Oops...Christmas and THEN Valentine's Day!

Since we were going to be in Hawaii and it was our first Christmas together, we wanted to have our own little celebration together. Steve cooked his first turkey! It was excellent and I think we gave most of the bird to Shauna and Pat since there was no way it was going to be good when we got back.

This was our little Christmas tree. We weren't expecting it to be such a bright shade of green, but it turned out to be just what we wanted. It was about 4 feet tall and fit nicely in our tiny studio apartment. We opened presents on the 23rd, which was dubbed as our 'Christmas Morning'.

Christmas Eve dinner.

On the real Christmas Eve, we got up super early to fly to Hawaii! It was a long trip, but so worth it! This was on the beach that Santa Claus rowed into.

This is a pretty spot near the Edwards' home. If you can't tell that we were exhausted...I think we were out after the festivities before Zac was even in bed.
A few days after Christmas we went for a bike ride along the coast. It was such a nice ride--until I overused the breaks on Karen' s bike and went flying over the handle bars! Steve said it looked pretty graceful for the fall! I only came away with kind of a nasty scratch on my elbow, a few small scratches on my hands, and bruises on my thighs where they connected with the bars.

This is Waimea Canyon, on the west side of the island. We took this as a drive more than a hike. We stopped along all of the little lookout points and really enjoyed driving with the windows down and the beautiful sunshine!

This was part of a very beautiful, and rather muddy hike to part of the Napoli Coast. We enjoyed the hike to the beach (where we are standing the in picture below) and I have never been quite so muddy on a hike before. As we were traveling back to our car, someone was actually putting down vines and things to make it less slippery. I'm proud to say that I didn't fall on my butt at all during any of the hikes that we did! The picture just below was by far our favorite picture that we took!

We actually spent a ton of time on the beaches! Part way through our vacation, we discovered that our camera was broken. Luckily, since Steve thought it was broken anyway, he used force to pop the lens back into place and it has worked fine ever since!

This was a pretty lighthouse that we went to see while we were there. We both kind of got super-tans! I still actually have lines from my swimsuit (2 months later...).

On one of our last nights, we got to go to the Smith Family Luau! We loved it! When we got there, they greeted us with leis of shells and then we were given this little tour on a tram around the entire grounds. They were gorgeous!

I loved the flowers, bushes and trees on Kauai. They were nothing like I had ever seen before.

At the luau, we had several people around us ask why, since we were both over 21, we weren't taking advantage of the free alcohol! We just explained that we don't drink! The punch was great, the food was great, the entertainment was amazing!

This was a sunset from Brennecke's beach on our last official night there. It was so pretty and our camera died just as the sun was setting. Boo.

There you have it! We have a bunch of pictures that Brady and Karen took, but not on this particular memory chip. :D

Belated Valentine's Day?

So--we took pictures for our Valentine's celebration, but we never posted them. Here they are!

Steve let me open my present the day before. He had gone to the Food Sciences booth that was set up and put in a tiny teddy bear, a chocolate orange (my favorite!) and a nice note from him. I got to open up a can and find all of that. It was a really clever idea!


I had to give Steve his surprise on Thursday rather than Saturday. It was the only day that I would have time at home by myself to set everything up. I cut out a bunch of pink and red hearts and wrote out reasons why I loved him on all of them before taping them all over the house.



On the floor, I spelled out this little message in caramel kisses. He was surprised! :D

My first four months of partying in marriage

Here they are! The honeymoon/everything I've done since our wedding pictures!

The first two nights, we stayed in a place called Castle Creek Inn that we found in Sandy. We loved it! The breakfasts were great and everything was themed. We stayed in Rapunzel's tower. Very exciting.


Each night we were there, there were at least 3 or 4 cars that said "Just Married" on them. Quite amusing.

This was the first picture we took of California when we got out there. It was amazing to see the difference between Nevada (dry and brown) to Cali which was lush and beautiful.
A little Mexican man had stopped at the same place we did to take a picture. We had been trying to take it of ourselves, so we know he was confused when he turned the camera towards himself and said "Like dis?"

Mallory and Monica will enjoy this one. Steve did quite a few U turns in the few days that they were with us and I think they may believe that Steve is just lost all of the time. We enjoyed that they were legal here.

After we had driven all day long, I was exhausted and carsick, however, the Redwoods were absolutely gorgeous!

The beach!

