remembering 9/11

9/11 really hits close to home for me.  I didnt lose any friends, family, or even people I may have known.  But 9/11 was the starting point of finding heros in my life.  I have two brothers that serve our country and even since 9/11 both of them have been depoid across seas.  Jake Carter is my oldest brother who is in the National Guard and he served time over seas when I was in Jr high soon after 9/11 and I remember the weekend he was leaving and the family and I went to St. George to see him out and we spent time at the arcade in the hotel and Jake used the tickets on both me and my little brother and I picked out a bear, it was a flag bear that I would keep with me at all times to remember him and I remember nights that he was gone and I missed him so much and thought of great times we spent together growing up and I would hold that bear close to me and cry on it.  I am so thankful for my brother and He is one of my heroes and He always will be.  I also have another brother Mitch Carter that has joined the Air Force and is currently serving our country over seas and I love him alot and am so thankful for his service.  It has been a little easier with Mitch because he gets to get on facebook and chat and update his status so Its easier to know he is ok when he is able to update almost everyday.  He is one of my heroes and I am so thankful for my two amazing older brothers that serve our country and keep us all free.  They are the best brothers and they mean the world to me.  I love them both and am so proud of them both!  again that is how 9/11 has affected me and my life.  As I sit at home tonight watching documentrys on 9/11 I think back of that day and remember where I was and how shocked we all were in our middle school english class watching tv all day and watching the news and keeping updated with what was happening.  I just remember what class i was in and that we watched the news most of the day.  I didnt find out until I was at school unlike alot of people that heard it on the radio while getting ready for work and school.  I want to say thanks to all those that have served our country.

Getting into shape

So... Getting back into shape.. Oh boy.. oh boy.. So lyle and I have decided we are going to start eating more healthy and work out more and we have been doing this for about a month now (thats amazing).  We started out running after work again like we used to and we did that really well for a while but then it started to just not interest me, I cant run for a long period of time and it was just not helping me I was losing interest fast.. So I thought maybe we should start swimming and then running like once a week if we get bored of swimming.. Well I do have to say we have been swimming for over 2-3 weeks every night after work (we are slackers on our weekend)  We have enjoyed it and havent tried talking ourselves out of it.  I think its been great for the both of us we both talk about how we feel much better after we work out.  I do have to say my motivation is I have already bought my wedding dress and it fits perfect, so I cant gain or lose much or it wont fit right when the wedding day so I have a motivation so it has helped me.  :) 

WEDDING PLANS

Ok so our wedding planning has been crazy and so up and down.. But this is the plan, We are gonna do the actual wedding in his home town in Florida.  I cant wait!!  We decided not to do it on the beach because the beach closest to his home town is the golf coast, and the sand is not what you think of when you think of the beach, and the water is more of a brown color not a clear blue.  And the bugs... Oh boy with the bugs be so bad down by the ocean in April and so we have decided to do the wedding on the River down there.  So your thinking small rivers or wide rivers like we have out her.. NO the rivers out there they actually drive boats and water sky and all that stuff in the rivers.. Its so awesome!  But a family friend is helping us in trying to get a home on the river to use and do the wedding in the back yard down on the river and if by chance it does rain (VERY HIGH CHANCE) we will have a place to go inside. :) 

So our decorations arent going to be sea shell anymore, well because we arent doing it at the ocean.. We are just gonna do beta fish as our center peices, and for our cake we are not 100% sure on that.  WE do have our colors picked out and they will be baby blue and hot pink with some black. So for the tables we are thinking black table clothes with pink and blue ribbons and the blue beta fishes with pink rocks in the bottom of the tanks... :)  We are just wanting a small arch to do the cerimony under nothing too crazy just simple.  We are making our own invitations so that has been kinda stressful.  We have been using friends to take our pictures and are having some trouble getting some that we both love.. So we are still working on those :)  we are trying to save up the money for our wedding and boy does it cost some money to put one of these things together... But can I say it will be the best day of our lives.. We cant wait to get married, Lyle keeps saying that April wont get her fast enough, not sure if its so he can go home and see his family or get married ;)  Its been great planning and so excited to get it going.. Cant wait to be able to start buying things for the wedding.. 

