Being Married Rocks.

So we had a pretty fun week this week. There was no school on Monday so we went on a little date for FHE to Outback. It was delicious. Then we got The Social Network from redbox and watched that. I liked it. I thought it was interesting and cleverly made. On Tuesday we went to the social security office and I changed my name! That was our one month anniversary of being married. We went to the BYU basketball game which is always fun to do but I wasn't feeling too well so we just sat in the chairs across from the student section. It was still fun especially since we didn't have to stand up the whole time. It was Jackson Emery night and he is my favorite. On Wednesday, we had the opportunity to go to Costa Vida and the Jordan River temple with some of our friends. After eating wayyy too much at Costa Vida, we headed to the temple. It was only my second time at the temple and it was really awesome. Thursday night Michael was gone at his Barbershop chorus and it was pretty lonely at home. I had planned to get a lot done but I just talked to my mom for awhile and played some scrabble on my ipod haha.

 I was so excited when Friday came around. I downloaded a new To-Do list app and so I got all excited to get stuff done before the weekend. We stayed on campus to finish a lab and some homework that were both due Monday. Then we got home and finished two homework assignments that were due on Saturday and then I cleaned the bathroom and tidied up our room while Mike cleaned the front room. We were having some people over that night to play games and my brother requested chocolate chip meringues for the treat haha. So as I made those, Michael did the dishes. On Thursday I had found out that one of my very best friends from when I was 10 years old was now in Provo and so I invited her over too. It was so awesome to see her. There were 6 of us and we played fastrack, one of our newest favorite games, and hand and foot. It was so much fun catching up and playing games.

Jamie, Zach and Me after about 9 years...

Chocolate chip meringues. so delicious.

We stayed up way past our bedtime until 1:30. But on Saturday we got to sleep in. We hung out all day and relaxed together. It was so awesome. We got our wedding pictures back so I spent quite some time looking at those. We had planned to go ice skating with the Bertoch's and Whitney and Erik that night but when we got there it was super crowded so we left and went to Nickel City to played all these arcade games for nickels. We found some pretty fun games there to play. Afterwards, we went to Farr's and ate some delicious frozen yogurt. I am dumb and forgot to take pictures at either of these places :(

Church today was so good like always. And Sunday has been so awesome again. I love relaxing all day with my hubby and eating delicious Sunday dinners. Tonight it was beef stew and homemade bread. I'm soooo full.

Ready to start another week, at the end of which we'll be going to Las Vegas for Mike's first barbershop competition! Woohoo. Hopefully this week will go as fast as last week did.

Husband and Wife at last!!

Well... we've been married for three weeks now and after a week of honeymoon, a week of family and receptions and a week of unpacking, moving, decorating and shopping for our new apartment we are slowly getting used to the married life. We love it though. A lot. Here's a little bit about our wedding/honeymoon/receptions..

December 18, 2010
Best day ever. Seriously. Everything was perfect. We arrived at the temple an hour before our sealing and went to go change and get ready. We were blessed to have a full room of people that love us in the temple and a lot of family waiting for us in the waiting room. When we came out of the temple we were greeted by many of our closest friends and family and it was really just perfect. We are so grateful to everyone that came to support us and share the most special day. Taking pictures was pretty cold and my dress got soaked but that couldn't have got me down. We had so much fun with our amazing photographer Ashlee (you can see her blog here; she has posted one wedding picture with more to come soon). After getting the keys to our room for the night, we went to Wendy's before our reception. Our reception was beautiful. Our family and friends did an amazing job at decorating and making everything perfect for us. We had a photobooth at our wedding and it was so much fun. My sweet new husband and some of his friends from his Barbershop club sang to me before we cut our cake. We even had Michael's brother who is serving a mission in Brazil there :)

Here are some more pictures from our perfect day:

Our Honeymoon: Huntington Beach, CA 

Our ENTIRE 11 hour drive was rainy and dreary. As was most of our week in California. Some of the people at the hotel who have lived in CA for many years said it was the longest storm they had ever seen. Awesome. 

This is the amazing view from our hotel balcony thanks to my dad who hooked us up with an amazing deal at the Hilton. Luckily it was still pretty in the rain...

On Thursday, we finally got some sun and we went out on the beach!

It wasn't too windy but we did a little kite flying.

On Friday morning we woke up to this... a beautiful sunny day to send us back to cold, snowy Utah.

Bye California...

We had a really special opportunity on Tuesday to go to my best friend, Chandra's, wedding. All our prayers were answered that it would stop raining just long enough for their pictures. It was beautiful. 

