One Year Ago...

I married an amazing man.

and today....

I love him more than ever.

Looking forward to an eternity of endless happiness with you honey!

12/30/2010

because i am blessed.

Christmas Week

We spent Christmas in Virginia this year and it was absolutely perfect!! I am so blessed to have married such a wonderful man who comes from such a wonderful family. I am seriously in love with all my in-laws (on my side and my husbands side). How can a girl be so lucky? I have no idea but I am eternally grateful for the beautiful relationships I have with all of my family! 

I couldn't not put up a billion and three photos and even limiting it to that was difficult! Generally I love to take pictures but often get swept up in loving the moment and forget to snap the memory. Luckily I was able to get a bunch of cute ones that really capture our time there.

My beautiful sister in law, Lindsey, had her second child a month ago and we were extremely privileged to meet our new niece, baby alice, while we were there! Norah showed us how great of a big sister she was, it was very aNORAHable. (blessing post soon to come).

Putting captions to all the pictures crossed my mind but I think they speak for themselves  BUT the picture of hubs with his "corn de-husker" is a hilarious story I must tell...

Kimballs grandmother (susans mom) had a thing for kitchen gadgets (ever heard of an egg pricker? I hadn't.) Anyway, there's a cute little running joke between kimball and his mom (susan) about all the kitchen gadgets that are out there and so she decided to find a new ridiculous kitchen gadget for him every Christmas. I am personally very excited to see what she comes up with! This year it was a corn de-husker and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited to see if it works!

One last thing, I can add a new state to my list! Maryland!! Did you know that the DC Temple is actually in Maryland? Now you do :) 

Between getting my booty kicked at the gym every morning by Susan, eating every thing in sight, shopping our brains out, playing Just Dance until dripping with sweat, searching the house for our first christmas gift (a very cute hicks family tradition where susan comes up with genius rhyming hints that lead us to our favorite gift *see bryan above*) and snuggling with family galore we had plenty of R&R to get us ready for our very last semester here at BYU. 

because i am blessed.

Baby Alice

As mentioned in the previous post our sister in law, Lindsey, just had bebe number two! Baby Alice is the sweetest baby I have met, do not take this comment lightly. These pictures are the few we have with her eyes open! Being less than a month old at the time of her blessing (what the pictures above are from) she was a very sleepy baby. But even when she wasn't sleeping she hardly cries and is a joy to snuggle with :) 

The top picture show hubs, guy and bryan with baby alice. The next is hubs parents (Susan and Guy) with Lindsey and Bryan as the very proud parents of the adorable Norah and Alice. Under that is Bryan & Linds with Lindseys sister, Ashley and brother in law, Matt with their new little one Louis (is anyone else drooling over all the cute baby names? kay, good.) Finally we come to Norah giving kisses to baby Alice (and wiping off the kisses promptly hah she does that after every kiss to every body, i love norah! she is too hilarious). And of course, mama and baby finish off our photos. It was so special being there for the blessing of baby Alice.

because i am blessed.

kiss kiss.

There is a song that my dance partner and I loved to dance to called Turkish Kiss and after taking this picture to send to hubs for after he gets out of a final I can't get it out of my head!

I miss my competing days but I love my life and am so grateful for a husband who encourages me to keep up with my passion of dance even if it means sitting in a room trying to study while his wife flails around the room to blaring music.

Hubs is taking a final as I type, and I'm actually "studying" right now ;) Hope the week is turning into a great one for all of you! 4 finals down and 2 to go over here and only one more week til Virginia!

p.s. who else is enjoying the christmas music a little too much? i may or may not have gone through my christmas playlist on grooveshark like 20 times just today.

p.s.s. justin bieber? why do i all of a sudden really like him..? especially his christmas songs? i'm okay with it.

because i am blessed.

one more to go!

It's the last day of the second to last semester of my Brigham Young University career!

Which doesn't mean a ton but I'm excited nonetheless! I mostly felt like I needed to post because I've been uber poopy at blogging lately..I was going to blame it on the fact that my blog has been silly lately but that really would be a major lie considering even if it was being completely cooperative I still wouldn't have had time to blog. It's also a bit pathetic that my countdown has been zeroed out for a good month and a day now..oops.

Point is I am only 50 hours of work and 4 finals away from being pretty dang free! The Hubs and I are going to Virginia for Christmas and we are soo ready for the break! We hit up Az for Thanksgiving and spent a week with my familia which was beyond needed and so wonderful! But, sadly, I forgot Lady (our nikon) at home here in Uthar :( so no photographs por tu. Just imagine my huge family (aunts, uncles cousins and cousins kids included).

