Adventures in Renting

Ever since about mid September this story has been unfolding and it finally came to a close on Saturday (or, so we hope.) At the time, I had no idea it was even going to be a story or what I like to call, an adventure. In short, we found a mouse in our house. 

  Yep, the adorable house pictured above had a nasty little creature that looks like this

living in it.

It all started in mid September or so. I had recently been hired at my new job and was quickly figuring out that I get hungry in the middle of the morning and sometimes again in the afternoon after lunch. To solve this problem I began bringing granola bars to work to eat when I needed them. I would bring 2 to work and sometimes only eat one so I would leave the other one in my purse for the next day. I started finding my granola bars wrapper with a hole and a chunk of my snack taken out of it. Being the irrational person I am, I decided that it was probably my keys making holes in my food. I have a large purse I bring to work and often my keys get shuffled around. Surely this had to be the explanation. For months, this carried on and I continued to blame my keys.

One day, I was getting sick of finding holes in my food so I started to put my keys in a separate pocket. This did not solve the problem. We weren't sure what was happening until Dom saw one of my snacks and said it and I quote "looked like a creature had taken a bite out of it." This scared me. No idea why, but it did. Beginning to suspect he was right, I started putting my extra granola bars in the pantry. No more holes. Yay! 

Over Christmas I got sick and was bringing cold medicine and cough drops to work in a Ziploc bag. Sometime last week I got up in the morning, opened the bag and found my cold medicine pills all over my purse, each cough drop was unwrapped, and the baggie they were in was torn to pieces. This, for me, confirmed that we had a mouse. That night, we went out and bought traps. We used my purse as bait because apparently, I had unintentionally conditioned a mouse to believe that his food source was my purse. After a couple nights we didn't catch anything. Dominic decided to leave a trap by our fridge, and by our dryer. If it was living in the kitchen it was living in one of those two places. We left the traps and didn't catch the mouse for days. 

Saturday morning came and I was getting ready. We have a spare bedroom at the back of our house and it has a straight shot to the kitchen. I came out of that room and as I was about to turn into our bedroom I caught a glimpse of something that looked like a tail sitting in front of the fridge. I kinda freaked out for a second and yelled for Dom. He came out of the room he was in and I asked him to check the trap (because I'm a big ol' scaredy cat with a soft spot for animals.) He checked the trap and sure enough, there was a mouse in it.

The mystery since September was finally solved but now I have a new question, was he the only one? We are leaving the rest of our traps up for now...just to be safe.  

2015

Well, today is the last day of 2015 and I can honestly say that I am sad to see it go. 2015 was full of firsts, lasts, new experiences, and regular every day life and I loved it. Since this will be my last post of the year, I just want to go over some of my favorite highlights of the year.

Toward the end of February is where our first highlight begins. We had the opportunity to sit court-side as a Jazz game! Once in a lifetime if you ask me, It was my first pro basketball game and it was so awesome to see the game from that close. 

Sometime I believe it was in March is where we go next. This highlight might seem silly to pretty much everyone but for me it was something I needed. I came home from school one day to find a small cat in the yard. She was very friendly and she started to visit regularly. She didn't have a collar and I don't know why but I decided to call her Reeses (yes, like the candy.) She has since been given up by her family and I have no idea what happened to her but I loved the time I got to spend with this cat that for some reason liked me.

In April I graduated! No more school for me!!

At the end of May I also got to see my brother and my sister in law graduate high school! I love that they graduated from the same high school and I am so proud of them for getting through high school.

In June we did a glamping photo shoot with the Garquale girls (Gardner/Pasquale) which was way fun and was definitely one of my favorite things this year.

June was also when Josh came home! I have never been at the airport when a missionary that I'm related to came home and it was an experience that is hard to forget. The love and joy felt in the family when Josh came down the hallway was something I will never forget.

July bring us to something I never thought I would get to do (it's up there with sitting court-side at the Jazz.) We got to see Journey!!

We also took Garquale family pictures in July which was way fun

Where are we now? August. My dad bought a small fire pit and one of my absolute favorite memories of this year is making s'mores throughout the summer and early fall.

I also got a new job in August. I had definitely outgrown my job at America's Best and it was time to move on. I was very blessed to be hired at Wasatch Mental Health. The work environment and the people are so different than anything I have ever seen in an office. The friendships we all have with each other is something out of the ordinary and I am so blessed to know all of the amazing people there and am so thankful to work in such an awesome place

Now we jump forward to November. We celebrated our 1st anniversary in Hawaii. Everyone says that the first year of marriage is the hardest. If this indeed true, the rest of eternity will be as easy as pie :)

And now we come to a close in December. Christmas this year was so much fun. I loved everything leading up to it and of course the day of. Seeing all the lights, gingerbread houses, decorating the tree, the Christmas ball and of course opening presents was all awesome. One of my favorite Christmases yet.

