Our Christmas.

We spent our first Christmas together as Mr. and Mrs. Beck!  It was exciting to begin our own traditions and spend a lot of time with family.  

 But first and foremost, we had the opportunity to go to the St. George Temple for my brother Nathan's wedding about a week before Christmas!  Although there was a lot of snow on the ground (a bigger shocker for me), the weather was beautiful!

The day after returning from the wedding, it was time for finals.  Luckily, Colby and I both finished the semester strong.  It was nice being done so we could finally get ready for Christmas!  I loved decorating our apartment, especially our tree.  I personally want to keep our decorations up all year long.  That's how much I love them.

Although we were only engaged last Christmas, I decided to start a tradition.  Each year we will get a Christmas ornament that shows something significant we did that year.  Last year I got us a skydiving ornament since we had gone skydiving together.

Since I think that getting married this year was pretty significant, this is our new ornament for the year.

 I made these stockings just a couple of days before Christmas.  I plan to put our names on them someday.  After searching all over the apartment for a place to put them, I found the perfect spot.  Although we never actually got stuff to put in the stockings, they still added to our Christmas decor.

 

We went caroling on Christmas Eve with the nieces and nephews!  It was a lot of fun!

                        

We have spent a lot of the Christmas break with my family, which has been a lot of fun.  We decided to go back to our apartment for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning so we could share our first Christmas together!

Colby made an amazing breakfast of biscuits and gravy on Christmas morning.  He is basically a professional at that meal.

After spending the morning playing with our Christmas gifts (aka playing darts), we went back to spend more time with my family!  This is what a lot of the evening looked like.  Just Dance is addictive. 

We have loved having time to relax the past few days, and loved spending Christmas together as a married couple.  Merry Christmas, everybody!

Our much-needed vacation.

We're burnt out.  It seems like this semester couldn't end any sooner.  Each day is filled with what seems like endless amounts of studying.
  
We decided to take a few days off from school and start our Thanksgiving break early.  I'm not usually one for skipping school, but it was for a good cause--we needed to go to the BYU vs Notre Dame football game in Indiana with the Beck family.  We spent the day walking around Notre Dame campus and taking part in the tradition there.  The campus is beautiful. 

 We were excited to see the Touchdown Jesus we had been hearing about.

 The game was freezing.  We heard afterwards that it was the coldest game recorded in Notre Dame history.  I didn't think I would make it through the entire thing, but alas, I did.  I used to think Utah was cold, but it's nothing compared to the Midwest.  Colby was really sweet making sure I was alright.  During halftime I went into the girls bathroom along with a hundred other women to warm up.  I spent about 10 minutes standing underneath a huge heater--doing so allowed me to make it through the second half of the game.  Sadly, BYU lost.  But it was all such a fun and crazy experience! 

We spent the next couple of days around the Chicago area and saw some awesome things there.  We had pizza from one of Chicago's best pizza places, went to an aquarium, and saw The Bean at Millennium Park!

The pizza place we went to was a pretty one-of-a-kind experience.  Not only was the pizza delicious, the atmosphere was pretty cool as well. 

  This was the first time I had ever been to an aquarium, so I had a good time there.

I had just learned about The Bean in my Humanities class I took during the summer.  It was awesome seeing it in person.

 After Chicago, we came back to Iowa so we can spend Thanksgiving with the family.  This trip has been so relaxing, we don't want to even think about the homework we need to get done.  Luckily we still have a few more days before we go back!


Oh and by the way, today is our 7 month anniversary!  Marrying Colby in the temple was the best decision I've ever made.  I am so excited to spend eternity with my best friend.  I know I have become a better person because of him.

Fall fever.

Lately we've realized how completely boring we are.  This is the most productive semester we have both had thus far in our lives, and so we have had very little time for fun.  Luckily, we were able to fit in some fun recently!

The festivities began when we went on a walk to enjoy the beautiful weather and fall colors!

