Apartment's Looking Perfect? Time to Go Camping!

And thus begins a miniature apartment tour! (You can skip to the bottom if you only care about camping.)

This week has been a good week for Paul and I feeling like things are coming together.  Our apartment is now (pretty much) fully furnished with everything we wanted it to have!  On Monday Paul kindly drove early (for me) in the morning to Pleasant Grove and picked up a really nice lamp for $15 I had found on Craigslist.  It's been super dark in our living room since there's only one light on the ceiling and it's not even in the middle of the room.  Gerrit, my brother, and his wife Elisabeth also kindly gave us a couch this week since they've gotten a new one now.  I think about once every other day Paul and I commented that we really wished we had a couch... and this one is very nice and stylish!  Here's the lamp, couch, and an end table we got from Deseret Industries (western equivalent of Goodwill) for $20.

I like how the table has cool flourishes for its arms/legs.  The lamp has a twisty design, and the wall hanging says "Paul" in Chinese - his mom brought two cool wall hangings back from a trip she took to China a while back.  

And here's the other half off the living room - with the table and chairs we got for $60 from Craigslist, and a new addition - a doily which was made by my great-grandmother Venice Lucile Williams.  My aunts Jan and Merina were kind enough to preserve multiple doilies made by my grandmother and great-grandmother and frame them for all of us granddaughters in the family.  This one is such a cool reminder of family history.  According to my grandma Irene Larsen, this is the "pineapple design" on the doily which you can see in the middle - two of the delicious fruits :)

The other wall hanging Paul's mom brought from China is on the left, and the doily is on the right.  As you can see, there's kind of an Asian theme going on here, in part because I've always liked that style for a home but also because it reminds me of the Philippines.

Doily close up,  Note the pineapples in the center.

My great-grandmother, Venice Lucile Williams, creator of the doily (not all doilies, just the one I have ;) )

Another fun piece of family history also sits in our living room.  The top shelf in this picture displays a wooden bear and man drinking something.  These are both from  my grandpa's mission to Brazil, and as you can see, lower on the shelf I brought back some of my own wooden figures from my mission to the Philippines (these came from the island Palawan I served on.)  The eagle is a representation of the Palawan provincial bird, and one of the only times I saw one during the 4 months I lived there was when I was extremely discouraged and downcast after a series of difficult events.  When I saw that eagle, it somehow was able to spur me on with hope for the rest of that difficult transfer.  The dragon is also from Palawan, and it just looked so awesome (and was covered in so much dust when I purchased it) it just looked like that island made me feel while I was there - filled with mysterious antiquity and a small twinge of danger from exploring the unknown.

Multi-cultural shelf

Carved Palawan Eagle and dragon chalice

Brazilian bear and man drinking mate or horchata possibly.

My grandfather, William Verl Larsen, who brought back the Brazilian statues from his mission. This is hopefully mostly accurate, but grandpa left on his mission when he was about 27 after having already served in WWII because my grandma said she wouldn't marry him until after she was finished with getting her degree in college (also unusual for women of the period - hence our value of education among the Larsens.)  I'm very grateful that in a time when many young men didn't serve missions my grandfather still did, bringing a strong spirit of missionary work into our family which is still there through multiple generations.   My family all agree that Grandpa looked somewhat like a movie star of the time when he was younger.  Note - I think Paul's hair swoop looks a lot like my grandpa's.  Good style never goes out of fashion!

Now, bringing back small tokens from our missions to give to our future spouses/children has always been a family tradition in the Larsen family.  I'm pretty glad it has been too, because looking at the bear and crouched Brazilian man is always a good reminder of my grandpa and his dedication to the gospel.  I was kind of amused when Paul told me that he hadn't really brought any souvenirs or anything back from his mission, but I can also understand because it's easier to get back to his mission in California than it is to mine or my grandpa's.  I told him we'll just have to go back then and make sure to pick some up to further the tradition - and if not, our future sons can inherit the wooden figures as family heirlooms and daughters the doily and various jewelry I brought back from the Philippines.  I like perpetuating the "physical reminders of genealogy" tradition we have going on.

