Top 5 Things I Love About Our New Apartment

5. Our wood flooring and REAL tile in the kitchen and bathroom :)

  Here's the view from the front door when you first walk in...

And here's the view from the bathroom door...

4. Our extra bedroom

There's not a lot in there, but I already love the extra space. And there's plenty of space for the air mattress for when we have a visitor...hint hint.

3. The many, many kitchen cabinets and plentiful counter space. We even have some empty cabinets; I feel like my dad!

2. The DISHWASHER!!!! Woohoo!

And, the number one thing I love about our new apartment....
1. The washer and dryer in our huge bathroom!!!!

Now, for real, come visit us :)

Carlsbad, CA

Well, I still have no pictures because Tommy and I always seem to forget about those darn things, but Tommy keeps bugging me about how I haven't been posting and, since we did have a pretty eventful weekend, I thought I should probably post...
For Tommy's grandparent's 50th anniversary, they invited the whole family down to Carlsbad, CA, for a week of fun in the sun :) So, last Saturday, Tommy and I drove with his aunt and uncle and their 3 boys down to Las Vegas on our way to California! We stayed one night there and Tommy and I did some babysitting while his aunt and uncle went to see Celine Dion. The next day, we packed up again and drove to Glendale, CA, where we met up with Tommy's parents and two youngest sisters (sadly Monica couldn't come down, so we missed her :( ). While Tommy's sisters went to Hollywood to see if they could spot Justin Beiber's house, Tommy and I walked around Glendale a little, went swimming and hot tubbing, and played in the hotel's fitness center. The next day we drove to Carlsbad to meet up with the whole Burnside clan. We stayed at the same resort that Tommy and I stayed in for our honeymoon, so it was pretty fun to be back. Over the next couple days we went to the beach (it was a five minute drive away from the hotel), went on some walks to look at the beautiful city, did a little shopping (and a lot of eating out), swimming  at the hotel pool, and Knott's Berry Farm! We love Knott's Berry Farm :) We went on all the rides (and we went on the Silver Bullet 5 times...that one is my favorite) and we got to see some of mine and Tommy's favorite shops (including a shop where you get to watch someone do some awesome glass blowing and, of course, the jam store!). We also saw a funny stunt show in the "Wild Wild West."It was a way fun trip and super exhausting (I kept falling asleep at like 9:30).
It was sad to say goodbye to California and to Tommy's family, but now we're back in Provo and, guess what? We're getting packed up and ready to move in a week and a half to our new apartment!! We're so excited!

Work, Work, Work...

I have a lot of work related news to report, it feels like, so I thought I'd do a blog post about it...
So, Tommy recently got a new job at Northstar Alarm Services. Basically, he calls/emails/and sends letters to people who are behind on their payments and tells them to PAY UP! Okay, maybe that's not exactly what he tells them, but basically. He likes it a LOT more than his job in American Fork and it's WAY closer (we use to have to fill up the car every week and a half if we were lucky, now we can go three weeks!). He has really been liking it there and they love him there!! Proud wifey moment: One of Tommy's coworkers said to me "We always have to work really hard when Tommy gets there so that he doesn't show us all up, but then when he leaves we can slack off." haha! Well, they won't have a lot of slack-off time anymore because Tommy's boss increased his hours :)
Work for me has also been pretty eventful...I got promoted to a captain in catering, I got a job writing articles for Orange Soda, Inc. (a marketing company), I got a job cleaning a condo once a week, and I just got home from a job interview at Shirley's Bakery! The Orange Soda job is probably the most exciting because it's in my field, but I can work from home and work whenever I have time! It's great! And it will look great on my resume when I look for an editing job. The cleaning job is just a nice side job that I'm doing for a friend of ours. He just bought a condo and wants to keep it nice so that he can rent it out and make money and whatever, but I like it because I get payed $13 an hour to do what I do at home for free! I'm also excited for the Shirley's job because catering has been s-l-o-w the last couple of weeks, so if I get the job at Shirley's than I'll probably quit catering. Which will be a little sad since I've worked there for two and a half years, but then also not very sad because I've worked there for two and a half years (do you get what I did there? funny, right?).
Anyway..those are our jobs!! Yay us!

Christmas Break

The last three weeks have been super eventful for the McLaughlins!! We went up to Malta for Christmas Eve and Christmas day to celebrate with my sisters and my dad. It was so exciting to shop for Tommy; I think this year was the most excited I've been to see someone open the presents I picked out for them! I also think this was the first year in a long time that I've had trouble sleeping the night before Christmas because of excitement...Tommy and I woke up at about 5:30 and played Bejeweled until Thomas woke up at 7:30. On Christmas day Tommy went snowmobiling with all of the guys and he loved it! He bragged to everyone about it all break.
When we got back to Provo, we had one day off before Tommy's family came into town. They were here for a full week which we filled with yummy food, movies, shopping, and sledding. On New Year's day we went sledding and Kati sledded into one of those long sprinklers they use on farms and got a concussion :( Poor Kati was super shocked and really worried they would never be able to repair her chipped tooth! We got to see them the next evening though and, even though we had to wheel her in a wheelchair, she was in great spirits.
We also hung out with Jenny and Ryan a lot over the break. We all went and played laser tag, made some dinners together, went hot tubing, and went shooting. Tommy was so excited all week to go shoot Ryan's guns and he absolutely loved it; he already wants to go again!

And that was our Christmas break!!