A decade

 Nic and I celebrated 10 years of marriage in May! For so many reasons, it feels like a lifetime ago but none of the memories or feelings from that day have left me. A whole decade later and he is still the best decision I ever made. 

We left the kids overnight with my mom and snuck away to dinner at P.F. Chang's followed by a walk around downtown Boise, grabbed a brownie and ice cream from Stella's, and lounged in our hotel bed watching reruns of the Office, Friends, and Schitt's Creek. While we may not have been on that trip to Hawaii like we talked about in our early years of marriage due to Covid and a baby on the way, it was truly the best way to spend our day!  

When I opened my fortune cookie after dinner and found this inside, I couldn't help but to tuck it in my pocket and keep it as a special reminder that the best is yet to come for us. <3 

While our actual anniversary was wonderful, the next day was a little rough. We took our time checking out of the hotel in the morning and planned to go to breakfast. We tried to get into 8 different restaurants all over town between 9:30 - 11:00, all of which had over an hour wait until finally giving in and settling on skipping breakfast entirely for an early lunch. The nearest place was Smoky Mountain so we pulled up and were their second customers of the day. They immediately greeted us with frazzled faces, got us a table next to the front door, and told us they only had 2 staff members on site so the service would be slow. It took a long while to get our food while we proceeded to awkwardly watch them turn away customer after customer instead of putting a sign on their door that they couldn't offer any more service due to short staffing issues. Instead of having time to take a long leisure walk around the Village ponds like we had planned, we were left with only enough time to race from lunch in the rain to my second vaccine appointment. It was a day, that's for sure! So grateful we had the wonderful day together before and to my mom for watching our kids. 

Happy 10 years to my favorite person! I love you!!

8 years

You guys, summer is so wonderfully crazy, fun, and busy! I have so much catching up to do!
Let's start with one of my favorite days of the year ...

Nic and I celebrated 8 years of marriage in May!!

I made him this video (linked here) and it brings me to tears every time I watch it. So many unforgettable moments and a beautiful life we've made together! We watched it laying in bed that morning and I think he loves it just as much as I do.

In the morning we visited the Boise Temple grounds where we were married. It was our first time taking our kids there and it was like being in this crazy time warp seeing how much our lives have grown and changed since that beautiful day!

Liam's first time ever taking our picture! haha

And the second ... there are our heads! haha

I love that our love created these two beautiful humans!

In the afternoon Liam had a play date and Lyla took a nap while my sweet step mom stayed with her so we could have a date together! We haven't been in Boise on any of our anniversaries so far so Nic planned the most special walk down memory lane starting with the Idaho Botanical Gardens where he proposed 9 years ago. He reenacted the moment in the very same gazebo and got down on one knee and gave me a set of silicone rings to wear when I exercise/do yard work/hike/etc. It was so cute and thoughtful! In the moment I remember saying, "what are you doing?!" haha because I was so thrown off by it and it was the best surprise!

The gardens were covered in the most beautiful pink peonies and we were so entertained by the ginormous coy fish and lizards running around on the rocks.

After the gardens we stopped by The Bishop's House ... a beautiful old Victorian house where we had our wedding reception! There was a big sign in the front yard telling people to stay off the property and that there was some event soon so we quickly popped out of the car long enough to snap a picture and drive away.

I can not imagine my life without this handsome guy in it. We've been through so much together ... school, buying and selling houses, babies, new jobs, a big move and through all of it, there is no one else I'd rather have by my side. I'm so grateful for our marriage and excited to see what the next 50 years will bring! Love you so much Nic Williamson, Happy Anniversary!! XO

six years

Yesterday was Nic and I's 6 year anniversary! Definitely the fastest and BEST 6 years of my life!! The celebration started Friday night when he came home from work with this beautiful bouquet of roses with a card that followed later that said: "Yellow because you make me the happiest man alive, Pink because I will never stop being thankful you married me, White because you are the best person I have ever known, Red because I will never stop loving you."

Colds have been going around our house over the last week and half. It started with Nic, then Liam caught it a few days later, and just when I thought I'd escaped it, I found myself coming down with it by Friday too. I was so bummed knowing that this was a special weekend and not feeling well for it was not on the fun meter but that didn't stop us. Saturday mid-day Nic surprised me with a date and we left Liam in the good caring hands of my mother-in-law. His plan was to recreate most of our first date so we started with lunch at Wingers. It felt so serendipitous when the hostess at the restaurant sat us at the EXACT same booth where we shared our first date 8 years ago! We haven't sat there since so it felt so special! Can I tell you just how incredible it is to slowly eat your meal and share a flashback conversation with your spouse without any sticker fingers covering your outfit or leaving your food to grow cold while you cut up and feed your toddlers to them?! It was so nice to just be the two of us for a little while (well, with a growing third wheel in tow who enjoyed that lunch just as much as I did! haha). 

