an east coast christmas

Did you know this past winter break was our first prolonged visit back to Lancaster in over a year?! Unacceptable. My time back at home was so so necessary. Not only because 2016 was a shitstorm that desperately needed to end, but it was also the first time my whole family was together in over two years! There truly is no place like home for the holidays.

Don't ever think it's impossible to attend a concert that starts four hours before your flight from SLC --> PHL departs. It can be done if you don't have a problem with appearing homeless and bringing your luggage into the coat check room :)

Cute front door and even cuter mommy 

Christmas morning: before

Christmas morning: after 

*please note that this was taken from my dad's digital camera :) :)*

 Drew's first time to our nation's capital featuring Ellie, monuments, Library of Congress, Capitol Hill books (not featured: Ted's Bulletin pop tarts, National Gallery of Art, sushi in Ellie's cute hometown of Bethesda).

I'm getting emotional looking through these D.C. pictures because I'm thinking about the fact that the world is ending and every day since Friday has gotten worse and look guys it hasn't even been a week yet :') :') :')

YOU GUYS I FINALLY MADE IT TO TERRAIN. I have been not so subtly hinting to Vanessa and Caroline to take me here for at least a year now. It was just as dreamy and Instagram-worthy as I imagined.

I'm at this point in my life where people from my hometown have forgotten about me so I don't really talk to anyone from high school anymore. These two babies (see above and below) are the exception to the rule and some of the only souls outside of my family I make a priority to see every time I'm in Lancaster <3

But like when will you visit me in Utah???

 Me and my twin doing what we do best ((forcing our husbands to take photos of us in the woods to win free leggings because they are tired of funding our love for Outdoor Voices. We didn't win the leggings.))

winter break: so cal

Guys. Last week I started my last semester of my undergraduate studies...EVER! I cannot believe I am graduating from this wonderful university in April. So many uncertainties ahead! But a lot of exciting things to look forward to as well. Nervous, but excited for sure.

Rewind to winter break, when I celebrated the holidays without my parents for the first time in my life. Most of the time, being married feels no different than dating, but then the holidays came around and I remembered I wouldn't be going home to Lancaster at all and got a little depressed. My house is the best place to be for Christmas. Seriously. My mom always puts up the cutest decorations, I get to visit my Lancaster friends, home ward, and my mother's cooking is second to none. I was definitely homesick for a good chunk of my break. However, trading the bitter cold of Provo for sunny southern California definitely helped.

After recuperating from finals week, we had a lazy weekend in Provo before flying to Yorba Linda for six days of movies, eating, and my favorite event...Disneyland! We decided to go on Christmas Eve and no one else wanted to go with us because everyone thought it would be too busy and figured it would be better to go after Christmas. However, Drew and I left a few days before everyone else (the Monday after Christmas), so Christmas Eve was our only option, because Christmas day would've been a nightmare, and so would the weekend. So, we just ventured by ourselves. SO GLAD WE DID, because it was the least crowded I have ever seen the park! Honestly. The longest wait was probably 45 minutes and since we finished all the attractions at Disney by about 2 PM, we decided to upgrade to a park hopper and head on over to California Adventure for the rest of the day, which was even LESS packed. It was my first time ever going to California Adventure too! Best decision of our whole trip. 

I had to include that ridiculous picture of me on the right to mourn my long hair. Last week I got my annual haircut and I always have a hard time with short hair for the first few weeks, but then I get over it. In other words, I am slowly but surely starting to hate how short my hair is less and less.

The Haunted Mansion decked out with Nightmare Before Christmas decorations was my favorite holiday change to the park.

California Adventure did not disappoint! I'm a big roller coaster person, so naturally we had to ride California Screamin' three times.

Christmas day was equally as wonderful, the highlight was definitely talking to Nic! That kid is such a riot and I miss him lots. He is doing great and although he wanted to talk about Yeezy boots and rap music, he is also improving a lot in his Mandarin and I can tell how much he loves serving the people in Melbourne. He even developed a little bit of an Aussie accent and uses the lingo which was so weird/funny to hear. Less than a year left until he's home folks!!

Elder Padilla probably talking about Kendrick Lamar

Getting married meant gaining this cutie as a nephew and I love it. Look at him in the onesie I got him for Christmas!! I cannot. He is in a huge Toy Story phase right now and he watched Toy Story 3 at least five times that week. Here he is hanging out with his friends aka Toy Story toys in a box.

