This Saturday the love of my life turns 24. We're headed to Disneyland and to visit my Aunt and Uncle to celebrate. Justin had never been to Disneyland and absolutely loved it. I'm so glad that I have a husband who loves to go do fun things with me.

I married my best friend in the entire world, and it shows. There are so many things that I love about him. The best thing I have ever done in my life is marry this boy. Marrying your best friend is something that I strongly suggest:)

He is such a stud that I am so grateful that I caught him. When we were younger we used to refer to him and his brothers as the "Skinner boys" because they were the incredibly cute nephews of my neighbors the Skinners. We would all make sure we were looking our best when they would come visit, and sometimes I still can't believe how lucky I am to have married a "Skinner boy."

He is the kindest and greatest husband I could have ever asked for. He love to surprise me with a clean house, and he knows exactly how to make me happy and how to de-stress me, and that is no small feat. He puts up with all of my craziness, knows everything about me, and loves me anyways.

He is my rock. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of strength to marry a girl with my health issues, and to put on a happy face about it and assure me constantly that everything will be OK. He is always the tough one during hospital visits and keeps us realizing that life can still be happy, even at the hospital.


He loves to take me out on dates. He makes me feel so great about myself, and I love that he wants to be with me all the time. I am so lucky to have a husband who adores me so much.He is up for anything. Anything I feel like doing, he wants to go along. Anything I ask him to do, he is up for. When I am crazy and change my mind about stuff every ten seconds, he thinks all of my ideas sound great and he believes that I can do anything.
He has the greatest sense of humor. We spend most of our time together cracking up. Even when I don't think something is funny, his laugh is enough to get me rolling on the floor laughing. He has such a happy-go-lucky disposition that I consider myself incredibly lucky to get to be around him all the time.
He is easily the most handsome man that I have ever seen in my life. I love to be able to look at him and know that I totally scored. I lucked out being able to find a man so good looking and wonderful who loves me too.
He is incredibly driven and smart. I am so excited that he is getting to do what he loves every day and excelling at it. He knows what he wants to do the rest of his life and he is going after it. It won't be long before he'll be flying the skies and be the best pilot the world has ever seen.

I love you sweetheart. I hope you have a very very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Becoming a Vampire....

Surprisingly, this post has nothing to do with the Twilight series, although I will say that I am getting pretty excited to see the new movie. Nope, this has to do with something that I will be taking a course for in November.

It all starts with my Doctor's appointment (in which we found out that I am Cancer free.... Hooray for 3 and 1/2 years!!) when I had the greatest phlebotomist of all time draw my labs. She was wonderful, she got a vein on the first poke, and even though she went into my hand, it hardly bruised at all! (Usually my entire hand is black and blue when they do that)



Now, I had thought to myself before that if there was anything I was interested in in medicine, it would be phlebotomy, don't ask me why.... it's rather creepy I know.... but an interest none the less. But over the past few weeks since the appointment, I have not been able to get it out of my head. I now passionately want to be a really good phlebotomist. I know what kind of a difference it can make in a hospital visit when your phlebotomist is good, and I want to be that kind of person.

So I signed up for the November night course in Ogden. I am super excited and I am really looking forward to having this skill, and hey..... being a vampire wouldn't be that bad right?:) Isn't that what reading Twilight tells us?:)

Oh no!

Our Idaho registration expired on our Carolla yesterday, so now we are officially utah drivers. Both of our cars will soon have Utah license plates, and I was informed yesterday at the DMV that we need Utah licenses. We're trying to embrace our Utah lives, but we're still Idahoans at heart!

Much needed update

Well, I finally have a couple minutes to update. Our lives have gotten even crazier since school started (we had no idea that that was possible!) Justin is working at the airport and going to school, and I am working at the doctor's office and doing online classes. We have early mornings for work and late nights for homework. Oh the joys of being students!

Before school started we got to go up to Moscow for a long weekend, and it was wonderful! We really miss our families when we are away from home. We got family pictures with the Schwartzes (see the post below) and family pictures with my family (more to come, I'm sure) :) There were a couple of pictures of Justin and I that I LOVED. (Thanks Annie!) It's fun because both families got them taken at the same place, so that will make my decorating so much more fun with all of the "matchiness."



This is one of my most favorite pictures that we got taken. I adore it! It's so fun to have such a cute husband!