The only pictures we took for our anniversary, still the same old goofballs we've always been ...

We were SO full after eating so we planned to walk around while mini golfing but in true Pocatello fashion, the wind was being outrageous and I couldn't keep my dress from flying up (haha!) so we ditched that plan and went furniture shopping instead! While we have a crib and a rocking chair handed down from Liam for baby girl's nursery, we have been on the hunt for a dresser for her room. I found one I loved at a vintage antique store in downtown last weekend while my mom was here but wanted to show it to Nic first. We wandered through a few more antique/furniture stores (basically all 5 we have in this town) to make sure it was the one before finally going back and buying it before the store closed for the day. Our anniversary gift to each other. It has these adorable scalloped edges and little gold key holes on the front, perfect for a girl's room. I love it so much!

From the beginning, I envisioned this sweet little dresser to be pink so our next stop on our date was to Home Depot. We looked through all the paint samples before deciding on the cutest light blush/coral pink color called "pink elephant". haha We still had about an hour and a half left of our date (it was about 5:00 by this time) but there was no way we were going to be able to have a full meal again after our lunch so we decided since it was a special occasion to just skip straight to dessert. We sat across from each other in a cute little diner setting and had oreo shakes, once again just enjoying each other company talking about both the past and our future together. There is no one in this world who I would rather share both with than you, Nic Williamson. 

Sunday was the day of our actual anniversary and I was up all night long with the worst stuffy nose and sore throat so Sunday was a pretty rough day. We all spent most of it in our jammies watching Disney movies together and taking naps in the afternoon. We went for a short walk through this beautiful cemetery that Nic and I used to live across from. Each time we go back, our lives and our love has grown just a little bit more!

Happy Anniversary to the perfect man for me! I love you even more today than I did 6 beautiful years ago!! There is no one I'd rather adventure with, experience parenthood with, or grow old with than you. I love you!!!

our second anniversary

It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating our first anniversary. In fact, it seems like just yesterday we were getting married. And man were those two perfect days! Tuesday was no different. In fact, can we just rewind so I can re-live it all over again?! Okay, thanks!

Nic left for work at his usual time with the promise that he would try his darndest to get off early. I felt fortunate to have a large portion of the day to get things ready as I was the one who wanted to surprise him this year. When he got home, I was just finishing up on the final touches and of course he showed up with a gorgeous bouquet of roses and tulips for our new shelves {kinda been my thing lately} like the hopeless romantic that he is. Loved it!





And my surprise...
I had a bouquet of balloons waiting for him with something special tied to the bottom of each one! The pink ones were for a progressive dinner {he had to guess from the pictures of clues where we would be having drinks, an appetizer, dinner, and dessert}, green for the gifts I got him, red for a favorite picture and memory from each year we have been married, and blue for our date activities!







We had smoothies from Jamba for drinks, shared a cactus blossom from Texas Roadhouse for an appetizer, shared a grilled chicken salad from Cafe Rio for dinner, and had a little frozen yogurt from Kiwi Loco for dessert. We had only done a progressive dinner one other time together but it was with a bunch of other couples where we went from house to house so it was fun just the two of us this time having a few of our favorite things!



One of our date activities was put put golfing, something we did on our first date together at this very same course. See the one where Nic looks like he is rejoicing down there... he got a hole-in-one on the second hole. The SECOND hole! Who is this guy and where did he get his talent? I'll have you know it clearly did not rub off on me! My average... five puts per hole! :)







And since I can't ACTUALLY relive this amazing day with this even more amazing man all over again, I'm so happy to have these pictures to remember it by. Happy Anniversary you! xoxo

two years.

May 21, 2013

Nic,

This day snuck up on us so quickly that it was hard to believe that it has been a year since the last time we celebrated this special day. I think that it is because every day with you is more perfect than the last one. Not short of hundreds of wonderful memories though. I hope you know that I absolutely adore you. Here's to two years of special holidays, finishing school, and becoming a family of 3 with our little Rue. All of which were wonderful because we did them together. You and me. 

Happy Anniversary, love you to the moon!!! 

p.s. Today was just as perfect as the last ... one year

St. Lucia Bliss

The day after our wedding we headed to St. Lucia on a long journey to our honeymoon!
and when I say long journey.. I mean 24 hours.. it took us an entire day to get there. But it was SOO worth it!

We drove from Boise to Salt Lake. This is us waiting to board our first flight to Las Vegas! Don't we look so excited?! Well to be honest.. that excitement died after the first flight haha

....and in-between there were many more layovers and flights. We took a red-eye so we had been flying all night when we finally ended up in St. Lucia Monday afternoon.

Here is where it got exciting.... isn't it the most beautiful place you have ever seen?!! And that was just from an airplane window!

