New York City!

This past weekend I was able to fly out to New York to be with my cute little sister Brecke! For those of you who don't know, she is living there so that she can dance with some of the most amazing and successful ballet teachers in the U.S.. I am so proud of her and she is such a BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING dancer!

I had a Friday off from school due to parent-teacher conferences, so I thought that it would be a great time to go out and visit Brecke. I finished my last night of parent-teacher conferences on Thursday around 7:00 and then headed home to quickly pack and leave for my red eye flight that night to NYC. I arrived in New York early Friday morning and headed straight to Brecke's cute apartment right in the heart of the city. That day I was able to go and watch Brecke dance in one of her private dance classes. It was so much fun and I was so impressed by her talent and passion towards ballet. For those of you who don't think ballet is hard then you should probably go and watch one of my sisters classes. Let's just say that I was tired by just watching her!!! She has improved so much in the 3 months that she has lived there. I can't wait to see how far she will come with her talent. After her classes we were able to go and see the Broadway Musical Shrek! It was such a fun play and we laughed ourselves silly! I am always amazed at the talent of Broadway stars. They are so entertaining! We had such a great time! After the play we went out for a fun dinner and dessert at Ellen's Stardust Diner! Always a good time!



The next day we woke up and I took Brecke to her ballet classes. I wasn't able to watch that day so I went out and spent the day by myself exploring the city. Now I don't know what would you do if you had 7 hours to kill in New York and you were by yourself....but, I had a great time! I ran around the city trying to get a ticket to a matinee show. After not winning the Wicked Lottery, I quickly ran over to try to get a ticket to the play called A Steady Rain, starring HUGH JACKMAN and DANIEL CRAIG (aka Wolverine & James Bond)!!! I was able to get one ticket and I was thrilled to spend my afternoon with two A-Class HOTTIES! The show was absolutely wonderful, I would recommend it to anyone going to New York in the next few months.




Needless to say, my afternoon spent alone ended up being great! I ended up going to pick up Brecke around 5:30 that night and we ran home to change and rest for a few minutes. We had tickets to go and see the Musical Bye Bye Birdie that night and we wanted to try and go to the restaurant Serendipity before. So we got a cab and quickly got to the restaurant because they always have a huge, long wait to eat there. Well we got there at 6:00 and the wait was going to be 2 1/2 HOURS!!! Our play started at 8:00 so we didn't have time to eat there....bummer! We started walking, trying to find another restaurant before our play started and the only place we could find without a huge wait was TGIFridays!!! Wahoo! I know, we were in New York City and we ate at Fridays!! Ha ha. But desperate times call for desperate measures! We ended up having a great meal and we hurried off to yet another play. My cute Mom and Dad had gotten us tickets to go and see the new musical Bye Bye Birdie starring John Stamos (aka Uncle Jesse from Full House!!!). We were so excited and loved the play so much. In fact both of us have not been able to stop singing the songs from it since. Well a favorite thing for us Swan girls to do when we are in New York is stay after the play at the stage doors and get autographs and pictures with the stars. And since this play was starring my favorite Johnny and Brecke's favorite Nolan Funk (Nickelodean star) we knew we had to stay and get pictures. Here are a few pictures from the night!







We had so much FUN!!!

Well the next day I was leaving, so we went out to breakfast at one of my family's favorites Normas! Yum! Afterwards we shopped around for a while and got some great finds from street vendors and then sadly it was time for me to head to the airport.

It was such a fun trip, I am sad that it is over. It was so great to spend some much needed time with my cute little sister! I love her so much! Thank you to my parents for allowing me to go and for buying my plane ticket! I love New York! What a great trip!

Introducing Maddie!

We have welcomed a new member to our family. She is a 2 month old yellow lab named Maddie. She is so adorable and we have had so much fun with her so far! Getting her was totally out of the blue and not planned at all. About 2 weeks ago Cole came home from work and told me that his secretaries friends dog just had lab puppies. She told Cole that they had one left if we wanted it. So the next day we drove out to Sunset, Utah to look at the puppy. Trust me when I say that you should never go even look at a puppy if you are not 100% planning on getting one, because you can not say no to them! We instantly fell in love with her and told the people that we wanted her. It was fun to see the Mom of our puppy and very interesting to see how all of the puppies turned out. The mom was a black lab and the dad was a yellow lab with a hint of wire hair in him. Out of the 9 puppies 7 of them were black and only 2 were yellow. We were so happy that we were able to get her! She is so cute and has such a fun personality. So we drove back to SLC with our new puppy in my lap!

