BeeVee

As some of you may know, since last October I have had the absolute privilege to live in a very unique, beautiful, diverse, middle-of-nowhere town in the hills of Virginia named Buena Vista (pronounced BEEOO-nah Vih-stah). (Seriously. None of this bwenah veestah stuff. They'll shoot you. Look it up). Everyone just mostly calls it BV, if they're cool. 

That's right.

I was one of the 6002, but I did meet the 3. Lovelies. 

See? BEEOOtiful. 

Also, this:

Anyway, after dating a certain man for some time (a whole 6 weeks!) we were wed. This you know. 

 We lived in our first home for 10 days, then moved into a lovely apartment on the other end of town.

Apparently, one can become very creative in a someone-hum-drum-town. Ain't he cute?! It was scary at first, but I have now come to accept him. 

 Some friends of ours invented a game called "Wall Ball" and we played a few times on campus. I started calling it "Bwalls" and it stuck. The head of the Board of Trustees just made plans to put in a Bwalls court on campus. Thank you very much :) 

 Many of our saturdays were spent in the lovely company of our friends Mitch and Cassidy at the baseball field. Mitch pretty much owns that field and was so fun to watch. Go Knights!

 Turns out it's not very easy to take a picture of a swinging person. But here we have The Swing - a huge tree swing by the river. We loved hanging out there. (Ha!! I'm punny).

 We ate lunch sometimes. 

 And flewd some kites at the park

 And ate crepes to the sound of Prophets. 

 One day my hub'n introduced me to a very strange park in Lexington. Lexington is to BV as Eagleton is to Pawnee, if you know what I mean. 

Anyway, this park had a lot of strange but amazing things in it. As I got carried away here...

 ...my man-friend got carried away here.

 AND FOUND ME A MAN-TURTLE!!!

I guess his name was Frederick, but we just called him Man Turtle, or MT. We stole him from the park and domesticated him so fast. 

 Our last week in The Beeve was a good one. 

 We packed up

 And said goodbye to Southern Virginia.

Also, Good-Lookin graduated!! Watch for that post cummin up next. 

April Fools!

I started out the day texting Garret about how sick I felt.

He felt bad and took me to dinner.

When we got home I "took the test"

I handed him the wrapper so he would know what the reading meant, then asked him how to read it and he wouldn't tell me. "He wanted to find out first"...

I told him that if by chance I am pregnant, I wanted to film it.

You know you have an amazing Visiting Teacher when she's pregnant and will pee on anything you ask her too :)

I GOT HIM SO GOOD!!!

Happy April Fools!

Cape Lookout

Once upon a time Garret and I were in a singles ward and Garret lived with our bishop. We were all nice and close. Now that we're married, poor Bishop Braddy starts missing us lots, so he invites us to do random things with him.

This trip was no exception

 We left home at 4am and drove through Virginia and the better part of North Carolina to a town called Harker's Island (I'm not sure I'd call it an "island"... more like a high marsh). We got there a bit early, so we cruised around town while we waited for the Braddy's to arrive. 

 When I'm old, I'm definitely putting a sign like this in my yard

 There were trillions of stores like this - people's collections of real life treasures for sale. We figured we could find some funny junk for cheap, but instead we just found a bunch trash and it was NOT cheap. Porcelain bunnies - $20. Broken seashell - $15. Fake apples - $7 each. Picture of a galloping horse on the beach with a rainbow - $35. Sounds like a solid business model to me! Except we decided nothing had ever been bought, and that's why there wasn't any room to walk around. Great for I Spy though! 

 We did a little trespassing onto a dock and had our lunch by the sea

 Don't make fun of him - it was vur bright. 

Then the Braddy's showed up to ferry us to Cape Lookout! 

I'm not sure who's idea it was to go camping in March, but it turned out FANTASTIC. And the boat ride was a good time. (Don't you just love Bishop Braddy in this picture?!)

30 minutes at sea and we found ourselves at Cape Lookout, which is part of The Outer Banks. The Outer Banks are these weird sand bars out in the ocean in South Carolina and they are so strange but so pretty. Please bless you look it up on Google Earth right now. We camped at the base of the lighthouse.

 It only takes about 5 minutes to walk across, and the other side has big waves, surfers, shells, you name it. 

 We camped on the inside. Weeeeee. 

