Happy Birthday Leila

I just wanted to take a second to wish the love of my life a happy 26th Birthday. You mean everything to me. I love you forever. Have a great day Lei.

Love Always, Nick

Congrats to Nick

I just have to say how excited I am for Nick. He just got his acceptance letter to the Masters program for the University of Utah School of Architecture. Architecture school has turned out to be a lot of work. Nick has worked really hard and done really well. He is extremely creative and has pulled a lot of all nighters. He had to apply to get into the program two years ago and now again to get into the Masters. He made an awesome portfolio of all of his work which I am sure they loved and I am so proud of him!

Arches

I'm sorry for all of the pictures but we had about a million of all the beautiful landscapes that I just couldn't decide. We just went to Arches and for those of you who haven't been I highly recommend it. We hadn't been for a few years but it is so incredible. There is one amazing thing to see after another and being outdoors when there are very few people is almost spiritual. We loved being outside, camping and hiking. Nick's favorite was the fiery furnance. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you do it together. We had such a blast!

From Drab to Fab

Brittany, my sister-in-law, worked in New York as a fashion designer. She obviously has incredible taste (as does the rest of the family). She spoke at a recent conference in Logan about how to build your wardrobe. Her talk was in the Herald Journal. Check it out if you want some awesome tips about how to make make your wardrobe fantastic! Here is the website:
http://hjnews.townnews.com/articles/2008/03/03/news/news04.txt

Utah Jazz

Nick and I love the Utah Jazz (and the Aggies - who won today, yeah!). We talk about the days when Stockton and Malone played and all of the fun games. We have been watching a lot of the recent games and we were able to go to the Denver Nuggets game with Nick's wonderful parents. I love when they come to see us. We hope the Jazz do well in the playoffs!

Rascal Flatts

Even though Nick isn't as into country music as I am, we spent a lot of our courtship listening to Rascal Flatts. I remember playing Tetris and having Rascal Flatts in the background. We had so much fun. We went to the Rascal Flatts concert on Friday and the songs brought back a lot of wonderful memories. Our first dance at our wedding was to our song "Bless the Broken Road" (that is what the video is of if you can get it to play). I know, cheesy, but I love my husband very much and cherish every memory we have made. For the last song they had the Marine Corps come out and honored them. I thought it was awesome because I think so often we take for granted what others are doing for us. Because they are willing to sacrifice we can live in this wonderful country with all the freedoms we have!

John McCain

Nick and I have been way into this election trying to watch the debates and news coverage to decide who the best candidate is. I saw this and couldn't help but laugh. It's funny what your subconscious inadvertently tells you. So what do you all think? Is he conservative or liberal?

Our New House

This post is for Anne Marie and my parents as promised. For all of you that don't know the story of our new house here it is. When we moved down to Salt Lake we bought an awesome town home. We loved it and had worked on it some. Last summer Nick and I were looking at the real estate market (this was before the market crashed). Nick had been looking at a new development for awhile which had grown like crazy and the prices were increasing a lot (he thought it would be a good investment). Just to see what we could get for our house we put it on craigslist for a lot more than we thought we could get. Within a week we had two interested parties and decided to go ahead and sell it. Since we sold just at the right time we were able to put a big down payment and build in the area Nick had been looking at.

It was one of the cookie cutter homes which was hard for Nick (since he is in architecture school) but we figured we could change a lot to make it our own later. Our house was finished in December. It's crazy that it's our house. We feel so lucky! It's not a lot bigger than our town home but little things make a huge difference. I think my favorite part is the pantry (Nick's favorite is the garage). It's amazing. We are so blessed. You can tell Nick is in architecture school and loves the modern style. Good thing he has amazing taste. I do think we took too many projects on ourselves to save money. In our last house we painted the cabinets. We decided to do that in this house. I forgot how horrible it was to do. Last time I had my moms help and no school. This time it took forever but it's finally done, yeah!! We still have a lot to do (like our yard and floors). Nick is currently working on concrete countertops. We will keep you updated and show more pictures when more gets done. You are welcome to visit any time!

Kohler M. Tippets

Kolony had her second child last week. He is absolutely beautiful and so sweet. I spent the afternoon with them. This is Kapri holding Kohler. I can't believe I now have 5 nieces and nephews.

My Wonderful Parents

So I don't have beautiful children to show off but I have incredible parents. This is a picture of them by the Recife temple. We actually went to see them last Christmas and loved seeing what they are up to. They are the missionaries in charge of the
Perpetual Education Fund and Welfare in Northern Brazil.

They are stationed in Recife but constantly travel. They
have absolutely loved their mission. They are suppose to
come home in April but I think they will stay until May. Even though most of the work they have been asked to do is
mainly with PEF they have also had some wonderful experiences with non-members. My dad has baptized quite a few people and they were waiting to come home because of some new prospects. When we went to see them we saw their cute apartment and met some of their wonderful neighbors.

I think it will be hard for them to come home except maybe for the weather. When we were there it was about 95 degrees with 100% humidity almost all of the time. You constantly feel wet but because of that they have the most amazing fruit. My parents recently received an email from the director of PEF that told them that the last meeting President Hinkley attended was for the PEF that he started and was very proud of.

Blogging is the Thing to Do

So everyone keeps asking me if we have a blog so I guess this is the thing to do. I'm actually not even quite sure what I'm doing but I love looking at what everyone else is up to. I'm afraid our life isn't exciting like everyone with beautiful children but I am excited to check out what everyone else is up to. I think our lives might seem somewhat boring compared to everyone else.