Happy New Years Eve!

It's currently 9:49 PM and so far we've had a pretty low key New Years Eve. Tyler and I saw Avatar this morning at 11. It was a movie we were both hesitant about seeing and so grateful that we did. Directed by James Cameron, it was STUNNING visually and the story line which has gotten some iffy reviews was actually quite good. Go see it at the theater and in 3D. Watching it at home on your 40 something inch just wont do it justice.

After the movie, we came home...Tyler got ready for work at 4 and I got ready for shopping with a friend. Wow was it busy out there! I would like to say now is a great time to shop; there are great sales going on, however everything seems to be thoroughly picked through. I did find some great shoes for Tyler though. Beautiful, fun shoes.

After Ross, I headed over to my parents for some good Bar-B-Que and some DVR-ed Evan Almighty. My parents loved the movie. I haven't heard them crack up like that in a long time.

and here I am. Tyler should be home in an hour...in plenty of time to count down the New Year. So long 2009. 2009 was memorable in so many ways, but we're hoping that 2010 will be even better.

The Day After Christmas

So, our hiatus from the internet and TV is officially over! Yay! We did pretty good, although we did cheat on the 7th day...whoops! All in all it was a much needed break. We watched a few great movies and rekindled our love for books. Tyler finished The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and I finished If I Stay. Both good books! Tyler then started Next by Michael Crichton...

Christmas was wonderful. We celebrated Christmas Eve with Tyler's mom, Jan and his brother, Justin (his dad Jerry was working late). I made my first ham and we had mashed potatos, corn and rolls on the side. That night we both had a hard time sleeping in anticipation of Christmas morning and Tyler woke me up several times early, early in the morning. He says I wasn't asleep either, but I'm quite sure I was trying. We finally got up around 8:30 and opened up presents. Both Tyler and I scored on gifts. In addition to other fun things, I got Tyler Pirate Latitudes, the last book written by Michael Crichton and Tyler gave me The Lovely Bones, a book I picked up years ago and started, but never finished (movie also coming out next month). So, we're currently reading our new books and loving them. Reading is such a fun, cheap way to spend time.

We spent Christmas day at Tyler's parents house where we enjoyed another great ham dinner, chatted and played games. By 8 PM, we were spent and went home to put on our PJs and relax. We ended up watching our new DVD, Monsters Inc and went to bed after.

We had a wonderful Christmas...

Happy Hiatus

The internet is a useful tool, but sometimes it can be horribly addicting and time consuming. All too often I find myself getting online to check one site and then getting carried away (almost by magic) to another and then another. Soon, I've spent two or three hours on the internet without even realizing it. And time...well you just can't get that back. I normally work from 1-6 leaving all morning to take care of things...work around the house and do other fun things, but sadly the last few mornings I've completely wasted my time on the internet (along with watching HGTV). I haven't even gotten out of my pajamas until 12. I've always been a Net Nerd, but I'm ready to stash this addiction away. Our home still needs too much work for me to be wasting my time on the internet. So, in the sake of productivity and probably greater happiness, Tyler and I are not only nixing the internet completely for one week, but we're also giving up TV (again, for one week). One week! What a sweet, devoted husband I have to join me on this little adventure. We're starting tomorrow and will let you know how it went next Wednesday. Hopefully, not sooner. I'm excited to see how creative we get with our extra time.

New Addition to Our Blog

Well, As you all know, I (Tyler) work at Hollywood Video, so in our time off we end up watching a lot of movies. Sometimes they are at home on Blu-Ray, othertimes they are at the theater. Sometimes, believe it or not, we watch them on just network TV. So, since we watch so many movies, I thought it would be fun to add a feature to our blog over on the right hand side of our 10 most recently seen movies. After we see a new movie we will just add what we thought about it over in our always updating list. Right now I think we will just have a grade next to the movie, but if you want to know more or ask us about any other movies we may have seen, we will fill you in! Hope you like it. Let me know what you think about the new feature!

6 Months for Us!

Happy 6th Month Anniversary to Tyler and I!!! I have the sweetest husband in the whole world who makes me happy and keeps me laughing all the time. 6 months have flown by. Some of the highlights of these past 6 months...

