family, dogs, and wheelchairs

This weekend was.. um.. crazy and awesome and sad and great. Confusing huh? I will try to explain.

It was the Terry family reunion this weekend. Nathan's mom side of the family. I have met all the Merkley side, but only a rare few of the Terry side. And there is A LOT fot them. I have been facebook friends with a lot of them for a while so I was very excited to meet them in real life. It was like meeting celebrities haha.

Mom, Dad, Shawn, Jaden, Amanda, Brad, and the babies all came to Salt Lake Friday night. We met up with some family for dinner at Cafe Rio. I think the workers thought I asked for a grease quesadilla, because that's what I got. Clark discovered the front facing camera on my phone and fell in love. There was about 400 pictures when he was done.

We headed back to our apartment to show the family around our super fancy one-bedroom and practice for the family reunion talent show. Each family needed to perform some talents. We decided to do one all together and Mama Merkley chose the masterpiece song, "It's Ruff Being a Dog." It was hilarious! We couldn't get through practicing without laughing hysterically. Here's a little video of some of our practicing. We didn't film most of the laughing because we could hardly breath. We always lost in on Shawn's solo. At the end is the final performance. Yes we are wearing dog ears, black noses, and matching American flag shirts. Don't you wish you were us?

Shawn stayed with us that night and we stayed up late watching you tube videos. We are pretty crazy partyers. Shawn was getting over an infection in his joints, specifically his ankles. Friday was the frist day he had really walked on them in weeks. About 2am he woke up in excruciating pain. Nathan and Papa Merkley gave him a blessing around 5am, but by morning he hadn't slept at all and couldn't walk. He wanted to go to the reunion really bad, so we searched all morning for a wheelchair rental. Luckily we found one and Shawn was able to join in! Although the pain got worst all day :( Poor guy.

The reunion was great! Food and family and entertainment. There was some amazing talents and some hilarious ones and it was fun to meet so many people. It was great to hear so many stories from Grandmother and Grandfather and get to know how incredible their lives have been. And of course.. we sang like dogs.

My little buddy

Grandmother and Grandfather 

Talent show!

Family tree!

The Robisons!

Merkleys! 

Kalvin and Grandpa

It's a ruff life being a dog

all married within a few weeks of each other :)

It was so fun to get to know everyone, but unfortunately our night was spent in the hotel room convincing Shawn to go to the ER and then getting him there. The poor guy was in so much pain and it was only getting worse. We ordered some pizza then loaded him up. He got taken back really fast and we sat by our phones for updates. They ran some tests and we are still waiting to hear but he was able to at least get some sleep!

We headed back to their hotel early the next morning to spend some more time with family and say goodbye, but mostly we just watched Kalvin eat a muffin and played in the wheel chair. 

Even with all the craziness, it was wonderful to see family and meet so many new people! I love being apart of my new family. Keep our Shawny-boy in your prayers! We are hoping he gets better soon.