The Good Life

Hello my peeps :D
All is well at the Wilkinson household. We're a few weeks into the semester and back to our normal routine. Nate's busy working, keeping up with his church calling, and keeping up with school. Me? I'm busy keeping up with school. I don't know how I got lucky enough to get out of those first two that Nate is busy with. :) I've taken up volunteering for the hospital here to build up my resume. I've been assigned to volunteer in the infection control department. Sounds exciting huh? Well, I'll keep you thinking those exciting thoughts. I'll start volunteering next week probably since I have to get tests done before I'm allowed to start volunteering. Nate has started an intramural soccer team...Team Nate. I'm just glad he didn't come up with a name like Team Edward...but I think he's more Team Jacob. The team won their first game 5-2! Of course I'm not playing, I just sit in the stands and freeze my butt off! Yes freeze! Winter has officially begun, and has seemed to skip fall all together. It snowed basically ALL day today. Anyway, that's the quick update for us. We'll try to blog again this month, but no promises since we don't have a very exciting life. We don't want to bore you!

California

It took us less than a week after finals to get out of Idaho and down to AZ. Then a few days later we were in CA! What can I say, it's not summer without California! We slept in, went to the beach, ate some delicious food, and I took Nate to some of my favorite spots. He finally got to see the Del. He hears about it all the time from my family since we'd spend every summer on Coronado since I was five, or however young I was.


We ate at Sammy's, one of my favorite restaurants because of their dessert...the messy sundae!! We went to the beach a lot. We're actually tan! I should say Nate's tan, I'm peeling. We went to a few different beaches. We went to my favorite one in Carlsbad, and then Pacific beach by Mission. Not my favorite. You'll always see some interesting people there. Don't worry, there will be another post on that whole experience.

My family went back to the site where Nate and I took some of our wedding pics a year ago and took some family pictures. I was a little sad that it looked different already! I guess that's what happens though, but it's only been a year!!

Oh the memories!

Summer buzz....

We're spending most of our 7 week break in Arizona, so I did the only thing that I could to help with the heat.

Before.

During (and my lovely sister Kristen.)

After.

Exhausted

So this is what we've all felt like around the Wilkinson house lately. We're looking forward to the end of school in a few weeks when we can sleep all day! Actually that's probably just me...

Well Hello

I figured I'd get this month started right by blogging. We had a wonderful break in between semesters in Arizona, and now we're back to the school routine. Nate and I have two classes together, which is wonderful because we can be study partners. As Nate would say, "What's studying?" He's been lucky to breeze on by these firsts few years of college without spending hours with study groups in the library. We both despise the library and try to avoid it. Actually, we both try to spend the least amount of time at school as possible. It's going to be hard to do this semester. We start our day off by being on campus by 7:20 and I don't usually leave till 5:00...they joy of having an on-campus job. Nate usually gets out of there by two. This semester has already been a joy, for Nate and I both. It's lucky we have two classes together or we'd barely see each other! I think Chloe is feeling a little deprived these days. When we're at home, she's always near if not laying on one of us.

While we were in AZ my mom organized a family photo shoot. It was a blast to spend that time with my whole family...it's hard to get the Yoder family all together with everyone's busy schedule. I haven't seen all of the pictures, but I love this one. I'm biased to black and white though. Look at those ridiculously good looking people.

I absolutely love this picture too because it depicts our personalities. Nate's being a goof...I'm cracking up, probably because of him...Kelsey is posed perfectly for the camera, such a model...Dad, "Where's Zeus?" ...Mom is looking glamorous, probably saying "Wait! My boobs aren't in place!" haha...Justin's his chill self. By the way, Nate ended up laying in poop. Oh his luck.

I miss the palm trees and sunny weather of AZ. I'll always be a Arizona girl.

Lake Powell

Every year my family and a bunch of friends go to Lake Powell for Labor day. I'm a little behind in blogging about our trip...here it is.

The Moyes's house boat the "Big Dog". You can see why it's named that.

My strange husband who doesn't know how to make a normal face for a picture.

So lady like...hahaha it's basically tradition to get a picture of someone in my family sleeping. Look at my mom's page for a picture of Justin snoozing on the ground :)


Some of the clan inside the Big Dog. We really rough it at Lake Powell.


The view from the top of the house boat.


This is how cool people were their swimsuits. Hahaha. It looks like Lily is Justin's kid.


Everyone loading up for our adventure to Dangling Rope.

I love Lake Powell.

The massive fishies at Dangling Rope. They must be on steroids.

Where we usually get ice cream or root beer floats. The weather didn't permit though.

I survived this week!

