Back to Reality

I'm back!

2011-11-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been a long time. My apologies. I've been doing a really good job of filling my free time lately and as a result, haven't really taken a lot of time to blog. And as you know, I don't really see any use in blogging without pictures to show for it. Which I've also had a lack of lately. But, I will do my best to fill you in on my life while also sprinkling in some relevant pictures. Some things I've been doing lately:

1. Climbing. I've been doing a lot of climbing lately and it's been awesome. Over the summer and through the first part of fall, my friend Maddie and I would go multiple times each week. Lately, an early setting sun and dropping temperatures have seriously limited our abilities to climb outdoors. Winter...I have some words for you...

Just, you know...climbin'

Maddie, Megan and I

2. Running. This is another habit that unfortunately for my health and my waistline has died down a little bit in recent weeks. Turns out my body needs some recovery time. Earlier this fall, Maddie and I ran the dirty dash in Midway. I really wish they would have given out some kind of prize for being the dirtiest because we would have won--hands down. Check it.

We're really muddy, right?!

Also, a couple weekends ago a ran yet another Ragnar relay. The Las Vegas one. It was really hot, we even had one of our teammates taken to the hospital via ambulance because of heat exhaustion. Other than that...it was a great time. :) As far as Ragnars go though...I think I will retire from this one. There are other Ragnars that need my attention. Like...the Huntington Beach one in April?? Just sayin'...

The van 2 half of the team. From the top left: Shayla, Corrinn,
Maddie, me, Megan (our trusty driver), Mike and Bryce.

We had a little bit of car trouble...but thanks to the genius of
Maddie, Megan and Mike (not pictured), it was nothing
but a temporary setback.

3. Flag Football. A few months ago, my friend Jamie from work invited me to join her intramural football team. Other than breaking my finger about a month ago, it's been a blast! Unfortunately, we got kicked out of the tournament last week. Lame.

My flag football cheering squad. My family/friends
are very supportive. :)

5.Racquetball. A few weeks ago I thought to myself; self, why don't you play in racquetball tournaments anymore? So, I signed up for one. This weekend was the Utah State Doubles tournament and I played with my good old doubles partner Hilary. No pictures from this but we had a great time. I plan on playing in more tournaments soon. Because...why not?!

Not too terribly exciting but that's what's been happening in my life recently. Maybe I'll use the cold weather to give my tired body some rest. But...then again maybe not. :)

R.I.P.

2011-08-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend, the world lost one of its bravest members.

Rest in peace watch. We've had some unforgettable times together.

Generally, the mourning process should go on for at least a couple weeks before even thinking about replacing something of this caliber. However, after going one day at work without a watch on, I realized I have become completely dependent on constantly having the time on my wrist. So, for this reason, exceptions have been made.

Welcome, tri-colored $7 watch from Burlington Coat Factory.

As much as I miss my trusty old watch, this one has thus far made

a fairly worthy substitute.

Thanks for the memories old red.

Summertime

2011-07-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

Ok. So I don't even know where to start. I feel like about a million things have happened/are happening that I feel I need to report on. But for brevity's sake, let's go for a bulleted list.

I spent the 4th of July in Chicago with my entire family. It was amazing. Sorry, no pictures from this. My sister has these and turns out I haven't really seen her in a while.
I ran a half marathon the week after Ragnar which actually was really enjoyable, and then I ran a 5k mud run. The result of all this running--my body hurts all the time.

My friend Maddie and I made the best smores I've ever had. Picture this: fudge stripe cookie, mallow, reese's cup, mallow, another fudge stripe cookie. Yes, it's possible. And yes it's delicious.
She's back!! Megan Robinson, that is, from her year and a half of serving the Lord in Lubbock, TX. Lee and Ben and I just got back from a surprise visit to her home in Seattle. It was fantastic. She is fantastic.

And...for some reason, blogger hates me right now and the pictures are all weirdly organized, and I just don't have the brainpower to fix it right now. So, use your imagination. I think it's fairly obvious which pictures go with what events. The canoeing and the eating on the curb both happened in Seattle.

The Back of the Wasatches

2011-06-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

So back in 2009, my friends and I decided to run a little race called the Wasatch Back. This race is a part of the Ragnar Relay series and consists of teams of 12 running 192 miles from Logan to Park City, UT. And it's crazy. After our first race I thought, well that was insane, at least I can say I've done it. So then what happened? The time to sign up for 2010 came around and suddenly all my mind could conjure up was happy memories of those 28.5 hours the year before.

When the time came to sign up for 2011, my future was pretty uncertain so I decided to just leave the race alone. Well my friends, it seems this race and I are just meant to be together because a friend of mine sort of happened upon a team and then invited me and ten of my friends to be on it. And I just couldn't pass it up.

Wasatch Back 2011 happened this past weekend. And I'm here to tell you that I enjoyed it more this year than I ever have. And yes I would do it again in a heartbeat. We all had a great time, got an unprecedented amount of sleep (like we're talking almost 5 hours) and I ran relatively pain free and haven't even been sore since! So great. And since Shayla was there and she actually uses her camera instead of putting it in her bag and meaning to use it, I have some great pictures to share with all of you.

Brad and I at the end of the race. Please ignore my very

large-looking arm. And our tired sunburnt faces.

Maddie, me and Shayla after we'd all completed our first legs.

Leg #1: 7.5 miles on a dirt road, 1200 ft of elevation gain, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Yes, in fact, it was miserable. But oddly, not as bad as I thought it was going to be. And don't be deceived by Brad's parka. He was just bringing me water and when you weren't running, it was a tiny bit cold.

At one of the exchanges this random guy was spray painting Ragnar symbols on people's calves. So naturally, we got one.

The rest of these pictures are from after the race. I love this picture. We all look about as dead as we feel. We were sitting in the only shade we could find, eating our free grapes, waiting for our second van to show up at the finish line.

This picture is the epitome of laziness. Maddie wanted a grape but neither of us wanted to move. Shayla wanted a picture of us doing this but she didn't want to move so she just ducked off to the side in the middle of the picture. And Ben was too lazy to actually take the picture so he set it up on a chair and put it on self-timer. Love it.

And the whole team after crossing the finish line. Our team name was "There's always money in the banana stand" (something that makes more sense if you're familiar with the show Arrested Development) so that's why I'm holding a banana. Just FYI.

So, moral of the story: Ragnar races are fantastic. If you're any kind of a runner at all, you should definitely consider doing one. Look 'em up! They have them all over the country!

Camels: Up Close and Personal

2011-05-16T12:19:00.001-07:00

Remember how we went to that safari park when Jen and I visited Brian in Virginia? Well thanks to Brian's friend Emily, we have these fantastic pictures to behold of Jen and I being attacked by camels. I hope you enjoy them. Because I really do.

So naive. I had no idea what was coming...

They just up and stick their entire faces in the car!

I was literally using all of my strength to keep that

bucket in my hands. Because this is what happens if you don't...

They eat the buckets! Not just steal them--devour them.

But despite the bucket stealing, the smelly breath and the half-chewed, slobbery camel food

all over my lap, we somehow came away friends.

This guy was one friendly camel...

Tehas!

2011-05-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

This post is a little late but I got to spend Easter weekend with my parents and my sister and her family in Austin, TX! It was so great! The weekend also happened to coincide with Hailey's first birthday! I know what you guys are thinking, "Man, Ali hasn't talked about that darling niece of hers in ages!" Well never fear faithful readers, your wait is over!

Hailey is just about the cutest one year old this planet has ever seen. I got to ride in the back of the car with her everywhere we went and she would wave and say "hi" to all the trees. She also says "yeah" all the time and it's just awesome. I think she might have even liked me by the time I left. :)

Anyway, here are some pictures from the weekend.

This is my sister and Hailey opening one of Hailey's birthday presents. It's funny the things we do for one year old's on their birthdays. Like wrap presents. I mean, do they even know? But let's be honest, it made it fun. :)

One day we drove the two hours to San Antonio and enjoyed the beautiful river walk there. It was beautiful and a really good time.

