Edible Delights

Matt was covering a baseball game, and I was craving sugar yet wanting to be creative. The result was a chocolate cake.

It's scrumptious, by the way.

And obviously, Matt thought so too. Five minutes after he got home, the cake looked like this:

Economic Adventures

With the thrill of our European honeymoon behind us and a tight budget in front of us, we've unearthed our creativeness to have fun(ny), wallet-friendly adventures. This has made for some good laughs and photos.

With Utah finally realizing it's April, we went on a picnic last Saturday. That delicious fruit salad was made by Yours Truly (take that, Mom), while Erika made some sandwiches and muffins.

Even Erika was overwhelmed by the deliciousness of my fruit salad.

This is Reporter Petersen at a jam-packed high school softball game. It was pretty depressing. The final score was 16-3, but amazingly, the story was the lead on the sports section of the Herald. So yeah, this is how I roll.

Funny story. Erika has come with me to three games. The games she comes to are always cold, windy and miserable. When she doesn't come, it's a warm, beautiful day. As you can see, she tries to tough it out by wearing my sweatshirt I keep in the car for emergency situations such as this.

Erika occasionally takes indoor, self-entertainment to new heights. If you weren't able to tell, these are dominoes arranged to look like a flower. It was hard to tell whether Erika had more fun making the flower or starting the domino chain.




If you look at the previous pictures, it's obvious I was getting close to Beatles territory. To save money, we borrowed clippers from some neighbors and Erika had a go at her first barber job. After the attempt, we just buzzed the whole enchilada with a number three. Erika actually did a good job -- it's just my awkwardly shaped head makes minimal errors show up in an obvious manner.

It's official...I survived.

The semester is over. I took my last final yesterday and had the strangest feeling of freedom as I left the room. The Junior Core for the accounting program has been the toughest and hardest semesters of my life. The workload is overwhelming, the pace is grueling, and the expectations of the students are high. But, I am proud to say that I have survived. And now it's summer, with no 10 hour study sessions in the library, no homework that makes my head hurt, and no waking up at 3 am just to get a little bit more studying in before a big test.

I'm just glad I survived these past two semesters while being engaged and a newly wed. It was tough. Now I get to relax a bit and use my spare time to enjoy myself.

'Notha day, 'notha dollar. No, really

It's a busy week for both of us. Erika is studying/stressing for finals, and I'm watching/stressing through the lead-up to the Finals...the NBA Finals that is. Suns dropped Game 1, and this AZ boy was not thrilled. Wrote a piece that got a lot of feedback, though.

Speaking of writing, I'm doing double-duty with the Daily Herald and Examiner.com covering Utah high school sports. Both are part-time, and since the rights to the articles are mine, I can double-dip a single article. It's a good deal that gives us a little extra cash, something my accounting-major wife is always monitoring.

Erika's not just dollars and cents, though. She's also got home-making sense, as the following pictures demonstrate...

The above is a symmetrical (Erika was insistent upon it) photo display of our various adventures to other countries. We're hoping this expands over time.

The Kitchen, Part One: The only thing I had to do with the kitchen decor was the crown jewel: the basketball-themed calendar.

The Kitchen, Part Two: Erika likes pictures, and they do give me a reason to occasionally enter the kitchen. That's a lie. I make some exquisite Mac & Cheese and pasta-from-a-bag.

Most of you know newly-weds don't have a dining room...they have a dining corner. I think ours is pretty nice. The glass bowl contains seashells from Spain. The table was a product of my mom's creative genius.


Those shelves were a pain to 1) get on the wall at all and 2) get them parallel enough for Erika. I broke my own personal record for most time using a hammer, though. She's taking my mom's plea to make me a manly man seriously.

Spring has finally come

I've been so busy and worried about school, that I didn't really notice that spring is here. But a couple days ago I walked out my front door and this is what I saw:

The trees have blossomed pretty much overnight, and it's just gorgeous. Campus is covered in flowers, and it's finally warm enough to wear shorts. Spring is here!

Summer Crafting.

