Whoops

So I posted about the Rust Reunion a few posts back, but after perusing through the pictures on my computer, I found the following gems that add to the gloriocity of the trip.

Seven Peaks

Rather than driving straight from Rexburg to Overton, we took a pit stop in Bountiful. Our brand new little nephew Porter was being blessed, so a lot of our Hillam family was there. We got up the next morning at 7am and headed off to Seven Peaks! I had never been before and we had the infamous "Pass of All Passes" AND it was the last day that it was open! We had to jump on it.

We really are attractive people, I promise. This picture is just.... yeah.

Ok, here's the thing. Heights. They have been my number one fear since... forever! Ah they get me. Here's the other thing, these water slides are INSANE. See that orange one right down there? It's at least 430,495 million feet high and then it shoots you straight down. You go belly first, so pretty much you're watching as you fall to your doom. There were two other ones on the back of this death tower that were even worse. Be still my soul.

But, I didn't want to be a weenie and I didn't want to ruin "Thrill-Seeker-Eric"s fun. So without a word of how terribly frightened I was, nor how I'd so much rather be in the lazy river with the elderly, I went.

And you know what? I was a champ! I went down every single one! Get this, Eric even made me go down first on the most terrifying ones because they even scared him! This should also be noted: That orange slide mentioned above? Totally was my favorite. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Next on our agenda: The Clams

So this was our last day on the beach right? We'd spent 2-3 glorious days boogie boarding, sun bathing and playing like crazy. I grabbed Eric and told him we were going to go catch sand crabs. It's the easiest thing, as soon as a wave washes up, we stick our hand into the dirt and it fills with dozens of little sand crabs. 

So Eric and I walk out there and I say, "Lets see who can get the biggest one!" (I'm a pro, so I'm certain that I'll win.) Well the wave comes in, we stick our hands down and pull up our finds. 

Let's just say that Eric won. He straight up pulled up a giant clam! We've been going to this beach for years as a family and have never once seen any clams on the beach! How lucky was that??

Well obviously not that lucky, because Eric stuck his hand in again, and pulled out another one!

And another one! And another one and another one!

 By this time, my whole family (as well as random strangers) had gathered around, trying to find clams of our own. But we just couldn't do it! Eric tried to explain how he was finding them

"Look for their eyes!"he'd say.

 'WHAT EYES?!"

Eventually, we started to get the hang of it, and we were all pulling up clams before we knew it. But Eric still had found twice as many as the rest of us combined. He was a clam champ for sure. And pretty soon we had a whole cooler full of them!

It was seriously so much fun to dig them up. We had a blast and were bummed that we hadn't discovered this fun new game until the last day.

We had great plans for a good ol' fashion clam bake....until a nice lady on the beach told us that we were being extremely illegal and that we had better put those back unless we wanted to be served a big fatty fine + life in prision... or something like that.

Not wanting to upset the law, we said goodbye to our fabulous finds and Eric trucked them back out to the ocean.

 And then we went and had fish tacos for dinner instead!

Mission Reunion

So even though the whole mission thing for me didn't work out exactly how I expected, I still had the opportunity to experience a real live mission reunion. And it was a good one!

Eric has only been home from his beloved Brazil mission for just over a year.  I love hearing his stories about his mission and I can often relate a lot of what he talks about with the food and culture to my own little exursion to Peru.

So when we found out that his first mission president was hosting a reunion at Tucanos Brazillian Grill in Salt Lake, we were sold!

I'd never been to Tucanos, but I'd heard some pretty good things about it. This is just a picture from the internet, but it's entirely accurate. They waiters walk around with giant skewers covered in delicious meet! Then they just shave off whatever you want right onto your plate. It was awesome.

They also had an awesome buffet full of good stuff. I loaded up on the fresh mozzerella/balsamic vinegar/basil  balls and the sushi. I also tried the fried bananas and the pan de queso (I only know how to spell it in Spanish). Pan de queso, is this yummy little roll filled with cheese. The ones here were decent, but I like the ones we have at Sunday dinner better.

We finished off the evening with this beauty. Mango butter cream cake. It was seriously out of this world. We actually didn't even order it, but the couple who did had to leave early so we snagged it. Best. Decision. Ever.  Mmmm my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

I wish I would have gotten some pictures of Eric with his mission buddies, because that really was the highlight of the night. It was so fun to hear silly stories and to see Eric reunite with his friends. We're so glad we had the opportunity to go!

Rust Reunion 2013

This was SO much more than just a reunion.

It was a few days on the beach.
It was 14 people trying to fit in a 2-bedroom home.
It was a farewell for my dear Sister Natalie.
It was an opportunity for my husband to finally meet the rest of my siblings.
It was our last spurt of summer before school started.
It was our first unofficial Kubb tournament.

Pretty much, it was awesome.