This is Hailey in her Easter Sunday outfit. There are just no words for this cuteness.

Here's my mom and I at the Alamo. Remember it.

In San Antonio, we found a souvenir shop with some coon hats, fake rifles and a life size cardboard cutout of John Wayne. Naturally, the following pictures ensued.

And that was my trip to Texas! It was hot and humid and...awesome!

Yes I know, I make genius statements.

Row an Oak

2011-04-20T23:30:00.001-07:00

First off let me just say, I apologize for the blog neglect. I'm not going to get into reasons why it was neglected, but just know, you have my sincerest apologies (whoever you are...).

So I have a feeling there are some much better pictures to come that I currently don't have my hands on but I thought I'd give a super brief recap of my trip last weekend to visit my brother Brian for his birthday in Roanoke, VA. (Row an oak? I know, I'm hilariously clever)

We were greeted right outside the Roanoke airport by a pile of poop right outside the door. Yep. Don't think about it too long. It can't be explained. Anyway, I inadvertently rolled right through it. And got it on my shoe. We spent a good fifteen minutes or so (mind you, it was 11:30 at night) warning everyone that walked out of the door. Some we saved and some... well, we were just too late.

The next morning we hiked McAfee's knob which although it was much longer and more taxing than we ever imagined it could be, the views of the Shenandoah Valley were totally worth it.

That afternoon, we went to the Virginia Safari Park where I was almost eaten alive by very hungry giraffes and camels. I only have this picture but I am very confident there are better ones to come.

That night after a delicious dinner at Outback, we went and tried out one of Virginia's finest attractions: the hurricane simulator in the mall. It costs $2 and it blows air at you. So of course we did it! It was ridiculous and hilarious how un-cool it was. So naturally, we loved it and it was totally worth it.

The next morning we took off in the pouring rain to see Appomattox (where the civil war ended) and Thomas Jefferson's estate, Monticello. They were both beautiful but turns out you can't see anything at Monticello without dishing out $25. So of course, we didn't pay. And all we got out of this trip was a postcard, a pencil and this picture.

And in two days, I leave for Austin to see my parents, my sister and my niece! She turns one on Tuesday! Crazy. Stayed tuned for more family/travel updates. :)

Jimmered

2011-03-05T16:13:00.000-08:00

BYU won today. Which is great news. I don't think my emotions could have taken another loss like Wednesday's. Geez, that was rough. But, Jimmer (if any of you don't know who Jimmer Fredette is...you just should. Look him up.) and the boys were on top of life today and we pulled out an awesome last regular season game. Great. Just great news.

In other great news, I've taken some pictures! I know! I'm in shock too. I was realizing today that my little canon powershot, easily the coolest possession I owned about a year ago, may be becoming obsolete. It seems people don't bring cameras anywhere anymore. They bring their smart phones. It's making me feel a little behind the times but you know what, I don't think I care. I still love my camera. :)

So my good friend Jenny George leaves on her mission in just over a week. So we've been spending some quality time together. Thanks unemployment! And most of the exciting things I do in my life lately are things that we have done together. Like skiing.

I ski! This is a new thing for me this year but I love it. Jenny has an extra pair of skis and we've been monopolizing on Alta's daily ski free after three deal. Best invention in the world.

We also tried our hands at cross-country skiing a couple weeks ago. It was great! It had snowed the night before so it was beautiful and just a whole lot of fun. Jenny's solo shot turned out before than mine so I posted hers instead.

And the other night Ben informed us that he had tickets to the Real Salt Lake game. So we drove up to Sandy and watched some soccer. It was also great.

Sometimes we make faces. It's no big deal.

In other news, I am now employed! I'm working as a physical therapy aide for Intermountain Healthcare. It's not the most glamorous job there ever was but it will get me great experience for PA school. Also--I passed the BOC exam. In English, that means that once I send in some stuff and pay the state of Utah some money, I can work as a certified Athletic Trainer! More great news. :)

Happy Sunday everybody! I hope it's a winner.

Purposeless Posting

2011-02-24T00:07:00.000-08:00

The following pictures are random. And really serve very little purpose in this post. Honestly, I felt like posting, it's been way too long since my last post, and I don't think most of these pictures have appeared here before.

I used to wear this piece of my old jeans on my wrist. When enough people told me that it made me look homeless, I stopped wearing it. I may or may not still have it...

PS-I miss being tan.

This is my watch. I love my watch. Little known fact: the watch I currently have (pictured below) is actually a replica of the watch I had before this one. Interpretation: I loved this $15 watch so much that when my first one broke, I had my mom go back to the store to see if there was another one. There was! Knowing my mom, she probably picked up a couple more and is saving them in her closet for when my current watch breaks. :) Aren't moms the best?!

The indiglo feature stopped working the other day.

I almost cried.

Once upon a time I was a student athletic trainer at Springville High School. Their sports photographer was an extremely diligent man and captured many an unfortunate picture of me. Such as this one in which I am gazing thoughtfully and heroically into the distance.

Don't even ask. I have no idea what I was looking at. Most likely I was

thinking of everything I would have rathered been doing.

Whoa, was that grammatically correct?

I can however tell you that this turned out to be one of the best thumb/wrist tapings

I have ever performed.

I should really be more aware of the faces I make when I think

no one's looking.

This one time I got a busted lip. From a racquet I think. I don't even remember now. But I attempted to take a picture of it for blogging purposes. There were a few very obvious reasons why this picture never made it to the blog (until now that is). Namely because I look ridiculous in this picture and the lip injury was not as impressive-looking as I imagined it to be.

So...this one time (definitely an isolated event...maybe...) my

roommates and I had this much ice cream in our freezer.

What? It was on sale.

This is the gum wall in Seattle. I think most normal people

think this is disgusting. Which is why most of you won't be

surprised to know that I thought it was one of the

greatest things I've ever seen.

Oh, and in case you haven't heard...

...this is my niece. And she's still cute. Right?! :)

A Diplomatic Day

2011-01-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

Look what came in the mail today!

(It's a diploma, in case that's confusing to you.)

Cecil and the prophet signed it. I'm not sure,

but I think that makes it legit.

Well, I might have a diploma but unfortunately, I'm still jobless. I think I'm still getting over the shock of having so much time. It's surprisingly tough to transition from the busiest semester of your life to the most unstructured my life has ever been. It's like jumping from the hot tub into a bath of ice water. That kind of shock could kill you, you know. Just FYI. Anyway...I digress. I'm making good use of my time I do believe but if anyone happens to know of a smashing full-time job opportunity within a 20-30 mile radius of Provo, I'm all ears. :)

This time of my life definitely does have its advantages. I read a lot which is fantastic. And it's a lot harder to come up with excuses not to run (notice I didn't say impossible...) which means I run a lot more now. Even though it's freezing. And, even though I have no money for travelling, there's still some opportunities for totally spontaneous and cheap road trips. Such as the one we took this past Monday to Zion National Park. I'd never been so obviously it was a necessity.

Here I am just enjoying the scenery. And the temperature!

Short sleeves? In January?! Too good to be true.

The best part of the trip? A mile long tunnel! In the greater Chicago area, there's really not a huge need for tunnels. So I found this simply incredible!I probably shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did but I just smiled the whole way through that tunnel.

Believe it or not, I actually did go with some other people. But I don't have any good group photos of all of us. We even had this kind older woman take one for us but alas when I got my camera back...the picture was nowhere to be found. Still not exactly sure how that picture didn't get taken. But, I do believe one of us got a good one so perhaps I will post it at a later date.

My Niece is Cuter Than Your Niece

2011-01-03T13:35:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry if that's rude but...I just can't believe it's not true. This Christmas break was a great one. My whole family was home and it was just a much needed break and distraction from everyday life. We did a lot of pretty awesome things (pictures to come) but really, mostly we just sat around and watched Hailey, an 8-month old bundle of pure joy. And that was entertaining enough.

So...without further ado, I present to you, Hailey Marie Giles:

Hailey's hair has a mind of its own.

