Study Break

The good news: I've taken four finals. The bad news: I have three more. Here it is, midnight in the library, I can't keep my eyes open so I decided...why not blog? I don't really have too much to say other than I cannot wait to be done with these tests. Saturday is going to be a busy day; I will be doing nothing but laying on my couch, sleeping and watching movies. All day. I can't wait. That is the happy thought that is sustaining me right now.

On a happier note, look at my roommates. Aren't we adorable? We took this

picture on "Christmas", which was Sunday in case you missed it. We had a great time.

I think my favorite part of the whole day was playing mom in the morning. I woke up, turned on the Christmas lights, turned on the music, woke all my roommates up saying, "Santa came!" and then made them all line up in height order before they could come out into the living room. :) It was incredible.

This is us after opening all of our presents on "Christmas" morning. I'm sporting my roommates present to me on my feet. Thanks guys. You know I love them.

This next picture just makes me laugh because we actually do this at my house on Christmas day...

And just a little picture to brighten up your day; Jen got me this grow your own Christmas tree kit for a dollar at Target. It was a little frustrating to watch it do nothing for a couple of weeks but now look at it! It'll be a full grown spruce before you know it.

I can't wait until it's three inches tall so I can move it into a bigger pot!

Yep, it's still swollen...

Before I get into the most recent news, I just have to include this picture.

This one's for you Mom. :) Shooting this gun was a blast.

In other news...my ankle is still swollen! Very swollen. And now--very purple.

In this first one, notice how the swelling extends all the way into my toes. I wish I'd gotten a picture of it the first night. Talk about huge. But, this is still pretty convincing.

And here is the purple I was talking about. And this is only from one angle. The bruising goes all the way up to my toes on the top of my foot and it is also on the other side of my ankle. It is a lot of bruising but really no more than you see in any ankle sprain. I've just never seen one on my own foot before so I'm a little stoked about it.

I guess I should also note that it may look worse but it's feeling tons better. After one day of a few skipped classes...I was back to almost a normal gait. Emphasis on almost... And just a general note--yes our carpet is pink. And it is providing the backdrop to all these pictures. It's a little much but we try to love it.

In more uplifting news, we got a Christmas tree! A real one!!

Here's a picture of us at the lot picking it up on Saturday night.

Sunday after the first presidency Christmas devotional, we put on some music, invited some friends over, and decorated the tree! It was so great. Thanks to Marie's parents for the ornaments and lights.

Just getting the ornaments ready for the tree.

Megan made these very delicious and beautiful brownies.

And here's our forest of Christmas trees! The big one is our real tree, the medium one is courtesy of Marie, and that little baby one I'm proud to say is mine--thanks Mom. :)

So Christmas--come and get us! We are ready!

Burgerless and Embarrassed

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to get to know each other outside of the game of racquetball, we had a little racquetball team talent night. Turns out--we're talented. For our talent, Megan and I performed a rousing rendition of the well-loved EFY song "These are the Days". We did it mostly to be funny and it worked out pretty well because the team ended up joining in as back up singers.

Our coach, Val, loved this so much that she decided we should share our talents and testimonies with the young women in her ward. Little did I know that all I would get out of it was stolen food and embarrassment. Let's start from the beginning...

At approximately 6:30pm I drove to campus to pick Megan up from the anatomy lab. We were both starving and decided that we would have enough time to swing by Subway before heading to the activity. We got to Subway only to be greeted by a ten person long line and one amazingly slow worker. One. So...we ran across the street to the Creamery where there was no line and they promised our food would be ready in 5-8 minutes. So we ordered and waited. Bacon guacamole burgers. Is there anything more delicious? As if the line at Subway didn't tip us off that this night was doomed to fail, the ice machine was out of ice. Out of ice! Unbelievable. So we got our food, ran back across the street and got to the church building at 6:57. Three minutes to spare. Val suggested we put our burgers in the fridge before the program. Megan and I were inspired I think to eat a few bites of our burgers before leaving them in the kitchen. They were divine.

