Ode to Zach

For all of my devoted followers, I'm so sorry for not updating in a while. But I'm back!

Here's what's up.

The semester has gone really really well! Especially for my straight "A" husband. Seriously, he's the guy in your class who always sits in the same spot in the first or second row, he's he one who can decipher whatever the professor is saying a translate it for everyone else, and he's the one who ruins the curve for the whole class :) I never really thought I would marry a guy like that, but I am so grateful that I have. He works so hard, and takes school so seriously. I'm starting to learn what being a real student actually means. I thank goodness he's a whiz at math because I would have failed my algebra class without him. Not only is he so dedicated to school but he's also an MTC teacher, which takes a lot of thought and prayer and time. AND he is in the bishopric, AND he's so hott! I'm just gonna say it, I married Mr. Universe.

Love you Zach.

Here are some of his projects from this semester.

He made the sunglasses, the head is an actual scan of some kids head from a few years ago.

Pretty cool huh?

I'm just amazed at the kind of things that he is learning in his engineering classes.

I'm so excited to live the rest of my existence with the boy.

It's About that Time

Well it's about that time. Time for another school year. And in preparation for this year, Zach and I decided to hike Y Mountain! Nothing like a hike to get you pumped for a school year. What is it about being on a mountain?

This is the tippy top of the Y

One year ago I hiked this same trail with some of my girl friends who lived in Provo. And I was just thinking about the past year, and how different my year would have been if I knew what I knew now. But that would have been no fun. Who wants to be told when they're going to marry the man of their dreams? That would just be awkward.

This summer has been the best summer of my life. But we're excited for school to start. I have pretty easy classes because I'm doing a lot of general classes but Zach has some intense classes. We'll see how it goes! I'm sure we'll survive.

I can't wait to spend forever with this boy!

Happy school year everyone!

It's Dinner Time!

This week Zach and I had a lot of fun working for Education Week as Building Supervisors (not that exciting), seeing my mom and her friends (way exciting), seeing Carly at Temple Square (too exciting), and spending the weekend with Zach's Mama and Papa (the best).

It was a fun week and we sealed it off with a fun Sunday dinner with Zach's parents and one of his best friends Seth Rogers and Seth's new wife Janae. And for all you people who didn't believe that I could cook! Just look at those empty plates! I'm just saying that my food was edible and all who ate are still living. Thanks Mom for the recipe.

Brit's Wedding!

A couple of weeks ago Zach and I along with Rachel Kiene and her roomie Angela drove down to AZ for Brittany Stapley's long awaited wedding!! ( if you can call 2 months "long awaited" haha). It was a beautiful drive and we were so so excited to stay with the Brough fam and have a good time for a couple of days.

Here are few pics. I have been lame lame lame at taking pictures so I only have a few good ones but you can refer to Lisa Rowley's facebook for better ones.

Exhibit A: Bachelorette Partay

Outside the Mesa Temple. If someone as cute as us said hi to me as I

walked by I would feel just so great. (inside joke, sorry Emily Nicol it'll never die)

If you look hard you can see part of my face just to the right of the bride:)

Some other stuff we've been up to...

Finals are done. Woo hoo!!
We are obsessed with Gilmore Girls. Yes WE.
We're working for Education week Monday through Friday so if you're around, look for us! I'll be in the Joseph Smith Building and Benson Building and Zach will be in the MARB (whatever that stands for).
Fall semester starts on the 30th.... excited? yes. Loving the break? You know it!

That's all for now.
Have a great weekend!

Four minutes getsome

I was checking out some of my old music videos that I've made over the years and came across these beauties. Good times. I'd put our wedding music video up but it won't work... I'll keep working at it. Enjoy!!

Mesa girls when you're gone

Mexico 08

Rocking at MIT

World's Largest Water Balloon Fight BYU 2010

Zach and I got to be a part of The World's Biggest Water Balloon Fight this weekend at BYU. Not only did we ge to break a world record, but we got free T-shirts and free lunch! Can it get better then that?? I think not. Here's a look at what it was like:) And we were right in the middle of this chaos!!!

It's been a while

So it's been quite a while since I've posted so here's a mini catch up.

Went through the temple!

Got married to this stud muffin!!!!

Honeymooned in Costa Rica for a week.

Did a zip line tour through the forest while we were there:)

Flew back to AZ and opened all the many gifts from our crazy cool friends and family!!!!!

