One Semester Left!

I finished my finals!! Only one semester left (and one other loner class) and then I graduate!! Sadly, Tommy still has like...5 semesters?? And that's undergrad...but at least I'll be done. haha.
Anyway, now we're just looking forward to Christmas!! I have plans to clean the house and get the house ready for Tommy's family to come over and I got some rice chex for muddy buddies. Plus Tommy and I are making lots of head way in the Buffy/Angel department. :)
Well, that's our update! Can't wait to post about the holidays!!

P.S. If anyone knows about an online editing job, let me know :)

1 Month!!

 Welp, we're back from our super fun Thanksgiving in Boise where we ate some of Ben's amazing cooking, did some sweet Black Friday shopping, and played with nieces. Now we're ready for Christmas, which is made manifest in our decorated apartment :)

3 Months!!

Thought you'd wanna know :)

Scary time of year, folks!

So, in honor of Halloween (aka Tommy's favorite holiday) we have been doing some scary celebrating.

1. I surprised Tommy one day after work with decorating the apartment in Halloween decor! I would post pictures, but, sadly, my decorating abilities are seriously lacking...my spiderwebs on the window fell down after like 4 days and I haven't been able to get them good looking since :( And we don't have any cookies, so I haven't been able to use one of the three wood cuts my mom made for the cookie jar that is actually seasonably appropriate, (we'd been using easter for august/september) but I'm too lazy to make cookies. Plus, Melissa made us really yummy pumpkin bread, so we don't need any more goodies. Instead I have decided to put the woodcut up against our way cool can opener (shout out to Danny and Sarah) to help beautify it. And I've pulled the Frankenstein wallflower out from behind the couch; we get lots of compliments on that bad boy (shout out to RaeAnn).

2. We went to Cornbelly's (does anyone else think that place should have a different name) in Thanksgiving Point with some of Tommy's friends from work last weekend. Cornbelly's by day is a way cute place filled with awesome pumpkins, camp fires, fried oreos pb&j sandwiches and something else I can't remember, a hayride, plus a pumpkin gun and a corn gun that Tommy was really excited to play with (should I worry about his affinity to guns?? haha). But, by night, it is a terrifying place with a haunted corn maze, hay maze, jail/tall fence maze (not sure on the name for that one), haunted high top which I refused to enter, and "the beast" that ate and digested us (along with some other scary things). It was basically terrifying, but Tommy absolutely loved it! And it was fun to see him so excited :) Plus, I got raspberry rock candy out of it.

3. We've been watching Buffy in preparation for Halloween...I'm trying to talk Tommy into being Spike so I can be his Drusilla, but we'll see...not that we have any Halloween plans. What does a college married couple do for Halloween?? Please weigh in with your opinions.

4. We have also been watching the Halloween movies on AMC. I still haven't even watched all of one of them, yet somehow I am strangely interested in the story...though Tommy laughs at me because I refuse to believe Michael Meyers is just psycho...there must be some sort of back story people! 

Anyway...that is October in our house--SUPER SCARY!

Happy Halloween!

It's official...

If it's official for BYU, then it's pretty much set-in-stone...

I got me a new name :)

McLaughlin Home

It's taken me forever to finally post pictures of our apartment, but I had an excuse to take some pictures, so now I can share them with you!! The picture show starts with a story though...so when we first moved in, we noticed that the linoleum around our fridge was kind of bubbled up, but we didn't think anything of it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Tommy noticed that our carpet was kind of wet around the water heater closet, which is right next to our fridge.So we called the managers, got some people to check it out and what do you know? Our water heater had been leaking for months and had done some serious damage to the flooring under the carpet and linoleum.

 This is what it looked like after they ripped up the damaged stuff and took out our air conditioner and water heater.

We had to stay at Tommy's aunt and uncle's house why they fixed it for a few days, but we got new linoleum out of the hole deal, so we're okay with it. haha Anyway...here is our new and improved apartment with all of our decorations up!

Check out the nice linoleum! haha This is our kitchen view from the door

And here's the view from our bedroom door

This is our bedroom!

And this is probably my favorite wall! (it's the view from our bed)

And here's our front room..view from the kitchen

And here's the front room from our front door

And that's our home!! Come visit :)

And a wedding picture :)

Married Woman

I'm a married woman now!! It's official and we are very very happy!

We're home from the honeymoon, setting up our apartment. It's looking pretty good; we almost have everything done! And it's looking pretty good!

I started classes today and Tommy and I both started our work last week. We started going to our new ward and it seems pretty cool. We're trying to be outgoing and make friends (by "we" I mean "I" cuz Tommy is already outgoing and good at making friends).

