Secret Daughter

I decided before we left on our trip that I needed to get a book as the extraneous amounts of magazines that were piling up were making my carry on anything but lighter. Not only are magazines expensive, but they also don't facilitate much thought and they do tend to loose my attention after about an hour. After opening up this book on a long flight I remembered the simple joy that comes from escaping your own thoughts every once and a while and diving into someone elses. I finished this book by the time we landed in Florida and loved every page. I can't wait to continue onto my next book which I am half way through, The Night Circus.

Precious Moments

and this is why I love my husband and love being married. After being sad about him leaving for a couple days to head out to Florida to go wake boarding with his papa, I came home from work to find all my favorite friends on our bed.

Darren sent me that blanket while serving his two-year mission in Boston and my two best friends made me those pillows before I left to go to Utah.

Christmas Cruise with the Gardners

We just got back today from an amazing trip to Florida in which we also hopped on a cruise for 5 days through the Bahamas! It was so much fun and the highlight for me was definitely being able to visit Atlantis! For all of you who are Mary Kate and Ashley fans and who have seen Island in the Sun you know just how exciting this was.

Favorite moments in a nutshell:

1) Eating copious amounts of food and unlimited twist cones on the cruise
2) Our waiter from India named Uma.
3) Seeing Darren at at the airport as he left a couple days earlier then me. Couldn't stop smiling.
4) Bahama Breeze. So delicious. 
5) Getting to jet ski at Darren's family condo
6) Double tubing with Darren as we went through a tunnel filled with hammerhead sharks.
7) Shorkeling in Cococay and finding a lonesome little stingray
8) Late night swimming with Holly
9) Walking around Atlantis with Darren through the beaches and amazing aquariums
10) All the fun people watching that Florida and airports have to offer.
11) Celebrating being married for 3 months!!!!!!
12) The Love and Marriage night show on the cruise... Darren and I cried laughing as 75 year old couples answered the most hilarious questions. 
13) Coming back to Calgary and stopping for Mcdonalds and spending the rest of the day napping.

Cant even believe next week we are off to Mexico... lol we are seriously way too spoiled.

Grateful Mondays

I have always really liked Monday's. Monday's are a day to have a fresh start to a fresh week, with a whole weekend behind you for a promising start. I guess it is kind of like a weekly New Years.. you always are a little extra motivated to be a little bit better then the week before. This being said...I have also always loved the first day of school too and  Darren thinks I am straight up crazy, so maybe liking Monday's goes along with my weird thinking? Not sure if I am alone on this one? Lately however, something has changed... maybe my husband is starting to rub off on me......BUT I HATE MONDAYS. All it is, is a day start another repetitive week of work. So to combat this very negative thinking... have decided I need to change my attitude... and what better what to think of 5 things that I am grateful for small or big.... EVERY MONDAY!

1) Lets start off super conceited... I love my new anthropology coat purchased fully on a gift card from work... so technically a free new coat.. love it even more! 

sub gratitude: iphone mirror pics to get approval from husband lol lol.

2) Famoso becoming part of my diet at least twice a week. Who ever thought brussels sprout pizza could blow my mind so much. 

3) Surprising a friend a work with an ipod to help her out with her christmas shopping for her kids... giving is really better then receiving. 

4) Having a husband who woke up early this morning to start the crock pot to make cafe rio pull apart pork for tonight and who sends me hilarious texts like these...(yes he is the grey). Who buys a calendar these days.. let alone the one below?.... yup it is currently on our fridge. 

5) I am sorry but its true much to Darren's dismay... this is my favorite place at any time of the day...... I AM SO GRATEFUL FOR MY BED lol... yup I run to it everyday after work. The only good thing about a windowless basement suite is... it can be bed time whenever you want.

Now I wonder how I can start liking Tuesday's more.. lets me honest.. there is nothing good about a Tuesday.............. 

A little bit of goodness for the weekend

Hurricane Sandy Helping Hands from Joshua Brown on Vimeo.

Today is the first day that Darren and I have been apart since September 14th. And of course this is the day that my battery goes dead at work. Yup..... I guess you can't really tell that your lights are on when the sun is up? Luckily I have great people I work with to help me out, while I proved I know nothing about cars, however; I did learn that if something did happen and I was alone, I can't even pop my own trunk on a vehicle I have owned for almost 5 years. Also maybe also shouldn't of asked the gentlemen who were helping me if i should drive to them or they should drive to me to boost the car? Wow. One of those days. Its times like these I really should just sit back and observe. 

I must say though as much as I miss Darren it is kind of nice having the place alone. Darren distracts me too much or more like I just get distracted myself by him. Now I can officially clean more then one room faster then I usually can in a week when he is with me. 

So I didn't think I would say it but, wahoooooo me time!!!!!! 

Bridesmaids

Four of my favorite people. One of my wedding pictures I got back, love love love it!

Kingsland Farmers Market

Today was such a great day. I finally got to sleep in till whenever I wanted. The Monday-Friday 6 am wake up calls are really starting to kill me. Not only did I get to sleep in, but I was so so excited to wake up and check our sleep talk iphone application. This may be the best discovery ever. It records all night but only movement or when you talk, and in the morning listening to the clips are too fun. Then we got to go to the Kingsland Farmer's Market. I was so excited. 