Cole and I are learning a lot about puppies and are trying our best to train her. Let's just say that we have had a few frustrating moments, but it is always too hard for us to stay mad at her for long! Everyone we know thinks we are crazy to get a lab after seeing the movie Marley and Me. But we think our little puppy is going to be such a fun adventure for us and will teach us how to love and take care of something besides ourselves. Not to mention we will have a very trustworthy companion that will always love US no matter what! We can't wait for the fun adventures ahead with our little pooch. We plan on taking her hiking often, taking her up to some lakes to swim and play fetch and of course taking her on many walks (not to mention help keep us in shape!). Here are a few pictures of our little pup and some of the fun times we have had in the 2 short weeks we have had her.







For some reason Maddie thinks the coffee table is her bed! Anytime she wants to sleep she lays there! What a funny dog! She always makes us laugh at the cute things that she comes up with! We are glad to welcome her to our family!

Finally HOMEOWNERS!

Well this week has been crazy to say the least! We were finally able to close on our house, which has been quite the ordeal since it was a foreclosure with a bunch of legal issues. But we closed this week and they handed us over the keys! It was a feeling of excitement and nervousness, being a homeowner is a lot of responsibility but also great to have our own place to call home.
Well this week we moved out and said goodbye to our first little apartment and moved into our house (so many fun memories in that little apartment!) I don't think Cole and I have stopped this whole week between boxing up all of our stuff and moving it, cleaning our apartment and new house, painting most the walls in our house and finally getting things arranged for the installation of a new kitchen, lets just say we are exhausted! I love our new house and can't wait until things are a little more in order (it may take a while!). Once things are ready we are excited to invite our friends and family over for get togethers. We finally will have room to have more than 2 friends over. In our apartment we could only ever invite two friends over due to the fact that we didn't have anywhere for them to sit!! Well to conclude I just want to say that we are so excited and thrilled for the adventures ahead of being homeowners!

p.s. pictures to come soon!

Elder Cole Swan

I sure am missing this guy! He is on a mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil right now and I am starting to think that it has been long enough!!!! I miss having him around, with only having one brother in the mix of all us girls he truly holds a special place in all of our hearts. He is such a great brother and always makes sure all of his sisters are taken care of and safe. He even made a plan to protect me from boys while Cole was on his mission. He loves Cole(husband) so much and went out of his way to make it sure that we would seal the deal. What a cutie! I love him so much and miss him like crazy! February can't come soon enough! He is doing such a great job on his mission and he makes me so proud. He is an amazing missionary and is such an example to me. We always knew he would be a good missionary though because he is such a charmer and everyone just loves him. Well there you have it, we are on an official 8 month count down til he gets home! Can't wait!

ONE YEAR Anniversary

Last month on May 9th was our ONE YEAR anniversary! Cole had a great night planned for us that consisted of beautiful flowers, dinner at Tiburon (our favorite!!), and a night stay downtown. It was so much fun being together with just the two of us as we reminisced about our wedding day that was just a year ago. Of course before we left for dinner I made Cole sit down with me and look through our wedding album! I love looking at wedding pictures! I can't believe that we have been married for a year!!! Our wedding day was the best day and I am so happy that Cole and I get a day every year to celebrate and think about it! I love Cole so much and look forward to many more years of making memories together!

Welcome to our blog!

Well we have decided to join the blogging world! We are excited to share all of our fun with you and hope that you find it interesting! I am hoping that this will help me out with taking more pictures of the two of us, let's just say I am not the best at taking pictures. One year of marriage and only a few pictures to prove it! As most of you know Cole and I were married last May, which means we have successfully passed the "hardest year" of marriage! I graduated from the University of Utah a year ago in Elementary Education. I am a 5th grade school teacher now and I absolutely love it! I get to spend my days with 25 hilarious kids and my nights with my love! Life is pretty good! Cole is going to school at the U and will be graduating next spring! While he is going to school he is also working full time as an insurance agent. Well since it is my summer break from school I thought that this would be a great time to start our blog! Welcome and we hope you enjoy!