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

Things Poor People do for Fun

This past weekend we were hanging out with our upstairs neighbors, the Hadley's, and were trying to decide what to do. Marcus and I couldn't spend any money, for fear of overdraft charges, so we were trying to be creative. Someone came up with the idea of making paper boats and racing them in either the irrigation ditches by our house or the river/stream (I'm never sure what too call it...it's not quite big enough to be a river, but too big to be a stream) a little further from our house. Scout likes to cool down in the river/stream on our walks and runs, so we go there pretty often. Anyway, none of us really knew how to make paper boats, so after trying unsuccessfully on our own for a while, we looked up the directions on youtube.com. They were much more helpful, and we are all now pretty awesome paper boat makers...we also attached some pieces of foam plates to help with buoyancy and stuff like that.

Bret and Mican, with their boats:



Our boats: in case you can't read them, Marc named his the "HMS Irish Lady" and mine was the "U.S.S. Texas"



The race:



So, Mican ended up winning the race, and I can't really remember what the rest of the order was...near the end Marcus' got snagged by a tree and mine pretty much lost its shape, (so it wasn't a super successful race for the Milligans)and Bret's ended up escaping...but it was fun, although the water was super freezing...I think it's originally fed by melting snow, plus, it's completely shaded all day, so that might be why.

Anyway, it was fun so if y'all ever need a fun, inexpensive activity idea you should try it!

About those deleted comments...

While I'm sure its not as exciting as the scenarios you've all conjured up in your minds, the truth of the deleted comments is somewhat of a mystery. Best I can tell, its some sort of glitch. I receive an email each time one of you makes a comment and lately I've been getting duplicitous comments, e.g. I'll get one from Fiona and the exact same one from Zach while it was clearly written by Zach. It clears it self up in the end but I do get a few emails. Until then...

He's Sooooo Romantic...

The scene:

Marc and I are watching Full House. It's an episode where D.J. doesn't eat for like, four days so that she can look good in a bathing suit at a party with her friends...she wanted to look like the models in her fashion magazines. The life lesson, as presented by Danny, was that her friends loved her for her personality, and that was the reason they were friends with her, not because of how she looked.

At which point Marc turns to me and says "gosh, if I just went on your personality we never would have gotten married"

Thanks honey, I love you too.