happiness is...

"We all search for happiness, and we try to find our own "happily ever after."  The truth is, God knows how to get there!  And he has created a map for you; He knows the way.  He is your beloved Heavenly Father, who seeks your good, your happiness."

-Pres. Dieter F. Uchtdorf

to me, happiness is...

1. showers of kisses from brett

2. watching ROCKY

3. tan lines

4. game/movie night with best friends

5. seeing my family

6. cocoa bean cupcakes

7. sunshine

8. hula dancing

9. conquering a new recipe

10. a really good hair day

he's my cherry pie

remember those cherries i told you about 2 posts ago?  well i attempted to make a cherry pie!  it was my first attempt at making a REAL pie and it didn't go too bad.  i was very excited...

it started bleeding in the oven.

oh, my little bleeding heart.

so we just got back from a little vacation to island park and yellowstone and it was just perfect and relaxing.  we went with our bffs steve and gwen and we stayed at one of her friend's cabin.  we went all over creation, west yellowstone, yellowstone park, and the grand teton park.  i felt like we saw alotta nature.  i also got to take gwen's maternity pics!  it was just for fun and to give me a little practice using ailinh's sweet camera she let me borrow.  (thanks girl!)

whenever i look at this paint pot i really wanna dive in.

seeing old faithful wasn't as exhilarating as when i first saw it when i was younger.  but brett's never seen it so now his dream has come true.  haha jk. 

            i'm loving life, lovin my man and have been learning to love nature.  it's not as horrible as i always thought it was. 

2 year

2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!!

WOW. 2 years i've been married to my homeboy. you know, our anniversary is like our own holiday. i just get excited knowing that i get to spend the whole day with brett looking back at fond memories of how we got together and our first date, etc. i thought it was so cute looking back on our 1st year anniversary post and what a giddy little girl i was about my marriage. of course i'm still MADLY in love with my husband. i still have my giddy (can't believe i'm married) moments but i feel like our love has grown a lot deeper. i can safely say we're not honeymoonin it anymore and we've gotten to learn SOOO much more about each other than when we first got married. and i know we'll find out even more in the future.

here's a cute story from our wedding day.

our wedding song is "yellow" from Coldplay.

i can't listen to that song without crying...

so anyways, as we started our"first dance as a couple" brett started singing the words of the song to me. he's the kinda guy where he really wouldn't take the time to learn lyrics of songs like i do.

and right when he started singing i immediately bawled. i couldn't stop crying and i just lost it. i thought it was just one of the sweetest things he's ever done. i think it was also hitting me that i'm married, and that i found a man who truly loves me and i truly love him back.
he's my best friend and i don't ever wanna lose him.
he's stuck with me!


so to celebrate this momentous occasion we had dinner at our fav restaurant in idaho falls, texas roadhouse, and then went and saw a movie.
being young and poor that's really all we could do for our anniversary and it was just perfect.

then we came back home and watched our wedding video and couldn't help laughing at ourselves and getting a little teary eyed from our beautiful day.
i love seeing the differences in brett and i since our wedding day.
(yeah brett's hair is SOOO short! too short for me in fact. he seriously just cut it like, last week. he's gonna grow it out and he better keep it a little longer!)
we went back to where brett proposed to me on that fateful day.

sheesh i love him.

hi ho cherry o!

during the 7 week break from school our ward has been combining with another ward. a girl from the other ward told the relief society of her old bishop who has 2 cherry trees. and he needs people to come pick the cherries pronto, before they all go bad. i know i JUST wrote about me being allergic to cherries but i can't help myself. i remember when i was younger my aunt linda had a huge cherry tree in her backyard and my sisters and i got to go pickin. and when we were done we would give our loot to our grandma, who turned those cherries into the most delicious cherry jam ever!

so brett and i took steve and gwen out with us and it was so fun!

we didn't come at the most perfect time and some of the cherries were a little wormed through, picked at by robins, or just really overripe. but we still got quite a lot.

while picking the little red beads of fruit i kept thinking about the kiddie game hi ho cherry o! i really don't remember how to even play it but what i DO remember is putting the little plastic cherries in the cardboard trees and then putting the cherries in your little plastic bucket. anyone remember this game??

so being allergic to fresh cherries and i don't really feel like risking botox'd lips again, i wanna either make an awesome cherry pie (the bishop gave us a really good recipe) or i wanna make a sweet jam. i don't know, i just don't know.

but i sure am excited!

guns, love, and windmills

now we continue on with our story of our utah vaycay. my sister kyla have become a gun slingin woman and it's a little scary. haha, she's always been the girly girly girl so its funny to see her loading guns and shootin.

brett's been wanting a gun forever, i find them a little scary since i grew up in a non gun home. travis got kyla convinced about guns, that you never know when someone's gonna break into your home and harm you and your family. i think if we move to texas brett will try to convince me too...

my little mom!

tis a thug's life

we had more fun posing with guns than shooting them

it was really fun getting to know travis more and brett and i grew to love him even more.

my child on a really confusing playground thang.

everytime my parents come to utah they insist on taking us to their first apt in provo as a couple and my dad always loves seeing the changes they've made to the byu campus. then we went to byu's art museum, it was way awesome.

there were these huge windmills nearby where my aunt lives in spanish fork.

they were loud, huge, energetic, and active at night.

just like my family.

pamilya

(thats FAMILY in filipino)

we are alive and back from our adventurous vacation in utah.

it was grand and wonderful. seeing my family makes my heart so freakin happy. i'm so grateful for my family and when i get to see them i just soak up the time i have with them.

but first on the way down to spanish fork (where we were staying with my auntie) i just HAD to see my best friend charlene before she left on her mission to the PHILIPPINES!! when charlene and i were younger we would say that she and i would both go on a mission to the philippines and well, i have brett to thank for ruining that for me...jkjk life happens, but i'm SOO proud of charlene for going on a mission. i can't wait for her to come back speakin tagalog fluently!

and the reason why we went to utah...ALLLLL the WAYYYYYY down to manti, where my sweet sis and her hubs got sealed. it was so beautiful and there were just too many tears, coming from me that is.

here are some cute pics i took of the happy couple...

me and the boy

and i took a few awesome pics with my auntie's DSLR camera and i NEED a camera like it!! BRETT!!

did you know the manti temple was built on a rattlesnake-infested site?

yikes.

it was also the only temple to be dedicated by president Lorenzo Snow.

mm hmm.

our bffs steve and gwen came down to meet my folks and having them with us made our vaycay even more fun. turns out steve served his mission in the same area where my filipino family's from in the philippines. so they all had a lot of fun talking about whats changed and who's still there and whatnot.

brett and i gorged ourselves on the endless filipino food my amazing mom, aunts, and grandma cooked.

my parents brought out tootsie as a surprise! i miss da tootz

these boys are just some of my handsome cousins in the family.

what the heck? they're all taller than me, and before i used to pick on em when i towered over them.

my boy cousins have grown up to be such gentlemen. and kately (the one next to me) has grown up to be such a sweet little lady.

the guy in the red shirt is my 18 yr old cousin kollin who just won 1st place in the junior olympics for heavylifting! filipino represent!!

4 of the 8 mobo siblings and some of the chitlins

reunited with my girl tootz!

more to come later

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