Winter Break Activities

School ended and Brad and I have enjoyed spending all of our time together and not having to worry about homework and tests. :) We looked at the lights at temple square, we've played lots and lots of games with our family, we made TONS of peppermint bark and delivered it to our neighbors, we've stayed up late watching movies and laughing...so far it has been a wonderful break!
Christmas lights at temple square

Brad made me laugh really hard while I was brushing my teeth

On Christmas eve we spent the night at Brad's parents house. It was a lot of fun, the boys played halo and the girls caught up on girl talk. Christmas morning came and we jumped around from his family to my family, we are lucky they live so close. Brad had a "mans" christmas and received manly stuff consisting of tools, a dutch oven and an air compressor...he was one happy man! I had a "homemaker" christmas and got lots of stuff for the house-a new paper cutter, a hot chocolate maker, a food processor! I'm so excited to use them all.

My family always draws names for the siblings and this year we decided to do homemade gifts under $10 for each other. This was Brad's gift from Holli and Jeff. We really love it! :)

Brad and I did our own little Christmas with each other on Christmas Eve. We wanted to be able to open gifts from each other and take time to enjoy them without being rushed. I got Brad a new drill, he was like a little kid when he opened it...he couldn't contain his excitement. It was cute

Brad got me Brad Paisley tickets for Christmas!!! I think I was even more excited about the tickets than he was about the drill! The concert is January 27th and I can hardly wait! Definitely the best Christmas present! :)

Our Christmas Pajamas

While we have had all this extra time, Brad and I have been keeping ourselves busy with projects. I spent a lot of the break making homemade christmas gifts, baking and cooking. It has been so much fun! I can't wait until I'm done with school and I can do that stuff all the time.

Brad and his brother and dad have decided to make remote control boats! So he has spent the break working on that. he is getting ready to put the motor in it. The boat is almost 4 feet long and pretty awesome!

Finals are HERE

  Finals are here, which means lots of late nights like this...

 and plenty of this...

My day with Brad

Well Wednesday was my birthday...I turned the big 2-3! I know, I can't believe it either. Brad did a really good job of making sure I had the best day ever! The night before my birthday he took me to pick out our Christmas tree! I LOVE Christmas and I love to make a big deal of it, so it meant a lot to me that he took me to get our tree after he had a long day at work. It was so fun picking it, we found the perfect one, and they even had hot chocolate (my favorite) for us while we looked. It was like a scene from a movie :) We got it home and I thought he was just going to set it up and we'd decorate it another time because it was late, but he let us decorate it that night. I was so excited! The next day I had to work, but it was ok because work bought lunch and made me a card, they are pretty great! When I got done with work and  walked in our house Brad had all the christmas lights on and the house was clean :) my mother and sister-in-law came over and set up this cute happy birthday banner with balloons and then took me to get a pedicure! It was so fun, and definitely needed :) After pedicures Brad let me open my presents...he got me a sewing machine!! I am so excited, and was so surprised! I can't wait to get done with school so I can get started on some projects! :) Brad took me to Benihana's for dinner! I have wanted to go there for awhile and I'm glad we finally got to go. It was delicious! And so fun to watch them cook in front of us. After dinner he took me to the Festival of Trees! I loved it, they had some really beautiful trees this year. After all of the festivities we went home and had some delicious birthday brownies that cute Brad baked for me! He really is the best husband.It was a wonderful day, I loved getting cards and birthday texts from my family and friends. Thanks babe for making it special for me! I love you.

Birthday dinner at benihana's

My Sewing Machine!!

Homemade birthday brownies mmmm

Our tree! Brad named it Cleveland...cleveland the tree

Our weekend

Brad and I had a great weekend together. On Friday he took me on a "hot date." We went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen mmmmm and then to a movie. We haven't been to a movie in the theaters together for a long time. It was fun to get out of the house and spend time just the 2 of us. On Saturday after Brad got off work we had a Twilight Movie Marathon...yes thats right, we watched 3 movies for a total of 6 hours of non stop Twilight. We want to go see the new one and we hadn't seen the other ones so we figured we should do it all in one day :) Brad won't admit to it, but he likes those movies. He was very excited when Edward and Bella kissed. On Sunday we had some of my family over for dinner. It's fun to have people come over to our house. :)

Last weekend Brad had a boys night and I had a girls night. We went down to gateway and had dinner and saw Footloose...then we went DANCING! It was so fun to hang out with all my friends and talk about girl stuff and just be silly together, the time just flew by, and before I knew it it was 1:00 am! And I know Brad had a blast with his friends. They ate pizza and played poker and I'm sure they were out of control. I came home to find soda cans and 5 empty boxes of pizza in our kitchen. :) I'm glad they had a good time.

