Annual Update...(haha)

I can't believe it has been a year since I last posted on our blog! Time sure goes by fast! Well, it has been a busy year and I just got busier too... I started going back to school in August, and now the semester is almost over (and I should be doing homework instead of blogging!). I am going into Health Administration at Weber State. I still work full time and go to school full time too. Since I last blogged, I got a promotion from being a secretary to being the Office Cordinator for all of my boss' clinics at the hospital! I have been doing that since April, and I love it, which is why I went back to school! I still work at the front desk at one of the clinics for half of the week and the other half I have time to do my administrative stuff. Along with the promotion, the company requires that you sign up for their leadership training class, which lasts 4 months and you go for half of the day every other week. I have to take my class out in murray, so it pretty much takes up the entire day, but I am almost done with that too! It has been SO helpful though, and I really enjoy it! In my role I am the supervisor to the other secretaries, which means I had to do all of their evaluations, and have a few "chats" with them in the last few months. Not my favorite part of my job, but its not that bad. I stress over it right up until I start talking to them, but so far the conversations have gone well. I have seriously learned so much in the last 6 months (and the last year), that its hard to believe that I have only worked for the hospital for just over a year. So, between my job and school I stay quite busy and I am always thinking about one or the other! James has been busy all year too and he is just starting to slow down to where he actually only works 40 hours a week! During the summer there were weeks that he would work 80 hours in a week! It was pretty nuts for awhile! He loves his job though, so he doesn't usually mind working more! We went camping quite a bit this summer and had a ton of fun! And now I am just so excited for Christmas, that I can hardly wait to start shopping and to decorate my house!!! Our puppy, Joey, is the funniest little guy... he has a new habit of asking to go to bed! Yep, he wants to be tucked-in! :) hahha. He will go to the front door and whine, and then lay down until we get up and start walking toward him. If we don't hear him whine, he starts to scratch the door like crazy and then he will bark at us! We walk over to him, and then he runs and hides under the kitchen table until we have his bedtime snack in hand, and then he will run over to his little kennel and lay down! (He has to be put in his little pet-carrier bed, otherwise he would try to play all night long!) And then once we hand him his treat and shut the door, he will go to sleep! Sometimes, he will ask to go to bed at like 8:00pm! It's so funny, he must play hard while we are at work all day ;). Joey is such a spoiled little puppy, but we love him, and he is just so sweet that you can't help but spoil him! He is such a happy dog too, he loves riding in the car, seeing other dogs -even when they don't like him- he absolutely loves them!, he loves little kids, he is OVERJOYED when we come home at night (even though I usually come home for an hour long lunch with him), and he randomly gets bursts of energy and will run laps around the house, and will lightly paw at your face if you stop rubbing his belly when he doesn't want you to stop yet. James and I have such a great life and we are so lucky, and we love every minute of it! :)

sorry for the leave of absence! haha!

So i blocked the blog awhile ago just because some of my husbands friends found the blog and apparantly, somewhere i supposedly said he almost cried... hahaha, well and as guys of course they gave him a lot of grief for it, so i blocked the blog. Lame reason i know, but i was going to find that post and delete it then open it up again, and i totally forgot to open it again!

Anyways.. lets see since i last blogged we got a new puppy in june!!! His name is joey (named after joey from Friends) and he is adorable if you ask me! He is a shit-zu yorkie mix, called a "shorkie" hahah.

He is now 6 months old and so cute and so very very SPOILED! Seriously i don't think we ever go to the grocery store without buying him new treats or a toy! hahah. I'll post pictures of him soon!

Oh..and I got a new job! In july i was offered a job at Mckay Dee Hospital, and I was so excited! I don't live far from there, and it was much closer than my commute to Salt lake every day. Another bonus of the new job?! Working day shifts instead of evening ones = seeing my husband more! and not just on the weekends! YAY! It was the best change ever! My boss is amazing, i love her! And everyone else i work with is awesome too!

So, in August I started the new job. And we also went on a few camping trips.
Actually I'll have to go back a bit, the trips were in July.. hahah... So the first part of july we went to Flaming Gorge with James' Dad and some friends and lots of other people. It was a blast! I didn't take any pics though :(.

Then at the end of july we went to Jackson with my family and my dad's side of the family all were there too. James and I drove up with my little brother and his girlfriend, cuz we couldn't stay the whole week. And while my husband drove, I navigated with maps and directions from my dad... and found out that along the way we missed a turn by an hour... so we went an hour further than we needed to, and it was pretty funny, my husband looked at me like "way to go!" hahah luckily, he doesn't get worked up and mad over hardly anything at all so he just shook his head, and laughed. hahah.

lets see... not much else has gone on lately, since our little vacations its just been work and then home at night to relax! We have had some friends over and had a little party one night, and our friends brought their little girl who is one, and joey absolutely LOVED her, haha, they are the same height so he would jump up and his paws barely reached her shoulders, but he would hold on and go crazy kissing her face hahah, and she loved him too she would just stand there and laugh, it was so cute~

They were pretty much the entertainment for the night lol.

