The Best Year!!

Most of us don't remember what we were doing one month ago today much less one year ago, but I DO!!

We were getting married!!!

Tara and I have had a fun year together. We didn't ever think that our 1 year anniversary would arrive, but it's here!! We used to grit our teeth when people would say, "Oh you're still newly weds!" but now we've arrived and I couldn't be happier. Tara really is my better half and while I had no idea all of the growing we would do together, I love her more today than ever. I couldn't have found a better best friend and wife (and her family's not so bad either ;o). So to the girl of my dreams, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!

My First Deer [Contains Graphic Content]

I got a chance to go deer hunting this weekend with my Dad and his neighbor, Ralph. Ralph owns part of a 1600 acre ranch outside of Del Rio, TX and we headed down to have some fun. Tara and I drove down to San Antonio where we met up with my Dad and Ralph and then Tara headed on to her parents. We didn't get to bed until 1:30 that night and were up by 5am. We spent Friday morning watching some deer and touring the ranch. Saturday morning we all had our spots picked out, and after watching a buck for a little bit, I decided to take him at 7:31am. It took us another two hours to get the deer back to camp and cleaned up, but it was a lot of fun and a great trip to get my first deer. As a tradition in the camp, you get "war paint" (deer blood) put on your face when you get your first deer. I've had the opportunity to hunt ducks, geese, and rabbits, but this was my first deer. Below are pictures of the the deer and my war paint.

Snow!

Just wanted to share a picture of Scout loving snow in Texas. I know Tara's not happy, but at least Scout gets to use her coat. :)

Deck the Halls (well, just the one room...)

We put up our Christmas tree last night, since the living room was finally clean enough to be decorated ;). It was pretty darn exciting, we had to put the two parts of the tree together, and then plug in the lights. The tree is cute, I knew it was only 4.5 feet before we put it up, but I was still surprised at how short it is! But cute! It was fun decorating our first tree together. I know you're all dying to see how it looks, so here are some pictures! (you can also see our entertainment center that Marcus sanded down and we re stained together - the stain was darker than we thought it would be, but we still like it...)







And then here's a picture of the cute amaryllis plant that Marcus bought me. We got to plant the bulb and watch it grow, which I didn't think it would do, so we were pleasantly surprised by how nice it turned out!

Now introducing...

We got to have our ultrasound today. I was a little worried when the tech started because Aislinn and the tech said, "Oh there it is" while Tara and I couldn't make anything out. Luckily the baby was moving a lot and we were able to see it once she zoomed in. We got 11 minutes worth of video on a DVD!



He/she was very active and it was fun to see the baby moving. You could make out hands, the spine, leg bones, the stomach, and the heart beating. The heart sounded pretty cool (at 158 bpm for those of you who care). The craziest part was the size of the baby. Even with all the detail we saw, the baby is only 6.5cm! These sentences are longer than our baby right now!



I'm sorry we don't have clearer pictures but they're screen shots from the DVD of the ultrasound. Tara is 12 weeks and 3 days along and expected to have the baby on May 25, 2008. We're excited! Love, Marcus (and Tara...I had to hijack her account because I forgot my password)

Finally, a new post!

We finally rescued our camera cord from Mom and Dad's house, and now I can post pictures again! Here are some recent, and not so recent pictures:


One day I made the mistake of craking the window to our computer room while I was in there...since we were in the basement, the window was ground level, and the next thing I know, Scout has pushed the window all the way open and was trying to get in through it! I pushed her most of the way back out before pausing to take some pictures.






Next: Here's the picture of us with President and Sister Samuelson before graduation. I love President Samuelson, so it was super exciting that we got to meet him! Marcus tried to stand by him for the picture, but I made him move so I could...;)



And finally, here are some pictures of Declan after Gary and I were teaching him how to rock out...I gave them both fauxhawks, which Declan thought was pretty cool...

It's just sad...

