Balderdash Blues

Andrew and I ventured over to our friends house last night to help celebrate Luke's Birthday!  At the end of the night we decided to start a game of Balderdash.  Now deep inside I recalled the time we played this game at the Sprouse's house as a Youth group. Kerstin and I were partners and were not very good at coming up with definitions...so we decided to just keep a couple of the cards with us and copy some of the REAL definitions to other words for the word that was being discussed that round! It helped us out just a little bit!  But, I vowed right then and there that I would never play that game again!  I just was not good at it!  Well over 10 years later there I was sitting in a Living Room with 5 other people saying, let's play that one!  Which one? I wondered?  Oh no....that one..BALDERDASH!!  I was stuck I had no way out!  I didn't want to be the Party Pooper that every party has...so I decided to not reveal my uneasy feelings for such a game and went along with the crowd and played.  The first word was given...the definitions were written...laughter was shared...and then we picked which one it was going to be!  Low and Behold....I choose the right definition!  I got to move TWO places. The thought crossed my mind...maybe within the last 10 years or so, I have become better at this game. The second word was given, the definitions were written....laughter was shared....and then we picked...I did not pick the right definition and no one picked my definition....I stayed right where I was!  To make a long story short....After 15 rounds I was still right where I was after those two moves I made for the very first word!  No one ever picked my definition...even though I used my trick that I did with Kerstin so many years ago and just wrote down real definitions but with different words.  Still no one picked mine.  And I never got the right one!  Oh dear!  I realized right then and there that I still was very bad at this here game and I should most likely never play it again!!

Fortunately, it was still TONS of fun!  It had been a long time since I had laughed as hard as I had last night!  And, Andrew won the game!  So I may not have won, but at least Andrew did!   

Life in Rexburg

Things are going pretty good here in R-town USA! We are getting use to the cold, and lucky for us it has so far been a very mild winter!  It did get down to -19 degrees with the wind chill factor making it  a brisk -35!  Whoa!  That is cold!  I didn't mind it at all because that caused school to be CANCELED!  Gotta love those "snow days"

School is going quite well as well.  My goodness 2nd grade is tough!  You gotta keep those kids busy!  They keep you on your toes that is for sure~  But you gotta love 'em too!  They say the cutest things.  I told the kids that they need to be very creative on their Valentine Boxes and one of the kids came up to me the other day and said, "Don't worry Mrs. Walker, I am going beyond creative on my box.  It is going to awesome!"  Then there was the time that I asked one of my students if their phone number was 359 oh 8 oh 9.  And he said, no Mrs. Walker it is 359 ZERO 8 ZERO 9!  Gotta love those kids!

Andrew and I are enjoying our time here. We are making some amazing friends and just have a blast.   Remember you can also always visit us at

web.me.com/thewalkerworld/family 

Craft Fair

Andrew and I were in our very first craft fair, and maybe even our last!  I have always wanted to be in one and now it has come to past.  We sold my magnets that I make and tried to sell other things as well!  But the magnets were the only things to sell!  It is okay, because we made all of our money back that we spent on making the things and then we made a few extra dollars as well!  But the most exciting thing about it was the fact that we got our first potential customer for SLIDE Productions.  That is our Video Slide Show company!  We are way pumped about that!  It was a fun experience and we enjoyed our day at the Crafts Fair!

For more pictures go to the following link:

Pictures from the Craft Fair and other things

HALLOWEEN

Andrew and I are way into CSI. Our favorite is Las Vegas, but we are also lovers of the New York series! We watch it almost everyday due to SPIKE TV. Dang cable. It is okay, we are always working on something else while we watch TV, so that makes it ok! We are being productive. At anyrate, this yea for Halloween, we decided to incorporate our love for CSI into our costumes. For that reason, Andrew was the CSI agent and I was the CRIME scene. That's right, I got to go as a DEAD

person! It was pretty scary! For Ariana and Spencer's costume party I went as a person who was killed by her drunk husband. He came home, woke me up from my sleep, beat me up, shot me in the head, and threw me down the stairs. See pictures below. For the actual day of Halloween and I got killed while I was out running. A guy attacked me and strangled me to death! I had some pretty bad bruises on my arm. But, all in all....they were great costumes. Andrew made his badge all by himself. He was so proud of himself. He is so creative! Happy Halloween!

