Hawaii...

Well, I'm a liar and I'm sorry I never posted about Hawaii or our anniversary or other various events. I have the best of intentions, but obviously nothing came of them.

For the sake of getting back on track, I've decided to just post a jumble of pictures, and try to fill in some of the gaps of what we were up to this Fall. Hopefully this will be followed up by posts about Winter, before Winter is over already. I'll try. Again, best of intentions.

First up, Hawaii!

Andrew's parents have a time-share on Oahu that they inherited, and when we go that's where we stay. It's a little condo with bamboo furniture and a great view off a private beach, in one of the poorer quieter parts of the island. We love it! This year we were there in August, and last time we were there the end of March. Apparently I never learned enough in school to understand why tides work the way they do, but our awesome private sandy beach of March was a sheer rock cliff in August. It does it every year I guess.

This rocky beach was a long sandy beach last March.

Hawaii was all about relaxing this year, as we'd already done a lot of tourist stuff the year before. We spent out time snorkeling, hiking, laying on the beach, sleeping, and eating. It was nice to get up in the morning and just see where the day took us.

Andrew and I love to hike, and don't do it nearly enough. We also really love Lost....I know, embarassing but true. So we figured while we were in Oahu we would take the opportunity to get some hiking in and also see some amazing Lost areas.

Most of these pictures are from a hike we did up through an area where they filmed a lot. It was GORGEOUS. The ridiculously old and awesome buildings are part of the compound where the cages are in Lost.

This waterfall was at the top of the trail. What you CAN'T see is the ridiculous looking model and photgrapher taking pictures at the bottom of the falls. HILARIOUS. Can't believe I don't have any pictures of it!

Just down the road from our condo was this cave. There is a pretty creepy story associated with it about a shark god who drug people in to it and ate them...I didn't get to fully enjoy it, because I was too worried about the shady looking gang of locals hanging out by our rental car. In Hawaii they go out of their way to post signs that convince you everyone is out to steal your stuff. I have an irrational fear of getting my license/passport stolen and not being able to get back home....it's a problem that leads to me asking Andrew 70 thousand times a day if he still has his wallet (with my license in it because I make him carry it around), and then making him pull it out to show me that it's still there. Really, it's a problem.

The cave is right off the main road, and our cars were parked across the street

Inside...super scary, right? :)

This how I spent a whole lot of my time

Sunset off our lanai. We ate breakfast out here every morning. This is Andrew's favorite place to be.

One of my all time favorite days was spent at the temple. When we were here last it was closed for remodeling. It was rededicated a couple of months before we were there this time. It's completely gorgeous and was such a nice and peaceful day.

Don't mind the awful picture. Contrary to what it looks like, the wind was blowing like crazy, and I don't exactly go out of my way to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting ready in the morning while on vacation.

Last but not least....Food. My favorite part of vacation. We drove into Honolulu for some Bubba Gump's the night of our anniversary. I have a thing for Bubba Gump's. I think it's because we don't have one in Utah, so everytime we're in a city with one (Seattle or Honolulu) I always want to go. However, when we got there we couldn't find it and ended up giving up and heading home, stopping at McDonalds for cheeseburgers on the way home. :( Not the best way to spend your 1st anniversay. It turned out okay though, because we went for round 2 the following day with success. We also hit up Hank's Haute Dogs for some awesome gormet hot dogs as well. In fact, we stopped off at Hank's twice, because once just wasn't enough. It's pretty fantastic.

Worst. Picture. Ever.

I swear neither of us are as chubby as these pictures make us look.

A-MAZ-ING.

Well, that's about it for Hawaii. I wish I had pictures of other various events, such as the massive amount of snorkeling we did (and found out we LOVE), or the super ghetto Big Island Aiport in the middle of the night on our way home. I've been to some pretty shady airports in my life--mainly those in Mexico and Peru, but this one looked a whole lot more like a bus terminal than an airport. Probably because it was outside, nighttime, and there were some big honkin spiders runnin' around. Quite the adventure.

Next up....cake.

Andrew's Accident...