We got to camp a night in the Redwoods. Here was one of the hikes we took the next morning.


We had a set plan on where we were going, but we ended up just winging some of it and we loved it! Here was one of the hallowed out trees that we could drive through!
We absolutely loved Oregon! It is a very beautiful place!
Some of the things we did on the coast:
Sandduning

Visited the sealion caves

Explored on the low tides

Took some awesome pictures

Went to the aquarium (don't ask me to tell you where it was cause I can't remember)

Built and extremely awesome sand castle


Visited the Tillamook Cheese factory, ate as many samples of cheese as they would let us and got some delicious ice cream.


Spent lots of time on the beach! This was after eating at Mo's where they have famous clam chowder bowls. I thought it was good, but not as good as the sour dough bowls and chowder in San Fran.

Went temple hopping. We got to go through Salt Lake and Bountiful (just before getting married), and Portland. We also visited Kirtland when we were in Ohio.

Here is our Ohio trip. For some reason, I don't have picture of Spokane.
When we camped, they had this giant pillow-like trampoline that we all jumped on. Mom and the kids all came with us to Niagara.

The falls:
Riding the Maid of the Mist. It was wet.
All of us became interested in the same little picture-flippers and mom thought it was funny.


Here is our post-trip life. We live in a studio apartment that is just perfect for us. Our storage space is our deck on the 4th floor of a complex. When we first went shopping for things we needed, we didn't think about needing the hooks for a shower curtain. I thought Steve was quite clever here.
First day of school as a married couple! We had originally decided to match all semester, but it just got too hard since Steve had to wear MTC clothes everyday. We were going to try and get into the Daily Universe, but maybe a different semester.
I think Utah and the mountains are beautiful.

Here is our Halloween pumpkin. Julie gave me the idea and since we don't drink and I was expecting, we decided to entitle it "Morning Sickness". Unfortunately, we didn't win the $100 prize, but we still liked ours the best.

Our matching costumes:
Just kidding. Here they are. We went to a ballroom party for Steve's team dressed as Tahitians.
Here is Dancesport. It ruled our lives only for two days and we both did really well in our competitions.
Camille married Jason Millar in Nauvoo. It was an exhausting trip (remind me never to fly overnight again) but I was very happy to be there. Note to self: next time I go to a wedding, take my husband. I was kind of a sap all weekend since I wanted to be with Steve.

We went up to Temple Square for the heck of it. It had some pros and cons that were different from last year, but it was very nice.

Steve and I have been working to perfect our rolls. Here he is working on the first of three batches that we made for Thanksgiving.



I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season.

Some of you may be wondering...

So, after being extremely curious, I am wondering how many people actually check my blog anymore. If I were you, I wouldn't either. But those dedicated few who constantly wonder "Is Natalie going to post any time soon?"...well....not with pictures.
HOWEVER: here's whats going on.

--Thanksgiving was wonderful! Steve's whole family was here and his parents rented a nice house that we all pretty much stayed at for four days. We loved it! It was different being around SO many people when you are used to just the two of you, but we had a very enjoyable time!
--We have a baby due June 17th! We find out the gender in about 7 weeks so we'll let you know...in about 5 months...haha, just kidding. We got to hear the heartbeat of the baby just a few weeks ago and to see an ultrasound. That was an AMAZING experience! Up until then it had been like "Yeah, I'm sick and all signs point to being pregnant, but is there really anything in there?" Now its a "whoa!" experience!
--We are going through finals! Funny story. I am actually going to be intentionally failing a class this semester. :( Due to the above-mentioned news, I got extremely sick partway through the semester and had little to no motivation to go to school besides the classes I needed to be at. Since HEPE is not one of those classes, I completely forgot about it until about 2 days before the "final" exam. So, here comes failure and I will be taking it this spring when I have nothing to do except wait for the baby. :D
--We are taking finals this week! Hence the reason I am actually spending time on a computer. You know those times when you are trying to avoid studying and you are on a computer...those times you catch up on facebook and emails, and your sister's blog....yeah. Thats why I'm blogging right now.
--We are GOING TO HAWAII IN 8 DAYS!!! And we are super excited! Its kind of a nice motivation to do well in all of our finals! It snowed probably 4 inches last night and this morning and all we could think about was nice Hawaiian weather!


Okay. I am wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope you are able to forgive the lack of blogging! :)