This weekend we are having our parents over for dinner to thank them for all their work helping us move into our house and fix it up! It's long over-due, but between everyone having trips planned in the summer and then some hunting and camping in the fall, plus trying to find enough time to finish touch-up painting, and time to clean and organize some of our extra rooms, we have just a small window to finally get everyone together for dinner before all of the holiday festivites start!

Anyways, I am so excited for the holidays to be here! I am excited to have my own home to decorate for christmas, and though I don't have a whole lot to decorate with it will be so much fun! And one of the best parts is the after-christmas sales to buy all of the cute decorations for the next year at half off (or more)! I can't wait! :)

I also hope to come up with some fun ideas for some new traditions with our little family!! Even just little things, like a certain food/meal that we have christmas eve morning (since we always have more family parties than we can possibly make it to later on in the day and for christmas day) ... or i dunno buying each other christmas themed pajamas to open christmas eve hahaha... just something we can start together and then carry on for when we have kids one day!
....Any ideas?! All my family did was just me and my brother would exchange gifts on christmas eve, and we always looked forward to that! But I want to come up with more traditions!

I'm back!!!

hahaha... its been awhile but wow it has been a crazy couple of months!!!

time has really flown by and i can hardly believe we are coming up on being married for THREE MONTHS! it's so crazy! We have bought a house, got married, moved into his dad's house until we could move into our own home, remodeled our house from top to bottom, moved in the end of april and are just about finished getting settled!

We still have some touch up painting to do and painting in the spare bedrooms, but I'm pretty much sick of painting now... so i keep putting it off haha!

I'll eventually post some pics of the house before and after but here's what we have done:

*painted EVERY wall!
* tore up carpet in the kitchen & tiled it, along with the laundry room and 1/2 bath
* tore up the carpet in the family room and bedrooms (this is an older home, where they had original hardwood floors underneath the carpet) so we tore it up and refinished the orangy-oak floor to a drak walnut color!
* tiled in the master bath
*added baseboards in the kitchen, laundry and living room (the carpet was coved up onto the wall like baseboard)
* recarpeted the little living room
*replaced all the handles and knobs on the kitchen cabinets, they were so ugly before! hahah


Well i think thats it, but James has also been working on the sprinklers, some were broken and the lines are broken in some places and then we have just been giving our yard a little tlc.

We have been so busy with all of that, that my mom and I justa barely went and proofed our wedding photos hahah! oops! I was dying to see them but we just wanted to get everything done so we could move in and start getting settled! They are so cute though! I can't wait to post some of them!

The house is mostly decorated now and i love it! Im so glad I started buying stuff long before we got married! hahah It was nice to just start hanging stuff up and making it feel more like home!

For anyone that doesn't know me all that well I started buying stuff for our future home two years ago! haha I knew James and I would get married but just in case it didnt work out I always told myself it was just for when I moved out of my parents house and had a place of my own... (you know so i wouldn't be tempted to throw any of it away if james and i broke up) hahah. anyways it has been so much fun to decorate and though I still need to get quite a bit, it looks really cute for now!

The only downside right now is my work schedule I'm still working evenings and james works days so we still dont really see eachother until fridays when he is off work, but I'm hoping to get that changed one way or another soon! We can't wait to have the same work schedule and be home together at night all week long!

But I have had fun trying new recipes from cookbooks we got from the wedding, and seeing how they turn out! Just tonight I made some greek chicken pitas that turned out really good! I think they will be a new fave! especially since the chicken is fairly easy to make and is a crockpot recipe! I have been making some of my familys basics, that I have kind of always known how to make, but decided to try some totally different things, and i am dying to try this apple bbq pork recipe! (another crock pot recipe too) Ill let you know how it turns out! :D

Well... thats whats been going on since the wedding day! like i said it has flown by! I can't even believe it! I love my husband so much! He is the best! & handy too! hahah.. he can pretty much fix anything and keeps up on our yard and house so well, he even helps me clean every weekend! yup... he's a keeper! :)

p.s. i just remembered we have had a few fiascos too since becoming home owners... our dishwasher broke, and leaked all over the kitchen.... i already mentioned some broken sprinklers, and a few not so awesome dinners hahaha! The not-so-awesome dinners only happened because i tried to improvise... yeah it doesnt work! LOL

wel... im really done now! next time will be more fun! I'll post lots of pics of our cute house and from our wedding day!!! yay!

YAY!!!