1. Buying our first home!

2. Buying our dog child, Josie.

3. Going to our first Diamondbacks baseball game.

4. Going to our first women's pro basketball game (the Phoenix Mercury's)

5. Going to our first Coyotes hockey game (and my first hockey game ever).

6. Celebrating our first 4th of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving as a married couple.

7. Buying our first Christmas tree and putting it up.

8. Taking our first "vacation" - a trip to Utah for a wedding and to see Salt Lake City and the temple (my first time!)

9. Going boating on the lake with my parents.

10. Crying about and then loving paint colors!

11. Discovering what foods we like and don't like (I'm not a fan of barbecue sauce and Tyler doesn't like ricotta cheese...) and discovering meal favorites (breakfast bagels and our special chicken from Wal-Mart)

12. Having people over for a Salad Master dinner when we were stressed about our dog having ticks (stressful hilarity).

13. Tyler walking our dog wearing Heely's.

14. Tyler introducing me to Desperate Housewives and watching all 5 seasons from the beginning!

15. Late night visits to Barnes and Noble and Tyler reading me books in the children's section.

16. Late night chats over why we love each other...

& so much more! I love you Tyler!

Our House (A Photo Tour)

Now is my second blog for the day. I know we have been mentioning our home and our decorations, and painting in a lot of our entries and I felt bad that there were never any pictures to go with these descriptions. So I wanted to take you on a little photo tour of our home.


Our first stop is the living room. It was moved around a little bit recently to fit in the tree, but I think it works just great how it is.


Next is our little dining room that sits nestled in between the kitchen and the living room. It is still decorated in our fall décor and looks quite fantastic if you ask me! (mostly because I did it…)


This is our kitchen. It is the perfect size for us and there is a nice breakfast nook in the back for us to still finish up and furnish (but no hurry yet)


Here’s our master bedroom… Well, the master bed anyway. Jackie picked out the comforter and it goes pretty well with the rest of the decorations. We love our piece of art hanging above the bed as well… It was the product of a great sale at JC Penny.

So now you have a little bit more to picture what we are referring to when we discuss our home.

Tyler's Take on Thanksgiving

This is my first of two blogs that I plan on uploading today. As Jackie said, she is giving me the chance to write about our first Thanksgiving as a Morris family. The two of us headed over to my parent’s house for dinner and other family chatting and being together. We visited as we listened to Kristina play the piano. It was Jeran and Kristina, my parents, Justin and his girlfriend Stephanie, and Jackie’s Parents. It was the first time since our wedding that we had everyone together like that. It was a lot of fun to watch the parents talk about us and their other families, and share some good embarrassing stories about us. Aside from the visiting and conversations, the food was fantastic. We all pitched in and brought something to share with the rest.

One of the biggest highlights for me that night was to see Jackie eat pumpkin pie for the first time ever. She started with a slice a half centimeter wide, but I convinced her to eat at least a full bites worth, and with cool whip. As soon as she took the bite (hesitantly) she exclaimed “I like pumpkin pie!” and got herself a real slice.

To end the night we sat around and watched the movie Night at the Museum 2, then headed our own different ways. It was a fun Thanksgiving that we will remember for quite a while!

Today and Yesterday

Tyler says I don't give him a good enough chance to blog, so I'll let him cover the details of Thanksgiving, but what I can say is that we had a great time with our family (my parents, his parents, his two brothers, wife and girlfriend). I love living within 10-15 minutes of both sets of parents and brothers. I'm able to help my parents with their dozen animals when my mom's in the hospital for chemo; I stop by my parents' house for dinner when Tyler's working late and Tyler and I have Sunday dinners at his parents' house. Not to mention that our parents have been a huge help in getting our home together (fixing up the house, showing us how to do things, etc). I'm forever grateful for all of their help.

After we got home from Thanksgiving dinner we perused the Black Friday ads. There was only one thing I was interested in/had already planned ahead for and I'm proud to say that after waking up at 1 AM and then again at 3 AM this morning, Tyler and I scored a sweet Black Friday deal online. Totally worth having to get up again at 7 AM for work (my only 10 hour shift is on Friday, the rest are 5 hour shifts). I hope the gift-e enjoys their gift!

Got off work today at 6 and then headed over to my parents to feed their animals since they left for the Colorado river this morning. Got home and decorated the Christmas tree (which went up yesterday and was covered this morning by quite a few strands of lights...thanks Tyler!). The tree is beautiful! It's decorated with lime green, red and silver bulbs. It's quite the impressive yet economical first year Christmas tree if I do say so myself. If you are shopping for a Christmas tree I highly recommend Wal-Mart's beautiful, affordable, artificial trees. In fact, I recommend Wal-Mart for pretty much anything. Meandering off the perimeter path of groceries means I get lost for hours on end in that store.

