I hope you all had a blast on Valentine's day last weekend. It was nice that it ended up being on a Friday. MUCH easier for romancing the night away!

Justin and I aren't huge celebrators of Valentine's day, so we just got each other some simple gifts, and had planned to do something silly that night, like go to the family trampoline gym. He had to go out of town for some stuff the night before and had to take our only car. He was on his way back on Valentine's day when our car just stopped shifting gears, and wouldn't go above 2nd gear. This is kind of a huge problem when you live in a driving state. He called a local tow company, and they wouldn't be able to get our car home until Saturday due to the busy Valentine's holiday. They did have a loaner car he could use, so he said he'd borrow that so he could get the rest of the way home.

The car was incredible... or not. When he finally was on the road again, he called me to tell me he was more scared to drive that car than our car with engine trouble. One of the headlights was out, the car rattled like crazy and creaked like the axles would fall off at highway speeds. It was windy and he said it felt like the car couldn't fight back against the wind. It also was filthy everywhere you looked. Not just a little dirty, but like YEARS of grime and filth that came off on his clothes. But hey, when you're in a bind you will drive whatever you can!

So we 're in the process of trying to find out what is wrong with our car. We couldn't get it into a mechanic over the weekend because the towing company delivered it 8 hours later than promised. I seriously want to dispute the charge from our payment, but I'm still debating it. Just NEVER use A-1 Towing in central Utah. They are terrible at managing their customers. We had to call them like 5 or 6 times just to get them to communicate with us about where our car was and when it would be delivered Then they kept calling to ask if they could deliver it to a random place that wasn't anywhere near our home.

We secretly hoped they'd just ruin my car so we could get a new one for practically free! But alas, they delivered it in one piece. HA!

Right now we're renting a Jeep Compass (free upgrade when the rental place was out of compacts...SCORE!) to get around and it is super nice. I'm actually tempted to buy one of these soon and get rid of my car that I've had for 5 years.

Anyhow, this little beater loaner car was so funny. It has well over 200,000 miles on it and is super beat up. It made me feel like we were on a date in sophomore year of highschool. We did a late night run to Mickey D's and giggled the whole time about how fun it was when we were both 15 to even have a friend with a car, it didn't even matter if it was a disgusting, dangerous beast of a car.

I love our stressful, silly adventures. Let's hope the expenses to fix our car are not terrible.

I'm kind of kicking myself right now for not trading in my car 2 months ago when Justin and I were thinking of buying a new one. Where's Alanis Morrisette when I need her? This story should be in one of her songs. "It's a dropped transmission, when you could've had a new car, and isn't it ironic, don't ya think?"

We call her Blue Thunder. Ain't she a beauty? (His face speaks volumes about how he feels.)

So... I know I kept saying I would let you all know what's been keeping me so busy the past few weeks. Well, here it is!

(Drumroll, please.)


I had posted earlier this year about houses we were offering on and I just got sick of having to tell people we walked away from the house or we didn't get our offer accepted. So I kept my lips sealed about this one (except to my mom and girlfriends, of course). I'm happy to say as of August 1 we own this beauty. It's been a crazy week between one of the busiest weeks I've had at my job, trying to close on the home, Justin having his drill weekend, packing things and moving things, I am sufficiently sore and tired.

BUT SO HAPPY.

So far all we've set up is our kitchen, and half of the master bedroom, and half of one of the bathrooms. I plan to spend most of today slowly unpacking the rest of our bedroom stuff, and going back to our rental to do my laundry. I just love having a space that is all ours and with room to stretch our legs. Last night we raided Home Depot for a few things like new shower heads and paint testers. I am so excited to paint. You'll see why when you look at the pictures below.

Once we get the whole house set up, I'll take pictures of the place. But, I regret to inform you it will take a month or so to get it all setup. We have a very busy month ahead of us!

Enjoy the pictures below! It's a photo dump of some of my week on Instagram. (Sorry, if you follow me on Instagram, these will not be new to you.)

Our new front porch. This was right after we got our keys. We just went in, checked out the whole house and laid on the living room floor, chatting about all our dreams for the place. One of the funnest days of our marriage so far.

Our spare bedrooms. The previous owners had little girls. We will be painting over these delightful colors ASAP.

The only organized thing in our kitchen as of yesterday morning. Luckily last night I fixed that. Having a working kitchen is definitely making this drawn out move feel better today.

One of many car loads. When I lived with roommates it only took one day and 1.5 car loads to move all my stuff. This is definitely a bigger job. We also have only had a tiny bit of time everyday to actually move our stuff. I will be so excited when we are all settled in!

This is the only photo we took of us on our engagement anniversary date. We're lame photographers.

