Katsaridaphobia

I'm about to get real vulnerable here, but this post is my release. This hasn't been the easiest summer, and it definitely hasn't been the smoothest transition into married life. We moved to Austin, Texas so that Jason could work a summer sales job for Alterra. It's a pest control company, so obviously we moved to a high pest area. I've never liked bugs, but I've also never had much of a problem with them. Oh how that changed this summer! I found out {in the worst way possible} that I have a huge fear of cockroaches. I see one nearly everyday in our apartment. It doesn't matter how many Jason kills {I am too scared to kill them} because there's always always always more. We mainly find them in the kitchen and the bathroom, but I've seen some in every room of the apartment. I've gotten to the point where I don't leave our bedroom when Jason is out working. I haven't stepped foot in our kitchen in probably a month. If I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I wake Jason up to go with me. He has to check the bathroom before I get in the shower and right when I'm about to get out {I had an experience with a roach almost crawling into the shower with me so now I'm super paranoid every time I take a shower}. I get goosebumps all over my body every time I step out of our room and I've become the jumpiest person in the world. I am literally terrified to be in my own apartment! It's the worst possible way to live and I feel sooooo bad for how much Jason has to do for me because of it. I won't even get in to how I react whenever I come across one... let's just say Jason's become quite the comforter.

With all of that being said, however, I have come to learn just how sweet my husband is and how much he absolutely adores me. He will put himself through anything just to make sure that I am comfortable-- whether that's laying on the hard bathroom floor while I get ready at 6:30 in the morning or doing all the cooking & cleaning after he's been working in the hot sun all day. He does so much for me and not once has he complained or made me feel like the nuisance I know I'm being. I want so bad to serve and spoil my husband, but living here I feel restrained to and I can't stand it. I've told him over and over that I'm going to make it up to him in Rexburg, but he refuses to let me because he says I owe him nothing. He only wishes he could do more for me. I don't know how I got so lucky. I think it's safe to say that we will never be returning to Austin... or Texas for that matter.

My mom posted a picture to my Facebook the other day
with this saying on it. Ain't that the true!

While I'm on the subject of sweet things Jase does for me, I want to jot down a couple of moments from this week that made me feel extremely loved by him {this is really for my own memory's sake}. I've been stressing a lot lately. Like a lot, a lot. So much so that it's kept me up at night. We are now only days away from moving out of Texas {HALLELUJAH}, but with each day that passes the stress builds. Here's an idea as to why:

Our car is nearing the end of it's life. We've been dealing with major car issues all summer and it's been the biggest pain. On top of that, we haven't had working AC in the 100+ degree weather... ughhh! {And I don't know if you know this, but Austin traffic is  h o r r i b l e  which makes driving so dreadful} We've spent hundreds of dollars on "repairs", but the car condition was actually worse after we picked it up from the shop. Again, ughhh! Instead of putting more money into the so-not-worth-it car, we've decided to sell it to a junk yard. So there's one thing on our to-do list.

Since our only form of transportation is failing us, we've had to look for alternative ways to move back to Rexburg with all of our belongings. Next thing on the list... find and book a rental car on a budget.

The furniture we've been using while living here is all leased, so we need to call and schedule a pick up date for that.

Because of how Jason's job works, he gets paid completely off of sales commission {stress, stress, stress} & he only gets a percentage of the money up front. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to the amount of money we'll be getting from his back-end checks and I hate, hate, hate not knowing.

Jason also has to hit a certain number of sales in order for us to get partial rent back and other bonuses, so he's needed to work harder than ever these past two weeks to reach that goal. {Which by the way, he has been killing it with almost 4 sales every day!! I am so proud of him!}

Then just needing to clean the apartment, do all the laundry, go to work, pack up everything etc, etc, I've just felt like I don't have the time or the motivation to get things done...

For the most part, all of these things are planned for and taken care of now, but at the beginning of this week none of them were. Jason knows all too well when I'm feeling overwhelmed so he was ready to step in. While I was at work on Wednesday I received this text from my love while he was on his lunch break: "The apartment is cleaned and vacuumed. Towels dried, folded and put away. Darks are in the dryer and whites in the wash. All the dishes are done, kitchen cleaned. Your bottoms are soaking in soap in the bathroom. All the clothes on the bed are clean. I love you baby!! Muah!" 

Oh my goshhhhh, I do not deserve him! He even called and got everything scheduled-- the car, the furniture pick-up, the move-out date. When he got home later that night he told me that he knew how stressed I was and he wanted to do all that he could to take some of that stress off of me. Then he ended the night by giving me a foot massage... He is unreal! I'm obsessed, so in love, and incredibly lucky to call him mine.

