BYU vs Nebraska aka the most intensely awesome game ever

We have looked forward to this game for THREE years now! Ever since we got into Nebraska 3 years ago we knew they were scheduled to play each other in Nebraska and we were stoked for it. Each year leading up we said "oh it will be so fun our senior year when BYU comes to play!" "in just a couple years BYU will be here to play" "NEXT year BYU will be here to play!" and then we FINALLY WENT TO THE GAME!

 You guys it was as epically awesome as you can imagine if you were watching it on TV. To be the teeny tiny minority in that stadium up red and WIN THE GAME ON THE FINAL SECOND!? It was unreal!

The whole family sporting our best BYU T-shirts. We sang the fight song all week long to Max.

Let's start from the beginning.

Casey's parents came into town for the game WOOP WOOP! We loved having an excuse to get them to come out to see us and we even got lucky and Karlee joined along for the ride even though she didn't get a ticket for the game. It was so much stinking fun.

It was hot as Hades that day. So humid. So hot. So many people. Luckily there was slight cloud coverage during the first half and a good breeze the entire game that kept us alive. But still, oh man, it was so flipping hot.

That is the WORST stadium for traffic flow of getting people in the gate and to their seats. We waited forever in the hottest most humid tunnel packed like sardines trying to get from underneath to the top section of our stadium seats. Never will I ever again. But, on the topic of the stadium, that stadium is impressive with its sheer size and NEVER ENDING OCEAN of red (see picture below!). I never knew the power of an intimidating team/home town advantage until I was the visiting team in the Husker stadium. Oh my heck. Lavell Edwards stadium/fans definitely have something to learn from that once IN the stadium.

People keep asking if BYU had a good turn out. I'm not really sure how to answer that. See all this red? There were those two sections of blue across from us and our section that was blue and then of course some blue sprinkled through out but overall RED everywhere.  Nebraska loves their football, it's their thing. So of a stadium of 89, 595 there was 2000-4000?

The game ws pretty awesome overall. Lots of highs and lows for both teams which is truly the way it should be. It was an EXCITING game! There was no clear winner the whole time. They were ahead, we were ahead, they were ahead, we were close, they got further away, WE CAUGHT UP AND WON. It was amazing! AMAZING!!!

We were in a little visitors section at the very top of the Northeast section surrounded by BYU fans (actually the people behind us was a little row of Nebraska fans and that was so totally annoying, oh well). We became friends with the older couples sitting in front of us, they were very fun to talk to throughout it.

 I tried to take a picture of our BYU section, I looked to the right (picture below) and it was a ton of blue Y's to be seen. I looked to the left (picture above) and it was a bunch of red, ha

It was just oh SO great to be cheering on those BYU cougars once more in person at a football game. Singing that BYU fight song with gusto and passion and happiness wearing that cougar blue and Y's on hats. A few times during the game I wanted to cry thinking about how much fun and how awesome those 4 years at BYU were, those were 4 fast amazing fun filled years that I would do over in a heart beat. Motherhood and life now is amazing and so fun, don't get me wrong and I wouldn't currently change my situation (ok, I would have a fenced in backyard at least) but those 4 years at BYU were something else, something so special only a BYU alum can tell you about. The spirit of the Y truly does exist in hearts all around the nation! Now back to the game…

Max practicing his tackle skills on babies...

 I read the BYU Magazine during half time. Loved the article on the cougarettes vs the rugby team.

I felt like such a rude fan whooping and hollering out of the stadium while 99% of the other people walking around me were feeling the exact opposite emotion. I wasn't trying to rub it in their face I was just GENUINELY STOKED TO BE THERE IN PERSON ROOTING FOR THEM COUGARS AND SEEING THAT HAIL MARY PLAY IN LIVE ACTION AND WIN THE GAME. Man oh man. Talk about a game to remember!

That evening we were able to talk our good friend Quin Kimball into coming to our house for dinner! Quin, his dad and brother came to the game from Texas. Quin Kimball is whom our little Quinn is named after! Such a great guy, sure missed that wife of his!

The day after was a fun one too at church asking others about the game and excitement from the previous day's activities. Who they were cheering for, where they were sitting. It was also like a mini family reunion in our ward with previous members visiting and lots of current members' families visiting because of the game.

It was seriously just a great weekend!

Man alive how I LOVE Brigham Young University. I LOVE (the beginning of) football season. And I love when those two mix!

