house tour.

we've lived in our little house for almost one year! i didn't realize how much things had changed here until i went back and looked at photos from when we moved in. then i got to thinking............................................it would be fun for you* (me) if i did a house tour of our little place with photos of how it looks currently. i always want to post about stuff around the house, and then never do, so i guess now is the time.......starting tomorrow, leading up until the 19th, when we moved in. 

 jon and i, sitting on the bench in our "front yard".
(i.e. little patch of garden that i had them weed and put bark in)

*funny. 

our first anniversary.

(super adorable card i made for jon....)

when we got married, we decided to keep up the tradition of getting your spouse a traditional wedding anniversary gift for every year you are together. my sister katie and her husband have been doing it for EIGHT years now. here is the list. 

First: Paper

Second: Cotton

Third: Leather

Fourth: Fruit or Flowers

Fifth: Wood

Sixth: Candy or Iron 

Seventh: Wool or Copper

Eighth: Bronze or Pottery

Ninth: Pottery

Tenth: Tin 

Eleventh: Steel 

Twelfth: Silk or Linen 

Thirteenth: Lace

Fourteenth: Ivory

Fifteenth: Crystal

Twentieth: China

Twenty-Fifth: Silver

Thirteieth: Pearls

Thirty-Fifth: Coral

Fortieth: Ruby

Forty-Fifter: Sapphire

Fiftieth: Gold

Fifty-Fifth: Emerald

Sixtieth: Diamond

how cute is that? i can't wait until we get to our fortieth, fiftieth, and sixtieth...

BUT, i love how they progressively (for the most part) get nicer and nicer. and I think it is so funny and cute that year one was paper since...that's about all anyone can afford on year one. 

we decided, somewhat last minute, that i was going to plan our celebration. 

we had a chocolate-chocolate cake for our wedding. we saved the top of it....but.....it got lost. my dad had his wedding cake AND our wedding cake in his freezer. they didn't eat their cake on their one year anniversary (or their second...or third...). he got a new freezer. he knew they were never going to eat theirs, so he threw it out. but...it was actually our cake that he threw out. not sure how you could confuse your white wedding cake for someone else's chocolate wedding cake-but that is neither here, nor there. we were pretty bummed, but realized that the cake probably wouldn't be any good, anyway. 

we had a random groupon that we had bought, so we decided to use that and go on a picnic. we drove downtown and got our pizza, then parked our car and took the ferry to coronado!!!

 here we are on the boat on the way there! it was so much fun to be out on the water with such beautiful views of both downtown and coronado island. 

when we got on the island, i had a teeny tiny surprise for jon. i had him walk to cold stone with me and pick up our personalized ice cream chocolate-chocolate cake! he was so surprised and the cake was absolutely magnificent! 

then we walked toward the beach to find some grass for our picnic. 

it was so fun, and our date couldn't have been more perfect. it was simple, and gave us a lot of time to talk and reminisce about our first year together. 

so, about the gifts...

jon bought a frame, and put our marriage license in it! how cute is that for a "paper" gift?? right now it is propped up on the new shelves above our desk. i love seeing it displayed with our dads signatures at the bottom as witnesses and the phrase at the top "Marriage for Time and Eternity."

for my gift to jon, i got us some flying paper sky lanterns. !!

i got us two, for fear that one of them wouldn't work. it was so much fun and we have decided to make it a tradition! every year, we are going to buy the same amount of lanterns as years that we have been married and set them free! i can not wait until our 50th anniversary when all our kids and grandkids are helping us light 50 lanterns to send up into heaven.  

it was the perfect day, and i look forward to many, many more anniversaries with my babos. ;)

one year wedding anniversary.

it has been exactly one year since i married this man.

it only feels like we've been married for five months, 

so it boggles my mind that we'll be celebrating our one year today. 

he was gone 7 months of our first year, but it was still the best year of my life. pretty good, eh?

love you, bebe.

homecoming.

here we go.

this was my life in the days leading up to Jon's arrival.

7 days before reuniting with jon. 

Amanda Marie and I made a welcome home banner. 

this was a king sized duvet cover that i cut and sewed smaller. amanda used her pretty handwriting and then we used yarn to stitch the letters in.

the tape on the left is to show how large the banner is! 