Casa Abierta

Only one more wedding-related post, I promise! After our day full of tedious travel, we finally made it to Colorado around 5 am. Jason drove the entire 16+ hours with not a wink of sleep {I don't know how he manages to do that} so I let him sleep most of the day away. I was able to catch a couple hours of shut eye before I woke up to help my parents decorate and set up for our open house that evening. I can't express how thankful I am for all of the help and support that was given! So many ladies from the ward helped by making cookies for the cookie bars, setting up, cleaning, and even bringing the fam some dinner {THANK YOU MISTY}. Seriously, this town has the best people! It turned out to be such a great night. It made me so happy to see so many familiar faces that I've missed dearly! A lot of these people I've known most of my life and I loved being able to introduce them all to my new hubs :)

Along with my parents, Jason and I greeted everyone at the door. There was a lot of chit chat, a lot of "Congratulations!" and a whole lot of milk & cookies. The decorations were stunning and we were even able to use the same flowers from our reception a week earlier. Such a bonus! Mauri was the best sis/bridesmaid ever and snapped pictures of everyone throughout the night. So thankful for her!

I have a feeling my dad's going to take this same picture with all his girlies.

Seriously cookie heaven. {Heart eyes emoji here}

I absolutely love this quote my mom found to put on the cookie bars.
"Two essential ingredients to a successful marriage are a cookie and a kiss." -Boyd K. Packer

He's handsome.

Jason was told three different times that night that he looked like he could be a movie star {must have been the suit and scruff}. I thought it was cute, and I'm sure Jason loved the compliment ;)

We wrapped up the night by unwrapping our gifts. Everyone was so sweet to us! Again, I can't express enough how thankful we are for so many supportive people in our lives. We are still in the process of writing thank you cards {it's on our never ending to-do list}, but in the meantime, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to anyone that helped/celebrated/supported us in any way! We are so blessed!

H o n e y m o o n

The day after our wedding, me and handsome honeymooned at the all-inclusive Royalton Riviera Resort in Cancun, Mexico! It was heaven. Seriously, what's better than unlimited piña coladas, strawberry daiquiris {virgin, of course}, and food? Nada. The only thing I loved more was my brand new husband! The resort was beautiful, new, and h u g e. The pictures we have don't do it justice. As soon as we arrived we were both in awe. After checking in, our butler gave us a little tour of everything and then showed us to our room. Once we were able to settle in and relax a bit, Jason and I decided to explore for ourselves. It was already late at night, but we liked that. We took a walk on the beach and followed some music we could here further down the resort. There was a band playing and a bunch of people dancing their little hearts out in the sand. If it were any other night I probably would have wanted to grab my babe and go join them, but since we were both so tired we decided to just sit and watch. I love, loved it. Before we turned in for the night, we came across some hammocks on a roof and obviously couldn't resist. We swung and watched the stars until Jason started dozing off. It was the best start to our honeymoon.

Yum yum yum yum yum. Piña colada is my fav!

The next day Jason soaked up a little too much sun which resulted in quite the burn. We didn't bring any sunscreen {not smart of us} and decided not to buy some from the gift shop earlier that morning because it was dang pricey for one bottle. Well we ended up buying some anyways... just after he had already been super burnt. Good thing they offered aloe vera for the same pricey price! {I'm not kidding, we spent 50+ dollars on this stuff} We did get a free beach bag since we bought the two together, so we decided that could just be our souvenir haha.

 Something else I forgot to bring on our trip was a hair-tie. Oh my goodness that was the biggest mistake. I didn't even think to pack some because I always, always have a hair-tie either in my hair or on my wrist, but for the sake of wedding day pictures I took it off. Ughhh. We searched the entire resort, from the gift shops to the spa, and not a single place sold the dang things! I envied every girl I saw with an extra hair-tie on her wrist and I was tempted multiple times to ask if I could have one... but I never did. Instead I just dealt with my long, frizzy hair in the {very} hot and humid Mexico weather. I did attempt to make my own hair-tie with the string used to tie my new sandals together, but that didn't work out too well. It managed to loosely keep my hair up for maybe five minutes before it would all fall out. For whatever reason though, I still felt the need to wear the wimpy string around my wrist for the entirety of the trip, you know, just in case it decided to cooperate.

For the majority of our meals we ate at the resort buffet. It had all the food anyone could ever want and everything was dang delicious, so we never got tired of eating there. There was one night we ate pool side at a Tex Mex BBQ restaurant, but the portions were tiny and it wasn't our fav, so we had a second dinner at the buffet! So many food comas that week. We loved it.

Jason wasn't going to pass up trying the steakhouse while we were there, so we made reservations for an evening. We were definitely not dressed adequately for that dinner. Everything and everyone there was so fancy! But that didn't phase us. Our waiter was hilarious and way nice. Jason greeted him in Spanish, so for the rest of the evening our waiter spoke to Jason in Spanish and then translated everything into English for me. We mentioned to him that we were on our luna de miel so for dessert he brought us a 'Happy Honeymoon' chocolate cake and insisted that he take some pictures of us with it-- kissing of course. He was so fun.