Go Cougars!!!!!!!!!

A BYU quilt: a love story

This here quilt is definitely a proud thing for me. My first legit quilt with piecing, batting, backing, and binding. As you can see, we have more than our fair share of BYU shirts. We kept out a handful of BYU shirts to still wear and sport our BYU pride bu put most of them in the quilt. I have my friend Jessie, hey girl!, to thank for inspiring me to actually go forth and make this. She made hers about month before me while being super pregnant with two small children running around. I thought, if she can do it, I can definitely find a way to make it happen. 

I cute down all the shirts to pieces that had edges divisible by 4 (4x8, 8x12, 16x16 etc) and just made it work. There are a few questionable areas on the quilt and it's not perfect at all  but I love the way it turned out. 

Deciding on the initial layout, sending pictures to my mom and SIL for opinions 

sewing big sections together.

A FINISHED QUILT TOP! I felt like I had just run a marathon, I was very proud of myself. I did the majority of the work while Casey was out of school for a week so I wasn't as tired to work on it at night time or I could actually steal some time away during the day too

A couple of the shirts I made tiny to fit Maxson! I love seeing him in our old BYU shirts!

The end.

I hope you feel inspired to g make your own T-shirt quilt, you will be so happy you did! Also if I was able to do it with 3 boys under 3, there's surely a way you can go forth to make one too.

If you have questions about how to do your own I can let you know what I did exactly and the blog posts I used!

our trip to utah and the specialness of provo

after our trip in wyoming we drove down a couple more hours to utah to watch my niece and nephew for a few days while my brother and his wife were out of town for business stuff. we were able to sneak off a couple times to provo to try out some fun things. overall we just really loved our time there. taking care of 3 kids is hard but having incredible weather the whole time sure helped. we went to the park everyday with them if not twice a day. it was so refreshing to sit in the cool shade, perfect temperature, soft grass with no bugs, watching the children run and jump and slide and be so happy. it truly felt amazing.

here's a few of the pictures from my phone.

a. maxson slept the whole time from wyoming to utah, **tender mercy**
b. that first sight of those beautiful utah mountains was breathtaking. holy moly do we miss the mountains so very much.
c. we met up with our good friends, the sigety's, for a little hang out and lunch. it was the best. they make us laugh so hard. their little boy is adorable and towers over maxson at the mere age of 2 1/2.
d. a trip to BYU!!!!

a. we loved toting maxson around with us on campus
b. Y donuts. we bought the beloved cougar tails/maple bars but these look cooler
c. parking it with our cousins britton
d. britton at the playground

a.-d. took a small excursion up to bridal veil falls. casey was the super cool dad and bought the fish food for 25 cents, well worth the quarter because then the fish came all around us, maxson loved throwing out the little pieces of food.

a.-c. bridal veil falls
d. lunch at j-dawgs for casey (i did take a bite and man oh man was it yummy)

a.-d. feeding the ducks at the duck pond at BYU. maxson was thoroughly impressed by the ducks and was super eager to throw them food (after his experience with the fish). he threw ginormous pieces at the ducks though, they were probably sick after we left. (j-dawgs gave us  whole bag of squished bread, so nice)

a.&b. tried out sodalicious. definitely approve. we both highly recommend the boy scout. casey went back 3 times during our trip. i also tried their sugar cookie which was equally delicious
c. finally tried out slab pizza. hoy hannah was it YUMMY! i got some potato, rosemary, bacon goodness and wow it was good. casey got the buffalo chicken (surprise surprise). he liked his a ton too

a. met up with our great friend kelly at the beloved in-n-out. dang those burgers are good
b. the beautiful timpanogas mountain.
c. went to casey's grandpa and grandma's house for dinner one evening. the kids loved all their toys. we loved the company of those wise (older) souls
d. found britton one morning like this :) desitin. the perfect santa bear was impressive.

a.&b. tried out art city donuts. HOLY CRAP those were good!!!! luckily i don't live around there because those puppies would make me so fat so quick. the people working the food truck were seriously so kind to us too.
c. tried out swig. another soda place. their soda was sober carbonated but still good casey said. their sugar cookie was extremely yummy though.
d. and awful waffle! dang those crepes are so goo, lincoln needs to get on the breakfast train. abby got a waffle and loved it. we also picked up pizzas from sixth street pizzeria (2 businesses within one store) again, extremely amazing. i got the margherita and casey the buffalo chicken.

not pictured:
lunch with wonderful cousins.
a really cool jump house in the upstairs of brother's house.
brick oven pizza.
watching abby at her horse riding lesson.
a movie every night with casey.
me napping every day while the kids napped.


and here is a random list if things casey and i discussed that makes provo so special.

