Well, not much has happened in our lives lately.  School has ended and Nick and I are both working full time for the summer!  It's really not exciting, but it will be a nice break from school.  We both don't get done with work until 8pm every day, though.  I feel like we miss out a lot on seeing our friends or even doing things on our own, but it's really awesome to be able to sleep in every morning!  That's really nice.  My parents brought us their old treadmill in February since they never use it, and since then, Nick and I have been running every day!  I still absolutely hate running, but I have gotten used to it.  It has been a little difficult for me to get back into normal life after being sick for so long.  I feel like the exercising helps a bit.

A few days ago Nick and I got to go to Mesa for my brother's wedding!  That was pretty fun, but it was a really fast trip.  We flew into Phoenix on Monday night.  We stayed the night at my cousin's house somewhere in Maricopa.  It was really great to see him and his family.

In the morning, Nick and I drove to Mesa to meet Nick's mom and brother.  They live in Flagstaff, and they drove down to see us for a few hours!  We went to eat at The Cheesecake Factory and it was soooo good!!  Then, we walked around a mall and just kinda hung out.  It was a lot of fun, and it was great to see them.

Then, we went to the Mesa Temple for Brandon's wedding!  It was really great, and it was fun taking pictures afterwards.  It was such a beautiful day, and it was the perfect temperature!  Not too hot, but definitely not cold.  I absolutely hate cold weather.  Phoenix would be a great place for me to live.

After we took pictures, we went to the reception.  It was gorgeous!  They had such cute decorations!  The food was also really good.  Here are just some of the great decorations:

Brandon and my new sister, Sabrina! I just love her!

We had to go get Arby's for my dad because he was allergic to everything served at the reception.  It looked a little weird, haha.

We loved dancing together!

At the end of the reception, we got sparklers while Brandon and Sabrina went to their car and drove away.  It was fun, but I am terrified of sparklers!  When I was like 5 years old I burned my lip with one and apparently I'm still scared of them..  They are a lot of fun, and I didn't even realize I was afraid until after I lit mine.  Then I tried to stay as far away from them as I could!

The next morning, we had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to catch out flight back to Utah.  We got there just fine, but I was so nauseous and sick that we missed our flight.  It took until about 3:00 until I felt good enough to get on the plane, but then our flight got delayed and we didn't end up getting home until 8:00 pm.  It was the worst day of my life!  Overall, though, it was a great trip!  I should probably go now, its getting late! Plus, I don't really have much more to talk about.

Buddy

I found out today that my dad had to put my dog, Buddy down.  He hurt his hip a few months ago, and the medication wasn't helping at all.  He has just been in so much pain the last few months and since the vet couldn't help at all, my family decided that it was time to let him go. I know that he was super old, and its best for him that we let him go, but I can't seem to stop crying about it.  I think if I talk about him for a few minutes it might help, so if you aren't into dogs, you probably won't want to keep reading.

My family got Buddy right before my 8th birthday.  I was in Wisconsin visiting my cousin, and when they came to pick me up they brought him along as a surprise!

When we got home, we realized that having a new puppy and a newborn (my brother JJ was born like a month before we got Buddy) was pretty crazy.  Buddy chewed EVERYTHING! All of my toys had bite marks or an arm or leg missing, my stuffed animals all had holes, my shoes had holes, even some of my clothes had holes from him jumping up on us.  He was such a sweet dog, though.  He was just always so happy to see us and play with us. Here is a picture of Buddy and JJ.  JJ would climb all over Buddy, but Buddy was still so protective of him.  He also loved to suck on JJ's pacifiers.

At this age, I had really bad nightmares pretty often.  I still ran in to my parents room, but they kept telling me that I had to stop.  When we got Buddy, he started sleeping on my bed every night.  When I woke up with nightmares and saw him there, I knew that I was safe.  I still had nightmares often, even up until I left for college, and he was always the one that I looked to for comfort.

We took him camping with us in Michigan when he was a puppy.  He loved the water, but he didn't like not being able to sleep in the tent.

Before we got a fence put in our yard, we had to keep him chained up outside when he wasn't inside.  One day, I went to go unchain him and bring him inside.  When I knelt down to reach his collar, he scratched my leg up pretty good cause he was so excited to see me.  I still have a 3-4 inch scar on my leg from that, and I hope it never goes away.  It makes me think of how happy he was to see me whenever I look at it.