Next, our kitchen.  Kind of small really, but we're glad to finally have a fridge all to ourselves instead of sharing it with 5 roommates like when we were in singles housing.  The flower basket picture on the far wall is also from my mission - those are real pressed flowers, and I just thought it was incredibly creative how they made the basket's handle out of vines as well as the basket itself from small petals.  We're also very grateful to Aunt Jan for the beautiful framed "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" plaque where we can put photos!  We still don't have any pictures developed from our wedding, but hopefully we get to that soon to add on. One day I hope to also frame some good pictures from our missions and our name tags as a constant reminder of what we learned from our missions (and that in our family missions are one important building block to who we are as spouses and parents) but for now those will stay there. The table the family proclamation is sitting on we got from Deseret Industries as well - we feel we did pretty well with furniture overall, as far as functionality goes.

That spice rack (wedding present) is a life saver.

Finally, our bedroom.  I fell in love with this bedding set when I saw it online, and Mom gave it to Paul and I as a wedding present.  It's really comfortable and it just feels nice to come home and see a bed that looks so pretty (yes, Mom, we have been making the bed almost every day ;) )  and as I said in my last post, we got the dresser, end table, bed, and bed frame for $325 which we felt was quite a steal considering how high quality they all are.

Cherry blossom motif

This is the view right outside our window.  I told Paul that if our bed had been pointing horizontally across the room, when he woke up he'd see Squaw Peak first thing in the morning.  I said we should tape a piece of paper on the window to the side of the peak with an arrow pointing to it saying, "I can reach the HIGHEST HEIGHTS today!!!" Paul's motivated enough without a poster for it though.

It's so nice to have a place all to ourselves that we've decorated and furnished.  It really does feel much like home now to us - a peaceful retreat where I'm sure we'll have many future adventures and be able to continue inviting the Spirit, love, and harmony to dwell.  Plus, so much studying will be done here.  So. Much.  Studying.

It's been convenient as well living here because I've been working for about a week and a half now for Wymount Custodial, which is based at the office 1.5 minutes from our house.  I essentially just clean out other apartments right around our complex at Wymount after tenants have moved out to prepare them for new people to move in.  It's a very low stress job, and pays better than the average campus job.  It's not my favorite to be working around so many strong chemicals (one of the chemicals there, if some of it is dripped on carpet, will turn the carpet to a jello-like consistency if left on it for 20 minutes.)  So I'm being as careful as possible, but it's nice to just be able to listen to music and think as I work.  Paul got a promotion at the Cougareat where he works so we were pretty happy about that as well.

Camping Trip - Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Park

Cool shots from the drive up the mountain.  At 7:00 the moon was already up.

On Thursday Gerrit brought over the couch and kindly offered to pick up the two tables from Craigslist for us.  We moved it all into the apartment, and you'd think that we'd take the time to enjoy the new additions (especially the much wished for couch), but we had already planned a camping trip for that Thursday since we both didn't work and then had work later in the afternoon on Friday.  I wasn't kidding when I said we enjoy camping.  However, we were faced with a bit of a predicament.  We wanted to find a free campsite, but those are apparently few and far in between (if anyone reading this knows of free or really cheap camping available around Provo, let us know!) and so we ended up spending the first half of this week just trying to find a location to camp at.  We saw a few sites that seemed to say there was free camping here, or there, or possibly here, but nothing too definitive.  The best we saw was that at Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, there was "dispersed camping" available which essentially means "go out, find a wild and remote area, and leave no trace."  Here are the rules for dispersed camping on the forest's website, which we followed:

If you are going to an area where others have camped before, pick a site that's been used before. Plants, soil and wildlife are impacted by new campsites, so using existing ones will minimize your impact on the forest. If there is no existing campsite, then follow these Leave No Trace guidelines:

• Camp on bare soil if possible, to avoid damaging or killing plants and grass.
• Do not camp within 100 feet of any water source, plants near water are especially fragile. (We recommend 200 feet)
• Don't camp in the middle of a clearing or meadow, try to make your campsite less visible so that other visitors will see a "wild" setting.
• Don't try to level or dig trenches in the ground at your campsite. Select a campsite with good natural drainage.
• Try to use existing tracks and existing dispersed sites whenever possible to minimize impacts.

There is SO MUCH SCRUB here.

Now, the problem here is that we weren't exactly sure if there would be good parking to try and attempt dispersal camping, etc.  So we planned to go to the Strawberry Road campsite as a start and see where we could go from there.  Uinta-Wasatch forest is actually about an hour and some away from Provo, so when we got there at about 7:30 we were really hoping we could find something before dark (we were planning to get there earlier but the surprise of getting all the furniture on that day set us back some.)  I was pretty nervous about it because it was late and I honestly kept pestering Paul with, "Are you sure this is going to work?  What if there's a fee at this campground?  What are we going to dooooo?"  And generally being annoying, honestly.  In hindsight I've seen that the worst that could have happened if we never found a spot is we would have just driven back home, which would have been disappointing but the drive up the canyon and in the mountains itself was worth whatever money we spent on gas for it.  I also saw an adorable little fox (coyote? maybe.) running through the brush as we drove up, plus a few big hawks and birds which I'm pretty sure I've never seen back East.

