Christmas has come and gone...

can you believe it? The Christmas Season has gone by way too fast this year. I can't believe that just in a matter of a few days we will be ringing in the year 2009! HOLY COW. Well Christmas here for the Merrill's was great despite it not really feeling like Christmas. I'm not sure if it was the sunshine of Hawaii throwing me off or the fact that I was away from my family for Christmas for the first time in 21 years. But it was still GREAT! Dillon and I headed down to Shelley Christmas Eve afternoon and later headed to Blackfoot to Gma and Gpa Carter's to celebrate with ALL the Carters. It was also Gpa Carter's 82nd birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA! After a little food and chit-chatting the youngest cousins put on the nativity scene for us while Gpa and Uncle Val read the nativity story. All the kids looked so cute! Especially the little baby Jesus, aka the youngest of the Carter cousin's, Will who is only 1 month old! :) After all the kids opened their cousin presents and Christmas PJ's from Gma & Gpa it was time to go back to Shelley and wait for Santa. He found us and gave us some really good stuff! THANK YOU......SANTA! :) (I don't have any pictures of Christmas morning because I forgot to get them from my mom-in-law, sorry...I know you really wanted to see. lol) Christmas Day was filled with LOTS and LOTS of yummy food, hot tubing and some pretty intense card games! Dillon has had to work everyday (except yesterday) since, so I've been pretty dang lazy! :) He also has to work New Years Eve. We're hoping that he can get off at least before 11pm and we'll hurry down to Shelley to bring in 2009 with his family then New Years Day head to SV to spend a few days with my family! YAY! :) Well, that's what we're up to...I hope everyone else had a GREAT Christmas and have a VERY Happy New Years!

ALOHA!

What a week this last week has been...I finally did it and graduated, YAY! It was a great night and a real treat to see and hear from President Uchtdorf. Thanks my mom and dad for coming and thanks to mom and dad Merrill for coming as well! After all the graduation fun Dillon and I hurried and finished packing our bags and headed down to Shelley to stay the night. We had to be up and gone bright and early the next morning to head to MAUI!!! That was an adventure. We woke up to no power and had to just throw on some clothes and jump in the car. It took a good 4 1/2 hours to get to SLC because the roads were not very good at all and we were a little afraid we were going to miss our flight. We got there just in time to hear them announce that our flight had been cancelled because our plane couldn't land and had been diverted to Colorado. They were able to get us on a later flight and were talking with the pilot of our connecting flight hoping he would wait for us. We got into Phoneix, ran (litterally) through the airport and hoped onto the waiting plane and 6 hours later we had made it! I can't believe how beautiful it was there in Paradise! It was amazing! Even the sun there is perfect. It was hot the whole time (mid 80's) but it wasn't deathly hot. I got sunburned but it only hurt for about a day and now is nice and tan (too bad it won't last). It only rained on us for a few minutes on Sunday and the rest of the time was sun, sun and more sun. The only bummer of the trip was when all my money was stolen. Yup, that's right...all my cash was stolen right out of our locked rental car. We were parked in a beach parking lot and had walked down to the beach. I figured that my purse was safer in the locked car rather than on the beach. Well, I was wrong. I didn't even notice it was gone until later that night when we went out to eat. It turns out that Dillon's dad's wallet had been in the car too and all his cash was gone as well. All in all we were out at least $350 with over half of that being mine. I was pretty upset that night but soon got over it as I realized that there was nothing at all that we could do about it. Luckily Dillon's wallet hadn't been in the car so we had a little cash to use. It didn't stop us from going to that beach though, it was the best one we found and we spent basically all our time chilling on the beach and boogie boarding. We did find some pretty sweet beaches that were great for snorkling. We did also go on a snorkling tour thing Monday morning. That was pretty cool despite Dillon and his mom being sea sick the whole time. We got to see lots of cool lookin fish and even swim with sea turtles. One of the days that we went on our own we even swam with a shark. It was just a wee bit scary! lol. Me and Dillon were swimming around and he asked me if I had seen it, I hadn't and he wanted a picture (we had an underwater camera) so we hung around waiting for it to come back out of it's little cave. Sure enough it did. It came out and up towards us a little bit then went back down in. About that time Dillon's mom and little bro came over by us and stayed long enough for them to see it then it was to shore for us women! :) We guessed it to be able 6 ft long, not huge but big enough to make me pee my pants. But it was cool. Other than the beaches we found a little rain forest to walk through (that was AMAZING) and did some shopping in the evenings. On our last night in Hawaii we got to go to a Luau. Those dancers are insane, I can't even imagine being able to move my hips like that! lol. I didn't get many pictures of that night but I will have some as soon as I get them from my mom-in-law. The sunsets in Hawaii are the best I have ever seen! We made sure to stay on the beaches long enough to see the sunset before we went home. On Thursday night all of us girls thought it would be fun to dress up in our Hawaiian get up, find some flowers for our hair and go watch the sunset...so we did. I know we look so hot but we had just gotten back from swimming all day and didn't really have time to primp, the sun wasn't waiting for us! :) Well...now we're home, in all the snow. I miss the Maui sun but am glad to be home for a white Christmas.