I love it. :)

Me and the girl of the hour.

This was after our family picture shoot so she

wasn't totally thrilled to be in yet another picture...

I don't know who did her hair like

that but it's pretty incredible.

 Hailey loved Christmas morning.

If you can believe it, there are some even cuter ones out there from the break. I know, I know. You're thinking that this can't be possible. Well, it just is. I will post them when I have them.

This is an airport

2010-12-08T21:59:00.001-08:00

And I have spent more time than I really think necessary in an assortment of these the last month or so. The week before Thanksgiving I flew to Arizona. Then I flew to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Then this last weekend I flew back to Chicago for an interview. And I will once again fly to Chicago, for the third time this month in just a couple weeks. I guess that's not a lot of traveling for some of you frequent flyers out there, but I have about had my fill.

I'm feeling so overwhelmed with school right now that I might die. I haven't even had time to stop and think about how it's going to feel to be finished with my undergraduate education in one week from Friday. Weird.

Also, I heart Northwestern. I interviewed for their PA (physician assistant) program on Monday and I really just loved it there. And maybe, just maybe, they loved me too.

And last but not least, I got to see the one and only Brian Regan live tonight. It was amazing. And he was hilarious. Thanks to good friends with even better connections.

Sorry. That was probably a really boring post. Better luck next time.

Sara Bareilles

2010-11-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

Until very recently I have been calling her Sara Borealis. You know, like aurora Borealis. Boy was I wrong. Anyway...last night some friends and I went to her concert in Salt Lake. It was fabulous! We learned from our experience at Ingrid's concert and got there to get in line at about 5pm. We had to wait in line for quite a while but it was totally worth it when we got in there and were on the second row! Success.

While in line we had some Costa Vida for dinner. Everybody was jealous.

The four of us. Just regular old concert-goers.

And...Sara! She really was great. Not quite as funny as Ingrid, but her voice is truly amazing. It was really hard to get over her outfit, however. I don't think you can tell in this picture, but she is basically wearing a black one-piece pant suit with a zipper and a belt. I don't know if I missed something but last time I checked, that really was not an attractive outfit.

And by the way--this is my 100th blog post! Holy smokes. I feel like google should give me some kind of a prize or something...

Preemptive Posting

2010-11-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

So...my facebook's back. Yeah I don't get it either. I just decided to try one more time and there it was. So thank you everyone for your concern and prayers. It was felt. Crisis averted.

PS--Who keeps commenting on my blog and then deleting them?? It's kind of weirding me out.

Facebook?

2010-11-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

So I had an interesting thing happen to me today. I logged onto my computer this morning to do my usual site checks: gmail, facebook, blogs. Yes, in that order. I put my email address and password into facebook, clicked log on and was met with a bright red message saying, "Your account has been disabled." I tried to figure out how this would have happened so suddenly and without my knowledge and all facebook gave me was this huge rant about how you can't make a facebook page for a fake person or with a fake name. At which point I wanted to yell out to the universe, "I'm real!! I promise!".

So as of right now, I have no facebook account. I have really mixed feelings about this. A part of me is relieved. I've almost gotten rid of my facebook account a bazillion times but I could never go through with it. Now that it's been done for me, an even larger part of myself is feeling lost, hurt and confused (just for the record--I am being purposefully over dramatic...). I've had facebook for five years. That's a long time. Do you have any idea what kind of a friend base I've built up?! Yeah, I don't know either. But a lot! And that's all gone now. And sure, I guess I could just start another one but...do I really want to do that? Would it be the same? Oh man, this news has really thrown a wrench into my day...so I just had to blog about it. Naturally.

And ps, last weekend we went to the hot springs up Spanish Fork canyon. Here is a picture to prove it. Well...I'm not sure it actually proves anything but trust me--we were there.

The Thanksgiving Push

2010-11-11T17:14:00.000-08:00

Beginning with Halloween, we have officially entered a time that I have just at this very moment decided to refer to as the "Thanksgiving push". I've never really experienced this period of time from anything but a student's perspective so this may be a little off for the rest of the world. But I do believe that most people would agree with me. It is a well-known fact that Thanksgiving to New Years is the very best time of the year. People are happy, we get to sing Christmas songs, buy presents for people, think about Jesus, be with family, eat lots of food...all great things. And what is so great about the middle of November? It's the second round of midterms, fall is ending, leaves are falling, it's turning ugly outside and getting colder. So may I submit to you all--the Thanksgiving push. Just push through to Thanksgiving! Two weeks from today and we will all be on the brink of the best five weeks of the year. We can do it. Go fight win!

Identity Crisis

2010-10-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

I got on my blog the other day and I realized that I really didn't like the way it looked. I liked the book background thing I had going on but it just wasn't looking good. So...I've got this up and...it's alright I guess. I don't know. I'm not sold yet. If you have any suggestions, or want to come on over and design my blog yourself, I'd be more than happy to let you do that. I'm not exactly what you'd call the creative type.

The biggest news of the week--it's Friday, and I'm alive!! It really is a miracle. Hopefully the next few weeks will be equally as miraculous. On that note, I pretty much have no time to be blogging right now so let's get right to it.

On Tuesday night, some friends and I went to an Ingrid Michaelson concert in Salt Lake. We got up there at about 7 and waited in a line four blocks long, in the snow, for about two hours. Definitely a great way to start the night. By the time we got in there, the viewing options for someone just over 5 feet tall (yours truly) were pretty limited. My roommate and I finally found some decent standing room over by the bar. I learned something that night. Smelling alcohol for long periods of time gives me a headache. Good thing those drinking days of mine are behind me.

At one point, the snow was pelting horizontally. That was neat.

The four of us waiting in line (Hilary, Lauren, Jenny, me).

Using my scarf as an umbrella. More effective than you might think.

When we walked out of the building at about 11pm, I was astonished to find a solid two inches of snow on the ground. And there was no sign of it stopping. Well, I don't know why after living in Utah for almost 5 years I haven't learned to keep my snowscraper close at hand starting in September, but after I used my hand to clear the car of snow we were good to go. Until we got on 215 (the freeway). The clincher was when, as I was going 25 down the one lane that had been carved out of the snow, the SUV in front of me somehow spun out across all four lanes of traffic. Luckily, there was almost no one on the road so they were fine. But, that's when we decided our life expectancy would increase dramatically if we stayed the night at Jenny's house, which we happened to be about 10 minutes away from.

So we got there at about midnight, decided we were starving and ate everything we could find (sorry Jenny's parents...) and tried to get some sleep.

Jenny let us borrow some great clothes. Which included

these Texas boxers that Hilary was only too happy to sport.

My car in the morning. I was clearly not amused. I knew there was a

reason I've been saving that Toy Story 3 coloring book in my car...

it made a stellar snow scraper.

So Ingrid? An adventure. But what's life without a little bit of that? You might not believe me, but I actually did have a good time. Ingrid is hilarious and sounds even better live than recorded. We're going up for another concert next month. So...better luck next time?

Another Ragnar

2010-10-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

After we ran the good ole Wasatch Back in June, most of my team decided to sign up for the Las Vegas relay race in October. Having just spent about $100 to be in pain and run 18 miles and not get any sleep, I opted out of the Las Vegas race. But I still got pulled into it. Turns out they needed a driver, and I was available so I decided--what the heck. I'll go and drive.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Ragnar Relay series, first of all--they are amazing. They have them all over the US and each one is a total of about 200 miles. You gather up a team of 12, and two vans and then run. Their tag line is very appropriately, "Run. Drive. Sleep? Repeat." And there you have it. So what did I do this weekend? I drove an Expedition full of 4 smelly boys and 2 slightly less smelly girls through the Las Vegas desert. For 29 hours. For future reference, if you have any plans to run one of these--don't pick Vegas. A couple of our runners got lost on the course in the middle of the night and...I can't vouch for any of the other ones but the Wasatch Back at least is way better. So pick a good one.

