a new beginning

Hello everyone!  I'm so excited to start this blog and to write about all the exciting things happening in our lives.  I suppose I better start where it all began.  Joe and I got married on December 29, 2009 in the beautiful Columbia River temple in Richland, WA.  We were blown away by how smoothly everything went.  With the exception of it being a chilly 25 degrees outside (okay it was December, so what can you expect?) it was absolutely the perfect start to what will be an incredible journey.

After our gorgeous reception in Richland done by the budding wedding planner extraordinaire, my mom, we ran off to Oxnard, California for a relaxing honeymoon.  We slept in, played at the beach (in shorts and flip flops and 76 degree weather!), explored the beautiful countryside of California, watched the most amazing sunset over the pacific ocean, and even rode some crazy roller coasters at Six Flags in Los Angeles.  All in all it was such a great trip, and we were admittedly a little sad to come back and start school and work again in Provo.

But coming back to real life has had its perks too.  We had a second reception in West Point, Utah for Joe's friends and family and a few of our college friends too.  We got to open presents from so so many generous people.  And we've gotten to start the fun but long process of "getting situated."  We went from a big pile of boxes, to no more boxes and a big pile of presents, to a big pile of "where can we store this in our little one-bedroom apartment?"  But with a long holiday weekend coming up hopefully we'll get pictures on the wall and furniture bought and our little place will start to look more like a home.

Now many of you may not know exactly what our plan is for the next few years, so here's the quick run-down.  Joe is graduating this coming April (4 months!!!) with a bachelor's degree in Exercise Science from BYU.  He wants to be a (probably pediatric?) physical therapist someday.  He also has a really great job with a non-profit physical therapy clinic in Provo.  He's the office manager so he does a lot of the coordinating with parents and volunteers, while also finding a little time to work with the kids too.  His plan WAS to go to physical therapy school this coming September, but then I came along and tweaked his plans a little bit ( :  I am graduating in December 2010 with a bachelor's degree in Communication Disorders (Audiology and Speech Language Pathology) from BYU.  I want to become a speech-language pathologist for young children with stutters and lisps.  So Joe will work and help put me through school until then.  Then we'll be off for physical therapy school in September 2011.  Where?  Well, that's still the question.  Hopefully somewhere close to family, but we'll see where life takes us.

So that's us in a nutshell.  We're still getting used to married life (convincing myself that my name is Darci Hill not Darci Nelson...family home evening with our very own family instead of our assigned singles family... grocery shopping for two...and NOT labeling everything with initials before putting it in the fridge...) but so far we're loving every minute of it.  And although a lot has changed since we got married, a lot has stayed the same.  We still love spending every spare minute we have together, Joe still tickles me, I still try and try to tickle him with (much to my frustration) no response, and we both still look forward all week to Friday night date night.  Keep following us and hopefully we'll keep this blog updated with everything that we're doing.