Our First Christmas Morning

Me and Danny had a great first Christmas as a married couple. We spent the morning together opening our presents at our apartment before heading up to Danny's parents for breakfast and then later going up to Logan for my dad's side of the family's annual Christmas lunch. Here are some pictures of both of us opening our biggest presents from each other. We were so excited to give each other these presents and neither of us had any idea what the other one had gotten us... Largely due to how each of us decided to wrap them... Hehehe Alright so this is my present to danny. If you look at the bottom right side of this picture you will see there is a brown box. Well the present he is starting to open now was inside that box with all those old books to make it seem heavier... well that box was wrapped 4 or 5 times with a mix of wrapping paper and newspaper...
Here he is unwrapping another layer of wrapping paper only to find more newspaper...

Yet more newspaper.... Danny was trying to get me to tell him what this present was since November when I got it... he doesn't like surprises... so I knew how anxious he was to open it, I couldn't make it that easy for him... (and no worries, I most certainly haven't put pictures of him opening EVERY layer, just enough to give you an idea...

Yet another layer....

And finally he is into the second box, and what do we have here? Halloween M&Ms and more girly paperback books.... But wait is there something else??

Indeed, an even smaller box...

...with even more layers to unwrap

Oh and finally he finds he end to the wrapping and it is the Fossil watch he has been wanting ever since he saw it on our cruise... I think he was pretty excited what do you think?

Unfortunately for me, Danny had a similar idea when he wrapped my present...

Trying to unwrap the present that was in a big awkward box...

Finally got all the wrapping paper off and what do you think I found inside?

Waterbottles, old baseball mitts, and this little package of toilet paper and tape....

Well it ended up being a new Ipod Nano, which I totally love!

So ya, that was us opening our presents... Haha.

Our Apartment- Part 1

Well after taking a very long break from my blog, I am finally back!! And I am married now to the love of my life, Danny. Married life is a blast, and I think one of the funnest parts is having our own place and decorating it. So I thought that I would put up some pics of our new place while we have all the Christmas stuff up. So here are some pictures of our living room and some of the dining room. When you walk into the apartment that chair is directly in front of you. So this is the left side of the living room. That door in the left of the picture goes into the laundry room/wet room and then that is the kitchen in the back. Our DVD rack spins so it has 2 sides and it is completely full now that Danny and I have combined our collections, and after we went haywire on Black Friday and bought over 20 more. Luckily we have extra storage in our tv stand and we already have half of that full though. Haha. We love movies... Danny's parents gave us this beautiful statue!

This is on the other side of the room, our couch!

So this is a cute frame that we bought with some of the gift cards from our wedding. We have pictures of all our nieces and nephews in it. (Thanks to all of your blogs for all the pictures in it... hahaha)

Here is our Christmas tree! We did it red, black, and silver.

All lit up!!

The other side of the living room

This is our new temple picture that we just love. We actually bought it from our photographer from our wedding. Some day when we have more money I would really like to get it into a thicker frame, because I think it would look so much cooler. But for now it still looks great.

So that clock is actually a dark red, but you can't really tell from the picture. Our tv stand is filled with all of Danny's nintendos... a Wii, an XBOX, and a Playstation 2. Haha. And then our blu ray player that we splurged on on Black Friday. But we love it!

Here is the dining room which is just around the wall that the tv stand is on. We have a tall pub
table and I love the way it looks. It is just the right size for our apartment. That door leads out to our balcony.

These are the cutest placemats that we got at Target!

So there you have it. Thanks to my wonderful husband for hanging everything on the walls! I will put up pictures of the other rooms some other time but we still haven't gotten everything hung up in our bedroom so I want to wait til we do that to post pictures of it.

One Year Later...

Well today is the year mark from the day me and Britt got in our car accident last year. I can’t believe that it was a year ago already. I still remember it like it was yesterday. In fact I probably remember it better than I remember yesterday. Isn’t it funny how traumatic things become so engraven in our minds. But really I am grateful for the experience because I learned a lot from it. I learned to never take advantage of anything in your life. If you care about someone you need to let them know it as much as possible. You never want to let opportunities pass you by to tell someone you care or to live your life to the fullest. I will never forget how that night before I left for that concert I gave my mom a hug and told her I loved her… We never really did that very often before that night so it was kinda weird. But I felt the urge to do it for some reason. And I can’t help but think about how that could have been the last thing I ever said to my mom and with that thought it makes me really grateful that that is what I said and did. Ever since my accident I have noticed that me and my mom tell each other that we love each other at the end of every conversation we have. And most of the time with my dad too. I need to do it more often with everyone though. I just never wanna let that opportunity go by and not take it now. But ya, I am grateful that both me and Britt ended up being ok and that it didn’t end any worse than it did! I occasionally get my headaches still and I expect that I probably always will but besides that I am back in good shape! These are just some pics of the car. That is my door that is open. They had to use the jaws of life to get me out and even that ended up taking them almost a half hour because my side of the car was so banged up the metal wouldn't tear and just bent.

