GRATEFUL

I love this time of the year. It always gives me a chance to look back and think about what has happened in the last 12 months. 2011 really has been a great year and I have so much to be grateful for! I was able to travel to southern California twice, to Chicago, Pennsylvania, and New York City. I also was able to receive my endowments in May. I don't think I ever could have been prepared at the time for what a huge blessing this has been in my life. With that I was able to be in attendance at the weddings of my sister and fellow Quad member Cami.
I was not able to go home for Thanksgiving this year which I was sad about since I also work Christmas this year. Fortunately, I have good friends that took me in and let me be a part of their Thanksgiving. I do have so much to be grateful though. I am grateful that my life has been so full and blessed with close friends. I am grateful for a good family that I am still close with even though we have all grown up and gone our separate ways. I am grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I could not imagine my life without it. I am grateful for the knowledge of a Heavenly Father that loves me and knows of my needs and trials. I am also grateful for a good job that not only keeps me financially stable but gives me the benefit of knowing that I am making a difference in the life of others.
I just want to share a scripture also that I found this week. I love it and it has helped me recently. It is 1 Nephi 18:20..."And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed the winds did cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm."
So true. It works! Happy thanksgiving!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

It has been so long since I blogged that I don't know if I could possibly get caught up. But I will try. Starting with today...since it's the most fresh in my memory. I woke up this morning and looked at the weather. It was the last day of 80 degree temperatures and I panicked a little. The rest of the week is supposed to be 50's and 60's and rain. The first thing I thought of was the Alpine Loop (on my fall bucket list). So I convinced my roommate that after class we should go and drive the Alpine Loop before the trees are barren from the rainstorms. The colors were so amazing! I loved every minute of it as was manifested by me saying "This is so beautiful!" about 100 times during the drive.
As part of one of the best fall's I will ever have I planned some fun vacations before winter hits and it will be nearly impossible. At the end of August I went to Southern California with some friends from my old ward. It was a fun vacation. We did so much including downtown disney for dinner, six flags, beach time, San Diego, and boating. A few highlights from the trip...I got my first bee sting ever. Luckily, I'm not allergic but I did learn an important lesson that it's probably not a good idea to sit on a boat all day wearing a swimsuit with a giant flower on the front of it. Also, six flags was rather eventful. I decided that that was a place that I was never supposed to go. I had no idea that anyone would be crazy enough to make a theme park full of the worst ideas for terrifying roller coasters in my life. X2 was maybe the most memorable. It was the first one we went on and probably the worst of all of them which made the others not seem so bad. Let's just say after dropping 175 feet in a skydiving position I lost my voice on the first ride which made the others a little less fun. Six flags may be on my list of things to never do again if my life depended on it!
A few weeks ago a group of friends from my current ward went to St. George to my roommate Sarah's house for the weekend. So much fun! We played glow in the dark hide and seek in a cave, went boating all Saturday, and ate good food starting with the Santa Queen which is probably one of my new favorite restaurants.
About a week ago I went to Chicago with Brooke to visit our friend Chris from BYU that lives there now. What a magical city! It is beautiful and the architecture is incredible. Highlights included shopping on the magnificent mile aka shopping heaven, seeing the Michael Jordan, Navy Pier, river taxi to Chinatown, the Chicago Art Institute, and good food including Chicago style pizza. We went to brunch at a little place called the Bongo Room one morning. I don't love pancakes usually but I had the most incredible flapjacks at this restaurant. The actual flapjacks were graham cracker crusted with a cream cheese and berry sauce over them. They were to die for. I may have to move to Chicago because I don't think I can get those anywhere else.
For October I created a fall bucket list and I have already started on it. I love this time of year! I am going to visit Melody in a few weeks in Pennsylvania too and I can't wait. I have always wanted to go to the east coast in the fall. I love life and 2011 has been a great year because I have made the most of it!

Traveling Pants

The Quad and I restarted our traveling pants around again at Cami's wedding in June. Here is the letter I sent out with my pants. Some of the content may be altered for public viewing :) Photos will be included...My ,

My Dearest Quad Members,
I’m sorry that I was such a bad start to round 2 of the traveling pants. It has been a busy but fun summer! Part of the holdup was the fact that I couldn’t find the right embellishment to add to the pants. But in an effort to keep them moving I am not going to add an embellishment this time and I will start earlier next time and add 2 embellishments. For the record though I was looking for something to represent the dark angel, my signature title, to add to the pants but it didn’t happen this round. I know that I am cheating a little but hopefully you can forgive me :)

This last month and a half has been busy. I have been working hard and playing hard with a significant amount of time spent at 7 peaks, the pool at my complex, and working on my tennis skills.