The rest of our trip involved watching tons of movies, reading up on fan theories after watching Star Wars (please discuss with me because I'm not over it), visiting some friends, and hanging out with Harvey a lot. We flew back to Provo for a hot second (just long enough for me to remember how much I hate the cold and snow) before road-tripping to San Francisco for our friend's wedding! Pictures and stories from our Nor Cal weekend coming soon <3

i could dance to this beat

Hiiiii remember me and how I said I had a bajillion things to blog about from the month of August? Here's the last of it, I promise. After our perfect wedding weekend and our equally perfect honeymoon in Kaua'i, we flew to California for honeymoon week pt. 2 if you will, before starting real life in Provo. It started off with a few days of recuperating, followed by a day in San Diego, a day in L.A., and concluded with our open house. I just got all the pictures back from our open house, so I figured this was as good a time as any to talk about all of it.

After fighting off the jet-lag for two days, we decided it was time to leave the house. The San Diego Temple was high up there on my list of temples I want to visit, so our first day consisted of just that. We went for an endowment session in the early afternoon and it was completely empty. Considering it was an August day in California, we were pretty surprised. Shouldn't there be weddings going on left and right? Well, lucky for us we got the whole place to ourselves which was a really cool experience, plus we got a private tour of the sealing rooms. That temple is, in my opinion, the second prettiest temple of our church. Nothing beats D.C. though. Obviously ;) The architect is actually Catholic, which makes total sense because it is the most castle/cathedral-like of all our temples today. Similar to the D.C. Temple, it just pops up out of nowhere as you're driving on the freeway and is the most stunning and regal site.

 The next day was spent in L.A. as I anxiously awaited the main event of the week...Taylor Swift's 1989 tour at the Staples Center!!! (Hence this blog post title being T-swift lyrics. But which one?! 10 points to Gryffindor if you can finish them). It is a very long and convoluted story as to how I miraculously got my hands on a ticket the day before the concert, so HMU if you want to hear about it. In the meantime, we stopped by to play at the The Getty Center. This place is an architectural marvel. I was honestly more captivated by the buildings themselves than the actual artwork inside. And I'm a museum lover, so that is saying something! After walking around for a few hours, we hit up a chic little Thai-Japanese fusion restaurant in Santa Monica and then I said goodbye to Drew as he dropped me off at the Staples Center to party with Tay all by myself. Thanks Dad!! Seriously though, Drew earned so many dad points that night. Luckily he spent the majority of the concert hanging out with some old friends who live in L.A., but having to navigate back to pick me up amidst the insane post-concert traffic must have been brutal. It brought me back to the days of my own daddy dropping us (me, Ynna, and whichever friends came with us) off at Jonas Brothers concerts and having to kill three hours before picking us up again. So sorry guys. Good thing I married someone so patient and kind who knew how much attending this concert meant to me :)

But about the concert...it was such a party and I loved every second of it. Here's the thing, I have a weird relationship with Taylor where I actually think she'd be extremely annoying in person. Her girl next door, adorkable, gift-giving, cat-loving persona seems a little more forced each day, but I still love her and her music and her glam squad of friends. Say what you will about her, but she's a genius in the industry. Not to mention the fact that she puts on a great show. I've never witnessed so many pyrotechnics, moving stages, back-up dancers, or costume changes in one concert. It didn't even matter that I was dancing and singing by myself, THAT'S how much fun I had. I did however wish I had my mom or Ynna sitting next to me (the biggest T-swift fans I know), but I'm glad that by the end of the 1989 tour, we can all say we were in attendance at one of her shows in our respective cities.

The real reason we were in California was to get everything ready for our open house which took place in the Tekulve's backyard. Besides our families, we had so many people come to help during the day to set up and it was all thanks to them that it turned out so beautifully. It was such a pleasant evening meeting so many of Drew's friends from his home ward or high school that I had heard so much about before. It was so awesome to see everyone that wasn't able to attend the wedding come by to offer their love and support for us! *Bonus*: it gave me another excuse to wear my wedding dress <3

All open house pictures by Kylie Chevalier

Welp, that concludes my stories about August and all the craziness and happiness that it was. Definitely the best summer of my life thus far. Thanks for reading and hopefully I'll have some fabulous upcoming posts all about ~*newlywed wife*~ so stay tuned if you're into that kind of thing.

home is wherever i'm with you

LANCASTER LOVIN'. Last week I flew home for Nic's graduation from high school, and I chose the BEST week to come home. Seriously. So many other happy things happened and I was so lucky to be home for all of it! East coast beast coast indeed.

