Chuck Norris

Growing up in the Merkley home the boys would gather around the old family television set on Saturday nights to watch "Walker: Texas Ranger." We knew when there was about five minutes left in the show Walker (Chuck Norris) would face the bad guy and give him a swift kick to the head. It is nice to see that his legacy still lives on.

What We've Been Up To

So we went down to Arizona for a medical school interview and for Lauren to be with her sisters while her parents were in Canada meeting the family of Lauren's brother's fiance. That was a very confusing sentence. This picture is from outside a local mall before I left for Utah. We realized that we hadn't taken a picture of our trip yet, so we asked some random girls walking into the mall to take our picture by theses lovely cacti.

After a tortuous six days of separation Lauren came home and we went up to Rexburg for the wedding of her brother Jon! The marriage was done in the new Rexburg, Idaho Temple. The temple had lots of beautiful paintings of the Tetons. This picture is of the groom and his father at a reception in Logan the day after.
Being around all of the marriage talk and the reception reminded Lauren and I of our own wedding nine short months ago. Good times.
After the reception we had Lauren's sister's at the house. They wanted to re-live their childhood by all being on the same bed.

We have been having a bug problem at the house. Box Elder bugs have been invading. We left for five hours Sunday afternoon and came home and killed about thirty of them. They like the window above our shower.

What did you eat?

After flying back to Utah from Arizona I watched the Jazz game at my parent's house in Layton and then drove up to Logan. I must have eaten something strange during my drive home because I had the most peculiar dream that night.
I dreamt that Lauren and I had a baby, but I was the one that gave birth to it. It just slid right out. I couldn't figure out why women complained about giving birth so much. The baby looked like it was six months old and weighed like 12-16 pounds. After giving birth I walked around and talked to people and otherwise enjoyed the afternoon.
So I now will be much more careful about what I eat before bed. I promise I didn't eat at Beto's.

I'm Home!

I am typing this post from my family's computer in Mesa, AZ (I almost said childhood computer, but I'm pretty sure I never used anything this nice growing up). I've been here in Mesa since last Tuesday, when Erik and I flew down for a med school interview. He had his interview on Wednesday, felt good about it, and flew back on Friday. I stay behind to "play" with my sisters. That's the tactful way of saying "babysitting" to two independent teenage sisters. You see, my brother Jon is marrying a girl from Canada on Friday (hooray! now they'll get hounded about grandchildren too!) so my parents are in Canada right now for her side of the wedding. They have to hold all Canadian festivities before the wedding and then get married in Rexburg, ID so that she can stay in the US. Otherwise, she'll lose her student visa and be trapped in Canada. It's crazy. I guess they even have to travel separately crossing the border, because if the US border guards find out they're coming into Idaho to be married, they can forbid entry. I never knew that our borders were so hostile. From watching the influx over the Mexican border, I didn't think we had any kind of limitations at all. Anyway, here I am playing mom to my sisters and making them cook for me. It's great to have free air conditioning and a plentiful pantry, but I sure miss Erik. We're definitely still honeymooning - we've only spend a few nights apart so far, so this is rough. One thing I have decided is that we're never getting TV/cable. Erik got a little too excited about being able to watch sports instead of just listen to them, while I spent hours on Saturday watching HGTV home makeovers. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with a vacant look on my face. Since I'm home alone while my sisters are at school, I'm going to start quilting. I'm sure a few of you gasped, since I'm about as uncrafty as they come, but since my mom has a sewing machine and I don't I figured this was a perfect time to start. My mother-in-law, Kathy, is a quilter extraordinaire, and gave me really cute baby material and tips on how to start (and no, I'm not pregnant). We figured that if I make a quilt for a baby girl, we might actually have a boy, which is a difficult thing to accomplish in the Merkley family. If the quilting works out, I'll post a picture. Pictures of the trip will follow when we find the cord thing that goes from the camera to the computer!