almost our 1 year anniversary!

Jesus- it is almost our 1 year anniversary! I cannot believe how fast this past year went. I am so excited to celebrate with you in a couple days. We are going to McMennamins Grand Lodge and staying with the "frisbee golf package". It sounds like a lot of fun and includes two keepsake frisbees, $50 toward dinner, $20 toward breakfast, two 22 ales, and a stay overnight. You are so excited to enjoy the soaking pool ;)

Right now, we are both working lots. You are working some crazy hours (40-50 per week) and lots of early mornings (4-7am?!!?), but you are learning to adjust and keeping a pretty good attitude about it. You take naps most days to keep you going. I am working for your family in the office and enjoying it so far. I get to work with Mari and all 3 kiddos, so that is pretty fun.

We are still loving our little Cece. She is still super hyper and needs a walk or a trip to the dog park every day. She loves going with me to your mom's house when I work and she runs around with Figaro for hours. My parents just (yesterday) got a new bull dog puppy. She is only 9 weeks old, so we are a little nervous to introduce Cece to her. They are calling her Weezie, but her name is Louise ;) We also have 2 chickens. They are very funny! Just this morning, the gold one- Pauline- had flown the coop, so I had to lock the black one- Henrietta- in the coop and she made noises like she was dying and then chase the other one back inside. They are pretty messy- I am not enjoying having to clean the coop, but that is the only bad part. I love looking out the window at them and seeing them peck and hearing their noises. they started laying eggs about a week ago, but some of the eggs are still too tiny to eat, but we are excited to have farm fresh eggs soon!

We have a beautiful little garden. Most of our plants actually grew and they are looking huge. The peas are too big- I have to go buy some system to hold them up today. I am so excited to eat home grown veggies and cook up delicious meals with them! 

I am competing in the women's state gymnastics games on July 13th and I am kind of excited for it. I have my vault ready to go and my bars routine is decent. I have a basic beam routine figured out, but need to add some dancing and I have nothing figured out on my floor routine (except that it will be to "Mambo #5"). I hope you can get that day off work and come watch because I am not allowing anyone else to watch me!

We took the StrengthFinders2.0 yesterday. We had both taken it before, 5 years ago, so it was awesome to see a few changes. Your top 5: adaptability, maximizer, positivity, includer, ideation. Ideation was the only new one for you and we are not sure that we see it in you yet, but I am sure we will start to soon! My top 5: discipline, focus, deliberative, futuristic, significance. Both discipline and futuristic are new for me, so i am excited to see them in myself. 

We are about to start trying to get pregnant! We are planning to start on our anniversary celebration.  We are both excited and nervous for this next step. I wanted to have kids right away, and you wanted to wait, so we compromised and agreed on one year, and it is already here! Who knows how soon it will happen- it could be months or even years before the Lord decides to bless us with a baby, but we are hoping it will happen soon! 

I am so excited to see where we are now- I love you more today than I ever have before. I have learned so much about how to be your wife and how to love you.  I feel like we understand each other so much more now than we did one year ago. I think we are finally settled into marriage- I remember every "monthiversary" we hit, we would both say it still didn't feel like we were really married...but now it does! You are my FAMILY and I just love it! I feel like our life together is the most beautiful and wonderful thing about who I am and the biggest blessing that God has given me yet! I love you with all that I am, Jesus Gonzalez, and I am SO thankful to be your wife! Thank you for loving me and being my life partner. Thank you for all that you do to make me feel delighted in and cherished. Thank you for being my comfort and strength and keeping me excited about life and about our future. Jesus, as we grow together, I pray that we will fall deeper and deeper in love and look up every year and say WOW and just be overwhelmed by the blessing that our marriage is. 

Love,

Natalie

You & Me

Jesus,

I love our little family.  

I love cuddling with our puppy in bed.

I love dinners for two.

I love our weekly date nights.

I love drinking decaf coffee with you at night.

I love brushing our teeth side by side.

I love working on our garden.

I love getting lots and lots of time with just you.

I love going on walks together.

I love planning for our future together.

I love so many things about our beautiful life together.

I know I talk a lot about having kids and our future, 

but I want you to know that I feel so lucky

to be here with you right now.

and to get to enjoy life with just you!

a few highlights ;)

Hello handsome ;) 

-We are half way through our small group season.  We have been reading "Experiencing God" and it is really interesting- great new perspectives!  You and I are both working on our love relationships with the Lord- we are taking time each week to memorize Bible verses and are making church more of a priority.  We are excited about how we are growing! 