This is a picture of me at probably 2am, standing on the side of a road in the middle of the desert, wearing an orange reflective vest (that we found out wasn't actually reflective so we had to stick some reflective tape on it...) holding a bright orange flag and a bottle of water. This is also about the time I thought to myself--what on earth am I doing here?

Here's the whole team before we started running. Mike bought a purple bandanna. Then Ben bought one. And then Brad bought one. And then...suddenly, it was team uniform and we all had one.

The finish line was at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas. We were supposed to get a couple free rooms there but apparently they ran out and we ended up staying at the Venetian right on the strip! In these huge suites! So that was pretty darn cool. Although, I still had to sleep on the floor because there were 8 of us in there. Oh well, beats the driver's seat of a car (which is where I slept Friday night/Saturday morning). So, I guess the cool part of this race is supposed to be that in ends in Vegas but we got there and I suddenly remembered--I hate Vegas. I feel like it is the perfect embodiment of everything in the world I live my life trying to avoid. It's a dirty, sleazy and uncomfortable place. So what did we do there all night? Well, what any good group of Mormon kids would do:

Watched the Bellagio fountains.

And got our picture taken with the Coca-cola bear. Naturally.

Because what else do people come to Vegas to do?

When we thought we were all going to die of exhaustion (at about 10pm...), we wandered back to the hotel. We left to drive home at 5 the next morning and I was completely astonished at the number of people that were out and about. Way more than I expected. I guess the no clocks and windows in those casinos really does trick people...

Fall

2010-10-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

I spent this last weekend hanging out with my pal, Jen (aka--my sister). On Friday night we drove up to the outlets in Park City. I'd been dying to go there forever and even though Jen has been there several times recently, she still took me. What a sacrifice... :)

We spent quite a while trying to get the perfect picture but...

turns out a car is a really bad place to try to take a picture off of, and

I accidentally ruined every one just by being in it. So this is unfortunately the best we have.

I finally got aviators. Which I'm pretty sure I've been meaning

to do for years now. Hopefully they're still cool. But I guess I make them

look pretty good. So, it's a win-win either way really.

Saturday night was when the real party started. Jen invited me over once again to have dinner in a pumpkin. You really carve out a pumpkin, mix up some meat and rice and stuff, and then throw it in the pumpkin and put the whole thing in the oven. It was delicious. But it took a while. So in the interim, we made caramel apples. Naturally.

Just excited to be there. And so naive.

Jen holding dinner. Well done!

Ok, so Jen and I have never made caramel apples before. No one warned us that it is a very involved science. So, we started the night off by making some really ugly ones.

And, we ended the night with some slightly less ugly ones that were

exciting at the moment, but by morning looked just as bad as the first batch.

BUT--we had a great time. And maybe learned some things not to do next time. If we are ever brave enough to try again. And also, I do realize that I am sporting the button-up shirt/sweater look in all of these pictures. I just wanted to be positive that when you think to yourself, 'who do I know that wears more button-up shirt/sweater combos than I've ever seen?' there's zero hesitation before my name comes to mind.

Happy Fall!

Busy!

2010-10-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a few quick random updates from my life.

A couple weekends ago, Jen and I were able to go to the first

session of general conference at the conference center in Salt Lake.

It was a good time. And sunny. That's why we all look really weird.

Jen's roommate Jen (yes, it's confusing) and her friend Mary came with us.

We had wicked good seats. This is taken from my camera without

any zoom. I think we were about 15 rows from the front.

Jen begged me not to put this picture on here but I just can't help myself.

I think it's hilarious! I obviously caught Jen rather off guard as she was

chewing her headache-preventative granola bar.

About a month ago I bought a bookshelf. One of those $25 ones from Walmart.

Thus, I didn't have very high expectations for it. But is it too much

to ask that the bookshelf be completely vertical?

Apparently those stipulations are more than Walmart can handle. They told me they'd give me a new one if I brought this one back in but it's not exactly easy to take apart and...I just don't think it's going to fit in the back of a sentra. So I decided, what the heck. We are just going to embrace this topsy-turvy piece of furniture. And you know what, I think it was a great decision.

Today I came home from school to do some homework and our toilet was running. It's been doing this a lot lately. Marie's fiancé (gotta love fiancés!) told us he'd fix it but he hasn't gotten around to it. I was pretty annoyed by the constant running water so I decided to fix it. Since I had no idea how to do that, this is the best I came up with:

A hair tie and a twist tie. Maybe I missed my

calling as an engineer somewhere along the road?

Mud smells

2010-09-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran The Dirty Dash--Utah's very first mud run. It was a 10k which is a little longer than I really wanted to run but it was totally worth it. Here's a map of the basic set up.

I was picturing running all six miles through mud but most of it was more of a trail run with some mud obstacles sprinkled in. The walls were definitely the muddiest part. We did some wrestling and mud sliding through/over those. Believe it or not, we actually spent the majority of the race much dirtier than we are in these pictures. We literally had mud caked all over us. But then we went down the biggest, bestest slip n' slide ever and a really deep and nasty mud puddle. So we came out a little cleaner than we initially were. But...I think we're still pretty dirty. Observe.

Pre-race cleanliness.

Take note of the shorts I'm wearing...

And post-race.

Lee made a last minute decision to run with us and he didn't have any shoes. So he ran the whole thing barefoot. People thought he was really hard core. But really he just forgot his shoes.

Me and Suzanne. Notice the absence of the shorts. After the first bit of mud, they were drooping somewhere around my mid-calf. So, I decided to take them off and run in my spandex. And I definitely wasn't the only one who left articles of clothing on the course. No worries--I got them at DI.

And yes--it was awesome. I loved it!

Good resolve, bad memory

2010-09-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

I would like to apologize. My resolve for taking my camera places has not diminished. However, it appears that my memory has. This weekend I took a little trip down to Moab and even experienced Melon Days in Green River, Utah and--I forgot my camera in Provo. Some good it was doing me there. So...rats. No pictures again. My next outing--I will remember my camera. I'll have to make something exciting happen soon.

In the meantime, you can feast your eyes on this. It's not really very impressive, but when I was down in Moab, I went and picked up a CD of some pictures of me guiding on the river. There's a company that takes pictures every day that people can buy (kind of like when you're on a roller coaster...). So, this is the best one by far.

By the way, this was my first day ever guiding (I'm in the back of the boat with the white hat--staying dry) and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Don't worry--I faked it really well.

Resolve

2010-09-14T21:15:00.000-07:00

I am hereby now officially resolved to take more pictures. When I first came to college, I was really camera happy. Somehow, semester after semester, that trait has left me. But you know what? My life still consists of some exciting things (or at the very least things I deem exciting...) and those things warrant pictures. Right? Right!

If you are wondering where this resolve came from...it was this:

This is the best picture I have from seeing Lion King (the musical) in Salt Lake last weekend. It was incredible. ...and this is really the best picture I could muster? I really think I could have done better. So here's to hoping there might actually be something good to look at on my blog this semester (not that Jen and I growling--you know, like lions-- isn't good to look at...).

PS--My sister is awesome. That's really all you need to know.

Warning: PHOTO OVERLOAD

2010-08-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

This is what I get for not posting in so long--an overabundance of pictures to post. So here's the extremely condensed version of the last two weeks of my life:

Mom, Dad and Jen came to Moab to visit and take me back to the big city (aka--Provo)
I graduated! Ok, so I "walked". I still have a semester left
Brian graduated for real. Hence me walking now.
Sara had a birthday
I met my adorable niece Hailey
Jen got her Master's degree
I went home for a visit and we went on the lake five nights in a row (yes, I am sore but feeling better now, thank you.)
And now I'm back in Provo, moving in and waiting for school to start/life to end (ok, so life doesn't end when school starts it just slows down. Or speeds up?)

Enter photo onslaught:

We went on a hummer safari. I have never heard my mom

and sister scream like that. It was amazingly fun.

Jen, Dad, me and Mom in Moab.

We took some normal pictures but

I just like these ones better.

Priceless. The picture--not the education.

