Emmy's here!

Kristy and I are pleased to announce the safe arrival of Emily Elizabeth Orton, born yesterday (Feb. 1st) at 7:50 am. She is 8 lbs, 7 oz, 20 inches long and is a beautiful addition to our family!

We feel so blessed to be entrusted with such a precious little spirit and are grateful that both mom and baby are doing well. More pictures to come! :)

It's done!

So big news! I'm a geek! And I'm done with the CPA exam! Most of you who are reading this probably already knew -- I've pretty much been telling everybody I talk to... It's such a relief to have it finished so that I don't have to stress about it down the road, when things are likely to get more (rather than less) busy. I technically won't know my score on this last section for a month or so but I'm telling myself that I'm done. :)

Anyway, that's all. I just thought y'all should know!

Marriage is fun...

Marriage is fun,marriage is great. Life is more fun, when you have a mate!
...brilliant, I know -- I want royalties every time you repeat it :)

So 2 years ago TODAY, Kristy and I got engaged. How fun! For those of you who didn't hear the story (or forgot), I took Kristy on a hike to Stewart Falls up by Sundance. Due to a rather unfortunate (but super funny) run-in with Kristy on my way to Wilson Diamonds with her roommate Megan (who was coming to give me advice), Kristy had strong suspicions about the hike...which obviously turned out to be justified! We got all the way up to the falls, tooled around for a bit, then were about to head back before I finally got the guts up to pop the question. I actually forgot to take the knee (which I quickly remedied) -- but as as you probably could have guessed, Kristy said 'yes' anyway. :)

Anyway, married life is so much fun. One of Kristy's engaged friends just stopped by tonight and we're so excited for her. Kristy and I actually just read an article tonight from the opinion page of the Washington Post about some of the benefits of not waiting so long to get married (see here). We totally agreed with it, but were a saddened when we read some of the denuncatory comments. Obviously marriage isn't something that we jumped into lightly -- it's a big deal! -- but, in my experience, it's SO much more fulfilling than single life.

Tickle monster

So this is one of our new favorite things to do -- tickle Jake! He's so funny when he laughs! We thought we should share the joy with the rest of you... :) There's nothing quite like a baby's giggle to cheer up your day!

We're #1!

So tonight we took Jake to his second BYU basketball game...and thankfully this one turned out better than the last one (last time we lost to Wake Forest). The game tonight was WAY closer than it should have been -- the Cougs just didn't come out to play -- but they were able to pull it out for a win. That means that we've won the conference championship 3 years in a row, which is the first time we've done that since the early 1930s. Anyway, it was fun to go!

Kristy and I were talking after the game tonight and we realized that tonight was our last BYU basketball game while still living in Provo. While we're both excited to move on to the next stage of our lives and head out to California, we're going to miss living here in Happy Valley. I don't know if I would have said that a few years ago, but I really feel like that now. Both Kristy and I have had wonderful experiences here and made great memories. It has plenty of quirks, but we love how family-friendly it is, how many fun (and cheap!) things there are to do, and so on. It will be fun to come back and visit later, especially as our kids get older and we can take them to games, show them around campus, get them ice cream at the Creamery on 9th, and let them pick out a book at the BYU Bookstore. I have fond memories of doing that as a kid and I hope we can help our kids develop similar good feelings, regardless of whether they come to school here or not.

Anyway, just some nostalgic and sentimental thoughts.... Go Cougs! :)

Taking time to ponder

So today was fast and testimony meeting in our ward. Near the end, I thought I might get up and share an experience Kristy and I had about a week ago, but several people got up and the meeting went over...but I thought, 'hey, I could include it our blog!' (Side note: I've found that I've been thinking in blog-entries these days.)

As far as background goes, Kristy and I have been crazy-busy lately. Kristy works everyday from 7am to almost 5 pm, I watch the baby (which I've found to be much busier than I expected) and study for the CPA and have prep classes two nights a week. On top of that, we each have callings in the ward, family and friends to visit, etc. All good and very necessary things -- but we've been pretty tired. It's like, 'welcome to the rest of our lives!' (in a good way).

Anyway, we hadn't had the chance to go to the temple for a few weeks, so we asked some of our married friends if they could watch Jake for the evening. They could, so we ended up going on a Friday night. As it turned out, the temple was very busy (which is a good thing), but we actually ended up waiting around for a long time before we finally had to leave to pick up Jake. It would have been nice to stay and do some work, but we realized that having an hour or so to just sit in that beautiful, peaceful place and ponder was exactly what we needed. Life gets so busy -- but it's still so important to take time to be still and think about what we're grateful for, what we can do better, and how good the Lord has been to us.

So that's the thought: turn off the radio, pull out the earbuds, and be still. It's SO worth it. :)

Welcome!

So this is Kristy and I's newest adventure -- braving the new world of blogging! We've enjoyed reading up on our friends' lives through their blogs and figured it was time to give it a try ourselves. We haven't quite decided what we'll write about (other than what's going on with us and Jake), but we'll probably figure that out as we go.

Anyway, enjoy!