Buddy definitely had a hold on my heart.  I would let him lick my face whenever he wanted even though it was gross and smelly.  I would let him have occasion licks of my popsickles. I never got mad when he ended up scratching me because he was so excited to see me.  I cried every night the week that he got sprayed by a skunk and wasn't allowed in the house to sleep in my bed.  I never had much fun on the 4th of July with fireworks because I was so busy worrying about Buddy.  (He was terrified of them!) It also just broke my heart whenever I would visit home after I left for BYU because he would follow me everywhere, and I felt so bad that I had to leave him again.  I know he was ok with my family, and they also loved him a lot, but I always felt like he thought I was leaving him behind or something.

(You can kind of see him hiding behind me in this picture)

We had an electric underground fence put in.  It worked pretty well, but sometimes if there was another dog or a cat on the other side of the fence, Buddy would run through anyways.  When this would happen, I would just take some dog treats and walk along the border of the cornfield behind our house.  I would find him pretty quickly and take him back home.  One day, we couldn't find him, so I assumed he had jumped the fence.  I went looking for him, but I couldn't find him anywhere.  I went home and just cried forever because I was so worried.  It turns out that my dad took him to Lowe's with him.  Buddy jumped out of the car when my dad opened the door, and my dad drove home without him! He never even remembered that he took him with him until later that day when he saw me crying about it.  He went back to Lowe's, and Buddy was still in the parking lot having a blast meeting new people.

It was always hard to go on vacation when we had Buddy.  We tried taking him to someone else's house while we were gone, but he just made himself sick and wouldn't eat because he thought we left him.  We ended up just leaving him at home and getting someone to come feed him every day.  The reason that didn't work was because he was terrified of thunder storms, and in Indiana during the summer months, you have them all the time.  We got home once from vacation and he had been so terrified during a storm that he had torn up our front entrance trying to get in the house.

Buddy absolutely loved walks.  If someone would even just say the word, he would run and get his leash and jump all over us until someone finally took him out.  Once he got bigger, he was so hard to take for a walk because he was so strong!  I struggled for awhile, but soon enough I got stronger and didn't have to struggle anymore.  When my friends would want to take him on a walk, they would always get mad that I wouldn't let them hold the leash.  I would always warn them that he was going to pull and that they would have to pull back and not let him go, and they would agree.  They always ended up letting him go because he pulled to hard, though.  It frustrated me so much because then I would have to chase after him and try to grab his leash. A lot of times my mom would tell me that I would just have to come home and wait for him to come back.  He would always come back once he was done exploring the woods and the neighbors, but we lived not even half a mile from the freeway, and I was always terrified that he would head that way.  I always fought with my mom about her letting me go get him. I couldn't handle the thought that he would be run over by a car because I let him go or because I didn't go after him.  Thankfully, he was always ok.

He was always trying to protect us.  When JJ was a baby, he was very protective of him. Once, he found a raccoon in our garage and fought it out.  My dad ended up having to go kill the raccoon with a shovel and make sure it didn't rabies because it had bit Buddy during the fight.  That was pretty scary.  He also had this thing against specific males.  He hated my grandpa and one of my uncles.  He could be having a great time wrestling with us, but the minute one of those guys walked in the room he would jump up and growl until they would leave.  He got used to my grandpa over time because my grandpa would carry around treats to give to him.  One time when my uncle came to visit, we were out doing errands.  We told him that he could get in the house through the garage and wait for us to get home.  He said he went up to the bedroom and he was putting his stuff down on  the bed when he heard Buddy growling at him from the doorway.  Apparently, Buddy had followed him inside and trapped him in the room.  My uncle has been in the army since he was like 19, and he was too scared to move until we got home and told Buddy to leave him alone.  I was so impressed when I heard that.  I've never really seen Buddy look mean before, and he's just so sweet that it's weird to imagine that he could be that way.

He was always trying to catch birds and squirrels.  One summer, we found that we had a nest of birds in our grill.  We decided to leave it alone so that we could see the eggs hatch.  They finally hatched, and the birds grew stronger.  One day I walked past it and looked in, and there were like 6 little birds trying to fly around in there.  I decided it was time to lift the lid and let them out into the world.  I opened it up, and three of them flew right out.  Turns out I totally didn't even think to make sure Buddy wasn't outside at this moment and he ended up catching one of them right in his mouth.  I was so mad at him that day!