So, Marcus and I went tubing yesterday, in New Braunfels. It was really fun, and not very crowded since school has started already. There were like, ten other people there, which is not how it usually is! Anyway, we had a lot of fun, especially Marcus, who had never been tubing on the Comal before, poor guy. But, we did suffer a tragedy while there. Before we got in, I was debating whether I should go barefoot, and risk hurting my feet on the rocks, or if I should wear my BYU flip flops and risk losing them, or worse, in the river. I finally decided to wear my flip flops and just be really, really careful with them. They've been on their last legs all summer, and I knew they could only last so much longer...I got them the summer before my junior year in high school, when we took Gary up to BYU, and have thus been wearing them (weather permitting) for the past seven years! And then they broke when I was thrown from my tube going over one of the tube shoots on the river! It was very sad. But now maybe Marcus will let me buy some new ones ;)

(this isn't the best picture, I had to take it with my phone, since our battery charger is still missing)

College Graduates!!

So, Marcus and I FINALLY graduated from BYU. Yay! Graduation was awesome, which I didn't think it would be...Thursday was commencement, with an excellent talk by Elder Scott. Marcus and I chose not to wear our robes that day, because we wanted to sit with our families, and we didn't want to have to wait with all the other graduates in the August heat ;). We had to buy our graduation robes, they decided to not rent undergraduate robes anymore, so if any of you ever need a dark blue cap and gown and are either 5'7 or 5'9, let us know...

Friday was convocation, which was much more exciting than commencement. Before graduation, we were able to go to the meet the president thing to meet President Samuelson and his wife! It was super exciting, since I love President Samuelson, a lot. We were a little eager, and were the first ones there, ten minutes early, because I was afraid there would be a line...but there wasn't. But still, we were the FIRST ones to get to meet Cecil and his wife! We also got to take pictures with them. Marcus tried to stand by President Samuelson, but I made him move so I could ;). Sadly, I can't post any of those pictures yet, because the battery of our camera died before I could get that one on the computer! Lame, because I got the rest of our graduation pics (well, the ones on our camera) loaded up. Of course it would die right before the most important one! But don't worry, as soon as we find our battery charger (amidst all the packed boxes that are extremely well organized...) I will put it up!

We lined up for graduation semi-alphabetically. They split us into an A-L group and an M-Z group. Marcus and I were glad to be in the M-Z group, so we could watch half of the alphabet go before us, and know what to do. Except, for some reason they switched the lines up, and Marcus and I were the second and third undergrads to get our diplomas! We weren't especially happy about that...we thought it was going to be more difficult than it actually was because they had given us little instruction sheets that made it sound super complicated. They had step by step instructions like about how to walk up the stairs and across the stage, and exactly when we should pause and smile at the audience.

Anyway, it's all over and done with now, and we are sooooo relieved to be done with school! I really wasn't sure the day would ever come, but it did! Yay for us!

Below are some pictures...hopefully one of the three other cameras that were taking pictures of us that day captured some better ones, but this is it for now...

Marcus getting his diploma

Right after graduation

With the cougar!

Not our child, but still a cute picture

The Milligans

The Rickers

It's fun, but it's scary...

I'm pretty excited to write this as I know I will laugh as much reliving it as I did the first time.

Yesterday for Tara's birthday, I took her up to Sundance for a ride on the ski lift as I I'd heard it was picturesque and breathtaking- little did I know how true that would be. Unknown to me at the time, the last time Tara took the peaceful 45 minute journey through the most gorgeous country in Utah she nearly had a panic attack.

Ten seconds into the ride it all came back to her. :) We hadn't put the safety bar down until the first few minutes into the ride and I thought she would die before we got it down. The lift takes you up really high up the mountain which wasn't as much of a problem as the steepness of the lift (up and down the mountain, although going down was worse) and the relative height off the ground.

I've handled plenty of panic attacks before but I thought my best efforts would fail until I just started laughing at her. That did the trick. Below is a video during one of the steepest descents of the whole ride. It was a little unnerving but if you can get past my nerdiness, you'll hear Tara breathing really hard.

Pictured below was my prize for making fun of her (ok, so she was scared)

Below is a picture from one of the awesome shots we got. Enjoy.

We also went to the rodeo and saw some ridin' like this...

All in all we had an awesome time (yes, Tara was a trooper) and can't wait to go again!