 When we got to the site at Strawberry Road, we saw that indeed it was a $20 fee to camp there, so I proposed we would try and figure out dispersal camping following the guidelines they had posted on the site.  Fortunately we just barely had 3G coverage on Paul's phone to look it up some on what the rules (and allowed areas to do dispersal camping) were, and as we drove around a bit more I spotted a trailer and a few tents in the distance that appeared to not be at actual campsites.  As we started to drive past, it was pretty awesome because at one site someone had built a lean-to out of leaves and branches which I presume they had stayed in at one point.

(Side note:  Paul and I were super impressed by this guy who we saw this week on YouTube.  At first as we watched the video, Paul was like, "Man, he's just some American boy scout building a lean-to.  Not very difficult."  But with every level the guy gets more and more awesome.  I'm almost tempted to be super hardcore sometime and try to do this with Paul somewhere.)

Our view from the bumpy road.

However, as with all good things, the road gets bumpier as you get closer.  The potholes on this little cow pasture type road were impressively huge.  Paul's superior driving precision enabled us to avoid most of them though, and we are thinking that in 5 years or so if our Corolla decides to give out (it's so not allowed to die before then) we'd probably want a higher centered car so that when we do mild off-roading like this it won't be quite so potentially perilous.  Here's some shots of the mountains around the site we camped at, as well as the road we were driving on.  It's not a landscape I'm used to, but with the trees and mountains around us it was incredible.  It was on this road that we first opened the windows since arriving up in the mountains, and we both remarked immediately on just how fresh the air was.  It was like breathing in pure, fresh, gaseous relaxation.  That's about how I'd describe it.  I can't recall the last time I've inhaled air that wonderful.

Our car didn't like this road much.

We drove past a few areas that looked optimal for pulling off at, but they all had people already camping there.  I was still a bit antsy because it was getting dark and for dispersal camping we'd need to be able to see at least well enough to walk out to an area to camp and to set up our tent.  Then, we saw it.  There was one last spot at the end of the road which didn't have a car in it, and although it wasn't big enough to camp in there was a perfect thicket of trees off in the distance which looked promising.  With the hope that we would be able to find something good up there, we grabbed all our stuff and walked for about eight minutes to reach it.  It was perfect!  Okay, the ground was a little sloped and bumpy, but there was a nice layer of grass which was soft and tamped down probably because someone else before us had the same idea to camp there.  We set up our tent in the fading light (it's a good thing that this tent is so easy to set up.)  It was about 9:00 and we had everything inside and Paul sat outside and I poked my head out to observe the setting sun.  Not too much later I commented that I was nervous we were letting in all the spiders leaving the tent flap unzipped and Paul decided that was a good time to come in the tent as well.

Our campsite

Our view from the thicket towards the mountains.

Where we were camping, we could see and hear a main road from where we were at (although it was pretty far away) and there was a house maybe a 6 minute walk away from us and several other campers a bit farther from us.  So, theoretically, we were pretty safe and not too far from society.  However, this little thicket felt pretty secluded.  We felt a teeny bit nervous so we texted a friend with our location just in case.  We were both pretty tired and had planned to go swimming the next morning in a reservoir nearby, but as we both laid in the tent for a few minutes, it became increasingly clear the the West is not the East.  We both were a little bit weirded out by just how quiet it was.  I realized what was missing.  Normally, in Virginia, when I go camping there's about 3 billion cicadas, crickets, and various other insects making every single noise imaginable which I've always found oddly relaxing and is something I look forward to when I go camping.  However, I suppose because it was pretty cold up in the mountains and probably because not too much survives up in the mountains away from a main water-source like where we were, there was no noise.  Nothing.  Except.... for ALL the rustlings of the leaves and suspicious sounds of scrambling outside the tent.  Normally those are things I don't hear while camping in Virginia, so neither one of us was feeling too comfortable with all those little sounds.  So, we just stayed up until about 12 making a lot of noise, talking loudly, and generally enjoying ourselves.