I always love our Rust Reunions. It's just my parents, my siblings and any others we've brought into the family since then. With the 14 of us being all spread out (well half of us are in Idaho..), it's hard to find time to get all of us together.

And on top of that, this was my first reunion as a married woman and let me tell you, I loved the perks of it.

1. A bed. Because of our lack of beds, I usually have to fight for the love
seat, or settle for the ground. Married people get first dibs on the beds, and now I'm a married person! Granted, we slept on an air mattress for the whole week, but it was still an improvement!

2. From backseat-middle to shotgun! 
When your husband drives the 30ish hours from Rexburg to California and back, you get promoted to shotgun by default. Although I'm one of the older individuals in the family, I always get stuck in backseat middle because I'm the shortest and "don't need the leg room". Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the upgrade.





3. Going along with #2, usually I am stuck listening to whatever my brothers want to listen to while we drive. It varies from sports games to Hugh Nibley lectures, depending on who's driving. Usually, I'm not a fan. But since it was Eric and I in control of the sound waves... you guessed it, Harry Potter on tape theee whole time. We finished the entire 6th book! That would have never happened if I was single :)
4. Almost Guaranteed Koob winner. So, thanks to an awesome couple, we discovered an awesome game called Kubb, Koob, Kuub... who knows. Anyways, it's pretty simple, and all it takes is wood blocks and dowels, but it is seriously so much fun. We sent a link to my dad and he whipped up our very own Kubb set right there. Didn't take him any time at all! We made, we played, we conquered! Granted, we didn't win ALL of the games, but we made a pretty smokin' team.

5. The beach is better with a significant other.
We didn't get any pictures of us together on the beach. But this is one of us pulling a big root ball up on shore and digging through it to find all sorts of fun sea creatures. We found a gazillion starfish, several baby lobsters, a few sea urchins, plenty of crabs and much more! Hand-held walks on the beach and someone to help rub suntan lotion on your back were also some perks we enjoyed.

After an awesome few days at the beach, it was time to come home (to Overton) and help Natalie get read to leave. She spoke in two different wards on Sunday morning, and did an awesome job. Eric and I jetted out as soon as she finished speaking and headed right back up to Idaho that very night.

We didn't even plan to be color coordinating... but due to the fact that my wedding was just a few weeks previous, everyone's closets were loaded with mint, coral, cream and yellow!

It was really such a fun trip and so good to be with family! We loved it and look forward to our next one!

Love, The Hillams

Funny Food

Once upon a time, I was doing my homework on a Saturday night, so Eric decided to sneakily make dinner for us because he is a sweetheart.

I heard him rummaging about in the kitchen and asked what he was doing. The rest went something like this:

N: What are you doing hon?
E: I'm making dinner!
N: What are you going to make?

E: Hash-browns mixed with bacon and eggs!

N: That sounds awesome.... but we don't have any potatoes.

E: I know... but we have cucumbers!

 I'll admit, I laughed and laughed and laughed. But he grated those cucumbers and cooked them with eggs and bacon! And you know what, it wasn't half bad. Kudos.

*Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Eric split his head open, we raced to the store to buy super glue (but opted for liquid bandage instead) and I painted his face back together. And then we ate our cucumber hash and watched the BYU game. It was a heck of an evening.*

Pinterest Perfect

Also:
I've been craving pretzels for quite some time, so one Sunday, we decided to make some soft pretzel bites with salted caramel sauce. We got the recipe on Pinterest.

And you know what, they turned out pretty delicious. We didn't have all the ingredients that we needed and we just made up our own caramel sauce with evaporated milk, butter and sugar and that turned out pretty gosh darn good too! They didn't look quite as pretty, but we were pretty satisfied.

Real Life

We Like to Win

We are the Hillams, and we like to win. At. EVERYTHING.

And we usually do, so it works out great.

Ok, ok, that's not always true. But it was the case for our first married ward party!

It was a fall themed activity that went something like this:

Apple Bobbing: 1st Place

Potato Relay: 1st and 2nd Place

Statues Game: 1st Place

Pie Eating Contest: 1st Place

Don't mind my slicked back hair and lack of make-up. Apple Bobbing is not a sport for a lady.

\

Love, Eric and Noelle

A Little Bit of Life Lately

Today marks our 1 month of being married. I (being the "big into celebrating everything" person that I am) decided that I should post some pictures of what we've been up to. 

First of all. We need to learn to take more pictures. Seriously, we've done so much fun stuff this past month, and haven't documented any of it! We'll do better. Maybe.

Throwing ourselves a house-warming party and celebrating our first day in our first apartment!

We love our gift cards! 

But it kind of makes me sad when we have to turn them in to buy stuff, becuase they are so pretty! I just want to keep them!

We accidentally through away our moldy bread... so Eric lovingly dumpster dived for it...

So that we could feed the ducks!!!

These are not your average ducks. They are super aggressive and will come at you if they see you have food!

These two got way too close for comfort, Eric was terrified that they'd get his toes!