- it is totally normal to be driving/walking around and see people dressed up in white shirts or nice dresses at any moment in the day. you don't think twice about it. anywhere else you do a double take and say, "are those missionaries!!!!???"

- the mountains are gorgeous. holy heck. after living 2 years on flat land nebraska i can officially say the mountains in the utah valley are breathtaking and awe inspiring. even casey appreciated their majestic-ness

- all the amazing places to eat. holy heck. it's like a food gold mine in provo, so many awesome places, new ones constantly starting all in a pretty close radius to each other so it's not that big of deal to drive to them. wow there are seriously so many awesome new yummies around.

- speaking of yummies (this has nothing to do with the making provo so special part) but soda/sweet shops/breakfast treats places have completely taken over the scene of frozen yogurt

- everywhere we drove you could spot someone pushing around a stroller. made me feel like i belonged!

- there's so much energy in the city. a l l   d a y   l o n g. there's constantly people walking places, biking places, working out/running places, entertaining kids places. the energy never stops, it's incredible

- the gorgeous weather. no humidity is LOVELY. we hit this peak period in the year where it's pretty warm by late day (75-80) but cools off real nicely in the evenings to 40/50's. it's lovely to be outside nearly all times of the day

- the flowers everywhere. even crappy houses have made an effort to put flowers somewhere outside their home and it adds to the beautiful scenery everywhere.

-BYU. the specialness of BYU is probably only special to alumni but man oh man. walking around that campus you can't help but grin ear to ear. so many good memories it makes me want to cry. don't get me started on that bookstore. as a student i was always like "who buys all this BYU junk?" and now when i come back i'm think "casey, we need to buy ALL these wonderful BYU things!"

-church buildings everywhere. and not only church buildings, but ones with cars in the parking lots constantly. brings a smile to my face when i see that.

it's funny we were SO immersed in BYU the 4 years we were there, completely devoted our whole selves to the scene, people and lifestyle that after those 4 years we were SOO ready to be done with provo ready for something new. and now that we're gone, going back is SO fun and SO special and we miss it SO much. we definitely took advantage of it all while we lived there but oh man how we miss it. BYU friends, soak it in. 

cougar love

we found this byu headband today in my hair stuff and were stoked when maxson let us put it on him.

stud or what?

ps- that 2nd picture is totally the epitome of my child: cute, but a little disheveled all around, belly sticking out, stains on shirt, thick looking (not fat, just dense-musclely looking, ha), and ROSEY cheeks!

go cougars!

a quick visit in provo

i took a little trip down memory lane today in provo. i wonder if provo will forever feel like home because right now, that's always what it feels like when i drive through. i remember driving with my mom on university ave passing the soccer fields when i was moving up to BYU my freshman year and my mom said "it always feels like i'm coming home when we get to come to BYU and provo. i promise you, it'll feel like that for you too." and would you look at that. it sure as heck does, and i love it. i love it so so much. driving on university ave it's almost as if i could literally feel the energy pulsing throughout the city. people walking and biking everywhere, familiar buildings and houses where events and parties are always occurring, all the trees lit with red and yellow leaves, young people laughing as they ride a scooter together (very likely unmarried and thrilled they're that close) ring stores on every other corner. and the list goes on. i love that town. provo will forever feel like my home, and i'm so happy to be able to say that!

dear provo friends: if you haven't stopped to look at the beauty of that city recently you totally should. fall has literally taken over your streets with its leaves strewn everywhere, it's beautiful. stop and realize how lucky you are to be in such a unique, vibrant, beautiful town. i envy you for so many reasons (but do know you should envy lincoln for a myriad of other reasons;)

the iconic (to me) and first official entrance to provo

our beloved provo attic

we walked this street EVERYDAY to campus. i wish i had taken better pictures of these trees

the whole reason i even got to get on campus today: brooooooooooke!

but the city my brother lives, mapleton, is quite gorgeous if i say so myself

ps- loved this article on non-mommy bloggers. i find myself often saying in my mind to just enjoy life and not document and share every little part. and i am so happy when i find that balance for me

pps- here is a sneak trailer to my cousin's beautiful wedding last weekend in arizona, love it?

ppps- also loved this post about the instagram illusion and a fear of missing out on things

devoted fans

we asked max what his favorite school was and he showed us this.

proud parents, already learning his letters!

looking back

sometimes i look back at our blog and fall in love with life we had last year, 2, and 3 years ago.

tonight i randomly looked through the labels christmas and wyoming.

all those pictures made me so happy.

