A Trip to Paris!

Last weekend Cameron and I were very spontaneous when we decided on Friday to book a room at a hotel in Idaho Falls for Saturday night to Sunday. We had been completely stressed out and that week was particularly insane, so if we wanted any chance of making it to the end of the semester, we needed to get away. We heard about this awesome place called Destinations Inn, where each room is themed as a different place around the world. All the rooms looked nice online, but we were afraid it wouldn't be quite as nice when we saw them in person, and we were so wrong. We absolutely loved our stay there and would recommend it to anyone trying to relax. We stayed in the Paris room which we loved, but we also got to see several of the other rooms that were available.



This is Cameron standing on the draw-bridge in the entryway of the England room. Very cool.


This was pretty cool. We couldn't figure out where the bathroom was in this room(England), but then we found this awesome secret door behind the bookshelf that leads to the bathroom. Very sneaky.


Here's Cameron sitting on the edge of the tub in the Athens room. This room was a close second when choosing which room we wanted to stay in(except now that we have seen all the rooms we want to stay a night in all of them).


Me with my new friend in the Hawaii room. This one was really fun too. Tons of details and little things that made you feel like you were there. Even the floor was made to look like sand.


This room came with a massage table, pretty cool. And Cameron loved all the little water features it had.


This picture is pretty dark, but it is of a big reader board thing in the New York room. There is a mock-up of time square and they will make a personalized light up billboard with your name on it. The song New York, New York was playing over the speakers as we came in.


The rest of these pictures are of the Paris room we stayed in. It was absolutely perfect!


This is the view from our bed. It was up a few stairs on a raised balcony type thing. So this is overlooking the rest of the room. The rooms were huge.


I think this was one of our favorite parts of the room. Each room had this huge projector tv that you just pressed a button and it lowered down from the ceiling. They had a bunch of DVD's for you there, so we watched a movie and some of the Gonzaga basketball game.


This is the "Eiffel Tower Shower" in our room. It is this huge sculpture thing of the Eiffel Tower, but then it has a huge shower head at the top so you can actually use it.


I loved this hotel for all its little extra perks that we kept finding throughout the night. This was great. When we got to the room, they had a chilled bottle of sparkling cider and two pieces of cheesecake waiting for us. It was delicious!


I loved this part too(ok, so we loved all of it). This was our own personal Paris cafe in the corner of the room. We ate our Olive Garden dinner with sparkling cider in the wine glasses they provided for us right here.


Another great perk was the breakfast. At check-in you just tell them what time you want your breakfast and they will bring it to your door at the requested time. They just leave everything on the tray right outside your door so you never even have to see anyone in the morning, awesome. Here was our breakfast platter:


We had a great time here and it was exactly what we needed to re-energize ourselves for the last couple weeks of school.

Winter Semester 2009

Yes, it has really been almost three months since our last post. I have been thinking of something to do to update, but we are in the midst of both of our craziest and busiest semesters before we graduate and therefore we have done nothing but the following since the 1st of January and it will continue this way until April 10th, which is the last day of the semester AND the day we get to hop on a plane to spend the weekend in sunny Las Vegas! I can't wait till that day...

Hillary's life:
I am trying to graduate early(the same semester as Cameron will) SO this semester I decided it would be a great idea to take 21 credits and do my internship at the place I already am working. I spend about 6 or so hours a day in this building:


When I am not in classes, I have a great job that I work at about 27 hours a week, including every Saturday since I moved to Rexburg...wahoo Anyway, here is my peaceful work setting:




Cameron's Life:
Cameron was offered a job as a lab assistant in the Nursing Department and accepted that at the beginning of this semester so he currently has TWO jobs on campus along with working super hard in the hardest semester of the nursing program here. Here is a sample of his first job which is in the school's Health Center where he is a phlebotomist in the lab. He thought it would be dumb to have someone take a picture of him working so this is just an example of what he does and is not actually him:


Here is a sample picture of his second job in the Nursing lab. I was excited to find this picture because this is pretty much exactly how the lab is with the dummies to practice on and everything


I couldn't find a good picture of the building that Cameron spends all of his time, but because it is also the building where the testing center is, he is there MANY hours a day.

On Saturdays Cameron has his clinicals for the nursing program where he works 12-hour shifts at the hospital. Here is Madison Memorial Hospital, where he goes in before the sun comes up and leaves after the sun has gone down. We joke about how he never even knows if it is raining or snowing or is a beautiful sunny day since he is inside the whole day.


You may have noticed that I discussed our lives separately and that is for good reason. After long days of work and school(including every Saturday), we don't get to see each other very often and when we do, this is what we see:





Needless to say we are a little tuckered out by the time we get home and we usually end up just watching an episode of Monk and going to bed.

One Year Later and More in Love Than Ever

On December 28th Cameron and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary. I cannot believe how fast this year has gone and how much we have been able to do and see. Some of the highlights include:


January: Moving to Rexburg(well Cam moving,I was already here) and starting a new semester at BYU-Idaho.

February: Taking a weekend trip to Las Vegas with Nicole and Tyler to see Grandma Carole. We also got to see Blue Man Group while we were there...SO cool!

March: Trucking along in school(nothing too exciting that month)

April: Finishing winter semester

May: Cameron found out he got accepted to the Nursing program

June: Went to Island Park for the weekend with Jon and Michelle.

July: Went to Provo to visit family for the weekend

August: Huge cross country road trip with Nicole and Tyler. Saw places like New York, DC, Boston, Nauvoo, and much more.

September: BYU v. UCLA (aka the most fun football game ever!)

October: Cameron's 26th Birthday

November: Hillary's 21st Birthday. Thanksgiving in Spokane.

December: End of another semester, Christmas, celebrating our wonderful marriage together.


