Date Nights

When me and Jeff got married we made some goals for our life together. Along with scripture reading, praying together, and other things, we decided we wanted to have weekly date nights. No matter how busy we got, we wanted to make sure that we put our marriage first. We have kept right to that goal and have had some great times together. Our dates are always the highlight of my week! Here are some examples of things we've done:

Here we are on a paddle boat on Chaparral Lake. Lots of fun though and an easy way to relax, chat, and be with each other.

Sometimes we invite other couples over to join us on our dates. This was a fun double date with Denver and Alicia Leishman who just got married recently. This was the first time I've ever hosted a fondue night. We had meat fondue - chicken and beef with batter and sauces - and then for dessert we had chocolate fondue. It was amazing! Turns out I'm not too bad at the fondue hosting thing. We enjoyed Denver and Alicia's company and didn't realize how time flies when fonduing. It's definitely a slow way to eat your food! We shared MANY stories and jokes and then finished off the night with a game of Phase 10.

 In the summertime we went to the Stampede. We were very lucky to get hooked up with some front row seats to the Grandstand Show. It was the Stampede's 100th anniversary, so the show was extra amazing this year! And the stampede was absolutely packed.

I didn't do my research before going and had no idea that Paul Brandt was gonna be singing! I'm a huge country fan and have been listening to Paul Brandt ever since I can remember, one of my favorite songs being "Alberta Bound." I have to say that I may have shed a few tears when he came out. It was a great night and almost seemed like a concert for him, even though there were other acts. I enjoyed the show so much more than I even thought I would. It was awesome! The picture below actually shows Paul Brandt right above us. The truck he's on was raised up and came above the audience, so close to us I could almost touch him! The picture on the left is our great seats. We didn't have to stand (which was so nice), but we sat in the front row. This was sure an amazing date night!

These are just some of the dates we've enjoyed and we will continue to keep up with this weekly goal. Me and Jeff are not the greatest for remembering to take pictures, but now that I've started this blog I might try harder to get more pictures of us and our dates we enjoy!

6 month Anniversary

The date, June.2, came along six months after our wedding. Go figure! I had been teasing Jeff and telling him we need to go somewhere or do something to celebrate our six months. I say teasing because, if you know Jeff and his family, they don't celebrate many things. Rarely are birthdays even celebrated, let alone something like this. Not to mention Jeff isn't the most romantic guy either...or so I thought. When the day came, Jeff surprised me and told me what we were doing that night. He told me to pack and get dressed up and that we'd be staying in a hotel downtown. I jumped up and down and got very excited that he had not only thought about doing something, but researched a place to stay and followed through with it! 

  

 We went out for dinner and then to our fancy hotel called "Le Germain."

 

Jeff knows me very well because I'm a huge fan of hotels. And I love room service! We ate these delicious desserts you see on the left. I have no idea what they were called, I just remember that these little treats were so tasty!

Well, that's the only anniversary we will ever celebrate in June! I love Jeff for thinking of me and doing romantic things. I know it's hard for him because it doesn't come naturally! He's been very good so far though with celebrating things like Valentine's day, birthdays, and Christmas too! So...there's hope for the Ady's!

Jeff turns 30

After getting married and then settled into our apartment, I had to go back to work. The hardest thing for me about working was that Jeff didn't have a job at the time. I married a jobless man...boy I must love him! So I would leave Jeff at home when I went to work. I would always say that the roles were backwards and I wanted to stay home so badly. Jeff did not agree with me more and he was searching and doing all he could do to find the job of his dreams. Luckily, in less than a month he found it! He now works as a Financial Adviser for Fred Hurdman, under the Raymond James banner. He had been working at the bank, HSBC while we were dating and then when they wanted him to move to Medicine Hat, he finally quit. He never liked what he was doing and probably should've done this sooner. Jeff loves what he does now and it's a bonus that he works in Sundance, only a 15 minute drive from our apartment. In fact, I work as a dental assistant in Midnapore, only 5 minutes from Jeff! Anyways, life went on and then May.8 came and Jeff turned 30! Yes, me and Jeff are 8 years apart...but I've always been interested in older men! It works well for us and as long as we don't think about how when I was in elementary school he was graduating high school, then we're fine. Well, I figured I had to do something for Jeff when he turned 30, that's a big one! So I threw him a party...

