Grandma and Grandpa PETT

Last week my Grandpa Pett had his 80th Birthday- my mom and all of her sisters were able to make it back to California to celebrate with him-apparently it was quite the party with lots of people from the neighborhood and church all getting together to celebrate him. My mom had everyone write nice letters to him and compiled them all into a book- she also made up some kind of trivia game all about Grandpa lol I was sad that we couldn't be there to see him and Grandma- because they're both pretty awesome people and I don't get to see them as often as I'd like to.

Me and my Grandpa- I think I was 2ish

My hot Grandma with Jordan, Chris and me

Greetings from India

My little brother Cameron is currently in India working in a Leper Colony and he finally sent my parents some pics! His emails are pretty amazing- he's definitely getting some life experience he wouldn't find back in good ol' Boise. He left for India back in August and he'll head home around Christmas- the only troubling thing is that he sometimes doesn't wear shoes, like in the elephant picture below- that seems a little risky to me- but hey-maybe if you're brave enough to go live in India by yourself and take pictures really close to elephants, than walking around barefoot isn't that big of a deal- I dunno....

Conference Weekend

           Usually I'm counting down the weeks until I can sit at home all weekend in sweats and eat a lot of cereal while listening to the Prophet and Apostles, but this time I didn't realize what weekend it was until Friday night. I blame the weather- it's been freaking hot this September and that's not something I generally associate with Conference, but whatever- Conference weekend still came and we loved it, hot weather and all. I made a ginormous thing of home made macaroni and cheese (mac and cheese in any form is Jeff's ultimate favorite-even the 50 cent boxed kind) and my grandma's yummy rolls annnnnnd because I couldn't help myself, some scocheroos. We basically enoyed all of the best comfort foods (cheese, peanut butter, and bread :) ) annnnd listened to some really great talks.

           The only frustrating thing was our TV. The dumb thing's not very dependable- especially when our neighbors are having "band practice" and their electronic stuff does something weird to the airwaves and makes our signal go out- lol. I ended up making some quick fixes with a mini lotion bottle to our antenna to get the signal on Saturday, but then on Sunday I gave up on it after working on it for ten minutes (i kept all of the semi-bad words in my head to myself because, after all, this was for conference) so we just camped out on our couch with the laptop and watched it online. Overall, everything ended up working out and I only said that I was going to look up listings for a new place like...5 times-but really, who am I kidding, I love our little shack and its shack worthy price lol There's no way I'm giving our place up- there's even a list of people who want to live in our place (I was kind surprised to learn that lol)! And after listening to Elder Holland's really well timed talk, I should probably be a little more appreciative and grateful for all of the blessing in my life, our little place included.

This is us on our first day of school last year  in front of oue little shack that I'm pretty sure I'll miss at least a little bit when we move

Really?

So I just read what I blogged about exactly 1 year ago today.....and I want to punch that self in the face.  "I left our home at 7:45 am and didn't get home until 5:45. It was such a long day." hahahahha wow. Considering my schedule now- and the fact that we don't even have kids yet to keep us busy allllllll day and allllll night I'm pretty sure I'm always going to want to punch that old self in the face for saying that.

Happy Birthday!

Jeff's 25th birthday was last Thursday the 23rd. We celebrated earlier in the week with dinner and cake at his sister Amy's place in American Fork and again on Thursday with dinner in Salt Lake with my Grandparents who were in town- then we celebrated again on Friday night by staying up in Midway at the Zermatt Resort. We've been super busy lately, so it was pretty awesome that everything came together that week and we got to spend time with family and have fun up in Midway. My firm had a retreat that day up at Zermatt and was giving out free rooms for that night so it was perfect timing! I loooooooove birthdays and I'm pretty sure I had more fun celebrating than Jeff did lol, anyways..... this was our third time celebrating his birthday together, which to me seems like a lot- and while I was going through some of my favorite pictures of Jeff and I couldn't help but feel so lucky that I get to spend everyday with him! Here's some of my favorites that always make me smile :)

Haha, okay this is on our Italy trip and I caught Jeff being all buddy-buddy with our bus driver, Andrea. If you know Jeff, you know that he's ridiculously friendly, especially to people he just meets and this pic totally represents that since Jeff doesn't really speak Italian, and Andrea didn't speak much English and yet they got along great. I love that Jeff can make friends and see the good in just about anybody.

Yup! Still friendly.  

Jeff's probably the goofiest person you'll ever meet. I looooove this. One of my favorite times of the day is when we're in bed about to fall asleep because we'll talk about our day and I'm usually serious but when Jeff talks about his day, he does it in a ways that makes me laugh until I think I'm gonna pee my pants.

-I never do though and going to sleep laughing is a nice way to go to sleep :)

This picture is so, so, so stupid- but it makes me laugh every time I look at it. My roommate Mary took it, and I think she told us to be models and this is what came out. I think this picture shows that we're perfect for each other- like when you meet someone who's really weird and you just hope that they meet someone to be with in life that's also really weird- kind of like that.

