Our Family's Birthday Celebration

Can you believe it?! One whole year! One WHOLE YEAR!!!! We are practically that old married couple that bickers back and forth all the time haha. jk. He might be joking but we definitely have the aches and groans to go with it. But seriously. We are going on one year strong! We had some good times and bad, some stressful moments and moments of laughter, and I can't wait to do it all again this next year! and forever ;)

So on Friday we began our anniversary festivities by heading up to SLC. Sharyti insisted we include the image below. It shows my good side she said. It does haha, to be honest it just made me laugh. We goofed around the Gateway Mall for a bit before going to to see the new Star Wars movie Rogue One. It was pretty epic. Disney is carrying on the legacy well. Ya, it was a good movie but I'm very much a happy-go-lucky kind of movie person. . . and that is not what this one was. I cried. . several times. Yes I'll admit it. But I will agree with Jay, they did a really good job of plot and character development. Which is probably why I cried. .

Anyways, we then checked in to our hotel, and afterwards headed out on the town. 

We went to Temple Square and enjoyed all the lights and festivities that were going on, even thought it was like -60 degrees outside. BRRRR. I'm a St. George boy at heart. I have to add in here a blurp about Jay's very sweet surprise. So we're walking around looking at the lights and he pulls me into this little alcove of lights and bushes and says he has a surprise for me. Well if we weren't married I'd have though he had a ring lol. But wait, he did! We couldn't afford to get an engagement ring and a wedding band last year when we got married. So he bought me the wedding band that went with my ring for our anniversary. Such an AMAZING surprise and soo sweet. Also I'm pretty sure everyone around us thought we had just gotten engaged by the way I reacted haha = priceless. 

After a delicious Olive Garden meal, we stopped by the Cheesecake Factory for the real food. . . Cheesecake ;). The oreo cheesecake is to die for!!! Seriously, Jay almost got his hand bitten off trying to eat some of mine.

The next day we did sealing in the SL Temple. It was amazing, and it brought back the memories and feelings of when we were sealed together last year! That was still the best decision I ever made! Me too. After that, we struggled to think of something to do until 5 oclock when the Hoggle Zoo Lights started. After much thought, we decided "hey, lets go to Ikea for the heck of it" cuz you know, thats a great anniversary celebration activity haha.  Also I had never been before. I see now, why people can spend money there so easily. I wanted everything! We wandered the store dreaming of our future home and how we would decorate it, and yes wishing we had money to buy all of the cool stuff there.

The zoo at night during Christmas is awesome! They put up TONS of Christmas lights and it was fun to walk around and enjoy the sites. Only a few of the animals were out. We saw a sea lion, and a bunch of big cats. Jay was like a little kid when we got to the cat area of the zoo. Its a good thing there was a fence and glass between us and the Tiger because he probably would have tried to pet it and claim it as his new fur buddy. Jay "kind of" likes big cats. 

The tiger was the coolest. He was massive, and he kept pacing back and forth and growling haha. Not sure if he was unhappy or what. I'm pretty sure he had indigestion.

We returned home Saturday night, and sadly, I got sick on Sunday, our actual anniversary. We are happy to be done with school and we had a great time celebrating our anniversary. It was a good week all in all. :) And guess what!? Christmas is almost here!!! 
Go to this link to find out more ways to help keep the spirit of the season in mind for the next few days leading up to Christmas. 

Merry Christmas!!
 C Рождествom!!

What do giraffes eat? PIE!!

It's been a while since we've posted. 

We don't have a really good excuse other then by the time Sunday comes around all we want to do is sleep and eat. They call this the college finals funk. .  More just  lazyness on my part. oops. Actually we've meant to post the past few weeks and have even slowly added stuff to this post.

 I am now determined to finish it or we'll have an outrageously long post trying to catch up on everything. We're doing pretty good. We're almost done with this semester and the Christmas Season has begun!!! I LOVE this time of year and anytime it has snowed the past few weeks my Christmas cheer has become just that much brighter. Jay is a sweet heart and "puts up" with all the Christmas music, baking, snowflakes, etc. Ive been "putting up" with it for about 4 months now lol.

 The following is an update on the past few weeks since our last post.

Timmie has officially become comfortable with us as her humans. She has adopted the cat tendencies of sitting on our homework, keyboards, and books. Its cute until your homework needs to be done and she gives you the look of death if you go to move her. I should also mention the passing of Skittles, our beta fish. S/he took a trip down the toilet express. We did have a wonderful funeral and ceremony AKA Sharyti told me the fish was dead, then a couple minutes later I hear a splashing sound and the toilet flush. Goodbye Skittles.