2016, you have large shoes to fill and I hope you know that. But, no pressure or anything.

My Apologies

As you can tell from the title, I am about to apologize. It has been awhile since the last update and I don't like that one bit. I love writing here and each time I update I am reminded of that. I shall try to be better :) Now, on to more fun things!

The last time I updated was August so I'll just pick up from there. 

Toward the beginning of September Dom and I were on our way to go out for dinner and his car decided that it wanted to burst into flames. Okay maybe not literally flames but it died. We got off the freeway and all of a sudden there was an awful smell then I noticed smoke coming from our car and it started to get into the car. We pulled to the side and Dom got out and pushed the car to a nearby parking lot without any help. I have never felt as useless as I did in that moment. I was in the car turning the steering wheel for him but I knew I couldn't do much else and he looked exhausted. When we made it I was one proud wife. He pushed the car basically by himself. We called Ed (father-in-law) and he came and rescued us which was super nice of him to do. He even arranged for the car to be towed to the dealership he manages so he could look at it there. We were down to only one car for awhile but we were blessed to not have broken down on the actual freeway and to know someone in the area to come help us. We ended up buying Bryan's car a week or so later. Rest in peace Flopsy. 

The weekend that the car died we decided we wanted a mini vacation so we went to the Anniversary Inn. We stayed in a super cute room called La Hacienda. It was Mexican themed and they even gave us salsa and chips! It has been our favorite room yet.

Salsa and chips to start the day

A week or so after that we had heard of Festa Italia going on in Salt Lake City and having an Italian last name we thought it appropriate to go to the festival. It was super fun! We learned that we have a family crest, had authentic Italian food and authentic gelato which tasted amazing!

                      

Dom got himself a meatball sandwich

Festa Italia!!

I had authentic gnocchi and it was delicious. I was one happy gal

 We've also been trying to spend more time outside since this is the time of year that I absolutely love so one weekend we went and took a walk at bridal veil falls. This trail is particularly special because shortly after Dom came home from his mission we went up here one evening and took a walk and just talked and caught up. It was on this walk that I realized I liked him.

Awww, aren't we cute?

We also went to the symphony in September! It was the Sci-fi spectacular so they played a lot of nerdy music. My personal favorite was the Star Wars music :)

Picture in front of the weird sculpture in the lobby of Abravanel Hall

I have been visiting Puppy Barn a lot more than I used to. I work really close to it now and it isn't hard to take a lunch break and go down there. I also have a coworker who loves puppies and we have found that when we are stressed out by work that holding puppies makes us feel better.

                My cute coworker Amanda and a puppy!                          I wanted to take him home

October came and with it came conference weekend. It is a tradition with Dom's family to go up the canyon after a session and take pictures so that Saturday we went up to Squa Peak and took some pictures in the leaves.

This one was my favorite :)

October also brought some not so fun things too. The second week Dom and I had to travel up to Idaho for a funeral for my uncle Jim. It was a short trip and we knew that we didn't need to go but I felt like we should and I am so happy that we did. 

On the way back we stopped to get some water and we thought this was fancy water because the bottle was glass but when we opened it we found out that we didn't read the bottle properly because it was sparkling water. We both hated it and were sadly disappointed.

One weekend we went and had a picnic in our favorite park and there happens to be a lot of ducks. We sat down and I threw one tiny piece of bread from my sandwich and they all swarmed. I was the duck whisperer

All of the ducks I summoned 

Just this last Sunday I wanted to go up the canyon and see the fall leaves because fall is my absolute favorite and I hadn't seen many leaves yet so Dom being the wonderful husband that he is took me up the canyon and we looked around Hobble Creek Canyon

This picture was scary to take because Dom put his phone on a self timer and put it on the bridge. I was afraid it was going to fall.

This was by far my favorite place I saw on our drive. I just wanted to get a blanket and a book and never leave

So yeah, that is what we have been up to besides work and school. I'll try to be better at updating :)

3 month recap

It has definitely been awhile since I wrote anything about what we have been up to. I apologize profusely but I cannot promise that it will not happen again. I figure I'll just recap everything that we have done this summer so this doesn't drag on, and on, and get filled with too many pictures. So, lets begin with June.

