this july, and recently.

not too long ago, july meant that we'd finally be free from any/all school/wedding obligations.  and we finally made it!

...only to find that we also had "moving" on our to-do list still.

but we did it!  and i'm glad we did.  at first we weren't really excited to move out of the mesa house.  but then after a couple of weeks in, jon sort of confessed to me that he still felt like it was just "kristin's house," even though he technically also lived there.  that made me really sad, so i'm glad we have an "our house" now.

(we also like our new ward quite a bit, and it's nice to be "the young married couple" to a new group of people, as opposed to being "the old married couple" to everyone else who has known us for the past few years.)

one of the more exciting features of our neighborhood is the lack of any real drainage system, so when rains finally decide to come to our area in a particularly torrential fashion, we're stuck with huge, smelly, lake-like puddles that the sun can't evaporate fast enough.

there was also that pleasant business of getting my name changed.  and after the DMV and the bank had gotten things wrong the first time, we decided that the next time jon and i get married he's taking my name.  haha.

but!  july is over and august, old-boring-august-without-a-holiday is here.  and we're fixing that problem with a vacation.  finally!

only, last week i got so excited thinking about our trip that i went bonkers crazy.  i have this ongoing desire to move out of arizona, and i usually try to push it away with real, legitimate facts about 12-month leases and jobs.  but daydreams about where we're going and where we could be brought that moving itch right to the forefront of my mind.  and this also bred some self-esteem problems, which doesn't sound like it makes sense, but in my brain it does, so that was fun, too.  basically on tuesday and wednesday i was really really antsy.  like something was wrong and something needed to change that instant.

so i chopped off my hair.  totally a sensible solution.
(i'm one of those people that has a bad day and thinks a haircut will remedy that.)
(one day i'm going to have a bad day right after a haircut and have a serious problem.)


anyway, this weekend we worked on gearing up for our trip, jon has been getting his quad back in order, and he's excited to get his gopro on it and hopefully get some cool shots.  in our heads we have this idea to film parts of our trip and then edit together a video so that everyone can see where we go.  whether or not we're capable of that is TBD.  we practiced a little last night, and... well, we think we'll need to practice a little more before we leave on thursday if we want to be cool like that.

also this weekend:

yay!!