We named these ones Aflac and Benji

Thanks to Dan and Emily for letting us borrow their bikes for our adventure!

On Saturday night, Eric's mom and I made Sushi! It was so great and she let Eric and I take home all the extra ingredients for our Sunday dinner. Daniel and Emily happened to stop by and visit and the prime time and helped us make and eat super good sushi. 

Our newest favorite discovery... BACON Sushi. Bacon, avacado, cream cheese and raw salmon...Bliss.

We seriously have had so much fun this month and are loving our summer off! We both work every morning for a few hours, but find plenty of time to play and have fun! Next week, we're off to the beach for a family reunion and we can't wait!

Love, Noelle

A Week in the Caribbean? Don't Mind If I Do...

For our honeymoon, we had the amazing opportunity to go on a seven-day Caribbean cruise. The ports we stopped in were Jamaica, The Grand Cayman and Cozumel. It was my first time in the Caribbean and I couldn't believe how beautiful and different the beaches and ocean were from my beloved California beaches. 

Unfortunately, 2/3 of the pictures we took were on my phone (My phone died completely the day we got back, so the pictures are lost forever!) but we did remember to snap a few on Eric's camera, enjoy!

The food was incredible! We each ordered at least 6-7 courses for each meal! I think this was our escargo. We also enjoyed sushi, frog legs, alligator, shark and much more!

The Pool and Poolside theatre

Rockin' out in Jamaica!

Man on Stilts. But he wasn't much taller than Eric, so I wasn't too impressed.

Cozumel!

We went para-sailing in Cozumel! 

I thought that it'd be scary, but we loved it. It was so much fun!

We were so high up! And I couldn't believe how crystal blue the water was. Gorgeous!

We also went jet skiing on the ocean in Cozumel after para-sailing. I'll admit it wasn't my favorite. Mainly because there was a $5000+ fine if you damaged the jet ski and Eric was a very crazy fun driver. We flipped over twice....nobody else out there was driving even close to how we were driving, so I was scared to death that we were going to break something.

Also not pictured... The grand cayman! We had so much fun swimming with stingrays (yes, a little scary at first, but pretty cool once you finally believed that they really weren't going to hurt you) We even got to hold them and let them swim up on our backs and feed them! We went snorkeling after that and saw some cool reef and pretty fishies!

Pretty much our honeymoon was the bomb. We loved it and had so much fun! We ate way more food than I ever thought possible, but that was our reward for doing the Insanity workout for the entire semester before!

We've been back in the states for 3 weeks, and I'm thinking I'm ready to go back :)

Love, Noelle

Our Day

Well, hello everyone!
The newest Mrs. Hillam here.
We've been married for 3 weeks and 3 days. I can't believe it's already been almost a month!

The wedding day was absolutely perfect. Everything went amazingly well and I've never been happier!

I married this handsome devil on Saturday July 27, in the St. George, UT temple. 

We spent the evening before setting up a cultural hall for our luncheon. I was tired and said goodnight at around 11 pm. I'm pretty sure that's a record time to be in bed the night before a wedding. Our sealing wasn't scheduled until 12:40 pm the next day, so we had all the time in the world! However, we decided to schedule pictures at 9:00am to try and beat the heat. So after about 7 hours of peaceful sleeping I woke up and got ready to seal the deal. My two amazing friends Claire and Keri came over at 7 am to get me started on my hair (Also unheard of, I've heard of too many 4 am hair appointment horror stories). We took our time getting ready and spent about an hour and a half at the temple taking pictures.

My wonderful grandparents! My grandpa had the opportunity to seal us!

By the time pictures were done, it was about 11:00 and Eric and I were at the temple with no vehicle, no where to go and about an hour to kill before we were needed at the temple. So, we did what anybody stranded at the temple would do. We explored the visitors center! Keep in mind that we are fully dressed in our tux and gown, hair and make up, bouquet and everything... the whole nine yards.... Taking a tour of the St.George visitor's center. It was soooo wonderful! We knew that in a matter of minutes we'd be participating in one of the most sacred, special events of our entire lives, but we were calm. cool and collected! It was so nice not to be rushed, stressed or worried about anything! We learned about the history of the St.George temple and sat through a display about eternal families. It was so wonderful to slow down, forget all the hustle and bustle that comes with weddings and remember the important, eternal things with my sweetheart. Best thing ever.

Then the time came for us to report for our sealing. Well, we didn't have our recommends with us so had to watch as many of our family members entered the temple without us while we waited for Eric's dad to come with our recommends.

And then we were sealed! It was the most wonderful, beautiful, perfect thing that I have ever experienced. It was so special to have my grandpa be our sealer and to be surrounded by so many loved ones. I just couldn't stop smiling! 

Our first picture as "Man and Wife!"

It really was a perfect day! We have such wonderful, loving, supportive and downright hardworking friends and family and we are so grateful for their help and support!

Love, Noelle