We had practiced our song that morning at racquetball practice and decided that we should make copies for everyone before tonight. Surprise, surprise, we all totally forgot. So I ran up to Val, we tracked down someone with library keys and I made seven copies in about two minutes. Hold your applause.

Looking at the program, I discovered that not only was our little musical number first, I was also supposed to give some "comments" before we performed. Yeah, didn't know that. So I made up something on the spot about my young women's experience and then we started. Oh. My. Goodness. I could not play the piano tonight. Once, I totally skipped a line and started playing the next one down. Another time, my page turner turned the page about three measures too soon. After awhile, I suddenly realized that I couldn't hear Megan singing at all. Turns out she lost her voice today because she's been sick. She apparently had a few laughter breakdowns throughout the song and even dropped her music once. It was by far the worst musical number I have ever participated in.

The rest of the program was pretty stellar. Everyone had excellent talents and shared some really profound and inspirational thoughts. Megan and I only detracted a little bit with a few minor fits of laughter. Suffice it to say, we were great examples...

After the program, there were refreshments. Well, what could go wrong with dessert? I'm not sure what happened but somebody touched something and a shower of glass bowls fell onto the kitchen floor and shattered. Then Val comes over, holding an empty bowl, fuming, saying that someone (presumably the young men) had eaten every single one of her cookies that she'd made. We were already feeling bad for the boys who would experience the Wrath of Val until Megan and I opened the fridge and discovered our guacamole bacon burgers had been eaten. Completely demolished. That really set Val off. I was almost in tears thinking of the poor suckers who ate those burgers and they fate they didn't know awaited them.

At 6:57, we strutted into a church building, full of hope and anxiously awaiting delicious burgers. At 8:33 we left the church--burgerless and embarrassed. Now, when I initially started this post, that was the end of the story. But never fear, the disaster lives on. Tonight we had an intramural soccer game--the semis. We're kind of a big deal (in division III...). It's the second half, we're tied 1-1, I attack a girl with the ball and the next thing I know, our legs are tangled up together and I'm on the ground with this awful burning sensation in my ankle. That's right, my first athletic injury. My ankle is swelled up to...I'd say about the size of a racquetball :) right now and I'm trying to treat myself using all the techniques I've been learning in school for 2 years now. It's going quite well and I think I'll be up and at 'em in no time (Mom, if you're reading this before I tell you, I really am a-ok and I didn't call you tonight because it's midnight there and it's definitely not worth waking you up so you can worry all night (: ).

Sorry about the novel but how's that for a night? Better luck tomorrow...

Recent Happenings

We attempted to go up the canyon and look at the fall colors but...turns out we were a couple weeks late. But we did see some somewhat stellar shots (how about that alliteration) of the sunset/Provo. Good times.

Then of course there was Halloween. I decided this year that Halloween is really overrated. Especially for college students. Living in Provo. Even here Halloween equals huge dance parties. And...I just don't generally enjoy myself in those settings. So Brian and dressed up (he's a game show host and I am a rugby player which is yes, if you are observant the same thing I was last year but if you look closely I added a bloody nose this year which I think is a nice touch) and went down to Mapleton to hang out with our aunt and uncle that really go all out for their trick or treaters. Then, I just dropped by a couple of parties and ended up at Applebee's having some drinks (non alcoholic of course...) with some friends. Good times.

The next day I made my great-great-great grandmother's sugar cookies, a ton of frosting, and had a bunch of friends over for some good old cookie decorating. It was a great time. I felt like a kid again.

And you can thank Shayla for the artistic approach to this shot.

And that's about it. There's not a whole lot else going on. The Springville football team won yet another playoff game on Friday so that means we're going up to the U on Thursday to play in the semifinals. Good times.