I made him wear some pretty sweet party things to stand out as the birthday boy! I don't think you ever get too old for these kind of things!








Instead of a cake, I picked up some cupcakes from "The Little Cupcake Shoppe," which is right here in Mckenzie Towne. How handy right?! We LOVE this place. We go there on dates sometimes and I just love the red velvet cupcake. They also have gelato there!

The party was fun... we socialized, ate, and played a couple of games. We held it at Steve and Melissa Manville's house...thanks guys! We met these 2 in our new ward (New Brighton) when we moved in and now I would call them one of our best friends. I figured our apartment was a little too small for a party so this worked well! Jeff enjoyed it too, which is what was most important!

Our Apartment

I took some pictures of our first apartment, where we have been living for almost a year so far. It is in Prestwick, which is in the Mckenzie Towne area. It's a cute apartment condo, 2 bed 2 bath and newly renovated. We are renting right now, saving money to eventually buy a house. Our rent is $1100/month, all utilities included, and we have our own washer and dryer which was my request! We love the area, it's such a cute little "town." We love walking the streets and trying the restaurants around here. Also there is a big fountain you can play in, and me and Jeff go there sometimes for dates to sit, relax and chat. I also love the apartment because we get heated underground parking! Well...we get one stall, so only I get the heated parking. Jeff gets to park on the street...what can I say, my husband's a gentleman! Well here are some pictures of the place we call our own:

 This is what I see when I walk in the door. The TV was Jeff's last purchase before we got married and it's 60 inch screen hardly fits in our apartment!

Here is the living room. My colors were red, black and white for the house. I'm not the best decorator but I tried to make it a cute first place for us at little cost. The piano is next to the couch, where I teach some of my lessons. 

 And here's the dining room. As you can see it is tough for us to have more than 2 people over, unless we put them on the barstools in the kitchen. But it works great for us right now. The table, along with the couch, were donated to us from my parents. Thank you mom and dad!

 Here are some shots of the kitchen, where I love to cook. Well, I don't love it, but I don't mind it either. I try to make dinner every day, but I work late 2 evenings of the week so that makes it a little difficult. Sometimes I will make dinner in the morning on those days and put it in the fridge for Jeff when he gets home. I do my best to be a good wife...

Jeff is good at making my eggs for me -easy over- on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I can never get my eggs as perfect as he can! He also helps me bake cookies or different treats when were feeling like something sweet. As far as dinners, he has made a few things, but I'm mostly the dinner maker, while he does the breakfast.

Here's one of the bathrooms. We have 2 in our apartment: this one and one that is attached to our bedroom.

His and hers! We each have our own sides of the closet, which is a walk-in and leads to our bathroom. I was so close to fitting all my stuff on my side...but Jeff let me hang up my hoodies on his side. Girls just need more space!

Here is our bedroom, where the magic happens haha. We love our bed...both of us say it's the comfiest we have ever slept in! Also, when Jeff gets up at 5 in the morning and I get to keep sleeping, I can't feel him move at all! The bed was a gift from Jeff's parents Don and Cindy, thank you so much!

The last room of the house is the one we made our study. Jeff does some work and play in here and I do my blogging here! We bought the bookshelf, which is kind of hard to see in the pictures but we made this a place to store all our books and the closet in this room has all our extra things we can't fit elsewhere.

This ends the tour of our apartment. The interesting thing about this place is that we found it before we got engaged and started renting it before we could even move into it. The order may be a little out of whack, but we knew we would be getting married so we started looking early and once we found this we both knew we needed to get it. I knew the second I walked in the door that this was going to be where we would live. We didn't want to lose it so we started renting it a month or two early, even though we didn't need it then. We're glad we did this though, because we are loving it here!