Kick Start Smoothie: Blackberries, Strawberries, Kale, Banana, Beet, Carrots, Lemons, Orange Juice. 

It was fun, a little overpriced just like Darren said it would be, but we got some yummy soups and hummus and are excited to come back for lunch as their Mexican booth looked unreal.

Five Guys and Punch Buggies

Today was so much better then yesterday. After falling asleep two nights in a row at 6:00pm I finally felt alive at work today. My favorite part of today was when Darren picked me up at work and took me to Five Guys. I was hesitate about such a high calorie stop as I was really full from eating all sorts of snacks at work, but decided I would go check it out and maybe share something with Darren.  Darren was starving of course and didn't like this idea, so he instead suggested I get my own small burger and he would have some of it after he finished eating his. Well long story short... they messed up and gave me the larger burger as well... and surprise surprise... I ate the whole thing.

This is me getting ready to share most of my burger with Darren as it was clearly huge and I was too full for such a thing.


 ........And the day wasn't complete with out temporary new ride...

I laughed pretty hard when I came out of work and saw Darren in this as I had no idea he was picking it up. It even had the classic flower holder near the steering wheel. Looking good Darren!

Calgary Temple

We are so excited that the Calgary, Alberta temple is now complete. I had so much fun touring it with all our family and friends and even having friends lead the tours, before it gets officially dedicated. Over 100,000 people were able to come and see inside what I think is really a peice of heaven on earth, even though it was a tad squishy in there. 

One of my favourite rooms inside the temple was the Celestial Room. It is such a beautiful room which instantly evokes such peaceful feelings when your inside . One of my favourite parts of this room is the massive Swarovski crystal chandelier and a soaring panelled ceiling that "is meant to envision heaven."  

My other favourite room was the sealing room which symbolizes the families eternal nature. There are large mirrors that when you look through appears like the image in the mirror goes on forever. It was so nice to be in there with my family and remember my wedding day again. 

It was so nice that most of my family was able to make it as it seems hard to get us all together lately especially under such fun circumstances. Here is us at the temple, only missing Tessa (too cool to come... just kidding.)

From far left: Britlyn, Alexa, Maria, Joel, Mom, Dad, Me, and Darren

I love my family so much and it was so hard to see them leave but I had a great weekend to remind me what is really most important in life.

Over Easy Breakfast

Over Easy Breakfast 

My family came into town this weekend for the temple open house in Calgary, Alberta. It was so nice to have all of my family here and the temple was so beautiful, I will post photos soon. On Saturday we stopped at our favourite breakfast place Over Easy. I highly recommend you check it out and make sure someone from your party gets there early to save a seat as it is really busy. My favourite is the Original Soul in a Bowl (bottom right) which consists of two poached eggs, herb potatoes, real Quebec cheese curds, slow cooked bacon lardons & brown butter hollandaise.

I had such a nice weekend with my family and I can't wait to post more about the temple.

Darren's Birthday and One Month Married!

October 8th was Darren's birthday! I was so stressed with how I could make sure he had the best birthday ever, as he always tells me he doesn't really like his birthday... how can you not like your birthday? Anyways I tried to make sure he had a whole birthday week so he could retract his statement.

We got a tent for one of our wedding gifts, and I couldn't wait to use it. The Winters were never big campers,  so I felt so cool to finally have a tent of our very own! I asked Darren what his favorite movie, set it all up with our favorite treats and voila!

 Turns out my life filled with very few moments of camping lead to creative improvising to get that tent to stay up.... but it was a success! Nothing like Mulan and an indoor tent... yes he chose Mulan....

 With the help of my mom we tried to make Darren's favorite: German Chocolate Cake

 Happy 22nd Birthday Darren, I love you so much!

Honeymoon

Our honeymoon was so much fun. We flew to Florida then got on a 7 day cruise that took us to four islands: Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Mexico and finishing our vacation with 2 days back in Florida. The cruise was amazing and so was the food. After a long day exploring our stops we loved our dinners. I loved seeing and reading about the chef of the night on the ship and sharing 3 appetizers, entrees, and deserts with Darren figuring out out favorites. We loved our dining waiters Selma from St. Thomas and Bien from the Phillipines and coming back to our rooms to see  the new designs that Jeremy would create with our towels and place on our bed. I will summarize my favorite moments:

1) Going though the Jungle as Darren controlled our bobsled... scary!

2) Driving down the roads of Cozumel on our little moped finding Paradise Beach and eating copious amounts of guacamole.

3) Looking at the menu everynight to see what was for dinner. My favorite was lobster night!

4)Watching Darren in the Flow-Rider competition (he would wake up every morning at 8:00 am to go surf with advance only (lol so intense)

5) Mini Golf in Florida. There is nothing in the world better then mini golf in Florida. Every hole is a dream. And to finish the night off you could feed baby alligators.

The first week of marriage was wonderful, can't wait for many more! 

Wedding Number Two

Just some fun before our Calgary Reception

I must say it was so nice to come home from our cruise and have everyone excited again for another wedding, as well as have my parents here. I also didn't think I would say it, but I loved putting my dress back on. It reminded me of just how special our wedding day was. But I was right, it did not fit and I did enjoy just a little too much food on the cruise. We were all laughing as Darren and my parents had me pinned to our bed, as everyone used all their might to hook me back in.... luckily somehow they hooked!