(we look a little haggard from the flying ha)

So we go through customs in the airport and are led through a big door that says "Sandals". At this point I am dying to be at our hotel. We are both exhausted and experiencing a lot of motion sickness. A man walks up to us and hauls our stuff into a Landrover (which is a really nice car for this place) and says it will be a little over an hour to get to our resort. UMM excuse me?? I seriously had been planning on MAYBE a 15-20 minute car drive from the airport. Oh just wait it gets worse... so not only is it a little over an hour, we are with a driver who can barely speak English but continues to talk to us every few minutes. I don't think I have said "I'm sorry can you please repeat that" more in one hour in my life! Another tidbit you should know, there is practically one road that takes you around the entire island and our resort was on the other end of the island than the airport. So we are driving along and suddenly realize the reason for the whip lash we are experiencing every few minutes... NO speed limit in St. Lucia. OH GREAT.. and the island gets hits with hurricanes which have completely trashed their roads so we are dodging pot holes and driving 80 mph on a road that is incredibly windy. On top of all of this, our driver was listening to obnoxious rap music that said the "f" word every 30 seconds and did not understand that we didn't want to drink his champagne. So the journey to St. Lucia was not the greatest by any means but once we got there, this is what we got to experience.....

Monday: Day 1

Our incredible view from the balcony of our suite

This picture was taken shortly after we had gotten to our room. Our butler checked us in and set up everything for us.. the only thing we forgot to ask about was what was open for food. We hadn't eaten anything since the previous afternoon so we were starving! We realized the resort has a dead zone between 4-6 pm for food as they are closing down lunch and setting up for dinner at the restaurants. We realized we could order room service at this time so we call... DANG IT.. hour and a half wait. When we finally got our food we sat on our balcony overlooking the beautiful Caribbean. As I was looking over at Nic I notice this little guy scurry our balcony and I got a little excited. Nic on the other hand took this excitement as OH MY GOSH look at that massive creepy thing crawling on your t-shirt. This is where he jumps up smacking nothing off of his shirt and me rolling on the ground laughing. haha

Holy moly was that a little of food, but it was sure delicious :)

P.s. we came home plump but happy at the end of this trip!

Tuesday: Day 2

This was our one day of the trip where we didn't have any plans what-so-ever so we spent the day on the beach and got a little fried :)

At first we couldn't figure out why there were holes all over the beach until this little guy decided to pop out

A TON of water sport activities were included with our all inclusive stay, we loved it!

Paddle Boat Trike!! Greatest thing ever!

These were all pictures we took of our resort from the trike... gorgeous huh?!

We rented a jet ski! So much fun and a great way to tour the island!

For lunch we went to a restaurant at our resort called Josephines which was a homemade pizza/crepe place. Their food was incredible! It was our favorite place by far. We ordered a apple, banana, cinnamon, honey crepe and we both thought we had died and gone to heaven with every single bite. There were these cute little birds all over the island and they were NOT afraid by any means to enjoy your food along with you :) Here he is watching me like a little hawk. Just wait......

Hops on the table a little closer.. I had only scooted my plate to the other side of my drink to see if he would take a bite.

Yep he sure did!!

Some of the restaurants required a dress code and we had everything for it except dress shoes for Nic... oops. We thought he would just be able to go with the "casual dress" look with flip flops so he talked me out of packing his dress shoes. Well it turns out he needed them after all and all he brought for closed toed shoes were tennis shoes. They looked a little dorky but we did what we had to do to experience St. Lucia's fine dining.

The restaurant we went to was a Italian place which is right up Nic's ally. Sometimes we had a hard time determining what it is we were exactly ordering because their menus did not have great descriptions of their food. At this restaurant Nic ordered a tomato herb salad or something like that. It was literally a slice of tomato, a piece of mozzarella cheese, and some herbs sprinkled on top hahaha no lettuce for you Nic.

After dinner we were slow dancing on a dock and got really excited when we saw this. I know it is really hard to tell because my camera isn't great and it was too small but for anyone who has seen the movie Tangled will love this as much as I do. They lit it on fire and it was a floating lantern JUST like in the movie Tangled!! It was the coolest thing ever! Nic and I are bound and determined to learn how to make one this summer.

We had the cutest little romantic butler. He would always escort us to dinner and we thought it was a little strange at first until we realized he did it so that he knew for certain we would be out of our hotel room. Then he worked his magic, turned on some music and mood lighting, spread flowers on the bed for when we got back.

Delicious desserts always accompanied the room decorating as well. Thank you Richard (our butler)!