For more pictures go to the following links:

Pictures of Ariana and Spencer's Costume Party

Pictures of Halloween Night and other things

Yellowstone with Mom and Dad Walker

October 3-5

This was a weekend we were really looking forward to!  Our first trip to

 Yellowstone.  Mom and Dad Walker were taking 

us with them to their mini vacation to Yellowstone!  What a fun time we were going to have.  They picked us up in Rexburg on Friday afternoon.  They were our first family members to see the completely set up apartment in person!  (Ariana and Spence

r saw it when it was all still packed up and Richie saw it via SKYPE) But anyways, off to Yellowstone we went.  We of course had to stop at the Montana sign!  This was our first time in Montana!  How exciting!  That night we ate at an ok restaurant and then just hung out at the really

 nice hotel.  One thing that I love right off the bat in West Yellowstone

 is they have all these Buffalo statues decorated differently!  Andrew and I 

had fun taking pictures at ea

ch one!  They even had a little baby one inside of the lobby at our hotel!

SATURDAY IS A 

SPECIAL DAY IT IS THE DAY WE GET TO GO TO YELLOWSTONE!

Whoo hoo!  It is time to go to Yellowstone!  We were so excited to see all the different animals and Old Faithful!  Oh by golly, I couldn't even handle it!  we were in the park for about thirty minutes before we saw our first bison!  We of course freaked out, along with all 

the other twenty cars that had pulled over to take pictures.  Little did we know that we would see plenty more bison as 

the day went on! In fact we saw so much bison that we didn't even stop for it anymore!  We just drove on by!

The geysers were really fun to look at.  All the different ones that were there.  But man did some of them smell!  We of course saw old Faithful!  It was about two minutes later then what they had told us, but it is okay!  It still went off!  And wow was that amazing!  We even got to see a BLACK BEAR!  Apparently it is getting harder and harder to see Black bears at Yellowstone. We saw one our very first day we were there.  It was a great time!  But even cooler than the Black bear, we saw a BALD EAGLE flying high in the sky!  That was impressive!  That was my first time seeing one of those!  Our Nation's Bird...right there!  Awesome!  

Well that night we went to Yellowstone at the IMAX!  Whatever you do, please save your money and never see this film!  We were not impressed.  That night we just hung out in the hotel and ate some nice steaks and ate some wonderful baked potatoes!  Thanks Mom and Dad!  We had such a fun filled weekend!  It was neat to see such a beautiful park and spend time with family all in the same trip!!!  

For all of the pictures check out the following links:

Pictures of trip 1

Pictures of trip 2

Hospital Fun

Andrew got to be doctor Andrew for  day as he flushed out my IV at home! Crazy!

Hey there everyone! I just wanted to first say how much I am thankful for all of the prayers that were offered in my behalf. Andrew and I have had some trying times so far here in Rexburg all dealing with my Health! I just wanted to take minute and inform everyone what exactly is going on so you can continue to pray for me and know what you are praying for exactly! We have only begun our journey down this road of getting Margie healthy again!

As some of you might know I have what is called Diverticulitus. What is that you ask? Good question, here is a good definition....

Diverticulitis is a common digestive disease particularly found in the large intestine. Diverticulitis develops from diverticulosis, which involves the formation of pouches (diverticula) on the outside of the colon. Diverticulitis results if one of these diverticula becomes inflamed.
So basically, my colon does not work too well. I was diagnosed with this about five years ago and the doctors were amazed because I was so young! It usually appears in people older than 50! Somehow it made it's way into my body!

