Long Weekend

So Ryan and I got really excited last Thursday about the weekend. We decided to go up to Salt Lake City on Saturday and go to the temple, Liberty Park, Gateway - the works - just to be off together somewhere. That is, until we saw the weather forecast - rain all day Saturday. So we had to make other plans. Friday night we went out to SubZero with Bruce, Rachel, Hailey, McKayla, Scott, and Lisa. There were some salespeople outside trying to get people to sign up for Wing Cash - some smartphone "cash" payment app. So even though we don't have smartphones, we all signed up and got our ice cream for free.

 Saturday was the first day Ryan and I spent all day together, just the two of us, working at our apartment. We spent some time cleaning and organizing and then went shopping for curtains and soap dishes and picture hangers. We finally are almost all moved in and unpacked in our new apartment - and it's starting to look like a home.

Our kitchen - I'm planning to make a green valance for the window.

Our bathroom - I love our shower curtain and the fact that we have enough space for both of us to use the mirror at once :)

Our entertainment center - it used to be Bruce and Rachel's, but they let us have it when they moved. Our TV just BARELY fits - literally a sixteenth of an inch on either side. The TV, picture of Christ, and plaque were all wedding gifts.

On Sunday, I was sustained to my new calling - compassionate service committee. Then we headed out for Sunday dinner at Scott and Lisa's to celebrate my birthday and Jerry's birthday. It was fun spending time with Tana and Jerry and their kids, and Ryan and I got our thank you cards delivered, too. We played Rollick, a really fun backwards charades game in which I performed a one-time non-repeatable role as a scottish dancer, and we learned that Tana is unfamiliar with the term "jelly."

Monday morning Ryan had to work - but we pushed it off as long as possible by watching the Wizards of Waverly Place movie on the love sack with pineapple smoothies (see the recipe tab for ingredients!) Then he went to work and I visited my mom until three, when we met up at Scott and Lisa's again for a barbeque. We ate, visited with Lisa's parents, lost horrendously at Corn Hole, and set up Scott and Lisa's pool in their backyard.

Ryan and I are lucky to have our family so close while we're going to school. At the end of July, Bruce and Rachel will head off to Texas for Bruce's new job with E&Y, but we'll still have our parents, some of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in October, Ryan's younger brother will be back from his mission. We love getting to spend time with our family, but also love putting down our own roots and spending time together establishing our own traditions. We really are blessed to have the best of both worlds for our first few years of marriage!

April Adventures

Ryan and I dyed Easter eggs one night for family home evening in April.

On the weekend of BYU graduation, after finals, we went on an "Arches Anniversary" trip. Our freshman year, we went to Arches for a day trip. It was a really fun and memorable occasion. This year, we spent two nights camping along the Colorado River and we made a detour to Goblin Valley on our last day before coming home. We had lots of fun hiking, climbing things, getting lost, chasing lizards with waterguns, building fires, roasting marshmallows, singing Beatles songs with the guitar around the campfire, and playing catch and almost losing the baseball in the river.

After our adventuring, we came home and packed like crazy for our move to Bruce and Rachel's old apartment south of campus. We're spending all our spare time unpacking and organizing - in between homework, work at BYU, lawn work, and dates :)

Wedding Photo Book!

I finally finished making a photo book from our wedding...which was almost five months ago... haha :) It's posted online here if you want to check it out!

March Madness

More like March Illness. Not so much madness going on over here. March was lots of fun, in between Jen being sick again and again. I finally went to the doctor and found out I had pneumonia. Lots of antibiotics and soup from caring parents and in-laws, I'm finally back in the game - just in time for finals. Hooray!

In between being sick and trying to stay on top of school, Ryan and I made time for some fun things - including seeing the new Hunger Games movie, attending some folk dance events, including my semester concert, Festival of Nations, going to Men's Chorus at BYU, making green shamrocks to decorate our apartment, having open juice bar at Scott & Lisa's house with Bruce and Rachel, and planning our summer.

 Our St. Patrick's Day window decorations

 Ryan and I after Festival of Nations

 With my mom

 And dad

My traditional Serbian costume for Festival of Nations

Behind the scenes at the Sommerfeldt's

Ryan and I have a lot of fun together when it's just the two of us.

Ryan is very good at accents. He has his awesome British accent, his German mad scientist accent, his five-year old Ryan accent, a whole range of Harry Potter accents, his mattress-store salesman accent, and recently I think we've been exploring some Spanish, New Zealand, and Polish (?) accents lately. We can go on for an hour in our accents - and sometimes we forget to switch out of them and it makes for some fun moments.