Warning: This post will be long and boring (for the purpose of preserving the whole awful story while it's a fresh memory), and will contain some gorey pictures. I appologize in advance, and promise to get back to neglecting our blog soon.

I started a post about a month ago explaining how everything was so boring around here and so there was nothing to blog about. I couple days after that all this drama began, so in a way I feel like I brought it on myself.
There's been a lot of drama in our lives lately, and it all seemed to hit at the very same moment. At the end of October we were up to our necks in drama relating to some pretty big news that I'll share really soon (no babies involved), when all this new weekend drama began.

On Saturday, October 29th, I woke up and headed out for a fun filled day with my sisters and mom and the kiddos. We went to lunch and then went to see The Wizard of Oz at the Grand Theatre. It was really cute, although about as lengthy as the movie. A few minutes after the end of intermission, I got a text from Andrew that read something along the lines of "I passed out at TRAX and I'm on my way to the ER with Cam to get my head stitched up. Stay with your family." WHAT?! Upon learning that the play STILL wasn't going to end for another half hour (which actually ended up being another hour), Elise drove me over to our house for my car, and off to the U of U ER I went.

When I got there, I was obviously a little anxious to see Andrew, but the front desk attendent couldn't have cared less. She wouldn't let me back because Camden and Erin, his girlfried, were with Andrew and only 2 guests were allowed. She then took her very sweet time going and asking them to send someone out, by which time I was near hysterics (just think what would have happened if I had thought it was worse than stitches). Erin came out, and I finally got to go in and see Andrew.

 In the ER waiting room

This is what he looked like when I got there....no big deal. The guy refused to take his shoes off. I think he was in denial that he was going to miss the football game.

He was sort of a mess. His forehead had gauze on it, and he had dried blood all up and down his face, interspersed with bruises and cuts all down his nose and right half of his face. He had a deep cut above his lip that I was sure was going to need stitches. He looked terrible, and I hadn't even seen what was underneath that bandage on his head.

He breifly reiderated to me what had happened, with some help from Camden, and by the time he had told his story for the 20th time to the 20th doctor, I had it down pretty well. --Andrew was on his way to the TRAX station from our house to go meet Camden so they could go up to the stadium for the U of U game. He biked the 4 flat blocks from our house to the TRAX station, got off of his bike and was standing on the platform waiting for the train. He felt a little dizzy and light headed, and the next thing he knew some random guy was rolling him over and shoving tissue to his severely bleeding nose. He realized he had passed out, and the guy helped him to a sitting position. From there is got a little out of hand. UTA staff happened to be there checking tickets of football goers, and called an ambulance and firetruck. They blocked off a whole lane of traffic for the firetruck, and repositioned where the train stopped on the platform to stay away from "the accident scene". Andrew tried to convince everyone that he could just take TRAX up to the hospital and get some stitches, but he wasn't allowed on the train, due to all the blood--He was considered a "bio-hazard". So he called Camden, he definitely didn't call me, who came and got him and took him to the hospital after Andrew refused to ride up in the ambulance. This is about the time my dear husband thought to text me, not wanting to interupt my afternoon with his petty problems. Andrew was positive that all he was going to need were a few quick stitches and then off to the football game he would go. He adamently disagreed when I told him this was not going to be the case.

Needless to say Andrew didn't make it to the football game, which ended up being the Utes first PAC-12 victory :( sad thing to miss. He spent what ended up being about 23 hours in the ER, hunkering down for the night in the ER observation unit--I slept on the floor.

They insisted on keeping him because apparently it isn't normal for a 26 year old guy to pass out at a TRAX station like that. Honestly, I was kind of shocked they were making such a big deal out of the whole thing, because I myself am highly accustomed to passing out in random places (usually work). However, I passout because I am completely incapable of remembering not to lock my knees for long periods of time. Apparently for normal people, passing out is kind of a big deal.

