This weekend was a very fun, Christmasy weekend!

Friday night Randy and I watched Christmas With The Kranks with Grey and Sarrie and had Christmas cookies, we stayed up and talked super late and danced around our apartment, it was a blast!

Saturday we woke up to go do a photoshoot with one of my clients, and I love how the photos turned out! Here’s a little sneak peek:

We spent the day in Kaysville doing laundry and letting Randy study (finals week is coming friends!) We then jetted off to Bombay House to have dinner with my cousin and his girlfriend before the MoTab Christmas Concert!

The concert was AMAZING. So many beautiful Christmas songs performed by incredibly talented people. The dancers that came up and down the aisles were wonderful, the stories and the sets were incredible, and the music just took my breath away. There was a piece where three organists played at the same time which I loved, all of it was just amazing. We also were sitting really close to Mitt and Ann Romney, as well as Governor Herbert! It was so awesome to see them both there.

Sunday we had the laziest day ever so Randy could study study study, and I could watch the Holiday Baking Championships and catch up on some reading. All in all, it was an incredibly awesome weekend! But Christmas is COMING SO FAST. We gotta buckle up and get some presents purchased and get a move on!

It just occurred to me I needed to do a weekend update from LAST weekend! Oops.

Friday we went to City Creek and met one of my favorite vloggers! I love watching Ellie and Jared vlogs and meeting Jared was so awesome!

We went to sushi with Caleb and Nannette and had a reallly interesting experience. Really bad service and long story short, we were in the restaurant for roughly 2 hours.

Saturday we woke up bright and early to go to the Festival of Trees. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions with my family! We get to see lots of gorgeous trees and eat treats and just have a blast. It was so much fun! Afterwards we went to Texas Roadhouse and laughed and chatted and had the best time. I just love my family!

Saturday night I threw Courtney a bachelorette party and it was so much fun!!! We had a blast, there were tons of treats and of course “The Husband” cake from The Chocolate (one of my favorite things EVER and Courtney’s favorite cake)

It’s an In N Out Tree so naturally we had to get a picture

So I have been dying for a very specific type of photo shoot, and we wanted to send out Christmas Cards this year. So I put two and two together, and we headed to the mountains with Amber Bird.

I can honestly say this was one of the most fun photo shoots I have ever done! We trekked through the snow and were laughing the entire time. Amber made everything so easy and relaxed, and we got the exact look I had been craving. I feel like Amber caught this very raw side of us, but made it look beautiful. It was basically perfection and you should hire her immediately. I can honestly say that I’ve worked with some incredibly photographers here in Utah, our wedding photographer Elisha, Dan Page Photography, Charissa Thatcher Photography, Megan Owen Horn, and now Amber. I would recommend each and every one of them to anyone!

Anyway enough of my blabbering, let the photos speak for themselves.

Password: Surprise

https://player.vimeo.com/video/115237909

I will forever be so grateful that Randy decided to go on a mission, for the experiences we both had while he was gone, and that 2 years ago, he came home to me.

A Fifty-Year Silence was one of those books that at first, intrigued me incredibly. I loved the story, the characters, but as the book wore on, I began to be wary of them. I stopped liking them the further into the book it went. I understand that this book is based on a true story, but there was just so little towards the end to keep my attention. Nothing is really solved, I didn’t feel a weight lifted off me at the end to have learned the truth, it just ended. And I guess that’s how life really is sometimes, but after pouring through page after page, it was just a little bit of a let down. A fantastic book for those who are historically inclined, but a bit of a disappointment story-wise. 

*I received this book from Blogging For Books, the opinions are my own.

1 year, 6 months as Mrs. Low.

Oh, how I wish there were words.

The past six months have been so hard for me.

And Randy is the rock.

The shelter in the storm.

The warm blanket.

The shoulder for my tears.

He makes me laugh. I swear we spend most nights giggling like two kids over funny memes or knock-knock jokes or goofy videos.

