2017 goals

Another one that has been sitting in my drafts for months! I absolutely love setting goals, and a new year always feels like the right time to sit down and assess how the last year went and where we want the next year to go.

This year I had 5 categories of goals that I documented for my own personal growth as well as some business goals.

Personal: 

Quality time- 
1. Stop watching tv every night after work, find new activities to do during the week together
2. Only work Monday and Wednesday nights and don't let it seep into every other night of the week
3. Invite people over for dinner!

Health- 
1. Start getting ready for be around 9:45 every night so I can get to sleep earlier
2. Formally exercise 3 times a week

Spiritual-
1. Read my scriptures every night
2. Attend the temple at least once a month

Financial- 
1. Get the full match on Travis' 401k add 5% to my 401K
2. Save at least 1/4 of our post tax income

Emotional- 
1. Read 52 books this year or one book a week
2. Take more pictures
3. Take one trip a month (even if its something small like a weekend getaway to St. George)

Monthly trip ideas:
January- Jackson Hole
February- St. George & California
March- Iceland
April- London
May- ?
June- San Fransisco
July- Caribbean or Thailand
August- California?
September- Washington DC?
October- ?
November- ?
December- ?

Business goals:

1. Grow instagram to 10,000+ followers this year
2. Be able to pay our mortgage with my profits each month
3. Find new ways to express my creativity through my business (photoshoots, marketing, etc)

Telling people about my goals and having them in a place where I can regularly be reminded of them is the best way I have found to stay accountable! I have them printed on my nightstand so I can see them daily! What are your 2017 goals?

Europe tour wrap up, where I want to go next

It was so fun reminiscing about my Europe trip, I needed to get those memories and pictures down before I forgot everything. I love traveling so much, and I can't wait for all of the trips in the future. Coming up next in April: Europe tour round two!!!

All Europe posts linked below:

London, England
Cheltenham, England
Brussles, Belgium
Berlin, Germany
Munich, Germany
Lucerne/Zug Switzerland
Paris, France Part 1
Paris, France Part 2
Milan, Italy
Venice, Italy
Verona, Italy 
Rome, Italy
Athens, Greece

I also have a wish list of places I want to visit next:
Spain (Included on this years Europe trip)
Costa Rica 
The UK: England, Ireland, Scotland.
South America: Paraguay, Peru, Brazil
Santorini, Greece
Australia/New Zealand
China
Thailand
Egypt
Kawaii, Hawaii
Outerbanks, NC
San Fransisco
Waco, Texas
Orlando, Florida (Disney and Harry Potter World)

And a million other places I can't think of right now. Whats on your bucket list?

A little weekend getaway to fake Switzerland

Oh the Zermatt. We got gifted a little getaway with couples massages so that was awesome. The resort was ADORABLE.

See what I mean?? They even played festive music outside everywhere you walked! 

The resort was also equipped with a delicious steakhouse and the best bakery! We had steak for dinner and amazing pastries for breakfast, without having to leave the resort. 

Two croissants: 1 topped with strawberries, blue berries, black berries and raspberries; 1 filled with delicious ham and cheese. Perfect. We were stuffed after. 

How cute is this sign? Only about 5,000 miles from the real town of Zermatt. 

Our drive to the resort also happened to be breathtaking. As much as I hate the snow, it is beautiful, I'll give it that. It was a weekend of pure relaxation. 

Thankful

A loving, hilarious, husband.
A wonderful supportive family.
A merciful God and Savior.
The best friends.
Stable fulfilling jobs.
All of lives necessities and so much more.

Some of the major things I am thankful for. I have SO much. I often worry about how ridiculously spoiled I am at this time in my life. Will it change, yes, that is inevitable, I am sure I will have hard times in the future, but right now my little bubble of happiness is bright and I am not going to dwell on how that could change, right now.

I am so very very blessed. And I want to remember that year round not just today.

Hope you all have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Philippines video tour

My awesome friends Martha and Brandon made this video of our trip the Philippines. I am now getting some serious wanderlust. I'll be posting a shorter video soon. This one isn't for the feint hearted!