Mele Kalikimaka everyone!

Graduation!!!

When I first started college I thought it would never end and now here I am at the end and I can't believe it's over. Tomorrow I graduate from BYU-Idaho after being here only 8 semesters, YAHOO!! I decided that it would be fun to go through some of my pictures from the past 3 1/2 years and share some of them with you.............

This is a very small sample of the fun I have had mostly just within the past 1 1/2 years! It's been fun but I'm glad I'm done!!! :)
Now it's off to Hawaii to bask in the sun! I'll be sure to let you all know how it was when we get back.

FOOD!!

I can finally eat again!!! No I did not go on a week long anerexia spree or go on a diet (haha ya right!) I just couldn't eat without gettin sick. Well, as I said in my last post, I was a little sick last week. I was feelin better by about thurs but still couldn't eat without feeling nauseous so I just stuck to toast. I made an apt to go to the Student Health Center on Friday but woke up feeling pretty good and cancelled it...well I should have listened to my mom, I ate a little dinner that night and just a few short hours later I had my head back in the toilet. Not to mention not being able to stop coughing and my throat being completely swollen (Sidenote: Aunt Amy, I couldn't sleep at all Wed night I think it was because I was scared I was going to die in my sleep! My throat was so swollen that I had to sit up to swallow and all I could think about was that little gal you knew that died in her sleep because she couldn't breathe. At least I think that was the story! How silly am I?? hehehe). Anyways...so I thought I would get feelin better over the weekend and I did a little bit. I actually ate a little of Sunday dinner that Dillon's mom made and kept what I did eat down (a whole baby scoop of mashed potatoes, 2 bites of roast, and 1/2 a roll. WAHOO!). Well last night sleep didn't happen too much (for me or poor Dillon) because I couldn't stop coughing. So this morning I woke up and made another apt with the Health Center and went in at 1pm after classes. Just as I predicted they told me I was fine! They stabbed me and took my blood (left me a pretty little, I mean big bruise!), gagged me with a throat swab, and made me pee in a cup...all to tell me I was fine. The strep test was negative, the mono test was negative, and everything that the pee test tells them was fine. The only thing the doc seemed a little concerned about was the fact that my protein count (I think) was SUPER high. She thinks/hopes this is just because I haven't been able to eat much but she wants me to come back in 2 weeks to get a UEI (maybe that's what it's called) to make sure my Kidney (or liver, whichever deals with protein) is working like it should be. Can you tell I wasn't listening very well? So 1 hr and 45 mins, $70+, a Z-pack, and anti-nausea medicine later....EVERYTHING IS OK! I really don't understand this though, how can everything be fine and dandy when I haven't been able to eat, sleep, or hardly breathe (not to mention the snot fountain) for the past week??? Interesting. Well when I first left I was just a wee bit frustrated so I called my mommy, cried a little bit, and immediately took the nausea meds. Now, I'm just happy that I have been able to eat tonight!!!! YAY! Now if I could just stop hacking up my lungs!

Thankful

I know that Thanksgiving is over but I just have to tell everyone how grateful I am for my good health. I know, any of you that know me very well are probably laughing at that statement since I am ALWAYS sick it seems, but really...I am SO grateful for my health. This week I have been very sick. Last night I couldn't go 15 mins without barfing for about 4 1/2 hours (sorry if that's too much information), but I am feeling A LOT better today thanks to a blessing from Dillon and my friend's husband and I finally have food in me for the first time in 3 days. So are you all wondering yet why I'm grateful for health since this post seems a little ironic? Well on Sunday they passed a list around to the Relief Society woman (yes they were nice enough to include those of us stuck in Primary) to sign up to take meals to a couple that just moved into our ward. The wife was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago and this couple only got married in October! My heart definately goes out to this new little couple. I can't even imagine what they are going through or how hard that would be to come home from your honeymoon to find out that you have cancer. So, despite being sick this week, I am VERY grateful for my good health and feel very blessed!