Summer

 We had a fantastic summer! Here are some of the highlights:

We went to Lake Powell and had fun swimming, boating, tubing, and eating good food. It was a great vacation!

 

 

  After Lake Powell we went camping with the Sperry side of my family. We ate tinfoil dinners, s'mores, I went rappelling, Eric went paint-balling with the guys, we played games, we sat around a campfire, and on the last day we booked it out of camp in the middle of a 5 minute hailstorm. That was weird.

 

 

We went to a REAL game with some friends. 

We drove to Bear Lake with Grandpa Drake and went to La Beaus. We stopped a couple times to look at the beautiful view, and had a nice long drive.

 We went to the Ogden Rodeo with our friends Andy and Lizzy. It was my first rodeo and it was really cool! I loved all the different events, but the bull riding was my favorite.

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 Eric and I celebrated our first anniversary. Can you believe it has been over a year since we got married? Neither can we.

Eric was called to be the Second Counselor in the Bishopric. I'm so proud of my cute husband.

 

It really was a great summer!

Sidewalk Chalk Art

Every year in March I get an email that makes me really really happy. That email is from the Joy Foundation, and it's about the Bountiful Sidewalk Chalk Art Contest. I absolutely LOVE sidewalk chalk art. In the past I have participated with a group of friends, but this year Eric and I went together for the first time. We had fun! And I think our otter turned out pretty well.

Sorry the picture quality isn't very good. We didn't finish our drawing until after dark, so we planned to come back and get better pictures a day later, but there was a rain storm and the water got under our plastic covering, so this is all we have. It was another great year of sidewalk chalk. I'm looking forward to going with Eric again next year!

Happy Birthday Eric!

It’s about time I wrote about Eric’s birthday, since it was over a month ago. Well, it was fantastic. I couldn’t convince Eric to take the day off, because it was a Friday so it was only a half day anyway. But that was good for me because I DID take the day off and spent my morning decorating, wrapping presents, and picking up a lemon meringue pie. (Eric likes pie better than cake and ice-cream. So do I. We learned that on our first date. went out for pie on our second date. It’s just one of the reasons I think we’re meant for each other. :) )
 

Eric's gifts all wrapped. :)

Birthday decorations

I picked Eric up after school, with helium balloon tied to gummy bears in hand. When we got home Eric opened his presents and the cards that he got in the mail for his birthday. After presents it was time for dinner. We went to one of Eric's favorite places- Iggy's. We had fun and the food was delicious. After dinner, Eric and I walked through the new City Creek Center. It's really cool and City Creek is beautiful, for a shopping center. The man-made creek that runs through the middle is awesome. We loved walking through the different stores together and just checking the place out.

When we got home we broke out the pie and Eric blew out his candles and we each ate a piece. After pie we went to bed. It was a really good day. I loved every minute celebrating the life of my wonderful husband. There are few things that I love more than spoiling Eric. I adore the boy. I think Eric had a good day, too. 

  Eric with his pie

Blowing out the candles

Eric talking to family on the phone. He loved the phone calls wishing him a happy birthday, especially the ones from nieces and nephews!

 Another part of Eric's birthday came the following weekend when we were in Logan. Eric's favorite band growing up was Colors, and they did a benefit concert that weekend. It just so happened that the concert was for a friend of Eric's, so that just made it even better! I got tickets, and that weekend we went.

 At the concert

Colors performing

Happy Birthday! I hope #27 was a good one, hon!

Mission Reunion

A couple of weeks ago was able to go to Eric's mission reunion with him. It was a great night! We were lucky enough to get to pick up Presidente Guerra and his son Filipe from his hotel in downtown Salt Lake City and take them to the mission reunion in Lehi. Eric hadn't seen Presidente Guerra for a couple of years and he was really excited to see him again. Eric has a lot of love and respect for his former mission president, and he loved having the extra time to talk to him while driving to the mission reunion and back. I was impressed by the spirit surrounding Presidente Guerra and I was happy to finally get to meet him.

At the reunion, Eric had the chance to talk with former companions and mission friends; that was really fun too. At the end of the evening Presidente Guerra gave advice to everyone there. He spoke in Spanish so I couldn't understand very much, but Eric translated some of what he said for me. The two main parts of his message to the former missionaries and their families were to not just know the gospel, but to correctly understand the gospel, and that your relationship with your spouse is the most important relationship you will have in this life. What a great message! Eric had a great time, and I really enjoyed meeting Eric's mission president and mission friends. It was a wonderful evening!

Six Months! (And a Day)

Eric and I have been married for six months. (and a day.) I can't believe it- it doesn't feel like we've been married that long. These past six months being married to Eric have been some of the best of my life, but I haven't been blogging as much as I should. In this post, I'm want to highlight some of my favorite memories from the past six months that I missed...

