21!

Twas a beautiful July day in in the Salt Lake valley on my birthday.

Mark surprised me with a new set of scriptures when I woke up, with my married name embossed on them. He told me he just had to make sure I knew I was his.
So sweet of him.
I had expressed interest in a new set earlier because my old ones are falling apart badly, so I was very excited!

Then Guido walked in the room... I think he resembles a fish in this picture. We love to wake up to the sound of snorting at the door when we stay at the Thorups.
Adorable little pooch.

We took the day and walked around downtown salt lake which included a trip to the Apple store to play with the goods.
I love anything to do with Apple... the Iphone will be our first purchase after we graduate and make some mula.... it will probably come before a second car.

Slot car racing = killer date idea!

Smoochin

I got some fun new jewelry at the gateway for my birthday as well... no picture provided sorry.

This was our final event of the day. Mark took me to a piano bar! I got to use my I.D. on my 21st birthday. Besides showing up WAY to early to a bar and ordering a juice (we should have just worn a Mormon sign on our head) and a little bit of bar humor it was a blast. This place had dueling pianists and the show was so fun to watch!

Such a great day.

21 is officially the last "anticipated" birthday. It's just getting older and older from here on out.

The past few weeks

Since I can't keep up with blogging very well lately, this is an update of the past couple weeks. :)

We went camping! We took our parents trailer and found a nice little place up grover park. It was good to get a little wilderness time. Mark is an excellent fire builder.

I was in the Logan Herald Journal with my Pal, Aubrey. It was a great opportunity! I have had a ton of parents and students email me about wanting to be in the program. We fed the ducks at first dam in this picture. What you cannot see is our fear of the geese (well you can see it a little, because we are on the table). These geese had 8 little babies and were chasing us around barking at us. Terrifying. Click here for the article.

This is Jasper....he is a boy... in a family of lots of girls.

Poor dog. I love having awesome sisters!

Bear Lake with the Walker's and new cute swimsuits! I like this picture!

Carla's kitchen part dos. Mark raised their cabinets 9 inches! He put crown molding around the top and new shelves in below and in the bathroom. I LOVE the shelves. They are free standing, so no supports on the bottom, so cute! All that is left to do is paint and hang the doors again. Click here to see Carla's kitchen part uno.

More work on the trailer! It looks amazing. Detailed pictures to come. He just finished putting in a shelf and the dust collection system.

ALSO, Thanks to the genius Thorups, Matt and Carla, Mark has an awesome new "business"/blog name --- Mark's Traveling Toolbox. It will look great on the side of his trailer! His blog is now travelingtoolbox.blogspot.com.

Almost Done

Mark has now transformed this lowly little flat bed trailer into.....

A traveling workshop. It is almost done. These are some of the pictures of the process. There will be more later once it is completely finished. Now he has a place for all of his tools and a perfect work station.
Both sides flip out and he has some nice tables to work on.

This is the whole thing closed up
And painted.

He now has the outside and main structure done. Just little conveniences left to construct, like shelves, locks on the outside, a suction system for keeping it clean of saw dust, etc. It looks amazing though! Perfect summer project.

Star Valley fun

Carp fishing with a bow and arrow
Or sword
Tile job shinanigans
Mudding.... we love our truck
....and getting stuck....in snow.... in June

We love Star Valley. Thanks Mom and Dad Walker

Goodbye! See you in two years!

What a handsome young elder! We miss him already but are so proud of him.

The Guido Story

I am kinda on a blogging frenzy right now, but here is the long promised Guido story for Matt and Carla. This story was written by my little brother, Robert. When Matt and Carla went to Disney Land, we watched Guido for a week and brought him up to Star Valley with us. Robert was very excited for his visit. Pay attention to the creative spelling, translations are under each picture.

When Guido is coming over

On Friday, Gwedow (Guido) is coming over. Its going to be fun. He is staying until Sunday.

He is a puppy! He is a pug. He is fun. He is white, he is black on his face. (notice the picture)

When he gets here Im going to play with him.

He eats everything. And he eats his dog food fast! If it is 9:30 pm he eats
quick and its still 9:30.

Then sometimes he eats our carpet. My Mom and Dad don't like that. (he has never been to our house so I think he had just heard stories of the carpet eating Guido. haha)

When he leaves Ill take a picture.

About the author: My name is Robert Walker. I like hunting and fishing. I have 3 dogs and 4 sisters and 2 (1) brother (2 boys). I like reading. It is fun.

Justin Douglas Walker

is going on a mission to San Fernando, CA. He spoke on Sun and sang with two of my sisters! They did such a great job! with everything! The song brought us all to tears. We are so proud of our Justin! He is going to be such a great missionary! And a handsome one at that!

