Boxes, Boxes

Those boxes you see are full of some of our belongings because... we sold our house!! We got an offer on it after only 2 weeks on the market and we are so excited! We feel so blessed because everything has worked out so smoothly for us. We know that selling a home so quickly in this economy is rare which makes us feel ever more blessed and grateful.

We found an apartment in Logan a couple of weeks ago that we really liked and the managers told us they would hold onto it for us until we knew for sure that the house was sold. That in itself was a blessing because trying to find an apartment last minute would've been stressful (at least for me).

We have been packing fools at our house :) 26 boxes packed and counting. It's amazing how much stuff we have accumulated!

House Update

Warning, lots of pictures! This post is more for my benefit that anyone else's. I LOVE before and after pictures and it makes me happy when I can see pictures right next to each other to see the difference.

Mike and I have been working on different rooms every weekend, for the past couple of months and we've been able to get a lot done.

A couple of weeks ago, the family came over to help us till up and rake the front yard to get it ready for sod and after lots of rain storms and a delay on the sod delivery, we were finally able to get the sod laid tonight. It looks so great! I'm in love with it.

Before

Before

After

Here are a few more things we worked on.

The main bathroom on our house was very gross looking. I could scrub and scrub the floor, but no matter what it would still look dirty and gross. The caulking on the baseboards was gray with specs of black and it just looked awful.

Mike and my brother in-law Chad spent a couple of hours laying down new flooring and putting new baseboards on. It doesn't look like a brand spanking new bathroom, but now it looks clean and livable. It was a definite improvement from what we had before.

Gross flooring from before

Happy flooring after (that looks and feels CLEAN!!)

We have also painted 2 of our bedrooms. One of the rooms we did was the master bedroom. When we moved into our house, we found that someone had peed on the carpet in the master bedroom and it smelled AWFUL. We tore out the carpet and found that there was more carpet beneath (the industrial kind they have in schools) that was glued to the floor. I was able to borrow a carpet cleaner from my mom and everything came right out. A few weeks ago, we painted and put in new carpet.

Before

After (with new carpet)

2nd bedroom

Before

After

Now we just need to fix up the master bathroom and finish the bedroom and the basement and then this baby is going to get put on the market. Yep, you read that right! We have decided to sell our home. Mike has chosen a different career path which no longer means we need to live in Brigham City for his job. We will hopefully be heading back over the mountain to live in Logan again. Since both of us drive together to Logan every day anyway we figured it only made sense to make the move and to simplify our lives a little bit. We feel like it's the right thing to do. Some of you may thing we are total idiots, but this has been such a great experience for both of us. We've gotten to know the most amazing people in our ward, we've learned a lot of new skills that will come in handy in the future, and we've been able to learn a lot about ourselves and what we want for our future. We initially followed what we knew to be right and now we are following that feeling again :) We just hope that our house will sell fast and that we will be able to make a good profit off of it. We're hopeful and excited for this next little chapter.

Who do I love?

~THIS GUY~

We had a combined etiquette dinner last week with the Young Men and Young Women and it was "Best Dressed". Mike broke out his zoot suit (cane not included in the picture) and went in style. You can't tell, but the jacket almost goes to his knees. Too bad he didn't have his kilt because that could have been out on the table as an option as well. I love this boy A LOT and I love that he could care less what other people think of him much to his wifes' dismay :)

Chubby

For quite some time, I have needed my wisdom teeth out and I had avoided this fact like the plague for the last 3 years until I started to feel a lot of pressure on all of my teeth. I decided in December it was probably time to take the plunge and get this done.

Last weekend Mike dropped me off at the oral surgeons office and left to go to class and my mom was going to show up while I was in getting them pulled. It was amazing because I looked at the clock as they were hooking me up to the IV's to put me out and it was 9:15. When I woke up I looked at the clock and it was 9:45. The man was incredibly fast! They took me into the recovery room and I sat and texted things to my mom since my mouth was chuck full of gauze and I felt pretty coherent. I was worried before the surgery that I would be like this guy... (hilarious)

I did profess my love for Mike to my mom on my way home though. I told her I loved him SO much and I guess I was pretty emotional about it. I also said he was SO nice to me. She said I was a very sweet girl on drugs. :)

The whole weekend I was nice and plump

The pain from the surgery was not so bad for the first couple of days and I was sure I would be back to work on Monday, but on Monday/Tuesday, I started to feel worse and worse and a lot of pressure was building up in the left side of my jaw. It went from my ear all the way to my nose. It was SO painful. On Thursday I had to leave work early because the pain was so bad it was making me nauseous. No matter what I took for the pain, it wouldn't help. I finally got an appointment to see my doctor Friday and found out I had an infection. That experience was.. pleasant as he jammed a tube down in my gum (blinding PAIN!) haha, to suck some stuff out. I couldn't tell at the time because I was trying to keep myself from crying/swearing, but it relieved a lot of pressure.