If you ever go on a 12+ hour road trip, you'll wish you had him along. He was a hoot.
He also washed all of Mary's truck windows every time we stopped at a gas station.

So one thing that you might not know about him is that he really is a huge sweetheart, and you can see this whenever he sleeps/listens to music/watches TV because he always lays down with his hands folded across his chest lol. I think it's so funny! He looks so peaceful and innocent.  

 

Jeff looooves holding hands and showing affection. Everywhere. All. The. Time. This is kind of cute, but not something I was that in to- like when you're grocery shopping, hand holding just gets in the way, OR when we're walking somewhere I tend to walk a lot faster and hand holding holds me back and I get annoyed lol- BUT after being with him for a while I totally got into it- and now I love it and love that he cares so much about togetherness and all that.

I love this picture because it shows how Jeff feels about his mom perfectly. Ever since I met Jeff he has always told me how much he respects and loves his mom. This meant a lot to me while we were dating because it was important to me to see how he treated his mom- and like I said, he's a big sweetheart.

Yeah... the pics above and below probably fit best under the before mentioned "it's nice when weirdos find each other," category.

This pic is from one of my favorite mission stories of Jeff's. It was when some of the missionaries in the Toronto area were asked to sing Canada's national anthem at a MLB baseball game without much prior notice- Jeff said he didn't know any of the words past Oh Canada, but that he smiled and sang the loudest haha, which I don't doubt at all.

So, like I said, Jeff's a big sweetheart- and nowhere is this more evident than his love for babies and dogs. I'm not always sure which he loves more, haha but it's still so cute to see how excited he gets whenever he's around a baby or a dog. As you can see, they provoke similar reactions lol although I would prefer Evan over a dog every time :)

While I was looking through old pictures it was clear to me that Jeff loves to ham it up for pictures. I remember telling him to practice smiling "normal" for our wedding day pictures lol. But seriously, he really made it fun to go through pictures of him since at least every other picture he's in he's doing something ridiculous. When we broke up and I went to London for a semester I remember trying to show my new friends pictures of the guy I used to date and was still talking to, but when I showed them his facebook- these were like the only two pictures he was tagged in lol, both with his shirt off and showing off either his butt or his muscles.

Annnnnd this is from the first time we celebrated his birthday together haha, I told him to look cool. Gosh, I love him.

Happy Birthday Jeff!!!!!

Lately...

Well...I've been super busy this Summer with work and Jeff's been even more busy with school, so I haven't written anything about July or August- but for the sake of our little "family history" I'm recording, - here's a little recap:

4th of July- Jeff had a lot of homework this weekend so we just stayed in Provo and ended up going out to eat with friends and laying on the grass outside of the Stadium of Fire listening to Carrie Underwood and watching the fireworks. The 4th was actually on a Sunday, so people here celebratd on Saturday and Monday, it was kind of funny.

Hiking the Narrows- My parents came down for a long weekend and took us down to Zions. We spent the first afternoon hiking Emerald Falls which was great, but the next day we hiked the Narrows which was even better. We started the next day by waking up at 5:30 am and took shuttle ride in a van to the top of where the Narrows Canyons begin- the ride was the worst! We were on a little dirt road and had to sit sideways but it was impossibe to stay in your seat. We kept going over these giant bumps and everyone was flying out of their seats. My mom kept screaming lol- good thing the other hikers thought she was funny and just kept laughing everytime she went airborne.

When we got to the drop off we all got together to say a family prayer and then we were finally off! We hiked about 8 miles the first day through some pretty rough terrain and spent a lot of time in the water! It was fun, but by the time we got to our camp we were pretty exhausted and after setting everything up, we played some UNO and then we all passed out.

The next day we hiked into the lower Narrows with the giant canyon walls and only the river to walk in. Before, we had been criss-crossing the river, but now we just walked straight down into it. The views were gorgeous and after about 7-8 hours we finally made it to the shuttle station to go home. The hike was a great experience and I'm really glad we were able to do this with family.

* On the way home we stopped for dinner in Cedar City- I think we were all craving something fatty and salty after our hike lol, so we went straight to McDonalds.

*This was the first time Jeff and I had been camping together, and it was also the first time we had eaten at McDonalds together-both are importand firsts lol

Up at the top of Emerald falls

On our way up to the first pool on the Emerald Falls hike

My Dad's the star of our family, hehe

What the second day looked liked

Annnnnd that's about all we've been up to the last two months besides the usual of work and school. Jeff was really excited to start his last Fall semester at BYU and his last conditioning season for volleyball. I survived my first tax deadline at work which I guess was like a baby deadline compared to April 15th, but it was still nice to get the overtime :)

Year 1 is Done

Last Sunday was our first year anniversary (June 27th). We celebrated the night before by going out to dinner- where our waiter broke some glass and sliced my finger open- but it was all good, the finger healed and our meals were free! Happy Anniversary to US!