Our house sat right beside the woods in Indiana, and whenever he would start barking in the direction of the woods, I always thought either a bear or a kidnapper was out there, and I would get scared and run inside.  For some reason, I was always afraid of bears even though I'm pretty sure they don't live anywhere near Indiana.

When we got our second dog, Tinkerbell, Buddy HATED her.  He had had our family to himself for about 7 years, and he did not like Tinkerbell taking over.  He eventually got used to her, but he always tried to avoid her.  When he got older and Tink got bigger, Tink was a big bully to him so I'm not a big fan of hers.  She's super cute, but actually really stupid.  Buddy had learned some tricks, and he always seemed to know what we were saying to him, but Tink acts like no one ever talks to her, and she just always does whatever she wants.  This is Buddy with Tink when she was a puppy:

When I was 15, I had braces on my teeth.  One day while I was loading the dishwasher, Buddy was licking the plates. He wasn't allowed to do that, so I kept shooing him away.  He kept coming right back, so finally I had had enough.  I bent down, put my arms around his neck, and yanked him away from the dishwasher with all my strength.  His reaction was to snap his head back at me to get me to stop. I let go of him, but somehow his tooth got caught on my braces.  When he pulled away, he pulled my teeth with him!  Turns out he had pulled out the front two teeth completely, and the rest of the teeth had all moved slightly forward.  I was in so much pain!  We called the orthodontist, and he said he would meet me at his office the next morning even though it was closed on Fridays so he could fix what he could.  I was in so much pain that night, so my dad gave me a blessing.  Turns out my front two teeth regrew their roots over night (they were still sitting there because they were still attached to the braces) and the rest of my teeth moved a little bit back to where they were.  The orthodontist was still shocked about what happened, but he decided to leave everything where it was since it was moving itself back.  It all ended up ok, but I always got teased for "making out with my dog" whenever I had an orthodontist appointment.

The last few days in Indiana before we moved to Idaho, Buddy knew something was going on.  Every time someone would open up the car door, he would jump in and refuse to get out for hours sometimes because he didn't want to get left behind.  Even when we finally did leave, it took forever to get him out when we stopped to rest at the hotel on our drive there.  When we finally got to Idaho, all of us kids and the dogs had to spend the day in my parent's bathroom/closet so we wouldn't get in the movers way.  Their bathroom was pretty big so we pulled a mattress in there and watched a movie or two.  We also ordered pizza and took a nap.

For some reason, Buddy had this weird thing with hats, scrunchies, and gloves.  I could never wear scrunchies when I was little because if I did, he would attack my head until he got the scrunchy out of my hair.  When JJ was like a year or two old, he had his snowsuit on, and he was standing outside with us.  Buddy grabbed his hat and ran around the yard with it while JJ was still attached.  That was actually really funny.  When we would put gloves on, he wouldn't try to run around with it, he would just attack your hands until you took them off.  We ended up using that as a game inside to wrestle with him.  It was pretty fun, but my mom would always get mad because it would really tear up the gloves.  We never had gloves that didn't have at least one hole in them.

If you ever had food (especially popcorn), Buddy and Tinkerbell would both follow you around until it was all gone.  This is my brother JJ.  He took popcorn to his room to watch a movie on a laptop and both the dogs followed him there.

This is getting really long and I feel like I could go on forever so I should probably stop here. What I will always remember the most about Buddy is that he always knew how I was feeling.  If I was happy, he would always wag his tail and have a party with me.  If I was sad, he would come lay by me, put his head in my lap, and look up at me with his big sweet eyes until I told him it was ok.  He was always there to comfort me, and I will always be grateful to him for that.

Semester #2

So nothing has really happened since I last wrote. I'm mostly writing this because I'm supposed to be studying for a test, and I'm trying to procrastinate it. Here's some awesome news: my brother got engaged!! For those of you that don't know, her name is Sabrina Bradshaw, and my family loves her.  My parents say that she is very kind and thoughtful, and they are excited to get to know her more.  I'm excited because she's really cool, and I really like her with Brandon.  They are getting married on May 8th in Mesa, Arizona, and I can't wait!