Ryan is also a very good cook. He invented a delicious steak marinade yesterday, put together the grill, and made dinner while I did homework. He's also great at vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the shower, and taking out the trash. We joke that someday I'll be a real wife - and in the meantime, he's doing a great job :)

We went to a nickel arcade for a fun date recently. Ryan was astounded to learn that I've never played Mario. He had to inform me that mushrooms make you grow, turtles want to kill you, hurling yourself at a flagpole gets you extra points, and jumping up and down on top of pipes makes you sink into the ground and get bonus points. In turn, I informed him that Mario is a plumber. Why else would he crawl around in pipes?

Sometimes we get to babysit for Rachel and Bruce. We babysat for them a couple of weeks ago - and by we I mean Ryan. I had class during most of it so he was on his own. I came just in time to traumatize Hailey while getting her ready for bed (in my defense, I had no idea that her reason for climbing into McKayla's crib was to get a blanket and not to wake up little sister!) Hopefully I'll understand our own children someday better than I understood Hailey!

We went skiing for Ryan's birthday. It was much more successful than skiing on our honeymoon - Ryan LOVES Alta more than Canyons and I have to say I agree. I like the runs much better, and it's so much easier to relax when there aren't crazy snowboarders whizzing around all over the place. We had this great moment where I accidentally fell - and slid halfway down the run because it was so steep. My feet flipped around so I was sailing down the hill on my stomach, headfirst, skis waving in the air, screaming for Ryan to help me. He tried to get in front and stop me, but that only resulted in me pushing him down the mountain too. Fortunately, the whole incident ended with me laughing hysterically and wishing I had a video of it!

February was full of fun adventures - we're excited for March - St Patrick's day, Jen's folk dance performance, springtime, callings, midterms, and more :)

Be Mine?

Ryan and I started getting excited for Valentine's Day waaaaaay back in January.

Personally, I think the holiday is a little silly. After all, why would you only spend on day out of 365 (or 366, for that matter) celebrating how much you love each other? Not to mention, the holiday is filled (and I mean FILLED) with all things pink. Eeuurrgchk. Pink is great. I plan to have a little girl someday and drown her in cute little pink outfits. But seriously. On February 14th, there's just too much of the color.

Nevertheless, Valentine's Day has its plus sides, and one of those is gingerbread houses. What, you've never heard of a Valentine's Day gingerbread house? Let me educate you:

 Ryan building his gingerbread house masterpiece.

 I have to brag about this. My house is UPSIDE DOWN. Yes, that's right. No glue involved. For the first time in my short frosting-making career, the royal frosting turned out just right, and everything stuck like magic. I think those houses were more earthquake-safe than our apartment building.

Our finished creations:

Our beautiful homes graced our coffee table until well after the holiday - by which time the candy had mysteriously disappeared off my little cottage.... don't know who might've done that...

Valentine's Day itself was quite an event.
It started with Jen quietly getting up with the intent to heart-attack the kitchen while Ryan was still asleep - only to have him sit bolt upright and insist she turn on the light.

And this is what she found. Turns out great minds think alike:

 Apparently he had the same idea - only about three hours earlier.
No worries, I still had time to finish mine:

 Later that day, Ryan surprised me with the coolest bouquet I've ever seen - and the tastiest, too:

And we finished it all off with a delicious dinner at Tucano's.

So despite the overabundance of the color pink and the increasingly ridiculous marketing schemes, Valentine's Day has, once again, proven itself a good excuse to have fun and celebrate being together.

Kicking off eternity

  Ryan and I were lucky enough to be able to have a full week for our honeymoon, thanks to a wonderful person who signed his time share in Park City over to us. The day after our wedding, we headed up to Park City, where we stayed until coming home on Christmas Eve day.

While we were there we:
- went out to dinner at some crazy restaurants
- walked around Old Main Street
- watched some of our favorite movies
- attended a singles ward sacrament meeting (who'd've thought that there's no normal wards after 11:00 in Park City?)
- bought some DayQuil for Jen's cold that she got from being outside for so long on the wedding

- swam in the pool while watching the snow fall outside
- spent a day skiing at Canyon's

- saw the lights at Temple Square

- visited the giraffes and elephants at the zoo
- rode in a horse-drawn carriage in downtown Salt Lake City

Pretty much it was a much-needed break from all the stress of school and wedding planning - and a great kick-off to our eternity together :)