Sort of a pointless post but I just wanted ya'll to know I'm not dead and doing fairly well and maybe at some point I'll be able to focus long enough to write a post that is actually coherent and possibly even *gasp* witty? That'd be pushing it but we can hope :)

p.s. i've been thinkin' lots about new years resolution. i have a few that i'm actually really excited about but have never really had concrete, measurable resolutions before so i'm a bit nervous! have you thought of yours yet?

do tell.

because i am blessed.

Meet George.

This is George.

You may call him Mister Fix It

George and his wife, Lucille (you may sigh at how the adorable-ness), are our wonderful landlords. We LOVE George and Lucille and often find ourselves in their living room talking for an hour before we even realize time has passed at all. And we never leave their home without food. We love George and Lucille.

Two adorable things I must share about this couple before I explain the manliness that is pictured above..

1.George is extremely hard of hearing. His hand is constantly attached to the side of his head as if to cone the soundwaves more directly into his ear. Despite the fact that he rarely hears everything you say he smiles and pretends your story is the most pleasant and compelling thing he's ever heard.

2.These two are the King and Queen of flirting! George will tell Lucille how pretty she is almost constantly and tap her foot playfully as we talk. They also call each other Mom and Dad..too cute.

Pictured above is the famous George himself fixing our tub. You see, George is the ultimate handy man. It would take me all day to list off the things he has done and the number of houses just in our neighborhood he has built with his own hands but if you're interested ask husband. Husband knows basically everything there is to know about George and his accomplishments and could talk for hours about "how much of a man" he is :) We've lived in our apartment for 10 months, in that time George has fixed our sink, re-roofed our bathroom, patched up leaks, painted walls and reattached our soap dish in our tub. We've kept him busy, and he loves it ;)

Hubs and I are infinitely grateful for George and Lucille and the love and service they give despite the fact that they are 84 and 87 years old (not joking). They are such a wonderful examples of life-long service and loving your neighbors! Thanks George and Lucille, for teaching us how to grow old together.

I (not so) secretly want to be them when we get to be old and wise.

Seeing them together makes me so grateful to have Kimball for a husband, I can't imagine growing old and flirting with anyone but him.

twenty-two.

I turned twenty-two yesterday!

And it was marvelous :)

thanks to all my loved ones who made it so special!! i love you all so much and appreciate all you have done for me throughout my life.

because i am blessed.

p.s. midway and halloween catch up soon...promise!

not my semester.

okay so it's pretty apparent that i'm struggling with this whole blog and school and work and on and on and on thing. sorry to those of you who actually read but things have been a bit ridunkulous. i love my major, i love my job and i love being busy but i'm sort of not rocking it this semester. i'm not failing any of my classes (of even doing really bad at all actually) but it's just been impossible to feel on top of things. as a result i feel like i'm constantly running around with not only my head but my arms and one leg cut off. luckily i have the most amazing husband ever who somehow knows how to make all of this go away for a moment so i can breath. i hate venting blogs and i have a lot of fun stuff i really need to catch up on here but right now i just need to be human and not just talk about all the good stuff.

i'm so ready to graduate. and yet i hate to say that! i love being here at school and i love learning more and more and i hate to think that a year from now i'll miss it and wish i was able to take fun dance classes and religion courses etc etc. but right now that mentality is far from my brain. you know those days when you stub your toe or someone opens a door on you (just happened) and you kind of just lose it? as if it's like the biggest deal in the world and there is no way you could deal with it right then? yeah. welcome to me for the last month. my poor husband :(

i'm coming to the realization that there truly is no point to this post so i guess in closing i'll just plead with you to tell me i'm normal, not dumb and probably going to be okay..can you do that? thanks.

Halloween Par-Tay!

I love parties.Love love love parties. But I've never thrown one! Kimball and his roommates used to all the time but I would just show up. Well, this year I really wanted to dress up for Halloween but let's face it, we're married and boring and didn't have a legitimate reason. So, what did we do? Made up a reason and threw a party! Not just any party, a costume contest party. Our cute friends came in amazing costumes and made the night so so fun. Here are some pictures..of course :)

top left: chad. top right:ali and nate.

bottom left:jamie and james. bottom right:sarah and chad.

top:sean and jean

bottom:kelly and jacob

top:katherine and paul

left:katelyn and zac right:michelle and jordan

and us? oh, we dressed up.

grecian gods

(i swear we're not vain)

any excuse to wear false eyelashes and

craft together a leaf headdress for Hubs is a good time!