We got there on a saturday and arrived at high tide, so after an hour the boat was nicely beached. We explored for a while then set up camp and built a fire and hung out with some of our old single friends :)

We all got up early Sunday morning to pack up and head back to Harker's Island for church, but we realized that it was again low tide and our boat was 20 feet from water. So we slept in then had some Beach Olympics! Check out Garret's form... he totes won! We also saw a bunch of dolphins.... I've never seen dolphins while camping before, that's for dern sure. Then the tide came in and we left :)

Kitchen potential + poll

So I really love cooking. I don't know how or why, but I just can't get enough of it. I'm not a big fan of people blogging about the food they make, but I'm thinking about sharing a couple pictures-as-I-cook recipes. If this offends/excites any of you, please let your thoughts be known in comments :)

Snow day

The past couple weeks have been unusual in ol Buena Vista. This is my first winter here so I'm not totes sure what the norm is, but I discovered that 13 inches of snow means a "state of emergency" and, according to the alerts, "stay home". OK!! 

I'm not sure how to not sound snobby in saying this, but growing up in Utah and working in the snow industry most of my life, I have never been found wanting in the snow gear department. I don't remember the last time I got cold or wet while being in the snow. This snow day made me appreciate all those people from Texas who made a trip up to Utah to go skiing with only glove liners and jeans. 

Because that's all I have here! 

I got super and wet and cold, and I loved it. 

 My snow compadre was a little more prepared and delicious looking

 We might have looked nice, but we had no sleds or tubes. First time in my life I haven't had a sled within 12 steps at any given moment of any season! So we sat in garbage bags and went down the road on our butts. While incredibly painful, it was one of the best times I have ever had in the snow. 

 So good, in fact, that we decided to go pick up some friends so they could join in the fun.

G parked the car down the road the night before, because he is incredibly intelligent and smart and brainy. As I have mentioned in previous posts. Because it's true. He goes to college. 

 I was in charge of driving (peeling out) backwards, and G was in charge of killing his body and soul while digging. 

 After 45 minutes we showed up at the Mantles. They commented on how our muscles looked incredibly large and bulge-ish. Yep. 

Aren't they the cutestststs?!?!

 These two have been BFF's since before such a thing existed, and they figured out how to steal and take apart the neighbor's wheelbarrow to make a sled. Genius. 

 Garret is holding "the paddle" (which doubled as a brake) and I am holding Garret. I simply can't help myself. 

 When we were too soggy to go on any longer, we came inside and gave ourselves a laser show using G's new lasers. For some reason it was incredibly entertaining. Oh dear. 

 Cassidy and I made cookies and the men headed out to build a fort. If there's snow and men, there will be a fort. Sadly I didn't get a photo of the end result, but it was about 6' high, all enclosed with candles for an atmospheric touch. Last week it was over 65 degrees here, and the fort is still in my driveway. This thing might last till next winter. 

Then the sun set. And that was perdy. 

My sleepy little man

Every once in a while (every time we go shopping) this dear man finds somewhere to rest his sleepy little head

 This is just a sample

 And when his feet get cold, he takes care of it with such class

And sometimes he gets bored at home. 

I'm the luckiest wife :)

Mooneyhun!

This blog post might be a bit boring because it's just a bunch of pictures of two hot people... PSYCHE! Like anyone EVER gets sick of looking at pictures of hot people!?

So after most of the wedding festivities/finals/Christmas were over, we headed on down to Florida

 We played in the wawa

 Husband bought me a hat

 Then we set sail on a cruise to the Bahamas! The weather was a bit interesting, so we didn't get to go to our first island, but we got off in Nassau and rented a scooter. I dare you to say we don't look adorable in our gomer helmets.

 I got to stare at this all day. Yes please. 

 I really like this picture. Don't I look like a 6 year old? 

(please excuse the lack of pants. They are illegal in the island countries)

There was a man on the side of the road in a shack with a sign that said, "Locally grown mangos $2" so of course we got one. We ignored the "Grown in Brazil" sticker on the bottom. 

Is brazil local to the Bahamas? How did we miss it?

 We white

 I just barely noticed the background of this picture. Ew. 

 We cruised around Miami on a vur tall bus. 

 This guy told Garret that this hamburger would allow him to walk on water and sing like Justin Bieber. Little did he know that Garret already does that stuff. Yep.

:)