Best Friends :)

So happy for my second family.

Whitney is next!! Her and Erik just got engaged yesterday! :) :)

No longer the newlyest weds :( 

Our Christmas "Break:" 

Christmas Eve: 10 hour drive including a stop in Vegas to some really last minute shopping, arrive home at 11:30 PM, open presents from UT reception, pack, go to bed

Christmas day: wake up at 7:30, flight to WA at 10:45, arrive at noon, skype with Jeremy in Brazil, 5:45 PM Tristan and Jana arrive (who also just got engaged on Christmas Eve :)), presents, games, movie

Sunday: church, lots of games, great food, lots of it, hot tub, another movie

Monday: set up for reception all day

Tuesday: reception #2, presents, try to fit all presents in suitcases, late to bed again

Wednesday: wake up at 3:00, drive to airport, attempt to get all 8 bags through the airport to the Southwest counter, arrive in Texas, surprise Mike (father) with Michelle who decided to fly in to help with the reception and see her family, shop for next reception, drive 3 hours to Brownwood, do more preparations for reception, games

Thursday: reception #3, presents, movie

Friday: finally able to relax, went golfing but left early because it was too cold, pizza buffet, games all night, watched the ball drop and went to bed

Saturday: found lots of games to play, Grandma's fried chicken, more games! 

Sunday: church, packing, drove to Dallas

Monday: flew out of Dallas, arrived in Salt Lake, went to eat with Zach, unpacked, tried to prepare for school the next day

Our apartment decorations thanks to the Morgans (handiwork of Kayla and Michelle) :)

All of the Morgan family on Skype together for Christmas :)

Christmas with my family.

Our MV reception looked SO good thanks to my wonderful mom and dad and family that helped out.

Michael found all the games his family owns haha

Look at that form.. yeah, that's my husband :)

My amazing (lucky) drive which let to a par for this hole.

I'm going to stop now because I'm sure you get the idea that we had quite the busy week... 

Classes so far are fine, no big homework due yet. 

Church today was so good. We are in a married student ward so our whole ward is young married couples just like us, with a few kids scattered here and there.

Back to school tomorrow! whew.. that was a long post. Hopefully I'll keep up better so next time it won't be so much.

Sister Elizabeth Jean Watson!!

Even though we couldn't go spend Thanksgiving with my family we still had an awesome day! The day before thanksgiving, Liz's call got to Provo but she was in Layton for the week. We got it from the mail for her and since we were going to Ogden for Thanksgiving, we decided that we'd take it up there on the way to dinner and open it then. 

After we got everyone on Skype and the phone, she opened her call and guess where she is going!?! Kennewick Washington Spanish speaking!!! I am so excited for her. That's why she was put in our room freshman year, this little Alabamian needed three Washington roommates to prepare her :)

She leaves March 2nd and We're so excited for her! Except I don't want her to leave me :( But I know she will be the most amazing missionary and Kennewick is so lucky to get her. After a lot of hugs and congratulations we had to go on to my Aunt and Uncle's house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving was so fun and delicious. I got to see my cousin's families that I hadn't seen in a long time and Michael got to meet some of my extended family. And of course the food was delicious! Thanks Aunt Deb :) We got to sit at the "un-married table" for the last time!

After dinner we watched How To Train Your Dragon, which I will have to finish at another time because I fell asleep, oops. Then we watched the Cowboys lose to the Saints :(

On the way home, Michael FINALLY let me listen to Christmas music! And then we watched Elf because Michael had never seen it, crazy I know. On Friday, we were going to go shopping but I don't think Michael really wanted to go and all my girl friends were gone so instead we just sat around all day and did practically nothing. At around 6:30, we decided we needed to get out of the house so we went to see Toy Story 3 in the dollar theater! It was so cute and funny and we loved it. On Saturday morning we had a delicious breakfast and then we watched the BYU vs. UTES game that was good until the 4th quarter. I still cannot believe that we lost... Oh well.

Michelle and Clark invited us to go up to Clark's family's house to play games. We played Werewolf which is kind of like Mafia but with different and more characters. It was really fun and some funny stuff happened. Overall, it was a very fun weekend. Even though we didn't get much homework done..