-Tomorrow is our last day of puppy training!  Our Cece is 5 months old today and she is so much fun.  She is so lazy in the mornings.  She hates her big, red sweater.  She only listens to us when we have food.  She has just started playing with the Frisbee!!! She is super sweet and we just love her as an addition to our little family! 

-We have a couple slow weeks where the farm doesn't have much going on!  You have been working hard on prep work on the farm and I have been helping your mom with office work.  It looks like I might be starting a second internship at Intel soon and you will be starting the PGA program as a second assistant professional at Forest Hills shortly (did I mention how proud I am of you?!!!?!) and life will get busy busy busy this summer, so we are enjoying a few light and easy weeks with lots of time together and i LOVE it!!!

-I am learning how to coupon (saving 40-70% all the time) and it is difficult, but really fun.  it is such a challenge and super thrilling so i am just loving it.  we are being super thrify in all areas of our lives right now and have actually saved up ~$1,500 over the past few months despite hardly working.  we rock!  we are working hard on saving so that we can have enough saved up in just a couple years to put a down payment on a house.  we have been spending lots of time looking at floor plans and dreaming about what our house might look like and our future in it.  it is so much fun! i love dreaming about our future.  we even talked about how we hopefully have ~63 more years on this land...we want to stay here until we are 85!!

-We have an awesome obstacle race coming up in ~6 weeks (The Dirty Dozen 5k).  We are starting to train- walking, running, "blogilates", even some Denise Austin hahahah i love us.  I bought us some fun bright yellow shirts that I will be decorating to wear on race day! 

Life is so sweet with you right now, I just wanted to document a few highlights!  I am loving being your wife more and more everyday.  You truly are the best partner for me and my very best friend.  You are such a hard worker, have so much integrity, and such a big, loving heart!  And did I mention how good looking you are? ;) I am head over heels for you, Jesus Gonzalez. 

Thank you!

I am so thankful for you, Jesus.  You are working so hard and I am very proud of you.  You have been getting up early to read your Bible and go to the gym... amazing!  You have been working hard on getting our businesses up and running.  You have been keeping up with things around our house.  You have been doing a great job of making time for everything and everyone.  You have really come so far in such a short amount of time.  I hope you understand how proud I am of you!  I hope I make it clear to you that I am in awe of you.  I hope you know that I feel so lucky to be your wife.  I thank God for you!  You are the biggest joy in my life and my very best friend- such a tremendous blessing to me.  I am so lucky I get to go through the ups and downs of life with you.  I am so lucky I get to be the mother to your children.  I am so lucky I get to grow old by your side.  I am so lucky I am the #1 in your life.  You are an amazing man.  You are kind, compassionate, encouraging, humble... I really admire you, Jesus.  Thank you for all you do for me and for our family!  I love you!

Our first "Sexy Christmas" ;)

Today, we celebrated our first "sexy Christmas".  We started by opening our festive chonies last night!  I have to say, you did an awesome job of picking mine out...i love them! This morning, we made snowman pancakes and had candy cane coffee and opened all our presents!  We talked about how in the future, we will send the kiddos off to grandma and grandpa's house and keep this tradition every year :) :) :) It is such a wonderful way to celebrate our 6 months even in the middle of the Christmas season!  I love you very much and am excited for the next few days of celebrating! 

almost 6 months already! and Christmas!