Squash, Corn and Size 20 Tennis Shoes

So we have this little inside family joke. Nobody I've ever told it to outside of my family sees the hilarity in it. But humor me anyway. A few years ago while shopping at Macey's, my mom and siblings found a gigantic squash and decided to buy it for Jen. Just for kicks. And I mean--gigantic. Like, twenty or thirty pounds. It was hysterical. She was making things with squash for a looong time. The next year, we got her another giant squash. Don't worry, it was just as funny. Then...my mom found a gigantic plastic ear of corn, couldn't contain herself, and mailed it to Jen. So that's the history behind this blog post.

My mom works at Marshall's (which for you Utah people is a lot like TJ Maxx or Ross) and one day found a pair of size 20 tennis shoes. Twenty!! What a perfect addition to the large and useless things to give to Jen list. She bought them for five dollars, shipped them to Utah and told my brother and I to find some creative way to give them to Jen. We racked our brains and finally decided that we would just make them part of her Halloween costume and then drop it at her door. Are you ready for the final product?

Priceless. You probably have to know my sister to really appreciate this picture. But it was so fantastic. If you don't think it's funny, just focus on the shoes. They are amazingly huge. Apparently Shaq's are two sizes bigger than that. Fun fact for the day.

Another amazing news flash--I went to haunted house this weekend and enjoyed myself! I know, right? As a general rule, I despise haunted houses. But for some reason or another this weekend, whether it was the company, an increase in maturity level, the smart comments I attempted to make back at the scarers, or some other unknown factor, I actually had a good time. And I feel great about it.

And that is all. Have a great week!

Ramming Speed!

Happy October! Isn't that nuts? It's October. It's officially fall now and I love it. Fall has also brought some pretty stellar photo opportunities so that's good news for my readership. Haha, readership. I just got a kick out of using that word. Anyway, last weekend was conference and thanks to my parents I got to go! Megan and I went to the Saturday afternoon session. It was kind of fun to be in the conference center for the sustaining of all the church officers. There's definitely some power in raising your hand with 20,000 other people. So that was awesome.

Megan and I at the conference center.

This weekend was pretty great too. Brian got this idea a couple weeks ago to put together this gigantic group date. Apparently he had some coupon for a 20-passenger canoe rental. Twenty!! So he got a group of 10 guys together and they all asked a girl and...tada! A huge group date. Our whole apartment got asked so it was really fun to all go together. When we saw the canoe, my initial thought was that 2o people was probably a high estimate...It was definitely a tight squeeze. But it was probably one of the funnest dates I've ever been on. And it was hysterical. Just imagine a 30 foot canoe with 20 college students in it, all screaming, floating down the Provo river while trying not to (but failing miserably...) hit every tree branch and log in the river. Every time we passed another, smaller canoe, somebody in our canoe would yell, "ramming speed!" and we'd attempt to become organized enough to ram them. As I'm sure you can imagine--that never actually worked. It was so great. Hopefully this picture adequately expresses how ridiculous this whole experience was. But I definitely owe Brian a thank you for organizing it. Oh, and my date too for taking me I suppose... Thanks Mike! :) It seriously was a blast.

Marie, me and Jenny with our mandatory life jackets on. There is another one where all three of us are smiling but for some reason I thought this one with me looking confused/angry and Jenny with her goofy little smile was way better.

And here's the canoe. Isn't that hysterical? And that's only 18 people. There are two more in the front of the canoe.

And...that's about it for exciting times in Provo. Oh, and what would any semester be without some good old time wasting. We did all four of these DI purchased puzzles in about three days. A waste of time? Maybe. But hey, at least I was kind of using my brain. There are bigger wastes of tuition dollars, right?

Back to Reality. Again.

Well hello there! Now, I realize some of you have been silently depressed each day you did your daily blog checks and mine still wasn't updated. But--perk up. I'm here to announce my reentry into the blogging world. There are two perfectly good reasons why I've neglected my blog for so long. 1) School started. It's not like I've been totally swamped with homework since day one of the semester but school being back in session is definitely a lifestyle change. Also, the daily humdrum of school tends to impede on the bloggable spontaneity that summer holds. At least for me. I'm sure there are plenty of people that can maintain that throughout any circumstance but let's face it, I'm not really the queen of spontaneity anyway so...summer is my only hope. And 2) I have literally taken one picture since my last post. And here it is.

