These last six months...

After realizing the last time I posted was about a 2018 review and we’re now mid-2019, I realized it would be best to do a review of the last six months or so before jumping into anything specific. Because, although I’ve been quiet on here, the last six months have been JAM-PACKED with school and a study abroad and moving across the country to my current state of residence in Indiana for the summer. It feels nice to be living here and just being able to have time again. Time to read books and to take small road trips. Or just binge-watch “Bones”. Time to do nothing or everything. So here goes, a summary:

In January …

Matt and I went up to Island Park to hang out with friends, go snowshoeing, snowbiking, snowskiing at Herriman State Park, and visit West Yellowstone to see the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center (and get as close to bears and wolves as I ever want to be).

Had a Bob Ross paint night with our friends Chloe and Markus. Funny to see how each of ours turned out with similar instructions!

Matt and I got onto the Marie Kondo bandwagon and winter-cleaned our apartment as well as refolded our clothes. I think once we have a real dresser, this part would be a lot easier to maintain.

My brother got married!! And I made this cute video for them:

In February…

Matt asked me to prom – more specifically the BYU MBA Winter Formal — and I’ve honestly never been creatively asked to prom and this was pretty cute and creative (and so is he!) 💗

My mother-in-law got some cute family photos taken for us:

Photo by Malae Talley

Photo by Malae Talley

Photo by Malae Talley

We celebrated Matt’s birthday with some friends the Friday before by going on a bike ride and then dinner at Denny’s. On his actual day of birth, we had a party with family complete with a unicorn themed party as chosen by our four-year old niece who’s birthday we were also celebrating (also, that cake was done by my sister-in-law! Isn’t it incredible?? I was very proud of my cake too, it actually tasted good – making progress!). His favorite gift was most likely the sleeping bag from his parents (he even slept in it on our bed that night ha).

We went skiing! I haven’t been for over ten years after I transferred to snowboarding following a traumatic wipe-out experience where I literally forgot how to stop and my brother kept yelling “pizza” as if I knew what that meant… turned out I actually really enjoy skiing! Other than the boots. I’d choose snowboarding boots any day.

For Valentine’s Day, we went to a marriage getaway at Aspen Grove. We learned a lot! It included a place to stay, meals, and 3 seminars with a marriage/family therapist. I felt a little stressed and overwhelmed about some things and we ironically got into an argument that night, so the whole romantic idea of being in a cabin setting in the woods wasn’t exactly there, but we were able to make up and move forward. I’ve thought a lot about what we were taught since then and it’s been really insightful and useful. For the actual Valentine’s Day, Matt planned it all out and made this amazing display of Italy complete with a wine sauce that was a little potent 😂

In March…

Our friends came down to visit for the night and a day so we actually got out of our apartment and went to my new favorite thing in Provo: the Tiny Art Show. The whole vibe was really cool – it was in a treehouse for one, and they had tiny s’mores you could eat too.

We also went to the Nickel Arcade and took them to Bridal Veil Falls the next day. Patty and I even made some Popin’Cookin’ donuts – have you tried these kits? They’re pretty fun!

I was on the Service Committee at school (one of my favorite groups I got to work with last school year! I’d be crying laughing at our meetings because we all got along so well) and we did a service project helping to build homes through the non-profit Self-Help Homes. My job was to caulk the basement floors – at one point during my internship, my manager actually asked me if I knew what caulking was since he was trying to explain something and compare it and because of this experience I could say DEFINITELY. Seriously though, this experience made me recognize again how service brings people together and always feels so good.

went skiing again! This time with April!

went to my first BYU Tuesday Devotional! They have these almost every Tuesday and I’ve only watched the broadcast up to this point. Way better in person and not what I was expecting. Thought it was in a conference center, but it’s actually in the place where they play basketball, so the seating is a little steep. The music was one of the best parts though and something better experienced in person.

took a trip to Wyoming with my friend/another student for a hospital project we were working on.

made (and ate) a lot of chocolate! For my brand management class, we did a project with Hershey and my team and I made samples of our product. Then, for Marketing Lab (the student run marketing agency that I’ll actually be president of next year), we worked with an international chocolate company and as the team lead I decided it was worthwhile to go to a real chocolate tasting. So we went to our local chocolatier Taste where they do chocolate and oil tastings. It felt very fancy. We had a lot of fun (how could you not?).