As a young married couple each Holiday we try to establish fun traditions we can have for our family. Well it was a no brainer when Jay wanted to get the bow out to practice since it had been awhile, to shoot pumpkins. New family tradition - Pumpkin Archery. In this case we started late and had to use a spot light to be able to  see the pumpkin. Definitely added a whole new element to the game. Only broke 2 arrows, so I'd say it was a success :) 

Every Thanksgiving the local choir chorals gather together and have a Thanksgiving concert. My Grandma Lu sings in the Orem Choral so we went and watched her sing and all the other fun performances. It was really beautiful and a great way to start the Thanksgiving Holiday week. 

Thanksgiving was a full day. We had Thanksgiving dinner at my families and then went down to Mona to celebrate with Jay's family.

Note - We didn't make these pies. . I wanted a Thanksgiving picture with Jay and so what is more Thanksgiving then a live Turkey. . well we didn't happen to have one so pies had to do. These were actually my moms pies and they were amazing! Can you see the temptation in my eyes? Oh how I wanted to give Sharyti a taste of my pie haha.

The food was soooo good. Many thanks to Sharyti's family!

It looks sparce of people but that's because the kids were all downstairs playing and the adults somehow managed to never be in the same room all at once. 

I love that my brother and sister in law know that if they need someone to hold their little girl they can always give her to me. Her smile melts my heart and I love making her laugh (Which is super easy). One of the many many "favorite" nieces. :)

Jay's family scheduled a cultural hall for their Thanksgiving Celebration because his parents house is too small. . The crazy thing is not all of his siblings and their families were able to make it and it was still a big/huuuge party. Super fun and the pies . . oh the pies!

 Williams Boy's Thanksgiving Shootout. No one got shot!! It was good times and the kids really enjoyed it!

Christmas decor is up and a plenty.

This is our life right now. School, work, eat, study, sleep, repeat. Jay's and my finals are all this week. By Thursday night this week we'll be extremely happy and our brains will be fried. We're not just excited for the end of this week because it means finals are over, we may or may not be going to Salt Lake for our 1st YEAR ANNIVERSARY too. One whole year!!! It's gone by so fast and sooo much has happened. But I am so grateful I got to spend it with my stud muffin of a husband ;) (que your inward groaning) A wonderful year it has been! We've been very blessed and are grateful for all we have. Looking forward to another amazing year with my sweetheart :)

Glacier National Park. . who knew?!

So 2 weeks ago we went on a really awesome road trip with Sharytis parents. We left Wednesday the 19th for Yellowstone. We only spent a couple hours there but what we saw was AMAZING! We left the park that night and stayed in a cabin just outside of it. The next day we went to Glacier National Park. I didn't really know what to expect at Glacier, and I was extremely surprised by how amazing it was. It was so green and there was a huge lake and rivers everywhere. We went in the off season so a lot of the park was closed, but we did do one hike called the Avalanche trail. 4 miles round trip to another lake with an amazing backdrop. It was overcast and wet our whole stay but that just made it even more beautiful! We passed a couple houses on our way to the park that were for sale and we kept joking that we should buy one and move to Montana. I think we were only partly joking to be honest. Northern Montana is absolutely breathtaking. Don't be too surprised if you hear we opened up a bed and breakfast on one of the lakes up there. Just saying. 

Me and Shar owe many thanks to Bruce and Debany for planning and inviting us on their vacation! Many many thanks! On the way back we stopped at a Cathedral in Montana that was really cool. Huge paintings and lots of sculptures everywhere.

Other then the trip not too much has really been going on for us. We are really happy at our jobs, trying to stay afloat with school, and just living it up as newly weds while we can still be called that (almost one year!). I'm definitely excited that the Holidays are here (Thanksgiving is included in this) and i think Jason may be too, he just might not admit it to you ;) So a happy late Halloween and a Happy Thanksgiving! 

Love, 

The Williams

Pictures of our crazy adventure can be found below. Some of them are ones that Jason took with his "special" camera. They're the ones that look really good! 

Yellowstone National Park

Montana (our future house can be found below)

Glacier National Park (aka one of mine and Jason's favorite places on earth)

(wolf prints found by my dad)

I have to admit, I squealed when i saw snow. I'm definitely feeling the need for some chiller weather to help bring about the Holiday spirit. Driving through this definitely added to my excitement for the Holidays.

We went as Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo for halloween :) Sharyti looks pretty amazing in glasses and soccer socks :)

DI for the win!!