SLACKER

I am ready to admit I am a slacker when it comes to blogging. I think if we had a computer at home I would do much better.  But we don't so therefore I am the worst blogger out there, I leave out so much.  Well right know in life Lyle and I are focused on planning our wedding. We are very excited to get married in Florida but at the same time I am stressing about planning the wedding because its so far away.  Its hard to set up things when you are over 2200 miles away from where your wedding is going to be. But I wouldn't have it any different.  We are so excited, actually sometimes I start to think Lyle is way more excited than me.  Like the last couple weekends on our days off he has been getting onto me to go look for a dress... LOL He has been bugging me and bugging me so we went both last weekend and the weekend before that, and well this last weekend we FOUND me a dress in our price range and I love it.. Honestly its exactly what I was hoping to find. I love it so much. I don't know if I should be putting pictures of it up yet because my goodness our wedding is like 9 months away still... BUT I JUST LOVE IT!!!  I am just hoping to stay the same size until the wedding gets here. Because I would be so sad if the dress didn't fit me come the wedding.  But that is a great motivation to stay healthy and keep exercising.. RIGHT?!?!  Well we also have all the stuff for the invitations, except the pictures... :(  But we are working on that and excited to start working on the invitations just to get them put together and set aside to kinda get what we need all finished as soon as we can.  Lyle is trying to push and get everything done that we can do early and just set it aside until we need it. lol So our wedding plans are kinda coming together. Its been tough keeping to our small/tight budget but oh boy is it going to be worth it.  I cant wait to be married to my best friend!  He is amazing and I just love him so much.  Don't get me wrong we have our days.. but He is still the best Fiance ever!!  I love him so much and he means the world to me.  WE work hard for all we have and that's worth my love and forever with him. 

Florida!!

Our trip to Florida was amazing!!  It was one of the best trips I have taken. We drove our car down and that was so much fun, all though the GPS took us on a couple random 2 hour delays but we made it.  We stopped at the Gateway Arch in ST. Lewis and that was amazing!  We road the tram to the top and oh boy is that high, and it sways.. It was scary but a great view and a great experience!  We finally got to Florida and went and saw his momma and she is doing great and that was good to see her.  We spent every night sleeping at Lyle's Step Dad's house and that was so nice of them. The main reason for this trip was to go to his brother's Graduation. That was great to be there, although it was so hot sitting out at the football field, but it was great to see everyone.  We went to a family gathering after the Graduation and I meet more of his family. It turned out to be a great night. We went to the ocean and went fishing lots of times, also crab catching out there.  That was so fun but those crabs running out all over our feet kinda gave me the creaps, but I had alot of fun.  We went to Gainsville with his sister and took her to the mall and got her nails done and also went to see a movie.  It was so funny because we got a large popcorn and they have the salts all sitting out so you can add what you want and we saw a orange container that we all thought was cheese flavor..  well it wasnt so we added regular salt and a lot and I mean A LOT of this orange powdered salt... so our popcorn was so salty we laughed so hard about this.  It was great!  We went and floated the river and that water is amazingly clear blue, but sadly we got Hardies for breakfast and I ended up with food poisoning and had a very rough 1.5 hour float down the river.  :(  I made it just in time to a bathroom.. It was a rough day.  I spent the rest of the day in bed drinking the pink pepto all day and sleeping and his step dad gave me a great nickname "Squirt" lol fights just great.. :)  Well we spent some time with his sister and her husband and 2 kids also we went to lunch with them and then went to the spring it was fun.  They gave me this tiny little turtle, I wanted to take him home with me but everyone told me he wouldnt make it. So we let him go in the spring the day before we left.  We went hog hunting while we were down there and that was crazy, When sitting in the blinde for 2 nights we didnt see a hog come in at all. but we did see some hogs off the side of the road and lyle got in the back of the truck to shot one, well and he missed it :(  but atleast he was able to shot at one.  We spent alot of our nights out in the woods driving the mainline looking at aligators, frogs, snakes, and FIREFIES!  The aligators were amazing to me.. we watched them for a while and also the last night out there we saw the fireflies and I have never in my life seen them so that was so amazing to me.  We had such a great time in florida! We were so excited to bring Lyle's little brother Galen out to Utah with us.. That will be in my next blog post though :)

Lots to Say

So I have alot to blog about today.. Hope its not too boring for those of you that might read it.. So lately I have been starting to coupon.. I enjoy it and Lyle laughs at me alot of the time, because I will be so excited and have to tell him about this awesome deal that I found and he just giggles at me..  I know I know I am becoming one of those crazy coupon ladies that you hate being behind at walmart.. But I am saving money and that is a major plus in my book.. :)  I get all caught up in googling better ways to coupon, and it keeps me busy reading these pointers from other couponers.  :) 