Nicole, Emma, Traci, Me, Kari

This is Brad's latest look...don't worry, it didn't last long. I'm sure you can understand why.

Weekend Fun

Brad and I had a great weekend, it started on Friday when Jeff and Traci came over and we played the wii. The boys got a little too into some of the games :) it was fun to spend the night talking and hanging out with them! Saturday it was my mom's birthday so we spent the day with her, just hanging out and playing games. We had dinner together and then my dad, sister, Brad and I all carved pumpkins! On Sunday is was the ward primary program. My little primary kids did such a great job! It was a cute program and everyone loved it! It was a wonderful weekend, and just like all wonderful things, it ended too quickly.

Baseball on the Wii

Happy Birthday to the best mom!! We love you!

Our Pumpkins!
Brad's is a haunted castle, mine is a witch, Melinda's is ghosts, my dad's is the grim reaper.

I got home the other day, and this is what I found

This note that probably took 10 seconds to write, made my whole day! :)

A different kind of workout

My dear friend Traci is a fitness pole dancing instructor and she invited us over to her house to teach me and Emma a few workout routines. (fat burning, muscle building workout routines...nothing else) Let me just say that pole dancing is HARD! She is an expert and was doing the craziest moves! I don't know how she does it. Anyway, I consider myself to be pretty athletic and when she showed us "simple" moves I thought to myself, "oh this should be no problem, I should be able to do that." It was the exact opposite! I was so tired after our hour lesson...and sore. Lets just say I have a new respect for people who can do it and make it look graceful. It was super fun, and a great workout. I can't wait to do it again! Thanks Traci!

Notice my sweat? (I'm sure you do, its hard to miss) It was a tough workout

The girls
Traci, Emma, Me

365 days

On Wednesday Brad and I celebrated our first anniversary together! It was such a fun day. We both had work and school all day but at 7pm we got to celebrate our day together. I made Brad a big fancy dinner and we just hung out and talked about our wedding day. After dinner we watched our wedding video, that was my favorite part. It was so fun to see us so happy and in love...not much has changed since then :) After the video we ate some of our cake from our wedding. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that it actually tasted really good. We got a fresh cake from the reception center and we ate some of that too, they really didn't taste all that different. They were both delicious, pumpkin chocolate chip cake is the best! Brad brought home beautiful roses that looked just like the ones from my bouquet, he is so thoughtful!
On friday we went downtown to Little America (where we stayed on our wedding night) and spent the weekend there. We ate at an italian place called Biagi's which was delicious. We walked around downtown and looked at little shops along the way. We went swimming and hot tubbing and Saturday morning ate at the cute little restaurant inside the hotel. It was perfect! I honestly feel like the luckiest girl! Being married to Brad is the best, he is the perfect husband and treats me like a princess everyday! He always makes me laugh and I just feel so special when I'm around him. We were definitely made for each other, and he really is my other half! Thanks for the best 365 days, I love you babe!




Dirty Girls Have More Fun

On Saturday my sister Melinda and I ran the dirty dash! It was our second time doing it, and this year it was even more muddy than last year! :) It is 6 miles of running up and down a mountain, through mud, over obstacles and through a giant, disgusting, muddy, smelly river. Some of the obstacles included a rope climb over a giant mud hill, crawling through barrels, jumping over hay stacks, climbing over walls, weaving over and under poles, running through tires, and a giant rope net you had to climb up and down. It was so much fun and we can't wait to do it again next year with everyone! Thanks to cute Brad for coming all the way out to Heber to watch us run and take pictures! :)

Our shoes!
I gave away my old running shoes after the race last year, so I had to go buy some $10 keds to run in this year, because  I didn't want ruin my actual running shoes. The keds worked a lot better than I thought. They even had more grip than my sisters 8 year old running shoes :)

Before the race! It was our other sister Courtney's birthday
HAPPY BIRTHDAY COURTNEY!

dirty girls DO have more fun

Running toward the filthy finish

dirty dash round two: Completed!



