Tulips for Tulip

That's right, Matt calls me Tulip. He sent me these for my birthday :) Sweetness!

5 years in Utah and...

...we finally decided to try skiing (and snowboarding)! I loved skiing and Matthew loved snowboarding - so much that he bought a snowboard (hooray for end-of-season sales!)! So, unbelievably, we are looking forward to another winter in Utah...















(above is my friend, Ellie, who fearlessly taught me how to ski & a picture of us trying to act cool in Park City)

Our child...well, almost!

These pictures speak for themselves! Samson (Sammy) became part of "us" in February of this year and our lives have been changed forever ;-D ...particularly Matt's, since he had originally claimed that he "hated" cats... haha, I think the picture tells otherwise!

Time marches on...

When pondering how to sum up two years in a nut shell, I figured I'd point out major highlights. I graduated (woo-woo!), Matt moved up several positions at his job (over-achiever ;) ), we went to Hawaii (thanks Spanns!), and we've moved several times (4 times, to be exact) - which includes our present location, our OWN HOME! Although the buying process was the BIGGEST nightmare of our lives, we finally got into our Condo in October (2006) and have been loving it ever since! After lots and lots of paint and tender loving care, its just about how we want it -

Before & after pictures:

History continued...Temple Time

Our 5 month engagement zoomed by as we jumped back into life together. My roommates joked that Matt was our seventh (thanks Faith) roommate - he fit in perfectly, as you can see ;)

We got married in the Washington, D.C. Temple on May 21, 2005. Although it was gross and rainy the night before, May 21st turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day! That is not to say we didn't have our share of insanity getting to & through the perfect day - as usual, Murphy's Law struck and just about anything that could go wrong did! To mention a few things: I forgot my birth certificate at home and our neighbor had to break into our house and overnight it to D.C., unbeknownst to us our hotel was in the ghetto of D.C., Matt & his parent's hotel lost water the morning of the wedding and Matt used two bottles of water to wash himself, my Dad almost got married to Matt (haha, whoops - my name might be a boys name, but its not Michael), and then we got lost on the way to our hotel and ended up being two hours late to our dinner that night (sorry guys!).

Below you can see the beautiful day we had & our two-hour-late arrival to dinner...

We flew out to Cancun the next morning at the crack of dawn and had a great week there -- looking at these pictures, all I can say is, take me back!!! hehe

When we got back to Tennessee, we had our reception and worked & saved before heading to Utah for school.

And so the story continues...

Continuing down the road...

Matt and I managed to remain friends through the crazy high school years (haha), and soon Matt was leaving on his mission to the Dominican Republic and I was heading to BYU (go cougs!). The two years went by pretty quickly (or slowly, depending on the day), and I eventually found myself landing in Nashville for Christmas break. Surprisingly to some, and not at all to others, Matt and I were engaged two weeks after he got home! To the right is a picture of us the night he proposed - a reenactment :) He took me to a bench that had significance to us and, after puttering around chit chatting, he finally got the courage to propose. As I said yes and leaned forward to hug & kiss him, we suddenly heard applause break out above us - yeap, a group of people had noticed what was happening and gathered to witness our moment! Hooray for spectators! haha

Here are the two engagement pictures we sent out with our invitations:

Where it all began...

Of course, we could dig way, way back, but this is probably far enough for a blog! ;) Matt and I met in November of 2000 at a church youth dance (heehee!) and became fast friends (probably because Matt asked me to dance about 8 times that night)! Needless to say, a week or two after the dance, we went on our first date... and the rest is history (lots of history!)! Although I was mortified at the time, it is pretty classic & great that my parents made us take a picture before heading out for dinner and bowling :) Here we are... (sorry for the bad picture quality, I need to find a scanner).