Our First Christmas 2009

Our First Christmas
We decided to spend our first Christmas with my family.
I wasn't quite ready to spend Christmas away, and so Dust was a good sport.
We headed down after finals and spent the two weeks in Vegas.

Our Christmas celebration always starts off the same every year.
We go to the annual Hardy Party out in Logandale.
The Hardys are my mom's side of the family, and they have been doing this
party for over 25 years.
Every Saturday before Christmas we get together to eat, play games, and have a program.
It's a great time to catch up with family and hear about everyone's year.
This party though, is quite exclusive.
Everyone wants an invite to it but you have to be a member of the family to get in.
My beautiful cousin Jennifer.

Grandma Whipple

Dustin is now officially part of the Hardy family.


This Christmas we decided to celebrate it Vegas style.
Our family has always wanted to stay at the Bellagio, and so we got a room for the night.
We pretended like we were tourist and went and toured the town.
We went over to the Aladdin to eat, and then of course had to see the Bellagio flowers.
The flowers are my favorite attraction on the strip.
They are always so beautiful and the most creative thing I have ever seen.
I especially love them this time of year.

I know that some people think that the strip is straight from Hell. But I love the place.

Christmas Eve is probably my favorite day of the entire year.
The anticipation for Christmas Day is at the ultimate high.
I love how we get to spend the entire day with our family and carry on all of the family traditions.
Our family always goes out to breakfast on Christmas Eve Morning.
We usually go the the Cracked Egg because it is our favorite place on earth.
(I especially love their coffee cakes)
Then we go see a movie, come home and have a big dinner, and then do our family program.
Christmas is the best time of the year and I am so glad that I was able to
spend it with my sweetheart.

Dust was such a good sport. Our Christmas jammies this year were UNLV. And because Dust loves me so much he actually wore them.
He is the best.

Santa brought me a picture of the Savior on the shores of a Galilee.
My favorite place in the world.

We do this picture ever year. Lol.

Grandma Kelly

Grandma Whipple

20th Birthday (2009)

Okay, so I realize that everything I am posting on my blog is a little out of order,
but I am trying to make up for the last year and half of my life.
This is proving to be a daunting task, but I want it all documented so there is no better time
than the present to start working on it.

After coming home from Jerusalem, I was on this outdoor adventure phase.
I wanted to be outside all the time hiking, swimming, and exercising.
So when my birthday rolled around all I wanted to do was hike the Y.
I know right, sounds like a freshman thing to do.
But I had never done it before and I couldn't leave BYU without doing it.

So Dust was a good sport and hiked it with me. I have to say that going up the hill is fun
but coming down the hill is a different story.
Your knees hurt so bad.
Your tired and you feel like your going to fall the whole time.
Needless to say, this was my last time I hiked the Y.
I realized that hiking really isn't my thing.

Utah State Fair

After being in Jerusalem with my best friend Heather, I realized that I needed to go to state fair.
I have never been to the Utah fair and I really wanted to go to a rodeo. So my Jerusalem friends and Dust went up to Salt Lake to see what this is all about.
We had pizza, funnel cake, peanuts, and all of the other fair foods.
We were sicker than dogs.
And really felt it the next day.
But we had a blast.
We watched the rodeo, went on some rides, and ate.

This funnel cake may look good but it actually made us SO sick.

My absolutely amazing Jeru friends.

KINA

This is my best friend Kina. We have pretty much been inseperable from the moment we meet. Kina is not your typical girl. She is the smartest girl I have ever meet. She is on a full ride to BYU, got a perfect 4.0 at BYU, tutors students on the MCAT, and is going to Medical School. Seriously though, she is superwomen.
I meet Kina my freshman year through my childhood friend Kourtney. They were roommates and I would always hear stories about this girl. By the time we finally meet, we realized that we had a ton in common. We were both Pre-Medical, driven, loved school, and most importantly loved to have FUN. Life was always an adventure with Kina. She has had some crazy idea on what to do, or would plan fun weekends.
We basically did everything together. We lived together, ate together, studied together, played together, and hung out together. So I got to know her and Kyle really well. They did not have the easiest road to marriage, but I always knew that it would work out. They are great together and I dont think they could have found a better match than each other.
Kina and I are so much alike that we even started dating our now husbands at the same time and got married two weeks apart.
Kina had the most amazing wedding, and I was so glad that I got to be one of her bridesmaids.
I love you KINA.

Waiting for Kina to come out of the temple.

The Honeymoon

Our honeymoon was not your typical honeymoon.
It was still the best week ever but was not what I thought it would be.
This could all be contributed to Dustin's face being broken. The poor guy just endured the longest day of his life but now he was absolutely exhausted.
There a couple of things that Dustin was dealing with that made it an interesting week.
1. He was not allowed to sleep laying flat.
So he had to sleep propped up on a pillow every night, or else blood would go down his throat.
2. He still had stitches in his mouth so every time we kissed or he ate he had to use this antibiotics to make sure that his mouth did not get an infection.
3. I was only allowed to kiss him on one side of his face,
so I didnt put any pressure on his new face.
4. He was on a soft food diet so our eating choices were a scarce.

But we had a fabulous time just being together and hanging out.
After the craziness of a wedding and getting surgery it was just nice to have some down time together.

The morning after our wedding Dustin woke up and both of his eyes had turned completely bloodshot. He was the best looking scary man I have ever seen.

We went to Disneyland for the first half of our honeymoon.
(I know that this sounds funny but Disneyland is my favorite place in the world).
We stayed in the Grand California and had so much fun walking around Downtown Disney.
We loved all of the fun shops and all of the good restaurants around town.
We didn't realize the fact that Dustin would not be able to ride a lot of the rides.
His face was so sensitive that we spent most of our day on the kiddy rides and eating churros on the sidewalk.

After a couple of days at Disneyland he headed to Newport and spent the rest of the week there.
We stayed at the Marriot across the street from Fashion Island.
Which was a great location.
We spent the rest of our time going to movies, eating out, and shopping.
It was my perfect idea of a great week.
Our honeymoon also feel on Thanksgiving weekend so we got to spend our
first holiday just the two of us.
We went to Coco's for breakfast, saw "Blindside", and went to the Pelican for dinner.
Even though we weren't with our families it was the perfect day.

For my birthday the Calls gave us tickets to a Lakers game. So we headed down the LA and showed up a couple of hours early to enjoy LA live. We loved the atmosphere down there and had fun walking around. We ate at the Yard House and then enjoyed the wonderful Laker game. The Lakers beat the Knicks in convincing fashion.

We even got to meet Magic Johnson. Dustin bought his book and he even got it signed.

We thought it would be a great idea to give a little shout out to all of the wonderful people who helped us with our wedding.

Endowment

I took out my endowments the day before I got married.

I am so glad that I did these two events so close together because it made for the most spiritual week of my entire life.

I was so grateful that my family was able to be in the temple with me.

The peace that is felt there can never be duplicated.

The Parents

Dustin's poor face. He hung in there.