Andrew also has a known heart murmur, which to our knowledge was not a big deal. So the first thing they did was an EKG of his heart, which showed something abnormal and they decided he might be having a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot that travels into your lung--super dangerous). They did a chest x-ray, and a screening test for a PE that came back positive, which led them to do a chest ct as well to check for a PE. No PE thank heavens, so they decided to do an echo (an ultrasound of his heart) in the morning (it was about 10 PM by this time) and if that came back okay we could go home. This was about the time they finally decided to get around to letting a med student stitch up his head and lip.
--I should say that my first thoughts about the situation were that Andrew was probably just overreacting to the large amount of blood due to it being a headwound. I was sure it probably wasn't really that big of a deal and probably didn't even need stitches...I even weighed in my mind how much less difficult it would be to just get some superglue to close up his wound. Really I did, and I was really really wrong.
I think he ended up with about 14 stitches in all. Originally they thought it would take more like 20.

This was the worst of it. It took about an hour for the doctor to stitch it up. It went clear through all the layers of tissue.

They also ended up putting a couple stitches in his upper lip. His lips were ridiculously swollen for a few days

After he was stitched up, they moved us to the ER observation unit, where we would be spending the night, around 11. Andrew's nurse ended up being my old friend Charles, who I worked nights at Huntsman with a few years ago. That was a nice surprise, and made me feel better knowing that someone I trusted had our back. Aside from his heartrate dipping into the 40s during the night, nothing eventful happened during the night. The next morning, Sunday, we talked to round after round of doctors (med students, residents, fellows, and attendings) and Andrew had his echo done. Finally around 3 PM, 23 hours after the whole ordeal started, they decided that the murmur and electical block in his heart probably weren't the cause of the problem and sent us home to follow up with the Faint and Fall Clinic at the U.

Our tiny observation room where we spent the night. I slept on the floor, next to the air pump on Andrew's bed :(

Right after his stitches.

Waiting for someone to let us go home

The ECHO they did Sunday on Andrew's heart before giving him the all clear to go home and follow-up later in clinic

When we did follow up the following week, Andrew did a treadmill stress test and a heart MRI to rule out a rare fatal heart condition that affects young people (scary). Those tests finally came back well at the end of last week. So basically after all of those tests, we still have no idea what happened. However don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have no answers as opposed to Andrew having a rare fatal heart condition. He follows up with another cardiology specialist in December, but I think it's going to be a wait and see if it happens again kind of situation. For now, we will just be grateful that he seems to be in good health and take things as they come.

All of the events of that weekend sure made me happy to go back to our original drama and hopefully put all of this behind us for awhile. Andrew's stitches are all out by this point, and his scabs are even gone. He's got a pretty gnarly scar on his forehead, that will fade in the next few months/years. He looks a bit like Harry Potter, which is okay because I dig Harry Potter. There are worse things in life to say the least.

Awesome news to come sometime in the next couple of weeks!! Hopefully only a couple more days...

It's been a very long time...

Well, to say I've been a blog slacker would be an understatement of epic proportions. For that I apologize, and I will try to do better....don't hold your breath though. Here is a catch up of the year so far...

watching Grizzlies hockey

Most importantly, things have been going really really well for us so far this year. We spent the first months of the year at soccer, hockey, arena football, and even a very very cold baseball game between the Bees and the U of U baseball team. It was a good way to pass the time and stay entertained, while I continued searching for a new job (talk about a long few months). At the end of March I started as a study coordinator at the University of Utah. I work for a couple of immunology and rheumatology doctors, studying childhood immune deficiencies and diseases. While there is still a whole lot left to learn, it feels really great to be challenged in what I'm doing once again. It's starting to maybe even feel like all those years of college were worth it.

So for the past 5 months, our lives have revolved around work. It's not all that bad though, since my sweet husband works on the floor just below mine; we get to have lunch most days, and ride home together after work. It's pretty awesome.