That night, I was able to eat chicken (glorious!!) and now Mike is eating actual meals, instead of ham sandwiches and frozen pizza, because I can actually get up off the couch to make something. Miracles happen people :)

Cruisin'

Mike and I were able to go on a cruise to Mexico in October for our Anniversary (thanks to Uncle Sams tax return from last year). It was SO nice! We went to Catilina Island and Ensenada, which gave Mike the opportunity to see the ocean for the first time and to leave the country for the first time. We drove out to California over conference weekend, spent the night in Vegas and took off the next day to the ship. We had the most "romantic" stateroom complete with bunk beds! Yes, we are cheapo's. The beds were amazingly comfortable though :)

The cruise was really cold the whole time so we didn't do any excursions. Since most of them had to do with being in the water, we opted out. We did however, make many excursions to the dining room (can you say all you can eat Frozen Yogurt?). On the formal night, the waiter brought Mike 2 plates of crab and we ate lots of tiger shrimp. I swear I gained at least 6 pounds on our trip!! I didn't weigh myself for at least a week or two after just incase.

I did make it to the gym once on the cruise, but there is something about running on a treadmill... that is on a ship... that is on the ocean. The gym was on the very front of the ship and all of the treadmills/ellipticals faced the front windows. I could see the bow of the boat going down and up and from side to side. Feeling the boat moving and seeing the blinds in the windows moving slightly... made me feel like I was running sideways and about to tip over. I was due for some motion sickness pills after that little jaunt.

My favorite parts of the trip were sitting in the dining room really late at night and talking to Mr. Berry as we sipped on hot chocolate, or going on walks on top of the ship late at night. Mike also bought me a massage in Mexico (which I was thinking might be sketchy based on the surroundings of the shop) but it was $20 for 40 minutes and the best $20 he could've ever spent! I had never had a massage before, but it was SO heavenly. I also loved the car ride there and back because we were nerds and listened to Harry Potter 7 the entire time and had discussions about it. It was so nice to spend time with Mr. Berry and to have no cares in the world for a little while. We'll have to go again sometime, but with friends. Any takers? :)

What the Berry's have been up to

I figure it's been a while and I need to catch up. Here are a few things that have been going on since September... or whenever I last posted.

-- After a lot of thought and prayer, Mike decided to change his major and his career path and is now going into Geophysics. I think he will do so FABULOUS! He is super smart and loves anything and everything that has to do with science. It's going to take him 2 1/2 more years of school (blah!), and then another 2 for his masters degree, but I'm happy that he's excited about it and that he knows what he wants to do! Time will fly like it always does and he'll be done in no time! He thought he wanted to go the insurance route for a long time, but that was way too stressful for him. He was always worrying about work.. and I mean ALWAYS. Commission jobs will do that to you I guess :) Anyway, we're happy with that decision and feel like it's going to be what's best for Mike and for our family. In the mean time Mike is still going to be working for Farm Bureau part time and has another job he started a couple of weeks ago that will be perfect with school since he can basically make up his own hours. Mike will be driving with me to Logan next semester so he can go to classes and I'll drop him off at school like his little mother (precious!) Now we just need to figure out why God wants us in Brigham City since Farm Bureau is what brought us here. I'm pretty sure we know why, but I'm sure there are even more reason that we don't know about yet :)

-- We paid homage to our Mexican ancestors and went on a cruise in October for our anniversary.

-- Mike got called to be the assistant scout master in the ward and I got called to be a Laurel advisor. It's kind of weird to drive to mutual with each other :) We're both loving it and and we're learning a lot.

-- Got a new front door for the house

-- Painted more things in the house

-- Had an amazing Thanksgiving with the Merrell's

And we're happy as clams. Life has it's rough edges to it, but we're working out the kinks and so far so good.

Man Vs. Mud

Well on September 4th, Mike and I hit the big 2 years of marriage and what better (and romantic, might I add) way to spend an anniversary then to trudge through the mud with the in-laws?! Mike and I ran it with my sisters Chelsie and Brooke and it was SO fun! There were a bunch of huge water slides we went down, we army climbed through one part, we went through a really long trench that I'm assuming was dug out by a back ho and oh my goodness... hilarious! It was deep in some place and shallow in others and Chelsie and I had some serious struggles with not tipping over. I guess Mike and Brooke just have outstanding skills. Anyway, here are some pics.

For some reason I didn't realize how extremely dirty I was going to get. I spent a LONG time in the shower trying to get clean. :)

After the "race", my dad took me and my sisters out to Maddox for dinner. Chelsie and Andrea were about to move away (to Oregon and Italy) :( and it was the last time for all of us to go out to dinner with each other before everyone took off. Can I just say how much I love my sisters? They are hilarious and I am always giggling when I'm with them. Now it's just me and Brooke and we'll have to find some way to keep life entertaining in the sisters department.