 

 6 days before. 

shopped for and picked out an outfit to wear when picking him up. something that hopefully wouldn't date the photos too much, something cute but doesn't make me look 12. breezy in case its hot, but still modest. 

ugh, it sounds as hard as it was to find. but i found it, thanks to my darling friend, jenni hens.

5 days before.

one thing i liked about having jon away: i could do anything to the house that i wanted.

i knew that was going to change when he got back. 

so i celebrated by painting the front door.

  4 days before. 

i hung jon's signs!!!!!!!! that way, the whole neighborhood could celebrate with me!

the last two (seven month old) jr mints tasted better than the first two fresh ones!

2 days before. finished painting the door, and cleaned the whole house.

1 day. 1 day before. the DAY before he got back.

 cleaned our car, to make him think it was that clean the whole time he was gone. 

freaked out, freaked out, freaked out.

and failed an accounting exam because i was too busy freaking out to study.

then the day finally came.
after 209 lonely days apart.

April 10, 2011.

The day i had been waiting for since we found out he was deploying, over a year ago.

on sunday, i woke up anxious and panicky. 

i text my favorite girlfriend from church to tell her i couldn't come because i was too....just too.

she said that she thought coming to church would help, so....reluctantly, i went. 

she was right, it did help.

after church, i went and visited with the Vigil's in Carlsbad. 

they are our biggest fans, they're so so good to us.

they helped me calm down and made me feel a lot better.

then i met up with AMANDA.

jon was supposed to get home at 3:50 pm. his flight got delayed, so we did what anyone else would do. ate mcdonald's and chocolate. 

and, as you can imagine, we regretted it soon after.

greasy mcdonald's food, soda+caffeine, sugar+chocolate mixed with anxiety isn't good for the belly. plus, we had driven off base to find a pf changs to fix our addiction to their dessert shots, so we were about 30 minutes from where we were supposed to pick jon up and it was getting REALLY close to that time. so, our nerves were through the roof.

 then, i got this alert. 

(the timing was a little off)

and that did it for me. we really needed to hurry. so we sped back up to camp pendleton!

 and once we got there, we realized that we hadn't written on the windows!

my phone was blowing up with texts from jon saying he was on base and that he would be there soon and that he was nervous and couldn't wait to see me, etc etc etc...and the producer was calling me over and over asking me where i was because we needed to get our microphones on and everything and i hadn't put any lipstick on, and i hadn't written on the windows yet and ahh! it was a lot!

after writing on the car, we ran over to the parade deck, met with jon's family, got our microphones put on, and pushed in front of the cameras. it seemed like ten hours, but i think it was actually ten minutes before the motorcycles pulled in, followed by the big white buses that me and all the families had been dreaming about for seven months. 

they all parked, and i looked in the third bus and saw a tiny little hand, waving at me out the window about six rows back. i waved back and when i couldn't handle it any longer, i ran to the bus that jon was in and he jumped out and ran to me and we hugged the best hug i've had, ever. and hugged and hugged. he was squeezing me so tight. then we looked at each other, i took off his cover and his shades and looked at that cute leathery, clean shaven face and relief washed over me. finally, my boy was home from war, safe and sound. and it wasn't a dream, it was for real. he looked cuter than i'd ever seen him look.

 he was sooo happy to be hanging out with his favorite twins again!

 this is the photo that i sent out to my family, letting them know that he was home.

my car, on the way to dinner.

we all ate at the California Pizza Kitchen in La Jolla afterwards, and this was our view as we left the restaurant. 

the beautiful San Diego Temple. 

Welcome Home, Jon from Double Scoop Photography on Vimeo.

video from my amazing photographer. 

Double Scoop Photography.

wk 45.

our home. <3

obama's speech.

"It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory - hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child's embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

Servicemen hang off a lamppost near Ground Zero and cheer news of the death of Osama bin Laden

A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

"The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who's been gravely wounded.

So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defence of our citizens and our friends and allies. 

We will be true to the values that make us who we are. 

And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al-Qaeda's terror: 
Justice has been done."

Barack Obama's full speech.

God Bless America.

wk 44.

birthday girl at the one and only ikea.