cha-cha-changes…I MOVED!

when i was in elementary school, i really, REALLY wanted to be the new kid. i don’t know why, i just did. i thought it would be fun!  new school, new friends, new look — not that i didn’t love my own, i just wanted something different.

so now i am the new kid over on blogger. i was in the need of change — i always get this way at the start of the school year! most of the time i just chop my hair off — and decided to start all over. except for the fact that i moved all my archives over there too but…that’s besides the point ;).

anyways, go take a look :). the url is: http://www.brookestapleton.blogspot.com — it’s called ‘simply us.’ it’s only sort of lame, i know.

likes + don’ts.

this is a picture from our honeymoon. jeff thought i looked like the quintessential modbod shopper with my t-shirt under the long dress combo. you’re welcome. consider me your beacon to modest dressing! (do i smell a sponsorship? c’mon, people!)

:: i am on one of my short-lived exercise kicks. like, a super kick. i’ve been trying to wake up early and run and pick things up off the ground and everything! but being so sore that i literally fall down on the toilet? i could probably live without that (waaaaait…when does the soreness go away, again?)

:: the support and love we got on our wedding day was truly amazing. like, so many congratulations and bed bath & beyond gift cards that my head could spin…but my perpetual hand cramp from writing all those thank you’s? yowza! i have a problem in which i want to write a novel to each person, describing the very moment we met and the reaction when i opened the gift and how much i just love it and what i ate that day and…you get the point. i’m just overly thankful or something? (p.s. to whomever gave me the dish towels: thank you, anonymous gifter!)

:: i love the start of the school-year (the sudden drive to try super hard and buy planners and put on real-people-clothes), but i don’t like that it is so blazing hot here (and deceptively so! the mornings always disguise themselves as ‘jacket-weather’ then BAM! you feel silly in your cardigan!). swoob/swass/swustache…they are all happening. on the daily. so that’s fun.

:: getting married is the best thing i have ever done, and i really do love my last name (i feel distinguished!) but guys! getting married is hard work! not just the before, but the after too. mostly i am referring to the social security office…i have found my h-e-double-chicken-legs on earth! i previously thought it was cafe rio on a busy day but no. this beats it out ten times over.  longest. line. ever.

:: the smell of cookies could honestly just kill me dead. i’m not really a cookie person but the aroma reminds me of my home and my mom and other such things. but the whole baking thing? what is therapeutic about it?! no seriously, what?!

:: i like when my jeffrey brings me home a delicious cubby’s salad for dinner butttt…no wait. no buts. all love.

p.s. thanks maggie for the idea!

labor day.

guess what’s a kind of fun game that we were forced into? having no money. no, seriously…no money.

when we got married, we joined our financial forces (…my bank statement was -33 cents…oops…!) and opened up a new bank account. we ordered fancy new cards and set up secret passwords and signed a bunch of papers…and then two weeks later, we found out that our cards were sent to a random person who 1. guess our passwords and 2. spent $600 on philly cheese steaks and other some such things. long story short(er), our bank account is now frozen and under investigation…great password, no?

so for labor day, we were in search of something free. and mildly entertaining. but mostly free.

after much internet-surfing, we decided on oktoberfest at snowbird; a festival centered almost entirely on sauerkraut and bratwursts…my type of party!

two hours and some serious wrong-turns later, we weren’t at oktboerfest. or even snowbird. but we were in pretty brighton, utah and brighton, utah has public restrooms so brighton, utah it was! we determined there are about three things to do in brighton, utah for free (brighton, utah is a firsty-lasty, don’t you think? kind of like joss stone or jay zee). using the restroom is one of the three.

so romantic drive through the canyon it was! and oh! was it romantic! we were hand-in-hand, reminiscing about our shotgun courtship and old arrested development episodes…

and then a wasp flew in through the window and landed in my cleavage and stung me repeatedly.

the end.