new camera.the fair.and the U game



We FINALLY got a new camera! YAY! I am so so happy! :) And it came just in time for the State Fair. I have never been to the Fair and on Saturday we went with our friends Scott and Megan and Taylor and Kaisha. It was actually really fun. We saw the worlds smallest woman...boy was she small! 29 inches I think she said. She is from Haiti and she just layed there on her little mini couch and let people come and look at her. It was a little weird, but to each their own right?? We played some games and Brad won me a prize! I have never had anyone win me a prize from the carnival games and I was so happy that he won it for me! What a sweet husband :) It was a fun experience and I'm glad we were able to go. After the Fair we went over to our friends house to watch the Utah vs. BYU game. It was an awesome game and Utah absolutely dominated BYU. It's always more fun to watch the team you're cheering for win. Today we took Fortuna family pictures. We all got dressed up and went to wheeler farm for some pictures. It was actually pretty fun since I haven't been to wheeler farm for probably 10 years. Everyone looked cute and I can't wait to see how they turn out! It was a good weekend and it was so great to have Catharine and Kirk and cute baby Amos in town...even if we did see them for just a few hours. That baby is so dang cute, he makes me want one of our own. So maybe it's a good thing we only see them a few times a year :)

The first picture with our new camera-at the Utah State Fair

In front of the game where Brad won me that cute giraffe

Utah fans :)

Saturday=a great day!

Saturday was the best day Brad and I have had in a looong time. It was the first time in probably 6 months that we have both been in town and had the day off to just relax, it was long over due. We slept in and then we went running together. We had a delicious homemade jamba juice breakfast and did some homework together. That afternoon we went and looked at new cameras...since I broke ours. We found a few and we're probably going to be getting one in the next few weeks. YAY! After camera shopping we went to the Draper temple :) This temple has a special place in my heart because it is where cute Bradley and I got engaged and where I took out my endowments. It was so fun to be there since we haven't gone to that temple since I went through...a year ago this month! After our session we went to Cafe Rio for dinner. We walked around outside, looked at a few trucks that were for sale and just talked about life. These are the moments I love best. Just hanging out with my best friend, doing whatever we want, or doing nothing at all. :) After dinner we went to a movie with my brother and sister-in-law, Steve and Cathy. This is a rare occasion, us hanging out with just the 2 of them since they have 3 little kids at home. It was so funny, they kept looking back for their kids and kept saying how weird it is not carrying a diaper bag and a stroller and seeing a movie that isn't a cartoon :) We saw shark night in 3D. It was a little cheesy, but since it was in 3D there were some parts that made you jump. It was our first 3D experience and it was pretty great :) It was just such a perfect day!

Happiness

School is back in session and already it has been busy busy busy. But...we paid off all of our student loans so we are 100%  DEBT FREE! :) It feels amazing! AND we opened another savings account and we are officially starting to save for a house! We are hoping to be ready to make an offer by Christmas of next year. We have been looking at houses here and there and it gets me so excited to think that we could be home owners next year! It is crazy how quickly life goes by. It feels like just a few months ago that Brad and I got married and in a month we will have been married a whole year! Life is crazy and busy but we are finding happiness in the little things and right now life is good!

He's back!

Last week Brad's very best friend in the entire world (that is an understatement...afterall we are naming our first born son after him) Jordan got back from his mission in Argentina. They haven't seen each other for 4 years! Jordan left on his mission the week before Brad got home from his. Since Jordan has been home, those two boys have been inseparable. It is so cute to watch them together. And it makes me happy to know that they are out doing silly boy stuff together and loving every minute of it. They had a sleepover 2 nights after he got home, they've gone to the mall twice, they find buy one get one deals and get matching shirts and shoes and stuff, they text each other at 3am just because they can. It really is so cute :)
Joran even sent Brad a list of plans for their future together, complete with pictures and a story. This is what it said
{ Lets move to Cali and we will buy houses there together and make an underground tunnel that connects the two, and then we will both put secret rooms in the house where you have to move the right book in order for the bookshelf to rotate. Then we will have fountain drink machines in the kitchen, I will have dew and you will have diet coke. Then we will have big screen tvs with urinals in the bathrooms!! Red urinals (maybe lime green) and this is the best part, our backyards will be the beach! We will have tight boats that go fast and sick ace wakeboard/kneeboard boats! Dude, this is paradise we are planning here. And once we are sick of that stuff (not till we are 60) we will buy a helicopter and a personal jet together, and the helicopter pad will be in an underground hide-out and we can use that to fly us to our private jet, so we can take our wives to Mexico or Hawaii or wherever we feel like...because we have our own personal plane and we are rich old men! HECK YA, LETS DO IT!!}
 I'll have to regulate on the urinals in the bathroom...thats just gross.

4 years ago

Last week

Introducing Owen

Welcome to the world Owen Richard Wilcox! My adorable nephew Owen was born on Saturday August 13th.  He was 7.9 lbs of pure sweetness when he was born. We are so happy that he is finally here and doing well! We all love him so much already :) Congrats to Courtney and Robert for bringing such a sweet baby into this world! (These pictures were taken on my phone, that's why they're so blurry)



Leah, Owen, and his momma