Then we packed up all our stuff and moved to Provo to go to school. And we love it here!!!

I don't think we could be happier. Our apartment is perfect and school is going great. I'm doing a few summer classes while Zach is on the search for jobs. Our ward is fabulous! I just got called as Compassionate service leader and Zach was called as 1st councilor in the bishopric:) So you can imagine it hasn't been hard to get to know the people in our ward. Zach already has a good enough memory, after two months here he pretty much knows the whole ward by now.

Being a newly married couple we love just hangin out together, but now and then we reach out and play games and stuff with other couples. Zach likes to say that we're "dating" other couples. haha. You call them up, have dinner and play games. If we have fun we make a note of it but you can't call them more then once a week or else they'll think you're weird and desperate. But it's ok to add them on facebook. And once they've excepted we stalk their wedding pictures:)

haha We've made lots of friends already and are anxious to make more!

That's about it for this post.

goal of the week... make it home for Brittany Stapley's wedding on Saturday!!!

Too hot to sleep

So it's only 75 degrees outside but it's waaaaaayy to humid for this Arizona girl. Our apartment is a boiler room and I can't sleep in these conditions. Really good for finals week... Anyway Zach has been bugging me about blogging so I thought I'd update the world on my life. Which is actually pretty exciting right now.

Let's rewind about three weeks.

April 13th

I haven't slept in two nights because I'm freaking out over my surprise birthday present for Zach. ME! My plan was to fly home tuesday night so that I could be at his house when he got home from work to surprise hime. I even set up a fake temple trip with my ward so that I could say I couldn't use my phone. But of course no matter how good everyone was at keeping my secret Zach just knows me too well. Don't get me wrong he was really surprised and soooo happy to see me, but this was just the perfect opportunity for me to come out and he knew I wouldn't miss it:) He was right. Love you babe!!!

It really was good timing though. His birthday was April 14 which fell smack dab in the middle of spring break and summer break. And it was convenient becuase Mom and I could get a lot of wedding planning done.

I'm mad at myself for not taking enough pictures but I did get these ones.

Seriously. The best part of being home was getting to register with Zach. We had sooooo much fun walking around BB & B and Target looking at stuff that would hopefully fill our new apartment together. Zach thought that it was funny for me to register for a tomato holder shaped like a tomato... I don't know why... It was really cute! haha

Zach I love you and I'm so glad that you were born on April 14, 1988. So that on June 3, 2010 we could get sealed together for eternity. According to Boston time it's already May 3rd. One month!!! sigh... I can't wait.

So I had to leave my lovely home on the following monday to finish up school out here in Boston Town. But luckily three of my best friends came out to keep me company for 4 1/2 days! I would put all of our pictures on but since we took over 500 that could take a while... So here are a few of my favs.

we went on an amazing sunset Boston Harbor Cruise.

And this is what you get when you ask Rachel to pose on a boat. Yes she is in the air.


Love you girls!!! Thank you so much for coming to my town. I had too much fun and it really did help me focus on my finals better... haha. love love love you!

And now I have one more week. Just one week left in this beautiful city. But then I'll be home with my beautiful fiance:) It should be a fun week because my family is flying in on Tuesday to help me move out. Oh yeah and I have finals. But I don't like to dwell on that. If anything interesting happens I'll think about blogging about it.

Until then, have yourself a great week!

Boston in the Spring

On Wednesday me and two of my roommates decided to take advantage of the amazing 80 degree weather and went on a picnic! We had PB&J, fruit, cookies, juice, and LOTS of sun. It was amazing. I love Boston in the Spring!!

And Last night we added to the fun by renting The Princess and the Frog and going along with that theme we thought it was appropriate to turn ourselves into frogs by treating ourselves with a cleansing face mask. These girls rock! I love em.

We had entirely too much fun.

ALSO!!! Zach sent me a package:)

How much do we love this boy?

We've got a new CD

an ASU T-shirt

Gilmore Girls

A letter from Landon, Zach's brother on a mission in Australia. It was sooo sweet.

A letter from Zach, which isn't in the picture because it's in a special spot.

And yes that is a baby snickers bar. It's representing the whole family of chocolate that it came with and who are now in my stomach. Ok I didn't eat the WHOLE bag. I have to fit into my wedding dress in 2 months.

Again, how much do we love this boy?