Just ask Dad.

The whole fam. We even let Dave be in it with us!

Me and my cute sisters.

Jen won't actually be walking for her Master's degree but

the road there has been so long that she just had to

put on a robe and throw her hands in the air. GO JEN!

Oohing and aahing over Hailey. I'm sure it's hard to believe

that we spent most of the week doing this.

...and this. Give us a break, we're not so used to babies at

family gatherings.

And last but not least...

...me and the girl of the hour.

Phew. If any of you actually made it to the end of this post, thanks. You get a gold star! Adios for now.

Let me out!

2010-08-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of where I've been living this summer:

That's right--a double wide trailer. And just to make sure
we fit in with our redneck neighbors...

We have a toilet on our back porch.

So it's been quite the experience sharing this tiny, somewhat dilapidated space with 17 other girls. Mostly, it's really been ok. But this morning, I lost all patience with my summer home. I got up early this morning to get ready for work and walked to the bathroom. Sometime between about 12:30am and 6:30 am, the bathroom door had been ripped from its hinges. The top one was completely off and the bottom hinge was holding the door at a rakish angle by one screw. Shaking my head, I squeezed into the bathroom and attempted to close the door. But the door wasn't even the last straw--the lack of toilet paper was.

How many more days do I have to live here? SEVEN!!!! And they couldn't be over fast enough.

If it ain't broke, I don't own it

2010-07-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

Well hello there. I've had some great things to blog about recently but I think when I explain my life as of late, you will realize why I haven't posted anything. Ready for the list of things that have recently BROKEN in my life? Here you go:

my driver car door (don't worry, I figured out this one)
my watch (I also figured this one out)
my camera battery charger
my computer

Yep, you read that right--my computer. One day, my computer screen decided to no longer illuminate. It was fantastic. Upon further evaluation, a local computer repair man declared my motherboard to have a short in it. Don't worry, it only costs about $300 to replace. For a computer that is three years old and has no battery life? Not worth it. So, a moment of silence for my computer please.

Alright, now that we're all teary-eyed I'll tell you the good news. Moab has an awesome library and I was able to get some pictures off of my camera card today. So I can share some fabulous photos with you. I know--I've made your day. You. Are. Welcome.

A couple weekends ago, Jenny and Ben came down to visit.
It was fun to have them down here. Here's some of the things we did:

We went bouldering. None of us had ever really been
before so here's Jenny trying her hand at it.
We went up into the La Sal mountains to attempt to do some climbing where it wasn't 115 degrees. Well, we got a little lost. And ended up walking about a half mile through an ice cold creek (with a very strong current I might add) and straight up things that looked like this:

And here's our victory picture. You can't really see, but behind us
is a canyon that looks like it has some climb-able walls but...we sure couldn't get to them.
Since our climbing venture failed, and we were up there anyway, we decided to check out Oowah Lake. It was beautiful. We skipped rocks on the lake until we couldn't handle the bugs anymore.
Apparently the rock I set the camera on wasn't exactly level. My bad.

A few weeks ago, a few of us went out to a place called Honeycomb Caves. It was a cool place. We just explored and climbed around in the caves for awhile. And I snapped this picture which, being the photographer that I am not, I thought was pretty cool.

Jen came down for my day of birth! It was lots of fun. These pictures
are out of order but...we got some snow cones because it was so blasted hot.

We ate lots of food (this happens to be a picture of my free
grand slam breakfast at Denny's on my birthday).

We went to Canyonlands National Park.
Again--unbearably hot. But fantastic views.

And we stayed at the slightly ghetto Motel 6.
And we may or may not have jumped on the bed...

And other than that, I'm either at work trying not to kill tourists, at the trailers trying not to melt away, or at the library attempting to understand biochemistry. Yep, I'm a busy girl.

2010-07-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

Check out this Moab-ian sunset I caught the other night.

Pretty, right? Well, minus the powerline. We went up to the parking lot of a restaurant called Sunset Grill to watch it. Turns out...you can't be up there when the restaurant is closed. But we didn't know that so the guy kicked us out very nicely. Thanks man.

So the other morning, a few of us all had the morning off so we decided to go for a little hike to a place called Fisher Towers. I've heard great things about it and it certainly lived up to the stories. It was a gorgeous and really fun hike.

Here's the hiking crew. From left to right we have Jake, me, Mike, Makel and Krissy. If I look really awkwardly spaced from everyone it's because we used the self-timer on my camera and the rock I had it on took longer to jump off of than I thought. So, I didn't have much time to strike a pose.

It was a great hike. I highly recommend it. And don't listen to the trailhead sign. It says it takes most people three to four hours. But we totally did it in two. So...go hiking!

The Coolest Thing I've Ever Done

2010-07-06T22:15:00.001-07:00

Pictures from today's post are brought to you by the letter P for the Pelican 1010. Micro Waterproof Case Series. This thing was completely underwater and repeatedly banged against rocks. And yet--my camera lives on, unharmed.

So I've been called hard core before. But I really don't think I deserve that distinction. I mean, people just throw that word out because I rock climb or because I run ridiculous relay races. These things, honestly, are not a big deal. I can name dozens of people that do way cooler things than me, all the time. Today however, I think I turned a new leaf. I did something today that I would consider--truly hard core. My good friend Ryan Pepper took me to Pleaides Canyon today. It's a slot canyon with about six waterfalls. The trail is up in the La Sal mountains of Moab (a popular place for locals where it's about 20 degrees cooler and there are no tourists). There's a little hike in through a beautiful aspen forest and then you rappel down the waterfalls and hike out the other side. Oh man. It was awesome. Freezing. But awesome.

This is the hike to the canyon through the incredible aspen forest.

Here I am, about to go down the first rappel!

Here I am....rappelling down a waterfall! Gosh it was cold. Just so you know, this first one was the smallest one we encountered. I actually tried to take a picture of one of the bigger ones but I couldn't feel my hands enough to generate enough pressure to turn on the camera. Don't worry--all feeling has since returned!

And there's Ryan Pepper, the man of the hour, going down on one of our last rappels. I think this might have been the one where his rope got caught for a second and he had to sit under a pounding waterfall of freezing water for a minute and get it unstuck. I wasn't sure he was going to recover from that one.

Rappelling Pleaides Canyon? Literally--the coolest thing I have ever done.

RFTC and Other Updates

2010-07-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

It's almost midnight and I have no idea why this seemed like a good time to blog. I have to be at work in six hours. Oh well. Here goes anyway. Warning: the following post is simply a smattering of my life as of late. Chronological order is not guaranteed.

Last Saturday was Raft for the Cure (RFTC). It also happened to be my first official day as a river guide. I was a little nervous since this event involves about 350 people on the river who are all there to help cure breast cancer. But I safely and hopefully enjoyably, got my very own boat of ten people down the river. Due to my lack of a waterproof camera and copyright issues, I don't have any pictures to show you. Sorry.

So Saturday was a long day. The guiding part of it started at 6:30 am. Right from there, I went to work at the store for the rest of the night. RFTC also involves dinner and a concert at our store. I got to sit inside all night, hear the band and the joy outside, and stand at the counter. It was very boring. And I didn't get home until about midnight. One of my co-workers caught my mood quite perfectly in this picture.

I was so ready to go home.

I also ran the Wasatch Back relay again this year. Our van managed to get there super early again this year but that's ok. It allowed for great pictures like this one to be taken:

There were several of these that were equally as ridiculous. But I thought we looked the most bored in this one.

And here we are at the finish line.

The other day I finally bugged my boss about going on a sunset jetboat tour. We offer jetboat tours through a company here in Moab and last night I finally got to go on one! It was great. The boat goes about 30 mph down the Colorado river. It's a great way to see the scenery. And plus, afterwards they serve you this amazing dutch oven dinner. Holy smokes it was good.

The Colorado river by jetboat.

