Two Years and counting...

Two years ago, a young lass named Kelly decided to tie her life to mine in the bonds of eternal marriage.  To this day, I still wonder if she was thinking clearly.  But, too late for her! (Insert evil laugh here...)
In all seriousness, though, it really was two years to this day that we were married.  Hard to believe.  Like a fairly tale, somehow this beauty decided to fall for this beast, this princess decided to love the street urchin, this classy lady descended to love this backwoods kid.  Kelly may say that I am her Prince Charming (and for that reason I will forever be thankful), but I know I am no prince...though, I gotta admit, maybe a little charming. 
Through thick and thin, Kelly has been my best friend.  I don't want to make this post just one big mushy-gushy blip that makes people roll their eyes at how sappy I can be, but the truth is that I have a gem of a wife, no wait, a gem studded crown of a wife!  She is worth more to me than any riches this world could hold.
Is our marriage perfect? No, but that is because I am in it.  Kelly is the perfect part of this union.  I don't know if I tell her that enough, but I tell myself how lucky I am everyday.  I guess I should follow my own advice that I usually give to love sick puppies that share their feelings via modern-day technology (chiefly the book of face), and get off this blasted machine, quit using it to tell all of you how much I love her when she is fifteen feet away, and go tell her myself!
Okay, you all convinced me.  I am on my way to do it right now...

Behind door 2 is...

A new car!
If only Bob Barker had been there.  It would have made the moment perfect.  But alas, there was no Bob, just a car salesman who did not speak with nearly as much authority or game show host flair.
Some people may look at our recent posts and say, wait...didn't they just buy a house?  Well, yeah.  I guess we did.  And now we bought a vehicle?  Yeah, we did.  I hope that doesn't make us seem crazy, but I don't know if I could take riding my bike to work and school in the cold of winter.  It is only October, and I was already complaining about it being cold in the mornings and too windy for my enthusiasm for biking to keep me doing it for much longer.
We'd been talking about getting a second car for a while now.  We'd been saving our pennies for over two months, riding bikes to work and school, and avoiding eating out as much as possible.  When the weather started getting colder, the need for a second vehicle became much more clear.  So we started looking a bit harder, and found a deal that was pretty tempting.  Turned out it was too tempting, and we didn't pass it by.

So, say hello to the newest addition to the Stelly fleet, a silver Jeep Liberty (yet to be named, our other car is called the White She-Devil)!

Our first night apart in almost two years...

Yes, believe it or not, Kelly and I have never spent a night apart in almost two years.  People laugh when we tell them this because it seems to foreign to them that we've spent every night together since we were married.  What can I say?  We've never really had a reason to be apart.  But, the time had to come sooner or later, and it came in the form of the annual excursion into the mountains to shroud myself in camouflage and attempt to sneak within 40 yards of a thousand pound animal with antlers.  It really gets the heart pumping when a bull elk stands a stone's throw away and bugles at you...oooweee!  That part is thrilling enough, but the real challenge is getting an arrow to actually stick itself into said beastie.  When that happens, oh boy, it is a feeling that is pretty awesome.  Too bad I've never felt it, which is something I hope to rectify soon.

So, here I am completing this post on Tuesday the 20th, come to report on the momentous event that was our first night apart.  First off, I am sad to admit that I did not stick any big antlered animals with an arrow.  Didn't really see any honestly.  Oh well, such is life.  But, as to the night apart, I think my experience was less comfortable than Kelly's.  Kelly slept in a nice warm bed with several pillows next to her to form a replacement me for one night.  She reported to have slept very well actually.  Me...not so well.  Reasons why: a) it rained all night, and in a tent even a light rain sounds like a torrential downpour, b) I slept on the uneven ground (done it before, so this shouldn't have been a big deal, but...), c) the two people who shared the tent with me couldn't hold still on their cots and moved around loudly all night long.  Needless to say, it took about 11 hours of laying on the ground in order to get 6 hours of actual sleep.
Morale of the story...either sleep on a cot yourself, or bring ear plugs to block out the noise.  Or stay home with your wife and sleep in a warm bed, something I plan to do for upwards of 360 days of the year from now on (there will be a few hunting trips in there even if it means getting less sleep than if I were surrounded by angry howler monkeys).

September showers bring October...

Kelly loves thunderstorms.  She says Idaho doesn't have enough of them.  I have to agree with her.  We do not have enough thunderstorms.  That is why whenever we have one, she seems to get this excitement about her.  She soaks it in like a kid at Christmas.  Her eyes light up with every crack and roll of thunder. 
So today, when it rained for almost an hour straight (an oddity in Idaho, even though it was kind of come and go and not straight sheets of rain) and the thunder rolled through the early afternoon sky, she was happy.  I was happy because it rained enough that I didn't think I would have to water the lawn for a few days.  Save money on water bill...check!  (Bills are not fun.  We should do away with them.)
The whole point of this post is...thunderstorms make Kelly happy.  When Kelly is happy, that is a good thing.  It makes me happy.  There is a general happy feeling throughout the house (which is still waiting for its first official guest at the Hotel Stelly, it could be you!).  Therefore, we should have more thunderstorms in Idaho.  Somebody please call the proper authorities and put in our order.  Thank you!
And if anyone knows what September showers bring in October, I would love to hear their thoughts.  I couldn't think of anything inspiring.  Bummer, I know.

Homeowners at last!

Well, in all truth we have been homeowners for almost three weeks, but this is the official blog posting to show you all what our house looks like.  We got a nice little 4 bedroom, 2 bath house here in Pocatello and became the official owners on August 5th.  That's when the fun began...or at least the painting did.