In April…

Matt and I took a quick trip up to Logan and stayed with our friends Peter and Makenzye and their little boy Walter (who is the cutest!). We also got to go to the Logan temple for the first time while we were there.

started wrapping up the semester with the end of the year Marketing Lab party! We went to Lowes Xtreme Airsports and I got trapped in the foam pit for a solid five minutes (which feels like eternity). I never thought my life would end in a foam pit, but it really felt I might never make it out. Shout out to the two workers that helped pull me up.

all the leadership of last year and next year went out to play some Topgolf.

Went to a BYU Lacrosse game and saw Cosmo (honestly with the end of semester, I felt very moody about being here. It also rained on us which didn’t help as we biked ha).

had a nice bike ride and game evening with our friends Rachel and Eric (miss them!)

went to a “Farm Home Evening” at one of my professors house. He had chicks, kittens, a dog, and some other animals. It just felt nice to be reminded of baby animals in general and that the world isn’t all in the Tanner building – happiness exists beyond finals 🙃

Kana visited me!! I’ll be sharing a separate post with our adventures, but here’s a photo of us in the meantime.

Wrapped up all of my projects! We WON our Hershey project so we got some fun Hershey prizes. I also worked on a project with Ancestry and their newspapers.com acquisition. They were extremely nice and gave us some tshirts!

Matt and I drove to Los Angeles before our big trips – had breakfast with my dad and Marian at one of my favorite spots growing up:

and then we were off to Asia! I went on a month-long study abroad to 7 different countries. Matt was able to come with me for the first week and then went on his own adventure to Beijing for four days and an internship in Taiwan. He’s coming back to America THIS WEEK! 🤗 More extensive posts about all that coming soon!

In May…

Came back from Asia, flew into Los Angeles, drove to Utah the very next morning, and ran some errands, said see you soon to Noelle (who’s moving to Texas!)…

and then drove with my mother-in-law, Rebecca, from Utah to Chicago where I dropped her off at the airport before driving the next couple hours to my final destination in Columbia City, Indiana! I’m working at DePuy Synthes until mid-August. I’ll definitely be sharing more about the things around here (and how much I love it!). For now, I’ll leave you with the places Rebecca and I stopped at on our drive out (she’s a champ and the best for coming on that drive with me):

Cheyenne, WY where I learned that Wyoming was the first state to allow women voters.

Fort Cody Trading Post featuring the most random assortment of things but worth the stop.

Church in Omaha with a friend and his wife from school! I’m holding the drawing his son made for me. We also went to check out the bridge and some sculpture which we thought was related to Lewis and Clark, but it’s not.

Probably my favorite stop: the VW Spider. It’s just sitting next to a house. I talked to one of the neighbors and he told me that the man who lives there is a welder, and one summer when his son was working for him, there wasn’t much to do and he was bored, so he welded this thing together. Now they have about 5-7 carloads of people coming per day to check it out!

Final stop before Indiana: Chicago!! And Chicago pizza! More than that – I got to see my friend Michael who I haven’t seen in almost 2 years!

And June has been transitioning to this internship and exploring some of the area around me. But also regaining energy. So that’s been my life for the past six months. Always fun to stop and reflect on it – most of the time I didn’t even know what day it was. I can’t explain the level of “busyness” I was in except to say there was no stopping to reflect at any point. But we got some good times in there too. Even though, by some miracle, I was able to accomplish everything I committed to, it was definitely a lesson of strategic decision making for the future and learning to say no.

As I now have some time, I’m excited to also write about Matt and mine’s wedding day! It only took two years, but I guess I’ve got an eternity, so I decided to take my time. Looking forward to sharing that over the next week with you and reliving the week leading up to it and the day of and our trips after too!