Reflections on being 21

Ladies and Gentleman, I am pleased to announce that this week I finally made it to 21. This week I have been reflecting quite a bit about where I am in life vs. where I thought I would be. When I was just a young naive 18 yr. old (in comparison to the older and wiser adult I am now!) I truly and honestly believed I wouldn't be "one of those" girls who goes down to BYU and gets married. I had big plans for myself: I was going to major in public relations and finish as quickly as possible so that when I turned 21 I could turn in my mission papers. I never thought I would be celebrating my one year anniversary with my husband? I didn't foresee my time off of school, nor did I think I would be finishing my sophomore year at BYU still "open major". I would have laughed if you told me I would choose a career with Victoria Secret (just so you all know how ironic this is growing up my dad used to tell me I was a pirates treasure: because I had a sunken chest...) and I would never have dreamed of being in a financial position in which I could afford to buy a home.  It's funny that even though my life is so far from where I thought I would be, I am still so happy. Life took me to where I needed to be whether I was ready for it or not! Well enough of all this mushy gushy stuff, let me tell you about my birthday!

Thanks to some sacrificing from my friends at work I didn't have to work on my birthday! (quite the luxury!) So I started the day with a relaxing bubble bath, scented with my lavender Doterra oils (still trying to figure out all the fun ways to use them!) after that I got busy! We had cleaning checks the next day so I had to scrub our apt. down from top to bottom! Its amazing how relaxing cleaning can actually be! I received lots of love from family and friends through out the day so Thank you Thank you! When Garrett came home we went to our house (well technically its not our house yet but I like to think it is...) for the inspection. Every thing went well and we got a lot of good information about being homeowners. It sounds like a lot more work then I originally thought! After we finished up G took me out to dinner at one of our favorite places: Tucanos! We ate until we thought we were going to POP! In case you haven't eaten at Tucanos before it is quite the experience! Its brazilian style BBQ every thing is exotic and delicious. Waiters come to you with skewers of meat or pineapple and you eat until you can't eat anymore! When we were done we went to our best friends/ cousins house. Lauren had made me a delicious birthday cake and they gave me beautiful flowers. We went to Grants championship soccer game (which he won) and played some Disney Scene-it (My birthday present from G, my husband knows me too well!) All in all it was a wonderful birthday, much different then most of the world celebrates the big 21 but it was exactly perfect for me! Well I'm off to Cozumel for the next week so stay tuned for some wonderful stories and pictures!



Dinner at Tucanos

Lauren's gourmet birthday cake!




Birthday suprise from my little sister!

Do the DoTERRA!

Earlier this week I went to a DoTERRA house party for our good friends the Trumans.

The Trumans introduced us to DoTERRA about a year ago when I had a muscle cramp in my neck that prohibited me from turning my head to the left for about a week. They gave me a small bottle of Deep Blue essential oil. When I opened the bottle it initially smelled like icy/hot. (which I had already tried and it didn't help) However, since they were so kind to offer this help with out us even asking we decided to give it a try. So every night before we went to bed G would give me a neck rub with the oil. Sure enough two days later my neck was back to normal... better then normal actually, I felt great! The Trumans generously shared their oils with us over the next couple of months: On Guard for when I had a cold, Peppermint before we went to a the midnight premier of Hunger Games to wake us up, they even used Lemon for cooking one night when they invited us over for dinner. By this point I was very curious. So that's how I found myself going to a house party... Well I'm a sucker for sales because I found myself leaving the party with the Family Physician Kit: DoTERRA's Top 10 oils (Lavender, Lemon, Peppermint, Melaleuca, Oregano, Deep Blue, Breathe, Digestzen, and On Guard) and DVDs teaching me how to use my new oils. They even threw in a bonus Slim and Sassy (a best selling weight loss oil).  G was a little skeptical at first so we decided to give it a test run.

My new Family Physician Kit.

Anyone who has talked to me this week has probably caught on to the fact that I get pretty bad seasonal allergies. I have had a particularly difficult week with all the wind and rain blowing those lovely blossoms and spores up into the air. By the end of the week I had absolutely no use of my nose. I couldn't even breath out of my nose if it meant life or death. I've been on every kind of allergy medication Walmart has to offer, and even when I'm all drugged up I still have minimal use of my nasal passages at best. Anyway, back to the story, tonight I finally opened my kit and read all my material and found the perfect test: Breathe. I put one drop of the oil onto my palm and massaged it into my chest... sure enough within minutes I felt my sinuses open up and I could FINALLY breathe out of my nose again after about five minutes. I'm not saying that I'm a true believer yet but it has convinced me enough to do some further testing and investigating. So if any of you out there use DoTERRA or other essential oils. Do me a favor? Let me know some of your favorite uses for your favorite oils. If anyone wants to try some come on over and borrow some of mine... I have plenty!!

The Big News...

Its been nearly six months since my last post.... so I figured when I posted again it would have to be for something BIG. Well ladies and gentlemen we have some BIG news...

Garrett and I are buying a HOUSE!!! Crazy huh? The process actually started a little over a year ago. G and I were in a frustrating predicament: We had not one, but TWO rent checks to make each month. A four month time period went by while we watched our precious newly-wed money pay for an empty apartment. Luckily for us, that's when the light bulb went on. We realized we were making enough money to start to saving for a bigger cause. So we started the saving game. Giving up fast food and new clothes was easier when we had a bigger goal in sight. Around January we decided we had enough saved up that we could start seriously looking. We looked at lots of condos and town homes for weeks and weeks and weeks. After a while it got pretty discouraging. If we liked the property it usually meant it was out of our price range. If we found an affordable one it was almost always a short sale with other offers already on the table. I had decided to throw in the towel and give up when G and I decided to fast about it the up coming Sunday (which happened to be Easter.) G and I went up to our parents house for Easter dinner which is when the miracles started happening. My mom inquired how house hunting was going and I expressed my discouragement. She went online with me and started looking at available houses. That was when we saw it; a beautiful three bedroom two bathroom single family home right in the heart of Provo. It was PERFECT! The best news was it had only been on the housing market for a week! So we contacted our realtor and said we wanted to get in to see it ASAP. The next day that both G and I had off was Tuesday so we figured that would be soon enough. Well Jeremy the realtor got back to us and said he was actually available Monday night if we wanted to get in to see it sooner. I had work but G agreed to go, and good thing he did. As he walked through he loved it so much he put down an offer (with out me even seeing it once) (but he did call and ask my permission) that night! There were no other offers on the table so we knew we had to move fast. In the morning we found out that two other offers had been put in on our house that same night! Good thing we didn't wait til Tuesday to see the house. So now we had to play the waiting game to see which offer would come out on top. Im sure you can all guess the end of the story... WE WON!!! In approximately three weeks G and I will be the proud owner of this cozy little home with the big backyard. I am SO happy and grateful that were were blessed by our faith so quickly. What a happy Easter! 

The O'Briens first home!