Today we closed on our house!!! We signed a huge stack of papers, and made our down payment, and now we just have to wait for it to fund & record tomorrow, and then 48 hrs after that (or possibly sooner) we will get the keys!!! AHHH!! I can't believe it!! I'm so excited, stressed, nervous, and happy all at the same time! haha...

One thing that I am thankful for, we don't have a basement, just a yucky dirt floor crawl space that I will never go into... so we don't have to worry about a flooded basement! hahah... i have heard of like 3 people lately who have dealt with that, and definitely doesn't sound fun!

I'm just stressed about all the bills that we have to pay now, and neither of us have ever had so many bills! And now its going to take basically all that we make to get by until James finishes school this summer and gets a very nice raise! hahah... until then.. all i can say is "UGH..." hahah good thing i already bought so many decorations and stuff for our house... I have plenty to put up, and I don't think I'll really have any bare walls.. so at least I won't be tempted to splurge at Rod Works or Tai Pan LOL!

But we are excited to get to start out in a house... and so thankful that with the help of my mom who happens to be in real estate, that we could make this happen at such a young age! It feels like such an accomplishment already!

And we have so much fun now, wandering through Home Depot and Lowes looking at stuff we will need for our house & ideas on how to eventually and little by little remodel out first home! This has been such a good bonding thing for us too! We just get so excited talking about our plans to fix it up the way we want it, and having that common goal, just brings us so much closer! (Luckily, we even like a lot of the same stuff... for instance, we found a bathroom vanity that we both LOVE and we want to eventually redo the master bath, the main bath & probably the laundry room- bathroom in it!) It might be awhile before it looks the way we want it to, but its fun just talking about it!

One of our first "fun things" we want to get (that isn't necessary) is two comfy chairs and a small side table for our patio! So we can sit out there on the weekends during the summer and drink coffee in the morning and at night eat dinner, and have our own little BBQ together!

We get to go and buy our new furniture for our house on friday too! I can't wait! Oh and paint! this weekend we are going to be painting as much as we can too! :) So fun!

Back to Real Life

So this week is finally back to reality, :( Back to our normal work schedules that happen to conflict so much that between monday and friday the hubby and I will only see each other at 4 a.m. when he is waking up for work, which means I wake up too so I can make him a lunch or just to see him! sad huh!?

by the time he gets home from work and school mon-wed its about 8:30 p.m. and I have work at 5 p.m. in salt lake, and then thursdays James doesn't have school after work, but we will still most likely miss eachother by about 15 minutes! :(

Wow... I hope my work schedule will change soon, hopefully in a couple of months we wont have such conflicting schedules!

But We have had so much fun these past ten days! We went on our little honeymoon to salt lake for two days, had a random guy buy our breakfast for us when he saw the "just married" stuff all over my car windows, and then we went shopping around at Lowes and Home Depot, to get ideas of things we will need for our house, and picked out paint colors, and just walked around looking at anything else we thought was cool hahah.

Then, we went on walks almost everyday this last week, we went 2-3 miles and just held hands and enjoyed the warm weather :). We had a barbeque this last weekend with his dad and neighbors, we stayed up late learning how to play Phase 10, rented some movies, and drove to our house just to drive by it because we are so excited to move in in a week and a half! :)

oh and much to my delight we found some girl scout cookies that were being sold, so we stopped for some of those too!

I think the married life suits us well! :) We love it, and we love each other so much! And each day just gets better and better! (seriously! what they say is true.. it just keeps getting better!)

And Easter weekend we get to move into our house! (which we may not totally move in, we might just paint that weekend, but it will be ours!!) Hooray! :)

We are so excited for summer barbeques in our cute backyard!!! :) oh...and i remembered it even has a designated garden area right outside the kitchen door, so I decided I'm going to attempt planting a garden this year!

Well... those are the updates for now!

The Newlyweds!!!

Well we have officially been "newlyweds" for 6 days, and it has been so awesome!!! The wedding day was perfect, but went by so fast, I swear it was a blur! So much excitement, and so many family and friends that came to support us, it was all a little overwhelming! :)

When I had to walk down the huge flight of stairs with my dad I was suddenly terrified I was going to fall down the stairs, so i think I went a little too fast...hahah but I just had to get down the stairs in my 3" heels, then I thought I would be fine...hahah.

But my nerves had gotten the best of me, first of all I don't do well in front of large groups of people staring at me hahah, it makes me nervous, even when it is all family and close friends, and second I was focused on getting to flat ground, hahah!

Then I got to the alter where I had no clue what I was really supposed to do, but handed off my bouquet to my maid of honor as i had seen in movies, and turned to James, the love of my life, the bishop then asked us to take eachothers' right hand, and well lets just say we were both nervous and that confused us...LOL. oops! (that's right, learning left from right without hesitation might even come in handy on your wedding day... who knew?!?)

