Christmas at the Carroll's

We celebrated Christmas early down at Matt's house.

It was quite the eventful day!

Baking, lunch, Wii gaming, movies, games, delicious dinner and lots of family time!

Jen (Matt's sister) and her family came for dinner and all the Christmas festivities.

We had a blast with the games Jen planned for us and having Santa call the boys and even visit them!

And our sweet little Mason made us our very first ornament for our future tree!

Wicked

One of my early Christmas presents was to go see Wicked!

I was so excited!

Matt was too but this was his second time.

I would highly recommend going to see it to everyone!

Quite the interesting crowd walking around the streets on Hollywood.

Wicked was absolutely amazing!

The singing, the dancing, everything!

Our Glinda totally stole the show though. She was incredible!

Oh hey Hollywood!

Beach Day

We had to take advantage of the beautiful weather down here and took a walk on the beach. The weather was quite perfect during our stay!

So clear and so warm!

Matt's so presh isn't he?

It's Official!

I am now officially a "Carroll"

We left a little earlier than planned to CA so we could change everything over.

(Due to the fact that the lovely people lost our request to get our marriage license.)

It was quite the experience!

Upon changing everything over, while we were at DMV I was informed I had to retake the driving test.

Lovely surprise.

I passed thank goodness.

Needless to say we are very excited to now get my passport and get ready for our "honeymoon" cruise!!

Hello Cabo!

Stressed to the Max

Things are getting pretty stressful around the Carroll home. Emma is slammed studying for all of her finals this week, and I am finishing up end of the semester projects and beginning to study for my finals next week. So once Emma finishes up and starts celebrating I will be the lucky one starting to take finals. Needless to say we are both looking forward to having another semester done and under our belts. We each will have 3 semesters to go until we both graduate.

We are both super stoked to be heading to California for Christmas. It is freeeezing in Utah (currently a blistering 19 degrees, with a low of 7 tonight). Yah not too much fun. Also, I just got over my head cold, and Emma is now just starting to feel symptoms :( All in all we are just a super happy house right now!!!

Here is a picture so you understand how cold it feels outside:

I Swear I Can Cook

As some of you may know, or have experienced, or have heard me complain, our oven burns everything. For the first while I completely took it personally.

The breaking point was the day before Thanksgiving when I needed to bake things of course. And yet another batch was burnt, even though I set the oven 50 degrees lower and baked it 10 minutes less than the what the recipe called for. I was so frustrated. So frustrated in fact I emailed our landlord right then.

Long story short:

Someone came out to look at it. He informed us that our oven is 100-150 degrees too hot and that one of the burners is always on apparently.

And with that our landlord decided its time for a new oven!

Hallelujah!

Black Friday

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.

We spent it with my aunt and uncle in Alpine and there whole family. It was a lot of fun and reminded me of the Thanksgivings at my grandparents growing up. Lots of food, laughter and little kids running around!

Matt and I ventured out for some Black Friday shopping after.

Walmart was honestly crazy.

So were the outlets.

Luckily we got everything we wanted, after a solid 4 hours of standing.

Not sure if we are doing that again next year...

Date Night

Date night is something I look forward to all week long!

I love spending time with my sweetheart.

We decided to head over to the Riverwoods for the lighting of lights night.

I would say the busiest night ever at the Riverwoods.

We dined at Marleys which was delicious, minus the fact that this lady stood inches away from us staring and as I took my last bite she asked "Oh are you guys leaving?"

Like I said it was busy!

We also listened to a choir group play beautiful Christmas music.

They were great, we just didn't know who they were, but they definitely got us excited for Christmas!

We both thought it was so weird we hadn't really run into anyone we knew there. We spoke too soon of course and as we were walking to our car saw our lovely friends Jackie and Andrew. The 4 of us then enjoyed an evening of hot coco and games.

Now we are off to freeze our little tushies off at the BYU game.

Go COUGS!!!

Almost Break. . .

Can I just say Thanksgiving break is not coming fast enough!?

This week has been one of those weeks where you just pray you can make it through at least one more day. And this week I am extremely grateful for the power of the priesthood and marrying a man who is worthy to hold it. Its what has gotten me through my week so far.