Well, I could update more but it would take forever and I have to go to work so...I hope you enjoyed the quick update!

4 Days!!

Tommy and I are in ARIZONA!! And we're actually taking pictures, so it's time for a post!! :)

So I got to Utah on Friday, so we moved all of Tommy's stuff into our apartment and got him packed for Arizona and then went to bed because we woke up super early to get on the road to ARIZONA!!

Ignore the no-makeup...as I said, it was early. Also ignore the fact that I couldn't get Tommy to smile normally and when I finally did, I cut him out of the picture, so this is what you get. haha








And then we stopped in Penguitch to get some snacks (Tommy judged my salt and vinegar so I ate his jalapeno too...it was kind of a smelly-breath day)





We got here just in time for dinner and then we changed and went to Madisen and Brenton's wedding reception! We got there a little early, so we took pictures in the car while we waited to go in...

Being cute...

And being not-so-cute :)

And then we went in..Madisen's reception was super pretty with lots of twinkly lights and tall tall centerpieces that we loved!! Madi looked gorgeous and I guess Brenton looked okay...haha just kidding they looked super happy so it was great to see them! We also got to eat some BOMB Caesar pasta salad, so that was great. CONGRATULATIONS MADISEN AND BRENTON!

Are you as excited as I am?!? Probably not.

My posts use to be so cute and creative...I don't really know what happened with that but here's a new post for you!

I am so so excited for the next three weeks of life!! Why, you may ask. Because I'm getting MARRIED!!! 

That's right, I am! And here are the current countdowns I have running through my head everyday!

7 days til I go to Utah

8 days til Tommy and I go to Arizona and Madisen gets married

11 days til my Glendale bridal shower

13 days til I get to go to the temple

15 days til MY WEDDING

16 days til we go on our honeymoon

Yay!!! Could not be more excited :)

18 Days!!!

That is all I have to say :)

Why I never post...

Sorry I haven't posted in forever! I figured out why I always avoid posting...it's cuz I always forget to take pictures!! This weekend I went down to Utah to spend the weekend with Tommy and his family, so I brought my camera and was all prepared to properly document our apartment, Coey's birthday, and boating...well, the weekend is over and I have no pictures to show for it. haha But it was a very fun weekend! We got all of the furniture unpacked in our apartment and started hanging decorations and got all of our boxes unpacked! Then we did lots of partying with the cousins and went out on the boat for tubing with everyone. We also did lots of shopping and I even got a manicure :)
It was a way fun weekend!! And now we're down to 32 days left til the wedding!!

Tommy's Happy Birfday!

Sorry I've been lame on the posting, but Tommy just sent me this picture from our last weekend together and so I wanted to share the story of his Happy Birthday with you all!!
For Tommy's birthday, he drove up to Boise! haha We went out for a sushi lunch with RaeAnn and Paul since Tommy loves his sushi and I...well don't haha. Paul and I got some way yummy sandwiches though. And then we went to this way cool chocolate shop where we found chocolate frogs from Harry Potter!!

Then we watched Where The Wild Things Are and made dinner together for my dad. We also went to the mall to get Tommy some Happy Birthday clothes from his mom. I think Tommy probably hated shopping with me because I was very wishy-washy about what I thought he should get, but that's okay. It probably takes me longer to pick out clothes for Tommy than to pick out clothes for myself.
But anyway...it was very very nice to have Tommy here--I always love to have Tommy in my Boise :)


P.S. 53 days to go!!

The countdown has been slightly changed because we have decided to postpone the date of the wedding to August 11th. I feel really bad for the inconvenience this will be to a lot of people who were planning on flying down to Arizona for the 26th, but it is the best decision for Tommy and I right now. We are still very very very excited to get married and are still very in love and hope that those will love will still be able to come and celebrate with us in August, even though it will be a lot hotter in Arizona by then...
Love you all (to my very few readers),
Kimberly

Dreams

Lately, all of my dreams are somehow wedding related. I haven't had any dreams of the actual wedding yet, but I do have dreams about all the things I'm preoccupied with. For example, I had a lot of dreams last night that all revolved around banana hooks for the centerpieces. Possibly every dream I had last night contained at least one banana hook (always in the color silver, might I add, since that's not what I want! haha).

I'm also having a lot of dreams about unpacking in our new apartment and not having enough room for any of Tommy's things because I have SO MUCH stuff!! You really don't realize how much you have until you are trying to pack it all up.

