Happy Halloween!!

one of my favorite holidays of the year!

walking the school hall today, I thought, "man, I wish every day was Halloween--how fun is this!?"

we are getting sooo excited for our halloween party tonight!

we always throw a big bash--and it's one of my favorite parties of the year!

...except this time, we went a little crazy with the invites: since we are having the party on ACTUAL halloween this year, we thought a lot of people wouldn't be able to come.  so we invited double the amount we normally do, and lo and behold--everyone said they could come.

AH

so with a guest list that is definitely more than the capacity of our home, we had to rega-rega-remix our regular party ideas and reaccomodate.

but I think it will all work out in the end!

the other day, I said, "tay, you need to come look at the trash can--it's disturbing."

he said, "uhhh, I don't think I really want to, kells."

me: "no, really, come look."

and when I finally convinced him, he saw that the whole trash can was filled with candy wrappers. HA

that's when you know you shouldn't buy your halloween candy any earlier than you have to.

and that's also when you know it's time to resort to this:

using packing tape to tape the entire bag so we have at least SOMETHING for our little trick-or-treaters. HA

and, a little tribute to our past halloween costumes:

lots of pictures of our costumes and halloween bash to come!

follow me on insta to see what our costumes are tonight!

sailing video.

a little film of our sailing trip.

see pictures here!

ALSO, I must pay a tribute to my dearest friend, kelsey briggs, who is coming home from her mission TODAY!

she's one of those friends that just makes everything happy.

taylor and I adore her--and she was such a big part of our dating/early married life.

we cannot waaaaaait to see her!

we even all plotted for months to make her a gilbert sister-in-law. HA

....but that didn't work out

(which we are both still kinda sad about BUT she has a great guy waiting for her to get home and they might have just the cutest love story around. so win-win. but lose for us. hahah)

she is just about the most beautiful, happy, and endearing person we know.

We love you, kels!!

...and you will always be an honorary gilbert.

See you SOON!

anniversary celebration: part 2!

after our first anniversary surprise, I drove a very confused taylor to utah lake and handed him this note:

we were going SAILING!

...a sunset sail, no less!

I had SUCH a hard time keeping this a secret.

I was sooo excited. and taylor joined me in that excitement after reading the note!

we went with two of our greatest friends--and had the cutest captain ever!

and this was seriously one of THE most beautiful things we have EVER EVER done.

we could not stop talking about how beautiful it was.

...and we may already have plans to take sailing classes next summer. HA

i'm definitely going to give you a picture overload, because I just can't cut any of these out.

just loooook how beautiful!

we had just about the best time together.

seriously--go surprise your special someone and plan a sunset sail!

I can't even do it justice with words.

the world was magical from this point of view.

and the water was absolutely quiet and still.

a glass reflection.

just us five and the world.

aaaand I'm pretty grateful I've got this guy by my side for my eternity.

haaaapy 3 year anniversary, babe!

I love you with everything I have!

see other anniversary posts here, here, and here.

P.S. sailing video coming TOMORROW!

who does this!?

last week was a little on the crazy side.

I was running around like crazy trying to get everything done before I left for sacramento.

aaaand, admist all of that--the thing that fell to the bottom of the list was taking care of our house.

...and, our house was a disaster.

let's face it, I'm not perfect--and as much as I try to keep a clean house, sometimes weeks like this happen.

so, don't judge. just please tell me your house sometimes looks like this! haha

the worst part, was that the house was a disaster, and I kissed taylor goodbye and left him in all of it. ha!

but during the days I was gone, I started to receive these videos.

one after the other.

and MAN, I fell in love all over again.

not just because my house was spanking clean when I got home, but because it was the epitome of taylor to think of making these little videos to send to me. 

My family enjoyed these videos all weekend long.

we all just love him.

you've got to see them:

pw: clean

pw: clean

pw: clean

^a little disclaimer on this one: the clothes on the ground WERE folded, just not put away. so it wasn't quite as pig-sty-ish as it looks haha^^

pw: clean

^and he did the rest of the laundry! wait for when he folds the socks--the coolest!

the funniest part was when taylor sent me this video showing the contraption he made to record all of these videos.

