Random Provotian {Adventures}

Do you want to know a funny thing about Kenny? When we had been living in Provo for about a week he decided that it was necessary to come up with a term for all these Provo people around us. The term he so proudly coined was "Provotian." Well, we say it all the time now. One would use this word to describe something that the people of Provo do... "That is so Provotian." or it could be used to describe these crazy driving, walk across the street when I am driving near you, college kid kind of people..."There are so many Provotains on the street." You feel me?

Anyways...since we DO live in Provo, I guess you could even call us Provotian..although at times I am not so sure it is a compliment. :] Long story short, we have been up to some good ol' Provotian fun lately. Here is what we have been up to....

We have gone ethnic with our food intake. You don't realize how big of a deal this is!! Kenny dislikes Chinese food, and slowly but surely I have been changing his mind. (Muahahaha) A couple weekends ago we went on a date to a Chinese restaurant in town, and it was SO GOOD! I am glad that Kenny is changing his mind about some of my favorite foods.

We tortured ourselves by going to the humane society and looking at dogs. I say "torture" because we want a dog so bad, but we can not have one because of the apartment complex we live in. I am almost tempted to send emails of bribery to the landlord just so we can have a cute little 3rd member of the family in our house....however I am not so sure how that is gonna work.  Needless to say, despite the fact that we know we can not have a dog, we enjoy looking at and playing with them anyways.

We stopped to take pictures of the crazy rainbows in the land of Provotia. :] There was even a double rainbow!!! These rainbows occurred while I was waiting for Kenny to pick me up from campus one day; he said that everyone was pulling over and driving ridiculous because of it too. Not surprised. But I guess you could count me in the mix too because I took about 10 photos in the street just to capture this beauty!

We have been indulging in FREE ice cream. It is free because of a gift card my sister gave to us, and we were not complaining when she handed that bad boy over. Have you ever had rocky road ice cream from Coldstone?! It is my favorite! No really...it is my favorite. Although, I am always reminded of my lactose intolerance after I splurge on that dairy....but who cares?! It is dang good ice cream!! 

Moral of the story? We are having fun here in Provotia. :] And I do have to say that it is even more fun having my sister here! She must take after me, because she is a crack up.

Anniversary #1

One year!! I can't believe it has already been ONE YEAR! Since our anniversary was on a Monday this year, (and we both had work and I had class AND a butt-load of homework) we decided to celebrate our anniversary the weekend before the "actual" anniversary. Whatevs, it worked for us! This was a much needed break from school, and it was the perfect "stay-cation" in Salt Lake City.

We headed up to Salt Lake City on Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel and walked around City Creek Mall. We love City Creek, especially The Red Iguana in the food court! :] They serve some pretty good Mexican food, and if you know Kenny you know that we eat Mexican food all the time. After dinner we went to my favorite Independent Movie theater in SLC that only shows Sundance Independent movies. We sure do love our Indie movies. After the movie we walked around town and wandered back to our hotel room. It was nice not having to worry about homework or chores.

Saturday we slept in, went to a farmers market, did some more walking, went to the Church History Museum, and did some more walking. Kenny had his Fantasy Football draft in the afternoon so we made sure to be back at the hotel for his draft. I was able to get some rest while he was "drafting." ...boys.... Saturday night we went out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. This was our big "celebratory dinner." Dinner was great, but the cheesecake was even better.

It was a great little trip away from Provo. It was hard to come back to reality. On our actual Anniversary we exchanged "happy anniversary" lovey-dovey stuff, and then I spent the rest of my non-work/school time writing a paper. Hah! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to us!

We have both learned a lot this past year. The most important lesson we learned this year is that WE ARE AWESOME. :] I can't wait for many, many, many more awesome years.

Date Night - Dinner & A Movie

When it comes to date night for Kenny and I, we seem to be the "dinner and a movie" type of couple. What can I say, we LOVE to watch movies. (That was, in fact, what we did on our first date). So when date night came around, and despite the efforts to try and do something "creative", we found ourselves doing the dinner and a movie routine. (I can't complain....it works for us!) 