Yesterday I woke up and realized--oh my goodness. It is July 1st. I only have about five more weeks to live in Moab. And I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of what this place has to offer. So I've decided that I'm actually going to go out and do things. Good idea, huh? So this morning, I hiked to Corona arch and repelled off of it. All in about an hour and a half because one of us had to be back to go to work. That was a fun sprint down the trail. Mom, this is the part where you avert your eyes...

See that little speck floating a few feet below the arch? That's me! A beautiful, and massive arch. Some of you may have seen it featured on Planet Earth, the deserts episode. Yeah, I'm cool.

Well hopefully, mostly due to my new found determination to do everything cool in Moab, there will be some great posts soon to come. But for now--that's all folks!

Famous

2010-06-13T18:45:00.001-07:00

So once upon a time I lived in Provo. A girl in my ward happened to have a mother on the relief society general board. So when the time came to make a visiting teaching video for some big relief society training conference, her mom came to our ward and asked for all of us to come up with ideas of "what visiting teaching looks like" that they could take pictures of us doing. Well, I participated in a couple and made the cut! So I'm just letting you all know that I'm officially famous. Obscure relief society videos are definitely the first step to some big gigs. With any luck, this link will pull up the video for you. In case you have a hard time finding me, my roommate Jenny is teaching me how to play the guitar at about 25 seconds and I'm in a jogging party at a minute and ten seconds. Enjoy!

Living in a Vacation

2010-06-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

I love going on vacations as well as the next person but I've never really had any desire to live in a vacation spot. Maybe that doesn't make sense. I mean, if a vacation is awesome for one week why wouldn't it be even more awesome year round? This summer, I'm getting a glimpse at what it's like to live and work in everybody else's vacation. And it's not bad. Who doesn't love Moab? But at the same time, I would be lying if I told you watching families and adorable old couples and people from Germany who can't speak English come into the MAC day in and day out didn't make me just a little depressed. Everyone I see is on vacation. And what am I doing? I'm working. Sure, it might be a cool job, but I'm not on vacation.

So this post really has no purpose. It's just me justifying my feeling of not wanting to live in a vacation spot. Besides, if you live in a vacation where do you go when you want to go on vacation? Think about that one...

A Full Weekend

2010-05-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Memorial Day! It has been quite the weekend for me. By some miracle, I had both Saturday and Monday off. When I caught wind of a plot to go to Lake Powell this weekend, you better believe I did everything in my power to get work off on Sunday. And I did! So here's how it went down.

Friday afternoon, Mike and Brian rolled into Moab. They picked me and my stuff up and then we drove the four and a half hours to Page, Arizona. Another car of people was supposed to be at our campsite before us but turns out we actually beat them. It was already 9 pm by the time we got there but the other car had dinner. So, we passed the time, in the torrential wind and inches of very soft sand, trying to light some charcoal (which don't tell the park service--we technically weren't supposed to have on the beach). It was a pretty frustrating process but finally, the boy scouts got the fire started.

When the rest of our friends showed up, we got literally everything covered in sand trying to put the tents up in gale force winds and finally, at about 11pm, finally ate tinfoil dinners.

Thankfully, the wind had died down by morning and we went to pick up our rental boat. I am so sorry to tell you all that we didn't get a picture of the truck they lent us to tow the boat. It was a 1988 Ford Lariat whose maximum speed was 50 mph and the driver door was brown instead of blue like the rest of the truck. The radio didn't work, neither did the AC and there was a Travis Tritt CD from the 80s and a brand new straw hat sitting on the seat when we got in. Brian and I decided that everything about our rental experience can be described in one word--quality. Anyway, the boat worked fine and we had a great day of boating. And here's what our "campsite" looked like. It was great minus the wind the first night and drunk people everywhere, all the time.

By the way, the credit for all of these pictures goes to Brian and his snazzy new camera.

Sunday morning, we got up nice and early and drove to Cortez, CO. On our way there we stopped at Four Corners. This is what we found.

It was under construction! Who does that?

After attending a very unique sacrament meeting, we drove to Mesa Verde National Park. It was a cool place. There are literally hundreds of ancient cliff dwellings all over the mesa. It's pretty neat. Here's me just hanging out in one.

We spent all day in the park and didn't get to our campsite until dark--again. We were supposed to have dutch oven pot roast for dinner but nobody wanted to wait until 2 am for it to be done so we made pancakes at about 11 for dinner instead. Yum.

Today, after changing a flat tire on Mike's Xterra in Colorado, Brian and Mike dropped me off in Moab and headed back to Provo. What a weekend! It was fun, eventful and exhausting. I hope we do it again sometime!

Moab

2010-05-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

I don't know why this is underlined. I can't make it go away and it's frustrating. So let's just try to ignore it. So... I've heard from a few people that I'm due for a blog post. Consequently, I feel like there's a lot of pressure to make this one quality. My reason for delaying postage is the same as it always is--lack of pictures. I have been doing awesome things here but most of them have involved lots of water and therefore not involved my camera. Thus--a lack of pictures. But, I'll try to do my best with internet fill-ins so you can at least get the idea.

Since I've been in Moab I've been sent on three whitewater trips. The first was down Westwater Canyon. Here's a map of it.

This map probably doesn't mean a whole lot to many people, but there you go anyway. Skull rapid is the gnarly one. I've actually been down Westwater three times now and one boat flipped in skull our second time through. Everyone was just fine, of course. Just a little cold.

I've also been down what is known here as "the daily". Every rafting company in Moab runs this stretch of the river everyday. Hence--the daily. It's a fairly simple stretch of river and this time of year especially is advertised as a "scenic float" with only class I and II rapids. But I enjoyed it a lot. One day this summer when I'm able to start guiding, this is the trip I will be doing. The best part of the daily is that it's beautiful. It goes through an area called Castle Valley and it seriously looks like this:

Pretty, right? Anyway, every guide here just talks about getting daily burnout, which I can definitely imagine. But for now, we're friends.

The third trip I went on was just last week. It was a three day trip through Cataract Canyon. And it was so fun. Cataract Canyon is kind of the trip down here. The rapids are huge and here's the map.

This 100 mile section of the Colorado runs through Canyonlands National Park and ends at Hite Marina in Lake Powell! The worst part of this trip was being in Lake Powell and turning around instead of going waterskiing. So painful. Our company (Western River Expeditions) is the only company that uses a raft called a J-rig to run Cat (as Cataract Canyon is affectionately known around these parts). Here's a picture.

And no I'm not on there. But you can sure pretend. These boats are 37 feet long and 18 feet wide. Just the rubber for each boat weighs over a ton and is lifted out of a semi using a crane. These things are legit. And a good time.

So there you have it. Well, most of it anyway. Brian and some Provo friends were down here last weekend so once I get some pictures from them I'll throw them up here. I've also done some rock climbing and hikes and such but again...no pictures. My bad. Sorry if that was boring--but there's the update!

News

2010-05-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, sorry for the lack of postage as of late. Life has been pretty nuts! First and foremost (the news is a little late sorry...)--I'm an aunt!!! Here is a picture of beautiful Hailey Marie Giles. She was born on April 26th. Poor girl, she was born the day of my GRE test...which went off as well as can be expected, thanks for asking.

She's adorable, right?

In other news, I'm in Moab! I have officially taken up permanent summer residence here. And it's been pretty good so far. I've been to a few days of work at the MAC (Moab Adventure Center) and I like it. There's a ton to learn and know but I think I'll get the hang of it soon. So at the MAC mostly what we do is book trips; river trips, mountain biking trips, hummer trips, jetboat trips, climbing trips, hiking trips... So in order to be a good salesman/woman, they occasionally send us on these trips. Yesterday I went on an Arches hike at sunset which was beautiful and today I went rafting through westwater canyon. Which was of course, amazing. And tons of fun. Brian and Jen drove me down here which I really appreciate. Thanks guys! Here's some proof that they were here.

You can't really see us...but there we are. In Arches. It was a great time. They even let me stay in their awesome little cabin and eat tin foil dinners with them. Aren't siblings just the best?

