Happy Birthday Cade!

Love this picture:]]

Its my baby brother's birthday!! He is the greatest I can't wait til we go to Arizona and we get to see him play some hockey, he rocks! Anyway, happy birthday brother love you!

xoxo, Pres

This week. . .

Monday-Thursday
Gare and I finished our finals! AND on Thursday we got to go to the David Archuleta MoTab Christmas concert! It was lovely, we went with Brent and Carolyn, had dinner before (Gare made homemade lasagna) and dessert after (root beer floats). 


Saturday
Carolyn and I went and got pedicures :]]  Lets just say our toes look super cute, I went for the red polish with a cute white snowflake painted on. Love it! Of course the cute little Asians were doing our toes, they were fun and could speak pretty good English, however, I always feel awkward when they talk to each other in their Asian language. I am convinced they are talking about me "this white girls feet are nasty!" or something? Does anyone else feel this way?


When Gare got home from work we headed up to my parents house to make sugar cookies and have dinner with them! We made a mess making cookies but we had fun :]] I love decorating them, my dad was pretty funny and inventive when it came to the decorating part, he took a turtle dove cookie turned it sideways painted it green and added an eyeball and turned it into "the mask" haha what a goon :]] Here are some pictures of the event. . .

The fun decorating stuff my mom got.

my cute Gare rolling out the dough

All done!

My favorite

Gare made this cute soldier

Sunday Night Fun

Sunday night Gare and I made the cute gingerbread village grandma Green gave us! It came with five little houses for you to decorate, can you guess which ones I decorated vs. which ones Gare did? We had fun, this entertained us for a couple hours, we decorated and watched the Hangover haha :]]

xoxo, Pres

A Night With The Girls :]]

This Saturday I tended my sweet little cousins, Addie, Jordy, and Sophie. We pretty much had a blast. The night started off with playing the wii and Addie totally kicked my butt, she is seriously so good, I could beet her at tetris though :]] Then Sophie came over and we played dress ups! We had three little princesses running around the house, Belle, Ariel, and Addie (she wanted to be herself).

Princesses

Soph got pink sparkly ones

pretty nails:]]

 After playing dress ups the girls wanted to paint nails. I painted Soph's and Addie and Jordy painted their own ha that was an experience. We had fun and finsished up the night playing with JENNY the hampster and watching Nickelodeon :]] 

xoxo, Pres

Happy Sunday :]]

 I have had such a great Sunday! Wonderful church meetings with my babe, got together with the Hirzes for dinner, then went to the Christmas Devotional with family and friends, walked around Temple Square to look at the pretty lights and temple. Such a good day! The fog/nasty Utah inversion made the temple look really cool and when you walked around outside you could feel ice crystals hit your face! So awesome, what a beautiful world we live in.

The fog made for a cool picture!

xoxo, Pres 

A Wonderful Time

So for Thanksgiving this year we decided to venture down to Moses Lake, Washington to spend the holiday with the Kofoed's! We drove down with Gare's brother Derek and his girlfriend Courtney and it was the longest drive of my life.  It took us about 15 hours each way because of the terrible weather.  It was crazy how many cars we saw off to the side of the road and how many crashes there were, I got real nervous and decided to put my ipod in and close my eyes. Good news is we made it safe:]]

Me in the car being scared (notice the scary weather behind me)

It was so cold! On Wednesday the power even went out because of the temperature. Luckily it only lasted a couple of hours! It was also Garett's birthday on Wednesday, it was nice to be able to spend it with him and his family and of course we went to the famous Chicos, this little pizza place that everyone in Moses Hole goes nuts over. And funny enough they have really good fries, and COKE :]] Thanksgiving day was also really nice, a bit strange to be spending it with a different family, but awesome to be with them and learn new family traditions! Gare and his mom made turducken, that was a bit interesting, don't miss Garett's post about it below! The rest of the food was really good the only thing that was missing was Grandma Glory's macaroni :[[ Oh well I will have to wait until Christmas I guess. On Friday we all (Garth, Beth, Derek, Courtney, Keith, Mariah, Eddy & us) went to Leavenworth. Its this cute little German town in Washington, It has cute little shops and restaurants, it kinda reminds me of Park City or Midway. Anyway, it was really fun, they were even having a Christmas festival, it was all decked out in lights and they had live Christmas music under a little gazebo, it was cute. It was fun to walk around with the family and roam the shops and see pretty lights :]] We also got some really good hot chocolate!

Leavenworth Mar. 2009

Leavenworth Nov. 2010

The awesome aprons we found HA!

So we had a good time, except for the 15 hour car rides :/ Thanks Garth, Beth, and the rest of the Kofoed clan for having us!

xoxo Pres

Turducken!

   We made TURDUCKEN!!!! (My mommy and I, Presley took some good pictures.)