Well, lucky for me...it came back! While Andrew and I were traveling up to Rexburg, I started feeling really sick. We went to an Urgent Care there in Utah and then gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way. It helped for a bit. About five days later, I was still in pain and I was still getting a fever. It didnt help that I wasn't RESTING. Against everything Andrew told me to do, I kept getting up and tried to help move into our apartment. Well, after a few days of getting the fever, I had had enough! We went to the Urgent Care in Idaho Falls and they diagnosed me with an even severe case of Diverticulitus than I thought I had. They were actually surprised I was not in even more pain than what I was. Apparently, one of the pouches had gotten so infected it put a hole in my colon and was now leaking into my body! Yikes! That does not sound good at all! Luckily my body was doing a REALLY good job at keeping the infection contained in one place. GO WHITE BLOOD CELLS!! They even built a wall around it! I love my body! Well, they of course admitted me to the Hospital across the street. Where they gave me antibiotics and morphine. Gotta love the morphine! On a side note, I do not like getting my blood taken or having an IV in me at all! I tend to faint when these things happen! So imagine what I was like, when it took them 4 tries to find a vein to take blood, 3 tries to find a vein for an IV for the CT Scan, 2 tries to find a vein for IV in the Emergency Room (I wish they would have just kept the CT Scan IV in), 2 tries to take blood from me in the morning, 2 tries for the blood culture, and then 2 tries for the IV they had to put in me at the Short Stay hospital. Needless to say, my arms are not looking very good right now. The good news is, I did not faint once. I didn't even get to the feeling of fainting. My ears start to ring, and I know I am about to go!!! Andrew was great during all of this. It helped that we were able to watch Brian Regan, CSI, and the Olympics during all of these needle pricks! My favorite was the time the nurse was taking my blood for the blood culture during the 4x100 relay for the men when we came from behind and beat FRANCE! The nurse was watching the TV more than my arm, but that was ok! Hello, it was an amazing race and he knew what he was doing!

After all is said and done, I was sent home from the hospital on Tuesday. Good thing too. I was getting really tired of Chicken Broth and Jello! I have to go back in a couple of weeks for surgery. They are going to remove the part of my colon that is infected.  ted. I am not sure how much of it they are taking out, but still. It is so weird to me that they can even do this. They cut out the bad part of my colon and then put the rest back together. Insane! Needless to say, I will be living with a SEMI-COLON for the rest of my life and I am okay with that!

We will keep you posted on the date of the surgery and all that jazz. Thank you again for all of your prayers. I will continue to need them. They surgery takes three weeks to recover from! Not fun! 

I love you all! And here's to a semi-colon!!!

Our trip to Idaho

July 28th---

Early to rise, we start packing up the truck!  Mom and Dad were there to guide us in the process and we also had Jose and Paco.  About two hours later the truck was ready to go and so were we.  So, after saying our final "See you laters" to the Hillmans and Mom and Dad we were off into the wide blue yonder.  Our first stop was in Lubbock, Texas.  We were on a time crunch due to thefact that we had to get there for our Open House that started at seven.  Just as luck would have it, we missed one of our turn 

offs and that caused us to get there at 7:00!  Yikes!  My dress alone took 20 minutes to get into! However, we still had an enjoyable drive up there after seeing all of the windmills that are now dotting West Texas!  When we got to the Davis' we ran in, we said our quick hellos, took showers and got dressed! We were out meeting the crowd at 7:45!  Not too bad!  It was an extremely enjoyable night.  Andrew met my Lubbock family and friends!  It was so nice to see everyone again!  My goodness...Lubbock has such a place in my heart!  I love it!

July 29th---

Tour of Lubbock will begin!  First off, we saw Shanna's new home!  Then we went past all of the houses that I had lived in!  I was surprised I even remembered how to get to them. Then we went to the Institute Building and chilled with Brother Merrill.  Then off to Tech!  I hardly even recognized  the campus anymore! And they had all of these new apartments right off of the stadium. WOW!!  Crazy!  More tour of Lubbock....down SlideAve.  the Temple, 82nd street.  You know all of the hot spots in town!  No worries, after the dinner at Krista's that night we stopped at Bahama Bucks, so Andrew could get a feel for what goodness tastes like! It was  a great day in Lubbock!  It is hard to believe all the changes that has occured the growth it will continue to experience!

July 30th---

The majority of today was spent in the UHAUL!!!!!!!!  Oh for the love of no fun!  Luckily, we had our laptop connected to a stereo so we had some nice tunes to jam to!  The thing about UHauls is that they don't go very fast...even though Andrew liked to push the limit...often!  And the floor gets extrememly hot!  I almost burnt the bottom of my feet a number of times.  All in all we survived the trip....we left Lubbock at 7 in the AM and got to Salt Lake at 12 midnight!  Such a long day!  The highlight of the trip would definately be the pit stop at the Four Corners.  I have always wanted to go there and now Andrew and I have fulfilled that dream of mine!  It was really fun! It was little.  Nothing that I expected.  I thought it would have been much bigger than that.  But I guess the point where four states comes together can only be so big!  Andrew got a picture of us in each state and were on our way!  We are all about randomness and fun!  We also stopped at Billy the Kids grave in New Mexico..that was also exciting! 

