Welcome! Come on in...

Without further ado, our home. Enjoy the tour!

Our front porch.

I love, love, love this bench! Our good friends gave it to us last week as a housewarming gift. I am so happy just sitting on it with Mike on a good evening staring at the temple. Thank you SO much Satterthwaites!!

Entry way

To the left of the entry way is the.... formal living room.

(This room is currently serving as storage for my sister's sofa and my chairs. You'll notice throughout the tour that we're building each room piece by piece. So we're not there yet with the decorating, mostly cause we don't own that much furniture, but we're enjoying the journey!)

Walking through the entry way from the front door leads into the... living room.

Behind the living room is the... kitchen nook. I adore the oversized window and doors on both left and right of the kitchen area that lead to the backyard. When we complete our yard it's going to be fantastic to open up those doors and let the air breeze through from our patio area.

Walking past the eat-in area is the... kitchen. You have to know how LITTLE counter space we had the first two and half years of our marriage to understand the appreciation I have for our island. When I saw it I actually hugged it. Counter space... I love you! I've always wanted dark hard wood floors so these beauties warm my heart at night after my sweetheart of a husband has cleaned and buffed them and they shine up at me. Yes, I have a serious relationship with my floors. (And, of course, with my husband!)

Walk through the kitchen and to the left and you'llbe at the garage entrance where there is a... guest bathroom. Not much to say here- it does it's purpose well! :)

Also on the main floor is the... master bedroom.

Obviously one of my favorite rooms. I love many things about it. One: I love the three little windows above the bed. Two: I love the high, slanted, unique ceilings. Three: I am obsessed with the sitting/reading nook with windows. It is my own, personal reading area complete with a ridiculously comfortable chaise lounge ($45 @ the overstock liquidation sale!).

Opposite my reading nook is the master bathroom.

His and her sinks and a jetted tub for stress-releasing evenings. I didn't take a picture of the shower which is to the left of the tub in the above photo. Also in the above photo is the door that leads to the closet. I definitely did not clean it the evening of picture-taking... therefore, it is being left out. It's a closet. To the left is Mike's area and the to the right is mine. There is also a giant window that doesn't really make sense to us but is nice for natural light (Ha ha...I guess?). Although it mostly remains with the blinds closed because really, how clean do you all keep your closets?! Also in the above photo with the sinks is the WC. Nothing special there but again, it does its job.

Upstairs overlooking the living room is the door to... Mike's office, which is put to good use pretty much every night as he studies for the CPA exam. He's one hard-working sexy man of mine.

One of the best things is the three windows that pretty much encompass the room. There are some great views on both side of the mountains.

To the left of the office is my (pretty much empty)... workout room. The good news is that in the next week a treadmill will occupy this space. Yay!! I'm so excited!

To the left of the workout room is the... guest bathroom. It's so nice to have a separate bathroom for family and friends.

Next to the bathroom is (currently) the... craft/play room. This is mostly "my room" where all my therapy toys, crafts, cedar chest, memories, etc. reside. It is planned to be the future nursery. It's going to be pretty much one of the cutest nurseries ever. :) Mostly because of the charming step down into a play area off of the room. I am going to put a glider in that area and rock my baby to sleep while I look at this...

In the future maybe that area will be a small sitting/reading area for my children or maybe we'll go all out and create it's own little door so when you walk through you are transported into a castle, spaceship or some other magical space for make believe.

And finally... this is the guest bedroom. I understand it's mostly empty now but I have big plans for this room. As for now, it's already housed 5 nights of guests. We LOVE having a room for them and welcome any of you to spend a night when you're in town, in need, want to have a sleepover... whatever. :)

So thanks for joining me for the tour. Again, we extend an invite to all that'd love to come for a game night, drop-by, FHE or weekend.

**The point of having a home is to fill it with family, friends, laughter and love. We look forward to many to come!**

A New Adventure

Some of you may know that Michael and I recently purchased a new home in April. We've lived here for 2 months and we are slowly repairing and improving. We love it! It's such an exciting adventure for us. We never, EVER could have done it without our incredible families. Here are some pictures of my family helping us patch holes, replace lightbulbs, clean walls, wipe out cupboards, etc, etc, etc... (all the dues required in purchasing your own home, right?).

Boys working hard... although it currently doesn't look like Jonny is, he actually cleaned ALL the walls in the whole house.

As it was a full days' job we had a little lunch in the kitchen. Ree actually brought some amazing chocolate cake for her birthday (we celebrated it about 5 times this year so don't think I'm a horrible sister-- it wasn't her birthday or her party on the day we cleaned).

A couple of the fantastic things about our new home is living near these beauties!

Although I still haven't found the time to go around and take pictures of the inside, here is a picture of the outside...

We love, love our home and can't wait to start an adventure of a different kind here sometime soon ("soon" is really a very relative term so don't read too far into that).

Health Ideal

Canyoneering

Every May my audiology group typically does a humanitarian trip. In past we have gone to Mexico, Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. This year, the trip ended up falling through due to all the turmoil in Mexico-- so we opted to do audiology-volunteer work at a school in Moab for a couple days. Truthfully, the volunteer work only took us a matter of hours. So the rest of the time we played!

The first day we all hiked to the famous Arch (my first time seeing it actually!).

Some of the students in a rock window, the famous arch on Utah's license plates and more of the group as we worked our way up.

The next day we chose whether to go regular hiking or canyoneering. I am so happy I decided to go canyoneering with Liz and all the boys. It was ridiculously fun! In case any of you don't know what canyoneering is (as I didn't)- let me tell you... it is a riot! Basically, canyoneering is getting through a canyon by walking, scrambling, etc. and using rappel gear to descend once you get to the top. Beau and Chris were our "secret-taking-the-backroad-trail" guides, and they fulfilled their promise to get us home in one piece. With the help of the men as an occasional step stool for the girls (hey- I'm only 5'3!), we all hiked/crawled/boosted/jumped/lifted our way up to the highest point in Arches National Park-- Elephant Butte.

