Wedding 2.0

Oh my goodness. Time has FLOWN by and I attribute that to all the FUN we've had so far this summer. I realize it has been quite some time since I updated you all on our fun adventures, so let me back track to mid-June. :D

If you follow me on Instagram you got to see more of a real-time happening of our adventures, but I want it recorded here as well. My family and Lindy all arrived safely and we started our week long of crazy family fun times with the blessing of Baby Rusha.

Rusha is BreeAnn and Tyler's second baby and has the CUTEST chubbiest cheeks I ever did see. Her full name is Zerushadi Emma Moore, but everyone calls her Rusha. :D

We had fun celebrating this new life in our family. :)

The next day (June 19, 2014) is one that I will never forget. The day dawned beautiful and sunny and absolutely perfect. Seeing as how it had rained and been 50 degrees just a few days prior, this was happy news indeed.

I had some errands to run before we went to the temple, so we made sure to visit Farr's ice cream so that my mom could get her beloved Triple C (cherry chocolate chip) ice cream before leaving for Virginia later that night.

Then....it was time to head to the temple. I am so grateful for the opportunity we had to have our family and friends with us as we were sealed for time and all eternity.

on our way to the temple!

Allan's best friends (Seth, Allan, Mike)

The Logan Temple!

Kerrie and I!

Seth and Cindy, Mike and Megan, Allan and Alicia

Becky!

Seriously, I can't say thank you enough to all the people who came. We didn't take enough pictures, and didn't get one of just the two of us, but this day was just so special to me. I knew that when we got married we would get here, and it was so exciting when it did! I am so happy to now know that I am forever tied to my sweetheart and that we get to work towards eternity and exhalation together. :)

HUZZAH!!

We got a really exciting letter in the mail last week....it was our clearance letter from the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. :)

We can now get sealed in the temple! I am so excited and so happy. :) We're going to do it on June 19th in the Logan Utah Temple. I'm really excited for that day. :D I've put together a little countdown timer (as evidenced on the right ----> ).

Here we go! :D

Valentine's Minute to Win it FHE

So, as previously mentioned, the husband and I are trying to be social with other people in our ward and so we want to have combined FHE activities.  Last night we hosted a Valentine's Minute to Win it FHE.

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.

I laughed so hard my cheeks were hurting by the end.

In case you are curious, here are the games we played that I gathered (thanks to Pinterest) from several different sites including this one. I don't remember the others. (thank you short term memory)

ANYWAYS. Here's what we played and a few pictures that I took (I didn't think of taking pictures until we were half way through....but I did take some!)

First off - we played Husbands vs. Wives. We had each couple go at the same time (with the exception of one game that they went one at a time) and whoever won that round got a point for their team.

1. First up, we played Heart Stack. Using small conversation hearts, the idea of the game was to stack the hearts as high as you could in one minute.


2. Next - Candy Corn Stick-up. Using candy corn candies, stand them upright on a flat surface (without biting off the bottoms) the most standing at the end of one minute wins!

3. Candy Pick-up. Using chopsticks move candy from one dish to another. Most candy in the plate at the end wins a point.

4. Marshmallow toss. Using mini-marshmallows, toss the mini marshmallows from a bowl into a cup on the opposite table. To make this one more fun we had one couple stand on each end of the table and toss the marshmallows into the opposite cup - we had marshmallows ALL OVER the floor by the end, but it was definitely a lot of fun.

5. Suck it Up. Using a straw, suck up conversation hearts and transfer them from a bowl to a plate. This one was harder than it looked. I almost died.

6. This Blows. Blow up a balloon and use the air to blow the cups across and off the table. We had 16 cups, and man was this one HARD! The girls had a harder time because we sucked at blowing up balloons. My husband was super awesome at this one. Also, this is the one we did one at a time.

7. Face the Cookie. A minute to win it favorite! Place the cookie on your forehead and get it into your mouth without using your hands.

8. Penny Hose. Place two pennies in each leg of a pair of panty hose. Using just your hands (one in each leg) AND NOTHING ELSE retrieve the pennies.

9. Cupid's Arrow. I think this was the favorite of the night. Using a straw blow "arrows" (aka Q-tips) through a heart hanging from the ceiling.

