This Crazy Thing Called Life

Today in my Gospel Doctrine class we talked about how our lives are not a straight paved road leading from point A to point B, but instead, our lives are like rivers.  There's lots of twists and turns.  I've never wanted to go "Southern Black Gospel" on my ward so badly.  It was all I could do to not shout out a "Hallelujah!"

Because our life is twisting and turning right now.

Let me back up.  Our plan has ALWAYS been to have Steve graduate with an English degree, then go to Law school.  We've been working toward that for the last 2.5 years...  

Until suddenly we're not anymore.

Law school was getting close.  and we were getting uneasy.

You're probably saying to yourself, "well duh, Katie, Law school is big, of course you were getting uneasy."

and to you I say, you're right.

So I've ignored that uneasy feeling for a while.  But the more things moved forward, I started feeling depressed, and I couldn't figure out why.  I could tell something was off with Steve.

I just kind of felt like our life was spinning and I couldn't quite get a grip on it.

So finally (I don't know why we waited so long) Steve and I had a sit down chit chat.

Long story short, we talked about Law school, we decided we needed to revisit our plan and pray about it.

So that's what we did, and we both felt strongly that Law school is not for us.

So we said, "well... what's our next step, if it's not law school?"

We started looking around at houses, we prayed about whether or not buying a house would be something good for us, we realized our lease is up at the beginning of April and right now is kind of the perfect time to look.  So we looked and looked, we looked for a full 3-4 days until we stumbled upon a house that had EVERYTHING we wanted, for the price we wanted it at.

We prayed again and thought a lot about it...

Do things normally happen this fast and this easily?  Everyone always says the process of house hunting/buying is stressful... we hadn't run into any real stress yet.

We decided to go take a look at the house in person... and we fell in love.  

After looking at it, we walked in our door, and suddenly, our perfect little home didn't feel quite so much like a home.

So we put an offer in, the sellers countered it, and we accepted...  Assuming nothing crazy happens, we'll be homeowners in the next 30 days!

Eek!  Oh, by the way, all this happened within the span of 2 weeks.  I know... it's insane, right?

But I'm so excited for this next chapter of our lives.

2014 has been all over the place so far.

Birthday Festivities

well, it's true... I'm no longer feelin' 22.

My 23rd birthday was AWESOME!  Best birthday yet.

I'm hopeful that it's a foreshadow how my 23rd year will be.

I started the day out with a delicious donut from Banburry Cross
went to work, left a few hours early with Steve, went shopping, ate some delicious sushi....
and went to Nickelcade!  I know I know,  I'm like a 10 year old.
But ya know what, life is more fun when you let go and have fun like a little kid.

A few days before my birthday my parents took Stephen and I to a Thai place downtown.  It was absolutely delicious.  We will definitely be going again.

We did 2 different family birthday gatherings for me (I know, spoiled).
The first one was with my family, we went bowling, then to my brother's for cake and ice cream.  My soon-to-be sister in law made me a beautiful cake.  In the middle of singing the happy birthday song, my niece and nephew ran up and blew my candles out.  It was pretty hilarious.
The second one was with Steve's.  Steve's family came to our house and we had a taco night.  Because tacos are just delicious.

Also, people were ridiculously thoughtful this birthday.  I feel like EVERYONE remembered.  and it was really sweet.  I wasn't really looking forward to my birthday, I feel like the older you get, the less fun they are.  But then my birthday came and my coworkers and neighbors and family and husband all made it super awesome.  Thanks, everyone.

Now, enjoy a slew of pictures.  I'm feelin' too lazy right now to combine them into little collages.

Life as of Late

We've had a fun couple of weeks lately.  We got to go see Brian Regan, which was soooo awesome.  We were the first raised row on the ground floor and only 4 rows from the stage (that was probably confusing).  Our seats were perfect though.  the non-raised seats had to look up the whole show, however, for our row, he was right at our eye level and we were smack in the middle. :)

(sorry about the terrible lighting, I obviously had no control over that)

Man he's awesome.  I'm so glad we got to see him.

I also did something drastic.

Why did I do this you ask?

I just needed a change... and my hair grows so quickly anyway that I figured if I didn't like my short hair, my long hair would be back in a couple months.

But I do like my short hair.  A lot.  I do miss my pretty melt though.

One of my friends from my Vegas days (Victoria) lived and Provo and used to do my hair before she moved to New York... I've let very few people touch it since then, even for just a trim.  I'm not quite ready to let anyone color it...  I guess I just have trust issues.

And I'm still hurt that Vic left me alone to fend for myself... (I'm needy, plus it's hard to find someone who just gets your head.)

Buuuuut..... there's a light at the end of my tunnel.  A cute girl in my ward has gained my trust when it comes to her scissors, which is why I decided to take the plunge and chop off all my hair.  And I was not let down.  She did a really cute a-line long bob... It's hard to see the a-line from these pictures, but it's cute.

Also, life lately has been trying to get my body good and healthy.  I've been working with a lady at my work.  She weighs me once a week and takes my measurements.  That, combined with the fact that my back is feeling pretty dang good, has been incredibly motivating.  Stephen and I got passes to the rec center by our house and we've started swimming several times a week.  I also discovered that my gym offers an aquatic zumba class.  Yes, it is as awesome as it sounds.  I've also started going to cycling classes.  The first time I went I made the mistake of wearing normal work out pants... an hour and half later I was ready to cry.  Without getting too graphic on you, I'll sum up my experience with saying this: padded pants=an absolute necessity. 

I love working out.  My struggle is eating clean.  Seriously, why do all my favorite foods have to be so void of nutrition/fattening.  This little meme sums up my feelings perfectly.

Sigh...  in a perfect world...

Since I'm out of school this semester, I've tried to take advantage of my free time and play around with food.  I've made some pretty tasty things and tried some fun new foods.  This week I will be trying homemade sweet potato chips with an avocado dipping sauce.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  Also, I'm make spaghetti squash tomorrow for the first time.  Hopefully it turns out yummy.

Here's one of my favorite breakfasts... I find that I'm starving in the mornings, especially if I've had a good work out the night before, this breakfast has a good mix of carbs/proteins.

ps. that egg mixture is half of the following: 1 whole egg + 2 egg whites mixed with chopped veggies.  Delicious (the other half makes a sandwich for Steve)

We've been doing pretty well at eating clean... well... we were doing pretty well until Friday... That's when our girl scout cookie order showed up.  Curse those delicious little cookies.  I think next year I'll be crazy and not order any (assuming I've mastered self-control in the face of junk food by then).

Also,  tonight my cute parents took Stephen and I out to dinner to a Thai restaurant in Salt Lake.  It was super delicious.  I think I found a new go-to place for us.  I wish we had gotten more pictures, but we were all too busy stuffing our faces full of deliciousness.

My cute momma and I.

Well folks.... those are the happs with us lately.  Have a good rest of the weekend!