Fortunately, we learned some from our camping experience in Colorado when it was so cold Paul had to crawl into the one person sleeping bag I was in to try and keep warm, and we brought a pretty big fluffy quilt.  We got lucky that it didn't drop too much and Paul felt pretty warm.  At about 12 though, I realized that I actually needed to pee.  I am not truly hardcore, because I had never urinated outside in my life before that moment.  But with all the rustling outside and pitter-patters we had heard... I was pretty nervous.  We had been talking about bears and cougars earlier too which probably didn't help too much.  Paul offered to crawl out with me and brave whatever it was that might be outside (yes, he was a little scared too, probably due in part to the huge tree branch cracking we had heard in the not-to-far-distance at one point ;) ) and we both went out and there really wasn't anything there.  I accomplished a wilderness achievement of peeing outside and then Paul told me to just stop and listen.  I did for a moment, and indeed, I heard all the rustling that we were hearing in the tent and there certainly weren't any animals near us causing it.  Mostly the breeze and small rodents perhaps.  That was pretty comforting to both of us and we crawled back in the tent and managed to sleep after not too long.

Being the light sleeper that I am though... I woke up at about 2 or so and then over the course of the following 2 hours heard at least 3 large animals (sounded probably like deer I imagine) scamper through our little thicket.  That made me nervous enough that I didn't really sleep too well the rest of the night.  I'm sure I'll get used to the silence associated with camping here eventually, but it was pretty unexpected compared to what I'm accustomed to.

Good thing I married a Boy Scout.

The morning was beautiful, and we packed up all our stuff and headed out.  Needless to say, I was pretty exhausted, but we both agreed that it was super fun to get out and get away.  I've told Paul many-a-time that being on campus for long periods of time gives me terrible cabin fever, so at least once a month we hope to get out and do something more or less exciting (perhaps not camping once it gets snowy and cold - but maybe!) so we'll see what we come up with, and if anyone has suggestions of small ways to "get away" we're super open to hearing them (but cheapest is best.) Having never had a car on campus before, it's been kind of thrilling for me to finally be the one driving instead of always getting driven to places or walking EVERYWHERE. Paul and I are pretty thrilled to be done with him walking 40 minutes to and from my apartment every day/night when we lived at different locations here on campus last semester, and I'm pretty happy to not always be driving 2 hours to/from his house back in Virginia (and vice versa for him) although that drive over the mountain that separates our houses is often breathtaking.

Being married has been exciting and fun, and mostly I am extremely grateful to have my best friend with me all the time.  I've told Paul how much I missed him while he was on his mission, especially when he was on his and I wasn't on mine yet, and I don't plan to ever forget how much I appreciate him and all he does for me every day - small and big things.  Although camping was originally kind of my idea this time, I'm happy he enjoys that kind of thing too and that we are making plans and succeeding together.

Hesitation Stops Here - Living Life, And Recording It

"Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age."

Ernest Hemingway

I've decided it's time to stop hesitating.  Time to start a blog because I've felt I should.  As I observed this summer at work as I taught crafts to people of all ages at a resort, children are always more willing to act freely and according to their own desires as opposed to adults who are often afraid to act for fear of ridicule or doing a "sub-par" job with their craft.  

I want to recapture that piece of imagination and perception of life that I expressed quite a bit easier as a child, which has become more suppressed over the years.  I think that may have been partially situationa and soceitally induced, but it was definitely also my own choice.  I want to flip the ratio that Ernest Hemingway stated since my name is now indeed Risk.  I'm pretty ready to take the kinds of small, personal risks that will help me to stretch beyond my comfort zone a bit more.

On the note of how I plan to take a few more personal "risks:" Before my mission, I was very dedicated to writing in my journal on a regular basis and keeping a relatively thorough record of the important occurances in my life.  I took that good habit into my mission expecting that I would write at least once a week my whole mission.  However, I learned on my church mission to the Philippines that sometimes living life can be distracting and tiring enough that it feels like the greater reward comes from just doing, rather than taking the time to do it and then write it all out.  I know the blessings of keeping a life record however, and I feel a blog will help me pay a little more attention to the finer details of what I'm doing in life, and the "why's" and "how's" behind it all.  

For starters, being an adult now, Paul and I are now off on our own. It has been a singularly exciting and novel experience.  There's a different feel to life now, and I very much like it.  I'm going to do a quick recap of some of the fun things that have happened to us over the past couple of weeks.