Nick and I just recently had our 6 month anniversary!  After class, we went out to eat at Applebees (love that place)!  Then, we bought Despicable Me and took it home to watch it.  It is one of my favorite movies, and I loved watching it again with him.  We took pictures, but I don't have my camera with me.  I'll have to put them up later.

This whole semester has been pretty chill, but this week has been super crazy.  I'm only taking one class this semester to recover from having mono, and I have the first test tomorrow so I have been studying a little every day.  I don't think it will be too bad, but it's a lot of physics, which I didn't expect.  Nick and I also started doing P90X on Monday.  The past few weeks I have been feeling a ton better.  I started doing yoga every morning with my cousin, Jessica.  It kinda pushed me back a little bit since exercise is one of the things that triggers mono.  In the long run it is good for it, though, so I kept doing it.  I started feeling better last weekend, and I decided I wanted to start doing something more rigorous so I'm doing P90X with Nick.  I usually end up only doing like 15 minutes of it because I feel so weak after that, but it hasn't made me feel any worse so I think it's ok!  As long as I remember to eat every couple hours, I feel amazing!  It's so crazy how being sick for a few months completely changes everything.  I thought I had gotten used to being sick and that it didn't bother me too much anymore.  Now that I am actually starting to feel more normal, it's like I'm a completely different person.  I'm so happy all the time like I used to be, I want to be active all day and visit everyone I know, and I feel so free!  I feel like I can do anything I've ever wanted to do! Let's hope it stays that way for a long time!

Another thing that happened this week was I found out one of my best friends from high school is getting married in Orland, Florida in November!  Nick and I are probably going to fly out there for the wedding, which I am really excited about, but we are also going on a cruise to the Bahamas!  We found super cheap tickets online, and we are going to use it kind of as a second honeymoon, even though its a couple months past our 1 year anniversary.  It's basically all I can think about this week, and I wish it was sooner than November!

We also started looking at grad schools for Nick.  He doesn't get his BA for another two years, but it was nice to get an idea of where we could be then.  We still have a lot of researching to do, but we are thinking that he will stay here at BYU to get his MA and then we will move to Cheyenne, Illinois so he can get his PhD.  He might get both his MA and PhD in Illinois, though, or he might go somewhere completely different!  He is really liking the looks of the program there right now so that is our first choice so far.  It's weird to think that we could be leaving Provo soon.  I always knew that day would come, but I never believed that it really would, haha.  I have no idea where we will end up after he graduates, though, so your guess is as good as mine!

I feel bad not having any recent pictures, but here's one of us walking home from school one day

I should probably start studying now so I hope you enjoyed this little update!

Our First Semester Together

As for our first semester together, there's not much to tell, and we don't have any pictures to go along with our story :(  We would go to school at 8:00 am and get home around 6:00 pm every day.  Nick and I both really enjoyed most of our classes this semester.  For those of you who don't know, my major is communication disorders (otherwise known as speech-language pathology and audiology), and Nick's major is the classics. This semester I got to take Hearing Science and Acoustics and Medical Speech Pathology, and I just loved both of them! Nick got to take Latin and some Greek literature classes and he really enjoyed those.  We both got really lucky with our jobs this semester.  Nick works for the microbiology department researching early church history, and he gets to choose the hours that he works, which was really nice.  I worked for Bookstore Custodial, and it was so nice because I got to sit in an office and do homework for 4 hours unless someone called in a spill or something that I needed to clean up, and that didn't happen very often.

For Halloween, we got to take our nieces trick-or-treating, and we just loved it! They dressed up as a baker and a cup cake. It was so cute!

