Happy One Year!!

We can't believe that it has gone by this fast! Yesterday was our one year anniversary. We have actually been celebrating since Thursday though. I picked up Rick's gift that day and couldn't wait to give it to him so we exchanged gifts that day. I got him a photo album that had everything that we had done in it since we had gotten married. It was really fun to see the finished product because I had been working on it since the beginning of October last year. Rick got me a really nice white gold necklace with a pink flower pendent on it. It was beautiful and I loved it. And then on Saturday we hiked to Timp cave together. And can I just tell you that that killed me!! That is a lot harder to hike then I thought, or maybe I am just really out of shape. But it was a lot of good excercise and it was really cool to see the cave. It was about a three mile round trip up and back. We were so tired at the end but we had a really good time. And then tonight we had our dinner together. It was a great few days of anniversary celebration together. We still can't believe that it has gone by that fast already but it has been wonderful and we look forward to the rest of our lives together.

Virginia, Here We Come

The past few months Rick and I have been hunting for a new job for Rick. We first looked for jobs around Utah or Colorado but didn't have any luck. So we expanded our search to anywhere in the contry. The past few weeks Rick has had several interviews with several cities but we finally settled on one. We are going to be moving to Manassas Park, Virginia the middle to end of August. We are really looking forward to moving out there. We both are very excited to start an adventure together outside of Utah. Manassas Park is about 45 minuted for Washington DC, a little under 4 hours from the beach and about an hour and 40 minutes from Rick's parents and sister in Pennsylvania. We are really happy that we were able to find a better job with a lot better opportunities for both Rick and I. We are sad to leave our friends and family that live around this area but we are happy to be moving closer to family out there too. We are also excited about living in an area that has real thunder and lightning storms and real rain storms but is far enough away from the ocean we won't have to worry about hurricans. We will give you an update on more specifices as soon as we know. And Virginia, ready or not here we come! :)

Baseball and Rodeos

It has been a very eventful week. Rick and I got free tickets to the Salt Lake Bees Baseball game from my work. The game was on Tuesday night so we drove up to Salt Lake to go the the baseball game. IT was a lot of fun. They played the Oklahoma Redhawks. The Redhawks won 7-4 but that's who I was cheering for anyways since that is my home state.

Then on Wednesday night Rick and I went to the Spanish fork Rodeo together. Going to the Rodeo has been a yearly tradition since we started dating. This is the third year in a row that we have gone. We love going to the rodeo because it is as close to Oklahoma as you can get out here. They even had some riders in from Oklahoma doing cow roping and on the bucking broncos. It was fun to watch all the horses and riders preform and compete. This is one of our favorite things to do during the summer.

RC Cars

We have found a new hobby, RC cars. This is the newest of the cars that we have so far. It is waterproof and designed for off-roading. It is so much fun to drive! Rick and I usually drive it through the sprinklers every night and then race around in the puddles after the sprinklers go off. There are a lot more people involved with RC racing then we thought. Every thursday night they have races down in Spanish Fork on a dirt track that was set up just for RC cars. During the week Rick and I go over there to practice for the big races on thursday. It is a lot harder then I thought it would be to drive these things the way you want. I usually end up hitting the curd of going off the track. Rick is practicing on the dirt track so he can race in the thursday races and maybe get in the top three. It is a lot of fun to drive these things together especially off road and through the water.

The Stadium of Fire

For the 4th of July Rick and I went to the Stadium of Fire. It was Rick's first time ever going so we were pretty excited to go. I won the tickets through my work so it was nice to get a free seat!

Here are the sky divers landing on the field. It was really neat to watch them jump out of the plane and fly down onto the field. That is one thing that I don't think I could ever do!

And of course the dancers that perform each year did an amazing job! There was about 1500 of them on the field at a time this year. They said that was the most they had ever had at one time. They did a dance that had every sport that is in the summer olympics. It was really interesting to see how they performed each sport but still did it in a dance.




And the fireworks! This is always my favorite part of the 4th of July. I love to watch them and they always do such a good job at the Stadium of Fire! Rick and I really enjoyed being a part of that this year. It was a fun way to celebrate the freedom of our country! Happy 4th of July!!!

Campfire

Rick, me and my friends from work, Katie, Danica, Brittany, Collin, Sam (Katie's Boyfriend) and I all went up Provo Canyon for a campfire over the weekend a few weeks ago. Rick and I were in charge of the fire because I am the biggest pyro you will ever meet. So lets just say the fire was pretty big. It was so nice to just get away and spend time with our friends. We roasted hot dogs and marshmellow and then just sat around the fire while Collin played his guitar. It was so much fun. I am so glad that the cold weather is finally gone and we can go outside and have fires and play without having to worry about getting cold.