My lil bro Nic received his mission call the same day I flew in! How lucky is that?!? The first text I received when I landed was a picture of his envelope. Once my family picked me up from the airport, we drove straight to Ocean City, NJ, where we stayed at this adorable little bed & breakfast on the beach for the remainder of the weekend. As soon as we settled in, we FaceTimed Ynna and Preston for the big reveal. Nic deferred his acceptance from BYU-I and has been called to serve an LDS mission in Melbourne, Australia, speaking Mandarin Chinese! He will serve there for two years and leaves for the Provo Missionary Training Center on Oct. 1st. So ladiezzz, hit up this righteous hottie because you won't be seeing that face for 24 long months. I will miss him so much but I cannot wait to hear all about his adventures and the Aussies he meets. I know he will be amazing in the field and learn so much. My baby's all grown up and saving China (or at least the Chinese people of Australia).

Sweet sweet frands <3 I love being in Provo for the summer, but I definitely miss hanging out with some of my best friends whenever I want. Sadly didn't get pics with them all, but I had such a wonderful time catching up with them at grad parties, Starbucks, bonfires, and some of my favorite Lancaster spots like Central Market and the new and impossibly cute Rachel's Creperie. I even tried out Skinny Park Juice, which Vanessa raved about in a past blog post of hers. Above are my cute friends Trevor and Alexa in Alexa's mystical garden for a bonfire on my last night home.

On one of the days I was home, I went to Philly with Chris. I looked up GQ's City Guide to Philadelphia (I remember Ynna referenced this list when we visited Philly over Christmas break) for some new places to hit up. Our first stop was the Mutter Museum. The description of this place was 'the grossest museum in America' so I was instantly intrigued. If you weren't aware, I love all things dealing with anatomy and the human body. I'm eventually going to take a cadaver dissecting class offered here at BYU. I have prints of organs framed in my room. If I could get my hands on a skeleton, I would want one in my future home. You get the picture. The museum is part of Philadelphia's College of Physicians and is full of medical oddities. We're talking Siamese twin specimens in jars, an entire wall of human skulls, and a colon that once held 40 lbs. of feces. It was a medical student's/horror movie junkie's dream. Sadly, you weren't allowed to take pictures in the musem, so here's a candid shot of Chris in the pretty garden outside of the museum. We then walked around old city to explore some of the shops and boutiques. I took Chris to Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which is one of the chic stores I visited a few months ago. It had those hanging lightbulb bottles on the right, a Warby Parker station, sign language alphabet wallpaper, and Hillside ties. Favorite find of the day? Meandering inside this junky little thrift shop next to A.K.A. Music that was cluttered with floor-to-ceiling piles of books, creepy old dolls, and baskets upon baskets of records. I searched through the records (since we have a now working record player in our apartment!) and scored two: Touch Me by The Temptations, and Big Bands: Greatest Jazz Hits. They were gifts for Desireé and Drew respectively. I asked the lady working there (who looked about 104 years old) for the price; $3 !! I only had a $20 on me, and she said she didn't have change for that. I figured I could maybe muster a dollar or two in change. JK I only had 56 cents. SOLD. What a steal.

The last of the Padilla's graduated from Lampeter-Strasburg on Friday! Pioneers 4EVA. Nic was definitely the flyest graduate there in his cute chambray bowtie. I die every time I look at the picture on the right, which I snagged after commencement as the seniors exited the auditorium. #swaggie. After the ceremony and spending half an hour taking pictures of Nic and all his friends, we celebrated with dinner at Aussie and the Fox, a classy and fairly new restaurant in Lancaster City that I also made sure I visited before I left. I loved how this place was decorated and the color scheme of oranges and purples. The price was surprisingly not as fancy as this place looks. Ironically enough, this place serves Australian and American cuisine. Just tryna culture the kid before he heads to the land down under for two years.

I spent my last day at home attending church back in the home ward and celebrating Father's Day with my dear daddy. Also, Nic was ordained into the office of Elder this day and I am lucky to have witnessed such a special moment for him. I'm so happy I was able to be home for Father's Day, since I am usually away from my family for most holidays throughout the year. My time at home was a little too short for my liking, but very sweet like always. I picked a prime week to visit with my loved ones in my cute hometown. Hopefully I will be back real soon!