Happy Wednesday! Woo! It has been quite a while since I’ve been on here to post. I am so sorry for that but while working full time, coaching, getting married, and preparing to move across the country, I came to the realization that something had to give. Now that life is slowing back down just a bit I’m so happy to be back on here spilling my thoughts onto the page (and for you fantastic people that take the time to read them!).

LIFE LATELY! It has been a whirlwind to say the least. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, life is just pretty darn great. I’ve experienced so many emotions in the last few months but I am so thankful for every one of them.

I guess I’ll rewind back to the start of the year… Like most people I was very busy blah blah but looking back on it I probably didn’t feel very inspired to write because all I was really doing was working, coaching, working out, hanging with friends, and wedding planning. The wedding part made it a little (that’s being nice) more hectic but because of that my life was pretty dang boring, HA! Oh! If you are wondering, I plan on discussing all of wedding planning on here in the future. Anyway, to be frank, I wanted to maintain the element of “surprise” with my wedding so I didn’t want to post all about it on here beforehand. Some people do it differently but well, I’m fairly certain that if surprises were a love language, it would be one of mine. I managed to surprise Stephen multiple times the week of and at the wedding so I’m glad the behind-the-scenes stayed behind-the-scenes.

Leading up to the wedding I was fortunate enough to have two bridal showers. TWO?! I don’t know how I could deserve such a thing but I am so thankful. We had one in Pittsburgh with Stephen’s family and one in Virginia with the rest of our family and friends. They both were so beautiful and so much fun! My maid-of-honor and bridesmaids also threw one heck of a bachelorette party for me in Pittsburgh but we’ll talk about all of that later!

During this time I was still living in Kentucky so it was a lot of traveling up until I went home in May for the wedding. The week of the wedding makes me laugh just thinking about it. That also needs a whole separate post in itself… You’ll be thankful for that. HAHA! The week flew by, we said our vows, and now I’m here, writing this post from sunny Arizona.

Everyone tells you the wedding day goes by fast but you really can’t comprehend it until you’re in the middle of it and you feel like you’re frantically running around trying to find the pause button. It was such a beautiful whirlwind. If we could do every single part of it over again we would in a heartbeat, mud and all.

The day after the wedding was Stephen’s 25th Birthday so we threw him a big surprise party with all of his family and friends. It still makes me laugh thinking about watching him walk past all of the cars in the driveway and not thinking anything of them. He got to the top of the deck and saw all of the people on the other side and said, “There are a lot of people here!” I looked at him and said, “It’s for your surprise party!” …. “OHHHHH!” It rained a little bit and the grill was throwing a temper tantrum but otherwise it was really really great! I think he was so happy to spend more time with everyone.

That night Stephen and I opened some gifts so that we could play a good game of Jenga with our suitcases to fit our clothes and the gifts that we received from the wedding. Side note- I won’t forget the look on Stephen’s face opening everything… He kept saying, “How are we so deserving?” That is not to brag by any means. That is to say THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts. We feel so blessed to have such great people in our lives and we hope that we can love you all even half as well as you love us. After packing for hours, we ended up caving and having to ship some of it but we did a pretty good job getting a lot of it here safely if I do say so myself.

Monday morning Stephen flew back to Phoenix while I followed behind a few hours later.

Phoenix?! Yep! Hot hot hot Phoenix. Stephen has been living here since he was stationed at Luke AFB in February. The housing options in this area are actually low in cost compared to what we are used to so we found a cute little house to rent while we are here. One room is literally just all boxes (we call it the box room, haha!) but that’s okay because we also have a guest room so we’re able to host visitors! =)

I’m fortunate enough to continue by “day job” from here so that is what I do all day. After work we’ve been unpacking everything and setting up the house. We believe our next move is less than a year away so it’s kind of a shame knowing that while unpacking everything (considering it takes forever) but that is just life in the military. Overall it’s coming along. We have to set up the guest bedroom and hang up some things but it’s livable! For the first week while we were waiting for all of my furniture and the rest of my stuff to arrive on the moving truck we ate standing up and slept on an air mattress on the floor. It was not glamorous at all but in my head it was the perfect most humbling way to start a marriage. We decided the next weekend to make a trip to Ikea because Stephen had enough of eating standing up and my lap was getting really tired of holding a laptop on it all day. We found ourselves a little table and set of chairs that are plain brown and boring but they were inexpensive so now I’m in the process of showing them a little love (will post!). For those of you that following me on Instagram you most likely saw my TV setup in Kentucky. Well… We had the same [ghetto] setup here for a couple of weeks until I couldn’t take it any longer. Luckily you people won’t have to see that crazy mess anymore! PROGRESS! A couple of other exciting things- Stephen had the great idea of trying a new donut shop in the area after Ikea and we learned that they were voted to have the best donuts in Arizona! They were definitely good but not number one for me compared to other states *monkey mouth covered emoji*. A week before then we finally got to celebrate National Donut Day together so we tried Fractured Prune! “Best donuts in Arizona” beat them, hands down… I was actually really disappointed in them and stopped after only taking one bite of each. *insert another monkey mouth covered emoji*.

I think my favorite part about being here with Stephen so far was getting to watch his first solo in the F-16. There’s something so special about watching the one you love DO what they love. You’re one heck of a human, Superman!

Lastly, launching Kiss the Co-Pilot has been such an exciting time for me and one of my roommates from Virginia Tech, Natalee. I’ve always had this goal of creating a website where military spouses can interact and learn about bases, receive advice from other spouses, or just find someone going through a similar scenario. I mentioned the idea to Natalee and we hit the ground running. We launched this past Monday and we are so excited to see where it can go from here!So many people have asked me how married life is and I could say a lot but all I’m going to say is that it’s really great. I think it’s especially great after being long distance for so long. It sounds stupid but I know there are many of you dealing with long distance that understand when I say it means a lot just to see Stephen’s face every day in person and not having to call him/FaceTime him every time I want to have a conversation with him.

As I mentioned before, we aren’t going to be in Phoenix for very long so we plan on soaking up all of this area while we can. We already went tubing last weekend along the salt river. It was a BLAST! If you’re going to be in the area definitely check out Salt River Tubing. It was so much fun that we only got these two pictures… Oops. I really look forward to sharing our adventures on here. I hope you all enjoy following along!

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