This week has been absolutely crazy!! I work for a department on campus that deals with off campus jobs, so this week we had a Career Fair. Even though I'm only a secretary, I felt the craziness of the week. Thursday was the actual fair, which is not a good day for me! I normally have class till 9:15 at night. So Thursday I started at seven and basically didn't get a break till 9:15! By the time I got home, I was exhausted. The fair went great! There were some grad schools there too, so Nate and I got some information about grad school from them. Man am I so intimidated of grad school. It's going to be intense! I can't believe that I will need to start applying soon. Time flies by so fast!

School is going great! I LOVE all of my classes, even though they're kicking my butt! On Wednesday we had a P.A. in dermatology come to the disease class that I'm taking. Since that is exactly what I want to do I was so excited to hear from him. Let me tell you though, there are some nasty skin diseases! I find it extremely interesting, he didn't talk me out of it :). I'm still keeping my options open though, since P.A.s can specialize in a lot of fields. He said that he diagnoses about two people a day with skin cancer. Scary!! People need to wear sun screen and take care of their skin!

Tomorrow Nate and I are planning on going snowboarding. It's the last day the resort will be open, and our first time going snowboarding this season. How sad is that! We lucked out and got free lift tickets from Nate's friend, so basically we have incentive to go. At least we'll use our boards once before the season is over. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of boarding tomorrow so I can post them on here!

All in all, life is great! I have the greatest husband. He just cleaned the kitchen today while I took a nap and caught up on some sleep. How wonderful is he?! I love him :)

Bye Bye Winter!!!

Ok, so I probably shouldn't be saying that yet, but it is getting warmer!! Most of the snow is melting, but freezing at night so were left with a lot of ice. Well there were some massive icicles forming from the melting snow from our roof so I decided to do something about it. I actually did minimal, I asked Nate to knock them down :) As the good husband he is, he listened. I had to document these massive icicles so here are some pics!

Something Random

I decided to be a creative chef today and actually try experimenting. I've been obsessed with pineapple lately, so I incorporated that into our dinner tonight. It's kind of a problem though, because I just found out that Nate isn't a real fan of pineapple...What's up with that?! So he might suffer through eating dinner tonight, I'll probably enjoy it. He gave me his consent actually so I can make it. Anyway, the real reason I wanted to blog was because I found a really cool blog site (? is that what I should call it). I was in the process of researching for homework and I came across this blog. It's getmeready.blogspot.com. All you LDS bloggers will appreciate it. Plus, there are a lot of awesome blogs liked on her site. I'm taking a disease class right now so I'm all about prevention and being prepared, but I don't know where to start. I skimmed through her blogs, and I was impressed at how much useful information she had. Check it out!

Our Christmas Break

We're back! So we'll update everyone what has been going on in our lives in the past month...we survived our first semester back at college as a married couple! One semester down...a few more to go :/ Once school was done for us, we packed up and headed to Spokane for Christmas. We were very lucky to have great driving conditions heading there and coming back! In between our traveling...not so lucky. A few days after we arrived in Spokane, more specifically Otis Orchards where Nate's parents live, it snowed about 2 feet in one day! Below are a few pictures that captured the monster storm!

Nate tried to get all the snow off our car, and get it out of the snow so he could go to work but Mother Nature just wouldn't have it. He got to spend the day with me :)

It snowed continuously throughout our stay, which was fun. By the time we left, I was ready for a change though. I had my first white Christmas AND it was our first Christmas together!! Definitely a Christmas to remember. Most of my time spent during the break was without Nate because he was able to work at the place he use to before we got married, which we're so thankful for! So I was able to spend time with all of Nate's family, who I all love to death! They were always checking on me and making sure I was doing ok...since it was my first Xmas away from home. One of their favorite past times is playing cards. I didn't grow up playing cards so I don't appreciate it as much as they do, but it's growing on me. I'm kinda competitive, so as long as they let me do well I'll like it, haha. Nate and I also had fun spending time with the cutest kids in the world, our nephew Dylan and niece Leila! Here are some pictures below of Christmas Eve.

Dylan unwrapping his Christmas Eve present...pajamas!

Leila showing off her princess pajamas

Leila and Dylan LOVED Chloe. Chloe accepted the love pretty well usually which surprised us. Every time Leila came to Grammy and Grandpa's house the first thing she would say was "Choe?". It was so cute.

So Rock Band is a pretty big deal in the Wilkinson family. We rocked out pretty often. Someday we'll start our own band.

Kristin looking pretty intense on the bass guitar, and Ryan rockin the vocals behind her.

Nate and I love this picture of Ryan. It was a "had to be there" moment to witness his vocal skills. More like screaming skills.

Kristen made playing the guitar look easy, she doesn't play lower than hard...I like sticking with easy.