AND I have been wanting to start back with making quilts.. I need to get me a sewing machine first, but I used to make quilts on and off and I enjoyed it.. What inspired this is My mom has made a couple quilts for my brothers kids and they are very cute and it made me want to start them again.. I have been saving old worn-out jeans to make a Levi quilt but I just haven't done anything yet.. :)

This last weekend Lyle and I went over to his aunts house in Payson and enjoyed some time with his family, we had a BBQ and watched a couple movies.  It was just nice to spend time with family.  We stayed the night at her house and just enjoyed our time with them.  His aunt and I talked about ways to plan for the WEDDING, and told me to stop stressing and just start putting my ideas in a book and do that for a couple months, cause I do have a year to plan :)   Then on  Saturday we went for a hike up Provo canyon and we both enjoyed that alot.  I complain alot when we hike, cause I like to hike on trails where I don't have to climb over and through trees, bushes, and so forth.. but I did enjoy it alot.  We had a good time, we ran into 3 deer and watched them for a while.  Lyle still gets all excited when he sees deer and they don't run away when they see us.  :) 

OUR TRIP cant get here fast enough.  We have 18 days until we leave for Florida and Let me tell you The time is passing SO STINKING SLOW!!  We are trying to work overtime so that this last check before we leave will have some extra money on it for spending.. I honestly feel like we live at our work, we have been working some much overtime, I'm not sure what we are going to do when we have our 3 weeks off work.. :)  We talk alot about what we wanna do and places we wanna see while driving.. We cant even wait..

I hope I didn't get you too bored from all this silly stuff I shared. Thanks for reading my blog!! 

Colorado Trip

Lyle and I made a trip our to my parents over this last weekend.  We went out to visit and to see our puppy. Just so you guys know Dixie is getting so stinking big.  Mom told me she is house trained 100% :)  She running and plays with my moms little puppy.  It was a great visit with my Parents.  They actually were in Utah buying a trailer when I called them Thursday to tell them that we wanted to come out and visit. So they headed home Friday so we traveled together.  It was a nice trip out we went in the middle of the day Friday and we didn't rush so it was kinda a nice drive.  We went out all day Saturday and took my parents and little brother bowling.. That was way fun, My parents used to bowl on a team, so it was nice to bowl with them.  My dad taught me how to bowl by using the arrows and not looking at the bowling pins.  I did pretty good after that. :)  We went shopping all day with my parents to buy stuff to put in the trailer they bought.  Then we got home and my dad and Lyle cooked steaks, they tasted so good. We didn't end up leaving my parents house until after 9:00 pm so it put us home at about 12:30-1:00 so we drove all night.  :) We really enjoyed the visit this weekend.  Our next trip will be to Florida and I cant wait.. Lyle and I are both very excited and think about the Florida trip a lot.  We are working 2-3 extra shifts a week to get money saved up for the trip and boy is that a lot but we are used to it because we have been doing it for like 3 months.  :)  We can fight through the extra shifts because we think about the fun times we will be having in Florida and then the fun times in Utah with his brother.  :)

EASTER

Lyle and I spent Saturday night and Sunday morning with his Aunt, and cousin's in Payson.  Saturday night we enjoyed coloring Easter Eggs with his cousins.  We colored lots and lots of Easter Eggs.  We watched some movies and went to bed.  We got up Sunday and had a wonderful Easter lunch.  Lyle's Aunt prepared a ham, potato salad, macaroni salad, green beans, and we used all those Colored Easter Eggs for Deviled Eggs.  Sadly both Lyle and I had to work so we spent the morning with his family and then around 1:30 We headed to work.  We had such a great time with his family, we ENJOY every second we spent with them. 

Road Trip To Florida!

So Lyle and I are making a trip to Florida this summer for his brothers GRADUATION!!  We are so happy for him and are very excited to make our road trip to visit his family and his home town. We are going to make some fun stops on the way down such as the Arch in St. Louis and Music Town in Tennessee, and while in Florida of course we are going to the Beach, and the clear water river (not sure how to spell the actual name of the river), and just spend some time with his family.  And the BEST news of all is that GALEN (Lyle's littler brother) Is going to come home with us for a week!  We are very excited for this, we are planning to take him to see the Grand Canyon on our road trip home!  We are so excited to have him come visit the family that is out here in Utah.. We are working lots and lots of overtime so we have extra money to use and to play with while in Florida and when his Brother comes out here to visit!! 