My New Hobby

This weekend in between lots of hanging out with family, my talented little sis gave me a short tutorial on making/editing videos!

I made a sweet little video of our trip to Seattle last september. This one is a little rough, because we didn't have much video to start with ( I added a lot of photos to supplement). I can't wait to make my next one!

Seattle Trip 2014 from Jessica Church on Vimeo.

California Dreamin

My amazing little sis made this video of our family vacation in California. Makes me want to go back so bad, 4 days in paradise with the people i love the most was not enough!

Trippin with the whole family!

This was the first family trip as an entire family in over two years! And in that time we added another member to our family, Travis! It was so fun to spend time together.

Travis and I flew into long beach while the rest of my family drove down (we couldn't take an extra two days off of work to drive with them). We took a taxi to the beach house and started off the adventure walking to the pier and eating at Ruby's diner. My parents rented this incredible beach house in Huntington beach. We were a 3-5 minute walk from the beach. My fam got in a little later and real trip began.

Our days were spent eating delicious meals, lounging at the beach, taking family pics (coming soon) enjoying our cousins beautiful wedding, going full speed one day at Disney, and riding bikes.

All in all it was a fabulous trip to bond. I love that our family is all together again and can't wait for our family to grow with new spouses and babies some day. Adding to the family just adds to the fun!!!

To be continued....

Parade of homes first timers

The Storybook House:

Alemexo: Birthday Dinner

The 7 million dollar house:

This weekend was so fun!!! We did parade of homes for the first time and really had a blast. The best part is we were sitting on the couch on Friday night trying to figure out what we wanted to do for the night and travis suggested parade of homes. I was shocked that would be something he wanted to do. But there was clearly enthusiasm. So we found a promo code and bought our slightly discounted tickets. 

I was mostly excited to see the house up the street from us (the big blue one pictured above). I was super curious about the inside. It blew me away!!! so beautiful. So many deatilas that were so lovely. From the textured walls to the storybook theme throughout the house. I was sold. We walked around our neighborhood to two other houses in the parade, which were subpar after seeing the first house! 

Saturday night we ventured out to Alemexo in salt Lake, a mexican restaurant I had heard a lot about. for my birthday! Its a bit pricey, but the food was incredible, so worth it at least once! The Quacamole still has me dreaming. Then we headed to the most expensive home in the Parade of homes. 6.5 million dollars of wow. Definitely not my style of house, ultra modern. But it was impressive. It had incredibly expensive fixture choices, an infinity pool, a baby grand player, crazy amazing views of the salt lake valley, and waterfall running through it. 

The best thing about parade of homes is that it lasts for 2 weeks and you get access to every home for that time. So its an especially good deal if you live close to the houses. We plan on going to a couple more houses in the next two weeks when we feel like it! 

The rest of the weekend was birthday celebrations with family :) I am a little sad about my birthday. I used to plan it months in advance knowing exactly what I wanted. This year my mom texted me a couple days before and I was like hmmm don't know what I want, maybe lets just go shopping? Also it used to be a full week of celebration, now its just a weekend. I guess I am growing up. haha More on my birthday later. 

Island Park Family Reunion

 (Travis thought this guy pulling two canoes was hilarious)

Every year since forever Travis' mom's side of the family have done a big extended family reunion. This year it was in Island Park Idaho, which is right outside West Yellowstone. We could only go for two days, but we packed in the fun! We participated in the annual scramble golf tournament, where travis and I magically got on the same team, I legitimately didn't even try to do that, it was fate. Our team struggled with our putting game, so we didn't come away with the win. 

We went on a hike, went boating twice, played a new game we are obsessed with (and might have bought off amazon immediately (Coup), I got a lot of reading done, and we just caught up with family. For me it was a lot of getting to know people in general since this is only my second reunion. 

We didn't take very many pictures, but here are some of our hike and the lake we spent a lot of time on. It was a blast!