At the start of June I had my birthday. Yay for 23! To be honest, it was so long ago that I hardly remember what I did haha. The day after my birthday Dom and I went up to the Anniversary Inn in Logan. We will go up there every now and again for what we call mini vacations. I finally got to stay in the room there that I had been wanting to say in for a long time. It was themed as a drive in movie. A truck was the bed and the TV was a projector. It was awesome!

Me in the truck

In June I also got my diploma! I graduated in April for those of you who do not know.

Yay! My money paid for a piece of paper!

The most exciting event of June was Josh coming home from his mission. I never got to know Josh while we were kids so I was pretty excited to have a new brother. Dominic was as excited as a little kid on Christmas Eve the night before. It was adorable. The morning we picked him up Dom's excitement never toned down. I thought he was going to explode with joy.

Josh coming out :)

July was a way fun and exciting month. We started the month off by going to the Stadium of Fire on the 4th with my family

Super excited to be there

Journey!!!!!!

We also went to the dinosaur museum in Bountiful or somewhere around there. They basically have gigantic sculptures of different dinosaurs outside.

Dom wanted him as a pet

Me with Dinos!

We also did Pasquale family pictures in July. 

This field was beautiful for pictures.

The gang is all here!

I look like one of them. It's funny 

August is only a couple weeks in but it has been rather exciting. 

A couple weeks ago we made smores are my parents house on a Sunday. Very messy, but very fun,

Dom and his fire he made

Yummy!!

We love smores!

The most exciting this to happen this month I sadly do not have pictures of. A few months back I decided I wanted to work for Wasatch Mental Health. I went to their website and applied for a couple job openings. I felt really good about it but I didn't want to get my hopes up in case I didn't get it. About a week after submitting my application I got a call from the HR department, they wanted me to take a computer test to assess my skills before pursuing me further. I took the test on a Monday. The Tuesday of that same week I got a call from one of the supervisors in one of the clinics I applied for. He said he wanted to interview me. We set up an interview for Thursday. When I went I wasn't feeling well and when I left I felt like I blew it. About 3 hours after the interview he called me and offered me the position. It was insanity. I thought I had blown it but apparently not! I was able to leave my job at America's Best and accepted the job with Wasatch. The position I am in is not what you would think someone with a degree would have but it is getting my foot in the door in order to do what I really want to do later. We are very excited about the adventures ahead :)

Missing Out? I Think Not!

Well its been awhile since I last wrote. We've been crazy busy with school and everything that goes with it. Dominic finished his 1st year and I finished my bachelor's degree which is awesome! This week we had Josh come home from serving in Kansas. Dom was so excited to have him back it was like watching a little kid on Christmas Eve. I had to joke with him before we picked Josh up from the airport that he was not allowed to be happier to see him than he was to marry me. I didn't really know Josh very well while growing up around the Pasquales. All I can remember was that when I moved in to the house my parents are in that he moved my bed in and put it all together. I'm super excited to get to know him better. I have another brother! How cool is that?! 

This week we also we able to see my cousin Jenny be married in the temple to her now husband Allen. It was so neat to hear the covenants that Dominic and I made just 7 months ago again. This event is what prompted the title of this entry.

Lately, I have been receiving comments about how I miss out on all kinds of things now that I am married. Sure, I can't just go and spend a couple hundred dollars whenever I want, I can't leave the house at 10am and not come home till 3am the next morning, I can't just pack up and go on a trip whenever I want, and I can't go do things single people do. While thinking about this I came to the conclusion that not only am I not able to do these things but I really have no desire to do them. When you get married your mindset completely changes. The moment this happened

 my mindset had changed. I knew that I was making a promise to the wonderful man kneeling before me that I would stay with him forever and do whatever I could to make him happy. My mindset changed again kneeling across the alter and saying "yes" to the sealer. I knew we had become one with each other, and one with God. 

In the sealing room yesterday at Jenny's wedding the sealer talked a little bit about sacrifice. He said something that I completely agree with. He stated that you will have to make sacrifices in your marriage and many of them will be without reward for you. You know you will not receive a reward for your sacrifice but you do it anyway because you want your spouse to be happy and you love them unconditionally. How true that statement is. I wish we had gotten that counsel when we got married but better late than never I suppose. 

How it felt to be sealed to Dominic forever is indescribable. Would I trade that feeling for being able to spend two hundred dollars whenever I want? No. Would I trade knowing that I have someone to come home to for being able to leave at 10am and come home at 3am? No. Would I trade knowing that no matter what stupid thing I do he will still love me for packing up and going on a trip at a moments notice? No. Would I trade waking up and seeing my best friend peacefully sleeping beside me for being able to take part in activities for single people? Absolutely not. I gave up things that were good for something that was the best and I would never trade that for anything. Do I miss out on stuff? No, not really.