all grown up...

I can't believe that my little bro is old enough to go on a mission! But he is. A couple weeks ago Dillon and I headed up to SV for a weekend of fun that included the big white envelope.

The moment we'd all been waiting for....

He's headed to the Olongapo Philippines -Tagalog speaking Mission and enters the MTC November 18th!

Congrats little dude...we're so proud of you and love you! :)

Also while we were home we got to spend some time floating the great Salt River and freeze our little bummies off, playing outside, hiking to the Intermitting Spring, roasting mallows around the fire, meeting our puppy Skeeter and love on him, play with him, bath him then still had to leave him there :( (we can't have a puppy in our apt obviously so my WONDERFUL family has graciously offered to keep him until we get a place that we can have him...well I'm not so sure they offered, maybe just agreed to keep him! lol, either way...THANKS FAM!!!) It was so fun to get away from work and Rexburg and hang out with my family for a good 4+ days. Which reminds me. The original plan had been for Dillon and I to head up to SV Thursday afternoon when Dillon got off work then it got pushed back to Friday morning. My mom and Emily decided to come down to IF school shopping that Wed so I decided to get someone to cover my shift that night and just go home with them and Dillon would come up when he could. Well since this wasn't the "plan" nobody was expecting me. Especially Payzli and Heather. :) Lyndi and Payz came down to my mom's shortly after we got home so I went and hid in the pantry. Emily brought Z to the door to "get her a treat." As soon as she opened the door and turned on the light I was standing there...right in front of her face. Z didn't know what to do, she just stared at me then came to me and just laid on my shoulder completely stunned. She wouldn't look at me or talk to me for a good 5 mins, just gave me loves. She soon came to and was wild and crazy! :) Heather's suprise was a bit better. LOL. So, Heather and Lyndi go walking every morning at 6 am. Well....since I was home I decided to join them Thurs morning. I was so excited to get some exercising in that I was wide awake at 5:15 waiting for my alarm to go off at 5:45 so I could get dressed and meet Lyndi at her house. I hurried and got to her front door as she walked into her living room. She told me I had a good 10 mins before Heather would be there but I didn't wanna sit and wait...I wanted a head start! :) So I started walking and got tired and decided to sit in the weeds between the top of my parent's road and the neighbors. Well, soon (well kinda, Heather had slept in) Heather and Lyndi came walking past and of course I had to jump up to finish the walk with them. :) Let's just say....Heather was just as stunned as Z just not quite as quietly! But then again, Lyndi did scream louder and she knew I was there. BAHAHHAHA. It did take Heather almost just as long as it took Z to get over her shock and actually acknowledge me and see why I was in town already. :) Oh how it makes me laugh just thinking about it and writing this....it was GREAT!!! (Love you Heather!) Overall it was a FABULOUS weekend and so great to be home with family, just wish the Alaskans could have been there, next time. Now, here's a few pics, ok a lot, enjoy!

enjoying the warm fire

Z doin the splits

playin outside (do my parents live in the most beautiful place or what??)

The spring and Jake and Lacie bringin up the rear comin down from the top (don't worry...she's not that slow, just preggo with twins, no biggie! :)

um...this picture pretty much just sums up Dillon and I's life together. lol

the hiking crew (Cody was too lazy to come...hardly, instead he was just finishin up a 25K, again, no biggie! :)

the float...tryin to not FREEZE

too too cute!

Daddy and Skeeter

um...i LOVE this for some reason

silly silly girls (Z is wearing the 3D sidewalk chalk glasses)

Cowboy Gabe and Skeeter's sister he named "Sweetie"

Shopping brag

Ok, I have to brag for a min. Tonight Dillon is at work while I'm at home (again) and I had a gift card and some coupons so I decided to run to IF and do a little bit of shopping. Aside from spending...lots at Winco (and saving lots too, good old Winco)...I spent a total of $23.23 and came home with this -- It doesn't look like a lot but for what I spent...I am very proud. The Bath&Body loot was a whopping $.97 (should have been $51) and the shirts a whole $22.26 (should have been $44). YAY!!

Priest Lake

The day after we got home from our anniversary adventure we packed back up and headed to Priest Lake, Idaho. Dillon's family has connections to a cabin up there and this was the week for them to go! After 8 hours of driving...we finally pulled in to a very full cabin. We spent the next 3 days hanging out with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins, layin on the dock soakin up the sun, boating, jetskiing, fishing, motorbiking and swimming! It was SO relaxing and a MUCH needed vacation. Unfortunately our stay wasn't as long as we would have liked thanks to crazy work schedules but we did make sure to make the most of our time off. We came back very sunburned, very sore, very tired and very happy! Here are a few pics, most of the good ones are on Dillon's mom's camera so this is it for now...enjoy.

the view of the cabin from the lake

Dillon kneeboarding

Dillon wake boarding

the view coming down the mountain after a very long, very pretty motorbike ride

us and our styling glasses on the motorbike

the view of Priest Lake from the top of the fire watch tower on the top of the mountain
me cussin Dillon before we took off, telling him to be nice to methe view from the back porch
Thanks Merrill's for inviting us and providing all the food and fun! :)

One year!