Carving our pumpkin and making apple cider at the Sperry Halloween Party. This is one of my favorite traditions, and it was great to have Eric come. We had a lot of fun! Eric took care of the pumpkin guts. I've always hated that part of pumpkin carving.

In November, the Bonneville basketball team won the regional championship after an undefeated season. Eric had a great time as the assistant coach! He loved every moment from tryouts to that last game, and I loved going to the games and watching. The students at the school got really into it, too. Each game had a pretty big crowd, and we even heard some Aggie cheers at the games. At the championship game, the high school where the game was held even let the kids cut down the net after they won. It was an exciting day.

The Sperry Christmas party was as fun as Halloween. At this party we decorate graham cracker houses. Eric and I made a gummy bear battle. Green versus red. We had fun with that. :) 

Eric got really into it... Scary. ;)

On Christmas Eve we went to lunch at Chilis and then to a movie, Arthur Christmas, with my family. That evening we went to the the annual game night at the Soderquists house. We roasted hot dogs in the fireplace, made root beer floats, and played games. In the morning we ate breakfast and opened gifts together. At 11 we went to church. The meeting was nice. After church, we left for my parent's house and spent the day just relaxing with my family. The kids showed us their Christmas gifts from Santa and we opened some gifts, I curled Emily's hair with her new curling iron and Eric played a new dance game on the Wii with Heidi and Mandy. In the afternoon we were able to talk to my brother Kyle on Skype. It was fun to be able to see him and talk to him. He is a great missionary and he seems like he is doing really well.

 

After visiting my family on Christmas day we traveled up to Logan to spend time with Eric's family. We stayed overnight and celebrated Christmas with the Baileys on the 26th. We loved visiting Eric's family, too. They have a tradition of having Swedish pancakes for Christmas and this year Eric's dad taught us how to make them. They are delicious! After Swedish pancakes we sang carols and opened gifts. It was a wonderful day.

We always love seeing our nieces and nephews!

Next is my triumphant return to Aggie Basketball. The first picture is at the BYU game. We won. And it was awesome. The other two pictures are from my return to the 4th row of section F a few weeks ago. It's the best section of the Spectrum. That was just spectacular. It was great to see Tinille and Whitney and watch a game with them again. I love those two! We always had the best time going to Aggie Basketball games together.

 

We finished 2011 and brought in 2012 with a weird tradition we started last year... Finger paintings of each other. It's a random tradition, but it's really fun! Eric is sweet to do it with me.

This past week, Eric took me to my first Jazz game ever. We went with some of Eric's high school friends and their wives. It was a blast! I'm not as passionate about the Jazz as I am about my Aggies, but I still had a really good time. And I still got mad when the Jazz lost by only two points!

 

Eric and I have made some great memories together these past six months! That's it for now, I'll try to keep up better in the future. :)

{Our Apartment}

 Our little apartment is my favorite place to be. I am finished decorating for awhile, and though I'm not a great decorator by any means, I'm happy with the simple and warm feel of our place. We found the perfect apartment for us. 

 Here is the outside of our building on the day that we moved in.

 One of my favorite rooms is the bathroom. (Who am I kidding? Every room is my favorite.) This is the view from the doorway:

 

And the sink:

 

And the towel rack and clock opposite the sink area:

And my favorite holiday hand soap from B&B Works that Eric got for me in Park City. (I know, I know. He is just awesome.) Seriously though, the stuff smells great.

 

Next is our bedroom. First of all, I have to say that my talented Grandma made our quilt. It has the Logan Temple on it and it's beautiful. (Side-note: I've decided that if I don't learn to quilt and make pajama bottoms one of these years, I'm going to be a bad Grandma down the road.) Anyway, here is the view from the doorway:

 

 This is our dresser. I love the mirror! And the little painting on the right side of the dresser is from our honeymoon.

 Here is a close up of the Temple quilt:

Two closets. We love that.

 

 Next to our bedroom is the spare room. But we're not going in there...

 

 Next is the kitchen. This is the view from the doorway:

 

And the view from the other side, so you can see more of the room. I really like our kitchen. Also, I love the bright red garbage can.

 

This is the dining room, across from the kitchen.

My favorite color is red, in case you were wondering. On the right hand side of the dining room is our little laundry area. The washer and dryer are inside a closet, which is really nice. :) Now you see them...

Now you don't. :)

The last room is our living room. This is where the front door is:

You may recognize the painting from our secret date. :) The funny thing about our living room is that it doesn't have a light fixture. So we have three lamps to keep the room bright.

I feel so lucky that we found such a great place for our first few (we think) years of marriage. We love the apartment itself, we love Salt Lake, and we especially love being here together. :)