Hope your Thanksgiving was wonderfully successful too. We'll chat again soon later. I'm off to wash the length of today in the shower.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays! So, I got the shopping bug a little earlier this year than usual and can't wait to finish Christmas shopping. In fact, Tyler and I put together an Amazon order this morning. You can't beat shopping from the couch! We just have four more people to shop for, a few gift cards and a bunch of sweet generic (yummy) gifts to go and we're covered. As far as the home goes, we're already getting decked out for Christmas. We visited Tyler's brother Justin at work (Target) one night and came home with a red snowflake table runner, two snowflake/two snowman pillows for the couch, two Santa shirt kitchen towels and a Joy mat. What an expensive visit! I also bought Christmas ornaments and lights for our Christmas tree in October. We're buying our Christmas tree Monday (I believe, right Tyler?) and as soon as it gets in the door it's going to be set up. I've been waiting since May for our first Christmas and am so excited for it to happen! For those of you who are shopping ahead, check out www.black-friday.net if you like me never have ... Some stores are releasing their Black Friday ads a little early and there are links to the items that will be on sale. Supposedly, you can click on the links Friday and purchase the items online without waiting in long lines at 4 in the morning. Though if you haven't ever done a super early morning Black Friday, you must do it.

Well off to get gas for the car and head to work. Later!

Indoor Gardening

Lately I have been grumpy - grumpier than usual and it's no fun. For me or the people around me. I think I need some hobbies, some things to get excited over when the grump urge comes over me. Any suggestions? I'm thinking (and bare with me) indoor gardening (think glass terrariums and miniature flowers), re-painting/re-selling yard sale furniture, (learning how to) sew, blogging obsessively OR...??

My interests once upon a time were horseback riding, web site design and reading. I haven't done much of any of those lately, but could get back into them. I just need some spice in my life besides my husband.

Today I'm off to church alone. At least the first part of it (Sacrament). Tyler, his parents and brother are on their way home and should be here around 5. Woo hoo! Although I did sleep really, really well last night. It seemed like one second I shut my eyes and the next, it was morning. It was a deep sleep. But, at some point I did take my sweater off. I find the things you can't remember, but did kind of strange. Good thing I don't sleep walk - I would be mortified with myself.

Well must go to shower, get ready and then head to my parents to print off something for church. My mom is painting my old room this morning and I'm curious as to what color she chooses anyways. Until later!

Here's To Sleepovers!

So, Tyler left this morning and it was sure sad to see him go. I miss him already, but he'll be back soon enough on Sunday. Tonight I'm packing up the dog and we're heading over to my parents for a sleep over in their guest room. I'm not brave enough to spend the night in my own house alone. At least not until tomorrow night when I will have to do it (my night's going to end too late to head over to my parents). Wish me luck Saturday night. Kind of excited about tonight. I haven't been to a sleep over in quite a while!

Far Too Long We Know!

So, first of all, let me apologize for the lack of interest in blogging lately! We've had a trying couple of months that just didn't seem too blog worthy. Sure, there were times I thought about jumping on to blog, but who wants to read about a tick infested dog? (Tyler says he does). But, we've made it through as a stronger couple even more in love and that's what's important isn't it?

Since we last blogged some changes have been made to the house and I wish I could post some pictures, but I sold my camera just before we got married in May and Tyler has yet to teach me how to use his. (Tyler!) We found a great painter named Leo who has been my personal hero as of late. He painted our upstairs a lovely blue gray color and re-painted our ceiling downstairs a legitimate white (it was actually yellow). Again I wish I had photos, but for purposes of imagination our lower level (kitchen and dining area) are a light green with our living room a light blue gray and then our stairs, a darker shade of blue gray. I wasn't convinced when any of the colors first went up, but now I'm thoroughly enjoying them. They're different and that's just what we are.

In other news, Tyler is leaving me tomorrow for his Granny's funeral in Utah (returning Sunday) and I sure will miss him. It will be the first time since we've been apart since getting married and I'm kind of not looking forward to it. Though I am glad he's able to attend his Granny's funeral with his family. I'm very sorry for the loss. When my grandma passed away a few years ago it hit me hard and I still think about her often. We will see them again though!