Just Some Stuff

I took my last college final ever on Friday! Yay! It was really exciting to be done for good...except they wouldn't grade it yet, since my professor apparently hadn't graded my last online assignment. Which I thought was silly because that wouldn't affect the grade on my test...it's not like the answers are going to change, you'd think they could just run it through the scantron grading machine, but whatever. And Marcus and I ate at THE WORST Mexican food restaurant in the history of ever. Seriously, after living in Utah for five years, we have drastically altered our expectations for Mexican food here, but today we hit a new low. It made us really sad, but reinforced our excitement to move to Texas in 20 days. In other news, the Princeton Review came out for 2008, and BYU was named the number one most socially conservative school (the most socially liberal school was, surprisingly, in North Carolina. Berkeley really needs to step up their efforts...). The library moved down on the list of best college libraries to number 6, which is obviously the result of my not working there anymore.

Here are some recent pictures. We had a fun cook out this weekend, until it started to storm, which, incidentally, has happened the last few times we've tried to do an outdoor gathering type of thing. We also had a fun visit from Lauren, but she couldn't stay for dinner.

Marc and Rob grilling

The Hadley's who live above us

The Bohon's who live next door to us

Marcus and me inside...not sure why he's making that face ;)


Also, Scout made a new friend of our sprinkler...she likes to drink from the hose when we let her, but the other day we saw her doing this:













Also, here are some pictures of my cute husband:

Somebody's Gotta Do It...I just wish it wasn't me!

We took our dog, Scout, to the vet the other day, to get her shots, some sedatives for the move to Texas, and because we suspected she had an ear infection. She's been swimming in some very questionable water, and had been shaking her head a ton, rubbing her ears against the house and fence, and occasionally yelping when we touched her ears. You can tell we are really good at putting clues together...

Anyway, the trip was pretty eventful...the vet is just across the railroad tracks, so we walked there. Scout was really good until the vet tried to stick an ear checker thing (that's the technical term for it) in her ears. Then she freaked out. It took three of us to try to keep her on the table long enough to get her four shots. By the time the vet was trying to show us how to treat her ears when we got home(more on that later), she was frothing at the mouth from all her thrashing. Did I mention that she is ridiculously strong? Side story: one time we were playing tug of war with her dog toy, and I lost my balance when Scout readjusted her grip. I was interested to see what she would do with me on the ground, so I just held on to the toy. She went ahead and dragged me half way across the yard, until I let go. So...she's pretty strong.

The vet told us that we would have to give her some ear drops every day for a week, and then once a week for a month. However, before we put the drops in, we have to stick our fingers down into her ears as far as possible to remove the 'gunk' that builds up thanks to the ear infection. That is probably one of the grossest things I can imagine doing, so I was quick to let Marcus know that could be his job. Until he reminded me that I'm not strong enough to hold Scout down while he does it...so it looks like I'm the lucky one that gets to stick her fingers into the dog's ear canal...try not to be too jealous.

Called To Serve

Today we went with Sarah, Ruth, and Aunt Rosie to the MTC, so we could see Sarah off on her mission to Kennewick, Washington. We had a fun morning with them, and then got to the MTC at about 12:30. Thanks to our awesome MTC connections (Marcus) we were able to get some second row seats reserved for the little program they have to welcome the new missionaries and their families before the final farewell. Marcus was also kind enough to arrange for Sarah to give the closing prayer, which she was thrilled about. While waiting for the meeting to start, we learned that missionaries in the MTC drink 400 gallons of milk PER DAY! The MTC has their own 300 cow dairy to keep up with all the milk demand! Just an interesting fact about the MTC that y'all can now tuck away for future trivia use. The MTC president gave a nice little talk (the same one he gave when I went with Lauren Schiess...of course, he has to speak three times a week, every week, so I can't blame him for recycling!)It was fun, and sad, to send her off, but she is pretty excited to go be a missionary.

Here are some pictures at the MTC - some of them are blurry...I don't know why.

Getting her tag put on


Admiring her new missionary tag






Her last phone call (with her old tennis partner ;)...





So, if any of you are interested in keeping up with Sarah on her mission, her address is:

Sister Sarah Ricker
Washington Kennewick Mission
8656 W Gage Blvd Ste 205
Kennewick, WA 99336

You can also visit her website at: www.sisterricker.com