Newlywed Life!

Just a side note for you guys before I start this blog:

I am going to wait a little bit to post all about the wedding day details just so I can get a few more posts up fist. Plus our wedding pictures aren't even in yet. 

So...Cody and I are settling in beautifully to the newlywed life! And man, life seriously can't get any better! I thought I loved Cody then but seriously you love each other more and more every day! I am not worried at all about the first year of marriage. Everyone says it is the worst but I have to disagree so far. If the whole first year is like this than I can't imagine how awesome the rest of our life will be haha! It is so much fun waking up to each other right next to one another and making breakfast together. Each night is like a sleepover with your best friend!! We have movie nights and stay up laughing to all hours of the night! We have so much fun together! Marriage is exactly what I expected and exactly what I had envisioned with Cody!

To start off, when we first got home, Cody and I had major beach withdrawals. We severely missed the beach and were a tiny bit sad our toes weren't in the sand and we couldn't run down to Thomas' Donuts. So we had to get these matching t shirts and wear them ASAP. 

So Cody and I have started immediately reading devotionals together every morning to start our day off right! Right now is the time we are establishing us, our routines, and the new norm for us, and if we want to make these spiritually healthy habits from here on out we have to start now. For example, never going to bed with a messy house, working out together every day, and feeding our spiritual needs of going to church, Sunday school, and bible study every week!

Lets just take a moment to look at these gorgeous rings!! Cody did so amazing!! The wedding band was a surprise with the first time seeing it being at the altar. I was in awe!

I took a mini photo shoot of the rings in my bouquet on the car ride to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel!

One neat thing Cody and I do are cook most breakfasts' and dinners together! (We eat every meal together but cook only one or two meals a day (I like yogurt)) We both LOVE cooking so we have a blast together coking new creations! The collage bellow are just some of the many dishes we have created! Cody and I cook plant-based lean protein meals with minimal ingredients. We swap out unhealthy ingredients in recipes with greek yogurt or hummus depending on the recipe.

From top left to right:

-Whole grain waffle mix with vanilla greek yogurt instead of butter and 100% pure maple syrup with zero preservatives. 

-Same for the blueberry pancakes

-Buffalo tuna, quinoa, and veggies

-Zucchini boats with lean ground beef and reduced fat cheese with avocado deviled eggs (just boiled egg yolk, avocado, lemon juice, and paprika)

-Zucchini Parmesan fries baked in extra virgin olive oil and olive oil baked chicken

-Homemade pizza with 100% whole grain crust and low fat cheese (but with pepperoni ;/, good though!)

-Baked acorn squash with ground beef and skinny deviled eggs (just boiled egg yolk, plain greek yogurt, pickles, and paprika)

-Oreo quest bars

-My favorite breakfast, kicks cereal with strawberries and no sugar added almond milk

-Breakfast eggs for dinner

-Cody's sandwich creation

-Our grocery shopping

-Fresh lemon water for digestion health

-Meat, cheese, spaghetti squash casserole

-Mashed sweet potatoes with only sweet potatoes, dash of pure cinnamon, and plain greek yogurt for the 'sour cream'. Spaghetti squash for a side and olive oil chicken

-Oreo quest protein powder

One of the things we have had to do since getting back to reality is changing my name. Wow it is a process! It has finally been changed but has taken working at it every day. We make an errand list for us to accomplish and are 3/4 done! Some of those list items include hanging wall items, going to the bank every day for 3 weeks :( NOT happy with them, grocery shopping, and visiting family. With Cody and I combined, we have 16 close family members with July/June birthdays. Every day is a celebration! Why is everyone born in June and July?!? But as of now, all of my legal documents are changed to my new last name! I am now officially officially (and legally ) Kayla Nicole Raborn. And yes I still write and sign Dyar on everything and mess up constantly lol, i'll learn!!:)

Through the hustle and bustle of settling in, we still have to plan date nights every week. I feel like that is so important! A date night could be anything from seeing a movie, going to dinner, riding bikes, or having a picnic in the park! Cody is so much fun!

I still can't get over calling Cody my HUSBAND!! After 5+ years of dating it feels so weird but so so right!

One of the really neat things of having our own place is having family over. Mom and Morgan came over the other day to make Morgan's birthday cake! Morgan is 20 now and out of her teen years! I just can't believe it, I remember turning 20 like yesterday! It's so fun being with family now because they do treat you a little differently! Cody and I are like one now and our own family!! It's so cool!! I've anxiously waited 5+ years for this. 

Sister selfie! We both wore the exact same black shorts and a pineapple willies shirt. We have done this our whole life from time-to-time without even planning it! Morgan and I are a lot alike.

The end product of Morgan's birthday cake. I love how we can all still be kids! We came over to my mom's house to celebrate Morgan and played Clue, Life, Mancala, and Yahtzee! We also had a neighborhood get-together with my street just like old times! Wow had everyone grown! It was so bittersweet and was such a fun fun time! It was one of the best times I've had with my old neighborhood in a long long long time. College did that lol! ;)

So this was one of the honeymoon shirts I purchased in PCB. I love Pineapple Willies shirts! I also found my old Vans from high school so that was just perfect!!

From the day we got back, Cody has had football every day from 3:00pm-9:00pm so I have been learning how to be alone in our apartment and not go too crazy. But one of the days Cody came home early and surprised me with flowers! He is such a sweetheart! He always thinks of me first!

My look of surprise that he took of me lol!!

More adventures are to come and Cody and I's birthdays are coming up very soon! And I guess that leaves me now to have to start looking for my own job. But to be 1,000% honestly I don't want to work until December. I am so fried from school I want nothing to do with engineering right now. And I am completely content with being a wife! I have my whole life to work. Since you are probably wondering since this seems to be people's only question, lol, we are waiting at least 5 years to have kids. I want to have all the time in the world with Cody before kids. Because once they come your life changes forever and will never go back to the way it was. It is a wonderful and beautiful change but only when you are ready. And let me tell you what. I am NO WHERE near ready, maturity-wise either. I'd rather be jumping on the trampoline right now or swimming all day in a pool than worry about motherhood. Also Cody and I want to be living in a small house before we have kids. Raising a kid in an apartment sounds like a horrible idea. We want to live in an apartment as long as possible (5 years max) to save money and we also want to have money when we have our kid so we don't have to extreme penny pinch. When it is time to have a kid I want to buy all the cute stuff LOL! I already look at the baby section when I go to Target! They have absolutely adorable stuff!!

With Love,

Kayla Raborn

6-29-16