And....I think that's about it for the news. I guess that's not too much. It just feels like life has been crazy lately but I suppose that's the way it's meant to be right? So...if you're in Moab this summer, give me a call! Or just stop on by the MAC--your one-stop adventure store. :)

It's the climb

2010-04-20T22:43:00.001-07:00

So I have some good news and I have some bad news. Which do you want first? Since I don't really want to poll my very active and large base of fans, I will pick for you. Good news (I know, people usually want the bad news first but here's to being original): I AM DONE WITH FINALS!! I wish I could add FOREVER on the end of that but that would be untrue. Even if I was graduating this month the hope is to be accepted into a grad school where they will undoubtedly grace me with many a more final.

The other good news--I know, it's a lot of excitement to handle--Ben and I went on our first rock climbing trip of the season on Saturday. It was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. The weather was beautiful and though our skills were a little rusty, we still climbed safely and rather impressively, I think. Unfortunately this is the only (and therefore the best) picture I got of us on Saturday. Just lovin' life.

Ok, now that I've overwhelmed you with good news, are you ready for the bad news? I'm taking the GRE. On Monday. Which would be fine if I were ready. But I'm not. I think I've studied a grand total of...twenty minutes. And that was tonight when I started flipping through some math flash cards mom and dad sent me. So, I may be done with finals, but I'm not done studying. Bummer. Don't fret--I'll still have an enjoyable week. I mean, everybody needs study breaks...right?

The Results Are In

2010-04-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

So Nationals was good. Not as good as last year--but still good. As a team we definitely did much better last year (girls placing second last year and only seventh this year) and I guess if you look at the results I did better last year too. However, I think I played the best racquetball I ever have this week so that's what counts right? Anyway, I lost my first game in both singles and doubles but then proceeded to rather easily win every other match I played. So technically, I'm the winner of the losers. Really....I like to tell myself that I could have beaten all but two girls in my division and heck, we should have flat out won doubles if we would have played a little better. But what can you do? It was fun and for some reason they still gave me two gold medals. So I'll take it.

I love how nasty I look. I'd just played eight games of racquetball so you can't exactly blame me. And this is pretty much the only picture worth posting I have. And I had to get this one from my parents. Turns out I left my camera at the hotel--every day.

So just like that, tomorrow's the last day of school. Crazy right? I don't think I'm quite ready for everything that entails; finals, packing, storing my stuff, leaving for Moab, saying goodbye, taking the GRE, actually becoming proactive about applying for PA school...growing up is rather burdensome. My grandpa always told us, "Don't get old!" I guess that's good advice but right about now I'm wishing I'd listened to Peter Pan a bit more and stayed a kid. Too late for that, huh?

Happy Monday. Have a great week!

Off We Go!

2010-04-05T21:37:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow at this time I will be in Springfield, Missouri competing in the national intercollegiate racquetball championships. Don't worry, it sounds much cooler than it is. Although it is a good time. And I get to see my parents! I'm so glad they are making the long drive out to see me! Thanks mom and dad! So...see ya next week! Hopefully I'll come back decked out kind of like this again...

...but no promises.

And on another note--my brother is cool! And famous! Go to BYU's homepage to see this picture and read the story about Brian's sweet action mechanical engineering capstone project!!

Isn't bragging about your family awesome?

Better Living Through Chemistry

2010-03-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

My uncle generally uses this expression when talking about drugs but...I'm talking about ice cream! My roommate Marie is a chemistry major and really enjoys playing with liquid nitrogen. She brought some home this weekend and we spent some time making ice cream with it on our kitchen floor. It was pretty entertaining.

Marie's pretty into it. It's awesome.

Sneak Peek

2010-03-23T16:38:00.001-07:00

This weekend I got a preview into what my summer is going to be like. And I definitely liked what I saw. Good ole Western River invited the Moab Adventure Center (MAC) new hires (that would be me...) down for the weekend to experience some of the "adventures" we'll be selling on the job. It was awesome. A bit chilly but...great.

The trip started out with a sunset hummer tour. This was way fun. And our guide was hilarious. He should be a hoot to work with.

On Saturday morning we took a guided hike through the fiery furnace in Arches National Park. Before letting us in, the park service made us watch the most threatening informational video I have ever seen. But that's another story.

I was surprised by the amount of small spaces we had to go through in the park. However, I was also surprised at how not freaked out they made me. It probably had something to do with the fact that you could see the other side through all the cracks and people much bigger than me were in front of me. Always a good rule of thumb.

Saturday afternoon we went "canyoneering". Which I found out this weekend basically means you do whatever you need to get from point A to B. So we hiked a little, then rapelled down a couple cliff faces and hiked some more. It was, of course, amazing. The second rapel was especially awesome because it was off of a natural bridge. That means you just hang in the middle of the air and let yourself down. It was so sweet.

And these are the kids that come August I will either love to death or hate. I'm banking on the former. These are all the new hires. And I know, my helmet is ridiculously crooked. Can you believe no one told me until after this picture? I'd had that helmet on for a good 45 minutes before this too. Geez, some friends.

So bring it on! Summer 2010!!!

Broken Things

2010-03-10T17:05:00.001-08:00

Last night, while playing tennis, I snapped Marie's tennis racket in half. Still not sure how that happened. And yes that's our carpet. It's green. Forest green.

Then this morning, while in the shower, my loufa exploded. I have never seen a loufa do that before. And yes--that is also our carpet. It's a colorful place to live.

So basically...if you need anything broken or ruined in the near future--I'm your girl. Just bring it over (or mail it) and the deed will be done with the touch of a finger.

A Contact Sport

2010-03-05T14:40:00.000-08:00

So I've been blogging a lot lately huh? I suppose it's because I don't have so much to do that I'm totally swamped and don't have time for anything else in my life, but I have just enough to do that I constantly look for ways not to do it all...thus the blogging. And it's been pretty random thoughts too. So...my apologies. But today is no different.

I hereby dub racquetball a contact sport. Are you supposed to touch each other? No. Do you? Definitely. Especially if playing doubles. Like I was this morning when I got a ginormous bloody lip. I attempted to take a picture of it to post on here but...I decided I really didn't want anyone having access to that close up of a picture of me. So sorry. No picture. But, the point is--I decided this morning that we wear our "eyewear" for a reason. Had I underestimated the wingspan of my opponent even more, I could have been hit with a racquet square in the eye instead of the mouth. And that would be not good (name that movie...).

The big swollen lip is an added bonus because tomorrow I get to meet about thirty people for the first time. Nothing like a sagging lip to make a great first impression. I'm sorry that I haven't officially informed the blogging world of this but I got the offer at a crazy time. This summer, I will be working in Moab for Western River Expeditions! Talk about a dream job. I unfortunately will not be a full-time river guide but instead will spend my days selling merchandise and jeep tours to unsuspecting tourists while picking up random day river trips whenever possible. It should be awesome. So tomorrow we have a big employee meeting in Salt Lake and I get to meet all of my co-workers. With a bulge in my lip. Awesome!

So this turned out a little smaller than it looked online but if you look closely, in the midst of all of that awesomeness there's a glowing building: Moab Adventure Center. And that--is where you can find me this summer. So exciting.

How Did I Miss These?

2010-03-02T16:50:00.000-08:00

I am amazed. I watched the Olympics religiously for two weeks and never once saw a single one of these commercials. If you haven't seen the P&G commercials about moms please watch them here at my friend's blog (Maribeth hopefully you don't mind that I'm totally giving your blog address to all three of my readers that probably already know you anyway...). It's the "Feeling Olympic" post. If you are me they will probably make you cry. And want your mom. So mom--even though I'm not a US Olympian, you're still the greatest. Thanks for always being there.

