There’s No Place Like Home

I’m back! I took pretty much the entire summer off of blogging. Mainly because I started getting overwhelmed. I took on more hours at work because I was saving up for our Europe trip and so I was working double time. I barely had time to do laundry, which isn’t saying much because even if I had nothing on my schedule all week, I would still not have time for laundry. 

As our trip got closer, I got more stressed with everything piling up on my to do list and realized I could really simplify by knocking some non-essentials off of my to do list. But it’s Fall and I’m home now and trying to get back into routine. And I missed this.

Unfortunately, we have woken up at 3am the past two days since being home. And to top that, we are also totally sick. I have a sore throat and now Noah does too. Despite the lack of sleep and feeling under the weather, I’ve been pretty productive and have unpacked, grocery shopped and even fed my sourdough starter.

This Summer in review: 

We took a trip to Oahu with our friends Noah and Elise. It was my first time in Hawaii and it did not disappoint! 

I hosted our ward girls camp in Wallsburg. That was a lot of work but the girls had an amazing time so it was all worth it. 

I taught about a million pilates classes a week. 

We went to the annual Chadderdon family reunion in Lava Hot Springs.

Noah took me to the Bluebird Cafe concert up in Sundance. My only request for my 25th birthday!

We packed our backpacks (yes, backpacks) and hopped on a plane to Europe! We spent the entire month of September knocking things off of our bucket lists. We started in France (Chantilly, Etretat, and Paris), then we went to Lake Brienz, Switzerland for a week, followed by Italy (Tivoli, Rome, Amalfi Coast), and  ended in Greece (Crete and Athens) before heading back to Paris to go to Paris Disneyland for two days. It was a once in a lifetime and something I dreamed of doing before having kids. We experienced some really amazing things but also went through some hard things together that I may write about later. I feel like we are more in love, stronger than ever, and so aligned. I feel so grateful for the opportunity, but also that I got to experience it with my best friend! We make a really great team. 

This was 1 of about 2000 pictures I took. Maybe I’ll upload more later, but for now they are all on the highlights of my Instagram.

And now we are HOME. Traveling always makes me grateful for home. I love our lives here and I love where we live. It really feels like home. Utah welcomed us with vivid red, orange, and yellow mountains and crisp Autumn air. Fall in Utah is special. I’m so excited to get back into my routine. To take our last Vespa ride of the season up in the mountains, go to a pumpkin patch, bake sourdough bread, warm hearty soups, and pumpkin chocolate chips cookies. I’m excited to decorate my house for Halloween and to be uplifted and inspired by the messages in General Conference this weekend. I’m excited for fires in my fireplace and to work out in my yard prepping my garden for Spring. I’m just so happy to be home. There is nothing quite like it.

Now what to do about this jet lag…

Anniversary Weekend

 

This weekend was our 1 year anniversary! What the heck! It flew! Truly one of the best years of my life. Our friends Sage and Payton got married on June 7th in Wallsburg, same weekend and same place as Noah and I but one year later. Their wedding was PERFECT. So beautiful!!! I was waxing nostalgic all weekend.

They catered Hokuli’a snowcones which was so much fun!

After the wedding, Noah and I ran to the grocery store right before it closed to pick up some eggs, bacon, and raspberries for breakfast the next day and then slept up in Wallsburg! 

On the actual day of our anniversary, we went on a golf cart ride up the canyon and a little walk after that, we drove to Kaysville together to pick up a GoPro Noah bought, and had Sunday dinner at Noah’s parents house. Then we went back up to Wallsburg to dance under the lights temporarily left behind from the wedding, rinse off in the steam shower, and BOOK OUR FLIGHTS TO EUROPE!!!!!!

We are planning France, Italy, Greece, and Switzerland for a month in September and I am freaking out! It’s really happening now! 

Nothing more sweet than spending our anniversary weekend at the place of our wedding, dancing to our song alone under the lights in the same place we had our first dance a year ago same day, and then booking our belated honeymoon and bucket-list trip! I’m clearly still feeling sentimental.

1 Whole Year

I had planned to write a whole blog post about the details of our wedding for our anniversary, but I think I’ll come back and do it another time. Instead here is my screensaver and favorite picture of Noah. The point is we’ve been married for one whole year and it’s been the best year ever. He is everything!!!

I love him. So so much!