Shooting our new .22 Rifle

Rick got a new .22 Rifle for graduation and we love shooting it together. I like it because I can actually hold it up right and it isn't so heavy I can't aim. And I also like it because it doesn't have a lot of kick. So this is my new favorite toy that Rick got for himself. :) We have a lot of fun shooting together, even though my kitchen gets filled with juice bottles and milk jugs that we use for targets. It is a lot for fun to go shooting together and get all our frustration out on a milk jug filled with water after a stressful day of work or to just go for fun.

Rick's Trophy

Rick has Fridays off because he works four 10 hour days so he spends his Fraidays fishing while I am at work. This is one of his trophies that he caught the beginning of June. It is a 30 inch Tiger Muskie. These are his favorite fish to catch so he was pretty excited since they are so difficult to catch.

Memorial Day Weekend

We spend Memorial Day weekend at my parent's house. We went mudding in my sister's new truck, we went fishing and shooting, and we rode on thier new dirt bike. It was a lot of fun!

Camping Trip

The beginning of May Rick and I were so worn out because school and work had taken a lot out of us over the past few months. So we decided to go on a camping/fishing trip up to Pineview up by Ogden. We fished for most of the day and then we camped from evening until the next morning. It was so nice to get away for a little while and just relax. Rick even caught his first Tiger muskie of the year that week.

Rick's Graduation

Ok, so it has been a while since I last wrote and lots of things have happened. I will have to be better so that ya'll don't think we have fallen off the face of the earth. :) So Rick graduated in April from BYU in City Planning. He is currently working for Saratoga Springs, Utah as their Planner I. It is so nice to have him out of school and working a job that he doesn't have to bring home with him! It is nice to have a husband again, if you know what I mean. Rick's sister Kathy came up from Arizona with her three little boys, his parents came out from Pennsylvania and my parents came down from Logan so they all could attend the graduation. It was so much fun to have everyone together again. We haven't seen Rick's family since our wedding so it was good to have them visit!

A Break at Last

Life has calmed down a lot since my surgery. Rick is coming to the end of his time at BYU. He will be graduating in two weeks!!! We both can't believe it is already here. He received a position with the City of Saratoga Springs here in Utah. It is only about 30 minutes away from where we live now. They actually wanted him to start working before he graduates, so this week is his first week in the post-college work force. It is a huge change for him but he loves having a real job where he is actually helping to better a community. (And where he doesn't have to worry about homework.) He has already had the chance to review projects that are in progess in the city and set some guidelines that need to be followed in order for them to be approved. He is excited about putting everything that he has learned in school to use in a real world setting, not just for class assignments.

It is nice to be out of the time of uncertainty. We finally feel like things have settled into a pretty set course and are beginning to move forward. We are going to stay in Provo until about August, then we will probably be looking into moving to Lehi or American Fork so that Rick can be closer to his job but so that I can still work at my job down in Provo.

The past month and few weeks has really had its downs but it has also had its ups that are far out weighing the downs. It is hard to see the blessings when you are going through challenges but we can definatley see how blessed we have been the past two months. Thank you for your prayers and support! We love you all!

More Suprises...

So this month isn't getting any better. This weekend Rick and I were excited about not having to worry about too much and just spend some time together. Well, I've learned that if you plan for something it usually doesn't end up happening just the way you plan, usually it's the opposite. In fact, this weekend went nothing how we had planned. I woke up on Saturday with a really weird stomach ache. Thinking that it was just my normal stomache ache that I get every once in a while I thought nothing more of it. So Rick and I went down to Redmond Lake to go Pike fishing. Well, when we got home my stomache started to hurt really bad so I just went to bed hoping it would go away.

I woke up Sunday morning too sick to go to church. Rick went to sacrament meeting and then came home to find me unable to move because of the stomache pain. We called his dad and he told us that we should go into the clinic. (Another Sunday tradition this month, take Michelle to the clinic) :) So we went to the clinic and the doctor thought it was just a normal stomache ache, but she took some blood tests anyways. She found out that my white blood cell count was high. (This means that there was an infection somewhere) So she told me that I need to have a CT done. At this point I'm thinking okay maybe tomorrow, but she said that the hospital is expecting me right now and I need to get down there as fast as I can. This really started to worry me because I had no idea why I needed to go down there right now and the doctor wasn't being very specific on why I needed to go down there right this very minute. So Rick took me to the hospital and by this time my stomach feels like it is being ripped apart. I do the CT and then I am told to wait while they call my doctor and then he will call me back and let me know what is going on. A few minutes later I get a call from the doctor saying that I need to go the emergency room right now to have an appendectomy and that Dr. so and so will meet me down there. At this point I was scared out of my mind and the rest of what the doctor said was a blur! I had never been a patient in a hospital before, this was only the second time that I had ever had blood drawn and I had never dreamed of ever having surgery and it all happened only within a few hours after we decided to go to the clinic.