In July, Brooke and our good friend Stephen Steele came to visit me. Sooo much fun! I wish they both still lived in Utah. I actually wish all of you lived here! While they were here we went to Lagoon, my first time ever, ate a lot including a progressive dinner to 3 different restaurants, went to J Dawgs and Park City Outlets and even rode on the Ferris Wheel from the movie Charly. The pants apparently made me lose my mind a little because when we were leaving the outlets I couldn’t find my keys and realized that I had left them in the ignition with my car running for the whole 2 ½ hours we were there. How embarrassing. Fortunately I live in Utah and my car didn’t get stolen. In case you are wondering how much gas your car uses idling for 2 ½ hours it is ¼ tank. What a fun weekend!

I have also been attending all the concerts my little heart desires. We went to Stadium of Fire with Brad Paisley and David Archuleta during the 4th of July weekend and were able to get 2nd row tickets from 2 boys in our ward that work for the Festival that sponsors the concert. It was amazing! I was about 1 foot from Brad Paisley. It was a great night! We owe those boys big! The next weekend I went to Kenny Chesney, also great. Billy Currington and Uncle Kracker opened for him. It was a good concert! Last night I was able to go to the Tim McGraw concert with The Band Perry and Luke Bryan opening. I officially have a new celebrity crush on him. He is a very sexy man!

I also have recently planned all my trips for the fall including So Cal in August, Chicago in September, and Pennsylvania in October. I love my job for letting me have so much paid time off.

I guess this is the brief update on my life. It is fun, probably too fun at times when I don’t get anything else done. I love you all and I’m glad we have these pants to keep our friendship going. We are so lucky to still be such good friends. Yesterday the Vitamin C graduation song came on my Ipod when I was getting ready and the first line says “So we talked all about it, bout the rest of our lives. Where were gonna be when we turn 25...” Pause there, I had a mini crisis realizing that I was listening to that song going to my high school graduation and now I am 25. I am accepting the fact that I am old but I am grateful for everything I have at my old age...haha...and to still have such good friends. I love you all and am excited to hear about your adventures with the pants.

I am passing the pants on to Brooke as she starts school for her Master’s Degree I think she could use them to get her back into the swing of things and maybe to find a new man in Boise.

Love you all,
Merril
At Seven Peaks...my home away from home every summer :)

Melanie, Tania, and I at the Kenny Chesney concert. Oh and I think thats Kenny right below us...


Stephen, Brooke and I at Lagoon for my first time.


Brooke and I riding the Ferris Wheel from the movie Charly. It is in this great park called Liberty Park in SLC. That park is a little gem. It took us a little while to find the Ferris Wheel but it was so worth it. How magical!

Dede joined us for Saturday. We are at J Dawgs here and then we went to Park City and Thai Ruby for dinner. What a fun weekend! I'm so glad you guys came down to visit!

Let Freedom Ring

So my 4th of July blog post may be a little delayed but that isn't because there was nothing good to say about it. I was actually lucky enough to have a 4 day weekend from work. We had tickets to see Brad Paisley and David Archuleta at Stadium of Fire on Saturday night. We have some friends in our ward that work with the Freedom Festival. They called us 2 hours before we were supposed to be at the concert and told us they had 6 second row seats if we wanted them. Is that even a question? I spent the next few hours basically screaming and getting ready for the concert. The concert was so much fun! We were about a foot away from Brad Paisley twice. I almost touched him. This was my first time at Stadium of Fire and I probably won't be able to go again and think its good since I was so spoiled the first time! The fireworks were great too. Since I was in Canada last year for the 4th of July I felt like I had a lot of making up to do in celebration and I think this did it. What a great night!