So... I moved. Which has just been really great. I love the place and I love my roommates. The morning we moved in, I called the electric company to get our power turned on, thinking that calling at 9am would give them the whole day to flip that switch. Turns out, the earliest they could "possibly do it" was the next day. When I asked for a time window they said, "Anywhere between 7am and 7pm." Well that sure narrows it down doesn't it! I was close to asking if I could come over and flip it. It was a definite Brian Regan moment (if you haven't seen Brian Regan please watch his stand up DVD "I walked on the moon" to understand this allusion. It will be worth it. I promise.). So that night, Marie and I were the only ones moved in and were forced to navigate our apartment using maglites and headlamps. It was fairly memorable.

And that's all I've got. School is going pretty well so far. I'll be able to say just how well after I take my first round of midterms next week. I'm pretty sure about ten people I know got engaged this week, my new ward is fun, I got called as the ward pianist/organist (that is, I'm the pianist until I can fake the organ well enough to play it in sacrament meeting) and...I'm still truckin' it at Springville high school. Racquetball is in full swing and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees this week so that it now feels like beautiful, crisp fall. And that's that. I'll try to carry my camera around a little more. That or have a little more fun. Oh the sacrifices I make for my blog. :)

Farewell Summer

Isn't that the saddest paper you've ever seen? Can you imagine getting a test or an application back that said, in letters bigger than life, "REJECTED"? Apparently Jiffy Lube isn't quite so worried about the self esteem of their customers. About a week ago, I was sitting in my car thinking, "I'll bet my registration is expired." Sure enough, it was.

Yep. All the way back in April. I know, it's a little embarassing. And I'm lucky my car hasn't been impounded.

So I went in to get my safety and emissions inspection done and was...REJECTED. So...I have 15 days to replace my two back tires before I can renew my registration. In the meantime, I have a temporary registration taped in my window. And here's what it looks like:

Don't worry, you're not missing anything. It's there. Believe me. It's just that my windows are so tinted that you can't see it. At all. I'm just waiting to get pulled over and attempt to explain myself.

This whole experience has definitely been an eye-opening one into the adult world of responsibility. Just one more reason why I'm not ready to graduate from college.

So what has been happening other than failed safety inspections, you ask? Let's see if I can sum

it all up for ya.

The other night, at 12:30 am, Shayla roped Mike and I into going up the canyon and watching the meteor shower with her. I was definitely hesitant to go but I think it was worth it. We saw some pretty good ones. Sorry Shayla--I didn't mean to pick one where you weren't smiling...

Last Saturday, I hiked Mount Timpanogos with Stephen and Mike. We summitted (8 miles, 5,000 ft) in 2 hours and 57 minutes. Our goal was 2 1/2. Bummer. We had a good time until we decided to slide down the glacier. To my everlasting disappointment, I didn't take a video of Mike flying down it. Suffice it to say that it resulted in high velocities and large scrapes all over his body. Stephen and I found a safer (if not eternally longer) route down. After our glacier detour, I was late to a lunch appointment so we ran the last five miles down the mountain. Good times. Because of our speedy ascent, I didn't really take any pictures. But here's a great one of the view from the top.

This past week I started "working" at Springville High School. Generally, I work with a BYU team every semester for my major but this fall, I'll be with Springville. So I've been putting in about 10 hours of free work a day at high school football two-a-days. It's not terrible but...it's not wonderful either. It sort of feels like summer's over. So--thanks summer '09. It's been great.

Shake Week '09!