 

MEXICO

 

In may we went to Mexico and it was amazing!!! Theres just something about Mexican chips and pico. The water was so warm and looked like blue Gatorade. Basically every day we had the same schedule: 

- wake up around 7:30am 
- head down to the breakfast buffet. I had an omelet with diced peppers, onions, tomatoes and ham and a little cheese pretty much every day with a side of cantaloupe, honeydew, and pineapple.
- beach, pool, kids pool (like a kids water park with a giant water balloon in a pool that you can climb on and slide down), repeat. 
- snack break for a virgin pina colada or a soft serve ice cream cone
- back to the beach/ pool rotation until 4:30
- head to the room to shower and put on nice clothes for dinner
- go to the dinner reservation (we went to a new restaurant every night. Steak, surf and turf, Mexican food, Italian cuisine, hibachi (where they cook in front of you, etc.) 
- swing by the cafe for a chocolate croissant and some live music before the show
- watch the show at the outdoor auditorium (acrobat show, singing show, circus show, Disney character show) with drinks which for me was usually a virgin mojito or a coke with a lime.
- then we went back to the room and went to bed before doing it all over again the next day! 

Some random fun things we did:

- We learned how to sail with Ralph and went sailing on a tiny sail boat just me and Noah one day! It was awesome! 
- Another day we rode jet skis and saw giant sea turtles on the water which was wild. Noah also whipped me off and I fell into the dark part of the water and was swimming like my life depended on it. I was fine haha

- I went to a morning yoga class out by the beach by myself. It was such a great way to start my morning and I wished they did them every day!

- We rode a janky boat to an island and spent the day in the shops, at the beach eating coconut popsicles, and riding golf carts
- We also played random games of beach volleyball 

- One day me and Noah went to the beach for a late night walk. We kept doing dares to swim in the dark water but we kept chickening out. We did actually swim to the buoys one night but we had seen sting rays and barracudas (one was like 6ft long!) so it was kind of scary. 

- We took family pictures one night on the beach. We do it every year for the Yarro Christmas card, but it was especially windy this time which was kind of funny.

- We also swam in the giant super long pools late one night and watched a raccoon steal food like 5 feet away from where we were swimming haha! 
- And we went shell hunting out by the pier

Sleepy surfer boy 😍 

The Treat Drawer

I can’t remember a time there wasn’t a loose Almond Joy or a bag of chocolate chips hiding underneath a pile of socks in my mom’s dresser drawer. As a kid, I would sometimes open a drawer and sift through folded t-shirts to find my mom’s secret stash of Halloween candy, but only to look at it. I never, not once, ever, took a piece from her drawer. Not that I didn’t want to. It’s just my mom would 100% notice it was missing and it wasn’t worth the risk. And I didn’t want to be responsible for an empty treat drawer on a rainy day. 

Well today I randomly opened my mom’s sock drawer to borrow a pair of socks and sure enough, there was a lone Easter Egg full of jelly beans rolling around with the socks. 

Out of curiosity I opened another drawer, a few wrapped peanut butter cups sat in the corner. I opened a third drawer… the motherload. The jackpot. The treat drawer of all treat drawers. There wasn’t even clothes in this drawer! It was like the candy isle at your local Harmons!

My parents claimed it was for their “primary class.”  Maybe so, but that didn’t stop me from pocketing a bag of skittles and a KitKat (; 

There She Goes!

London turned 17 and is graduating high school (yes as a fresh 17 year old) and asked me to take her graduation pictures. I still feel like I’m 17 so the thought of the baby in our family being graduated from high school is a total reality check! We are 8 years apart but I would choose to hangout with her over most people my own age. She is just really cool, funny, and mature. She is easy to have around, smarter than all of us, and I have a lot in common with her.

I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this before but London just passed her national exams and is now a Nationally Certified Medical Assistant. She is planning to go to nursing school to become a labor/delivery or neonatal nurse. This is the exact path I had planned for myself when I was her age. I graduated high school as a medical assistant and was planning to become a nurse as well but life never really goes how you expect it to and I ended up going a different route. I love watching London pursue nursing and feel a little bit like I’m living through her. We’re so proud of her and excited to watch her continue to change the world! 

Ugh she’s just so cool! And beautiful! I’m not a photographer but London is photogenic enough that she made me look like a real photographer! 

Side note - she got asked to her senior prom six times. SIX TIMES. I know. A few of them were on the same days and she was out of town on another so she ended choosing 2 and wore my wedding dress to the second one! The dress was made for her honestly! 

We kept the wedding jokes to a minimum because me and Alexis both wore white dresses to prom as well, so it’s sort of a family rite of passage at this point. 

June 5 2025: Update

She graduated!!!