Splotchy Tan Paint Job

As you can see from the before picture of the front room, it was a light color and then had a sponging type texture in a tan color all over.  We didn't really dig it, so we primed the whole thing, and threw up a better (in our opinion) shade of tan. The results can be seen below with the couch and love seat we inherited from my folks.  Doesn't look half bad if I say so myself, and I do.

 The next room we tackled was the bedroom, which had a "beautiful" (as my niece Maren put it) purple wall.  We didn't agree, so away with the purple.  The only problem was that we discovered that the previous owners painted the whole room with a crazy color of neon green paint that everything just stripped right off of.  Let's say we got a little ambitious, and then realized that our ambition to strip all of the paint on top of said green nastiness off wasn't very smart. We gave up, sanded things down, did our best to stop anything from peeling, primed it, and painted the room gray...like an elephant as another family member was quick to point out (don't remember which one it was that enlightened us with their quick wit).  The gray is different, true, but it goes well with the color of our stuff, and is a nice cool, calming color. 

 The next room to conquer...the kitchen! It was a weird color of pinkish, salmon-ish, tanish...we don't really know what color it was.  Just not the one we wanted.  Plus, it had weird stains from where the former owners had metal decorations hanging, so that took a little cleaning.  But, in the end, with a little elbow grease, some Mr. Clean, a few coats of primer, and the piece de la resistance (correct me if that isn't how it is spelled, I never learned French)....Lime Sparkle paint!!!!!!!!!! As you can see below, the kitchen turned out to be a nice, light shade of green.  We like it.  Its bright like Kelly's personality.  In fact, that is exactly what it is like according to my dad--it is Kelly in a paint can.  Maybe that's why I like it so much.

 There are other rooms in the house, several in fact, but these are the only ones we took pictures of so far.  Anyone who wants to see more will either have to come see our house in person (highly recommended) or wait for another blog post (somewhere on the not so recommended end of the spectrum) that chronicles the rest of our new abode.  Besides, why wait for another blog post when you can come see us and Kelly can whip up something so yummy that it will blow your top?!  Yeah, no reason to sit there on your computer waiting.  Just come on down to Stelly's!  We'll leave a light on for you.

June-the Fastest Month Ever...

I looked at the calendar in my closet office the other day and realized that June was gone.  Where did it go?  If anyone knows, please let me know, because I feel like I have been cheated out of twenty-some odd days.  Looking back, I remember about three days of the whole month, and that's about it.  Day 1) Kelly and I went camping for the first time together, took my dad's truck because he was out of town, ate brats cooked over a campfire, and braved the chilly evening; day 2) went golfing with my two brothers-in-law here in Pocatello; and day 3) Kelly's birthday, celebrated by going golfing (played pretty horrendous), and going to eat at Famous Dave's in Idaho Falls.  Good times? Yeah, of course, but do they constitute a full month?  Missing something there.
I guess that is life, though.  Or at least that's what people tell me.
July is here, and Kelly and I have started the housing search.  Who told us it would be so hard and confusing?  No one, yeah that's right, no one.  We spent six hours looking at houses one day, and by the end we were so dog tired that all the houses blended together almost.  It took two days to recover before we could even have a productive conversation about the houses we had seen.  It is exciting, though.  We are both looking forward to getting into our own place and beginning the next chapter of our lives together.  Hopefully we'll get this show on the road and soon be able to post about our new abode and all our grand plans for making it our own.

A Marriage and a Baseball Game

I often get the question about how I became a Seattle Mariners fan.  People wonder how a kid from Idaho came to like a team from Washington instead of one of the bigger name teams, like the Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, or even the Cubs.  If we go by proximity, why not the Rockies?  What can I say besides I grew up when the likes of Griffey, A-Rod, Johnson, Martinez, and Buehner were wearing the Mariners' colors, and when you throw Ichiro Suzuki into the mix, how could I not be a fan?
So, what does this have to do with anything?  Well, besides explaining myself...probably not much.  But, my devoted following of the Mariners did help Kelly and I become interested in each other when we were first chatting at the BYU Telefund, and if all I ever get from being a Mariners fan is the knowledge that it helped me win over my dear wife, then that is good enough for me.  
We've been to three games now: one in New York City against the Yankees (we lost, booo!) when I won a sweepstakes that gave me four tickets to the game, and four airplane tickets (if you want more details, we'd be happy to tell the story), a second in Chicago against the White Sox (once again, we lost, something a Mariners' fan gets used to after a while), and finally, a third in Seattle at Safeco Field.  This was a big one for me, because I've been dreaming of going to Safeco for a long time, but never made it.  Yeah, it sounds dumb, but I'd been to NYC to watch them, and the Chicago to watch them, but had I ever been to a home game?  Kinda backwards, I know.  It was worth the wait, though.  It was a great game, we had great seats, and believe it or not, the Mariners won! 
So, what does any of this have to do with a wedding?  Well, the reason I was able to live out my dream of going to Safeco Field and watch my favorite team play ball was because Kelly's sister Caitlyn got married in the Seattle LDS Temple.  I have her and her husband, Bergen, to thank for deciding to have the wedding there and not some other place.  Little did they know when they were first planning their wedding that they were actually helping me fulfill my dream, but as they both can probably confess, I let them know that they were repeatedly, and probably incessantly.  What can I say?  They gave me the opportunity, and only a fool would pass it up, and my mama didn't raise no fool.