Flirt Texting: The Winky Face ;)

So the other day a friend and I were discussing flirt texting. This is something that I am NOT good at but she brought up a good point that I thought would be valuable to share (especially those who share the same lack of skill in this area as me). She just said if you don't know what to say that is flirty just add the winky face ;) to the end of any normal text and it automatically becomes flirty. I think this is very valid. Think about the difference between sending "How are you?" and "How are you? ;)." It automatically becomes so flirty or "You are such a jerk" or "You are such a jerk ;)." I thought these were true words of wisdom and my life may never be the same ;)

A Quad Wedding

This last weekend I was able to go up to Boise for my friend Cami's wedding. On Wednesday night we had a little Bachelorette party for Cami with just our group of friends (The Quad as we called ourselves) from high school. As you will notice in the picture above we found some fun Bachelorette wear for Cami. She has rose colored glasses that say Bride-to-Be on the top. A necklace with a giant diamond ring on the bottom and a Bachelorette sash. We made her wear these from the beginning of the bridal shower to the end and Boise loved it! It was a fun night. We ate pizza and cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory, did some shopping, and went and saw Cami and Chad's new house. That night I also regained the traveling pants in my possession which I am particularly excited about!
A group pic of the Quad 7 years later. We're all grown up!
On Thursday morning, Cami got married in the Boise temple. We were all able to attend her temple wedding.
She had a reception at the Train Depot that night. It was a lot of fun. I love Boise and it was fun to have a reunion with all my girls. I'm glad I have such good friends that I have stayed in such close touch with. They are great!

Recent Interests

Summer is finally here. Yay! It is about time. Over the past few months of rain and misery (haha) waiting for summer I have found some new interests that I would recommend to anyone to try out...
Top Book recommendations
1. A Vintage Affair
2. The Giver
3. The Help

Top Music Recommendations
1. The Head and the Heart (introduced to me by Brooke)
2. Coldplay's new song "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall (I'm in love with this song)
3. Due West (I went and saw them in concert last night and they will be a big deal soon. I'm sure of it.)
4. Adele - 21
5. Maroon 5 -Hands All Over

I was going to add movies in here but I haven't seen any lately that I have loved. Besides Never Say Never of course. This movie may have been mocked because it is about Justin Bieber but it is actually very fascinating. The Royal Wedding DVD has also been a big hit in my apartment lately. Love the Royal Couple.

There you have it. My recommendations.

2011

It has been so long since I've updated my blog I thought it was time to give a little rundown of the year so far. It has been busy and fun! Here is a brief rundown of what I've been up to. In January I went to Boise for a cabin weekend with some friends from home. It was up in Garden Valley. We had a lot of fun and went snowmobiling. I even drove the snowmobile (which I wasn't going to do) but I did pretty well. The morning after I got home from Boise, my sister had slept over at my apt and I woke up at 5 am to my sister coming in my room and telling me to get out of bed because there was water everywhere. Sure enough our apartment was flooding. A fire sprinkler in our utilities closet had malfunctioned and was pouring water from the fire lines above. All the fire alarms were going off in the hallways. About 6 fire trucks showed up and it took them at least 30 minutes to get it turned off. As you can imagine this was actually terrible and since we live on the 3rd floor of our complex it flooded all the way through to the parking garage. What a disaster. This resulted in us being almost homeless for the next month and a half. I am so glad that is over. Fortunately, I had a trip to Disneyland with some friends from work scheduled for the middle of February. Nothing like the happiest place on earth! We went to California Adventure which was fun too. But I definitely do not like the Tower of Terror and do not understand why everyone else loves it!
We hoped to come to get a little winter sunshine, which we did (keyword "little"). It rained the majority of the weekend, but it was so much fun despite that!

We went to the Joshua Radin concert at the beginning of March. He is so great! Laura Janssen opened up for him and she is a really good artist too. I would look her up if you don't know her.

In March, my friend Brooke came to visit. We had a fun weekend shopping, eating good food, watching good movies, and catching up with some of our old friends and roommates.
At the beginning of this month, some friends in my ward and I went to the Jazz vs. Lakers game in Salt Lake. We had terrible seats which I will take credit for but it was such a fun game. The Lakers won obviously. This last weekend I was able to go to Declo with my family for my niece Brynlee's baptism. I can't believe she's so grown up. That was fun to be able to have a short little reunion with my sisters and parents. I love my family!
2011 has been a great year so far and so many more great things are coming soon. I will be moving to Orem in about a week and am excited for that change. There is a sweet clubhouse where I'm moving and I'm sure you will hear more about that. Also as a side note before I end this post. A group in my ward did a 3 month fitness competition starting in January where we were supposed to make a change to our body that we had been wanting too. We each put $5 dollars in and there was a male and female winner. I won for the girls after losing 10 pounds. Thanks. I was pretty proud of myself too. Until next time.