So a few weeks ago, I took a trip to Target with Ben, Natalie and Amy. Target is always a good time but this trip was especially great. On the way there, we came up with the amazing idea of: SHAKE WEEK '09!!! Basically it involves us making t-shirts and getting shakes every night for a week. Yeah. Expensive and fattening but... a good idea, right? So we did it. It was this past week. Turns out we had quite the gathering most nights.

Here we are making the shirts. We bought iron on letters and also some iron on paper to make a schedule of shake week but...we never quite got around to that part. This is Natalie's shirt. She accidentally ironed on the E backward. In her defense, it was a very easy thing to do. But no less funny because of that fact. We used frozen cheese to cool the letters.

Ironing on some letters.

Monday night was the Malt Shoppe. A classic and my personal favorite. We also have an action shot of Natalie getting her shirt signed by the guy who made her shake (which we did every night--and got some pretty strange looks).

Natalie, Amy, myself and Ben. Not a flattering picture, I know.

Tuesday, day 2: Dairy Queen

Wednesday, day 3: The BYU Creamery on Ninth

I apologize for Lee's indecency in the background...

Thursday, day 4: Ben was in Salt Lake but we still went to The Purple Turtle in American Fork. I'd never been there before but apparently it's a classic. So of course we had to go.

I am sorry to say that I don't have pictures of Friday or Saturday. On Friday, we had to drive through a McDonalds in Payson on the way to our Relief Society camp out in order to fulfill shake week. But don't worry, we still passed our shirts and a sharpie through the drive through window so they could be signed. Saturday, I am sorry to say, never came to fruition. We were planning to go to Iceberg for the big finale but alas, it was not to be.

So, I never thought I'd say it but last week--I got tired of shakes. I really did. It became a chore to go get them. However, it was a really good time. And hello? We made t-shirts! I'm really excited for the proposed edition to our shake week t-shirts, "Shake what shake week gave you." So...Shake Week '10? Not likely.

21 and Invincible

Exactly one week ago today, I turned 21 years of age. In case you were wondering, it feels just like 20. Shocker. But, I did have a great time celebrating. On the Saturday before my birthday, Jen took me to Seven Peaks, the local waterpark. It was so fun! We nearly burned our feet off running from ride to ride but it was really fun. Then on Sunday, I went over to Jen's and she made me dinner and we opened my presents. Dinner and the cake were delicious! Thanks Jen.

I had my "birthday party" at REI which was just awesome. After we all wandered around for awhile and bought some climbing equipment, we all went to dinner at Cheesecake Factory. DE-licious. As always. I got a slice of chocolate peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake. Yikes. So good.

Thanks to Shayla for capturing the great moment of the waiters singing to me in the restaurant. And thanks to everyone who drove all the way up to Salt Lake to celebrate my birthday! It was a lot of fun.

Because we live in Utah, this last Friday was a holiday. My good friend Mike Barney and his twin sister Nicole were nice enough to invite a bunch of us up to their family's cabin in Bear Lake. We had a great time! We drove up there on Thursday night and then woke up at 6 am on Friday and Saturday to get some good boating in. Unfortunately, it's pretty much always windy and it was way crowded so the water was never really too good. And by about 3 everyday the water was basically unusable it was so choppy but we still had a great time on the boat and hanging out on the beach. And, not gonna lie, the choppy water made for some awesome rides back to the boat ramp.

This picture definitely doesn't do it justice, but the last night we were there, we drove over the border into Idaho and to this amazingly beautiful place called Bloomington Lake and had a campfire. It was great.

This is the sunset I woke up to out the window on Friday morning. Amazing.

Lee got buried in the sand and we made him into a beautiful, if slightly overweight, mermaid.

I got buried in the sand. And molded into a man apparently.

The girls. I don't know if you can tell but Jessica (the girl to my left) has blood all over her shirt. Small incident on the boat that ended with three staples in her head. As you can see, she's doing just fine.

The boys.

Dave and Lee, just being cautious in the car.

So thanks Mike and Nicole for letting us enjoy the cabin life for a weekend! It was so great!

11c Grandma!