I know that people read this blog or my many social media posts and think “Wow, there she goes again. Can she stop being so annoying and over-posting? It’s only a year and a half it’s not even an anniversary or anything.”

But guys, it’s Randy. I want to shout it from the rooftops, and sometimes Instagram and this lil blog is the closest thing.

I’m not sure what on earth I did to be so lucky.

He holds me when I’m crying over the most random things, he makes weekly Target runs with me and only complains for a minute when I insist we walk down every aisle, he cooks and cleans all the time, he lets me watched an absurd amount of Chopped when he could be watching The Voice or action movies, he helps me with the rowdy Sunday School class, loves God more than me, he lets me gush and tell him the plot to whatever book I’m currently reading, he helps me with clients and takes all the photos of them, and me, to boot. And all the rest.

I would need to write all this even if it wasn’t 1 year 6 months ago that we promised forever.

Because lately, even more than normal, I can’t help thinking that I just can’t live without him.

He is simply the best person.

And my little heart loves him with everything it has.

Yes of course I’m a horrible person and only snapped one picture during Thanksgiving.

My mom hosted 35 people at her house so I was running around all day helping her get everything perfect, and then Randy and I went to his grandma’s house for the rest of the day!

So here’s the quick recap. Woke up early, played the traditional Ultimate Frisbee Turkey game, cooked and cooked, had a family gratitude moment, did some work for a client in a rush, had 35 people come, socialized with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and great aunts and uncles, ate amazing food, drove to Logan, ate more amazing food, laughed and laughed, ate pie, drove home, played games and laughed until we cried, went to bed with a full stomach and heart.

So let’s talk about gratitude. It’s so easy to be the person who complains, who makes other people feel bad for being happy and content, find the bad. It’s easy to think that we live in a horrible place, that life is too much, and there isn’t much to smile about.

Oh but it’s so not true.

No matter what our situation is, we have people who love us. We have a Father in Heaven who not only loves us, but sent us His son to die for us, after suffering all of our pains. And as if that isn’t enough, we have so many other things that make us the luckiest.

My little heart has been so full this weekend. I am so lucky.

This month was just not the month for me to do a daily gratitude post on the blog!

I have a confession. The past few months have been incredibly hard for me. It’s been hard to find things to be grateful for. It’s been easier to feel overwhelmed and horribly sad. It’s been easier to stop looking so closely at my life to find the happy things, because when I looked too close I saw so many things I disliked. It was easier to just get through the day then try and have a good day.

There’s lots of things about the past few months I don’t need to get into detail about.

But I do need to say that finding things to be grateful for in every day has made the days better.

I have so many things to be grateful for.

For notes from the kindest friends, to phone calls from family who love me, gorgeous sunsets, the new Gilmore Girls reboot that has made me excited, youth in church who make me laugh and make me feel cooler than I am, people who listened to the Spirit and said the exact things I needed to hear when they had no idea what was going on with me, a Savior who has let me know time and time again that I am not alone, Huffington Post articles that help me realize I’m not alone in my feelings, kind emails and comments that made me realize my writing mattered to someone, music, plays, ballet, long drives and hikes, photography, candy, pasta, warm blankets, fall candles, new books, movie dates, and of course Randy. I can’t write about him right now or I will burst into a thousand tears. So I’ll just have to wait on that.

But really, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Hard things happen, and as one of my favorite actors puts it, “Life is crunchy and complicated, and all the more delicious.”

I’m learning to savor the crunchy and complicated.

My friends just be careful. Be careful with people’s hearts. I have made this confession to people in person and they have told me they are shocked that things have been so rough lately. It has been such an eye-opener for me that we truly never know what someone is going through. So if I snapped at you more than usual or didn’t reply or help as much as I should have, I’m so sorry. Thank you to those that love me through it. I’m certainly going to be more careful with people, because who knows what they are dealing with and how they are hurting.

Anyway, rant over. Basically just know that I’m feeling all the gratitude lately.