Well, I will continue soon, but I must go. We're headed out to dinner with my parents and I need to change. Love you all.

D-backs and Fireworks

Hopefully, just a quick update since there never seems to be enough time in the morning before I have to go to work and I have to get things done today!...

This weekend was pretty fun. Tyler and I joined the other kid-less couple in our ward for a wonderful double date night. We went to a D-backs baseball game which was followed by an even more exciting Montgomery Gentry concert and fireworks. I had a hard time staying focused on the baseball game. I found myself paying more attention to what the people in front of us looked like and what they were wearing ... the cool AC floating down in gusts ... and deciphering what all the letters and numbers on the scoreboards meant. Eventually, I had to turn the game into a giant I Spy field. I am so horrible! I did have fun though. Just being at the game, feeling the spirit of it was fun.

We won too.

After the game, we moved over a few blocks of seats to see the concert better and that was a blast. I had no idea I knew so many Montgomery Gentry songs. I sang along to almost all of them thanks to work and the country music we play there. I really got into it.

The concert was followed by beautiful fireworks. The perfect cap to a great night and the best $7.50 per ticket spent.

After the game Tyler and I agreed that we need to catch some concerts when they're in town, but nothing was mentioned about going to another baseball game.

The Cardinals on the other hand...

Another date night possibility?

Tyler's Turn...

Well, I was told today that I should take a little time and update the blog myself, so here goes. Life is going great right now. We are nearing our 3 month anniversary. Make fun of us all you want for celebrating the month marks, but you know you did it too. Jackie and I went and saw the Time Traveler's Wife the other night for date night and I surprisingly didn't mind it. I liked the concept and thought that the time traveling actually was done in a smart way and didn't have nearly as many plot holes as most time traveling movies have. Jackie loved it as well, and thought that it was VERY comparable to the book. She and I have been spending a lot of time playing the Sims on the computer. I never thought such a simple, silly, game could possibly be so time consuming!
We are excited to be planning our first vacation since our honeymoon. We are planning on going to Utah for my cousin's wedding. Jackie has never been to Utah before so I am excited to show off SLC to her and show her temple square and all the fun museums and centers that the city has to offer. I hope you all are having a great day and I hope to update again soon... and maybe we'll add pictures and tell people that this blog even exists soon!

Between Loads of Laundry

So, it looks like this is going to be a weekly updated blog. Better than monthly right?

Sunday night we had dinner with perhaps the only other kid-less couple in our ward. And it was a blast! I knew we had found our match when I discovered that they've only been married a month longer than Tyler and I and they also (at least partly) honeymooned in Vegas. What sealed the deal for me was when we discovered that we used the same paint in our homes. What are the chances of that happening? Anyhow, we had a great time laughing about various things at dinner and playing Rock Band. We've definitely made a lasting friendship! (I'm going to invite the wife out to go yard selling with me this Saturday morning); she already let me know that she has the proper car for furniture.

In other news, my mom's getting closer to coming out of the hospital after an almost month long stay due to complications with cancer. We are so excited! I know she's been dying to get out of the hospital and the animals need her. There are just too many sometimes! My dad's been wonderful...he's spent a lot of time at the hospital this past month - with work and the animals, I just don't know how he did it at times. My family is amazingly strong...I come from good stock!

Well I better get going. I'm trying to get more done during the week by designating certain days to do things. Monday was car wash/cleaning day and today is laundry day. I have much to do!

Welcome us to the "interweb"!

Hey Everyone! So, we had a wedding web site and what better way to follow that up than a married life blog. So, we're here and we're jumping on the family blogging bandwagon. So much has happened in the two months since we've been married! We've added on to our family already with a beautiful 1 year old named Josie. Before you start getting ideas, you should know that she has four legs. And she's not a strangely deformed human. She's a brilliantly smart dog, rescued from the pound...and Tyler has already been working his new found dog trainer magic on her. He's trained her how to sit and play dead. Who knew he had it in him!? Tyler has also started wearing plaid which boggled my mind and senses at first. Who knew we'd get him into so many colors at once! I love a man in color! Anyhow, we love each other and have fun daily. We're hoping to share some of that fun with you...our family and friends on a daily, weekly, monthly, or semi-yearly basis depending on how interested we stay in this thing! Please leave lots of comments to keep us motivated. We love you!