Engagement Story

Well Lyle and I are engaged!!!  I want to tell you the story of how it happened.  So April 12th we got up early and got the rest of our stuff moved out of our apartment in south Orem and got all moved into our new basement apartment in North Orem.  We didn't get any unpacked, because we had to head to work at 2 pm.  We happened to both drive our own cars today.  We went to work and took our lunch at 8:00pm together.  Well after our lunch Lyle texted me at about 10 pm and said that if he got off work early he was just going to head home and get some food cooking and I said ok that works for me, and I told him to remember to stop by and get the house key from me.  Then at about 10:45 he texted me and said, I totally forgot to stop and get the key from you so I will just wait outside for you.  I didn't even think twice about it.  Well i got out of work at about 10:55 and when driving from work I noticed 2 of his co-workers leaving work, so I asked why he got out earlier than everyone else and he said "I charted for them so they just let me leave early tonight."  I just let it go and drove home.  When I got home he was waiting outside next to his truck.  We both walked in and he opened the front door and handed me a rose that was sitting on the counter.  I noticed all the rose peddles on the floor of the kitchen and leading into the bathroom, and noticed the bedroom door was closed.  He had put a Daisy flower out on the back of the couch. When handing me the rose, he said I hope you know I love you baby, then told me baby I have a hot bath waiting on you, and some clothes in there also.  His face was very red, I giggled and said what if i wanted to pick out my own clothes.  He said well I'm sorry you cant go in the room.  I then hugged him, I walked into the bathroom and he had a White Daisy on the edge of the tub and rose peddles in the bath water.  I got in the bath and took my time just to be silly, I shaved my legs and kept asking him to come help me wash my hair, or my back just to tease him.  When I got out he had dinner made and it was ready.  He made some Lasagna in the oven, but it was cooking for over two hours and wasn't finished so he just cut out some pieces and finished cooking them in the microwave. :)  WE then sat on the couch and ate dinner while watching Family Guy.. lol After we got finished eating I got up and started taking pictures of the decorations with my phone.  He then said baby I need you to come with me into the bedroom.  I was teasing him and said what if I don't want too.  He said then I will just have to make you.  He opened the bedroom door and the room was spotless, no dirty clothes, no boxes and the bed was made up very nice with rose peddles on the bedroom floor and on the bed.  He walked over to his side of the bed and cleared off the rose peddles enough for us to sit down.  We both sat down and he said, You know I love you right, I said yes, and You know I want to spend the rest of my life with you right.  I then said I hope so.  Then he got up off the bed and got on his knee and asked me to marry him.  I responded with No, and he asked WHY? and looked so concerned then I giggled and said just kiddin, Of course I will marry you!  He then hugged me and kissed me.  (I've told him that I was going to tell him no at first if he ever asked me to marry him for a really long time)  He picked the ring all by himself!  It is wonderful and I love it so much.  He asked me on the very first official day at our own place, the day we finally got everything of ours moved in.  :)  I love him so much and cant wait to marry him and spend THE REST of our lives together.  :)  He is very amazing and means the world to me!!  

OUR FIRST NIGHT AT OUR PLACE

So lyle and I got an apartment together and our first night was last night.  We are slowly moving in and have been since Saturday thanks to our friends, and my parents for helping us move our large, pain in the butt couches, and our bed.  We are now just slowly moving the remainder of our things day by day.  We love that we can sit on our couches and watch TV without roommates walking through, or even hogging the couches.  We made dinner, and enjoyed eating a home cooked meal because believe me its been a long year living with roommates and not having the fridge room or freezer room to store food.  Our place is really small its a one bedroom, one bath and the living room and kitchen are combined.  But it fits our needs and that is what we were looking for.  It was hard to not be able to keep our cute puppy Dixie, but a great big thanks to my parents for taking her and keeping her for us until we move to a home that allows dogs.  We miss her but its a good step for the two of us.  We dont hear the upstairs nabors much yet, but its only been one day.  lol It is farter north then we wanted but let me say that its worth it, having our own place.  I will keep you updated on our moving in and when our house party will be :)