I'm not sure what this post is; it's mostly miscellaneous updates about what we've been doing lately illustrated with pictures from my phone. Consider yourself forewarned :)

1. House Progress

Now that the basement apartment is complete and rented, we've moved on to the garage and rest of the basement. Hopefully we can move into the basement apartment ourselves in the fall.

David decided to work on the garage first and then go downstairs again. Today he is putting up the insulation but previously he was putting 2 by 4s on the existing 2 by 4s to make them deeper. This way we could put in thicker insulation that will keep the garage (and the room under it) nice and warm during the winter months.

Here's how it looks right now:

I think David is enjoying outfitting the garage the way he likes it. It's been a great opportunity to clean it out and know what we have in there.

2. Post Graduation High

This picture illustrates life after graduation for me. I have time to laugh about random things they sell in the grocery store while I'm out shopping. I'm not the stressed girl thinking about the piles of assignments that are left for me to do when I get home. So yeah- random frog = graduation euphoria.

3. Gardening Greenies

When my family was here in April they helped me put in a great garden with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cilantro. But Utah is serious when it says don't plant until Mother's day.

Here's what happened for a day pretty soon after they left:

But David and I replaced some of the plants and salvaged some others. And we've recently noticed tiny sprouts from some of our seeds that survived the cold. Hopefully we'll have a real salsa garden to pick from fairly soon. (The rest of these details are mostly for my dad and anyone else who cares to hear a detailed garden description ;)

Time to weed yet again- that big green thing isn't progress, it's an invader.

This is the blueberry bush we planted fairly close to the fence. We realize we're going to need another one for cross-pollination.

The grapes have been growing pretty rapidly since my mom pruned them.

We actually think two out of the three tomatoes survived the snow after David inspected them closely. We bought the big one on the left but the one on the right is a post-storm tomato. But it's green so it's alive right?

Our lone pepper plant- David uses these in his yummy salsa so we got a replacement.

I counted the seeds out but then these little shoots started coming up and every time we go out there after work I get super excited to check on them.

5. General Conference Throwback

Cody and Markie had the Hatch cousins up to Markie's parents house in Midway for a session of conference. After dinner we took a walk and they showed us this crazy place I didn't know even existed.

It's called the "Homestead Crater" and it looks like a big random hill from the outside. On the inside you can look up and see the sky or look down at all the people swimming or scuba diving in the warm water inside the crater.

Here's a picture I found online of the outside of the crater. It was fun to check it out; if you're ever in Midway you too can explore the crater.

So that's about what we're up to. Sometimes it's kind of anticlimactic to explain life mostly consists of work, gardening, renovating and grocery shopping (mostly me) but for some reason I think life with David couldn't get much more fun.

This last weekend David and I went to Front Sight- I enjoyed being initiated to this Hatch family tradition and experiencing my first four day handgun class. Here are some of my first impressions as a newbie who wasn't quite sure what I was getting into.

Something about desert landscape just makes me happy to be alive. These kind of views are why I have a thing for Arizona.

We got to Pahrump pretty late on Thursday only to remember we had to be at Front Sight at the crack of dawn the next day.

But we dragged ourselves out of bed (or in my case out from in-between two air mattresses, haha) and lined up at 6:30 a.m. in a caravan of eager attendees. We tuned in to make sure we were prepared for day 1.

Some of my first impressions were from the cars that lined up. There were your typical large trucks as you would stereotype to be at a shooting range, but then there were luxury cars as well. 

There were vans and campers full of families excited for the weekend and geriatrics who made you wonder if they could really do an 8 to 5 rigorous course. But I quickly realized Front Sight is for everyone and I liked the variety and openness towards everyone.

David all ready to go after we checked in.

Here's me getting used to having a gun on my side. It took some getting used to- carrying all day long and seeing everyone else carry all day long as well. 

Here are the facades of the ranges we were on for the first two days.

This is the bigger range we were on during our third day. The first two days the weather was amazing but this day the northwest wind really kicked up sand when the bullets hit the berm behind the targets. 

But Hatch's have an answer to the dust: David used a headscarf to shield from dust. This is him practicing clearing malfunctions.

I used my scarf around my neck and tucked it into my shirt because I wasn't on the range for most of day three. But David captured a sequence of one of my last shots on that day. 

I couldn't believe how comfortable I got so fast- my first time shooting to my last time shooting were night and day. My favorite parts were the simulator bay where you clear a house and also working on using the techniques to improve my accuracy. 

Unfortunately I got a bad case of food poisoning and so most of the third day consisted of me being really, really sick. I'll spare you the all the details (they involve saline in the ER) but I kinda think Pahrump restaurants are ruined for me at this point.

But other than that, I had a wonderful experience. We met some really nice people and I left feeling confident, educated and safer. I remember a one point looking around and feeling patriotic, and not in a crazy, extremist way. The people at Front Sight were there to have fun and learn to responsibly exercise their right to keep their families safe.  

After four years and a lot of homework I graduated from BYU with my Bachelors in Communications- Public Relations. It was fun to celebrate with my family since they were here for Allison's wedding.

I grabbed my cap and gown from the bookstore a half an hour before I was supposed to line up for the Thursday commencement in the Marriot Center. And look who I ran into trying to buy my dad a belt? 

Then I lined up with the 5,000 other graduates and we paraded over to the Marriott. I couldn't believe it when we walked past President Uchtdorf- I waved to him :)

My view from my seat on the court.

President Uchtdorf speaking- he didn't have any notes but he was the most entertaining speaker.

Taylor and I both graduated and had fun celebrating together. He's heading off to USC's law school in the fall.

Everyone went to Banana Leaf for dinner afterwards and celebrated- we had fun hanging out and trying some new foods.

The next day was our college graduation ceremony where they call your name. It was more fun because I knew the people I was graduating with and my professors were there.

I snapped this picture of myself after I got my fake diploma (they mail the real one to you) and texted it to David and said "I'm done for realzzz now!" He had to work Friday so he only went to the first ceremony (lucky him).




Mom's pictures from the nosebleeds :)

PR ladies who I got to work with and have classes with.

Afterwards I met up with the PR students and some professors and we all took pictures with the Y.

Preston snapped some pictures of Mom and Dad looking on proudly. One down- three to go!

Unfortunately Preston also got distracted by this gentleman's head.

There were probably at least 5 more pictures like this on my camera when I got it back from him.

You'd think as a college graduate I would have known what to expect when I gave my camera to a 16 year old boy who is kind of bored. Haha! 

I'm so excited to work for an awesome company doing communications and marketing for them. It's fun when your hard work pays off. I'm still wrapping my mind around being done with school permanently and am excited for the next adventures in our life!