I Love This Place . . .

Because it is where my husband glows with more pride and sensitivity and gratitude than any other place I know. Because the hands that maintain this place also loved, fed, taught, and shaped the love of my life into who he is today. Because it always looks best with 15 people crammed inside. Because the love and laughter, memories, trials, hard work, and pure joy can almost be seen and surely felt steaming up from the floor and dripping from the ceiling. Because amazing people emerge from these walls. Because part of me feels like I emerged from here. Except I've only visited twice. Because the people inside are beyond-words-wonderful. Because I get homesick for it and I think that's ok.

My in law's place. We had our reception here and it was wonderful.

Extensions

I have extensions. They are RACOON brand. Which is pretty much the nicest hair on the market. I only say this because I do these extensions, so if you want longer, thicker, more beautiful hair, come see me! I just have a very few of them on the sides, called frontals. I'm just trying to grow out my hair and the back seems to grow faster, thus resulting in a very not-so-sexy mullet. I just love how the extensions feel so natural; no headaches, so weird heavy feeling, and best of all no damage to your hair!! And the special way we bond them to your hair allows us to customize the color to perfectly match your hair. This picture is for my sister in law who wanted to see the "new me." Not very new, still awkwardly short hair trying to make it grow. Maybe a baby would make my hair grow faster. Probably not the best reason to have a baby though...

Brotherly Love

We had Jared and Lynn (my husband's brother and his wife) over on Sunday. They came to church with us to try out our ward, then they stayed for dinner. Lynn and I tried a new recipe that turned out to be so good. I am so glad I am finally cooking and it's turning out well!! I always pick recipes that say "easy" or "simple," or "quick" in the title though. This one was called Impossibly Easy Chicken Pot Pie. Yes. It turned out so yummy.


Lynn made to die for cookies for us and we were all bulging we were so full. Lynn and I ended up just watching a movie by ourselves while the boys played a crossword on the two iPhones in the bedroom. (they were plugged into the power source).


It is always so cute how Jared and Gideon always get so excited to hang out and have so much fun just the two of them. They are brothers and they are the best of friends. I think we'll always have to live close to each other so that they can see each other enough. Sometimes I feel like Lynn and I are mom's setting up a play date. "We can cook while the boys play." It's the funniest thing. It's also dangerous though. Jared and Gideon look very similar from profiles and from the corner of your eye. Last week, Lynn came up behind Gideon and grabbed his shirt saying "I'm hungry. . . " She thought he was Jared. And last night I realized I was stroking the wrong man's ankle with my toes. It was Jared. He thought I was just losing my balance or something. Ha ha. We always laugh so hard about it. Hopefully those are our only two incidents. But we love having Jared and Lynn over and I'm so glad we live close to all of our wonderful family!

Oh, and just in case anyone wants to give it a try, here's the chicken pot pie recipe. It was really easy and super yummy!

IMPOSSIBLY EASY CHICKEN POT PIE

1 2/3 cups frozen mixed vegetables
1 cup cut-up cooked chicken
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 cup Original Bisquick mix
1/2 cup milk
1 egg

1. Heat oven to 400*F. Mix veggies, chicken and soup in ungreased glass pie plate, 9x 1 1/4 inches
2. Stir together remaining ingredients with fork until blended. Pour into pie plate.
3. Bake 30 minutes or until golden brown.

2010

I've been trying to be healthier in the new year. Hasn't gone too well. Went running a bit, but so far 3 miles is my max. My excuse is 22 is the new 40. Ate a cucumber for a snack, but then I felt bummed for various unimportant reasons, so I made some chocolate chip cookies. I've been doing a lot of unnecessary baking since my new kitchen aid came. Thanks mom and dad! I love it, but it has an amazing super power ability to shrink my pants, and my poor husband is making himself some soup because I used up all my cooking energy baking cookies. Oops. But I love it. I've also been keeping a better house. I started with putting the laundry away today, and ended up organizing my entire closet, which desperately needed it. Then I cleaned out the cupboard with all of our random stuff. I sent Gideon to the D.I. with so much junk, already accumulated in 6 months of marriage! Scary. But it felt good to clean everything out. Lucky for us, our little place is really small and it only takes a few hours to DEEP clean it all. Speaking of the D.I, Gideon's new year resolution is to not bring everything back that I send there. He LOVES that place, and for good reason. He found me an awesome pair of True Religion jeans for Christmas from there, and his most recent fixer-upper purchase: one of those cute candle melters! It works PERFECT, he just needed to get a replacement light bulb from wal-mart. I love my thrifty husband! I also bought some really cute fabric and am going to attempt to sew pillows for my couch. My crafty sister in law is my role model, so we'll see if I can live up to her! It will be fun either way. More pictures of that to follow. Finally got our house slightly decorated, so here's some pictures per request of Caitlin. It's nothing special but it's a little bit cozier now with a few things on the wall.

Finally figured out what to do with the odd space above the sink.

A bookshelf. Simple, but hey, it fills a lot of wall space.

This is the Draper temple, where we got married. The picture has our name and wedding date on it! It's my favorite.

We finally got a clock! I love TJ Maxx so so much. And in case you're wondering, our TV stand is our landlord's old chest with their grandmother's things inside. We looked inside. It's special.

Cookies. Batch 273.

The little candle warmer Gideon fixed up from the D.I.

You Know It's Been A Long Day . . .

when you find yourself in line at Wal-Mart holding a box of tampons and three candy bars.

TV . . .

Ever since we got married, Gideon and I always take a nice slow stroll down the TV section at costco and dream about the beautiful new TVs. Well, our old faithful TV went through a slow, painful death this week and finally has left us! Woo hoo! So we finally broke down and got a new one. It was the most exciting thing we've bought since we got married and it was so exciting! I know it's kind of pathetic that I'm posting about a TV, but nothing else I can post about has pictures, and my family keeps asking for some pics. Sorry we look so tired and gross. . .it's because we were setting up the TV after I picked gideon up from work around 11 p.m.

That's Ben's fluffy 80's hair from behind the instruction manual. He's been staying with us all week and it's been so fun! We will be sad to see him get moved up to Salt Lake. :(

Definition

med⋅ley

noun. a mixture, esp. of heterogeneous elements; hodgepodge; jumble.

adjective. archaic.

mixed; mingled.

We had family over tonight. There was laughter an d many other strange noises as we played games, made jokes, ate too much and just enjoyed life for a few hours. It was so nice and normal and wonderfully imperfect and it felt like home. Sometimes I feel like my body just can't contain the love I have for this amazing person who calls me his own. But even more recently, I am amazed at how strongly I can love a group of human beings whom I have not known for very long. I think it all comes from beautiful words spoken in sacred walls, crazy gatherings, a tender word, and lots of hugs, pats on the backs, smiles, discussions about the scriptures, and just the love that comes from a family. Perhaps I love them so much because they all helped form the one person who I need to keep breathing, to see the brighter side of things, and to help me fall asleep at night. All I know is that I do; and I do so much that it almost drowns me in the best kind of happiness and love I have ever known. I have always had a family who loves me. My gratitude is beyond words that I am blessed enough to have two. I am so proud to be a Medley.