Just a Really Really Great Night.

Tuesday night was spectacular for a few very simple reasons:

• Johnny came to work with me to do some homework, and I got to see his smiling face every 15 minutes on my walks.
• After we left work in the Wilk, we pulled the car over to play in the sprinklers on campus. I haven't done that since I was like 10.
• We watched 3 episodes of 24. Yes, we're hooked.
• It was hard to fall asleep because we were apparently slap happy & laughing like crazy. That's what happens when old married people stay up past midnight.

I love being Johnny's wife.

Perpetually Behind

I'm convinced that life is happening much too fast around here. Because of that, I cannot seem to catch up on this blog. We've been keeping so busy and we're loving it!

Earlier in the month, we had our Arkansas open house. Johnny and I flew out to Arkansas with his parents on the 8th. They stayed a couple of nights in Branson to see the sights while Johnny and I went straight to Mountain Home (thanks to Emily and Julieta). I absolutely adore being home with the fam. They have all been together since the wedding so it was definitely time for me and the hubs to join them in Arkansas. Tanner and Clark are growing up so fast, I can't even get over it. Tanner still always picks Uncle David over me. Actually, he will usually pick almost anyone over me. Someday he'll reciprocate my love and then he'll regret ever giving me the cold shoulder. In the meantime though, Clark loves me so I had to work that as long as I could while I was home.
The open house went really well. Margo and Daren came down from Branson for the party. It was so fun to have them in Arkansas! It was nice to see so many people from home, too. I love the people in Mountain Home and I was excited that Johnny got to meet so many of them.


On Saturday, we had a nice biscuits and gravy breakfast and then my parents, Johnny's parents, and Johnny and I went to Blanchard Springs Caverns. We did a little walking tour of the caves and then Johnny and I went for a quick swim in the river. Somehow we made it through the shoots (the little passages made from rocks that the river water pushes you through). I had to go on my side at one point and I honestly don't know how Johnny made it through. I do know that he caused quite a traffic jam of impatient little kids.

The rents in the cave

When we got back to Mountain Home, the three couples went out to 178 Club for a delicious dinner. I never went to that restaurant growing up, but 2 of the 3 times that Johnny's been to Arkansas we've gone there. They have good food so that always makes for a good time. After dinner, we took Margo and Daren back to my grandma's house (where they stayed) and then we went to the nursing home that Grams is staying in now for her rehab. It was so good to see Grams, she's had a hard time lately and I've hated being so far away from her.

That about wraps up the Arkansas portion of our trip. I'm already aching to go back but I'm just grateful we got to go at all. Flights home are not cheap so I'm lucky to have married a man that understands the importance of home and family and who will always take me back to Arkansas. (Thanks, Dad, for making that a condition of our marriage when Johnny asked your permission to propose!)

Margo and Daren flew back to Utah that Sunday, but Johnny and I had not had enough of the Drakes at that point. We were lucky enough to join my family at our condo in Branson for the week! This year, since our family is getting so massive, we had twocondos. It made it much better for sleeping, especially with the two nephews and their early bedtimes. We love Branson week so much, it's my dad's favorite week of the year. All we do is swim, get tan (or burned if your name is Johnny or Sarah), watch 24, eat tons of food, stay up late and sleep in late, play games, and maybe see a show or two. But my personal fav part of the trip is just hanging out with everyone! I seriously miss my family like crazy so I really depend on these visits. Unfortunately, Chris had to work and Joseph had class most of the week, so we didn't get to spend much time with them. But we were all together for a little bit on Sunday so of course we jumped on that photo op. Look how big we are! And in about 7 weeks we'll be ever bigger. I can't wait to meet my first niece on the Drake side!

Johnny's first time seeing slash catching fireflies. Yes, they're real. No, his enthusiasm in this picture is not real.

Love these little boys in their swimsuits.

I wasn't joking about the sunburn thing.

Tanner and Papa love huge sunglasses...

...And eating s'mores together.

The boys love watching mario beat box with uncle david. It's basically the only thing that calms them down, so that's normal.

Before we went to the bodies exhibit- so cool!

Making sushi on our last day there

I think that about sums up our trip. Which is perfect because I need to post about another trip that I just got back from. Again, perpetually behind.

Other May Happenings

Summer is flying by! We've been having so much fun since we got married and we're loving the fact that we're not in school right now. Even when we don't have some big activity planned, we have fun just making dinner and watching 24, Modern Family, and lots of movies.

One adjustment I've had to make is making meals all the time. Grocery shopping and making menus consume so much of my time, not to mention meal prep. It's a lot of work! Lucky for me, Johnny is always so good to help me with meals and clean-up. He gets really excited about homemade meals because our single college days didn't see many of them. Here he is at our first attempt at Sunday dinner. He's so easy to please! (Don't mind the fact that I made five pounds of mashed potatoes for two people -I'm getting much better at halving recipes)

Also, last month we celebrated my 21st birthday! It was the best birthday ever. May 10th happened to fall on a Tuesday this year, which is our day off, so it was perfect. While I was sleeping in, Johnny got up early and got the apartment all ready for a nice birthday surprise. He made me a cake, bought me flowers, blew up lots of "It's a Girl!" balloons (he claims the store was out of birthday balloons but I'm still not convinced) and made a huge birthday banner for me. It was real sweet.

