college girl

Crazy last couple of days! I had the apartment all to myself last night. (kinda creepy) My room is slowly coming together, but I refuse to take pictures until the walls aren't so bare. My bed is crazy high in the air. Like "I use my dresser as a step-stool" kind of crazy high. My closet is way bigger than I thought it would be. In case you were wondering, if you are told to walk all the way to the bottom of the street to use the cross walk, do it. If you happen to cross in the middle, campus police will literally run straight at you, blowing their whistles like crazy. Not that I did this, but I did witness a group of students get chased out of the road by men in fluorescent vests with loud whistles.

The BYU Bookstore really should pay this girl I met today for being walking advertising. BYU flip flops, shorts, shirt, headband, earrings, hair clip, and bracelet. I just think that kind of dedication should be rewarded.

bad news

This week I've felt plain crummy. Kinda flu-ish with absolutely no energy. My mom dragged me to the doctor on Thursday, once we suspected it was my gall bladder. 2 years ago, when I first started having issues with my gall bladder, I had a scan that basically said my gall bladder wasn't performing ideally, but that surgery wasn't emergent. When we went to the doctor this week, they couldn't find the report for the scan, and the hospital was being super slow about sending it. Once the report came in, we headed to our general surgeon. (Yes. We have our very own designated general surgeon. 4 appendectomies in 2 years necessitates that kind of relationship :) The surgeon said that I had classic symptoms and that he was comfortable performing surgery without any extra testing. After discussing all the options, we decided extra tests weren't really going to change anything, so I decided to bite the bullet and schedule surgery for the next day, to give myself more recovery time before I move.

I strongly despise anything hospital related, so I was less than pleased that immediately had to head to the hospital for pre-op labs. I have terrible veins that are hard to draw from. Typically I drink about a gallon of water to make it possible to get a vein. I was at the point where eating or drinking anything, even water, caused pain, so I hadn't really had any water that day. Plus I wasn't anticipating this blood draw, so instead of putting me through heck, the nurses decided to hold off and draw blood when I got my IV the next day. I was so grateful for that.

We got to the hospital Friday morning, I got all prepped, and then we waited for ever for the surgical team to be ready. I don't know that anyone has laughed as hard as I did while waiting for surgery. We were having a good time.

See how much I just love IVs?

I was super calm all the way up until the anesthesiologist gave me something to "calm me down." I swear it made me more nervous and I was mentally freaking out as I got wheeled to the OR. For every other surgery I've had, I've been asleep before entering the OR. This time I was wide awake and had to climb on the surgical table.

I woke up doing super well. I had an appetite right away and didn't have any nausea. The nurses said I could hang out for a few hours, but I opted to go straight home, and walked out to the car before they could even bring a wheelchair.

I was worried that Day 2 would be more painful, but I'm still doing super great. So much less pain than before surgery. The surgeon said that my gall bladder was definitely chronically inflamed, but that he didn't see any problems in the surrounding areas. This news was so much better than if he had come to report that my gall bladder was perfectly healthy.

I'm so glad this surgeon was willing to listen to me and take a chance on surgery without making me get thousands of dollars of testing done first. I'm extremely happy to be recovering so well, without hardly any pain. I'm super glad to have Netflix to entertain me when I wake up at 4 in the morning because I rested so much.

party, party

Today we left our lovely hotel. Sadly, I did not get pictures. You'll just have to visit to see it for yourself. Really. Those fire hydrant red accent walls are worth the drive. The place was very clean, but extremely well, um, eclectic. We liked it. It had plenty of room for all of us, not usually the case with our clan, and I was really jealous of the owl clock and porcelain decorative silverware. We packed up and left for a DI trip. The whole purpose was to get a dictionary for a wedding present. My cousin is going to school to become an English professor so the plan was to get a dictionary, highlight random wedding-ish words and leave dollar bills on each page with a highlighted word. We got tons of blow up toys for the lake next week and made my grandma and grandpa meet us so they could drive up a game table the boys found. And of course we forgot to even look for a dictionary so we had to make a second trip.

Last week I saw pictures of a splash pad on Main Street, so the whole trip I was pushing for a visit. Owen loved it. Everyone else, not so much. It really was meant for small children. Plus it was insanely hot. Everyone was begging to leave, but we forced them to play in the water until 2:00 so we could hit up Sonic for a drink for the ride home. Everyone got a 44 oz. slush and we made it all the way to the reception in Provo without a single pit stop. Pretty remarkable, I think.

The reception was great. It was in my aunt and uncle's backyard and it was gorgeous. Everything looked great and the frozen yogurt was a big hit. We partied it up for hours. We made it home after midnight. 9:00 church was not very welcome the next morning. Congrats Taylor and Julie!

He was really bored. So he pretty much laid here and made annoyed faces.

this could be my favorite picture of all time. it is just so him.

we are a little bit redneck. we stuck my phone in the sunglasses holder so everyone could watch Grownups. favorite. movie. ever.

when finley gets ahold of the camera...

we went to zion

We went to Zion's today. We were going to hike the narrows, but didn't due to the flash flood warning. We had tons of fun playing in the river. Since we were soaking wet, no one complained of being too hot. We saw the fattest squirrels ever and witnessed 3 squirrels fight to the death (well not really, but pretty close) over a bag of food.

Asleep on the shuttle after some lady told him to shut up.

Owen accidentally fed a squirrel a Cheeto

Jumping off a rock into the river

She's kinda pretty, I guess

asleep. again.

nothing huge...

I'm feeling a tinsy bit proud today.::I have eaten breakfast 3 days in a row. Sadly, this is a big deal for me. ::I did 9 loads of laundry today. What will I do this fall when there aren't enough clothes to do a whole load of turquoise? Seriously, who has enough clothes for a whole load of turquoise? Right. Families of 8. ::I finished sorting through 8,000 pictures and finished the history book a whole month before my self-imposed deadline. ::I made a really exciting lunch and Owen acted like I was cooler than Darth Vader. Nothing huge, but enough to justify half-priced cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory.

a day at the lake

We went to Pineview Reservoir today. The best beach for just swimming is by far Cemetery Point. The boats aren't allowed anywhere near the shore and there are plenty of picnic areas. We had a blast. We swam for hours. When I got home however, I discovered a TERRIBLE sunburn on my back. I swear I have sunburned more this summer than the rest of my life.

Drew took an immediate liking to that monkey. We watched Better Off Dead for the first time this weekend. The monkey's name: Charles DaMar.

Sam wanted to be buried in the sand. Drew wanted to turn him into a merman and went to work on his tail.

He was really excited I guess

Chasing seagulls. Real mature.