I like this pic because you can see my headrest in it and you can see how the backseat is all the way up to my headrest. That's how bad my side of the car was banged up.

This is Britt's seat. It broke on impact so she was reclined in the back seat. It knocked her unconscious so she doesn't remember anything from the accident.

Here is a far away shot of the car.

This is a lovely shot of my head, I know. It's pretty nasty looking. This was after they had stapled it.

This is a pic of some of the staples over my 4 inch gash. I was really grateful that my brother Nick was there with me when they stapled my head because it was extremely traumatic and I don't think that I could have done it alone. Poor guy though, I don't think it was a very fun experience for him. But I was so relieved he was there. I remember that as soon as the ambulance pulled in to the hospital and the doors opened he was there at my feet. I started crying again the second I saw him because I was so relieved to have someone I loved there. Especially since my parents got stuck in a 2 hour parking lot on the freeway that the accident created. He held my hand the whole way in and the whole time they were stapling my head. I am so glad he was there. I love him and I am so glad he is my big brother!

This was after I had a whole lot of pain killers and they hadn't touched my cut in a couple hours... haha

This is the newscast from Channel 13 of our accident.

Here is me and Britt at her wedding 6 months later! Both healthy!

Lake Powell!!! :)

So I went down to Lake Powell last week with my friend Blake from high school and his family. It was a really random thing because I hadn't really talked to Blake in forever. But then we talked on facebook a few weeks ago. And the next day he texted me and asked me if I would want to go. Well it ends up that he broke up with his girlfriend the night before and she was supposed to be going but obviously that wasn't happening anymore. All of his siblings were taking dates so he didn't want to take a guy friend, he said he would rather take a good girl friend. So ya, he thought of me! So ya I got a free trip to Lake Powell from it. And it ended up being a lot of fun. His family was awesome and I had fun getting to know them all. We left Monday and got back Saturday night. We had a houseboat down at Bullfrog. It was a really fun week!

Me and Blake had to cook dinner the first night. We made tin foil dinners. I peeled the potatoes and I found out that I am really slow at doing that. Blake had everything else ready before I had 12 small potatoes peeled. Haha.

This was a picture from a hike that we went on above our houseboat. I look like a goof but I think it's a cool picture!


Ok so this was my first time wakeboarding ever. And this was my first try and I got up! So I was pretty proud of myself. I didn't stay up much longer than this though because this was before we realized that I am actually goofy foot and needed my right foot forward...


Me, Jesse, and Jason on another hike we did through a slit in the rock

Jason, Jesse, Blake and me. Ya, I look cool with 3 guys... haha

This is called the Moki Steps... The indians put them in so that they could get over the mountain. Well the guys all decided to climb up it...



...But they hadn't thought about having to get down. It was really dangerous. They couldn't see where to put their feet because it was so steep. So the one beneath them had to direct them. It was pretty scary. I would suggest that no one ever try and attempt this... they learned that the hard way. Luckily they all made it down safely!



Getting ready to tube! My favorite!


Me tubing


This is the first fish I have ever caught!


Me, Blake and Jesse cooked my fish and another one we caught. It was really good!



Me and Blake on another hike we went on


Me and Kayleigh

Me, Blake's brother Taylor and his fiance Kayleigh. These guys were seriously a blast. They are super funny!


This is after I got my footing right. I got a bit better after that!


This is Blake's little brother Jason. He could get really good air and hang time on the wakeboard. He was really fun to watch.


This is me and Maryann. She is one of Blake's brother's girlfriends. I really liked her too.


Me and Blake getting ready to war on the tubes.. He was trying to bail water out of his tube..


Tube wars are my favorite. I think Blake beat me everytime but I beat most of the other people!

Another Close Call...