Liz and I were pretty proud of ourselves. We were the only girls to brave the 4 hr hike!

The canyoneering group (minus me, the picture-taker, of course).

The view from the top of the world (or at least the top of Arches National Park). Us signing the register to proclaim we made it to the TOP!

Me rappelling down-- woo! I'm the tiny pink dot so look closely. Wow, what an amazing rush!

On the second rappel, we decided to flip upside down half way. Some of us (Liz) had some great shots!

Others struggled a little to get all the way upside down, not naming any names (Beau and Dr. Larsen). It was quite the hilarious scene to observe.

I highly recommend canyoneering to anyone that gets the chance. It was a blast and hope Mike and I can do it together soon!

Sometimes it's the little things...

...that make a home yours.

The permanent mark on our linoleum floor where Mike and I (still under debate who is personally responsible) accidentally leaned on the stove knob while putting away groceries, caught our groceries on fire, realized I have not been trained how to appropriately react to a fire and Mike running in and knocking the flames onto the ground. Resulting in above.

The hole under our porch where one, two, possibly three snakes resided. You never know when a snake is going to completely ruin your ice cream cone on the porch.

The pink (debatably mauve by some people's account) carpet. I cried the first time I saw you (not the happy kind). Yet it's amazing how your horrid color seemed to fade and be less important to me as the years went by. I think I actually accepted you as if you were a nice, pleasant beige. Now that's growth on my part.

The cheesy glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of our bedroom. We made fun of them but somehow never had the time in two years to take them down. So they will happily pass to the next resident and they will think that those tacky stars were my fashion faux pas.

The "flame" key. Also another thing to pass to the next lucky resident who will think that we thought the key that looked like fire was cool. No, definitely was not us.

The shelf that Mike built me to store all the cleaning and laundry supplies due to the paucity of storage space. And the amazing labels he made to organize cleaning supplies vs. food storage vs. laundry materials (yes, I'm very much in love with him).

The extra security measures, the motion sensor alarm and second door lock that Mike bought and installed for me to make me feel safe while we lived those three long months apart. Ironic that I felt I needed these on our little lane in Logan after we left our keys in the door for an entire night without being robbed, killed, etc.

Even if it was the little imperfections that made it perfect. It was ours.

Just Call Him Master Mansfield

Bring on the accounting jokes, jests and jabs... cause he's an accountant baby!

(And soon to be a CPA!)

I am incredibly proud of my fantastically intelligent and hard-working husband! At his young age, he's accomplished so much. On May 6th, he graduated from Utah State with his masters in accounting. Now he's anxiously awaiting starting with Deloitte next week (4-6 months earlier than previously expected!). You can almost taste his relief of putting school behind him. Although he's not a huge fan-- he graduated with his MAcc, at age 25 with an outstanding (hope he doesn't mind me sharing) 3.93 GPA. I know, he amazes me as well. Again, it's hard to describe how proud I am of him as well as grateful for his dedication to provide for us. I know very few people who work as hard as him. I'm attributing that to some seriously impressive parenting and role models throughout his life.

Graduation was a whirlwind of a weekend with Mike's family coming out to stay from Vernal. On Thursday, Mike's sister Megan and her husband Mike (yep, you read that correctly. There are two Megan's and two Mike's in the family. We just like to keep it interesting.) came to stay with us at the new house. It was so fun being able to host someone finally. It's been our hope for a long time now that we would have a home where family would have room to come and stay with us. Thankfully, we now have at least one room with a bed (nothing else really in it) for just such visitors. Anyway, Megan, Mike and Chloe all came and stayed Thursday. On Friday morning, we all drove to Logan to meet Mike's parents, sister and niece. It was a long graduation ceremony but so worth it to see Mike get hooded. Below are his pre-hooding picture (waiting in line) and post-hooding picture (notice the presence of a smile here!).

Afterwards, Mike's sister and brother-in-law threw this wonderful BBQ for Mike as a gift. We went and had great food, our fill of laughs (my body actually hurt) and played some competitive games of HORSE. It really was an awesome day. Plus, on top of that, Mike's sister, brother in law, niece and parents all came back and stayed at the house. It was a great weekend and a monumental step in Mike's professional career. Thank you to all the family and friends who supported Mike not only on this day, but every day he worked towards his goals!

What's next, you ask? CPA exam here we come...

Spring Break

This post is a little (okay... a lot) late coming but I've got to take these precious (not) blogging moments when I can. In case any of you were wondering if Mike and I had nothing new to blog about... that's really not the problem. (More posts should be filing on here soon!) It's been more a lack of time and internet access than anything. But I did start this blog post about a month ago and wanted to finish it. It's just a recap of our enjoyable Spring Break adventures. Being low on money but having a whole week for Spring Break (our last one ever, in fact) we wanted to do something fun. So we decided to migrate down for warmer weather to the beautiful St. George. We stayed with my amazing grandma and enjoyed home-cooked meals, lots of laughs and oh so sweet relaxation.

One day we did a hike up to the 3 waterfalls in Zion's National Park. It was great! The rest of the time we swam in the pool, read books and watched the movie "Babe". Yes, I know, weird. It's a Grandma Allie thing.

Here's some pictures from the hike:

And last but definitely not least... we got to see my aunt's amazing new home she's building in Ivins, UT. I should have taken pictures of the inside. It is incredible! Floor to ceiling windows looking at a giant, red rock. It's literally breathtaking. Can't wait for my parents to build there's next door so we can start making the memories!