THE SHORT LIST OF THE PAST TWO WEEKS:

Paul and I were sealed for time and all eternity in the Washington D.C. temple.  Simultaneously we were married legally. I will talk a little more about my feelings about it all in a future post most likely.  Despite the following list however, I haven't ever had a more perfect day or week in my whole life.

Here's some of the more interesting things that were little bloopers and side notes from that day and into the following weeks : 

~ We only barely had enough time to get my five-piece dress on and hair done before we left to go take pictures before the sealing at the temple.  We showed up late by a bit to pictures.

~ The car with all the flowers in it (except for my bouquet which I was holding) was driven off right as we started taking pictures, so Paul didn't have his boutonniere on for about half of the pictures which were taken around the temple grounds. Good thing he had a snazzy pink pocket square to make up for it.

~We were a little late getting into the temple, and then ended up waiting for a while because we weren't fetched on time so we were about 40 minutes late to the ceremony.

~I didn't want to go through all the rigamarole of taking off my dress (a 30 minute process because of all the layers and pieces to it- it was a rental dress) so Paul and I went to the luncheon at Olive Garden dressed in a tux and wedding dress.  We were sure fancy there for Olive Garden.

~We got to the reception about 5 minutes before it was supposed to start, and then promptly lost each other in the chaos of trying to get stuff ready.  Paul had a tad of a sick stomach, a groomsman brought him Pepto Bismol, and some of it ended up spilling on his rental tux.  That resulted in a heroic (and eventually successful) attempt to remove it with water.

~When we left to go to a small historical inn for the night (the Inn at Dawsonville - super cute, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a quaint place to stay near Charlottesville), we pulled up and expected to be able to find the key since Paul is friends with the owner.  After an unsuccessful search, we saw that we were truly locked out (it was about 11:30 at night or so) and sat on the front steps waiting for things to get sorted out since the owner was out of town.  After about a half hour of waiting a man (kind of a stand-in inkeeper) unlocked the door and apologized saying he didn't know we were coming.  That was a pretty frustrating/entertaining moment of that day considering how drained we were from the day's festivities, but props to us for not getting mad because of it.  

The Inn at Dawsonville and some shots of the room we stayed in.

~There were two really big wolf spiders lurking in the honeymoon cabin and about 15 other ones over the course of the week.  Paul thankfully dispatched of them and tried to save the ones he could by just putting them outside.  I think that's really why women need to have men around - to have a person who has specifically been designated as a "Spider Removal Specialist."  Our honeymoon at Fairystone State Park was awesome though, and it's definitely a place I'd like to go back to in the future.  We also found fairy stones while we were there, which are a specific mineral found in only a few areas in the world which naturally forms in the shape of tiny crosses.  We found some pretty good ones while we were there, and although I don't have pictures of the ones we found walking around here are some examples of what they look like, as well as pictures of the cabin.

The water was right through the trees there - lake front property.

Our very quaint little cabin, inside and out.  The doors had huge awesome latches on them.  This cabin was built in the 1930's.  Probably those big spiders had been there since then.

This was a moonshine still that we discovered at a small town's museum/geneological society (Bassett, VA) right outside of Fairystone.   They actually had this meme with "Got moonshine?"  on top of one of the still barrels. There were a lot of cool displays there, and about half of them were related to the Civil War.  When we first walked in a man with a confederate flag on his hat asked if we were there to find information about our Confederate ancestors. We replied we were "just exploring."

We went hunting for our own fairy stones!

  

The Legend of the Fairystones:

Hundreds of years before Pocahontas father, Chief Powhatan, reined over the land that is now Virginia, fairies dance and played around springs of water with naiads and wood nymphs.  One day an elfin messenger arrived from a city far away and brought news of the death of Christ. When the fairies heard the story of the crucifixion, they wept and as their tears fell upon the ground, they crystallized to form beautiful crosses.  Historic superstitions held that possessing one of these rare stones would protect its owner from illness, accidents, and even warding off a witch’s curse. 

When we left the cabin, I left behind a Book of Mormon with my testimony in it.

~When Paul and I got back to the house, we ate wedding cake for the following three days before we left to drive to Provo. We. Ate. So. Much. Cake.  Definitely had cake for breakfast at least twice.

The chaos of putting on a wedding is evidenced by the mess, but yes, there are three different types of cake in front of Paul.

~ We packed up all our stuff into the Carolla my parents gave me and drove out West.