Our first anniversary was while we were in Moscow. We celebrated just the two of us before we left. We went to the Salt Lake Temple to do sealings and then had lunch at our most favorite restaurant called Tucanos. We have had such a wonderful and eventful first year. I am so grateful to be married to such a wonderful man:)

On our actual anniversary in Moscow we went to Gracie's baptism. It was so fun to have the family all together. My cute husband got me a dozen roses, and we ate out with the fam after the baptism. It was an awesome day.

We ate the top layer of our wedding cake that we had kept frozen. The whole family was completely grossed out that we would even think about eating year old frozen cake, but it wasn't bad. I kept trying to tell them that it is a long standing tradition. I don't think they cared.:)

We got home and started right into school, and had my family come down to Logan and stay with us for a couple of days while they took Lauren to BYU. It was so much fun to have them here and show off our new townhouse a little bit.

And now we've been in school for almost a month! It's crazy to think about for me. The semester is flying by way too fast. I've been doing homework for a couple of hours a night to keep up with my online classes, but I am lucky enough to get Saturdays off of work. Since my hubby usually isn't home for most Saturdays I use it to get lots of homework done and some fun projects.

Once I finish my homework, I like to have projects to do that have nothing to do with school. This has been my most recent one. I've worked on it for the past two Saturdays and it is finally finished and will be moved inside our house this evening!


I found this solid oak coffee table at DI. Yes, it was very beat up but it had a lot of potential. I spent last Saturday sanding it down and staining the top. I put one coat of black on the legs, and that is all I could get done before it got dark. This week, I put two more coats of black on the legs, and put a gloss stain on the top. It looks great and I am so excited to move it into the house!


My next project includes these. I got them this morning at the farmers market in town for $1! I was so excited, they look delicious. I think we may have quite a bit of zucchini bread in our future:)

Schwartz Family Pictures

Someday I'll actually get around to talking about our wonderful anniversary trip, when I get the pictures from the camera loaded up. We had an awesome vacation home, it was great to be able to see our families and not have to WORK! We also got to take pictures with BOTH families, and here are the results of one of them!

The Schwartz Family:)

All of the Schwartz boys..... or "Skinner boys" as we used to call them:)

Me and the Hubby:) I LOVE this new picture!

Livin' it up in Logan

We're doing well here as the summer comes to a close. Justin passed his third stage check today and will have his final check ride on Tuesday. Then I will officially be a pilot's wife:) I'm really proud of all of the hard work that he's put in this summer. When I got home from work last night he still had his books and charts and flight stuff spread out all over the floor making a flight plan. It's pretty cute.

We've got a couple of changes coming up soon. I put in my notice at Sports Authority because I am moving to Full TIME at the Doctors office after we get home from Moscow. I am very excited. I could not ask for a better job. It will be a lot to handle working full time and school full time, but I think I'm up for the challenge.

Justin will hopefully be changing jobs at the airport and working at dispach where he will only be taking care of the Utah State airplanes. They would be better hours for him, and a lot less stress which he'll need since he'll be working on TWO ratings in the fall. He'll be taking instrument ground school at the same time he's finishing his intermediate hours. The instrument rating kind of scares me because they put him under a "hood" and it covers his eyes so he can't see anything but his instruments and he has to fly using only those. Should be an adventure for him this fall!

We're getting excited to go home in just over a week. We have lots of family pictures to do, lots of visiting, and lots of mom time to get in. We're both feeling a little bit deprived way down here in Utah.... we need our moms!

Grace is coming home with us after we go visit because my family is coming down here the day after we come home to take Lauren to BYU. I'm excited to have her closer, and excited that BFFs Justin and Grace will get some quality time together. They have a very special bond, and Justin's been missing her a lot! It will be fun to have her all to ourselves for the drive and that Monday.

Well that's an update on us! I should have pictures coming sometime next week.... we're doing an early anniversary celebration in Salt Lake. We're planning a little bit of the Temple and Tucanos. Should be some good times! We love you all!

My life = explosion

I don't think I have ever been so busy in my life. It's a blast, but definitely taking its toll. I'm sitting here at the doctors office at the end of my 12-13 hour day (we have yet to see which one) and I realize I've only seen my husband for about 9 hours in the past three days combined. Its a bummer. But between both of our two jobs, and him going to school it makes sense that we would never see each other. Which is why we're actually looking forward to school starting. Weird.

The upside of this current explosion of my life is that I was finally able to afford the graphic design programs that I had been yearning for for the past six months. I plan on churning out masses of invitations, business cards, programs, announcements and everything else I've wanted to make. I am excited. So if you know anyone who need wedding invites, party invites, baby announcements.... anything, let me know!