(and thank you mama for making our beautiful costumes!!)

some of our goodies!

some of the games:

costume contest

truth or dare halloween style (soo funny!)

mummy and pumpkin bowling

&

of course toe tags.

I am beyond happy we put this party together!

It was extremely fun to have a reason to dress up and get all of our friends from different areas of our lives all together in one place. We are so blessed to have so many fun friends who make our lives so great! Everyone did such an amazing job on their costumes and were great sports participating in my cheesy games and activities. We may just have to make this a Hicks Family tradition :)

because i am blessed.

Cougar Love

Nope, not talking about older women loving on younger men. I'm talking about a fellow BYU cougar completely making my day last week. Friday was a ca-razy day filled with classes, work, a midterm, a few wardrobe changes, very little food and of course a football game. When I had finally finished my day on campus husband came to pick me up with my third change of clothes of the day (dance clothes to work clothes to game clothes). I quickly changed and we swiftly made our way to the stadium, I was SO excited about it being the weekend and was ready to stand and cheer and not think about school/work/etc.

Husband asks me, probably about four times, "you have your ID,right?" Well, I always have my ID so I say "yes, i do!" until we reach the actual stadium and I realize that no, i don't. It was in my backpack...in the car...all the way across and through and around and beneath and over campus. I was pretty done with the day at that point and began to tell poor husband how "done" I was.

I was not about to make that trek, again, to get my ID. If I walked back to the car we were a-goin' home! I continued to be dramatic until the nicest cougar student in the world came up to us explaining that he had a ticket, a normal non-student ticket meaning I didn't need my ID and offered to switch. Immediately I felt ridiculous that someone noticed how upset/dramatic I was but ultimately grateful and took his offer.

The game was back and forth and then back again until the last 11 SECONDS where the cougars got the final touchdown of the game leaving USU in the dust by only 3 points! It was a beautiful game at the beginning of a beautiful weekend and a fellow cougar is to thank.

I am so grateful for just plain nice people. How wonderful to live in a world with people who need no motive to serve!

maybe complaining loudly isn't such a bad idea...

because i am blessed.

PhonePhotographs: life lately

ahh! okay, craziness on aisle 14.

So much has happened since being back and while contemplating the best way to sum it up I realized I had a billion and two photographs on my cellular to explain each significant thing (that I can remember at least)

So, let me introduce you to "lately"..

labor day picnic/best-day-of-my-life thanks to ice cream man.

 ward campout.

new antique shop findings/final weeks of farmers market.

new job!!

(husbands encouragement after only a week of tiring work)

 football! 

and so it begins.

That's it! Of course if I had taken the time to do individual posts you'd be laughing and saying "oh, that kelsey!" but for the sake of time just love on my simplicity. 

I'm dying to show you my soon-to-be etsy merchandise...stay posted!

because i am blessed.

Outer Banks, N. Carolina

After spending a week in Virginia we loaded up and headed down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. 

We stayed in a beautiful beach house and, minus a few hours of rain the weather was superb! Of course Lady (our Nikon) came along but she didn't see too much sun. But don't you worry, I had my phone on me some of the time so I still got some good pictures. So, surprise surprise, here are some moments from the trip!

Swimming, sunbathing, cards, reading, sunbathing, story telling, sunbathing, tennis, family pictures on the beach, and some more sunbathing = best beach trip ever!!

Susan, my mother-in-law, and I felt the earthquake but it was so slight we thought it was Kimball shaking our chairs, we didn't realize until after we heard that there had been an earthquake that it was what we had felt! We also took off a half day early to beat the traffic off the island because Hurricane Irene was on her way. But we made it out before anyone else started evacuating so traffic was a breeze back to Virginia! 

What a blessing it was to spend time with family and just relax with my husband who had had a summer full of work, thanks again Guy and Susan!!

because i am blessed.

Newseum, much like a museum

Actually, it is a museum..about news. 

Very clever if you ask me.