Thank Goodness for Best Friends

Ok so I promised to put up some posts about my wedding plans. So thanks to my best friend, Laura Bayles, who talked me through this last night, and for her wonderfully talented mother who is making my cake, I have a pretty good idea of what I want my wedding cake to look like.

ok

Picture this shape.

With these messy ribbons wraping around the bottom 2 tiers.

And with these cute little flowers sprinkled all over it.

That's kind of what I'm thinking. But we'll see...

It's funny trying to plan a wedding. I keep looking at website after website of cakes and dresses and colors and flowers... oh man all the flowers!! A girl could go crazy looking at her computer screen so much. But after I find the right flowers and the right cake and after I get my dream wedding dress (which I already have:), all I really want is Zach.

That's all I want.

I want to be Mrs. Tara Brough.

Tara Elizabeth Brough

-someone "Hello, what's your name?" -me "Well hello my name is Tara Brough, and I'd like to say I'm married to the boy of my dreams, but I can't because he's so amazing and wonderful and gorgeous that my dream boys hadn't quite reached his level by the time he came into my life. But I love him and I wish he was here instead of you."

I want to be with him all day, everyday, me and him, forever.

sigh... long distance relationships...

Visiting the Sister

So this is a little over due. But better late then never.

While I was home for spring break Zach and I got to drive up to Utah for a few days. Yes, it's a ten hour drive, and yes we were only there for about a day and a half, but Carly had to be on a mission when I decided to get married of course, and I really needed to see her! So that was the main reason for the trip. To see Car Car. But I also had the chance to surprise all my girls up there at BYU and to have a fun road trip with my Zach! So it was a win win situation. And we had so much fun.

Kind of a nasty shot of my burrito but I was just sooo excited that we got taco bell that I had to document it.

So the first thing I thought of once Zach and I started talking seriously about getting married was Carly. She still has a year left on her mission and I just can't wait that long. Well, maybe I could, but I really don't want to. So while nothing will ever make her not being here okay, we both have learned to except it.

We've come to terms with the fact that that's just part of serving a mission. The sacrifice of missing out on the lives of family and friends for a little while. And we figured that even if I wasn't getting married, I would have ended up on a mission and missed out on Carly's wedding! Because we all know she's going to be taken 3 months after she gets back.

So we had so much fun surprising her and listening to her talk about the miracle's she's witnessed and the sisters she's growing with and her favorite places on the square. And since we caught her on her P-day we even got to get some lunch with her. I couldn't have asked for a better visit. She is doing so so good. If you want to get a good idea of what Carly's like as a missionary, just picture her on temple square as a missionary and then add million pounds of pure awesomeness! and you've got Sister Porter. She's my inspiration. I love her. And I am so grateful to be able to call her my sister. The whole time we were on the square everyone kept calling her sister for some reason... Didn't they know that I was her REAL sister? They can only wish to be so lucky.

I love you Carly! Can't wait to see you again! And I'm so proud of you. And thank you Zach for putting up with my craziness as I ran around Temple Square trying to find her.

He tried to hold my hand for the first bit but he was walking too slow so I ditched him and zoomed around the visitors center till we found someone to help us in the search. Love that boy.

Hope you are all having a wonderful week! I'll try and blog again soon. I think an update on wedding plans is due.

He Melts my Heart

Oh my gosh Amanda just put some of our pictures from our engagements up on her website (Pie in the Sky Photography!!!) . I started crying when I saw this one. I miss you so much Zach!

Spring Break

I'd like to submit that I have possibly had the best spring break that any 20-year-old mormon college girl has ever had. Lets just get to the point.

I'm engaged!!!!

Yup it's true. After getting home Saturday night Zach and I were sitting like we always do on the swing in our back yard, when he went inside to "go to the bathroom". When he came back out and sat down he pulled out this wooden box thing that looked like a salt shaker and said it was a late Valentines Day present.

The box is called a tika pot. It's from India (he knows I loooove India) and it's used to hold the paint that the women put on their foreheads to symbolize that they are married. So the box was supposed to hold something symbolizing marriage.... Once he said that, I couldn't really think about anything but opening the box.

I opened it.

Was blinded by the most beautiful ring of my life.

He got down on one knee, and asked the magic question. And I said YES!

I love him soooooo much!! And he did so good at surprising me and setting it all up and picking out the ring with out me being with him. He knows exactly how to make me smile and I have never smiled so much in my life.

We had a wonderful week and I will be posting about that a little later this week.

Our date is Thursday, June 3rd. I cannot wait!!!