Married Life!

Okay! I finally have enough time to sit down and write on this thing and it is really my new goal to start updating more often.

First of all, Dan and I have been married almost 4 months now and it's definitely getting better everyday! As most of you know, the first few months of marriage were really rough for us. I had a small stroke and kidney stones which left me sick, disoriented, and on painkillers for about a month and a half. My recovery is going really well though. After 2 1/2 months I'm finally back to normal. I no longer have issues walking from one room to the other without running into walls (I lost quite a bit of dexterity in my right side when I had the stroke). With all of the medical bills, doctor visits, and painkillers in the past, Dan and I are moving on with our new married life.

The first bit of exciting news is our new house! We closed on our first house on October 29th. It's a little 3 bedroom 1bathroom house with a big two-car garage. It doesn't look like much on the outside since we've had limited time to work on it. The house is newly remodeled inside and has a cute little kitchen, a living room and we even have our own laundry room. We've been trying to close on it since May of this year but due to all the bad bank loans, it was very difficult and we had to switch mortgage companies. But now that everything is squared away, we are fixing up the yard and cleaning out the garage to make it look more livable.

Even though we own the house, we are actually renting it out to my old roommates and some friends. For the moment, Dan and I live in a two bedroom 1 1/2 bathroom townhouse down the street. For now, it is the perfect arrangement. The rent we bring in actually pays the mortgage, the rent for our townhouse, and we have a little left over to help make some much-needed updates. So we may not currently live there, but we will someday in the future. For now, it's a fun project house. We cleaned out the garage, tried to fix the lawn (but we've decided to do most of it next spring), and eradicated the squirrel that was living in the attic.

We a lot of big plans for the place, such as a new wrap-around deck,a fence in the backyard, a sprinkler system, some updated landscaping and we'll probably end up connecting the house and the garage eventually. It will take a couple of years but it will definitely pay off in the future. For now we settle for raking the leaves and cleaning the garage.

Dan and I both started working for PFS-Primerica Financial Services and are being trained to open our own office. As a subsidiary of Citigroup, Primerica markets financial products and services. In the mess that the market is today, it's nice to know we work for a company that is fixing the problem. PFS helps set up complimentary financial plans, offers life insurance, mutual funds, and gives people more options for retirement. It's all really new to me but Dan loves it! He owns a real estate company and this fits in perfectly with his interests. Although we only been in the comapny for a few months, he's getting his first promotion in the next couple of weeks! I'm so proud of him! He has his life insurance license through the state of Utah as of two weeks ago and now he's working on getting his securities (mutual funds) license. I, on the other hand, am still working on getting my life insurance license. I'll be taking my test again next week. (I didn't pass my first one by 4 questions).

In other words, Dan and I are doing really well! We usually drive down to SLC from Logan at least once a week for work and it's great to see the family while we are down. Lisa and Cody where in town last week and we saw my brother Kevin, this past Wednesday. We're glad we live close enough that we can come visit often! Dan's family lives in Texas so we only see them a couple times a year. Hard but we usually stay for several weeks when we go see them.

That's all for now and I'll keep this updated more often since I have a little more time these days!