After we finished out in Chicago we shot over to Virginia/DC for a much appreciated vacay with the family! We spent a few days there relaxing and enjoying family and I was looving on having Kimball not at work all day. Here are some fotographias from the newseum! (yes, it really is called that--i didn't make it up, i'm not that witty)

P.S. The newseum is a museum of everything news; how it has evolved over the years, the major players in news and the major events covered by the news and how. It was extremely neat and very insightful as we learned about everything that goes into news and how it really differs from country to country, region to region and even station to station. Okay, now here are some fotographias :)

top: kimball, momma hicks, tay-z on the balcony of the newseum looking out to the capital 

right: sections of the berlin wall and a guard tower (verry cool!)

left: an entire room mapping out the history of the newspaper

we also momentarily became newscasters and i found out that i am apparently not so great at reading monitors. not only am i completely incapable of reading at the pace that the monitor wanted me to read at, i supposedly am also great at making up words when the monitor isn't moving fast enough. 

i blame my many years as a student. speed reading is extremely practical when you have fatty textbooks to read through but apparently the people listening to the news don't want to hear garbled mumbo jumbo- who knew?

the 9/11 exhibit was probably my favorite.

not only did they have an antenna from one of the towers but along the wall were all of the major newspapers from 9/11/2001, it was extremely interesting to see the different perspectives of the differing newspapers. also, there was a video of point of views from newscaster covering that morning. so personal, so intense and so so heartbreaking. 

That day at the newseum was truly eye opening and I will never watch the news in the same way again!If you are ever in DC I highly recommend you check this out!

beach pictures soon to come!!

because i am blessed.

Grant Park

Our last weekend in Chicago we took one final trip downtown to Grant Park. We were hesitant, as the weatherman said it would be a rainy day. But considering the weatherman was wrong 98% of the time and it looked sunny outside, we decided to go anyway. It was absolutely perfect outside and we were able to spend a few hours in the park relishing our last bit of Chicago life.

And because I am me, here are a billion pictures to relive the day..

The bean, as promised

(it is as cool as it looks)

There was a little natural reserve portion

which displayed all of the things that grow wild in Illinois. 

Lots of bees, but very gorgeous.

 The Buckingham Fountain 

is huge. Why did no one tell us how cool it was?

We also found out that the weatherman was not so wrong today..

see clouds in background for proof.

As we realized the storm was real we scooted up toward some museums and took refuge in the Field Museum.

The storm didn't seem to last long, so we thought, or so we started to head for the train when the rain decided it wasn't quite finished. We turned into those crazy people who are running through the rain with their arm above their heads (as if it helps) and laughing big belly laughs trying to figure out which station was closest.

We were also those crazy people who sit down on the L, soaking wet, taking pictures of themselves and all the while still laughing. It was a great last hurray in Chicago, we were very glad we ignored the weatherman.

because i am blessed.

well hello again!

Remember me?

Well, I'm back..sort of. After traveling like crazy people and then finally settling back into p-town (provo..just in case that was confusing) we are back in school and ready to live up our last year here at BYU! It's bittersweet to realize we really don't have that much time to enjoy all that there is here but

good to realize that school does actually end!

So after finishing up in Chicago we went to Virginia/DC where husbands family lives, we hung out there for a few days and made our way to N. Carolina for some very much needed and appreciated beach time in Outer Banks. Yes, the same Outer Banks that was trashed by Irene. (We got out of town before it hit, do not worry...more on that later) After returning to Virginia and then flying back to Chicago we picked up our car and drove through Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to get back to Utah! 

So there's a little dollop of what's been going down the last couple weeks but you better believe I got pictures! When the beginning-of-the-year craziness finishes or when I decide I'm going to go crazy if I read over one more syllabus (that looks exactly like the last 4 I've read) I will get around to posting for you to behold.

hope ya'll are enjoying the last bit of summer!

i'm loving on..

You know the clearance jewelry sections that you go through for like an hour?

Okay, maybe that's just me. But I always leave with something I adore and I love to try to look at the jewelry as a starting point. Like today I found this great necklace at Kohl's for 60% off and though the first thought to enter my head was "i really hate those little disc things..and that one is broken.." I knew I had found my fixer-upper. After spending ample time in the rest of the store (I love kohl's. call me ghetto, don't really care because kohl's seriously rocks and you cannot beat the crazy deals they have) I finally returned home and snapped those cheapo little discs off in two seconds.

voila! 

I am loving on diy fixers that really take no effort at all.

And I am most definitely loving on crazy deals on almost-great jewelry!

So thank you Kohl's, I will come again.

p.s. completely off topic--except that it happened at kohl's--i found a poncho..yeah, a poncho. and i got it. i still don't know how i feel about it, i mean i love how it looks but just knowing that it's a poncho kind of grosses me out. just the word poncho makes me feel weird. am i alone in this? does anyone else think 99% of ponchos are hideous? or are we, as a society, loving on this blankets-as-shirts idea. (not that ponchos are new..) 

anyway, i want to hear what you think. i'll wear my new...poncho *said with a pained face* soon and post pictures.

p.p.s. i just decided i'm going to refer to my poncho as a raincoat because even though it is shear and would do me no good in the rain, raincoat just sounds cuter. problem solved.