Well, I've been inactive on this blog for most of this month. It's been a busy few weeks! We spent the Independence Day holiday weekend with both of our families, and had a blast. That week we hit up the small town parade where my parents live, watched the firework show on the runway of the Cedar City airport, went to Brian Head to an arts festival (and got a really awesome cheap print of a Navajo painter's work), made a couple special trips to Brad's to get taquitos with cheese (if you've never had taquitos in Southern Utah, you are missing out!), rode the ski lifts up to the top of the mountains to cool off from the 100 degree weather, spent a day at a cabin, and finished the weekend with Sunday dinner at my parents' house. All in all a great Independence week celebration!

I have been so busy with work that I haven't had a chance to post much. I worked days and nights all last week trying to do some international work for our office. It's pretty exciting branching out to places we've never been. I am happy to add work like that to my ever-growing resume even if I pretty much wore myself out getting it all done!

The week before, we celebrated our 1 year anniversary from getting engaged. I am so happy I married this guy. Thanks for proposing on a Friday the 13th! Some would say that means we'll have bad luck, I just say, it's up to us to make our own good luck!

To celebrate this monumental occasion in our lives, we redid our engagement date except one part of it. We hit up Barnes and Noble where we first met on our first date, bought books, and ate at the same restaurant. The only thing we didn't redo was the Thanksgiving Point gardens. It was raining hard, just like it was when we got engaged.

I have some really exciting news I want to share (it's part of the reason I've been avoiding my blog), but you all just have to wait another week until it's a for sure thing and I can talk about it. Until then, enjoy these pictures from our fun Independence holiday week. It was so nice having a 5 day weekend!

Parade Pair

Where we watched the firework show.

On the way down. Brian Head chairlift.

Incredible view of the area. Brian Head chairlift.

Aren't we a pair of cute feet? Brian Head chairlift.

Daisies everywhere at 11,000 feet. Brian Head.

Where the Sidewalk Ends. A walk around my hometown.

My favorite picture - My sis-in-law took it. My mom is an excellent grandma.

Cabin scenery.

Cabin Scenery.

Cabin scenery.

Taken near Meadow, UT. Utah sure is beautiful sometimes.

One more thing... My mom had another clean MRI! I am so grateful for miracles. She has worked very hard through all her treatments and is being rewarded for it. I couldn't be any happier right now about this! I swear this is a great month we're in so far. I'm just full of great news and fun things happening.

Whew! I think I covered everything I wanted to write about!

So, I rarely complain about businesses because I feel like if I take my business elsewhere then I am victorious and they are not, but over the past few months Justin and I were getting screwed big time and I'd like to tell the world about it! I'd like to help you from making a grave mistake by working with CHASE BANK for anything at all.

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We're trying to buy a house and were very excited to find out the type of loan we qualified for was the best one on the market and allowed a lot of freedom when buying a house with minimal up front costs. Well, our lender was an idiot and didn't actually make sure we qualified for that specific type of loan. It's a hard one to get and so you have to make sure all the hoops are jumped through.

But he never told us. So we went house hunting, and happily put offers on homes we fell in love with hoping someone would accept our offer. SOMEONE DID! And the house was perfect!

Three weeks before we were supposed to close on the home we fell in love with, we found out he hadn't done his job, and our only option was to come up with a lot more money every month AND upfront, and that we didn't even qualify for that loan (despite the fact he'd sent loan approval letters to our seller). You can imagine our severe disappointment in having to walk away from our dream house.

What's even worse is, the first house we offered on wouldn't accept our type of loan because it requires an extra appraisal, and had we known we didn't even qualify for that type of loan, we'd have gotten the first house which was super cheap and nice, or waited several months to come up with a huge downpayment.

Then when we walked away from the house BEFORE the deadline to cancel our offer, the guy tried to tell us the fee he said was for the APPRAISAL was actually for a non-refundable application fee. Yeah, I don't fall for that. We have been fighting for over a week now to get our money back. I filed a complaint with his boss, and on their company's website.  Justin talked to his boss about the whole thing, and he said he'd give us our money back. The guy we were working with didn't even apologize for not doing his job, making us lose our favorite house, or for lying to us. All he said was "I told you already, can't refund you, take it up with my boss".

GRRRRRRRRRRR! Chase bank you suck balls. I hate you.

His manager told Justin we'd be getting our $500 bucks back... let's hope this really happens. It's been 5 days now.

NEVER WORK WITH CHASE BANK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!!!

Have you guys ever had sweet potatoes? I love them, and I also love yams... (I thought they were the same thing but I was corrected recently on that idea.) My sister in law made candied yams for Thanksgiving, and I couldn't stop eating them... it was probably one of my favorite things to eat this year.  So naturally I thought a soup mix I purchased called "Sweet potato soup" would be delicious. All the other soup mixes I bought from this brand are amazing.

This post wouldn't be complete without a good song from a band I'm falling in love with. You may recognize them from the song "Little Talks".

Here's another of theirs called Mountain Sound by Of Monsters and Men