60 to 0 to 5

It's safe to say that moving to Florida has been an adjustment. May was a difficult, rather sad month, and I'm glad we've moved on to June :) Life has been getting better since I've started to get more of a schedule going, but it has gotten even better since I've started asking God for more help.

Days generally consist of waking up in the morning to go with Jared to the hospital to drop him off, then driving back home. In the afternoon I go back to get him again. Each day has study time, and then there's a day for planning what we're going to eat and buying the food, a day for going to the laundromat and washing our clothes, a day for cleaning/watching a movie, a day to FaceTime with friends. I could be a lot more productive each day, and I know I'll get there, but I need baby steps :) People talk about how fast they can go from 0 to 60 -- this adjustment has felt like going from 60 to 0, and now I'm starting to slowly pick up speed again, but this time driving on a different road doing different things than I did before. The change is hard, but it's good because I'm closer to God because of it.

Hello, again!

Hello!

I've been wanting to write for awhile, but I ran into the problem of having so many things happen that deserve so many words to be written about them, and not making the time to write. I felt a little stuck, like Pooh Bear.

Solution: Here's a brief overview of all of the things so I can post again with you being caught up on all of the changes. This post is like watching a movie in double fast-forward. Quite a shame seeing as how the movie was so good. But, it is what it is, so here you go :)

I think it's sufficient to say that a lot of things have happened since April 17, 2018, which was the last time I posted.

Pretty soon after that, I went and bought a tree with a friend in my ward named Jared. Sometime during May we started dating each other (sometimes we say May 5th because that's the first time I was pretty sure we were on a "real date", but we never really had a conversation about it . . . ).  Over the summer we had good and growing times which included things like Jared meeting my whole family (all 30 of us, at the time) when he took our family picture at the end of May, fish pedicures, sitting outside talking, going to the BYU planetarium, Jared coming to the cabin, bonfires, Sunday dinner with Jared's parents, lots of dance parties, and lots of long walks.

At the end of August, Jared and I went to California and visited where I used to live (a.k.a. the Promised Land). We had a great time. Then we came back to Utah (on a Thursday) and broke up.

(It's okay if you feel confused--so did I.)

As you can imagine, many tears were shed. Lots and lots of tears, and lots of Desperado. I was a very nice basket case.

Happily for me, Jared realized he didn't really like being broken up. On Sunday night we went on a walk, and Jared asked if we could start dating again. I told him we could :)

A few weeks later we talked about getting married. We got engaged on the stormy night of October 3rd with a ring in a box of chocolate truffles. What a happy thing!

We were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on December 22nd. It was, and is, wonderful.

PC: Tracy Anderson Photography

I love this good man. And he loves me. I'm grateful God helped us find and recognize each other.

After we got married, we lived in Orem, UT for about three months while I worked in Human Resources and Jared did school. He's almost finished with a masters in Speech Language Pathology. Halfway through April, I left my job, and we went to France, England, and Ireland for two weeks! So fantastic. We really loved our time in Europe, so maybe I'll tell you about it sometime :)

We came home from Europe on April 29th, and then drove to Florida starting on May 1st. It was quite a long drive, so it's a good thing we like to be together :)

Now we live near Tampa, FL where Jared is doing his last externship before graduating. We live, love, and learn in a one closet-one bathroom-one room (bedroom/living room/dining room/kitchen combo) Airbnb that we call home. And that, my friends, in a nutshell, is the happy adventure in which we currently find ourselves. 

           

Also, we got a fish named Christopher Columbus Florido, and a frog named Frederick lives outside of our front door :)

Here's Flo :)

Frederick seems to be a little nocturnal though, and I don't have a picture of him yet.