 Our first stop was in Missouri, but we ended up getting to that first stopping point at about 12:30 am.  This was even more complicated because we had planned to camp the whole way out instead of spending money on a hotel room.  So there we were, exhausted from our first day of travel, pitching a tent until 1:00 am or so.  We were pretty happy to crawl into that little two-man tent once it was set up and fell asleep easily.  I kind of laughed when I first saw it because I had never seen a tent quite like that one, but it ended up fitting us both quite nicely. At probably about 3 am though, Paul and I both woke up to the sound of a pack of coyotes not too far off.  I definitely got a little closer to Paul when we heard that.  When we woke up in the morning, we realized that we were actually camping right next to the Missouri River.  It is quite an impressive sight.  Our campsite was at Cooper's Landing, a small marina that was right beside the river.  

A pretty small tent, but just the right size for two average sized newlyweds.

 A shot of the marina. They do a lot of folk music concerts there apparently.

 We woke up to this sight of the Missouri River in the morning.  There were several boats there similar to the old paddle boat you can kind of see.  Thankfully we were able to pay for much needed showers in the marina that morning.

While Paul was taking a shower, I found this adorable little Manx cat (she just had a little stub of a tail.)  This cat literally laid on my lap purring and rolling around for 20 minutes while I looked out at the Missouri River.  That was a heavenly moment, especially when Paul came out and sat next to me for a bit.

~ I unfortunately received my first ticket ever on this trip.  I was driving through an intersection on a road that had been 65 for a billion miles and I saw a sign saying it had dropped to 55.  I suppose I never saw the sign that said it had dropped again to 45.  I got pulled over and was pretty upset when an Iowa state trooper gave me a ticket for it.  To Paul's eternal credit though, he wasn't mad or upset with me because of it, although we really didn't have the money to spare (hence the camping out instead of staying in hotels, combined with the fact that we really do enjoy camping.)  

No, I didn't take this.  Just a photo from the internet.

~  Lesson learned about desert-esque climates: That night we got to our campsite at about 2 am in Colorado, set up the tent again, and tucked in to sleep.  Paul chivalrously gave me the better foam sleeping mat and the only sleeping bag while he just had a few lighter blankets on top of him to sleep with.  As I tried to sleep, I noticed that I was feeling rather chilled inside the sleeping bag and had curled up into a little ball inside of it.  Not too long thereafter I felt a couple of nudges on my leg - it was Paul. "Hey... can I get in there with you?  It's freezing out here."  It sure enough was, I had my face down in the bag because the temperature had dropped so much from the hot day.  We somehow managed to fit both of us in one sleeping bag with it zipped up all the way.  I'm pretty glad we're small-ish people sometimes... it was like one of those emergency survival shows, since we both did indeed feel a lot warmer after that if not a lot more squished.

~ After about thirty hours of driving, we eventually ended up in Provo!  Boy were we excited to see that big "Y" on the mountain as we drove into our college town.  We did our best to unload everything when we arrived midday, then went and picked up stuff from by brother and sister-in-law's house which I had been storing there over the summer.  It took two car trips, but we did it.  That night, we slept on our little foam camping slabs because we still had no furniture.  Fortunately, I had gotten into contact with a few people on Craigslist about a table, chairs, and bed set.  Fetching all the furniture was a whole different matter, however.  It took a lot of Paul's Tetris skills and tine to make it work.  So our second night in the apartment, we fortunately had furniture and a bed to sleep on.  We're pretty thrilled with everything we got, especially at such cheap prices.  The table and chairs were $60 and the bedframe, mattress, end table, dresser, and sheets/pillows were $345.  We're still on the lookout for a lamp or two and a small side table for our kitchen.  We're also getting a free couch, so that is pretty awesome as well.

~ The first meal we cooked in our new home was a pizza from scratch.   We invited over my cousin Rachelle and good friend Deb to eat it with us.  We also had our first real Family Home Evening on Monday, and Paul organized a lesson about finances.  Our activity was watching My Little Pony in bed and eating ice cream.  Best FHE ever.

And now life continues - right now Paul and I are both working and we'll be starting school again at Brigham Young University in a week and a half!  We'll see how often I really post on this blog once school starts, but I hope it's at least mildly entertaining for those of you who know us and may be curious about what's going on in our lives.

Sources:

The Inn at Dawsonville:  http://www.theinnatdawsonville.com/

Fairystone crosses: https://www.etsy.com/listing/236192735/australian-raw-natural-staurolite?ref=market

Cooper's Landing Marina:  http://www.cooperslanding.net/

Police shot: modernsurvivalistblog.com

Ponies: play.google.com