I love how much effort he took to do something so silly!

pw: clean

seriously, who does these things!?
taylorray--you are my idol.
just about the coolest guy I know.
thanks for always keeping my life entertaining!

aaand, it made my heart flutter when I came home and saw he had opened one of the "open when..." envelopes:

glad to know he missed me as much as I missed him!
i'm addicted!

gosh, I got lucky with this guy.

he really is a keeper!

anniversary celebration: part 1

this last weekend we were able to celebrate our 3 year anniversary!

it was my turn to plan our anniversary, and I decided to pick a "theme" this year:

"tie the knot!"

so all of taylor's surprises and gifts were accompanied with a little note and a "play on words" with our theme.

see here for more about our theme!

On our actual anniversary, we celebrated by going to the temple and out to dinner.

but we always like to drag things out...ha

So we had a whole weekend full of surprises!

On Friday morning, I gave Taylor this note:

we dressed up fancy and took our traditional "anniversary picture."

^oh, and taylor bought me this new fancy dress for our anniversary. I LOVE it!^

then we headed up to Salt Lake City for dinner on The Roof!

we loooove the atmosphere of that place.

I mean just look at the view!

and this was my favorite view...even with his slightly creepy smile. ha

every single time we do something fancy, we are quickly reminded that we do NOT belong. ha

if you haven't been to The Roof, it's a fine dining buffet.

while in line, taylor dropped the tongs, and they clattered to the floor.

he quickly picked them up, but not before rubbing his plate with ranch dressing along the back of my dress (while everyone was still staring because of the tongs...ha!).

flustered, he tried to wipe my dress, and then dropped his fork. ha!

so we got out of line and headed back to our table pretty quickly, while trying really hard not to burst out laughing.

but as soon as we sat down, I tried to "fork" a piece of potato, and it just FLEW off of my plate.

and that's when we broke. 

tears and all. it was just sooo funny.

on a more serious note, I got SO emotional during dinner while talking with my sweet taylor and having the temple as our view.

it was all just so special to me...I could hardly handle how grateful I was!

soooo...we were supposed to spend the night at the Grand America...but our reservation fell through (due to my stupidity).

and I'm still a little sad about that part, so we are just going to skip it over completely and pretend like the whole plan was to go home on Friday night after dinner! 

OH, so one of my gifts for Taylor was new sheets!

lame gift...BUT he has been wanting a new set for awhile.

and when our reservation didn't work out, I thought it would be a perfect gift to come home to (new sheets is close to the feeling of a hotel suite, right? ha)

When we got home, I gave him the gift, and when he opened it, I said, "This is the only thing that makes the hotel not working out bearable for me! Let's put them on right now!"

Taylor looked at me and said, "kells, I've got good news and I've got bad news.  the good news is that they are beautiful sheets and I love them.  The bad news...is that you got them in queen size."

yep, our bed is definitely a california king.

how did I not even check that!? I still don't even know how that happened...haha

anyways, this one moment made the "hotel not working out" totally worth it. because we laughed on that bed for a good 5 minutes--you know, the crying and having trouble breathing kind of laughing. it was the best.

I woke Taylor up Saturday morning to a starbucks hot chocolate.

which came at the perfect time, because taylor woke up not feeling too hot :(

I told him to suck it up---we had a whole day of fun ahead of us!
no...but really. 

we started with an afternoon of shooting (hence the note).

taylor has been dyyyying to go for awhile, and so I got it all set up with the help of taylor's dad.

but, I wasn't too sneaky apparently, because he had this part of the day guessed all along. ha

our dear friends, kate and taylor, accompanied us all satuday, and it was SO fun having them along!

they are just our very favorite!

^how cute are they? we love them.^

taylor is AMAZING with these guns. 

he hits the clay pigeons every SINGLE time!

like...c'mon, stop making the rest of us look bad.

but with his coaching, I hit 3 out of 2938728473 pigeons! wahooo!

