Three Reasons I'm Going To Have a VERY Good March.

1.  For Christmas, my very lovely boyfriend bought me tickets to go see...

WICKED!!!!!  I am SO ridiculously excited about it!!  I have been dying to see this show ever since it came out--seriously, I've read the book and I know all the music.  This is such an awesome surpise!  I can't wait!!

2.  One of my best friends from college, Debi, decided to defect to France after we graduated...just kidding.  She went over to teach English for a year, remembered that she loved France, so she applied for med school and SUPRISE! got in.  Then, just like it always goes for people who are living a fairy tale, she fell in love.  Of course she did.  So she's GETTING MARRIED!  In the South of France.  Where she lives.  I know.  Rough life, huh?  :)  But seeing as how she's one of my bestest friends ever, of course I promised her I'd do everything in my power to go, especially because, really, how many people have many friends or family members who can just up and go to France in the middle of March?  Not many.  But this is one case where it comes in handy that I'm not married, not super tied down, and I told my job before I took it that I'd be gone for a stretch mid-March, so they knew to begin with.  That meant, lucky me, I'm good to go!  :)  So now that ticket prices have come into the range where poor, non-profit working kids can pretend to afford them, I bit the bullet and bought them!  I'll fly into Paris, take a train to Montpellier (where she lives), then be at her beck and call Friday and Saturday.  Then Sunday morning when she leaves, I'll figure out what's next.  Okay, so I'll probably have it figured out before that, but you know what I mean.  :)  Hopefully I'll go to Lourdes, but most of my time will not be spent in France (see number 3).

3.  Because I simply cannot go to Europe without adding another country's stamp to my passport, and I've already been to France (to visit Debi when she lived in Paris and I lived in London) my trip will include some quality time in SPAIN!!  I'm flying out of Madrid on Sunday, March 22nd.  I don't know for sure what my trip will be (that will involve some more research), but it will include time in both Barcelona and Madrid.  So if you've ever been to Spain and you have great ideas of what to do if one has a week to spend there, let me know!  I'd love to hear.  :)

So, yeah...if you have any ideas about how to make January and February fly by, I'd love to hear those, too, because March is my month this year, baby!!  :)

Merry Christmas, Darlings.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!!  I hope you all had a WONDERFUL holiday, full of friends, family, food, fun, and all the other blessings this season brings.  Know that you have all been in my prayers and thoughts, and I love each of you very much.  Thank you for touching my life in special and unique ways, and thank you for all the things you've each taught me and ways you've supported me.  My life would not be the same without each and every one of you, and I am eternally grateful for the blessing of each of you in my life.

God bless you all, this special season, and know that you are loved!!  Happy Christmas!

(P.S.  This photo was inspired by snow day boredom with some friends trapped in Portland by the snow.  I was QUITE thrilled with my sugar cookie Nativity scene!)

The Crazy Snow Nightmare, Part 1.

Here's a little photo to help demonstrate the craziness of the NW weather these days.  I'm pretty sure this one was taken after one of the first storms, not even after the biggest one.  It was crazy.  

I just BARELY managed to get out of Portland to come home for Christmas, but luckily, this was one case where having a new job with no vacation time actually came in handy.  My friends who had flights scheduled Saturday, Sunday, or Monday got stranded in Portland, but flights were going out on Tuesday, so I managed to make it out.  Hooray!!

I was literally stranded--snowed-in--for like 9 days last week.  It was NO fun.  Snow days are fun at first, but after a couple days, holy boring, Batman!  I'll write more about that later, but I just wanted to show everyone this beautiful photo taken from the balcony at my house.  Believe it or not, my house in Portland has AT LEAST 3 or 4 TIMES as much snow (before I left!) than my folks' house in Utah.  Crazy!!

FREE CHRISTMAS MUSIC!!!

If you CLICK HERE, you can download free Christmas music from Oprah.com for the next 48 hours, and it's great new music, so you should definitely check it out!  Merry Christmas!

My New-Found Love: Karaoke.

My cute sister and I trying to figure out what to sing...Amy picked songs for everyone as a "grab bag"--you had to sing whatever she picked, and hopefully you knew it!  

You guys, let me tell you a little secret about the Merrills: they love them some karaoke!!  Before Amy and Ster got married, Ster's mom, Pam, told me there were two things she takes seriously in life: boating and karaoke.  And let me tell you, she wasn't kidding.  

Despite the fact the fact that I LOVE to sing, until the night before Amy's wedding, I had never done karaoke.  This might seem surprising until you remember that, underneath it all, I'm super shy, and a pretty big chicken.  Add that to the fact that I haven't sung in front of people a whole lot recently, and that means no karaoke for me.  But now that my family is joined with the Merrills, there's no avoiding it.  And turns out, I love it!  Once I get over my shy, chicken self, that is.  Let's just say I've sung karaoke 4 times in the past 2 weeks.  No joke.

