Above all what makes me smile the most right now is how Justin makes my mom giggle and laugh. She is in a lot of pain. She is miserable. And then he'll crack her up and the laughter heals her brain for a little bit.

We were visiting her at my grandparents' house last Thursday after one of her treatments. When she is tired, she has a really hard time with word recall and loses her train of thought very quickly. She will mix up names, and terms like "we", "you", etc. She was struggling at trying to tell me something and got pretty frustrated. It always breaks my heart. I wish I could fix it. I hate seeing her in any pain whatsoever.

Justin made her laugh about something dumb we were joking about. Then I started venting about how we were sick of cars since our transmission failed and is STILL NOT FIXED. I mentioned we'd get one of those carts that are pulled by a human, and we'll take turns pulling each other to work. When I said, "What are those called again?", she immediately said, "a rickshaw." As if she had never been struggling with her thoughts at all.

Miracles, people. Rickhaw is a really hard word. Most people don't even know it. But then, she is incredible with words, and the tumor and scar tissue can't even keep her down. I get stuck on a hard word, and my genius of a mom, a regular thesaurus, chimes in.

Laughter really is healing. I'm so grateful that she and Justin like each other so much. He really is great at making her laugh. We spent the weekend with her getting her to laugh and smile. I couldn't imagine a more perfect weekend right now. It is exactly how I wanted to spend my time.

Oh and during that we watched my friend's brother get a bronze medal in the olympic bob-sledding!

Miracles, people. Miracles!

I love my mom. I am incredibly lucky that I still get to spend time with her, and have her be able to talk to me, and still get to see her face. Brain cancer may be a jerk and may be beating the crap out of her, but my mom is a fighter.

Justin and I have spent some time really making our house feel like a sanctuary from the world. For us that involves positive attitudes, incessant laughter, love and a lot of really great items that remind us of all the things we find beautiful... and surrounding ourselves with all of that.

Here's a photo roll of some of the little details that really make a difference in it not being just another place, but our very own home.








And how could it feel like a real home to me, without a pet or two?

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, because I had a whole night to myself after work last night, I decided to redo the flowers patch that had recently been cleared by the lovely yard guys.

No more bare dirt!  $20 bucks at home depot can go pretty far if you go at the right time. Also, these FOR SURE look like flowers and not weeds so I am positive they won't rip them out this time. I'm loving my little flower patch. Maybe I should've done things the easy way the first time instead of trying to grow wildflowers from seed?


What do you think?