Plastic Blinds Are Not Okay

Why do apartments think it is okay to place these hideous, plastic, cheap blinds in front of sliding glass doors? Have they never heard of a thing called curtains - made of fabric? Or better yet, have they never thought to just have a door out to the balcony rather than a sliding glass door? David and I started apartment hunting last Saturday. All the apartments, except one, had these ugly plastic blinds. I hate these blinds. We had them at Alpine Village and by the time we moved out, half of them had fallen off. And don't even get me started on the sound they make when you try to slide them open. I cringe at that sound. Luckily, for David and I, our application was approved (after a horrible three day wait - (how will I ever buy a house and have to wait a month)) and we got the apartment we wanted! The apartment that chose to use a door as the way out to the back patio rather than these hideous, plastic blinds. Don't worry - pics to come on the new apartment. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! (sadly, we can't move in until November 14th; the countdown has begun!)

Fall Makes Me Happy

This is the tree I park directly in front of every morning for work. I love it. It is so beautiful. Yesterday I was driving to the bank for work - the weather was perfect, absolutely perfect, and trees everywhere were turning red. I love the fall. I hate to admit it - but Utah has the best falls.

I Don't Feel Like 23...

Well, I turned 23 on September 15th. I don't know if anyone feels this way, but I feel like I stopped aging once I hit 21. I still have to stop myself from saying I am 21 - I am 23! Crazy! I'm pretty sure I still look like a high schooler! For my birthday, David took me to dinner at Tucanos. We LOVE Tucanos - plus the free meal for your birthday isn't bad either. After stuffing our selves with cheesy mashed potatoes and every kind of meat imaginable, David told me we were going to go get dessert. He did not tell me where we were going at first, and we ended up at the apartment of my old roommate - Courtney! Courtney had baked the most delicious Boston cream pie (from scratch!) and invited over all of our good friends - Natalie, Kate, and Michelle! It was so good to see them! It really meant a lot to me that they all still remembered my birthday. It was a lot of fun and the cream pie was DELICIOUS! Thank you everyone!

David's parents invited David and I over the Monday before my birthday to have a mini celebration. What is a birthday with the Driggs without a yummy funfetti cake?!! I love David's family and enjoyed spending a night with them to celebrate my birthday.

For my birthday, David gave me two tickets to the Killers Concert on September 26th. So that Saturday after the BYU game, we headed up to the E-Center in Salt Lake City for the concert. The concert was SO good! I will say that the opening band was a little lame. It was this rock/mariachi band. The whole band was dressed like the Three Amigos. The lead singer was some bald white guy singing Mariachi music. It was strange. But then the Killers came out and we loved the rest of the concert!

Here they are singing. The lead singer, Brandon, sounded SO GOOD live! He was amazing! Plus he is Mormon - gotta love that!

David was super thoughtful and bought us these Killers t-shirts for my birthday for us to wear to the concert.

The stage had those huge screens in the back that would change colors and show video clips and different things. It was a very good show - and of course they sang all of their best songs - I really liked their performance of "Smile Like You Mean It" and "Spaceman". David of course loved "When You Were Young".

At the end of their encore performance they had all these sparks come down from the top of the stage. Then they had balls of fire explode at the back of the stage. It was really cool! Thank you David for such a great birthday gift!

And the winner is...

Last August, when David and I moved into our first apartment, we decided to have a shampoo bottle contest. We wanted to see who went through more bottles of shampoo in a year - me or David. The results: Well, I lost count back in May when I was on bottle 6. David is STILL using the same bottle that we purchased way back in August 2008. How sad is that. I think I ended up using nine or something like that. Life is so much cheaper as a boy. That's all I have to say.

FINALLY a new camera

I will finally have no more excuses for not updating my blog with more pictures. David and I decided last week to use my credit card reward points to get us a new camera. My camera was a giant brick that I have had since my senior year of high school, and we lost David's camera at the beginning of the summer (but it wasn't that great of a camera anyway so we didn't really care). Here is the camera we got COMPLETELY FREE! Yay! Two years of racking up credit card points and finally the reward program paid off!

P.S. Why is that my hair is always two colors? Stupid roots. I promise they don't look that bad in person. :)

It's a New Car!

For anyone who doesn't know David very well, he says "It's a new car" just like the Price is Right guy ALL the time; so the title of this post is in honor of David.

Well, exciting news for the Driggs - we got a car on Monday! We were planning on buying a car in December when David was done with school, however after taking each of our cars in to the car shop twice, so four times in all in a two week span, and after spending over $500 on those two cars, we felt that now was as good a time as any to start car shopping.

Last Saturday, the 12th, we began our search for a car. We had already decided we wanted either a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic and had already done all of our online research on Kelly Blue Book, blah, blah, blah. FINALLY David agreed to let me actually go to a car dealership. We went to both the Honda dealership and the Toyota dealership here in Orem. Anyone else looking for a car in the future, we loved Kevin Burns - apparently he has been salesman of the month a bizillion times. His office was FULL of plaques and awards. After looking around on Saturday we went home to decide what we wanted to do.

Long story short, we were going to buy a 2006 Toyota Corolla that the Honda dealership had on their lot, but at the last minute they brought out a 2008 Honda Civic that had just come in so we took it!

Here is our new baby! We love it! I know its a pathetic dream but I have always always wanted a Honda Civic - you can blame my parents - they only drive Hondas. We love our new car and love driving it!

A view of the inside. Best feature - iPod hookup jack!

College Graduates...Almost!

Well I thought I should give everyone a new life update on me and David.  As most of you know, David and I were living in Salt Lake for the summer with his Aunt Tiff and Uncle Chuck.  Fortunately, David was able to get an internship with a construction company in Salt Lake called Zwick Construction.  Unfortunately, the internship was unpaid, which = we are poor.  haha. Fortunately, he loved the internship and loved the company.  And super fortunately, they just gave him a job offer!  He graduates in December and Zwick wants him to come work for him!  We are 99.99% sure we are going to take the job offer.  He really liked the people he worked with, the company is great, and he would learn a lot.  Also, the owner sat down and talked with him and said that he could see David growing with the company.  They want to expand into California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, etc. and David could help them with that eventually.  And we all know David would just LOVE to live in California.  We are so grateful that David was able to do this internship.  

But for now David just has to focus on his last 5 classes (that is if he can get his mind off of college football) for the next three and a half months and then he can officially join me as a college graduate!

Now on to my life.  In July I decided I wanted to be done working with CFO Solutions.  They are a great company, but I was ready for steady hours, one location, and most importantly a steady paycheck.  (Yeah, that whole month during the summer without a single paycheck was not fun at all).  So I looked around for jobs and found a great one - thank you craigslist!  The company is a small private equity firm that invests in real estate/development companies.  I started at the very beginning of August - so I am about to start my fourth week with them.  The job is in Orem so before I was driving down from Salt Lake.  Now that we are back in Orem, I am about three minutes from work, which is really nice.  Since I don't have to be in until 9:00 am, I get a pretty good nights sleep each night.  The company is great and they are letting me be a lot more involved in the accounting than I was at my previous job.  I even have my own little office!

For the semester, David and I are living in my grandma and grandpa's basement in Orem - thank you grandma and grandpa!  We really, really, really can't wait to get our own apartment but that will just have to wait until December.  For now we are just trying to save up for our many large purchases we will be making in December - new car, couches, bed, bedroom furniture, washer/dryer, etc.  We are super excited to be done with college in three months and to both be working, contributing members of society!  Yay!