The Life of Riley

We got a new addition to our home. Two betta fish, a guy and a girl! Chad and I fight over the names so we don't have one yet but they are fun and it is the next best thing to having a puppy! ;) Tonight is Kelsey's Bachelorette , we are staying in Laguna Beach and it is going to be so fun to have a girls night! Then tomorrow Chad and I are going to get our Christmas tree! Our apartment has been decorated for a week and I am ready to get the most important part of the decorations! Have fun Christmas shopping this week!

We have so much to be thankful for this year. As we look back and reflect we are overwhelmed at how blessed we are. We have a God who loves us and takes care of us in all aspects of our lives. We have our health, we have jobs, we have careers, we have wonderful family and friends, we live in the greatest country, we have our freedom and, of course, we have the gift of marriage! It's been so fun to celebrate as husband and wife, we still look at each other sometimes and say, "wait, are we seriously married?!" Its such a wonderful thing to live and share so much of your life with you best friend, lover and partner (in and out of crime (; ). Our thanksgiving was wonderful! We both had thursday and friday off, so it was practically a vacation! We spent Thanksgiving with our great friends, The Hathaways, at their beautiful new home in Dove Canyon. It has been a tradition for the Armstrongs and Hathways to spend Thanksgiving together for a while so it was fun to have one...

Hopefully some of you have recieved your thank you cards from the wedding and are now logginig on to check out our site for the first time. First let us say we are so sorry it took us this long to get them out to all of you, but we are so thankful for all of it and we think of you all often as we use our gifts. So, recent events in our life... work is going great! Rachel loves being a nurse and learns a little bit more about surgical nursing each day. She is looking forward to her vacation day on wednesday for Veterans as well as 2 days at thanksgiving. It's nice to not have to go to work but still get paid! Chad is working hard at his job and is doing great! We are looking forward to the upcoming holidays and decorating together for the first time as husband and wife. We have lots of wedding festivities for our friends over the next couple of months that should keep us busy all the way up to Christmas which we will spend in OC with our families. Then we will head out to Havasu for...

We are getting the travel itch already! Rachel (writing this, does Chad ever write?! ;)) has made a couple trips to triple A to get information on affordable vacation options. I have 6 months before I can take time off so this gives us time to catch up on bills, save money for a house and save some for travels! Does anyone have any suggestions as to where to go? We have a few weekend trips planned like Cambria and Vegas and San Diego etc. We are thinking of going to the Big Island, our second home (although I wish it were our FIRST home :/), once I get off my 6 month probation period in March. Then we were thinking somewhere tropical that we haven't been to for our one year in July, how about Puerto Vallarta or Puerto Rico or Costa Rica? We want to go somewhere more secluded and not all about the "spring break" atmosphere. And next fall/winter we are PRAYING we can make a trip to Europe. We want to do Ireland/England or do France/Germany/Switzerland or Portugal/S...

Time is rolling on and life is rolling right along with it! Yesterday was our official 1 month anniversary, it seems so small compared to 8 years of loving each other but still, celebrating never gets old! Rachel started her new job yesterday as a perioperative RN and UCI. I have never seen/ been a part of a more amazing hospital and the benefits are incredible, by far the best hospital around! I feel blessed to be a part of their periop team. We have a robot called The DaVinci that surgeons use to preform Urological surgeies ! It's a little overwhelming but we will learn and we will be great Rn's once we are done with our training program. This is a picture of my homemade pizza. The dough was even homemade ! It was a 2 hour event, I got a little stressed attempting to flatten the dough out after we had already flattened and then balled it up again. Note: After you roll the dough out DONT start over, just keep it flat, folding it over onto itself is a disaster...

We have been married for three weeks now! Time is flying by! Last weekend we took a trip up to see our friends Marcai and Randy and got to meet their 8 day old baby boy Noah! It was so much fun to spend time with them, we are so excited for them and their new addition, he is precious! Chad went back to work Monday and I have been getting the house set up, it's really fun because we don't have much (besides our wedding gifts which are amazing! Our kitchenware is SO NICE) but we are making the most out of it. We know in a few months from now when I've been working as a nurse that things will be so much better and so it makes it fun to just blow off the fact that we are on a tight budget. Chad and I saw Julie and Julia this afternoon- it was GREAT! It's right up my ally since I am obsessed with everything to do with cooking, especially French Cuisine lately. Then we went furniture shopping and out to a late dinner with my parents. We are babysitting 8 kids tomorr...

Well, here we are, married for 16 days and loving every minute of it! A lot of you have asked about our honeymoon so we figured we would start a blog to keep everyone filled in on what is going on in our lives.  Our honeymoon to St. Lucia was gorgeous! We had an incredible time at the Sandals Regency Resort.  It was an all-inclusive trip so we were able to eat and drink all day and night! We got upgraded to a beautiful two story villa that was right on the water.  We just walked down our steps and jumped in! So much fun! The water was beautiful and warm.  We went on a day sail and got to visit another part of the island and snorkel and then go to a special event called "Carnival" which is their version of Mardi Gras.  It was really awesome! Talk about a party!    We laid by the beach/pool and indulged in the swim up bar every so often ;) It was really great! We went horseback riding down to the beach and got to ride our horses together bareback into the water! What a dream!  ...