Anyway, knowing that April and a few other friends would be in town and we all had limited time in Vernal, Brooke (who was a co-conspirator in my surprise) and I planned a karaoke party.  It was an interesting event to plan, since certain people couldn't know I would be there (and so probably would be confused that my friends were going to be there), we didn't really know who would be in town and who wouldn't, and we didn't really know how to get in touch with many people to invite them in the first place.  Nevertheless, we persevered, and the party planning was set into motion.

Apparently Pam's not the only Merrill who takes her karaoke seriously!  Brooke plays a mean air fiddle while Sterling and Wayne give us a little "Devil Went Down to Georgia."

After pie on Thanksgiving, Brooke decided it was time for us to practice, so we went downstairs and the three of us (Amy, Brooke, and me) serenaded Sterling while he slept on the couch.  :)  It was fun.  The next night, we had a little get-together with a totally random group of people, but it was really fun!!  

Amy even managed to get our mom to give it a go!  :)

There were people there I haven't seen in ages (Amber Wilkey and Jay Haslem!), and people I hadn't yet met (Amber's husband--who is a total sweetheart, by the way, even if he wouldn't sing!).  April and her hubby were there with their adorable little Kelsi, who totally stole the show.  I think the best song of the night happened when April, Amber, Amy, and I relived an old shared HiLite memory and sang "Tell Him."  To be honest, none of us TOTALLY remembered all our parts, but between the four of us, different people remembered different harmonies throughout the song, and everyone agreed it sounded AWESOME--even if it has been 10 years or so since any of us had sung or even heard the song.  Take THAT, Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand!  :)

My darling best friend and her adorable husband!!  Seriously, April got an AMAZING guy when she got Jeff.  They are lucky to have found each other.  (And I bet you can't even tell they were both feeling like complete crap that night--aren't they cute together?!?)

Anyway, the party was definitely a highlight of my Thanksgiving trip to Utah, and I'm glad it worked out the way it did.  Val couldn't make it because she thought she might be having a baby, and we were sad to miss her and J.D. (but totally understandable!), and we were hoping Renee and Brandon would come, but they missed out, too.  Bummer.  It was great fun!

This kid must take after her parents!!  Seriously, the first time April sang, Kelsi saw the extra mic lying on the ground off to the side, and she wandered over, picked it up, and you couldn't take it away from her the rest of the night!  It was ADORABLE!  And obviously she's a little ham--check out that cheeser grin she pulled out as soon as she saw me with the camera!

So, yeah, Thanksgiving in Utah was a blast.  I got to see Jan and her family, April and her family, and Amber and her hubby, not to mention Brooke and the Merrills, my sis and Ster, and my folks.  I even saw Andrew Bentley when we were walking down the street!  It was a GREAT time, and a fantastic trip, overall.  :)  

And like I said...karaoke has apparently since become a way of life for me, because after I got back, my friend Deborah called and asked me to go do karaoke with her (it's all about a boy, but that's a story for another time), and we went back again the next week with her sister and another friend.  And it was a blast both times!!  So karaoke is apparently my new-found love.  Good thing I have a Portland friend who likes to go, too!  :)  

Blessings Abound!

We had Thanksgiving at my parents' house.  Now, when Sterling and Amy arrived late Wednesday night, we weren't so sure how this was going to happen.  The house was...well, let's just say that the remodel wasn't exactly finished and things were a little...um...chaotic, to put it gently.  It was CRAZINESS!!!

But somehow, after a good night's sleep (some of us longer than others, right Ster?), we all managed to pitch in and pull it together, and my parents' house looks FANTASTIC!!  There are still a few little things here and there that could stand to be finished, but for the most part, it's an amazing transformation.  I'm so proud of them for all their hard work--they've done an incredible job!

So the Merrills came over for Thanksgiving, and it was a blast.  I honestly can't remember the last time my parents hosted Thanksgiving for anyone.  I must have been SUPER little the last time it happened, because we almost always got invited over by some of my dad's work friends, and then we all started being out of town.  So it was really fun to have people over to share it with.  We had great food (and just about everyone contributed to the feast in some way or another), my blackberry jam was a TOTAL hit!, and it was really fun to sit and talk with everyone.  Brooke and I see a lot of each other now that our siblings are married, and it's fun!  After dinner we cleaned up, watched TV for a bit, and then headed to the Merrills' for Brooke's smorgasbord of homemade pies--delicious!!  For someone who doesn't claim to be Martha Stewart, she did a GREAT job!  Then the "kids" (aka Brooke, Ster, Amy, and me) headed downstairs for a little fun...but more of that in the next post.  