I was taking a break from studying and all that jazz and took a gander at my lovely cousins blog. And that was definitely time not wasted. You will agree. . . Just watch this video and see for yourself.

I'm grateful that my trials deal with things like a tough week rather than the struggles Tessa Wingler deals with. Such an inspiration and shows the effect of a positive attitude.

Grateful

During class I occasionally get my phone out and look at facebook for a few minutes. This past week I have noticed that a friend of mine has been posting daily about different things she is grateful for, it being November and all, and because of her daily statues it would then turn my thoughts to different things I am grateful for and made me realize how lucky and fortunate I am.

So here are a few different things we are grateful for today. . .

1. Learning ultrasonic

(only my mother in law can probably relate...amazing!)

2. Dinners with EY - a day off cooking for me!

3. LA Kings Hockey

4. A comfy bed to sleep and cuddle in

5. The Amazing Race!

(Totes addicted. Go Snowboarders!)

6. A working heater

(getting out of bed in the mornings when it is 60 degrees is no bueno)

7. Our families

8. The gospel in our lives and our eternal marriage

9. We are also extremely grateful for temples close by to allow us to go often!

(Mount Timp)

And here are a couple of pictures from Halloween

We were nerds. So original right?

Lately

My grandma has been on my mind a whole bunch recently.

So I figured I write a little post about her. . .

She was my very best friend ever since I can remember.

We shared many fun times together and memories that will last me a lifetime.

She was the nicest person ever.

Every family dinner included more than just our family, she was so welcoming.

Her love was the definition of unconditional.

When my brothers would babysit me on "date night" I would call up my grandma and have her come pick me up. I loved spending every minute I could with her.

We had many tea parties and sleep overs. And with every sleep over was a trip to get an ice cream cone with my grandpa and a drive to the beach to eat them and look at the pretty ocean.

She is who I inherited my love for sweets from.

She was always such an example to me and such an inspiration.

( Not to mention her and my grandpa's story is the sweetest! )

She was one amazing person and I hope I can be half of what she was.

Hump Day

Has this week felt like kind of the longest week ever?! I've had two midterms (one tomorrow) and Matt has had many group projects. I swear teachers just cram as much as they possibly can in the few weeks before Thanksgiving break. I just need to make it through one more day of school. . .

It was nice to have Matt home last weekend. We enjoyed a date to ourselves on Friday night. We finally got an excuse to use our bocce ball set. The weather was so nice on Saturday we just had to.

We are looking forward to going to the temple tomorrow and heading up to Heber this weekend to The Ford's cabin. Can't wait for all the Halloween festivities in store for us!

He has Done IT Again

My wonderful husband has made me proud yet again. He had his first fly out interview this past weekend with Ernst and Young, and fortunately enough it was our favorite of the three firms. He flew out Friday, much to my dismay, spent time with his parents and interviewed on Monday (as in yesterday). He got a call today saying they absolutely loved him and they extended an offer!

It still has not quite set in yet.

[This is our future.]

San Diego here we come, soon!

I love you Matthew! You make me prouder than proud each day!

Pinterest

So I am slightly obsessed with this little site.

It has a ton of crafts, recipes, clever ideas and more! It makes me want to do so many different things (which is not always the best) but this weekend I decided to try another pinterest craft.

It was fairly inexpensive and pretty fast.

Supplies:

(2) 25 yard spool of black tulle

(1) 25 yard spool of purple tulle

Orange ribbon

10-16'' metal ring

(apparently these rings are really used for macrame, but they work great for wreaths)

Choose any size ring you want just remember it will grow quite a bit once all the tulle is on it.

Its very simple. Just cut strips and tie in a single knot onto the ring.

Easy as that.

Mine turned out to be way bigger than I thought, but I think it is perfect for Halloween.

In case you were wondering. . .

I have the best husband!

(Sorry but its true.)

We have both been super busy, as usual, and this week felt especially busy. And to top off this long week I got sick. So my sweet sweet husband completely pampered me last night and all day today. He even blasted the heater this morning just to make sure I was extra toasty and fed me breakfast in bed! He truly is the sweetest!