Then, he took me out to Magelby's Fresh for breakfast. We shared these delicious strawberries and cream and then had their famous all you can eat french toast (which for me, definitely meant just one serving). It was so good!

After breakfast, Johnny took me shopping for a cute new dress. We had lunch at the apartment, did some laundry, watched a couple of TV shows, and then went to Shoots for a nice Chinese food dinner. We love Shoots- it's where we went for our Valentine's Day dinner a few months ago and now we live so close to it! After dinner we had some friends over for a little cake and ice cream party. I got to talk to all my family back in Arkansas, too. Basically, it was the best birthday I could have even hoped. Definitely not your typical 21st birthday, but it was perfect for me.

We also went to a Salt Lake City Bee's game. I'm not really big into baseball, but it was something we had on our Utah checklist and I'm glad we went. Nate, Claire, Quin, Adam, and Chris all came along, too, so it was really fun to hang out with them. We definitely lost, but we didn't really care.

Here's some pictures from Memorial Day Weekend up in Layton. We went to visit the grave of Johnny's Grandpa Allred, who passed away when Johnny was a little boy.

3 Sarah Allred's

Since we were already in Layton on Monday, and Johnny and I both had Tuesday off, we decided to go camping up Logan Canyon that night. It was our first camping trip together and I'd say it was a huge success. We roasted hot dogs and crescent rolls over the fire that night with Nate and Scott before they left the camp to sleep in the comfort of Scott's place. They were kind enough to supply us with lots of blankets and jackets, though, which was nice because I didn't know it was supposed to get down to the 30's that night. Needless to say, Johnny and I slept bundled up in separate mummy bags with tons of layers of coats and blankets on top of us. We stayed warm all night and woke up to the most beautiful day for a hike! We forgot to take a picture before we took down camp, so this will have to do.

It was so beautiful there! After we ate a light breakfast, we hiked Crimson Trail, which I think was about five miles, up and around the mountain. If you can't really tell from these pictures, we were up very high.


And once again, Johnny proved to be the world's best husband by carrying my gatorade for me the entire hike. Lifesavor.

I think that pretty much covers all of May. June has already been a busy month for us - we just got back from a week and a half vacation in Arkansas and Branson with my fam. I'll post again about all that fun stuff. For now, I'll just say that I already miss my family like crazy, but it's good to be back in our cozy little apartment.

Best Honeymoon Ever.

This is a very late post about our honeymoon. I've been a little busy the past month so now I'm trying to play catch up. We had so much fun and could not even imagine a better honeymoon!

We went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We chose Jackson because neither of us had ever been there (even though once we got there, Johnny remembered that he had actually been there before), it was close enough to drive to, but far enough for us to feel like we were still on vacation, and because Jackson is beautiful. All good reasons.

On our wedding night we stayed in a hotel in Layton so that we wouldn't have to drive all night to Jackson. We had a very busy day and by the end of the reception, we were so tired. We got up Sunday morning and started driving north. On our way through Idaho we saw this:

But we did laugh.

We got to our hotel around 4 or 5 that afternoon. The hotel was technically in Teton Village, about 15 minutes outside of Jackson. It was called Hotel Terra and it was so luxurious! It was basically a classy, organic hotel and we loved our suite! It had a bedroom, bathroom (with a rain shower - I need one in my future home), a full kitchen, living room, patio, fireplace, two flat screen tvs, and everything else anyone could ever want. Our favorite feature of the hotel was the rooftop hot-tub in which we were always the only ones visiting and that had a waterfall over the edge. We used it like every day and it was best when it was snowing outside. We loved the kitchen because we made s'mores in our oven. Johnny got really excited about that.

Turns out that the week of April 24-29 is in between seasons in Jackson, so the whole town was pretty empty. I think we may have been the only guests at the hotel so we basically ran the place.

We went to lots of little shops in Jackson. I had to be forceful with Johnny and forbade him to purchase this $700 ensemble:


As you can tell, he simply felt much too confident in it. But we quickly made amends.

Jackson is a funny place. It kind of reminds me of a mountain version of Branson. For instance, look at this landmark on the town square. Yes, that is an archway made of antlers. Don't question it.

We ate out a lot. We had really good Chinese food, barbecue, pizza, and Italian food. Our favorite place was called the Bunnery, which had a delicious breakfast menu. The name of the place didn't hurt it, either.


We saw several art galleries and museums, too, mostly because we're so cultured. This is us outside of the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Johnny took it upon himself to make us the same height.


We wanted to see some more of the Tetons, so we drove into the forest. Then we got real crazy and climbed our way down to this river. We know, we're super adventurous.

One more thing. Jacksonians LOVE moose. Seriously, they just can't get enough of the little guys. Remember the antler archways? I'm telling you, it's an infatuation. When in Jackson...

you know the rest.

We also saw Water for Elephants in this really old theater (super cute). Oh and we definitely watched over half a season of 24 in our suite. Thank you, Netflix.

We had the best time ever on our cozy little honeymoon! It was so nice to completely relax and have zero responsibilities. Our wedding went off without a hitch, we both had a stellar ending to the semester, and work went on without us. Usually when vacations end, I'm sad about leaving and getting back to real life. But this time, we were even excited to get back to our little apartment and start married life together!