July 31st---

Thursday was spent in South Jordan with Andrew's family!  During the day we were on our own because everyone else was at work. So we wandered around the new neighborhood next to the Townhomes and tried to get into as many houses as possible.  We were successful on two and then we also looked at

the Model home.  They were pretty nice.  At about 1:30 we got a phone call from Kate asking us to come get her.  She was right by the entrance of the neighborhood and could not drive her car anymore because her tire popped right off and rolled down the hill!!!  You heard me right, it popped off!  It did not go flat, it seriously came right off of her car.  The axle broke causing her tire to fly off.  She skidded on the road for a good 10 yards leaving a gash in the road.  We ended up chillin' with her by her car until her husband, Branson, could get there and then they waited for things to get fixed.  Branson's brother helped fix it!  Crazy the things that happen!  That night was full of food and games.  We introduced Life Twists and Turns to the family and they loved it!  So, as if Kate's wheel was not enough excitement for one day, that night was the beginning of a very long week.  This was the night that I started having severe stomach and back pains and a fever.  I tried so hard to get all those symptoms to go away. Andrew went to Wal-Mart at 4 in the morning to get me medicine, but nothing seemed to help!  So, needless to say it was not a very enjoyable night for Andrew or me. 

August 1---

We woke up and I was still in pain so we decided to go to the hospital.  Just as a expected, diverticulitus.  It has come back!  I got it four years ago, and now it has returned.  The Urgent Care that we went to was a bit shady, but we continued forth with what the doctor told us to do!  We went and picked up the antibiotics and decided to continue to Rexburg.  We had to get up there.  I was sick!  I still had a fever, but we pressed on.  That was the longest four hours I have ever experienced and I am sure Andrew has experienced as well.  We even were able to stop on the side of the road for me to throw - up!  Apparently, I was suppose to take the medicine with food...oops! We arrived in Rexburg at about 3. It was a good thing we came now, because they are closed on Saturdays. We would not have been able to move in!  Good thing we suffered through that trip!  Finally, we are here in Rexburg and we are in our apartment.  Andrew as so kind to get the mattresses out the very first thing!  He told me to go to sleep and he would take care of everything!  The Chapman's came over to help and they had the truck unloaded in no time.  That night was spent with me in bed and Andrew starting to unpack.  Oh goodness, not the way I imagined spending my first night in Rexburg...sicker than sick and just not loving life!  Luckily, I got better in time, after many fevers and a hospital stay.  And life is much better, even if we are still in Rexburg!!  =)  We love our life here and are so excited for all of the adventures we will have!  Oh goodness.  How much fun we will have!

We became the Walkers

Well, well, well! I figured since I am now married, it seems fitting to have a Blog! So, Andrew and I are now bloggers. Now you can really keep track of everything we are doing! The first couple of blogs will be us catching you up on the last couple of months of our life together. They have been jam packed!!!!

So, even though we are posting this on September 1st....we need to back up to where the Walkers began. June 21st was the first day of our life together. We gt sealed in the San Antonio Temple. Of course it was a dream come true. Andrew and I absolutely loved that all of our family and friends were there to help us celebrate. After the sealing there was an hour of picture taking outside in the hot San Antonio weather. Andrew and I both went away from that experience with sunburns. Luckily, we had hand held fans and water bottles for everyone. And, if you were not in the picture you were standing in the shade. It was fun taking pictures with everyone. The skirts for the bridesmaids were WONDERFUL (thanks you Elizabeth) And all the guys looked stunning in their nice pink ties! Once the picture taking was all said and done, Andrew left to take care of things at the hotel, and I went to Wal-Mart. That's right! I went to WalMart in my dress and everything! We had to get some pictures developed for the reception and I thought it would be an adventure to go to Wal-Mart in my wedding dress!!!

The reception was a blast. It was so nice to see so many of our dear friends and dance the night away! We were having so much fun, we didn't even realize we left 40 minutes after the end time of the party. Ooops. It truly was such a fun day. Everything went just as planned! Luckily, Andrew and I come from amazing families who helped out so much with EVERYTHING! Thank you so much!

Well, Andrew and I left around 8:45 and off to the Honeymoon we go! Did this really happen. Am I really married! So crazy to think about!