p.s. happy one month to jeff and i! what a feat, no? we had a waffle feast this morning to celebrate! …and also to eat seeing as we really only have bisquick left in our pantry. fingers crossed our account unfreezes!

p.p.s. is jeff’s new haircut kind of hilter youthy? morgan told him so and i am kind of on the fence. except for i am more on hitler-youthy side.

p.p.p.s. happy labor day!

on brothers; younger ones, specifically.

on my LNW (late-night-walk) with avery, we talked about how we so badly crave the attention and approval of people who don’t really want to give it to us– people who think we are lame, weird, or obnoxiously good-looking (what? me?). over the past few years, my younger brother chad has fallen into that category of ‘people who think brooke is lame’ — it was such a subtle, slow-moving process! he began to laugh at my jokes less, dodge my ultimate-high-fives, and shy away from my compliments (YOU GUYS! he accused me of ‘hitting on him’ last time i visited– i can think my brother is cute, right?). WHAT HAPPENED? i thought i was automatically ‘cool’ because i was his elder–isn’t that how it works?

but i still seek after his danged approval! and how! 

while jeff and i were home earlier this month, chad celebrated his birthday with a SURPRISE! slip-n-slide birthday party and a family dinner. we decided to anti-roast him at dinner and tell seventeen reasons why he was rad (truth: i never say ‘rad’ in person, is that weird?). mostly it was about how he is the funniest, outgoing-est, party-starting-est member of the family. because he is, duh. you just want to be apart of his club, you know? 

anyways, happy belated birthday chadwick! sorry for hitting on you and holding your hand for far too many years, i am sure that was scarring. i will continue to try to buy your love forever. as long as it can be bought with a bed bath & beyond gift card.

the new rule…

there’s a new rule: i have 30 seconds to take a picture! 30 seconds! my hands tremble at every kodak moment; fumbling to get my lens unscrewed and the scene in focus. jeff implemented the rule last night while we were late-night grocery shopping (there’s something so therapeutic  about being in a sifted-through walmart almost totally alone)(besides the crazy coupon queens stalking up for labor day– you guy, mom pants!). we were in the parking lot and he was waiting for me to pop the trunk and he was looking so handsome! so pleased and content and happy. perhaps it was because we had finally, finally sold our coffee table with the lion legs? or maybe it was because we had just gotten over that two day back-to-school hump? the pecan-pie diet we started after my mom sent us one? the kick-butt dinner i made?

or maybe it was ‘us.’ at walmart. with the couponers. laughing over ‘cardio butter.’ yeah, let’s pretend that’s it.

also, sidenote: monday was out to get me. i waited in a line of 34 back-to-school shoppers, only to get to the front to realize i didn’t have any form of payment. and my bike tire popped on me. but at least jeff looked content?

side-side-note: can someone get me a baby or a pug already? jeff can’t take all these pictures!

honeymooning.

i almost titled this post ‘honeymooning…each other’ but then i thought it’d be weird for everyone and didn’t. but now i just told you so…now you know.  jamaica was probably my favorite place that we stopped. i loved the atmosphere, the scenery (…it was really pretty…we just didn’t take any pictures of it–when i have the camera, all i take pictures of is my handsome devil man-boy), and the people (do i sound well-traveled or what?!). though we did get suckered out of $40 in jamaica. jeff is the second sweetest person in the world and can’t say ‘no’ and i freeze in times of confrontation so…

at least we got some beads we will never wear and mini-statues with our names on it (too bad the guy spelled mine ‘b-r-o-o-k-k’ …almost right?).

