In a Year

In a year we have done so many things. This first year of marriage has been the best year of our lives. (Except Dave says that the first year he was alive was the another best year of his life. All he had to do was eat, sleep, poop, cry and giggle.) I love being married and I know Dave feels the same. We get along so well and any tussles or arguments that we have are short and minor. Most of the time we just wrestle it out and it's all good. Here is a little review of our last year...

We moved into our cute one bedroom basement apartment. It felt like home. We belonged there.

We finished a semester at school and were then blindsided by the economy and lack of jobs.

We were jobless for about a month. Dave searched for an internship and I was desperate for anything.

Dave found an internship at JHS Architects in Pocatello.Which was a miracle, because everywhere he had applied to had almost laughed at him when he applied. The economy was down and times were tough for architects.

A month later I found a designing job at South Industries which was a miracle because everywhere I had applied to had almost laughed at me when I applied. The economy was down and times were tough for contractors.

We moved from our cozy little downstairs apartment to our larger upstairs apartment. It has two bedrooms, a washer and dryer and a dishwasher. I thought that this was going to be an exceptional move, but we still miss our little #5 apartment. But #1 is starting to feel more and more like home as well.
With this move we took on the manager position for our little 8-plex. Mostly our job is to get $50 bucks taken off our rent, fill apartments, clean apartments, help everyone who locked themselves out, water the lawn, snow removal... etc.

We both started school in the spring. Dave finished his internship and I continued to work with Souths part time. Dave started working on the BYU-I grounds crew.

I graduated from college with a 3.475 GPA in July. It was a wonderful experience. I loved it.

South Industries cut their crew back to just family. I was jobless... again. Perfect timing, just when I graduated and right about when we started getting really desperate for some $$$ again... jeeze.

Dave started his last semester in the Architecture program at BYU-I.

We received a check in the mail for $2,500 dollars for Dave's damaged fingers. God loves us.

Dave found work with TJ which saved our lives. I tell him every day not to hurt himself... unless it's big enough to get workman's comp. :o)

I was hired as a customer service representative at JD Premium which I love. The people are awesome and I've been given some design opportunities here as well and it is just fantastic.

Dave gets the awesome opportunity to be the first class to graduate in the new BYU-I Auditorium. He is also on the 2 year construction/architecture team and gets to travel to Orlando FL in January for his competition.

Our life is wonderful and we are as happy as clams. (Where the heck did that saying ever come from? Are clams especially happy? To find out, click on this sentence.)




Here are some funny first-year-of-being-married stories:

1st funny story: Our wedding money got us through that month. We had enough money to pay our bills and not a penny more. Thank heavens for the blessings of tithing. A few funny stories that I would like to document about my new experiences of paying bills: I had never paid a bill before in my life. I didn't have a credit card, I didn't spend money I didn't have (except if the money was my dad's... thanks daddy!!). So when we started getting all these bills in the mail, I started realizing that they needed to be paid. So I lined them all up on the floor and then took out our wedding money. I started counting out all the money we needed and putting it in piles on top of the bills. When I discovered that we had just barely enough, I started stuffing the money inside the envelopes and getting ready to send the bills in. Dave looked over at me and asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was paying our bills. Then he started laughing. He said "Karlee... you can't pay bills with cash. I don't even think they would accept that." I was dumbfounded. EVERYONE takes cash... I thought. Guess not. (I'm much better at paying bills now...)

2nd funny story (funny now... not so funny then): During the tight time right after we got married and right after we paid our bills and right after we finished school and right BEFORE we got jobs... money was scarce. And by scarce, I mean scary scarce. I came home from job hunting one day and realized we didn't have any groceries. So I checked our bank account and we definitely didn't have enough money to get any groceries. I decided that we would just go get a $5 dollar pizza and hopefully we could squeeze a few meals out of it. (I obviously didn't know Dave as well as I do now...) So I started looking around for money. I didn't have any cash, Dave didn't have any cash, I couldn't find any spare wedding money. I looked through all the cards again and nothing was there.
I was distraught and frustrated that I couldn't find 5 measly dollars to use to buy a disgusting pizza. Finally I started digging through the couches, through our change jars and through our cars. I found 6 dollars in change. We went out and bought that pizza and it was gross.
But I stuck it to the man. The man who made it so we didn't have any money. Boy, was he ever sorry he made us poor...



So that's our first year in a really quick nutshell.

I love David, he loves me. We are a happy family.