On May 6th, Andrew and I finally had graduation. Even though we graduated back in December, the University of Utah only holds commencement and convocation exercises in May, a whole 5 months later. So we left work early, and headed to the Huntsman Center to watch Andrew's best friend Camden Burd graduate. 2 hours later we headed home to change, and then met up with Nicole and the kids, who came up to the Huntsman Center with us to visit and take pictures before convocation started. Then we met up with my parents, and took our seats with the rest of the college of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Technically, due to the fact that we were graduating in BOTH Behavioral Science & Health and Economics, we had the option to sit with and walk with either group. We chose to sit directly between the two, because we couldn't pick. So we walked at the very end of Behavioral Science and Health, which was also the front of the Economics group, led by our other very good friend Brian Trick. It felt very surreal to walk down the stadium steps with people I've spent the last 4 years of my life with, especially with my husband right beside me. We were handed our diploma covers by a lady that the group of us eventually figured out was an Econ professor that not a single one of us had taken a class from, and then my very favorite professor at the U, Norman Waitzman, gave me a giant hug and told me congratulations. Andrew and I were extremely bummed to find out Norm wasn't announcing names this year, as last year's graduation had the feeling of a baseball stadium more than a graduation thanks to Norm's serious announcing skills. I'm pretty sure they banned him from announcing this year because of it. Total bummer. Aside from that, graduation was a great experience, and officially marked the end of our undergraduate college careers, even if 5 months late. We ended the night with dinner with my parents.

At the end of May my baby brother, Josh, graduated from Rich High School. It was so fun to watch him graduate. I never thought he'd be old enough to leave high school, and it makes me think about the fact that my own high school graduation was exactly 5 years ago. So proud of that boy!

On the way up to Josh's graduation, I threw Andrew a rediculous proposition that entailed us leaving Randolph after graduation (about 9 pm) and driving through the night to Seattle to see his family for the holiday weekend. We'd already packed to stay in Woodruff for a few days, so after shooting down all the good reasons that we shouldn't go, we opted to go for it. So after Josh's graduation ceremony ended, we rushed out to the line of graduates and hugged him goodbye, and then took off. We drove straight through to Seattle, and arrived at noon the next day, taking turns napping through the night. When we arrived, Andrew called his mother and told her that we had sent her a belated birthday present and she should look outside to see if it had arrived today, because he wanted to be on the phone with her when she opened it. When she came out to see there was no package on the front steps, we screamed surprise and jumped out from behind the garage. Oh how I wish we would have videotaped her reaction, because it was HILARIOUS! We stayed in Seattle through Monday, just enjoying time with the family. We of course made time to watch the Mariners beat the Orioles, and then we made the long trek back to Utah on Tuesday morning. I've been going through withdrawls of Seattle and Pike's Place ever since....

As for June...it was pretty boring, and consisted mostly of work. We did get to spend some awesome time with my cousin Jessica and my Uncle Kevin, who were in town from Colorado. They joined us on our family vacation up to West Yellowstone for a weekend. Although I'm 23 and I've lived in Utah my whole life, I've never actually been to Yellowstone until that weekend. It was beautiful, and the weather was perfect. We only spent a quick day there, and than drove down to Idaho Falls to watch my brother, Matt, bless my sweet baby neice Bethany. She was born 4 weeks early and spent a few days in the NICU, but is doing fantastic now and is ridiculously beautiful. It was fantastic to spend time with their family, and hold sweet Baby Bethany (even if she did projectile vommit all over me).

Uncle Kevin and Jessica with Kadence and Kash

Beautiful Baby B

Baby B in her blessing dress

The rest of June and most of July consisted of AAA baseball at the Bee's stadium. This will be our 3rd summer in a row together, and every single one has consisted of a lot of time in that stadium. We spent the 4th of July in Woodruff of course, and then headed back to catch the Sugarhouse fireworks for the 3rd year in a row. There's nothing better in the world than fireworks, so I take advantage of every opportunity I can to watch them!

This is the only picture we have of the 4th of July, watching the Woodruff parade

The rest of July was pretty uneventful, but August has been AWESOME! I've been waiting for August for MONTHS! Not only was our very 1st anniversary on August 7th, but we got to spend that anniversary in Hawaii, so that was pretty awesome too!! Post on Hawaii to come!!...along with more pictures when I get around to getting them off of Andrew's computer.