…and that’s the extent of the honeymoon details. ha.

side note: traveling with a husband, particularly a jeffy-husband, is the literal best. i think i fell in love with him 435263 times over.  you can borrow him sometime?

life as of late…

for the past two episodes of netlix’d parks and rec (can i be couple-friends with will arnett and amy pohler already?)(…couple friends…eeeek…), i’ve been trying to  figure out the correct onomatopoeia to describe the sound of a deep inhale through the nostrils. my front-runners: ‘mmmm’, ‘ffffffff’, and ‘huuuurrrff’

maybe? kind of? are you feeling it?

now, enough of onomatopoeia, and on to me. that’s what we are all here for, right? (unless you are here for the other simply brooke–a fan fiction author that writes for digimon)

onwards: i’m married, you guys! and to answer the next question, it’s been great. people keep asking us if we like it and, if we are being truthful, we don’t really know yet. if being married is cruising, free meals, parties centered around your love, and a surplus of tagged facebook photos, then we are old pros. marriage is easy. ha. (…we have actually had a hard time adjusting from the cruise-life to real-life; we have to refrain from ordering 3 entrees and just leaving our garbage everywhere)

we do know that we love each other, though. it has been so fun to have him around 24/7 and to adjust to being married (answering to ‘brooke stapleton’, controlling nighttime gas, de-hair-ing the shower after use, and remembering that the crimson wave is a completely natural bodily function that happens once a month…to reiterate: i. am. not. dying.).

so here’s a little catch-up a la pictures (my life just looks better in the instagram ‘walden’ filter…) and a list (i’ll talk alllll about the actual ceremony later!):

one: we went back to my neck of the woods in northern idaho! we got all northern-idaho-y and rode the hiawatha trail (recommend! recommend!).

two: can you get over that sunset? me neither.

three: vegas, baby! we didn’t really mean to. nor did we want to. but we ended up in the crazy hot las vegas with my family and had a blast! i forget all the details and can’t really expound on this point but…it was a blast! exclamation point!

four: registering for a marriage license was sort of stressful. i thought that they were going to ask me really in-depth questions about him that i would have to know the right answer to (favorite color? elementary school crush? allergies?!). thankfully, they didn’t. but they did ask me my age…twice. “nine…teen…” (something about that ‘teen’ word evokes instant eyebrow raises?)

five: more lake time. but this time post-marriage…you know what that means! shared checking accounts! but really. jeff is slowly becoming me with the bowl of soup and can of ice-cold diet coke. and i am slowly becoming him with occasional showering and clothes washing. oy.

six: you know when you are apart from something for a while and you realize how much you actually love it? distance makes the heart go stronger? it’s like that one time i didn’t eat hot dogs for a year, just because. or when i haven’t seen my sisters in a while. they’re funny people, you know?  (and cute. and smart. and…another endearing adjective.)

seven: jeff and i have a problem. we both still think we are juniors in high school. we threw chad a surprise party (SURPRISEEEE!)(okay, side-note: all the kids hid in the bathroom to surprise him. five minutes before, i went into the bathroom and…relieved myself. thoroughly. ha. when they went in there, i heard someone say: “SICK! who farted?!” hahahaha…oops), and we both couldn’t help but try to impress everyone. i even overheard jeff telling a few of the boys about his high school football days that ended abruptly because he “got kicked off the team” (…you GUYS! he simply didn’t fundraise enough and broke his femur…dirt biking…cool points restored?).

eight: …we didn’t adjust well to a wedding event that wasn’t centered around us. like, what was that about? (only kidding. it was GREAT to not have to be paraded around– no strained smile muscles here!)

nine: hi hanna’s face and a plate full of brownies! when we got back to provo we realized that we live right next door to my morgan, hanna, avery, and maddy friend. mooching score: 1, us. thanks for the dinner, morgs ;) (eww. i never call her that. why did i just do that?)

ten: call us jim and pam! no really, please? i was on a quick job-scramble and applied everywhere…and ended up scoring a job at jeff’s place of work. ha. they have FREE fountain drinks there and chairs that spin and a softball team and everything! we work in two different departments but it’s still so fun having someone to carpool with and to kanoodle at the water cooler.

eleven: …and to take lunch breaks with, too. isn’t he handsome?

twelve: jeff’s brother shane is living here now! and they like to match and change tires together and stuff. (there’s your shout-out, shane. you happy?)

…school’s tomorrow. sleep tight!