I'm not sure if it truly was amazing or if it was just the juxtaposition with this last week that made it feel so amazing, but I had a really great weekend. After a week of h-e double hockey sticks at boys lacrosse camp, it felt great to have a couple of days off to just play. Not to sound negative but, the only good thing that I got out of that camp is some really hysterical tanlines. Anyway, here's just a few of the reasons why this weekend rocked.

I climbed an 11c. Probably none of you have any idea what I'm talking about but an 11c is simply a rating for a rock climb--a high rating (meaning it's hard). Two of my guy friends that I climb with all of the time both gave up before the top. Also my friend Ben, thinking I couldn't do it, said he'd give me a quickdraw (a piece of equipment used in lead climbing--pictured below) if I made it up. So guess who just inherited a new piece of climbing gear?? Oh, this is also where the title of this post came from. Ben told me that next time someone tries to tell me I'm not hard core I just have to say, "11c grandma!" I'm definitely planning on using that one in the near future...

We got free chick-fil-a. Apparently Friday was dress like a cow, get free chicken day. We didn't know that but we wanted Chick-fil-A anyway. On our way into the mall, some kind strangers gave us their construction paper cow spots and we got free chicken. It was awesome.

Lacrosse camp is over. Period.

I spent a lot of time reading. For fun. Just because I wanted to. Do people still do that? I love the book I'm reading too; The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Quality book--so far.

I ran ten miles, totally unprepared, and I'm not sore. Booyah.

So, you see? It was a great weekend. That means all these other weekends have a lot to live up to...

Home!

So last week, I went home. It was of course fantastic. Here's the week in pictures.

We had plans all week to go boating. Unfortunately, the lovely Chicago weather had different plans. It was cloudy and cold pretty much every day I was home. We're talking in the high 60s low 70s. For any of you who know how hot it usually is at this time of year in the midwest realize that those temperatures are basically unheard of. Anyway, we were struggling with knowing what to do all day when our neighbors called and asked if we wanted to go strawberry picking. None of us had done it before so we figured...why not! It was actually really fun.

Notice: We are wearing jackets and long pants. In July.

I like this picture. Just showing off our best sides while picking berries... Also a sidenote: this farm was in Wisconsin. Of course! When bored in Chicago, go to Wisconsin. It will never disappoint.

On our way back into the great state of Illinois, we searched long and hard for this replica of the great pyramid that you can see from the freeway. Unfortunately, it was closed. But can you believe this guy actually lives in the pyramid? Good thing he's got that sphyinx guarding it...

Still looking for ways to fill an otherwise empty day, Mom and Jen and I tried our hands at making deep dish pizza. I'd say it went very well. Until I dropped one on the floor.

Eventually we realized that we were going to have to go boating in terrible weather or not at all. So of course we went boating. It was chilly, but it was still boating and the water wasn't so bad since no one else was insane enough to go boating when the water was warmer than the air temperature. This is us trying to stay warm on the boat. In July.

On our way to the lake, mom and dad decided that a wakeboarding helmet was a worthwhile investment for me. You see, I have this habit of falling and hitting my head really hard on the water... So, mom and dad were kind enough to buy me a concussion-preventing helmet. And since Brian is now throwing things like 360s around (no I'm not jealous...), they decided it wasn't a bad idea for him to have one too.

Our humble "village" of Gurnee has the best fireworks ever. They are always the highlight of the 4th of July. For some absurd reason, Gurnee decided not to do fireworks this year. I know, right? Who are they to just go messing with our traditions like that? So we adapted. We watched fireworks in Wauconda from our boat on the lake. It was actually really great. Who knows, we could have a new 4th of July tradition. This is us just chillin' on the lake waiting for the fireworks to start.

While we puttered around the lake and waited for the show to start, we played games.

The fireworks made sweet reflections on the water.

And that was my week at home. It was so fun to be with my whole family even though the weather didn't cooperate. It was still a great time. Too short, but great.