While I was in the room waiting for the doctors to get everything ready for the surgery I kept making all the alarms go off because my heart rate was so high. They were worried I might be having heart problems, but I told them my heart was fine I was just scared out of my mind. They laughed and said that was understandable. But I still had to have a guy come in and put probes all over me to monitor my heart rate. They told me to take deep breaths, which is very hard to do in this situation, to help calm me down. Well, that didn't work so they finally had to give me sedative to help calm me down. I also found out that my uncle had just been released from the hospital in Salt Lake City on Saturday for the same reason I was in the hospital. I guess it must run in the family. :)

Another thing that was added into this crazy weekend was that Rick had two job interviews on Monday. So he wasn't able to concentrate on those very well. But mom drove down from Logan to stay with me sunday night so that Rick could try and get some sleep at home so he wouldn't be too tired for his interviews and so I would have someone to stay with me on Monday so I wouldn't be at the hospital alone. It was quite the adventure but at least I will never have to go through that again. And Rick's family doesn't have a history of it so he probably would have to worry about it either, thank goodness. Hopefully we won't have too many more suprises this month. At least not crazy ones like we have been having. Good ones would be very welcome, but I don't know how much more we can do this month. :) Hopefully April will be nice and calm. (But I'm not planning for anything this time).

Busy Month

So this month has been very busy for us. School has been demanding for Rick and so has his job search. He has applied at several places around here in Utah like Saratoga Springs, Provo, and Farmington. He has also applied for one out in Rifle, Colorado which is about 4 hours away from Provo. So now we are playing the waiting game. Hopefully we will have good news in a few weeks about where we are going to be living in a few months.

We have been able to have some fun though. We went bowling with my friend Katie and her son Avery, Rick went shooting, and we also took my sister Jenni ice fishing. We had fun ice fishing but it had it's consequences. My face got so sunburned that it swelled up so big that I couldn't see. We had to spend the entire morning in the instacare clinic on Sunday because we were worried this wasn't normal. But the doctor said that it does happen once in a while and gave me some medicine and within about 2-4 days i was back to normal. But we still had a great month.

Pike Fishing at Redmond

This weekend, Rick and I went to Redmond Lake to go pike fishing. Last year we caught 3 Northern Pike the entire year, but while we were up there this weekend, we caught 6 of them. I had never caught one before so when Rick hooked one he handed me the pole so I could reel it in. It was so much fun to reel that huge fish in. As soon as Rick handed me the pole it bent down so far that I couldn't keep it up. He told me I needed to keep the pole up and I told him, "I'm trying but I can't". I finally had to just walk backwards because I couldn't reel it in. It was so much fun. That day I caught 2 and a half fish and Rick caught 3 and a half fish. We had so much fun together. The smallest fish we caught was 23 inches long and the biggest one was 25.5 inches long.

Family Night

Last week for family home evening, Rick and I found these cute wooden toys at Wal-Mart and painted them. I painted the truck and Rick painted the helicopter. It was a really simple thing to do but we had a lot of fun painting them.

Christmas from Pennsylvania

A few weeks ago, Rick and I received our Christmas package from his family out it Pennsylvania. It was a little bit of an adventure to get the package from UPS because they didn't leave a notice on our door but they said the package went out for delivery that day. So we went over the the place the trucks go at the end of the night to drop everything off to check and see if it was there. The lady that helped us was so nice but she didn't think that the truck was back yet but she would go and check. About 25 minutes later she came back with our package. She said the truck just pulled in when she went back there so she dug through the entire truck until she found our package. It was so nice of her to do that for us because we were really excited to get our package and we really wanted it that night. (But if we had to I guess we would have waited, I'm just glad we didn't have to) :)

It was so much fun to call our family in Pennsylvania and open the package with them listening since we weren't able to go out there this year for Christmas. They gave us so many nice things and also a lot of fun things. We got several DVD, beautiful ornaments, pictures, a nutcracker, and several other things. We also really enjoyed getting presents from our niece and nephew, Christopher and Emily. Christopher gave Rick a really nice Eagles hat and Emily gave us little snowman angels with our names on them. It was so sweet of them. Our families have done so much for us and we love them so much! Thanks for everything!

Shooting Rick's New Gun

Yesterday Rick and I went up Provo Canyon to shoot his new gun. It was really fun to see Rick so excited about his new present. He had a smile on his face the entire time. While we were up there we also saw a bunch of wild turkeys. It was weird because they were walking all around us and weren't even scare of the gun shots.