high FIVE?...

....yes. I would most definitely say that a high 5 is appropriate for this given occasion! So I'm a little late (as usual), but Matt and I celebrated 5 years since meeting eachother on July 24th! Most of you know the story, we were FORCED to meet by some family members at a 24th of July party back in 2006, and well the rest is history...

The summer we met. I'm pretty sure this is the first picture we ever took together. That necklace was the first gift matt ever gave me. It was a beautiful little onyx heart with silver details on the border. I'm not usually a heart shaped jewelry kind of girl, but this was honestly so pretty, I LOVED it! Unfortunately it got lost in the move the summer I moved back home from Utah State; right before we got married. It still makes me so sad, but at least I have a picture of it...well kind of. In the picture it's actually flipped around so all you see is the back.

Walking out of the Salt Lake Temple about a year later

Us now 5 years later... a little plumper and even happier:)

I'm so grateful to have Matt as my husband and best friend. He. is. my. rock. Obviously life AND marriage itself can be very hard(and those of you who say it's not are lying, or haven't been married long lol) but it's about how you and your partner work together; even when it's REALLY hard for one of you, to get through the rough patches in life. I'm so grateful that Matt is that person for me, and I hope I am (I'm trying to be at least) that person for him. I'm VERY grateful for unconditional love. Neither one of us will ever be PERFECT but we have an unconditional love that allows us to love eachother despite our shortcomings, and pushes us to be better for one another. Okay I'll stop here, you get it, I kind of love this guy...a lot.

Us on the 24th this year. Not the GREATEST picture, he's all fuzzy and I'm makeup-less but remember the "unconditional love" thing? We spent the day swimming, seeing HP7 part 2(his first time, my second), and going out to dinner. Lucky for us since it was the 24th, little did we know that when we asked to sit out on the patio we would be getting a firework show too! It was awesome we ate dinner and watched fireworks going off in Sandy, West Jordan and South Jordan. Again appropriate for our ocassion:)

In other news I can't find my camera with ALL of our Oregon pics!!! Tragic I know:( But it has to be in this dang apartment somewhere! So hence the lack of absolutely breathtaking Oregon photos, so in the meantime I'll post about other happenings in our "oh-so-adventurous-life"...not. We REALLY need to get out and do more. Unfortunately our time has mostly been consumed by hunting for a new place to live. Our lease is up come the end of september so we are having to search pronto! There are a couple houses we really want (renting just one more year. That's the goal!) but we're just crossing our fingers we can get one of them, and if not then the search will continue!!

Anyway hope your all enjoying this lovely utah transition from summer to fall! It's my favorite time of the year!

The following week after the camping trip my BIL Dave invited us to go fishing, so Matt and I went on over to the lovely sports/hunting dept. (my favorite part of Walmart) and got ourselves some fishing licenses. We got some lunch and headed up Big Cottonwood...



Paul posin' for the camera.





















Dave with the first catch of the day! Don't worry we just did catch and release.














mil mil, lilly and I. I spent most of the time watching the girls so I didn't fish long enough to catch anything. I did get stuck in the middle of the stream though and matt had to come in and get me out so that was kind of a... high? of my day.










The girls had poles, but hello, who wants to fish when you can throw HUGE rocks into the stream??











Milla teaching lilly how to fish. Can you believe they are only 8 months apart???Lilly=a shrimp.

















Matt and paul at our second fishing spot.












Pretty Panoramic







Dave schooling everyone...
















Matt and his little baby fi...I mean most ultimate, awesome catch of the day!!!









Another Panoramic...in this one you can see Paul's evil twin getting ready to attack him from behind...

This is what I LOVE about UT. It's so beautiful. As much as I gushed over the landscape of Oregeon, my heart belongs with these mountains.

Oh, and Paul finally caught a fish at the very end of the day! yay paul!!



(I know you can't see it, but I promise the fish is there...)

The Great Outdoors! (Part 1)

A few weeks ago Matt and I planned a quick little camping trip with my mom, grandma, brothers/sister, and niece and had an awesome time! We camped a couple nights and went swimming. My favorite part of the trip had to of been watching Killer swim in a body of water for the first time. Hilarious I tell you. He looked so cute and pathetic all wet, I wish I had pictures of it. I'm usually pretty good about having the camera in people's faces at our family gatherings, but I guess I was having so much fun that I completely forgot about my camera until the final morning at breakfast, so unfortunately this is all I got...








These two weirdos. Yes. They're wearing cutoff shirts; a big no-no in my book. They're both super sports obsessed/athletes, and think these make them look "cool" and "muscle-y". They haven't said it out loud but I know they're thinking it...










My sweet grandma "Mami Bessy" and I. I love this Lady. When I was a kid I was obsessed with searching all throughout her house for old treasures, and antiques. Now I'm obsessed with hearing her tell me stories about her childhood, and about how she struggled to come to this country to provide the best life for her children; all as a single mother. I heart her. a lot.












My mom and Mami bessy








A couple of the cutest girls I know, lala and lilly(yes I mixed up their names about half of the camping trip. The other half I kept calling lala by my other niece's name, mil mil...). These two had SO much fun together and kept eachother so entertained there was hardly any complaining lol. I think the best part of watching these two interact was seeing how opposite they are. Lilly is very girly girl,"I dont want to get to dirty" where on the other hand I could NOT for the life of me keep Lala away from piles of dirt. At one point I found her playing with a pile of coal ashes because I had banned dirt piles (she had a burn I didn't want to get infected), but not coal. I've NEVER in my entire life met a kid (and I've worked with quite a few kids) that LOVES dirt so much lol! Sill girls, they made the best of friends.







Edward and Gypsy








Moments I wish I could have captured:
* Just ONE picture of Matt and I haha!
*Lala and one of her piles of dirt
*Killer's wet little snout
*One of matt, the boys and myself jumping off the docks into the lake
*Killer jumping off the docks:)
*My ridiculosuly huge mosquito bites! I swear I'm allergic...
**And finally I wish I had a video of my grandma teaching us a game our last night. The game consisted of us standing in a circle, one person yelling (in spanish) something about selling a quart of cooking oil, and then scrambiling around the circle to another spot. I think? Yeah. It made no sense. At one point we were completely confused(actually we were pretty confused the whole time) so we asked my grandma "What's the point of the game? How do you win?" and she said "What do you mean? Nobody wins it's just for fun...". After she said that we all looked at eachother and busted up laughing like no other! I love grandmas...

and camping.

Ketchup!!

Matt and I just got back from the wonderful state of Oregon, and although I'm feeling like that's the highlight of our summer at the moment, we've had a lot of fun happenings going on, so I'm going to take the next few posts to play catch up and then we'll talk Oregon!

First off this little beauty turned 1 on June 30th!!! We celebrated our neice Emilia's birthday with the Crows at the park...

Bink (visiting us in UT with the kiddos while her hubby is deployed in Iraq. We missed you Mark!!!) and Leah (emmie's momma)

Cute Dave and Lucy...and cute Momma in the background LOL!

Pauly D. my favorite dog sitter:)

Emmie loving on the puppy matt and I picked out for her. Leah told us that she LOVES stuffed animals especially dogs. She was so cute when we gave this to her and was even making barking noises:)

Later that week/weekend (I can't really remember) Leah and the kids took us (Bink her kids, me and lilly) up to the Bountiful Temple to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous! Thanks Leah!!!