Overall, Thanksgiving was FABULOUS, and I have so much to be thankful for, sharing it with my family just made it that much better.  So a few things I'm thankful for:

*My beautiful, amazing sister!

*My awesome, generous, loving parents.

*Erik

*My wonderful friends--what an incredible friend-family I am blessed with!

*Having a good job that I like (almost always--what a gift!)

*Having the opportunity to travel to see the people I love.

*The many gifts and talents God has given me.

*My health (especially after having the plague for a few weeks and feeling like death!).

*My education.

*My sweet roommate.

*SOOOOOO, so much more.

Thanks, God, for giving me all these wonderful things.  Please continue to bless us all and those we love and those we don't know through the holiday season and the years to come.

Surprises all around!

My surprise trip to Utah for Thanksgiving was a TOTAL success!  :)

I don't have a ton of photos, except of Janna and Ryan's kiddos, because most the time we had my sister's camera instead of mine, but I'll show you the photos of the kiddies, anyway!  :)

Jan picked me up at midnight on Tuesday/Wednesday and took me to her apartment (which is adorable, by the way).  Of course, being the silly girls we are, we managed to stay up talking until 3 AM, when we finally forced ourselves to say good night and head to bed, because we knew we had an early morning ahead.  Little did we know HOW early...

I was asleep on the couch probably around 3:15 AM, only to be awaken by little Ben (the blond one--and on a sidenote...how in the heck did Janna and Ryan manage to have a blond child?), crying around 4 AM.  From then on out it was a futile effort to sleep.  I heard Ryan get up and get the baby, followed shortly by a blood-curdling scream.  I'm sure some of you mommies with not-so-little nursing babies with sharp teeth can take a guess at the origin and cause of the commotion.  After that, of course, Joseph woke up to find a stranger sleeping on the couch, which was QUITE fascinating, evidently.  He stood a few feet away from me whispering, "Wake UP, wake UP, wake UP, wake UP, wake UP!"  Followed by, "I go over to her, I go over to her, I go over to her..."  After that I heard, "I asleep, I asleep, I asleep, I asleep, I asleep!"  After one final round of "WAKE up, WAKE up, WAKE up, WAKE up, WAKE up!" I gave up and started laughing.  Jan and Ryan tried their best to get Joe to leave me alone so I could get some sleep, but hello!  Of course he had to bring everything he owns to the living room to show me.  After quite a pile had accumulated, I asked him if his mom would be mad if she saw all his stuff piled there by the couch.  He said yes, and we agreed he should probably put it all away.  It wasn't TOO long after that Jan came searching for her phone.  So after an early morning, teaching a CPR class, and traveling to Colorado, I was running on about 45 minutes of sleep.  Awesome, possum.

Jan called my brother-in-law, Sterling, to see if they'd be able to bring some things to her parents when they went, and to covertly find out when they were planning on leaving.  We got the 1:00 PM plan out of him, and Jan and I headed out shopping (thanks for taking the kids so we could run away, Ryan!).  We picked up a few things, picked the kids up so Ryan could study, and headed to my sister's house.  

When we got there at 1:00, we rang the doorbell and no one answered!!  PANIC!!!  We thought Amy and Sterling had left without me!  So Jan headed to the car to get her phone and I banged on the window.  Still nothing.  I turned around and headed back to the car to talk with Jan, when my sister came walking out, VERY confused.  She looked at me and said, "What are you doing here???"  I asked if I could hitch a ride to Vernal, and then we all went inside.  Joe couldn't get enough of my sister's puppy, Dundee!  Luckily Dundee is a good sport--he's not used to having a 3 1/2 year old pack him around by his rib cage!!  And Dundee was totally afraid of Ben--not sure what to make of the not-quite-big-enough-to-be-a-person, and definitely-not-a-dog creature.  :)  

So we got all my stuff out of the car, said goodbye to Jan and the kids, and waited for Ster to get home from work.  He came in and Amy sent him into the living room, where I was "innocently" checking my e-mail.  He stood there and looked and looked at me, super confused.  It was hilarious.  :)  We packed up the car and hit the road shortly thereafter.

The drive was pretty uneventful--I managed to stay awake and talk to my sis for all but about the last 45 minutes or so of the drive (after Ster took over the front seat and I crashed in the back).  Then we got to my parents' house.  The plan was for Amy and Ster to go inside with them and keep them standing by the door, and as soon as the door shut, I would knock.  So I snuck around the side of the house, waited, knocked, and my mom answered.  SHE TOTALLY SCREAMED!!  :)  It was great!  :)  My dad was totally preoccupied by finishing the living room remodel  in time for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, but admitted over and over that he was too in shock to react to me being home.  :)

So, yeah.  That's how the surprises went.  Thanks to all my lovelies who helped work out all the details to surprise my fam!  It was a fun, fun time.