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.

July 16, 2011

 It wasn't hard planning the wedding.  It's almost like everything just fell into place, it was so nice!  The day before the wedding and the actual wedding day were the exact opposite, though.  Almost everything had some kind of problem going on with it, the two biggest of all were that all of the flowers were dying and probably wouldn't last til morning, and my dress didn't fit the night before our wedding.  The actual wedding day wasn't as bad, but it wasn't great either.  The flowers looked a lot better than they did the night before, and my dress fit!! Those two things were probably some of the biggest blessings I've ever received!  One problem was that I couldn't eat anything all day or my dress wouldn't go back on after the luncheon or for the reception.  We took pictures in the morning, then went to the luncheon, and finally the ceremony at the temple.  Everything was going well, but I was so hot, tired, hungry, and couldn't breathe in my dress. I just wanted to run away with Nick instead of getting through the rest of the day.  I was so discouraged that when we got to the temple and were getting ready, I just did not want to be there. I wasn't happy at all, and I felt horrible feeling that way right before Nick and I were sealed for all eternity.  I tried so hard to push those emotions away, and it just made me more frustrated because they wouldn't go away and I just wanted to cry.  When we met the sealer and walked into the room with all our family there, it was almost an instant change.  All of a sudden I felt so much love and peace, and I was so overwhelmingly happy.  The ceremony was great and afterwards, nothing could change how happy I was.  I didn't care if anything went wrong, I didn't care that I wasn't feeling well, and I didn't care if we even had a reception that night! I do want to say that the luncheon was great, though.  The decorations, the song that Lily and Ella (Nick's nieces) sang for us, our video, the food (I think at least, I didn't really get to eat any of it), and everything was just perfect.

After the ceremony, we went to my uncle's house and set up the reception and hung out with my cousins and kind of tried to take a little nap on the couch.  The reception was great.  It was a gorgeous day and the yard and view was gorgeous, and I had so much fun talking to everyone that came. A lot of people from my ward in Indiana came, and that was so awesome to see them.  I have missed them so much!  Also, my friend Lena Peel and her husband and parents came.  Lena was my best friend as a little kid.  We lived in Minnesota together until I was about 8 years old, and I have always wanted to see her again.  This was the first time I got to see her after all those years and it was really cool! And of course it was great to see our families. I'm so grateful for everyone who helped with the wedding, luncheon, and reception.  It all turned out great, and I loved it.  After the reception, I couldn't wait to get my dress off, eat some food, and get some much needed sleep!!

The Beginning of a Great Thing

So this is the first time Nick or I have ever blogged, and we are pretty excited! I feel like my mom when she first started facebook and didn't know how to do anything...she's so funny and I love her so much! Anyways...we'll tell our story along with pictures (we love pictures!) and hopefully you will enjoy it!

Nick and I met outside our bishop's office the second week of fall semester at BYU in 2010.  We were both getting new callings, and he said he went on his mission to Louisville, KY.  I was so excited because that's the mission that I grew up in in Evansville, Indiana!  The next week, Nick asked me on a date.  We went shopping at Macey's for dinner supplies, went to his apartment and carved things out of potatoes, cooked the potatoes, ate dinner, played some games, and finally made brownies.  It was a pretty fun night.  We actually didn't see each other for a whole month after that!

Our stake had a Halloween dance at the end of October, and we just happened to walk home at the same time so we walked together and got to talk some more and I thought he was the sweetest guy ever!  So the next week, our bishop challenged all the girls in the ward to ask two guys on a date during the week.  I asked Nick to go rock climbing with me, and he said yes!  It was so much fun! After that day, we talked almost nonstop throughout the week, and the next weekend he asked me on another date to babysit his nieces, Lily and Ella. We never wanted to be apart after that :) Here are some pictures from when we were dating:

On March 31st, Nick proposed, and I said YES!!! He took me out to dinner to Cafe Rio (my favorite restaurant in the whole world!!) and then to see the movie Tangled. I loved it! When we went home, I was going to change into my sweats (I always do that right before I go to bed), but he said that I shouldn't change yet, so I kinda thought something was up. He said he wanted to go on a walk, so we did, and he wasn't saying much so I really knew it was coming. We started walking towards my favorite place on campus, the gazebo behind the Hinckley Building.  It's so gorgeous, especially in the summer when everything is green and there are beautiful flowers.  I used to sit up there and write in my journal or talk with Mindy (my best friend!) as the sun was setting last summer.  Anyways...we got to the gazebo, and on one of the benches there was a white table cloth with sparkling cider, cheese cake (my favorite!), and candles.  He asked me if I wanted to sit down next to it, so I did, and then he got on his knee and said he wanted to make this the best day for me, just like on Tangled, and then he asked if I would marry him.  I said yes!! I was so excited that I couldn't eat any of the cheese cake or drink the sparkling cider. Nobody believed that we were really engaged because the next day was April Fool's Day.  It was pretty annoying, but it was still an amazing day!