Wednesday: Day 3

Today we went zip-lining! Nic and I both had been wanting to do this for a really long time!! Our tour guide's name was George but he told us that everyone calls him George of the Jungle. We quickly realized why. At every chance he got he would hop out of the bus, scurry up a random tree with literally his bare hands, and hack down a piece of fruit or some leaves. Funniest man ever! We were driving to our destination when George brings up the animals of the island. He says, "now you know that St. Lucia is a rain forest right?" He asked if we were afraid of any animals and most people said snakes and spiders. His response... "Yep! Got both of those! Tarantulas and the fourth deadliest snake in the world!" GREAAAAT! At this point I was pretty much glued to my seat on the bus and didn't really want to get out ha. I sure did stay on the look out for most of the time though.... more to come on this topic later.















I think this shows my excitement... I LOVE ZIP LINING!

Nic just laughs at me...







The only creature we actually saw while zip lining was this little guy. Most beautiful blue eyes ever!

When we were done we were absolutely covered in sweat.. didn't think about that one and I forgot a pony tail hence the crazy hair and hand waving.

While zip lining, everyone kept asking where George was? We thought he would have come along. Well if you knew George, you would believe what he had been doing. Spent the ENTIRE time hunting down a trantula for us.. what a sweet sweet man.

Did you know that thing is crawling on your face you freak?!!!!

and on top of your head.

well and every where else on your body. The question is... where didn't he let it crawl

Then this brave soul decided to give it a try. You can see how fun it was from the look on his face haha especially when that thing started JUMPING! I screamed, pushed innocent people to the ground, and jumped on top of the nearest table. haha Nic was dying laughing... I on the other hand was not. FREAKED ME OUT!

The piece of wood sticking out from this post has the fourth deadliest snakes hung over it. Luckily they had been killed and hung there like a trophy. As you can see, they are brown and would blend into pretty much everywhere in St. Lucia so they are really hard to see. Glad we didn't run into any of those bad boys.

This was one of the many things George hacked down from a tree. He claims that the white pieces inside are cocoa and used for making our chocolate. It tasted nothing like chocolate to me though. We got to taste his favorite fruit on the island which was called Judy (his wife's name) and it was soo good. All there tropical fruit there was. Way different though than I had ever tasted before. I forgot to get a picture of a banana tree but they had banana tree farms growing allll over the island with blue bags wrapped around the bananas to protect them from the sun. Among the fruit, sweet old George offered us some type of cinnamon leaf to smoke (good thing he forgot his liter) Seriously close call on that one! And he offered us some type of red shot that had roots and seeds growing in it. Everyone tried it on the bus except for us and said that it burned when it went down. Glad we didn't have to try it!

Another one of Richard's romantic things he had ready for us when we got home from zip lining all day. By the way, I forgot to mention there were 12 zip lines we did, each getting longer and higher. Zip line number 12 was 1500 feet long and completely above the rainforest. It was absolutely incredible and such a rush! We wish we could have taken pictures but it was so high up that we didn't want to risk losing the camera. It has happened many many times and there really isn't any way to get it back.










We went to barefoot on the beach for dinner. It was beautiful to be right on the water with our toes in the sand! Only a few minutes after we got there the beach was attacked with thousands of moths. You can't see them in this picture but I was cracking up because everyone was swatting them away. They got into our water and were everywhere! I felt so bad but the resturant cleared out quick and we went with them.

Right next to our hotel room there was these pots and in one of them we always saw this morning dove camped out in there. Once we took this picture we realized it was because she had a nest in there. It didn't move the entire trip.. poor thing probablly roasted in there during the day.



Thursday: Day 4



We went on a boat to go on a snorkling tour! This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip! We saw so many beautiful fish and coral. Nic even saw a seahorse!!

While we were in St. Lucia we found out that this was the island that the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were filmed on. Right out front of our resort was one of the pirate ships from the movie.. so cool!!

If you wanted the maids to clean your hotel room you had to put a sign on the door. Nic and I had put the sign out that morning and when we got back from snorkling this "out of order" sign was on our bathroom door. We both looked at each other like "what the heck? It wasn't me!" hahaha We open up the door and found out it was one of sweet little Richard's tricks.















We were so sad that this was our last day on the beach.

That night we went to the fanciest resturant at the resort. It was called Gordon's and it was out on the end of a pier in the water. It was so beautiful out there at night! We had this amazing coconut king crab chowder!! I might need to find a recipe for it and learn how to make it now myself.

Friday: Day 5

We didn't get to take any pictures on this day because we were only at our resort for breakfast and then had to leave to get to the airport early for our flight home. We absolutely fell in love with St. Lucia while we were there and will definitely be going back there someday. The place where we had our honeymoon and fell even deeper in love.

We didn't get back home until 3 am Saturday morning in Pocatello. We were absolutely exhuasted all over again but it was so worth it. We came home to this little fella. Biggest bee I have ever seen in my life! Nic of course had to name him.. goodbye Thor! I won't be missing you even if Nic might!

Love, The Honeymooners :)