The most exciting thing about packing is that I'm finding a bunch of random things from when Tommy and I first met and hung out after EFY that make me laugh because we had no idea we'd be marrying each other almost 6 years later! For example, I was looking through my old burnt CD's yesterday (a blast in and of itself) and I found one called "The Best of Slim Kim" (yep, it happened). A caption under the title said "Name credited to T-Mac," aka Tommy McLaughlin haha. It was pretty funny...

On another note, who wants to know the current countdowns? I know you all do!
Today: Dad's Birthday!
2 Days: Get started on the jacket for my dress
3 Days: Go see Tommy and move a bunch of stuff to Utah
17 Days: Boise bridal shower
18 Days: Leave for Utah
19 Days: Leave for Arizona
20 Days: Glendale bridal shower
21 Days: My birthday and the day I get to go through the Temple for the first time!
24 Days: Our Wedding Day!!!!

47 Days

It's starting to get exciting :)
Here are all my current countdowns...
9 hours til Tommy gets back from Arizona
2 days left of class
3 days til my first final
8 days til the end of [my] semester
12 days til I have to move out of my apartment
12 days til I leave Utah and get to meet Emma
13 days til Emma's blessing
14 days til Boise
42 days til I got go to Arizona
47 days til I get to marry my Tommy!!
Yep...definitely getting exciting :)

Blessings

Gotta start every post with a Tomberly picture :)

I'm not gonna lie, I've been kind of an emotional basket case the last few weeks...the stress makes me crazy! Anytime a little thing goes wrong, it feels like the end of the world (or even when it's a big thing)...like when I accidentally threw away my birth certificate, or when I thought we put the wrong address on the invitations that we'd finally ordered or like when the apartment we thought we had all set up for June til next August informed us that they'd sold all of their August-August contracts because it was taking the previous tenants (whose contract we were buying in June) too long to confirm that they were selling their contract to us. Yea, that was a big melt down for me. Thankfully, I have Tommy who is the voice of calm and reason who emailed the managers and the couple's whose contract we're buying and got us first on the waiting list for any August-August apartment contracts that opened up. And then today, miracle of miracle, a contract opened up and we got to sign our contract so we will have a home!! We get to move in after June 1st (which will be perfect timing for us)! And Tommy got contacted for an interview for a good job in Utah for when he moves down in 2 weeks and we really really hope he gets it!! On a similar note, I had an interview today to join the Writing Fellows program, which is a student editing program at BYU which will look great on my resume and they pay me!! haha So it's a win-win. Hopefully I get it....keep your fingers crossed!!

*Quick shout out to the Harper's and baby Emma!! So excited to meet you and super happy you're a girl so your wedding outfit that Aunt RaeAnn picked out will be appropriate :)*

Engagements and Invitations

Check and Check! Now that we have the engagements all done, we've ordered our wedding invitations and they're WONDERFUL!!

Tommy and I were scanning pictures for Kenna this weekend for the wedding video and I came across a few beauties...thought you might enjoy


Calling Danny (in Brazil) from nursery...in my Barney tights. hahaThe Missoula Mall was so cool! haha and Tommy absolutely loves these glasses on me--he says they're my Harry Potter Glasses :)
Tommy and I were excited that we could see Mom wearing the ring in this picture :)

PICTURES!!

Here's a sneak peek (link below) of our engagement pictures!!! I totally love them already and I've only seen these 2 :)

http://jennieraephotography.blogspot.com/

Just checkin' stuff off the list!

What do I get to check off after this weekend, you may ask. I will tell you! Registering and photographers!!
We finally found a photographer for our engagement pictures and are going to be taking those next weekend so we can finally get working on our invitations! I am so relieved we found someone--I was beginning to worry that, despite all of the talented people in Provo, we were never going to find one in our price range!
We also officially have our photographer for the wedding day and I am so excited because she did the pictures for my friend Kelsey's wedding and they're GREAT!!
Finally, this weekend we went and REGISTERED!! It was so fun to play with the price guns (even my roommates came so they could get a turn). And I totally fell in love with many things (the bed set we picked out, the shower curtain, the microwave (yes, I said microwave))! Even though Tommy was bored, I am going to say we both enjoyed imagining our future home and the decorations and things that will go in it :)
Still so excited for May 26th...it can't come soon enough even though we still have a lot to do before we get there!
Only 103 days left!!