Honeymooning

I called this honeymooning because me and Jeff decided we didn't just want a honeymoon. We wanted 2! Well actually we kinda figured that after we got married we'd probably want to spend more time in the hotel room rather than out and about. So we called our first one our Minimoon because it was shorter and then a month after that we went on our honeymoon to Cancun, Mexico.

For our Minimoon we went to Lake Louise and stayed at the Fairmont. Our room had the most amazing view, as you can see in the picture above. It was absolutely gorgeous wherever you went. Although staying somewhere snowy and cold isn't my idea of the perfect place, it was very romantic and ideal for what me and Jeff wanted for the first few days of being married.

We decided to go on a carriage ride that took us around the lake. It was a very cold ride and as much as we cuddled, neither of us could feel our fingers and toes by the end of it. We still had a good time though and the views were absolutely gorgeous.

We ate like kings, trying unique restaurants, as both of us love to do. We were also there when there was a ski show going on so we got to watch that as well.

It was a fabulous place to be for the first days of our marriage. My only complaint is that it wasn't long enough...but that's why we did a honeymoon a few weeks later.

In January we went to Cancun. I had been to Mexico various times with my family, but Jeff had never been there, so it was fun to experience it with him. We stayed in an all inclusive resort...although we didn't realize this until we arrived, but I'll just say they may have tricked us and got us to pay some extra money once we got there. I'll leave some details out, but after this we decided to enjoy ourselves. And boy did we ever!! This was my first all inclusive resort I had stayed in and since eating is one of my favorite activities, I was sure in my element. We ate until we dropped and sunbathed until we couldn't any more. Below are some of the other activities we did. We LOVED "Xplor," where we went ATVing, rafting and swimming in caves, and also ziplining. Another day we went snorkeling. And Jeff went fishing and caught some "Nemo" fish. We had a lot of fun!

 Well, that's the end of our honeymooning. Now we have to find some other excuses to travel...or at least I do. Jeff always enjoys our trips, but I'm the one that counts down the days until we leave and starts looking forward to the next trip once one is over. I blame it on my family...they're the same way! I think it's nice to work hard and then play hard, so I think our life will be filled with trips like these here and there.

Our Wedding Day

I thought it would be nice to reflect back on my wedding day, since it was the best day of my life. It's so hard to explain all the emotion you feel that day. You don't realize how happy you can feel until you experience getting married in the temple to the one you love, and knowing that you get to be with them forever and ever! It's also great to share the day with family and friends who care about you. 

Jeff and I got engaged 5 weeks before our wedding and reception. This definitely left my mom with a lot of work helping me plan this wedding...oh and did I mention she was moving as well! Yes, my mom was in the middle of a move when I threw the engagement news at her. Fortunately we used this for our advantage and were able to have the reception in my parents' beautiful home after they had moved out and before they gave up possession of it. I will never be able to give back enough to her for all she did to help me! The picture above shows how beautiful the house ended up looking for our reception. It was absolutely gorgeous and just what I wanted! Of course there were many others who helped me... my mother-in-law Cindy Ady was also a life saver!

 

When I look back at my wedding and reception, there isn't one thing I can think of that went wrong. I found my dress at West Edmonton mall and it fit perfectly with no alterations necessary. We were able to get the temple and chapel booked in Cardston for our wedding and family dinner. The house for our reception was absolutely perfect, and this was Jeff's only wish - that we don't have our reception at the church. The day flowed and everyone enjoyed themselves...I think. Obviously I was a little distracted and would've been happy on that day no matter what happened!

Here is a better view of my dress!

Now I am a married woman and could not be more thrilled to have my best friend live with me and share everything with me. I know that getting married to Jeff Ady in the temple was the best decision I have ever made!

A New Family

Well here I am starting a blog. I figured, as a fairly newlywed, that this would be a good time to start. Me and Jeff are now our own family, so I thought it would be great to document each step of the way as we create our own memories.

Stay tuned!