The Best Thing

Wanna know what my favorite thing ever is?

This kid.

So when I got married to my favorite thing ever, I went through some serious inner turmoil.
Since I was younger I wanted to travel the world.
When I started getting into photography, I wanted to travel the world, take pictures of it all, and sell my work in galleries all over.
I wanted to do humanitarian work in various parts of the globe.
I wanted to become a museum curator and live in studio apartment in downtown Kansas City.

Then I met Devon.

I knew that marrying him would mean my dreams and goals I had planned for myself would have to take a backseat to my marriage.
It was really hard at first to realize how little money we had and how hard I was working.
And to know that I wouldn't get to use the money on things I wanted.
It was our money, not just mine anymore.

But marrying him was worth it.
I decided that I would much rather live without Europe and fabulous museums, than live without him
(Que the cheesy "awwwws" now)

It's still hard now, but I just try not to think about it, and focus on other things.

When I was younger, I bought a jar.
This jar was to hold all of my money for my travels
(mainly Italy)

When I got married, I kept it.
But watched as the money was slowly depleted as we had bills to pay

The other night as I was getting into bed
Devon looked over at me and asked if I had seen what he wrote on the jar.
I got up and started heading towards the kitchen to get the "date night jar"
because,
what other jars did we have?

He stopped me and said "no in here."
I was confused, then finally realized what he was talking about.

I looked over to see this sitting on my nightstand

{Taken with my new lens, but we'll get to that later}

Now I know this may seem like a small stupid little thing but I was literally speechless.
He said "I am going to take you to Italy"
aaand as cheesy as this might sound,
I cried.
haha
But really for any of you who know how important this goal of mine is to me,
you'll understand.

So, he's the best. There really is no contest.
I am sure after he's sees this he'll be embarrassed and possibly "hate" me for a minute.
haha oh well.

{SIDE NOTE:  yes I love Devon and he is the best, but uh I also just got a lens today that might come as a strong second. I'm completely head over heels for this little bit of technology. *sigh*}

Kansas Part 2

While we were in Kansas we celebrated two very special birthdays!

The first was Devon's. Poor Devon his birthday fell on the day we were driving out to Kansas so the first 14 hours weren't very thrilling. Although, I did manage to tell him "happy birthday" about 45,000 times and I bought him a milkshake at Mcdonalds 

I am and awesome wife.

I had told my parents we were coming so we decided to throw a little surprise party for Devon on the night of our arrival with some family friend's that know Devon pretty well.

Jenni (who is like my second mom) made him an awesome cake for the occasion! (she was also the one that did our wedding cake)

taken with my i pod in low light (sorry for the quality)

I mean seriously HOW COOL IS THAT!? it had little light sabers and everything! Totally awesome. He was very impressed to say the least.

Later in the week we celebrated my mama's birthday which was fun. We have a little tradition in the Albrechtsen house hold. Whenever there is a birthday, my parents would always decorate the house the night before while we were asleep. 

well...

Devon, dad and I did it this time. It looked really bad. But I did discover a new talent that my husband has

He can make balloon animals!!

What the heck?

Anyway, so then we proceed to the following day and we went to the art museum in Kansas City. Which I always love :)

Then it was off to Olive garden for the special lady's dinner and then cake and present time!

for those who know my mother, you will know why we put "happy birthday windy Lyndee" on the cake

She got to wear an awesome hat that Devon made her haha

"Good moms have sticky floors, dirty ovens, and happy kids" One of her gifts

Then the week concluded with taking Marissa out of school to go have breakfast with me

and a photoshoot with Lindsay

ha

When it's an Albrechtsen photoshoot, it isn't going to be normal

And then Devon wanted some too

And so that was our vacation.

We left the next day definitely not wanting to leave.

Kansas Part 1

This past week we had the awesome opportunity to go back to my home in Kansas.

I cannot tell you how excited I was. 

We went back to see the new temple our church built in Kansas City, which my dad painted a massive mural in. It was absolutely gorgeous. 

I didn't get to bring my camera because mainly I didn't want to lug it around with me all day, so I just used my trusty I-pod haha. 

There were so many people at the temple it was crazy. They even extended the open house for another week so that more people could come see it. It is awesome.

We were lucky enough to get to go through with my parents and my grandmother. Unfortunately I don't have the photos of the whole group. Devon drove my grandma around in the wheelchair which was really quite humorous.

And then we went out to eat after the open house and I got these cute mini burgers! Haha I love mini things.

My dad wanted to put his hand in it to show the scale haha. 

So on this little vacation, we didn't tell my sisters' and went to surprise them while they were shopping at a store. We just walked past them and they were like "Wait...what?" haha I have a video, but it's long so I won't torture you.

Marissa, my middle sister, was gone a lot with work and school and such so I didn't get to see her much. When I did get to see her I realized I never really took any photos :( My mistake.

But we did get to go with her to look for her prom dress 

(and when I say 'we' I mean Lindsay, me AND Devon haha)

Me and Lindsay's awkward prom picture

I have to break this vacation up into two parts because there is just so much to talk about. It would be way too much to write on my part, and read on your part haha.

More to come!

A Breath Of Fresh Air

Oi! the past few weeks have been busy and holy cow have they been stressful.
Work has been almost unbearable and finals for poor Devon have just been brutal.
but finally the work load is easing up and we are able to relax.

This past week we had Devon's sister Adrienne, her husband, and their sweet little boy come to stay with us for a few days for graduation.
(no we weren't the one's graduating unfortunately)

And I just loved having a little boy running around the house.
And of course I couldn't resist snapping a few photos of the little guy, he was just too cute! And he loooved my camera. He would get right up close to me whenever it was in my hands.

 

Uncle Devon startin him early.

I have a very strong feeling that I will be watching my kids grow up through a camera lens.

Anyway, Just a short little post

more to come in a week when we get home from Kansas :)

The Date Jar

So maybe,
every newly married couple is so blissfully in the newlywed stage that they just cannot bear to be apart for one minute of one day
and for every minute of every single day just staring into each others eyes is just enough to keep them out of boredom


uh...
we're not like that.
Not saying we aren't madly in love,
we sooo are. I mean my husband is AWESOME!
however, we have the attention spans of squirrels and never have any ideas of what to do with the down time we do get with each other

{I mean c'mon people...it's Rexburg}

So, my AWESOME husband came up with an AWESOME idea.

The date night jar.

We each wrote 5 things onto little sheets of paper and put them into the jar so that the other one wouldn't know what we wrote.
so it would be a surprise.
We also wrote down 5 things together that we would want to do for a date, and put it into the jar.

We agreed that whatever was pulled out, we would HAVE to do it.
No matter what.

In my head I imagined pulling something out of the jar one night and being totally creative and fun.
I would take loads of pictures of our adventures and make an AWESOME blog post about it

Well...

The other night we decided to take something out. Devon let me pick.

It said, "Go to Doug's house (friends from our ward) and get a deck of Magic cards to play"

uh...

Do you know what "Magic" is?
Well it's a little nerd card game that I made fun of Devon for playing.

Karma?

Needless to say, Devon started cracking up when I read it because we had agreed that NO MATTER WHAT it was, we HAD to do it.

So, we played. And I didn't take pictures.

It wasn't too bad. I didn't understand the game at all and I'll probably never play it again. But Devon sure got a kick out of it.

Hopefully there are no repeats of that one in the jar.