And now a few pictures and video!

this is the suck it up! game.

 this is the this blows! game. :o)

Candy Pick Up

aftermath of one round of the marshmallow toss

Face the Cookie

Penny Hose

 So there you go! We had lots of fun and had treats (as one should at FHE!) at the end. It was good times to socialize with others in our ward. :o)

Life keeps on happening

I keep thinking I'll take time to update this little blog, and then I keep on doing other things. :)

Life has been busy lately for me and Allan. We work all day and play all night. Our "playing" consists of doing anything from working out and watching to TV, to going to a performance at Weber State and having ice cream afterwards. We're enjoying our many, many adventures! :o)

Since my last post we have enjoyed making new friends and hanging out with them, running in a color 5k to celebrate the inaugration of the new WSU president, going to the Imagine Dragons concert at WSU and celebrating Halloween with one trick-or-treater stopping by our house.

Like I said, life has been busy! I post lots of fun things on Instagram, so you really should follow me there. ;)

ANYWHO. We're getting excited for Lindy to come visit us at Christmas time - hard to believe that Christmas is less than 6 weeks away at this point! I'm excited to see Christmas through a toddler's eyes and for the magic of the holidays to be extra present in our house.

In other news, Allan and I are hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year with his Mom and Step-Dad, Brother and Sister-in-Law and other brother all coming to dinner. The total number of people at our house will be seven and it should be fun times! I'm going to brine a turkey and I'll try to be better at posting so I can tell you all the adventures that will surely bring. :o)

That's about it around these parts - I'll just throw some pictures below of our recent happenings and will try to be better at posting. :) Life is fun!!!!

us at the end of the color run 5k we participated in

what I did at Super Saturday - oh and it should be noted that I am now the RS First Counselor and Allan is a Gospel Doctrine teacher. :) We've been put to work!

Imagine Dragons concert! It was AWESOME!!!

We were Mario and Princess Peach for Halloween. :)

I may or may not have ruined Allan's hair when trying to use our new hair clippers. I may or may not have cried.

Funny faces time on FaceTime.

We have new friends! There are a 4 other newlywed couples besides us in the ward.

General Conference with a Toddler

One of the amazing things about my new life is that I am a part-time mom. It's kind of a daunting task to take on so suddenly - motherhood. In so many ways it really isn't "so suddenly" seeing as how I knew it was coming for such a long time and my role in Lindy's life isn't changing just because Allan and I got married. We're still doing things the same way...but still. To officially be a step-mom (although I hate the word step, so maybe a second mom? I don't know....) is kind of odd to think about.

Anyways. Due to drill scheduling and what not Allan had switched weekends to have Lindy over general conference. Our first non-honeymoon together....with Lindy! (hey, got to get the "normal" thing going asap right?) Knowing that this was happening I tried to be all awesome and put together something to keep Lindy entertained during General Conference. 8 hours of sitting and being told to stay quiet is REALLY hard for a toddler. Heck, trying to do that for 2 hours when what you're watching isn't Tinkerbell is hard to do at that age. ;)

So, I turned to Pinterest. I found SO MANY THINGS and started to feel a little overwhelmed at all the awesomeness out there that moms have put together. I didn't use any ONE source for what I did, but I did find just about everything that I did from this post.

So what did I do, you ask? Well, I got a bag for each member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency. I wrote their name on the outside of the bag and then put a different activity in each bag. Here's an idea of what was inside the various bags:

• 4 bags had 3-4 coloring pages from the Friend magazine.
• bubbles (we got special princess bubbles from walmart - they were a dollar or two I think)
• Princess coloring pages (this was a white elephant gift from several years ago, I had been saving it for the perfect time for Lindy.)
• Rip paper and glue to cardstock 
• Brown paper bags + craft supplies to make puppets
• Homemade sewing cards (took 5x7 pictures of a temple/First Presidency from the Distribution Center and used a hole punch to punch around the picture, used ribbon tied to one hole for a starter.)
• Play dough
• Apostle/First Presidency Matching game
• Vertical Drawing (taped a poster board to the wall and let her color on it.)
• Play a game on Daddy's phone (one of her church iPhone games)
• Faces game

I know there was one more, but I can't think of it. We got a little lucky in that during the Saturday morning session Lindy was playing w/her cousins while Allan and I got our washer and dryer picked up/installed in our house. :o) 

Notes: the coloring pages didn't go over super well (ESPECIALLY after some of the more "fun" activities). The ripping of paper and gluing it? PERFECT. That was one that kept Lindy entertained for an hour at least. Also a big hit? The sewing cards. Those are totally going in her Sunday quiet bag. We didn't pull out the bag to make puppets - the apostle this went with (Elder D. Todd Christofferson) went very last on Sunday afternoon and I knew it would be an hour or so project and I didn't want to start it at that time. So...we skipped that bag. Bubbles were another big hit and were used after the Sunday morning session to entertain for a while with Daddy outside. :)

Overall, it was fun times. Lindy loved getting a new "surprise" every so often. Some lasted longer than others - some got played more than once (the faces game for example). Also, I didn't stress on changing to a new bag each time a new apostle spoke. (i.e. the back to back Apostles like Holland to Oaks.) If she was entertained she got to keep going. If she was done and ready to move on, we opened the next bag. This worked really well on helping get through some of the other General Authority speakers that one cannot predict.