  Turducken - a dish consisting of a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed into a de-boned turkey.

Birds finishing defrosting.

IT WAS AWESOME! ...But it sucked to de-bone all those birdies. They were really cold and I (Garett) had to play around for awhile with them to figure out how to do it. The duck was the worse to do... I hacked that sucker up and there was not a lot of meat on the sucker. I now know why guys go out and shoot 5 of 6 of them out of the sky at a time, you might as well hunt for rats.

Hacking the duck.

They say that you can de-bone your turkey and it will cook faster and it will be much easier to carve up! After I got all the birds free from their skeletons I took this next picture of the pile of meat we had!

BAM! That's a pile of meat right?!

We padded our layers of bird with a layer of stuffing. Then we sewed it all up with some skewers.

"That looks so nasty." -Presley

 Well after 15 hours of cooking and being cut up in to small tantalizing bite size pieces even Presley loved the Turducken!

A bird with no bones = Real easy to cut up!

We kind of ended up with some visible layers.

I liked it too! I was worried that we would end up with a funky tasting pile of bird flesh and have a Thanksgiving lacking a lovely turkey bird BUT it was truly scrumptious. Next time we are going to have WHOLE STUFFED CAMEL!

Garett

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 --e. e. cummings 

Congrats Meg & Cam

My very best friend Megan is ENGAGED!! I am so happy and excited for her. Cam is such a great guy and I know that she is going to be a beautiful bride! I am trying to convince her that since she is engaged now its time for her to join the blogging group! Do it Meg come on!!

haha this is the only picture I had of the 4 of us.

I miss my sister :[[

Baby sister Ash

Shrimp

"Anyway, like I was sayin', shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that's about it."

 -- Bubba 

We went to Red Lobster with Deidra and David for an early celebration of Garett's birthday, and we all ordered all you can eat shrimp! The whole time I was eating I couldn't stop thinking about Forrest Gump haha. It was delicious and we all left with very full tummies. After dinner David and Deidra took us to Comedy Sports, we had a blast. These funny people put on a comedy improve like show, kind of like "Whos Line is it Anyway?". We laughed a lot and I even got to volunteer in one of the games.  
 

Us at Comedy Sports

They even had fun fancy COKE :]]

Happy Veterans Day

"And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me."

~Lee Greenwood

"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives.  I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."

~Abraham Lincoln

Don't Hate!

MERRY CHIRSTMAS! Ok, ok. . . I know its only the 10th of November but I was just so excited! I have been begging Gare to get a Christmas tree for a while now, but all the ones we have found were so expensive! However, today I was making a trip to my new favorite store HOBBY LOBBY, and they had all of their Christmas stuff out so I decided to just "look" at their tree selection. $34.95 for this cute 5ft skinny pine tree! That is a good deal if you ask me. All of the trees I have seen up til now have been like 100 bucks! This cute lil' tree is the perfect size for our apartment, it already had lights and the ornaments were all 50% off! SCORE :]] I called my mom after I bought it and she said if I can't put it up til after Thanksgiving, psh. Then I called my sweet husband and asked him if I could put it up today, and he said YES! So I did. Please don't hate, because I am excited. It's our first Christmas tree :]]

xoxo Pres

Let It Snow

Cute ornaments!

Happy Christmas, Merry Holiday

Owie :[[

Gare and I got flu shots yesterday. As many of you know I am deathly afraid of shots! I did really good this time though, I didn't even cry! I did start feeling a little sick as soon as we entered the doctors office and my palms were so sweaty! Gare was mean and was laughing at me the whole time. The nurse did  really good, she was super fast and I didn't even bleed! We were in and out in about 10 minutes, and we got our shots for $15.00 each. That is a pretty good deal if you ask me! We traveled down to West Jordan to get them, so we got to eat dinner with my family after. We had yummy potato cheese soup in bread bowls. It was so good I love bread bowls, THANKS MOM :]] Anyways, I think you should all be proud of me for not crying when I received my flu shot. The End.

xoxo Pres

Gratitude

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

purple? blue? black?

Hey all!  It's me, Care and I'm guest posting here on Pres's blog.  Because, let's face it, I rock.  Anyways, back to the reason for this here post.  Presley's pants ripped.  A big ole hole, right in the sweet spot.  Sad, no?  They were her favorite pair.  So, today we came over for some dinner and some fun-ness because we are their bestest friends evah.  She had on this new pair of pants.  Well, they were old to her but new to me....I'd never seen them before.  She asked what color they were and I answered "blue" because they were.  She asked Brent and he gave the same answer.  Then he said "well they do have a little purple in them" because they do.  Garett also said they were blue.  Presley hates us all because she thinks her pants are black.  Well folks, I'm here to let you know that they are blue.  Blue.  BLUE.  And a little bit of purple too I suppose.  We took a picture of the pants, loaded it on the computer, and bumped up the brightness to see what color they really were.  Sorry Pres, but your pants are soooo not black.  But, if it makes you feel warm on the inside, you can pretend they are black and we won't judge you too harshly.  That's all folks!

