Matt and Amanda

2010-01-06T17:47:00.000-08:00

So it's now 2010 and we have lots to look forward to this year. One thing that will be taking up lots of time is our first home we bought in November and have been trying to paint and arrange everything in the house and it has been lots of fun so far. We're going to try and update and post pictures of the projects we are working on as we do them.

The first project we tackled is the front dining room/living room area. The room was completely white, like many homes are, so we decided to add some color and Amanda chose an awesome yellow gold color for the rooms. Next, to add some character to the room, we painted the bottom half of the walls in the dining room area white.
We next added a chair rail along the border of the two colors which really added to the design.

We are pretty happy with the results considering it was our first attempt. But we are looking forward to working more on our new home. We will try to add more pictures when we can, especially of the outside.

Catching Up

2009-07-15T17:27:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since the last update so to start, here are a few pictures to bring you up to speed on what has happened.
Amanda graduated from Weber State University.
We went to Bear Lake for the 4th of July, and...
went to Las Vegas for our anniversary. It has been a great year so far and we are looking forward to many more. I'm including more pictures in the slideshow below so enjoy and look for more posts soon.

Updates

2009-04-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Lots of stuff going on lately. To start, we got a pet hamster we named Moki. He's pretty cool and really likes to run around in the ball. We've tried to get pictures of him a few times but he is always moving so the pictures come out pretty blurry but we'll keep trying.
Last weekend we went camping with family and rode four-wheelers and did a little bit of shooting with Matt's new .22 he got for his birthday. It was lots of fun except we both got a little bit sunburned. But not too bad.

In other news, we are moving to our new apartment in Layton this next week. Although our basement apartment was good for starting our marriage we 're upgrading to a better place and Hallelujah it has a dishwasher. It is an 2 floor townhome style place with 2 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths and lots of big windows and closets.
We are way excited to be moving!
Here is a pic of the kitchen.
And this is one of the bedrooms.

And the greatest news! Amanda is graduating from Weber on May 1st. Woohoo! It will be so nice to have one of us done with school finally!

Finally, an update!

2009-01-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Okay, so a few people have been hassling us for more updates so we'll try to keep things up to date. Here is the latest news, school has started again. It is Amanda's last semester and we're both way excited for her to graduate. She also started her new job teaching a class of 4 year old and the Weber State children's school. We are both taking a full load of classes and should be busy with that but the nice thing is that now that Amanda has her new job we are both home evenings and weekends and can see each other more than we did last semester.
The holidays were great! Lots of good food, fun, family and presents. Our first Christmas being married was sweet. That is a picture of the gifts under our tree. Amanda did a really good job of decorating it.

2008-10-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

We know it has been forever since our last blog so we figured it was about time to update. We have now been married over 100 days and are still loving it. One of the big reasons we haven't updated is that we're both busy with school, work, and other things. Amanda is student teaching 2 year olds this semester and loves the kids she's with. She is always telling me stories about the things they say or do in school. She decided to finish up with school and complete here Early Childhood major so she will be graduating at the end of spring semester and we're both way excited for that.
We 've also been been able to do some fun stuff with the family. This pictures is of our tent that we decorated for the Halloween themed Atkinson Family reunion. It was way fun. We just hung
out and did halloween stuff, watched football, played bingo and rode four-wheelers.

We're definitely looking forward to the holidays ahead and more good times. This Thursday we're planning to go to a haunted house and then to Pam and Travis' Halloween party on Saturday. We re going as pirates and we'll try to remember to take pictures.

37 Days and Counting!

2008-08-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

We've been married for over a month now and it has been awesome. Really busy, and fun, and exciting. We finally have our pictures from the wedding day so we've posted them here. It 's just a sampling of the day's events. It was so much fun and it was great to see so many friends and family. Things are moving along great for us. Amanda started working about a week after we got married and she's liking it but tends to get hurt a lot. Poor Amanda! Matt has been busy working and just finished his summer math class. Too bad school starts next week already. We also went camping last weekend with our new tent and some other outdoor gear. We found a really good spot up by Pineview reservoir and roasted hot dogs over the fire and enjoyed other activities that night! All in all married life has been sweet and we look forward to everything ahead.

2008-06-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

Wow! Things have been way busy the last little while and we haven't been able to update our blog much. Only 13 more days til we are married! Amanda has had a bunch of showers the last week and has had tons of fun at them. Matt's way excited for his bachelor party thing this weekend with his buddies. They're going golfing barbequing then watching the UFC fights! Then there'll be only one more week. In other goings ons, Matt had his eye surgery sooner then expected and its already all cleared up. (see picture on left)

We also rode the Skycoaster ride at Lagoon.

Way sweet!

Engagement Pictures

2008-05-13T21:47:00.001-07:00

We just got our engagement pictures from the photographer, so here is a sneak peak!

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

Happy mother's day to all the mom's out there. We just got back from an awesome mother's day party at Amanda's aunt Charlene's house. We spent most of the time cheering the Jazz on, and they totally kicked the Laker's butts it was amazing!!! Amanda got her mom a Deron Williams jersey for mother's day, while Matt bought her mom some flowers. Matt got his mom family pictures. Moms are great! Earlier this week we went and got our engagement pictures taken, which we will post on here soon. It was way fun and we both were looking pretty hot! There was a bunny that showed up and kept hopping around in our pictures and attacking Amanda and the photographer. Matt on the other hand was not afraid of the bunny. Matt thinks the bunny might be is "demon" like in the Golden Compass movie, because Matt too likes to procreate. (or he hopes he does, we will see in 62 days!!) We are also moving along with our wedding plans, not only did we get our pictures taken this week, but we also picked out our tuxedo's and looked at apartments. It was a very productive week. But unfortunately, we missed the Office on Thursday because of our pictures, and Amanda's dad sucks at running the DVR and recorded the wrong blasted program!!! So we are off now to watch it online!!!

"Peace out homies!" Mathew-John Lanakila Volden

P.S. Here are a couple pics from our last camping trip

Blogo Numero Uno

2008-04-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

To blog or not to blog, that is the question. We were once asked this question and we responded with a resounding YES!!! Seriously though, everyone else has a blog, and we felt left out!!! So alas. here we are. First things first, as of today there are only 79 more days til we're hitched. It's forever away! Right now we are trying to figure out where and when to take our engagement pictures, but we are sorta procrastinating cuz finals are upon us and taking up tons of time and we are starting our blog, also time consuming. Amanda's foot just feel asleep cuz she was sitting on it. What a nerd! Anyways, back to the blog. We are also currently searching out a place of residence in or around Ogden, preferably not near the inner city because Amanda's dad is scared due to recent gang activity seen in a recent TV episode about the Utah prison system. Apparently Ogden is not the safest place in Utah to live. Who knew? But Matt has decided to buy "some heat" ( a gun, for the less informed) to defend the homestead. But, he mostly just wants a gun so he can shoot things, the protection part is just an excuse to get one!

"End of Discussion"- Tony Almeida, CTU-Los Angeles