An Exciting New Beginning

On 4 February, 2013, we welcomed a new addition to our little family. His name is Wes. He already has shown quite a love of basketball, so I'm proud of our little boy! Actually, he's not too little I suppose. He's a 37" Westinghouse TV, hence the name Wes. Aside from his great love of basketball, he has also been spending a lot of time with his new best friend, Harvey Specter.

Wes with his buddies, Harvey and Mike.

Actually, we've gotten pretty hooked on Suits, and we're perhaps a little too invested in the lives of Mike Ross and Rachel Zane. Being the hopeless romantics that we are, we are dying to see them end up together. Like, RIGHT NOW, DARNIT!

Okay, maybe I should start at the beginning of our marriage, huh? I just saw an opening and had to take it.

So... the beginning. Like Shantel already said, the wedding was awesome, and even the reception wasn't nearly as bad as I had pictured it! (And thank you everybody who helped with setup and take-down.)

We went to Salt Lake on our honeymoon (thank you Slentz family!) and it was a blast! Temple Square, malls, Jazz game. But you don't want to hear about all that.

Actually, fun fact. Within one week of marriage, Shantel and I attended three basketball games: one Jazz game, and two BYU games, all victories! I thought it was a fantastic way to start out our life together. Shantel, basketball, and winning. Sweet.

After returning to Provo, we officially moved into our new house. Or basement apartment. But it's in a house, so it's our house. Home? Yeah. We'll go with home.

Actually, it wasn't a home at first. It was a dump. The previous tenants didn't clean it up before they left. We're not convinced they cleaned it ever. Shantel spent hours, upon hours cleaning (and don't worry, I added a couple of my own!) before we got married to make it a reasonable place for us to live. But now it's a really nice place for us to start, and we love it. The ceiling and door frames are a touch low in places, but don't worry, Shantel is only 5'7" so she can't hit her head. Anyway, enjoy the following photos from our home, because I guess people have requested those (some captions by Shantel, some by me, and some by both of us):

If you've seen the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith...
That's us!

The view from the front door, top of the stairs.
Notice the Christmas lights. Shan really loves Christmas.
And Timothy surprised me with lights everywhere!

Our kitchen. Easily the nicest room in the house. And there's food, so that's
pretty awesome. (Timothy is still alive... just in case you were worried)

The living room. Wes lives in here, to the left.

Photo display in the living room. We're really attractive.

Shanny's Christmas present. Not the tree, the keyboard. We've nicknamed this
room "The Gift Room," because it's where we initially had all our wedding gifts.
The tree was also a nice surprise. Tim had his mom/grandparents set it up in our
house  to surprise me when  we came back from our honeymoon.

So things are going well. We don't have a ton of exciting stuff to report on, but life is great. Shantel is in her last semester of school (LUCKY!) and we're both just pluggin' away. Shan is still working at the Law School, though that will end upon graduation. I'm still doing security, and just took a small second job as a basketball instructor/official for 1st and 2nd graders. We got called to be the Ward Employment Specialists at church, which we thought was pretty interesting since we are both in the process of looking for new jobs.

I'm thinking The Tumbler would be a good first car.

We are expecting to add a car as another member of the family soon! (I thought about a "we're expecting" joke here, but I think I got that covered in my opening.) We don't have a name picked out for it yet: we decided we'll drive it around for a little while and see if the car has a male or female personality before we declare that. So that should be happening within the next few weeks! And then we'll have some wheels to get around town. That'll be nice. Maybe we'll even get a social life or something. Wait, now that we're married, is that even allowed?

Anyway, that's about all the updating I've got for now. I mean, you aren't really interested in the boring, mundane details of our daily lives, are you? Perhaps we'll go back and share something about Christmas and New Years, though if that happens I think it ought to come from Christmas Queen Shantel, because that's kind of her thing.

Brief History...

Timothy and I met on April 23, 2012. We were playing volleyball for a Carriage Cove FHE activity. I guess you could say it was "Love at first sight!" Actually, we were on opposite sides of the team and didn't interact much. The following week, we entered into a competitive game of "lightning," "speed," "knock-out" or whatever you would like to call it.
That night Bri, K and I were invited to a game night which actually turned out to be a house warming party for Tim's apartment. It was this night Tim got my number. The next day we started talking over text, then hanging out every day, and the rest is history.
Timothy proposed on September 27, 2012. It was most definitely a successful surprise. We had planned on going ring shopping that weekend and I had not even met his parents yet. A quick version of the story. Tim picked me up after class for a date. Since we knew we were going to get married we decided to take pictures at places we had been. We arrived at park #1 (Grandview), it was crowded there were cars and people everywhere. I think there was a baseball tournament going on. Next stop, park #2 (Carterville).  After taking a picture in "our" sand it began to rain, so we ran back to Buttercup. On our way to the next destination, I could tell something was off with Tim. I could ask him what color his shirt was and he'd respond, "ahuh." Park #3 (Provo Peaks Elementary). When we drove up the rain did not deter the little kids from playing on the playground. At this point Timothy was frustrated, I didn't understand. The park was not going anywhere and all we had to do was switch up the plans. As we drove away I suggested going to park #4 (Centennial) in hopes Tim would feel better. He quickly agreed and we pulled up at Centennial. After taking a few pictures, Tim later tells me he was 15 seconds away from proposing when another couple walks  onto the park. We turn to leave when Timothy sees a tic-tac-toe board in the kindergarten playground. He asks if I would like to play a game before we leave, I agree and we head over. The tic-tac-toe game turns out to be a cat's game, Tim talks about all the hugs and kisses we'll have forever, drops to one knee and proposes. I say "YES" and the rest is history....

November 17, 2013 we were married in the Draper, Utah Temple for time and all eternity. It could not have been a more perfect day with all of our family and friends there to support us.