I was shaking, nervous, that everyone was staring at us, and nervous because we had zero time to even ask the bishop what we would say or when, and I was so sull of emotion I wasn't sure if I was going to cry, laugh, or simply smile, so my lips decided to quiver....hahah never had that happen before...so I was then worried I was possibly about ready to pass out... so then I thought, "ok..just don't lock your knees...ok. check" (Don't worry, I didn't pass out!) Instead James was trying not to laugh, uncertain of what my quivering lips meant... so he whispered "Don't cry" and that made me laugh little. Then the bishop got to the part where we each eventually said "I Do", and then said "you may now kiss your bride," and we were told we could do better hahaha, so we kissed again. :) Then, not sure of what to do next we started to walk back down the aisle, we didn't even think to wait for the music, and I don't even know how long before the piano player caught on and started to play... I didn't really hear it, I was too lost in the moment to really care either!

Backing up a little... we had a dinner before the ceremony, with our immediate family and grandparents, it was great, they all had a chance to get to know eachother, and our parents and some of the grandparents stood and shared a memory, story, or gave us some advice, it was very emotional and sweet. At the end, James leaned over to me and said, "I wasn't going to cry during this part!" It was so cute :) He cried quite a bit, and so did I, it was such a good way to start the day really, my dad shared a story about me, barely able to run, running out to our peach tree where we had a small strawberry patch beneath it, to pick my dad a good strawberry. James' step-dad talked and thanked James for doing something he never could, giving his wife a daughter. (James' mom has 6 boys, so as you can imagine, she had always wanted a girl!)

During the reception, we had many friends and neighbors and distant relatives come to show their support, and one moment I won't ever forget about that day was when James' Grandma came and said that his older cousins, Katie, would like to sing for us. We should have walked out the other end of the building so that everyone could have heard her, she was amazing. She sang accapella, "I will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston, and it was so amazing, Seriously, she needs to sing professionally! We both started to cry during this too, hahah...but you probably would have too just because of her amazing talent. It was awesome! :) Too bad someone didn't record it, but maybe one day I'll record her singing and put it on here for you guys, just so you know I'm not lying! :)

Our flowers turned out to be beautiful, I loved them! The huge alter arrangements were stunning, I of course, loved my dress, James looked ridiculously hot in his tux, and it was the best day ever! I can't wait to see some pictures!!!

For our honeymoon, we just went to Salt lake for a couple of nights to have a little get-a-way, without breaking the bank! We decided to do this because we also are buying a house!! YAY! I know I have mentioned it on here before, but we have it under contract, and we were worried for a little while about the old sewer line, but we had it checked out and it was in really good shape, so the deal is still on! We close at the end of the month and get to move in hopefully the 3rd of April! For now we are just staying at his dad's house. But we cannot wait to move into our first house together!!! Its going to be so much fun! On monday we walked around Lowes, and Home Depot, thinking of things we could do to make the house ours, and I picked out paint colors, we looked at tile, bathroom vanities, and light fixtures! It was so much fun!!!

Anyways, I just thought I would share a little about our wedding day, and the beginning of our lives together! The wedding day really was perfect, and you can't plan every detail, so we had some funny "blooper" moments, and moments where we wern't sure what we were supposed to be doing, but it was still so much fun and we loved every moment of it! I'm sure when we see all of our pictures, we will remember more stories to share too! We are so excited about starting our lives together!!! So stay tuned for more stories and pictures from our journey together! :)

Love,
James & Caitlin Kopecky :)

crazy!!

I can't even explain how weird it is to me that NEXT FRIDAY I will be getting married! hahah! I mean I am so excited, yet exhausted from the wedding stuff, house hunting, and every little detail that goes with both of those big steps in life!

I knew it would be weird when it got this close, I mean its so out of the normal routine, that one day that you somewhat randomly pick, becomes such an important day, and that so much changes with that day too! Did anyone else think that it was weird when it got so close to your wedding day?! hahah! (Weird in a good way of course! lol)

Anyways, its so exciting, and i think the anticipation of the wedding day and trying to buy a house just might kill me hahah! Anyways, I just had to ramble on for a minute about how weird it is and how exciting it is to think that in just 9 days I will finally get to marry James! He is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I love him for so many reasons, when i get mad, he hates it, (he would kill me for saying this, but he gets teared up... and worries about what he has done wrong) its never anything major and sometimes I'm just in a bad mood and get upset over something silly for a few minutes hahah... but he is patient and so sweet even when im mad or upset, and if its not directed at him, he knows i just need a hug and to let me vent. He makes me laugh and anything we do is fun, even when its just watching a movie or making dinner on a saturday night.... he is the best, and i love him so much! :)