It's official, Dillon and I have been married for one whole year. I can't believe it has already been 1 year and at the same time I can't believe it has only been 1 year...I feel like we have been together forever and can't imagine what life was like without him. This year has been full of laughs and crys, learning and growing, adjusting and changing and falling more and more in love with eachother. Before we got married people would say, "You think you love eachother now, just wait." I couldn't imagine loving him more than I did the day I married him but now I can't believe I love him this much more and I know that that love will only continue to grow as we experience what the rest of life has in store for us. So, to celebrate one year of marital bliss we both took a few days off of work and went camping. We had a hard time deciding where to go but finally decided on Henry's Lake (close to Island Park). We headed up fairly early the morning of our anniversary (Sat the 25th) and started our interesting weekend of fun right off by almost gettin in a head on collision only about 20 mins from our destination. To make a long story short we were in full view of an idiot driver and he still tried hitting us but we survived and I'm still not really sure how. We both wanted to turn around and give the man a piece of our minds but Dillon said we just had to keep driving because we couldn't afford to pay for broken windows. So...after driving around a bit we found a place that looked like the perfect campsite and set up camp. We bought a tent a little while back on a really good sale and I was so excited to get it set up and see how big and nice it was! :) Well it turns out it really was a good deal and the tent was HUGE! It is hard to get the full affect from this picture was it was so big it even had a little pop-out spot to put our bags and such in. Once we set up camp and got things settled we decided to head out and find a place to fish the day away. We quickly discovered this to be harder than it sounded. We thought we knew where we wanted to go and thought we knew how to get there but after some serious offroading and driving around (I think in circles) for over an hour we got to where we wanted to be. It was a little dangerous getting down to the water but once we got down it was beautiful. Dillon decided to try some very redneck tube fishing and to no avail came back to join me on the bank. Although the fish weren't biting, at all, and it was very disappointing the day was still beautiful and we were having fun...that is until the clouds started rolling it. It started with some thunder and lightening in the distance that quickly turned in to black skies and huge gusts of wind, turning the water not so clam and not so pretty. We hurried back up the cliff and to the car just in time for the rain. It didn't look like it was going to last too long so we decided to drive around a bit looking for another fishing spot while the storm passed. Well, again, long story short the bit of driving turned into a bunch of driving...like 3 or so hours of driving and no fish. But hey, the storm passed! :) So, we gave up and headed back to our campsite. We were playing card games in the tent when we decided to start cooking dinner since the clouds were rolling in once again. Again, long story short, the wind came and tent had to be collapsed, the rain came and we had to sit it out in the car, and still....dinner cooked and turned out fabulous just as the wind died enough to put the tent back up and eat inside while it POURED! After a little while of being trapped in the tent the rain stopped and a fire was started or attempted since the wood we had gathered was now d-r-e-n-c-h-e-d! Since it was our first anniversary we couldn't kill the tradition and packed the top layer of our cake into camp with us. I said it just tasted like cake and Dillon said it tasted like cake that had been frozen for a year. So, we tasted it but that's about it! :) My sweet hubby also surprised me and went into the tent and came out with some wine glasses we had gotten for our wedding and bottle of Martinelli's. So we sat around the fire sipping Martinelli and roasting mallows (but not making s'mores cuz we forgot the graham crackers). The next morning Dillon had woken up REALLY early and I got up shortly after. We decided to try out luck at fishing one more time then head up to spend the day in Yellowstone. Well, again, long story short, we sat around for about 3 1/2 hours waiting for someone to drive past that could jump start our car and by the time we found someone it was too late for fishing so it was off to Yellowstone. It started out pretty lame with TONS and TONS of people and not so much in the animal division. We had a picnic somewhere in the park, drove around, saw geysers (yes even Old Faithful but we had to sit and wait over an hour in the scorching heat with a very very stinky European family sitting in front of us), and eventually got to see some wildlife. The highlight was the 100's of buffalo crossing the road (BIG traffic jam) and lounging around a big open meadow. We ended up making a bigger loop into Yellowstone than we thought we had and didn't get out until almost dark so we stopped in West Yellowstone for some Arby's and headed back to camp. The plan was to see how much damage had been done to camp from the days storms (yes, again) and decide whether to stay another night or not. We got back and things didn't look too bad so we stayed another night. We stayed the night but did very little sleeping. Dillon ended up gettin sick just a few hours after we crawled into our sleeping bags and we spent a little while sitting around a fire in the middle of the night. Once his belly started feeling better and I couldn't stay awake any longer we headed back into the tent. Luckily Dillon was able to fall asleep and we rested until morning. We were in a little bit of a hurry to get our of there Monday morning since we had a lot to get done that day so we could leave the next day for our next adventure (details to come later) and we both had to work that night. So we woke up, hurried and cleaned up camp, got all packed into the car and again, long story short, Dillon had to take a little walk to find someone to jump our car yet again. He found someone and we went on our way stopping to get gas and once again having to have the tourists at the pump next to us give us a jump start. Well, we got home, hurried and emptied the car, took much needed showers and were off doing errands getting ready to leave again in the morning and buying a new battery for the car. All in all it was a very adventurous weekend and nothing like we had planned but it was still great and a wonderful way to celebrate our first year of marriage.

Thanks again honey for a wonderful weekend away and for marrying me! I can't wait to see what the next year and eternity has in store for us.

I LOVE YOU