Just another one of my crazy, could have died, stories. Haha
Ok so last Thursday I went over to my guy friend's Jade's house. And actually a bunch of my guy friends live there. These guys were all roommates with my friend Melissa's husband Tyler last year before they got married. We're all pretty good friends and I have a blast with them. Ok so me and Jade were sitting upstairs watching the Jazz game when suddenly there is a large bang in the room below us. And when I say large bang I mean like ear splitting crash. Ok so we yell down the stairs to see what happened and no one answered.. Well right when the sound happened I knew exactly what it was. It was a gun shot.. And the reason I knew this is because when I had gotten there Jake had been playing with one down in the living room. So when no one answered when we yelled I was like freaking out. So we run downstairs and we finally figured out what happened. Jake and Bill were down in the living room and Jake had been playing with his .45 pistol. Well the clip wasn’t in it so he didn’t think there was a bullet in it. So he was just playing with it and it ended up going off. Well thank heavens it wasn’t pointing at him or Bill. That would have been bad news. Ok so instead it was pointing up…. Yup that’s right, it went right into the ceiling DIRECTLY below the exact spot I was sitting. Well I didn't have a bullet in me, so something happened to change the its course. We don’t know what happened though. The bullet must have hit something in the ceiling that changed its course because if it had gone along the path it was headed it should have it would have gone directly up to where I was sitting. So I would say that I am pretty darn lucky that it did not. We couldn’t find the bullet hole where it came out though. So ya I have no idea where it went, but thank heavens it didn’t continue it’s original path! So anyways, that is my crazy experience of the week.
So ya, my car accident in June, the 2 other times when I have almost gotten into some pretty bad accidents the last year and now this... I guess I am pretty lucky!!

Grandpa's Last Sweet Ride

My grandpa passed away Tuesday March 10, 2009 at age 78. He had been dealing with various health issues for the last couple years. My grandma, mom, all of his other children, and a very close cousin were with him when he passed away. It's been a pretty emotional thing for me to go through but mostly I am just glad that he isn't suffering anymore and I know that he is in a better place.

I am most grateful for the opportunity I had to go down to St George with my parents and little brother and sister the Saturday and Sunday before he passed away to spend a little more time with him in the care center he was in. My aunts and uncles and some of my cousins were down there as well so it was a really great to be around so much family. We didn't get there until about 10:00 PM on Saturday night, but when we got there he was able to give us each a hug. It was really hard to see him so weak. He didn't have much of a voice but it meant a lot to hear him say my name and tell me that he loved me. I got to sit and hold his hand for quite awhile while the family sat and talked and that really meant a lot to me too. At about 1 AM my grandma and all my aunts and uncles went into another room to talk about some things. So I was alone with my grandpa until around 3 when they came back in. He had been given medecine to help him sleep so he was just peacefully sleeping. But I am so happy that I got that time with him. That was definitely a blessing and a special time I will never forget.

His funeral was Monday March 16. It went really well. The coolest part was that instead of using a herse, they moved him from the church to the Salt Lake cemetary in the back of a 1932 truck that apparently looked like a truck he had once had. We also got a please escort. I am sure that all the people that had to stop and wait for our procession thought that someone famous had died. It was really neat to send him off like that. At the cemetary there were a group of veterans that had a pretty sweet presentation thing for him. So overall it was all pretty neat I thought.
(Thanks to Nick and Kimberly for the next few pics! I was gonna have you email me some but I just took these off your blog. So sorry to you all who have to see them again)

I really like this picture of Nick and Grandpa. It was over Easter weekend last year when we were visiting Grandpa in the hospital. This was really when things started going downhill. But I just think this is an awesome picture.

So the other night I had a minor meltdown because I was thinking about it and I didn't think I had a single picture of me with Grandpa. I was pretty upset. I looked through all the pictures that I have up here in Logan and couldn't find a single one. So I had my mom send me up a book of picture cds in hopes that I would find one. So I spent a couple hours last night looking and so far this is what I found. I just about cried when I found it. As you can see in this picture and the one at the top that my 14 year old self apparently wasn't thinking that I should try and not look like a goof when they took this picture. I guess I had no idea that in 6 years I would be really wanting a picture of me with my grandpa. But regardless of how goofy I look I still love these pictures. I am hoping I might find more, but at least I found my picture with Grandpa!!

I miss you Grandpa and I love you!