Day in Boise

I call it "Day" and not "weekend" because we were literally only there for 23 hours...but Tommy and I went to Boise this weekend for Katie Ann's blessing! It was so great to go and see the fam. and get some wedding stuff done (thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to RaeAnn, Ashley, Aunt Mae, Sarah, Rebecca, and Shari for all the work this weekend!) We are chugging along in the wedding planning arena and this weekend we made some huge advances in the wedding line outfits (well the girls' side)!
We also got my mom's ring from my dad and couldn't be more happy about it. I seriously love this ring and it makes me feel happy and special and close to Mom every time I look at it. Tommy laughed at me because I didn't cry when he proposed, but I did cry when he put this ring on my finger :)

Save the Date

MAY 26, 2012
2:15 pm
MESA, ARIZONA TEMPLE

Long distance is hard

Having your fiancee live in Rexburg while you live in Provo is rather difficult. And not just because texting all day doesn't make up for not being able to see his face and not just because every time we have to say goodbye I want to cry, but also because it is very hard to make wedding decisions and find housing when you can't go look at stuff together. But, we will survive and it will all be worth it, right? Right.
So here's the wedding update...

• Went to Arizona last weekend and got to go see the reception site. It's gorgeous and we could not be more excited about where we're having the reception!
• Reserved the temple for May 26, 2012 at 2:15 P.M. :)
• Bought the wedding dress and shoes
• Found Tommy's suit
• Decided on a dress for the flower girls (shout out to Auntie M for her sewing skills that will make that beauty possible)
• Found a site for the brunch (shout to the Allen's and their awesomeness)
• Possibly have found an outfit for the bridesmaids
• Possibly have found ties for the groomsmen

So, as you can see, we are chugging along. Tommy and I also spent our weekend together looking for a place to live in the summer and creating our wedding playlist and pictures for our wedding video. We haven't found where we are going to live quite yet, but we are liking College Park right now and we will see if one of the others we didn't get to see this weekend can top that one or not.
Anyway...there's the update! Hope you all enjoyed it :)

I'M ENGAGED!!

Sorry I have not given you any sort of details about Tommy and our dating, but I am gonna be a dedicated blogger starting now because Tommy and I are officially engaged!!! :) I am so excited and so happy and now I just HAVE to share our story :)
Tommy and I met when we were 15 years old in EFY in Provo! We were in the same EFY group and Tommy and his best friend, Jordan, were the first boys to "escort" Brooke and me that week. When we all discovered we were all from Arizona, we had to be EFY friends! We thought that Tommy was a lot like my step-brother, Sterling, (who he's actually not really like at all) and we decided we wanted to set him up with Emily. Then I decided that Jordan would be my C.O.W. (crush of the week) and we were all best friends. We even sat next to each other on our flight back to Arizona and talked about The Format (our favorite band). We hung out sporadically the next few years, mostly going to birthday parties and playing truth or dare. The first time we hung out, Emily and I talked Tommy and Jordan into letting us dress them up in makeup and do their hair (he'd probably be pretty embarrassed that I am sharing this shame with the world).Tommy left on his mission in 2010 to Curitiba, Brazil and I was a lame friend who didn't write him....I know, I stink. haha. But Tommy got back in October and came up to Rexburg to check out BYU-I (where he'd be going in January) and stopped by Provo on his way back down. We set up a hang out with Tommy, Emily, Sam, and me, and we just kind of hung out and Samily's, catching up and learning about the mission. Tommy and I went and watched a movie at our friend Justin's apartment and quickly came to the conclusion that our friend feelings had definitely changed and we wanted to start dating. Of course, Tommy was living in Arizona for the last three months and just moved up to Rexburg, but he has come down to visit me a lot so we could spend time together.
We officially became "boyfriend and girlfriend" on November 17th (Baby Carter's birthday!! *shout out to Brooke's baby*). I went down to Arizona with Tommy for the week before Christmas and got to meet his family. Luckily, they were very sweet and welcoming to me and also very entertaining, which put me completely at ease. Tommy has gotten to sporadically meet members of my family throughout the last three months, though he still needs to meet Craig, Rebekah, Cy, and Brett.Tommy proposed to me on January 15th (today). We were driving back to Rexburg after visiting my family in Malta and we stopped in Idaho Falls for some lunch. Tommy wanted to go to Barnes and Noble just to look at books (one of our favorite pass times), so we were in the Young Adults' section and Tommy grabbed a Twilight copy and said "Look at the typo in the introduction!" I quizzically opened the book and found a cut out box inside the book with the ring sitting inside of it. I looked up to find Tommy getting down on one knee :) It was adorable and perfect and we are super happy!! I can't wait to put up wedding updates and ideas and to continue telling our story :)
P.S. This ring is actually a temporary ring...my dad is giving Tommy my mom's ring for him to give to me, which is going to be very special for us; it's something that I've always wanted. Until then, though, we have this beauty to let every one know that I'm taken!