I've spent this morning looking up fun crafting ideas for summer projects. I think I'm decided on an apron of some sort. Probably similar to one of these that I found on etsy.com.

I love the trees on this one and how it's fitted.

And I like how simple but cute this one is.

And I think this style is adorable, but it's only half an apron...that only solves half the problem of messy cooking.

And then I found these adorable fabric purses.

I think part of my draw to crafting is I just want to know if I can do it. That's why I made my quilt. I just want to a couple fun projects this summer that I can be excited about.

Nearly Four Months Now

Today is April 16th. Another three days and Matt and I will have been married for four months. I know, it sounds like an extremely short amount of time to all the veterans out there, and I agree, these four months have raced by. This really has been the fastest semester I have ever experienced.

Well, Matt suggested we start a blog. So, here I am. Hopefully we'll actually stay current with it this time. I've tried in the past, and it has never worked out.

But here's a recap of our first four months as a married couple.

Wedding Day Pictures

All of these wedding photos are courtesy of Nick Sorensen, www.thisisnick.com, he's absolutely amazing.

Our wedding day was one of the best days of my life. I still find it amazing that I'm married to my sweetheart forever. Life's great.

Honeymoon Confusion

Our honeymoon was one adventure after another...it was fantastic! Our original plan was to spend a week in Spain (yes, the Spain). But due to weather we were stuck in London for three or so days...London! Seriously, you couldn't ask for much better.

We saw Big Ben and the infamous telephone booths.

Buckingham Palace.

Took a stroll through Kensington Gardens and saw the Peter Pan statue.

Solved the mystery of where the Sherlock Holmes Museum is located...it isn't actually at 221 Baker Street.

And one of my personal favorites, went to Platform 9 3/4 where we tried with all our might to access the magical world of Harry Potter.

You can't really tell, but we're ice skating just outside of the Tower of London. Considering we both ice skate, we couldn't really pass up the opportunity. I had to sneak my camera onto the ice, which is why we don't have a better shot.

And then when we finally made it to Spain, I showed Matt all my favorite places in Madrid. La Mallorquina makes phenomenal napoleatanas.

And then we made it to our original destination all along, Malaga, right on the Mediterranean coast. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Normal Life

So, we came home from a whirlwind of wedding and honeymoon adventures, and then started normal life. I go to school everyday, Matt does his online classes and writes for several websites. He even was asked to do a daily blog by Fanster.com, Seven Minutes or Less a "blog by the fans for the fans". Check it out.

And then he interviewed and is now a stringer for the Daily Herald, the local paper for Utah Valley. He goes to high school and college sporting events, writes about it, and loves it.

I'm studying in BYU's accounting program and am just about to finish my first year. I've applied to the Masters program, so keep your fingers crossed. I'm currently enjoying the craziness and stress of finals week. I just keep saying...two more tests, that's it, only two more and I'm done.

I recently started my first accounting job. I saw the advertisement, applied that afternoon, got a call the next morning for an interview that day, and got the job that evening. It happened pretty quick, and I'm excited about it.

Local Adventures

Matt's birthday was in January and we went to the Suns vs. Jazz game in Salt Lake. Matt is a huge Suns fan...seriously, that's the majority of what he writes about, so this was awesome. Our seats actually had a bunch of Suns people around us, so Matt's heckling wasn't alone. The Suns played great...until they fell apart and the Jazz won...that wasn't so fun.

In February we went to one of my friend's wedding. Two week engagement...and the craziest part was they pulled everything together beautifully.

Matt's parents and brother came up for Dawn's birthday. We went skiing near Cedar City at Brian's Head. That was only the second time I've been skiing...the first terrified me completely. But this time, I loved it. I've decided skiing needs to become a family tradition. When I get those pictures, I'll put some up.

Tuesday I went with Matt to a UVU vs. BYU softball game that he was covering. It was absolutely freezing...frigid. We were huddled up under our coats and blankets just holding our hot chocolate trying to warm up our hands. And poor Matt, he actually had to take notes on the game, so he couldn't keep his fingers hidden!

Now that I've got you all caught up on the last four months, hopefully we won't have to go through any major recaps again.