Whew. If you made it through all of that then you're amazing or something. ;) Several of the bags I will re-use again and the ones that are now "empty" I will re-fill with new activities for the future. Who knows if at this time we'll have Lindy for conference but there will come a day in the future where we'll always have kids around for conference....so it's good for me to have some of the stuff already put together. :o)

And now...a few pictures of the activities. :) 

Whew. you made it! Catch you later friends! 

P.S. Allan and I enjoyed conference too...so many amazing talks! I'm excited to study them together. :o)

getting married....and all that jazz

So, if we're friends in  real life you might have heard....I'm officially getting married on March 28th.

What I didn't tell the Facebook world (because I don't feel like I need to announce it there...) is the really big news that came with the decision of March 28th.

See, as I may or may not have mentioned, my sweetheart has been married before and since divorced (obviously). Now, in the LDS church divorcing your spouse does not instantly divorce you from your temple sealing. You have to get clearance (if you're a guy) or a cancellation (if you're a girl) of sealing and that is done through a long process through your local leaders (Bishop and Stake President) and then a packet is sent off to the First Presidency and you have to wait (patiently?) for a response.

We have been working on this process since the day we got engaged. It has been long and slow and without much news. However, we found out last week from our Stake President that due to certain circumstances that are not important for anyone but us to know, our clearance isn't going to come through until October.

October. That's EIGHT months away my friends. And when you've already been engaged for almost 3 months - another eight sounds horrendous. After much discussion (and really, we had discussed this possibility before this news) and with the strong recommendation from our Stake President, Allan and I have decided to be married civilly on March 28th and then we will be sealed one year later.

I am so at peace with this decision. While it was hard at first to accept this idea, we know that this is the best thing for us and our situation. Waiting until October would be extremely difficult and would more than likely cause more problems for us. I know it's not the "normal" thing to do when you're Mormon....living in Utah...but it is what is best for us.

My family has been super supportive and the friends that I have told are also all for it. We are going to still keep things small that day - while we want a party we are also wanting only those closest to us to celebrate our special day. And that's what it will be - special. And who knows....I might just get lucky and get two anniversary dates. ;)

For now, if I don't write on here as much in the next 45+ days....just remember that I haven't abandoned this here blog, but instead I am doing my best to avoid blowing up and planning a wedding that is taking place in 45 days. Cue freak out.....

until next time! ciao!

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow..... NOT!!!

For the past three days I have woken up to ugly, gnarly, snowy conditions. It took me over an hour on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to get to work. It was nasty and not so much fun.

However, today, the roads were clear. I got to work with minutes to spare. :) And looking at the forecast for the next week I am one VERY happy camper:

Sunshine! Temperatures above 20 degrees! What more could a girl ask for? (well...lots, but I'll be happy with this!)

In other news I've slowly started moving to the new place and this weekend is THE BIG MOVE of everything else. I am excited to get everything set up in the new place and to make it a home. :-) It will be fun times.

Also, because everyone keeps asking me - no, I do not know when I am getting married yet. I have a working date in late March, but we're still waiting for everything to go through. We met with our Stake President last night and he is dedicated to help us finish everything out and have everything in place so we can get married as soon as possible. I left that meeting last night with a lot of hope.

I was reminded of this quote by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles :

“To any who may be struggling to see that light and find that hope, I say: Hold on. Keep trying. God loves you. Things will improve. Christ comes to you in His ‘more excellent ministry’ with a future of ‘better promises.’ He is your ‘high priest of good things to come.’ ” - Jeffrey R. Holland, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come,” Ensign, Nov. 1999, 36

Isn't that just lovely? Hold on. don't give up. It will be okay. That is my mantra for this next month. January has been hard one for me in so many ways and I am glad that it is ending today. February will be a challenge to get through, but I have a feeling it will fly by like a blink of an eye. Which more than I can say for January. :)

Before I know it will be March. March brings my birthday, our wedding (hopefully) and warmer temperatures (at least, one can hope for that!). Life is good. It's going to get better. I just need to live one day at a time.