Introducing...Kaylee Larsen!!

A.K.A Kaylee the Amazing

Not exactly sure how the Amazing started, but when I was a freshman in college at Brigham Young University, I started singing a little chant in the shower - "I'm amazing, I'm amazing, I'm ama-A-a-a-zing!" My roommates, of course, could hear me and my amazing label kind of began there.

It wasn't until I moved to Hong Kong, China (see this blog) that my name of Kaylee the Amazing - KtA came to be. See, I interned with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Administration department. My dad worked for the same firm, on the same floor - just a few hallways away. We got together often and I would write notes to him on his window. After spending 5 weeks alone together in Hong Kong, I suddenly got a text to KtA from my dad. And so Kaylee the Amazing was born.

With THAT out of the way...


I graduated from Brigham Young University where I received my Bachelors of Science in Recreation Management and Youth Leadership. My professor liked to call our degree a Social Psychology as a lot of what we did dealt with theories of recreating individually and socially and the impacts that it has on our lives. My emphasis was Youth Leadership because I enjoy working with youth.

My minor is in Nonprofit Management, a passion I found while at school. It was through this that I was able to be apart of the student association that paralleled the minor and thereby meet my husband, Derrick Larsen.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Derrick!

Engagement taken by Cami Quinto

We were married April 25, 2009 in the Jordan River Temple.

Yes, this is us :)

We can be normal, too!

We honeymooned in Zion National Park (BEAUTIFUL hikes!) and moved to St. George less than a year later to start our internships to finish our college experience.

At Zion

Derrick interned with the Boy Scouts of America - Utah National Parks Council as a District Executive and I interned with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Utah. We loved our internships and they loved us. They hired us as soon as our internships were completed and we started after we made a graduation trip to visit my parents in Hong Kong.



Little did we know that I was pregnant while we were adventuring in Hong Kong and Beijing. After finding myself eating onions while preparing dinner one night, I realized our lives were about to change.



We graduated from BYU in August.

BYU v. New Mexico - our first BYU football game together

GRADUATION!

 
Here I am pregnant with my baby girl!

32 Weeks

 Before we knew it our beautiful daughter Kiralee Larsen was born.

Just a little while after Kiralee was born

December 18, 2010 changed my life forever. I became a Mother. A title that I don't think anyone can prepare for, but, gratefully we are made for motherhood by a loving Heavenly Father. He gives you the strength to be a mother.

Resting at the hospital together

13 days old

I continued to work for Big Brothers Big Sisters after Kiralee was born. Part time, from home. Things were going well, but there was some discontent. It felt like something was missing, or something wasn't right.

So, Derrick was approached about a transfer out to the Uintah Basin. Even though it was a financial pay cut (we were house sitting for Derrick grandparent's in St. George while they were on a mission and were paying minimal rent), we knew the move was right.

After a long, frustrating journey house hunting (full details here) we ended up at 549 West 200 South in Vernal, Utah. Derrick is the District Executive for 2 districts: Uintah and King's Peak

I'm a stay at home mom and I'm finally really falling in love with it. My whole life I always said that I wanted to be a Mom, and then I became a Mom and it was a lot different than I imagined. College changed me. In school I lived by schedules, due dates and set tasks. As a Mom, I make tasks up for myself, write my own schedule and never really have due dates. That was hard for me. I've had to change a lot of my thought processes and accept that I'm not super woman and that sometimes I won't get everything done.

Thankfully I have an amazing husband who is patient and loving with a wife that is trying to figure out being a wife and a mother. Derrick is my strength and encouragement through everything.

He's an awesome father, too!

I am a happy person that loves spending time with her daughter. Kiralee is the joy of our lives and I'm pretty sure she knows it. She's stinkin' smart and the most adorable thing to wear pig tails in the world.

I love to read, write, play volleyball, watch Star Trek with Derrick, play with Kiralee, and, currently, watch Gilmore Girls (Thank you, Abby!). I'm getting into gardening, crafting, and SLOWLY couponing. I love my life.

This is me: A wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, an aunt, a child of God. These describe who I am and who, someday, I will be able to become with perfection.