We decided last minute to go to a restaurant we had read about in a magazine, it was rated one of the top 5 places to eat in Utah Valley - Milagros. Man oh man, this restaurant does not disappoint. The best part is that Milagros serves Mexican food - which happens to be our favorite. You see, we have been in search of the best Mexican food Provo has to offer. We no longer need to search any farther because we have found Milagros. AMAZING! Even Kenny (the picky eater - especially when it comes to Mexican food) gives it two thumbs up. I am pretty sure I raved about our eating experience here for hours after we left the restaurant. ...It really was that good. After dinner Kenny and I went to go see a movie - The Hunger Games. We debated whether or not we should see it because I am reading the book right now...but I gave in and we saw it anyways. It was a great movie that caught my attention the entire time...talk about suspense! Ironically enough, seeing the movie made me even more excited to finish the book. On our way home from the movie I was raving about how this was one of the best date nights we have been on. Great dinner. Great movie. 

We have many many more date nights in our future to try and get "creative"... but for now, I am grateful for these memories - an amazing dinner and a great movie with the world's best husband. Like I said, "dinner and a movie" works for us. 

Julian {Adventure}

With Thanksgiving comes a lovely four-day weekend. I have been looking forward to this specific four-day weekend for quite a while now. You see - Kenny & I put together a "bucket list" of all these things that we want to do before we move to Utah, we call this list our "California Bucket List". On this lovely four-day weekend we had planned to cross off one our our bucket list items - going to Julian!

Julian is a quaint town up in the mountains here in California. I have fun memories growing up of going to Julian with people from church and taking those old fashioned photos - you know those awkward ones where you dress up in ugly clothes and have a serious face? Yeah, those. I also have fun memories of going up to Julian with friends from high school and getting lost in the little used bookstore. And it wouldn't be a trip to Julian without a slice of pie from Mom's Pie House!! Needless to say I was excited to go to Julian with my Mr. Norton & create some new memories.

The drive to Julian is nothing short of beautiful - driving up and down those windy roads surrounded by beautiful nature (my favorite)! It was all making me very excited to go on drives with Kenny up the various canyons of the Utah mountains. Once we got to Julian we walked around looking in all the shops. We even hiked up to the Julian "pioneer cemetery" and looked at those old tombstones. We winded through the rooms of the used bookstore & searched through those old smelly books. Kenny and I also went into an eerie antique store, where there were even more smelly old vintage things! :] I love getting away to Julian because you can escape the city, enjoy some crisp air, eat some pie, and get your walk on!

We ended our trip amongst the pies at Mom's and buying some fresh bread at Dudley's bakery. It was the perfect day trip getaway. We can now cross off "trip to Julian" on our California bucket list. :]

I love adventures with my Mr. Norton!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone - but for documentation sake, I am going to write about it. This blog is about documenting our married lives after all, isn't it?!

This year for Thanksgiving we spent it with Kenny's family. It was a small family gathering, but it felt so great to spend time with family. (I L-O-V-E my in-laws!) Last year we spent most of the time with my family, so it was only right to spend all of Thanksgiving day with the Norton family this year. Thanksgiving was simple, it consisted of yummy food, family, & football. Personally, I think thats all you need on this lovely holiday. I really wish I would have gotten some pictures of famliy together - but , alas, I did not. I am working on doing better of caputring memories through photographs - however I am still a work in progress.

ALSO - we were not totally deprived of a Vidal family Thanksgiving this year either. On the Monday after Thanksgiving we got together with my mother, my sibblings, and my wonderful grandparents and had a Thanksgiving dinner. Another day of yummy food, family, and football - believe it or not. It's kinda fun to have had the Thanksgiving celebration two days this year instead of just one.

As Kenny and I reminiced on Thanksgiving memories we realized that this is our last Thanksgiving holiday as residents of California. Utah will be our home starting in January - and with that possibly brings Utah Thanksgivings (my guess is that it will be too expensive to come back to CA for Thanksgiving AND Christmas). ...Let's hold off on telling our parent's that though.

Overall it was a great Thanksgiving holiday spent in sunny California. I am so grateful for two wonderful families to spend this holiday with. However, it is exciting to think about what adventures lie in store for my little family (Kenny & I). What traditions are we going to start/pass on when we have our little babies? I hope that I can teach our future children that Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude - not just yummy food & football. I love this quote from our prophet Thomas S. Monson about gratitude, it sums up what I hope to teach our future children - "to express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven."

Operation Butterfinger

I am in love with pinterest. In fact, if you talked to Kenny, he would say I am border line obsessed. (It's true). On Tuesday I actually made something I saw on pinterest: homemade butterfingers. It turned out quite nice, & it was super easy (it requires only three ingredients!).

(Find recipe here.) 

I would consider this my first pinterest success. (High fives will be accepted)