Helloooo handsome!  I love looking back at the previous posts and seeing what was going on in our lives at that time.. very special!  So, since I have not written here in almost 3 months and there is a lot to tell, I will make a list:
- I hit 1.5 years in my intership with Intel and am now in the middle of a mandatory 6 month break.  I briefly took a job with a company called MyBinding.com and hated it! We have been toying with some ideas about starting our own businesses and are starting to work toward those!  We are in the process of taking over your parent's janitorial business and getting new customers. It has been interesting so far and I am excited to see where it goes.  Long-term, our goal is to be able to run our own businesses from home so that we can be home with our kids ;) You have a potential offer to work as a golf instructor this summer and we are also very excited to see where that leads!
- We went on a 2 week trip to Mexico with your family about a month ago.  It was around 90 the entire time we were there...gorgeous weather. It was surprising to us that we did not enjoy this vacation as much as the first time and we learned that we love to be adventurous- we are hoping to only go to mexico every other year and use the alternate year to go somewhere new and explore new cities and activities! We also discovered that 2 weeks is a little too long for a vacation! We took fun family pictures on the beach that turned out beautifully!
- It is now full on winter in Oregon and so far, it has been ok! I was very worried about being cold all winter long, but it has not been as bad as I thought. We have a bunch of frogs that live under our house and they are sometimes a little noisy, but pretty cute! we have also had a bunch of issues with flooding...we put a car port in our back yard and put gravel in it which elevated the ground around our house so the water is all pooling right under our back porch.  we currently have a huge pile of gravel in the back and are attempting to even out the ground!
- We have been leading our small group this season and hosting it at our house!  It has been interesting, but overall a good experience. At first, it felt way too small, but after Emily started attending again with baby Claire and Tamara started attending more regularly, it felt a lot better!  We are not sure if we will be hosting again next season- trying to talk to Rosie and Nathan about having it at their apartment, but we will have to wait and see..
- We are getting a puppy!  Your parents are bringing back our sweet girl from Mexico on January 9th and you could not be more excited.  You watch bull terrier videos on YouTube for hours on end and talk about it constantly.  I am not anywhere near as excited as you, but it will be fun to have a new addition to our sweet little family! We are thinking we will name her "Cecilia" and call her "CeCe" for short ;)
- We are heading to Eugene this next weekend for Ashlee and Danny's wedding!  I am a bridesmaid and am pretty excited for it!  We will be heading up on a Saturday for the rehearsal dinner and then will be heading to a bed&breakfast for a romantic night to celebrate our 6 month anniversary!  The wedding will be Sunday, December 16! I can't wait!
- You have been brewing beer with your brother, Cesar, and Lupito...interesting, but you seem to be having fun ;)
-I started taking an adult women's gymnastics class and just love it!  I still have so much of my tumbling- it is awesome. I recently got my layout full back on the floor! and I almost have my cartwheel on the high beam back! 
- You are in your last week of school for this semester and then you will only have ONE semester left!  You have been working really hard and have been getting awesome grades and I am so proud of you!
- You got a snowboarding season pass this year- technically your Christmas gift, but pretty early ;) You are very excited about it and I am very excited about the reason that we got it for you ;) ;) ;)

That is about it!  Life has been very busy, but very fun and we are just loving it! 
Thank you for being my husband and my best friend through it all!  I am so excited to celebrate our 6 month wedding anniversary and then Christmas with you this month!  A year of firsts for us... :)

3 months already!

Hi Jesus!

I just wanted to write so I could capture this time of our lives.  Last night, we celebrated 3 months of marriage! I do not know how those 3 months went by so quickly...! We had been pet sitting my mom's kitten for several nights, so we were happy to be back in our cozy house and we celebrated by drinking leftover wedding wine and watching "Coming to America". Last night, we also killed 11 flies and 2 spiders.  One of the spiders was HUGE and it came up on your arm when you were cleaning the vents......ugh.  It reminded me of how scared I am of spiders and what a long winter we are in for.  I am a little scared for our first winter here.  We have mouse holes everywhere outside and we have to sprinkle poison everywhere unless we want unwelcome guests.... We are going to get a ton of spiders!  and it is already freezing in our house in the mornings (even with all of our thermal curtains up)...I can't imagine how it will feel come January! eeeek.  But for now, I am enjoying the fall season!  You bought some syrup so we can make pumpkin spice lattes!  and we went to Goodwill and got everything we needed for Christmas decorations this past week!  Soooo fun to think about our first Christmas as a married couple ;) We still have lots of work to do around the house to ensure we're all ready for winter (finish painting the shed, finish staining the wood, crap car oil change and wipers, bolt down side house panels, etc.etc) but we are finally getting there!  The finish line is in sight and I cannot wait for lazy winter nights with you!  You are OBSESSED with getting a puppy.  We want to have it by Christmas time so we really do need to know where we're getting it from in a month or so, but you just look and look and look and look.  You even look at breeds that we would never ever get hahahaha. you are so funny- just like an excited little boy.  I love you very much and I am so excited to be married for these next 3 months...so much fun during this time!  our mexico trip, a new puppy, our first married Christmas....!  <3