Since our anniversary was on a Sunday this year we decided to celebrate the day before. We went downtown and saw a movie and then went out to dinner. After dinner we walked around Riverfront Park and drank hot chocolate. It has been a great year and we are excited for many more to come.

Christmas 2008

We had a great Christmas this year. It was actually our first Christmas together as a married couple since we got married just three days after Christmas last year. We got to be home(in Spokane) for about two weeks which was really nice and gave us lots of time to hang out with family. Here are a few of the pictures that really sum up our vacation.

These first few are to show(and no pictures could really do it justice)how Spokane was COMPLETELY covered with snow. A couple times on our journey home we weren't sure if we were actually going to be able to make it all the way to Spokane, but we did just fine.










We stayed at my house this break and this is my whole immediate family on Christmas morning.



Older brother Cole(22)


Younger sisters Brooke(14) and Paige(17)


Cameron, Grandma and Dad eating dinner some night while we were there


These are pretty out of order...oh well. This is us opening our stockings on Christmas morning.


Lining up on the stairs ready to come see what Santa brought us



Another meal


We played a lot of Wii while we were home. This is us skiing.


Yes, Cameron IS that intense


Christmas day part 2. After we were done opening presents and eating a delicious breakfast at my house, we went over to Cameron's family's house to do it again(I love having another family (:



Scott got to shovel the driveway A LOT this Christmas and this just happened to be his styling outfit on Christmas morning when he was shoveling.


These last two are actually from Christmas Eve, but I had to throw them in here. It has become a tradition with Cameron's family in Spokane to have banana splits on Christmas Eve. This is Cameron's mom, aunt and grandma serving them up.



Playing games...Scott,Brett,Kyle, and Stefani


Overall we had an absolutely wonderful Christmas time and it was so nice to be home and have a break from school. We loved being with our families and also were TOTALLY spoiled by both families. We were sad to leave, but at least next Christmas we will be home for good!

What happens when you have a husband who is too nice...

Monday was Cameron and my first official day off from school for the semester. Cameron usually doesn't work when there is no school since he works at the school health center and there are no patients over the breaks. I however am still working for another week until we leave to go home for Christmas. So here is the story of how our Monday off school went: We found out we needed new brakes in our car and needed to do it before we leave this weekend, so we decided that we might as well do it on Monday. I had to be at work at ten, but I thought that we should just both go to take the car in and then walk down to my work since it was only like one block from the car shop. So we took the car in and they told us it would be about three hours and I was excited because that meant that Cameron would have to stay for that long to keep me company. So while the car was getting worked on, we were in my office browsing the internet, talking, and just passing the time. The car place called at about one to say that the car was done. The ORIGINAL plan was to have Cameron walk back and pick it up and go home for the day to read his book he had been excited about finishing over the break. Well... I BEGGED him to come back after he got the car and to stay with me for the rest of the day(I get off at 6:00pm). SO, being the amazingly nice and accommodating husband that he is, he said "sure, do you want me to get us some lunch while I am out too?" So Cameron went and got the car and grabbed some delicious Bajio for us and came back. Well, to make a long story... shorter, he tried as hard as he could to keep me company and still try to get a little reading done as well. Anyway, this is how the last two hours of the day were spent for Cameron:





I can't get the picture to turn the right way and it is from my phone, so not the best picture, but it is of Cameron sleeping on the ground in the storage room at my work. He grabbed both our coats to use for pillows and I found a little blanket to cover him up with, and he was fast asleep for the rest of the work day. So basically this whole post is to thank him for putting up with me and my crazy requests (like coming to a FULL day of work with me just to "keep me company")
Thanks Cam, I love you!

Thanksgiving and Birthday Festivities

This year we were able to spend Thanksgiving with Cameron's family(and a little with mine since they only live two minutes apart),but we stayed at Lovinger's house and did the main dinner stuff with them. We had so much fun getting to see the Russons, and Dunaways who came to Spokane for the holiday and of course we were way excited to see Sean for the first time since he had been home from his mission.

We played lots of games,including the traditional dodge ball game(video at end of post)


We ate at the church since there were so many people. They had it all set up beautifully with Thanksgiving balloons and everything.


It was decided that the turkey carving responsibility should be passed down to Cameron this year so I had to get a picture of this momentous occasion.



It is also a tradition to make these turkeys to go at each place setting and since neither Nicole or Stefani were there to make them this year, Cameron and I had big shoes to fill by doing them ourselves, but I think they turned out great!


I can't believe this is the only picture I got of Cameron and Sean, but it is a good one(well at least the story was good). Ok, so it's not that good of a story I guess you just had to be there, but they were putting up this new light for their dad in his office and pretty much everything that could go wrong did. I wasn't really a part of it since I was just watching and laughing and occasionally handing them things they needed, but it was quite funny and we laughed A LOT in the process. I am happy to report that the light did get put up successfully.


The Saturday after Thanksgiving was my 21st birthday and it was lots of fun to get to celebrate with family for the first time since I have been out of high school. I had left to do some homework at my parent's house and when I came back this is what I found on the kitchen table.

Cameron made me this awesome edible bouquet. For anyone that does not know, I LOVE LOVE fruit, so this was the perfect gift for me.


Cameron also got me part of this nativity set that I had been looking at down at school and his parents got me the rest of it. I was so excited because I really like this particular one and we don't have ANY Christmas decorations so it was like a two-in-one present. Sean and Scott also got me a bag of my favorite snacks which was way fun to bring back home with us. Also, my family got me some much wanted makeup and a cookbook that I had told my mom about a long time ago, two pairs of new jeans,a new disney movie and some notepads.To end the night both our families went out to my favorite restaurant and it was delicious. I definitely made out like a bandit. Thanks everyone, it was a great birthday!!!

And last, but not least....Thanksgiving day dodge ball!