I felt pretty accomplished when we finished, because taylor couldn't stop smiling.

he was SO happy we finally got out and did this.

and it is surprisingly fun...even for a california valley girl. ha

By this point, I was absolutely bursting for our evening surprise.

I had been looking forward to it for WEEKS and had the hardest time keeping it a secret!

if you follow me on instagram, you probably already saw what it was--one of the best experiences we've ever had!

posting all about it tomorrow! 

I'm a little sad that I'm leaving this dreamboat of mine to drive down to my good ol' sacramento today!

FALL BREAK! (being a teacher...it's just the best).

I'll be spending a few days with my family before my little sister leaves on her mission in just two weeks! ah!

xoxo

las vegas in pictures

last weekend, taylor and I went down to vegas!

Taylor had a bunch of work meetings, and he invited me to tag along.

pretty easy answer...haha

we honestly didn't do much at all.

and it was awesome.

I accompanied taylor to two of his business meetings on friday, and it was so fun to see him in action!

after the meetings, we decided to go relax in the hotel for a bit before heading out.

but before we knew it..."american pickers" on history channel had us hooked.

we are suuuuch nerds. hahaha

we watched maybe 5 or 6 hour episodes in a row? 

before we realized we were hungry.

so we ran to get food so we could make it back for more episodes. 

it was the funniest thing.

we went to tommy's for dinner--a burger joint in california and nevada.

and when we pulled up, taylor said, "man, this place makes me nervous."

when I asked him why, he said, "because, the last time we were here, it was when we were driving back from california, and I realized I wanted to marry you. and that was exciting but also terribly nerve wracking."

you learn something new every day! cute boy, cute boy.

then, on saturday morning, we decided to change the channel, because we got WAY too hooked the night before.

buuut uh.

we changed it to HGTV. probably our favorite tv station ever (oh, yeah, we don't have cable, so this is kinda like a treat for us ha--taylor secretly hates me because I think cable is the biggest waste of money. I grew up in a no-tv-household--sooo yeah, judge me now.)

and so then we got hooked on HGTV, and had the best time watching, laughing, and talking in that hotel room.

we finally decided to get moving, so we browsed some outlets, went to lunch, and then came back for...more HGTV.

this is so embarrassing...haha

BUT at about 8pm, we decided to hit up more outlets, and then head down to the strip.

sooo, taylor's dad told us we could park in any hotel parking garage for free, but cute little Siri directed us RIGHT TO THE STRIP.

and so here I am driving on the strip and totally panicking, because it is so distracting and people drive crazy and there are walkers everywhere and geesh. it was the worst.

and then we both got stressed and kinda freaked out at each other (sorry, babe), but as soon as we were able to turn off of the strip, we both gave the biggest sigh and started laughing so hard.

and then taylor said, "uh, so...do you feel like we got the "strip" experience this trip?"

me: "let's count that and go watch some HGTV."

"I've never loved you more, kells."
sooo, we didn't quite experience the strip like in trips past, but that stressful drive was priceless.

and while the rest of the 20-something-year-olds in vegas were gambling on the strip, we gambled over whether we would hit the bed or the ground after jumping on the bed a million times.
best game ever.

^true fear on my face in this one. I went SO high and was headed straight towards the ground^

also, I learned that if I want to leave someplace (and taylor doesn't), if I just start dancing in public, taylor will get up faster than lightening.

...because I am the worst dancer ever. haha

(and I make sure I'm extra bad in public)

also #2, taylor was making a u-turn while driving and totally ran over the median.

we both gasped and sat there silently (busy intersection--pretty embarrassing) and then couldn't stop laughing.

running joke of the whole trip.

every weekend with this boy is golden.

aaand THIS WEEKEND will make the books, I have been waiting forever to spill all of the secret plans I have for taylor this weekend!

and high five me for being such a good secret keeper and not telling taylor! it has been the hardest feat ever!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

(follow me on instagram to see our surprises this weekend--saturday night will kill it!)