catching up

hi. it's been a while since we last blogged, so we're going to catch up on a few things we've been up to recently (in reverse chronological order -- meaning newest first). see the captions underneath the photos for the stories.



we started school today and decided to take a "back to school" picture. it's basically the same as most of our other pictures except you can see the straps of our school bags. we are excited to be back in school because this is our last year of classes.


when austin said he was excited for school to start, what he really meant was that he was excited for byu football to start. laura said, "he's almost as excited for byu football as he was to get married!" austin quickly pointed out that this was not true and that byu football doesn't even belong on the same chart as to how excited he was to marry laura. anyway, austin made sure he could have both by getting season tickets for both of us, along with austin's dad and braden. we enjoyed going to the first game with all of austin's family -- even jenna and ty, who made a surprise trip out to utah for the weekend. austin would point out that this picture is pre-haircut, so no comments, please. awkward! :)


this is laura at 'color me mine' -- a store where you get to choose and paint your own ceramic dishes. it's a place that is special to us because it's where we went on our first date. that was at the end of august 2007, so we celebrated the one year anniversary of our first date by going back and making cups for our kitchen.


austin paints one of several red stripes on his cup.


these are our unfinished cups. well, we did our part by doing the paint glazes and then they finish up by glazing the cups and firing them. we were able to pick them up a couple days later. for those of you paying close attention and remembering this was our first date, you would think that this could work out very nicely for austin on the first date because it gave him a reason to see laura again. true, but austin didn't think about that the first time when planning the date. he was too nervous. and since they were working together already that summer, he didn't really need an excuse.


here are the finished cups on our table. they're much brighter after being fired and look great with other red items in our kitchen. we think this year's cups turned out a bit better than last year's bowls and attribute that to us being less nervous this time. laura's bowl turned out better than austin's bowl last year, and we're pretty sure austin was more nervous than laura on that first date, so we think that our theory is pretty accurate. anyway, it was a fun evening and we are so glad we went on that first date -- we've been dating ever since!