Something that I absolutely adored during our stay in Mexico was listening to Jason speak to the natives in Spanish. He served a two-year LDS mission in Nicaragua so he is completely fluent in the language. Very rarely do I get to hear him speak español, but I loveeee when he does. He took every opportunity he could and literally everyone he spoke with commented on how well he could speak their language! They were impressed and I was too. Oh I love him.

After our steakhouse dinner date, we headed back to our room. We switched on the lights to find rose petals laying everywhere and a romantic bubble bath all ready to go. It was like the definition of what a honeymoon should be and the best part was that we were completely surprised! We had mentioned briefly at check-in that we were there for our honeymoon, but we didn't think we'd be given any sort of special treatment for it. The resort knew when to act thanks to the dinner reservation we made ;) We were very pleased with the service we got during our stay. Cleaners came around twice a day to make the bed, tidy up the room, and restock the fridge and {unused} mini bar. I'm surprised we never ran into them when they came around. Everything just seemed to work out perfectly.

Due to Jason's major sunburn {and my baby burns}, we figured it would be more enjoyable and less painful if we saved our beach visits for the evening time when the sun wasn't beating down so hard. Those nights were my favorite. I absolutely loved swimming with my babe in the warm ocean water right as the sun was setting. No one was ever in the water around that time, so it felt as if we had the entire ocean to ourselves. It was surreal.

Ow ow! He's a hottie.

One of the days we decided to go snorkeling to get off the resort for a bit. {Sorry no pictures} I'm not the biggest fan of snorkeling, but I thought it would still be fun to do something other than relax. We ended up snorkeling for less than half the time we paid for because the snorkel made my mouth sore and I kept swallowing the nasty water. I just felt much more comfortable in the boat. We were told before we hit the water that if we had to use sunscreen then we needed to purchase the one they offered because it was 'coral reef safe'. I'm ashamed to say that we bought another tiny bottle of sunscreen for $15... only to stay in the shaded boat for the majority of the time. Ughhh lesson learned. The only other downer from our little snorkeling adventure was that Jason accidentally left one of my favorite shirts of his hanging on a chair to dry. He also left his favorite hat on the airport parking shuttle back in Utah... oh, that boy!

For our last day in Cancun we somehow managed to wake ourselves up before dawn to catch the sunrise. It. Was. Beautiful. Once we got the good view, we headed back to bed to rest up for our full day of travel. After one last buffet fest, we said goodbye to Mexico! I reeeaaally wish we took more pictures during our stay, but it's hard to want to take pictures when it's only us two. As you can tell from the ones we did end up taking, we pretty much had the resort to ourselves. It made the trip much more relaxing, quiet, and intimate. It was {what's that word I like to use? Oh yeah} perfect.

Our returning flight was to Salt Lake and then we had a  l o n g  car ride from there to Colorado for our open house. {Side note: Our layover flight was delayed four hours so we didn't end up landing in Salt Lake until after midnight. The original plan was to start driving to Colorado as soon as we landed, but we were soooo tired. Instead, we went to my grandparents house in Bountiful so we could get a couple hours of sleep. After some breakfast the next morning, we started our drive. We got 4 hours into our trip before we were stopped in Rock Springs, Wyoming because of a closed road on I-80. There had been a huge car pile up due to weather conditions and the road had already been closed for nearly 24 hours... something we weren't aware of when we started our drive. There were no other alternate routes that were open, so after about an hour of waiting at a gas station, we made the decision to turn around and drive back to Utah to go the I-70 route. That turned an eight hour drive into a SIXTEEN hour drive. We got into Provo around 7 pm and decided that we might as well call Shilo up to see if she wanted to meet us for dinner. We met her and some of her friends at Cafe Rio and told them how we had spent the past eight hours of driving only to go from Bountiful to Provo. Seriously horrible. The only good thing that came from all that was the fact that we got to see Shilo one last time before she left for her mission to London {tear}. After we said our goodbyes, we started our drive... again. And right as we thought our luck couldn't get any worse... it did. The last stretch of the drive through the mountains was terrifying. The mountain roads were super icy and we were honestly fearing for our lives at some points. Jason was extremely cautious, which added another hour or two to our already incredibly long drive. We arrived safely to my house around 5 am. We were so beat, but we had to perk up for our open house that evening. A couple days after our open house, we packed the car air tight with all of our belongings and drove another fourteen hours to our first home together in Austin, TX. All that to come in later blog posts... hopefully haha. Okay, end of side note.} And end of this post!

Best honeymoon with the best husband. Ever.