He had an intramural football game this afternoon so I decided to go to Costco with my lovely Whitney and Audrey. And this is what I came home to. . .

I love you Matt!

Thank you for all you do all the time. You never cease to amaze (and surprise) me!

Update

Matt got second interviews with all 3 of the firms he interviewed with!! He makes me so proud! His fly outs start in a couple of weeks and until then we will anxiously wait to see what our future has in store for us.

I started patients finally! And thank you to Ryan (Matt's best friend) for being so willing to be my first patient! I'm still looking for patients though, so please come and let me clean your teeth!

Today was finally my last Friday for school! Apparently hygiene school does not believe in holidays or days off because every vacation we have to make up. (Hence the past two Fridays for the two days off at Thanksgiving...)

We enjoyed Conference weekend with Markham and April and our sweet Kaity and Jacks! We had lots of fun playing games, eating lots of yummy food and doing crafts! Thanks guys for letting us come and stay with you!!

And one last funny story for this post.

Utah decided to skip Fall. We went from beautiful sunny, warm weather to freezing cold snowy, rain. Not very fun. With the quick weather change came a little sickness. So after class today I decided to come home and take a little nap, I turned the heater on first (or at least I thought I did.) But really our apartment stayed at a crisp 63 degrees and just blew cold air.

Moral of the story. . .Light your pilot light!

Our First Apartment

Apartment #12 at Triangle H will always hold a special place in our hearts...

You've been great to us. 

We will surely miss you when it comes time for us to move to CA. 

Crazy Week!

With each of our school schedules and work we really only see each other when we eat dinner and before we go to bed each night. This week has been especially busy. We had dinners almost every night with the accounting firms Matt interviewed with this week (keep your fingers crossed for second interviews), an intramural football game, and I had a dental convention on Friday and Saturday in Salt Lake. We also managed to work in the BYU vs. UCF football game on Friday! (Thank you Millers for those tickets!)

My aunt and uncle were also in town this weekend and we went out to dinner with them last night. We dined at Guru's, and anyone living in Provo knows that a Saturday night in Guru's means Karaoke!!!! It started with Matt singing a solo, then with everyone singing a Kesha song, the girls singing Forget You by Cee Lo Green and the boys ending the night with Love Shack.

Honeymoon Part 2

Matt and I had tickets to see Rascal Flatts on Friday so we decided to make a weekend out of it. The whole drive to the concert it was pouring rain, thunder and lightning, the works! We just kept praying that it would clear up fast, because it was an outdoor concert, and that they wouldn't cancel it due to the weather. Both prayers were answered. Literally right when we got there it stopped raining. We felt bad for everyone else who had been there for a while, they were all soaked and literally ringing out their blankets and clothing.

We stayed up at Matt's family friend's cabin in Heber. It is beautiful up there!

And we saw some nice wild life. . .

We decided to take a little 4 wheel ride to start off the day.

We then got ready and headed up the Park City for the evening. We looked around at the outlets and got dinner at one of our favorites, Baja Cantina! We also couldn't resist getting a carmel apple from Rockey Mountain Chocolate Factory to enjoy when we got home.

We went and saw a movie, Contagion. It was alright and actually kind of scary when you think about it. Our recommendation would be to see it if you're really looking to see a movie now, otherwise just wait for the dollar theater.

Honeymoon Part 1

So since we got married on Friday and Matt started school that next Monday we didn't get to take a real honeymoon yet. Instead we enjoyed our first night of marriage bliss in a lovely hotel in Marina Del Rey on the ocean. It was a great get-a-way for a night. We of course had to indulge in room service for our first breakfast and it was quite delish!

Our "first" honeymoon was wonderful, but we are very much looking forward to our actual honeymoon in April!

August 26, 2011

Our wedding day was absolutely perfect, honestly. The only "bad" thing that happened was that I got a bit sunburned. We are so grateful for all of those who made our day so special! We couldn't have had such a special day without our families and friends. Here are just a few pictures from the big day. . .