Part of our busyness has consisted of volunteering with a 15-year old boy through a BYU service program called IMPACT.  He is really into reptiles, particularly snakes.  The first time we went and visited him, he took his huge 100-pound snake out of its cage and allowed it to wander throughout the living room--right by me and Colby!  Luckily, we survived; but it was terrifying, nonetheless.  We had the opportunity of going to an IMPACT Halloween party with him this past week.  While there, we carved pumpkins and he and Colby participated in a doughnut eating contest (Colby lost).

It was the 15-year-old's idea to make our pumpkin look like this.

On Halloween, we spent the evening with our good friends Tyler and Lindy.  We started it off by getting 50 cent corn dogs at Sonic and then we went on a "Halloween Cruise."  The cruise consisted of a boat ride that took us partway down the Provo river while the "captain" told us scary stories.  We were also attacked by a pirate who turned out to be very nice--he gave us candy.  The cruise was a fun and unique way to spend our Halloween.  Afterwards, we went and watched a scary movie.  It turned out to be a great evening.

The river was lined with really cool carved pumpkins.  Oh, and the flash of the camera was blinding.

This weekend we also went ice skating with Tyler and Lindy.  It was our first time going since Colby proposed to me last December!  We have so many ice skating memories including our first date and the proposal.

That about does it for our fun week.  Oh, except one more thing.  We bought plane tickets for the BYU vs. Notre Dame game!  I think it's kind of a crazy thing to do, but there's nothing that will stop Colby from going to as many BYU football games as possible.

 

 
 

The many adventures of Colby.

Well, you could say I am boring--but Colby definitely isn't.  He's been living the high-life in adventures lately.

For his last "big hoorah" before the new semester at BYU, Colby and two friends decided to hike Mt. Timpanogos!  It was initially going to be for couples (aka I was going to go as well), but then I backed out, which made the other girl back out.  I may have missed out on an awesome experience, but what can I say?  I'm terrified of heights.
Luckily, Colby got some pretty good pictures of the adventure to show me so I wouldn't feel too left out.

They started the hike at about 3 am while I was still in my nice, warm bed.

Although I didn't go, I still tried to be a good supporter.  I made sure to send Colby with many treats and band-aids for the hike.

 They saw mountain goats!

 

They made it to the top!  It was probably good that I didn't go because these boys did the hike in record time--I definitely would have slowed them down.  They even made it back before the BYU football game that day, with time to spare! 

 

  


Colby and a buddy also put together a baseball game yesterday with a whole bunch of people who played baseball in high school.  They reserved a baseball diamond and everything!  It initially started out as being a ward vs. ward game, but then they had to recruit other people so they could have enough to play a real game!  Colby was so excited the whole week before the game--it was all he could talk about.  I'm happy it all worked out and that I was able to go watch my husband play some real baseball, along with the other player's wives!  Plus, as an added bonus, his team won!

Colby was able to relive his high school catcher days!

Although it looks like Colby has all of the fun, I still get my fun in.  No worries.  

 

Iowa.

Well guys, we've decided to finally join the blogging world.  We realized that with having family and friends spread all over, we needed a way to keep everyone updated on our newly married life! 

With just finishing a stressful summer term, what did we do to celebrate?  We went to Iowa!  After taking all of our finals in one day, we hit the road early the next morning.  Thirteen hours later, we were in Iowa!

One of Colby's main objectives in going to Iowa was to ride the wave runner.  I think he may have got his fix--we went 3 times in the 5 days we were there.  I think I finally started REALLY having fun on it the last time we went.  (photo credit: Taylor Atkinson) 

Let me tell you, those Beck boys are scary when it comes to riding these things.

We also had a good friend, Taylor Atkinson, take some pictures for us!  He is so good to us.

Everyone takes 4-month anniversary pictures, right?!


In the process of taking pictures, I accidentally kicked my shoe into the water.  Luckily a nice little stranger got in the lake and saved it for me.

A big highlight of the trip was Colby catching for his Grandpa.  It is amazing how much that 78-year-old man still has in him.

Iowa is beautiful.  We definitely loved our time there enjoying the beauty and spending time with family.  Iowa trip= successful.