our new home

For the next couple of months, Grant and I (and baby Emily) will be living in my parents' garage apartment while we prepare for the baby to come, get settled in the area, and begin searching for our own place.  Since we won't be here long, we left a lot of our stuff in boxes.  We came into the apartment with it partly furnished, so we were still able to add a lot of our own little touches to make it feel like our own place.  It's small, but works perfectly for our needs, and we really like the way it's turned out!


Entrance:

Living Room:

Kitchen:

Bedroom (and nursery):

fun headband holder that my mom and I made (thanks to Amanda for the idea)

poor Grant has to use the "hobbit closet"

Bathroom:

We like our little place and are excited to spend the next few months here.  It's our 2nd home together, but it will be little Emily's 1st home!

(make sure to read the previous post about our last few weeks in provo... we have so much to catch up on that I decided to split up the blog posts!)

On to the next chapter

Sorry for the lack of blog posts in the past few months... things have been pretty crazy for our little family.  We spent much of our summer packing up our home in Provo, preparing for our move to Houston.  Now we're finally here and we're counting down the days until our little one arrives.
Provo has been very good to us for the past several years.  Grant and I were both able to study at and graduate from Brigham Young University.  Grant was able to teach missionaries at the MTC and I taught second graders at Westside Elementary.  And Provo is also where we were able to meet each other and fall in love :)  We've made great friends that we know we'll have forever and made lots of memories that we'll cherish.  For all of these reasons (and many more) we are very grateful for all of our time spent in the beautiful Provo, Utah.  Here are some pictures of our last few weeks:

After several years and countless intramural teams, Grant was finally able to win a shirt this summer... TWICE!  The first one came from coed kickball during the spring term, and just a few weeks ago his softball team became champs.  The team was thrown together last minute and most of the members didn't know each other.  They only won 1 game during the regular season, but came together and meshed so well during the tournament that they made it all the way to the end!

We had heard this was the best snow cone place in Provo and it definitely didn't disappoint!  I only wish we had discovered it earlier in this super hot summer!

Last cafe rio :(

Grant's birthday!

He got a new BYU blanket

and we went to Brick Oven one last time for a birthday dinner

Grant didn't end up walking in his graduation ceremony, but we did take some pictures to document the occasion!

Our final to-do list, preparing for the move

The morning of the move was very bittersweet.  We were excited to be moving close to family and starting the next chapter, but it was very hard leaving all of our friends, our first apartment together, and the security and familiarity of our college town.  It was a great 5 years for me (and 4 for Grant) that we will always remember and hold dear.  We don't know when we'll be there again but we're looking forward to it someday!

The move wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, especially considering the fact that I was 8 months pregnant at the time!  It went by pretty fast and I was fairly comfortable.  The only complaint was that my legs and feet swelled up like balloons!  It was pretty embarrassing!  But it's been so nice being able to swim and spend time in real air conditioning since we got here to Houston.  I never realized how wonderful swimming is for a pregnant woman, but now that I know I'll definitely be spending lots of time in the pool before the baby comes.  I'm 37 weeks today, so I'm technically full term and baby could come anytime.  Only 3 weeks until the actual due date... CRAZY!!