Kaitlynn received her YW in Excellence award the same day! Congratulations
and way to work hard!

We had a little lunch after church, and got to see lots of cousins and friends. This is one of Dean's boys, Gavin. He liked the flash of the camera.

2 roommates and friends, 2 beautiful brides, 2 amazing weddings

This week we went to two beautiful weddings. Both of them were roommates from my first year at Utah State.

Dana and Jesse got married at Wadley Farms in Lindon on Wed May 19. It was a gorgeous day and the farm was astounding. Jesse's bishop conducted the ceremony and his advice was so good. I loved how he told them that there is a lot of turmoil and instability in the world, but it does not have to exist in your marriage and your home. We loved that. We always want to keep our home as a place of comfort and peace. Congratulations to this happy couple!!










Not to mention a gorgeous dress.




































Angella and Ben married on Sat May 22 at Thanksgiving Point. She has spent so much time planning this wedding and wow it paid off! So beautiful! Angella was my roommate the first year as well. Ben is one of Mark's engineering buddies and he also lived on the same floor as me, Mark, Angella, and Dana. So fun! Ben's brother was the ring bearer and he dropped the rings twice as he came running in. It was adorable. :) The pastor that married them told them that you do not marry one person, you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they really are, and the person they will become through being married to you. We thought that was cute.

I loved her dress as well and her jewelry was incredible. Her sister MADE her necklace and earrings! Incredible. Congratulations to Ben and Angella!














These are my old roommates. (Jesse in the corner, haha) then Rhiannon, Shanae, Dana. Fun that weddings bring us together again.

Updates

This last semester was a VERY successful for the both of us. We both finished with above a 3.5! It's nice to win one :)

We have spent the last two weeks hanging with this little guy. He has been so freakin adorable. My favorite is when we come out of a room to see him patiently sitting and waiting for us, or how he farts in Mark's face, or his Bad A cage fitting with Jasper (Walker dog), or how his name fits perfectly in everything, in every song, saying, etc. We love the little guy and have had fun with him. Matt and Carla get home from Spain on Sat.


Sunday is Justin's farewell talk! He is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. WOW I can't believe this time has come. I am so stinkin proud of him and SO excited for him! It will be fun to write a missionary in a few weeks. He enters the MTC on June 9th and is going to San Franando CA! Congrats and good luck to him! We will be in Star Valley that day.

We are just roaming free this summer, sorta. Mark has had the opportunity to do a couple jobs here in Salt Lake and I am doing some work for my Logan job from home. Things are going well. We have started a blog for Mark "portfolio," (click here to see it!) hopefully this will help keep him busy with jobs this summer. The blog is still a work in progress. He has already got 3 or 4 other jobs lined up, so we will be jumping from SV to Salt Lake, to Logan quite a bit this summer. So far its been great.

Ya for friends! I have seen Kyli and Hannah a few times while being down here. We have had so much fun! Chase and Brooklyn are growing fast and man they are adorable! I stole this pic from Hannah's blog because I love it! Chase is "a bit" bigger than Brooklyn. I love it! They are both so cute! Thanks Hannah and Kyli!

Aggie Locks

A couple of weeks ago I donated my hair along with many other aggies on campus. It was so fun to see so many girls walk up and just give away their hair, many of them just on the spot. I was planning this for several months so I was prepared. Here are some pics. They just cut it off blunt, so they could get people through faster, I went back later and had it styled all cute like.

These are some other service center peeps that donated as well, after this pic

Lots to blog about

This is how we celebrate the last day of classes. SLEEP! Super excited to finally get caught up on sleep. Finals week is next week and then we are done!

Final PALS activity. This is about half the group I am over in the service center. We had a blast. We will send the nicer smiling picture to United Way of Cache Valley as a thanks for funding this program. Thanks to my amazing husband for helping me this whole year with this!

A backpack says a thousand words. We often joke that you can tell a persons major on campus just by looking at them. Its true though, its really easy actually. Mark is OBVIOUSLY an engineer by the size of his backpack. More often than not, it is more full than this.

We LOVE to see family! This is little Allstar (blog name). He is Melina and Spencer's boy and he is so full of smiles. So adorable.

Starting to get a little ansty

School is almost over! We can now count our assignments and tests on one hand. Sure feels nice, but its hard to keep going, and finish those few things when you can see the end.... so close! So far it looks like we are going to have a fun summer with few responsibilities and places to be... meaning jobs. Good jobs paying more than $8 an hour are not in sight, but hopefully they will show up, or Mark will have lots of handyman work. That would also be nice. Either way, another semester is almost out the door and we are that much closer to fulfilling our hopes and dreams. :)