We Are Awesome

I was looking through my pictures on my computer and I came across these. . .


Awesome right? Garetts Grandpa Kofoed uses it. The first time we went to moses lake I saw this contraption and immediately thought of Harriett the Spy, that old lady with the pink hair uses one! Gare tells me his Grandpa uses it to loosen up his muscles after long days workin on the farm. I have to admit it is very relaxing :]] I am also very happy that I got to give one of these babys a try! Cross that off my list.

xoxo Pres

Halloween

We had a very fun Halloween weekend. We started it off carving pumpkins with the Hirzes. We enjoy getting together with these two! Garett and Brent can be geeky nerds together and Car and I can be crazy together! It works out great :]] They came over to our place and we ate dinner, and had root beer floats (this has become somewhat of a tradition when they come over). Then we got to our pumpkins, Gare and I picked up the pumpkins earlier that day because we had to go to winco. I Picked out a cute little one and Gare decided to get three massive ones for himself, Brent, and Car. They were so heavy and dirty! We had to wash them off in our bath tub when we got them home :]] Turns out that Carolyn got the yucky pumpkin, the inside was all moldy and nasty! She made Brent clean it out for her, what a good guy. So here are our pumpkins. . .

I did Jack and Car did the monster!

Look at Gare hard at work!

Gare carved batman and Brent carved a skull, but I don't have pictures of theirs all lit up :[[ I will have to track some down.

After some fun pumpkin carving with the Hirzes, Gare and I went to THRILLER. I just love love love love it! I have been 7 years in a row and it never gets old. This year we even got to see our family member perform! Jessica Norris. . . I think she is like my cousin? Anyway, she is a great dancer and it was fun seeing her in the show she did a great job :]]


Gare and I also went to a haunted house with Megan and friends! We went to Nightmare on 13th, and it was so scary. I basically crawled through the whole thing. When something scary would jump out at me I would just instantly fall backwards. . . its a reflex? Everyone was laughing at me the whole time, but I was seriously scared! I think I was more entertainment to the group than the actual haunted house! It was so much fun though. Garett said that if a plague of zombies took over the world we wouldn't last long haha. After the haunted house we went to Megan's parents house, ate dinner and played games! We played this fun game called "Time's Up" It was very fun, but Garett was terrible at it. He has a terrible memory so we didn't make a very good team and we lost :[[

Aside from losing terribly at "Times up" I'd say we had one pretty spectacular Halloween weekend!

xoxo Pres

Getting Settled :]]

I am a little bit board so I decided to update my blog and make it cute. Anyways, Gare and I are happy as can be just getting settled into the married life. We have finally put all of the finishing touches on our cute little apartment, we love it here. It is so nice to finally be living together! All of our stuff is in one place, no going back and fourth between houses, it is so nice knowing we are driving to OUR place at the end of the day. Here are a couple of pictures of our newly decorated apartment. . .




Cute huh? Anyways I decided that I am going to try and be a better blogger. Try and at least do a post or two a month, I think I can manage that! Well so long for now :]]

XOXO Pres

Summer!

I just love summer time! This year Garett and I have been so busy with school, work, and wedding planning, summertime seems to be slipping away much to quickly! Welcome to the real world I guess right! Luckily the two of us have found time to slip in some fun summer time activities. About a week ago we went to seven peaks water park, we really enjoyed the boomerang and the wave pool! The best part is we got to go for free thanks to Garetts sister Deidra who gave us her free passes! Thanks Deidra! For the 4th of July Gare and I went to the Stadium of Fire! It was so much fun! The weather was perfect, we got to celebrate Americas birthday, see Carrie Underwood, and amazing fireworks! Garettes cousins Michael and Andrew were in the show too! It was fun to see them, they got to march in with the rest of the boy scouts holding American flags. It was a very neat show, I am glad I got to experience it with my Garebear :]]

Brent's Birthday

Brent and Carolyn are some of our dearest and most treasured friends. Brent proudly turned 24 on the 23rd of June. We had the fabulous opportunity to celebrate with him. We got to eat out at Skippers and return to their apartment for games, laughter, and a Chewbacca cake. Carolyn made the most amazing cake! It was all around a wonderful time. Happy birthday, Brent! We are sure lucky to have friends like the Hirzes.

Engagment

The week before Presley and I went to Washington for spring break this year we had a conversation that brought getting married to the forefront of my mind. I knew we wanted to do it but we wanted to try and get done with school first... But this is when I personally realized that I just did not want to wait that long.