I ended up getting really sick at the beginning of October.  I was really weak, nauseous, and every time I got out of bed I felt like I was going to faint.  I went to the doctor 3 times in the next 3 months, and they had no idea what it was.  Right away they thought I was pregnant, but don't get too excited, it's not true, haha. Then, they did tests on my eyes, heart, thyroid, lungs, and a few other things, but they couldn't find anything wrong. Turns out it was a combination of mono and an inner ear infection, and they both have not gone away yet. I am better than what I used to be, but it's still pretty bad.  There are some days where I have the strength to go grocery shopping or hang out with family as long as we just watch a movie or play games or something.  I ended up not doing too well in my classes since I couldn't go to class for the second half of the semester, but I passed all of them, which is all I was asking for!  This semester I am only taking 9 credits so hopefully I can get rid of this soon! I have been very blessed with such an amazing husband.  He has taken care of me so well, and I know it put a lot more stress on him because he had to work and go to his own classes and take care of me at the same time.  He says he will take care of me as long as it takes, but we both want this to go away as soon as possible so we can go back to normal life!

Christmas was really fun for us.  Both of our families came to Utah, so we didn't have to travel anywhere! It made it crazy with both of them here, but we were so glad we could spend it with both of them.  I mostly stayed home to rest except for Christmas Eve and Christmas, but Nick went snowboarding and to a movie with his brothers, and he loved it.  Also, Nick's sister, Jess, had her baby at the end of November! He is so adorable, and I'm so sad that I've been sick so I haven't been able to see him or the rest of their family too much.  I'm excited to get better and start seeing them more often again!

Overall, this semester wasn't too bad, but we are excited for and hopeful about this coming year.

Lily and Ella Date

One of the last things that we did before school started was go on a Lily and Ella date.  Our niece, Lily, called us up one day and asked if she could go on a Nick and Liz date. It was the cutest thing ever! We ended up taking her and her sister, Ella out for a few hours.  First, we went bowling.  Lily got 3 strikes in a row! Ella didn't care too much about knocking down the pins, but she loved doing a victory dance every time someone knocked anything down. Lily also loved dancing to the music.  They are both really good dancers!

Then, we got some ice cream cones and went to the park! The ice cream melted a little too fast.

We got to watch all the ducks in the pond, also.

It was such a fun day, and we just love spending time with our nieces.  They are so adorable and sweet, and we feel so blessed to live so close to them and their family.

Our Honeymoon at the Happiest Pace on Earth

After the wedding, we were so happy to finally be able to rest from everything.  For the first few days, we stayed at our new apartment, went shopping, and decorated everything.  It was so much fun! Then, we went down to Flagstaff, AZ for the reception down there.  We spent some time with Nick's family and went to the Grand Canyon.  I had never been before so it was a lot of fun. The last night we were there we went to the reception.  The weather was perfect and everything was so pretty.  I love how gorgeous Flagstaff is! The only problem was that there were so many mosquitoes!

The next morning we headed out on our adventure to California! Nick's mom drove us down to the Phoenix airport (it was so hot!). Our flight was only about an hour long, and before we knew it, we were in California!  It was gorgeous!  I just love seeing palm trees everywhere!  The first thing we did was go pick up the car we rented, and it was bright orange! It was super nice though.

We stayed at the Double Tree Inn, and we got some huge, warm cookies when we signed in!

For the rest of that day, we went to Newport Beach.  It was a lot of fun, but it was really cold.

That night, we walked across the street to The Block at Orange.  It was a pretty awesome mall with lots of good places to eat and shop! I got some adorable new shoes, and Nick picked out a new tshirt and jeans that he really liked.  Then, we ate at Lascari's Italian Grill.  It was so good, and they gave us free cheese cake since we were on our honeymoon!

The next two days, we went to Disney Land!!! I had never been before, so I was so excited! We got there right at 8:00.  We ran to our first ride, Indiana Jones, and it was awesome! Somehow, every ride we went to had almost no line when we got there, but when we came out, the line was like an hour long!  We were very lucky.

We ate lunch at the Blue Bayou.  It was this cute little restaurant that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride goes through.  It was pretty dark, and they had candles on the table.  The food was good, but I liked it more because of the atmosphere.

We also got to see a musical of Aladdin.  It was really cool, but we mostly did it to get out of the heat for a few hours.

That night, we got to see the World of Colors.  It was so cool, and they played some of my favorite songs.  Sadly, we were so impressed that we completely forgot to get some pictures of it :(   The next morning, we were going to go whale watching, but we were so exhausted that we wanted to sleep in.  We flew home that night, and Jess (Nick's sister) and her family picked us up.  We went to Olive Garden for Jess's birthday, and then we were finally home again.  It was a lot of fun, and we didn't want to go back to work the next week.