A brief update

So I've been a little absent lately, but it's been for a good cause. I've dedicated any free time I've had to working on my family finance class (it's all online, so no due dates, which is apparently NOT my best way to learn), and as of this week I have plowed through enough to be on track to finish the class early. 

But anyway, I've been gone from this lil blog! And that's a shame because October's been eventful.

We enjoyed watching general conference with our families earlier this month. I hope to post some of my favorite conference talks and quotes as we study them over the next six months, but can I just get an amen right now for Elder Klebingat's talk?? I think it was my ultimate favorite for this conference.

We also went to a mission reunion for Joseph's mission that weekend. I loved President and Sister Call, and I instantly thought Joe's letters had made President Call sound stricter than he really is. However, he said President Call in normal life is very different from President Call as a mission president, so there's that. In any case, it was fun to meet the leaders and friends from Joe's mission! And the brownies weren't too shabby either...

Next on our list of adventures: car problems!! But just a minor one. My starter got a little tired of doing its job, so we replaced it. Since my dad is awesome and does these things for us for free, we just ordered the necessary car part on eBay instead of taking the car to a mechanic. But the downside of this system is the wait time involved with snail mail. Fortunately, Dad had a good fix: to get my car to start each time I wanted to go somewhere, I just needed to pop the hood and tap on the starter with a hammer. Worked like a charm! Thus, this was my view at assorted grocery stores and campus parking lots for a week and a half:

Our next adventure: Obviously, we had our anniversary on the 11th. Wahoo! We made it a year! We celebrated with a weekend in Salt Lake City, where we stayed at the same place we stayed at for our honeymoon. It's literally across the street from the Salt Lake temple, so we spent most of our time doing things in that general vicinity.

We went to the temple on Friday night, followed by a yummy dinner at the Red Iguana. Saturday included breakfast at The Original Pancake House, a walk around City Creek mall, a walk around Temple Square (where we wedding stalked all of the couples who would now share our anniversary), and of course a trip to Trader Joe's for cookie butter. And then we watched a movie at the hotel and ate wedding cake* and free nachos from Costa Vida receipt surveys. Sunday morning we lazed around until check out time and then headed south to spend the rest of the day with our families. It was a great weekend! Mostly we loved having limitless amounts of time to just be together and chat and laugh and play. And just as I suspected when we first chose our wedding date, our anniversary comes at the best possible time of year, so #winning I say. Happyhappyhappy.

(*Having a Magleby's cake for our wedding was quite possibly the single best wedding planning decision we made. We didn't freeze any to eat on our anniversary; we just got a fresh cake (two, actually, but not like the one above) and enjoyed that instead. And we plan to do this on every anniversary until we die. Cha-ching. I love that cake.)


Finally (I know, this has been a bit of a marathon post), this last weekend was my mom's birthday, and she wanted to spend it in the mountains. Joseph had to work, but I had a wide open Saturday with which to join my family on a hiking adventure. And it was quite an adventure! Due to an unfortunate motorcycle accident on the Alpine Loop, we ended up hiking a little tiny hike to the midpoint of Bridal Veil Falls instead of the grand back-of-Timpanogos waterfall hike Mom had planned. It was still a blast, and I totally enjoyed Emerson's narration about every rock and tree as he hiked with us. What is it about 3-year-olds that makes conversing with them so wonderful? 

A very kind tourist took this picture of us with some other tourists selfie-ing in the background:

And then I took this picture of the mountains and made a heart eye emoji face at it:

 And look how cute my padres are in their matching Jackson Hole shirts:

Happy birthday, Mom!

We spent Saturday night with our friends Miranda and James, who shared with us a delicious dinner and a few rounds of Bananagrams. And then we watched our first ever episode of Dr. Who and quite enjoyed those BBC accents. I mean, really, who doesn't? Why do you think BBC is so popular in these United States? (Am I the only one with this hypothesis?) Thanks to the Moores for being such gracious hosts!

Okay, you have now been brought up to speed. I dunno if you care as much as I do, so thanks for hanging on this long. Hopefully I'll better balance my finance class with my blog for the rest of the semester! And if not...well, I guess I'll see you in December.