So that week while we were in my home town I asked my mom and dad their thoughts on the matter and talked more to Presley about living with me for the rest of her life and the here after. Parents like Presley and were cool about it, Presley was enthralled and I knew that was the case. What I was really worried about was coming back to Utah and talking to Darren and Tammy. (Really just scared about Tammy.)

We got back to Salt Lake and I waited for Darren to come home so I could ask him for his daughters hand in marriage. I felt like I was waiting for an eternity for him to come home and then once he was home I just wanted him to go back to work, I was nervous about the can of worms I was potentially going to open that night. Luckily we were barbecuing hamburgers that night so I was easy to get away from everyone else with Darren out at the barbecue.
It went something like this:

Me - "So, Presley and I have been talking... and we want to get married this August"

Darren - "Wow, Really?"

Then he ask me a few questions, like had we talked about being able to pay the bills, continue through school and a few others things. I think I had good answers for everything, Presley and I had talked about most everything but I really do not remember because it all seemed like a whirlwind but I did tell him that we both were going to work a couple more hours a week and we both will finish school.He went on to tell me he would love to have me as a son in law and how I was loved and we went back into the house. Once I got back into the house I was ecstatic on the inside and then it hit me... "I still need to tell Tammy..." and then I just got super nervous again.
I found a second time to go out to the barbecue with Darren again and with terror on my face asked him "How should we tell Tammy? and with a huge smile on his face he said "That's up to you." Ah, I wanted to scream!

The burgers were finished and we sat down to eat and I begun to find a good time to throw into the conversation that Presley and I wanted to get married in four months. Well, we started talking about Presley's work schedule and I inserted "Presley is planning on working more hours this summer." In hopes for more words to come out of my mouth or for someone to ask why but after I got that out I just awkwardly smiled and looked at everyone at the table till I came to Darren who had a gigantic goofy grin on his face. I don't remember exactly but someone said something and eventually Tammy was let in on our little secret.

She took it much better than I thought it was going to play out and we told them that Presley was going to be baptized a member of the church as well. Then their were some mother-daughter hugs and tears and a few phone calls to grandmothers.

Then within a few days we were in the hunt for a ring, we were very lucky to have Presley's grandma Green to give us a diamond, a willing mother to come with us and coach us through ring shopping and a great jeweler that has taken care of the Romney family jewels for ages. Presley told the jeweler just what she wanted and that is what she got.

It was about a six day wait for the ring to be finished and I think I heard about a million times a day from Presley "I just want that ring on my finger." It was understandable and I wanted that ring on her finger just as bad. I was planning on the jeweler to call and tell me the ring was finished on Thursday afternoon and I would go get it on that Friday. Instead I got the phone call that the ring was done on Wednesday afternoon and I had to quickly figure out how to purpose to Presley a day early.

After a restless nights sleep; I drove up and got it. I got back to Happy Valley and asked Presley if she wanted to go to Pizza Factory where we went on our first date and handed her a dozen roses. She had previously told me that I better not do anything to her on April fools regarding are engagement. So naturally when I handed her the roses and she asked me what they were for I said "Well, It is April fools day." to which she replied with a dirty look and I laughed inside because I knew what she did not know... That I had her ring in my pocket.

We went to dinner in the early afternoon, it must of been four or so. We got in and sat a few booths away from where we sat on our first date. I tried to tell her that the jeweler called and we would not have the ring until Monday or Tuesday but I am a real bad liar. She saw the smile on my face from a mile away and began pressing me to show her the ring. I tried to play it off like I really did not have it. Then I told her that it was April fools day and I just had an empty box that Tammy had helped me get from the jewelers. Hell bent to get the ring on her finger or to see what if anything was in the box she continued to press me.

I folded and looked around the room to make sure no one could see me get on my knee then got on my knee and pulled out the ring. I asked her to marry me and of course she said "YES!".

The Beginning :]]

Garett and I met a long time ago at Studio 600 country dancing. I was 15 and he was 21, don't worry we didn't start dating until 3 years later. There is still a 5 year age difference but it isn't a big deal now. Lets be honest we both act like we are about 13 haha. Our first date was on December 12th 2008, he had been begging me to "hang out" for months, so I finally gave in. We went to The Pizza Factory with our best friends Tommy and Megan. After we ate and a little bit of hanging out, Garett and I watched "The Three Ninjas". I have to say it was a very good night and I was sad to go back to Cedar City. Garett asked me to be his girlfriend a couple weeks later while he was visiting me in Cedar. . . I said no! And he cried, I was just nervous to do the whole long distance thing, but I gave in like two weeks later and said yes! I am so glad that I did :]] we have been going strong ever since and now we are ENGAGED!