(and i remembered we're going to add a stocking to our family this year!!!!!!)

do you ever go back and look at your blog?

last weekend when we were watching the BYU football game (we thank our lucky stars their games are all broadcast on espn now) the espn-byu commercial came on.

every time we see it come on, we get really sad because we miss it so much!

casey especially was saying how much he missed it.

he said something like "i didn't have enough fun there, all i did was go to school and work..."

i couldn't think of any of the fun crazy things off the top of my head that we did except i knew we made an effort to do fun stuff...but what was that?

so i hopped on the blog and looked up the labels provo bucket list and byu (i should have labeled so many more things byu...).

granted it wasn't all the fun stuff we did but it was a good chunk.

reading through the posts made us so happy with our time at byu (and more nostalgic) but it did remind us that we had fun!

i love blogging.

i love that i can (quickly) write down memories with pictures.

i love being able to look back at life.

i love seeing how we've changed and grown as a couple.

i love that i have all our married years documented on this blog.

i love that soon this blog will show our  journey from 2 to 3.

i love our blog.

BYU

watching the BYU game tonight, i saw this video on a friend's facebook wall.

i really miss BYU.

WE REALLY miss BYU.

those 4 years were some of the greatest for us.

i'm jealous of friend's pictures/stories while they're at the Y right now.

we loved our time their together.

when i start thinking about it too much, i literally start to cry because of all my good memoreis.

moral of the story: if you're still going to the Y or in the area/atmosphere of the school, soak it in.

2 bachelors

let's talk a little about graduation, shall we?

we shall.

graduation rocked.

it was like celebrate casey and kimber week all over again,

not to sound all self-absorbed, but it really was just so much fun.

i think of the 4 days we were with family, we pretty much only had cereal for breakfast at our house, it was great.

everyone was so nice and treated us to the yummiest places that week.

brick oven pizza, awful waffle, more pizza, magelby's, and a japanese grill.

twas the best.

casey and i did everything for graduation together, not only because we're married, but also because we in the same college anyways.

commencement was sweet. 

walking into the marriot center all dressed up, having the sidewalks lined with professors in their really cool garb and then hearing the official graduation song playing was really very cool.

everyone around you was so happy too.

and it's amazing, after 4 years at BYU, i was really surprised how many people i kept seeing/running into that i knew.

there were nearly 7000 graduates and i knew people, kinda fun.

elder oaks spoke at commencement ceremonies and did marvelous.

my landscape management friends sat on one side of me, casey on the other side, and on the other side of casey was some of his dental club friends.

precious, huh?

it was later this night we went with the cutlers to brick oven pizza (mmm pineapple) and awful waffle.

they are such a hoot to be around.

the next day was REAL graduation activities.

my sweet parents bought us hawaiian leis to wear during all our festivities.

those flowers were so much fun to wear all day long, and they smelt so DANG good!.

it just made it that much more celebratory!

we then went the (veryyyyyyyyy long) graduation ceremony where they called everyone's names and we received out "diplomas."

it was funny, casey and i were literally part of the last 15 people to get up there and walk due to them messing up seating, so the poor guy had done so well on EVERYONE'S names and still sounded so cheery,

but we went up (I was first, since casey technically was walking with me and my department) he said "kimberly woodruff carter" and casey very loudly corrects him to cutler.

he then says, "oh sorry, that's cutler and walking with her husband, casey d cutler."

it was so cute :)

we made our way out of the marriot center, and i met up with a bunch of my landscape management friends to take pictures.

we took more pictures with family and soaked in the moment.

then, for dinner, we went to sakura, japanese steakhouse in provo and boy was it good.

yes, a little pricey but well worth every dollar.

the food was incredible, the cook was so fun and put on such an entertaining show.

it was such a wonderful end to our day of celebration.

but seriously, the food and service were outstanding.

cue the rest of graduation pictures i want to post:

 

it was one of the awesome times where people just take your camera and willingly take lots of pictures for you, thank you, family.

happy graduation to us.

and even bigger happiness to kimber knowing that i never have to take a test for school again!!!!!!