Countdown:
9 days of school
2 papers
1 test
5 finals
20 days until the wedding! ah... :)

Scariest drive of my life

So Michael, Zach and I decided that we wanted to drive to Washington for thanksgiving to meet our new nephew Declan and to see the rest of my family before our wedding. We had been checking the weather all week to make sure that we would be able to go and it was looking good up until yesterday, the day before we wanted to leave. Last night we were getting all kind of weather warnings from people that we should think about cancelling our trip due to a big storm that was coming. But we had heard that it wasn't supposed to hit Provo until late tonight so we decided that if we left early enough, we would be ok. So we got up and out the door by 5:15 AM. We said a lot of prayers and we headed off. The first three hours of the drive were great. The roads were clear, the sky was clear, it was perfect. We had just passed through the long stretch of nothing between Tremonton, Snowville and Burley, ID that my dad was worried about when it started to get a little scary. I saw many cars that had slid off the road so I made Zach drive because I am a total wuss when it comes to driving in the snow. He started driving at about 8:30 and within about ten minutes the roads were completely covered and the snow was coming down. Soon after that we lost a windshield wiper.. Luckily it was the passenger side. I would consider this a tender mercy. This is what it looked like out our windshield.

Notice the spot on the windshield that wasn't getting cleaned.. At about 9:30 we hadn't come very far and we were stopped on the road. After talking to some other drivers we found out there was a jack-knifed semi about 6 miles ahead of us that they were working to clear up. We sat for about an hour and played games and talked about our options. After talking to the very worried parents we decided that since the blizzard went on for the next 200 or so miles of our trip, we would have to turn around and head back to Provo. At about 10:30 when the traffic started moving again, we turned around to head back the other way. 

Soon, we were the only ones on the road that we could see and we could not really tell where we were going. At one place, the visibility was so bad that we couldn't see anything outside our car in any direction. We stopped completely and tried to look around. We thought we saw a big sign up ahead but it turned out to be a semi truck. Some cars passed us so we decided that maybe they could see better and we should follow them. After a little bit they took off and left us in the dust, since I wouldn't let the boys keep up with them. Which is good because about an hour later we saw one of them turned around on the other side of the freeway.. So with no one to lead us, it looked like this..

I don't know if you know this but from Burley, ID to Tremonton, UT (an 80 mile stretch) there is almost nothing. There was one city in the middle called Snowville which is right on the border. Michael's mom tried looking for hotels in Snowville since we were thinking we'd have to stop and wait for the storm to blow over but there were none.. We found an exit to take about 38 miles from Snowville to fill up on gas. The gas station was closed though so we got back on the highway praying that we'd at least make it to Snowville. Since there wasn't anything in Snowville we were hoping that we could make it to my uncle's house who was the closest relative we had. But in order to do that we had to make it to Tremonton, which was about 75 miles away! It would take us hours to get there. Sometimes, the visibility was so bad that Michael had to steer from the passenger side of the car because Zach couldn't see at all. Sometime during this zero visability stretch of road, Zach got tired and we decided that there is no way we could stop and switch drivers. Michael decided to give me a heart attack by climbing over him and switching drivers while moving. They did it pretty successfully and were quite proud of themselves. After a very stressful stretch, we made it to Snowville, population 177. We pulled into their only gas station and I get out of the car to find this. 

That would be our gas tank door open and the plug sitting on the back of the jetta. We had just driven 40 miles in 20 MPH winds and snow with this sitting on our car. This was one of the many tender mercies we witnessed on this trip. This is another picture of our poor car in Snowville.

We had heard that since the storm was coming with us, that Snowville was supposed to start getting better and that we'd be out of it by Tremonton. We hoped that this was right and we kept going. Half-way between Snowville and Tremonton we could see the road again!! Yay!

And even though we hated those stupid semis that would fly by at 60 MPH and spray up all kinds of snow in our faces, they were pretty handy to follow since they carved a good little track in the snow. Although I was quite anxious about following so close. Many times throughout the trip we would have to go out through the sunroof and reach down and get all the ice off our one wiper blade. It was very cold but also very effective. Once we hit Tremonton (I think) we were out of the storm! We decided to race it back to Provo. The biggest relief was seeing the blue skies ahead.

After 12 hours of driving (it usually takes about 13-14 hours to drive to WA), we ended up right about where we started. 

I'm really glad that I had prayer to get me through this trip. Heavenly Father definitely looked out for us and helped us get home safely. I'm glad the the companionship that I had and that the boys were such good sports about me telling them to slow down every 30 seconds.

I'm sad that I won't be at home for thanksgiving this year but I am really glad we made it safely back here. But after a long, stressful day I am going to bed. Only 24 more days!! :)