Starting a family blog!

Okay, now that we've been married for almost a year, I'm finally giving in to the whole family blog thing. I doubt this will be as interesting as my sister-in-laws' blogs who have adorable kids that do funny and cute things all day long, but whatever. We take tons of photos and what's the point of taking them if you don't share them, right?

So here we go:

We were married November 27, 2009 in the Draper, UT temple.

Some of our bridal/groomal pictures on the Salt Flats and at the State Capital.

This photo was taken on our wedding day by my friend Sway who is an awesome photographer! (The temple and other two bridal/groomal photos are mine.)

 

This is us on the day Clay proposed to me : )

 

This is from before we were even engaged.

 

Me not wanting to go in the lake... (No, he didn't drop me. He's not dumb : P )

 

BYU fans!

Clay is quite busy with the nursing program here at BYU, work, and playing sports.

One of his many intramural teams.

Clay with all the nursing girls (there is only one other guy in his whole level! I've gotten used to this...ha).

 

He loves Ultimate Frisbee (oh wait, he loves every sport!).

 

He is a professional napper. Seriously.

I'm pretty busy with school and work as a photographer.

 

Getting stuff ready for our wedding.

 

A photo I took for one of my classes recently. I've discovered I love shooting interiors!

 

I also do a lot of engagements, weddings, families, and things like that.

Take a look at my photography blog.

Something that takes up a lot of our time is this:

 This is Allan. He's 92. We live in his basement apartment and take care of him. We do pretty much everything for him. He's legally blind, extremely hearing impaired, and can't really walk without his walker. Other than that's doing pretty well (unfortunately for him. He can't wait till his heart stops beating!).

 We take him to the cemetery almost on a weekly basis to bring flowers to his wife and his daughter's graves. Sometimes I enjoy the long drive, but truthfully I'm excited for winter when it's too cold and snowy to go.

 We eat the majority of our meals with him, which is nice because then he pays for our food, but we don't get to have quite the conversation that we'd like to have because he tends to dominate the discussion haha. But we love him anyway! I won an award for this photo of him in a contest at BYU recently.

 This is Gus, Allan's dog. He's pretty gross but we love him too.

 Us with Allan. Isn't he cute?!

We love him to death although sometimes he can be difficult and sort of emotionally draining. I think it's a lot like being a parent, although I guess I wouldn't really know, since I'm not one. But I definitely can relate when I hear mothers talk about how precious nap time is. I try to squeeze as much in as I can during his precious nap hours every day.

So this is where we live right now:



that's the "kitchen." I'm hoping one day we'll have a kitchen that looks something more like this:

But really the whole house isn't THAT bad, although it is pretty dark and retro looking (the bad kind of retro, like blue shag carpet with who knows what living in it...).

Honestly I'm not complaining though. We love it. We are truly grateful and feel very blessed for our circumstances. We are saving a lot of money (we're getting PAID to live here!) and we enjoy taking care of Allan. Although we get paid to do it, it still feels kind of like service, and it's a satisfying job knowing that we make such a difference in someone's life. Plus we love our neighborhood and ward. We live so close to campus and love our beautiful yard. We have a gorgeous garden and about 70+ rose bushes. I've constantly had flowers on my table EVER since we moved here.

 I'll miss the beautiful spring flowers this winter, but I do love fall

(photo I took a few weeks ago)

and I'm excited to make winter arrangements like this:

 

Overall, we're doing incedibly well. We're happy and busy. We have amazing family and friends.

 Clay's family. We now have seven adorable nieces and nephews. Also, Clay's sister gets home from her mission in a couple of weeks and we're excited about that!

 The boys in my family.

The girls.


We're happy. We're young and loving it.

Come back and see our blog again! I'll try to keep up and post a couple of times a week.