WARNING: THIS IS ME VENTING

2010-03-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

I. am. so. angry. It is 11:15pm. Tomorrow, I am taking a final for my block class that just ended. Have a studied for it? No. Not really. Why? Well, because Aspen Ridge, my stellar management company, decided that even though they haven't required one of us since we moved in here in August, they would email us on Friday and inform us that they would be coming Tuesday (that's tomorrow) to do a cleaning check. At least they provided a very specific time frame they'd be coming over: between 9am and 5pm. Now, cleaning checks are no fun anywhere but really, they aren't always that bad. However, when they suddenly decide that an apartment that hasn't been under stringent cleaning guidelines for years needs to be completely spotless in a day's time--that's just ridiculous. Ridiculous. And we can't have cleaning checks on a Saturday? Like the rest of Provo? But on a Tuesday, the middle of the week, the middle of the semester, and it's not like you can clean a few days in advance because just the mere act of living for 24 hours will make the apartment too dirty to pass a cleaning check Aspen Ridge style. All I can say is, if I fail my test tomorrow, or get fined for "not doing my cleaning" (which I've spent the last four hours not doing...) Aspen Ridge will be hearing from me about it.

So maybe it's late, maybe I'm tired, maybe Aspen Ridge doesn't deserve all of this flack and maybe I'm just angry because the Olympics are over, but...my official statement? Cleaning checks are ridiculous. Sure, come on over, make sure we aren't living like complete pigs and that we're not breaking every appliance and piece of furniture. But besides that--does it really matter how clean my baseboards are? Or if I took a q-tip to the cracks in my bathroom counter? Not a bit.

Correction

2010-02-25T23:52:00.000-08:00

I would just like to apologize for my recent oversight. Sven Kramer, the speed skater, is Dutch. Not Norwegian. Sorry for any pain or confusion this may have caused.

Magic

2010-02-25T07:47:00.001-08:00

Who needs school when you've got this?

Australian Torah Bright (who also happens to be LDS) winning gold in the women's halfpipe.

As if that weren't enough, Americans won both silver and bronze.

Evan Lysacek (who happens to be from Naperville--we're practically neighbors) winning gold and watching Plushenko trying but failing miserably to look happy.

Shaun White. There's really nothing to say but,um, wow.

Sven Kramer (Norwegian speed skating superstar) being told my his coach to switch lanes and being disqualified because of it. I hope they can still be friends.

Lindsey Vonn's disappointing and very painful looking crash on the giant slalom yesterday (not to mention the crazy fog they were attempting to ski in).

Canada's Joannie Rochette skating two days after her mom died suddenly of a heart attack and getting a personal best--enough to put her in third place. Talk about a tear-jerker.

So are the Olympics entertaining? Inspirational? Emotional? Magical? Yes, yes, yes and heck yes. So why study when pure magic is being shown on NBC from 8pm-midnight every night of the week? Luckily, it's a slow school week and I don't think the Olympics will negatively impact my GPA. Bring on the magic!

Vancouver 2010

2010-02-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

Olympic Party=the most people we've ever had in our apartment.

Sorry about the lack of news since Seattle. I guess everything in Provo just kind of paled in comparison. But...lucky for you we had some action this weekend. Friday night the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics began!! And we celebrated in style. My roommates and I really aren't big party-ers, but if anything warrants a celebration--it's the Olympics. The opening ceremonies, as they tend to be, were a little slow (but good, mind you). But luckily we had plenty of Olympic-themed food to fill the time.

Jen definitely wins the prize for creativity. She ended up coming at the last minute and just pulled this lovely snack right out of thin air! In case you can't tell, that's a block of cream cheese with the Olympic rings on it made out of cabbage, an olive and peppers. She didn't want me to post this picture for some reason but how could I leave that out? (For some reason, google thinks it's awesome to rotate this picture sideways...but use your imagination and flip it around.)

This is our lovely snack table. In case you can't read that brown mess at the top of the rice krispie awesomeness, it's "Vancouver" written with no-bake cookies. We tried.

Another attempt. I thought it might work well to make Olympic rings out of crescent rolls. Yeah...it really didn't.

And the prize goes to Michael Barney. Look at that! Thanks for the truly epic dessert Mike!

Turns out that black ring above? Yeah, it turns your tongue totally black. Pretty fantastic.

Everyone, I hope you enjoy these next two weeks and the magic the Olympics will bring to your lives.

Seattle!

2010-01-18T23:32:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (whose "I Have a Dream" speech I just watched with my roommates to appropriately celebrate), I just had a three day weekend! It was especially awesome because I spent it in Seattle! I'd never been there, or anywhere in the Northwest, so it was pretty great. I went up to visit Megan before she heads off to Lubbock forever. We had a blast. I'll try to sum it all up fairly quickly and only put the best pictures in. But, just warning you, it's going to be hard.

I got there on Friday morning. My flight left Salt Lake at 7am. We went right to the city from the airport and started at the classic Pike's Place Market. It was just as great as everyone has always said it is. I loved it. We even saw the guys throw some fish. We took a little jaunt to the gum wall which I thought was pretty awesome, walked around on the pier, went to Dick's Drive In for some burgers, went to the Seattle Library but only for twenty minutes because that's how long we had free parking (ten floors in twenty minutes was a pretty good time...) and then we went to Gasworks Park on Lake Union where you can supposedly see the "Sleepless in Seattle" house. But...even after watching the movie that night, we're not sure which one it is. Bummer. We also went to Freemont that day to visit the Freemont troll. Apparently some people in the town sculpted this troll under an overpass a few years ago. It's pretty great.

The Freemont troll.

At Pike's Place with a fish guy.

The gum wall! Loved it.

At the pier, aka, "Seattle waterfront".

I took about a million pictures of the library (which I absolutely loved) but none of them really do it justice so I'm not going to put any here. Just know that I love it, it is amazing, and everyone should go. Ok, so Saturday. We went back to Seattle and went to the Seattle Center. Not before going to the hugest and greatest REI I have ever experienced however. Oh man. That was amazing. We literally had to hike, complete with waterfall, from the parking garage to the store. So great. So the Seattle Center basically encompasses everything around the Space Needle. We went to the top of the Space Needle and the view turned out way better than we expected so that was nice. We took the monorail to the mall and then back to the Seattle Center, went to The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner and then went to the Bodies Exhibition. That was really neat. Apparently it was way smaller than the one in Salt Lake was but I really liked it. Neat stuff.

At REI. And loving it.

Me and the Space Needle.

Seattle from the Space Needle.

This picture kills me. They have these signs advertising a building that is half the EMP (Experience Music Project) and half SFM (Science Fiction Museum). So I am the nerd and Megan is the rocker. It's classic. And true.

Sunday we visited Snowqualmie Falls and went to church and on Monday we hung out on the Kirkland Waterfront in the beautiful, sunny, weather. Those Seattleists sure do get excited when the sun comes out. And for good reason. It was beautiful and probably 60 degrees.

Us and the falls.

Sunny Seattle! A miracle!

Even though it's a little painful to admit to the millions of people I know from Seattle that have been bragging about their city for the last four years, I absolutely loved it. I'd go back in a heartbeat. Coming back to Provo, winter and school...not so fun. But that's what makes the trips worth it, right? So thanks for a great time Seattle (and Megan!). I hope to see you both again real soon.

Caution: Ice cubes

2010-01-04T23:41:00.000-08:00

So tonight, I pulled an ice cube out of the freezer and stuck it in my mouth and it got stuck to my lips. So, I promptly pulled it off. Unfortunately, part of my lip went with the ice cube and I started bleeding! Isn't that just preposterous? I mean, the thought hadn't even occurred to me that maybe my lips would rip off if I pulled the ice cube away too fast. Was I stupid to not think that or was this some kind of freak incident?

Study Break

2009-12-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-12-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T15:51:00.001-08:00

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

2009-10-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-09-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

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.

My Ragnarly Weekend

2009-06-21T16:17:00.001-07:00

We did it! We ran the Wasatch Back! And let me just say, it was amazing. Really, it was. Long, hard, exhausting and painful. But oh so worth it. I'll try and give you a quick run down of everything that happened.

Once we got there we realized that our undecorated vans were really lame. So we used our extra time to run to the local Walgreens and pick up some window paints. We were having a little competition with our names on the window.

Our van, van 2, got to our exchange about four hours before our first van finished running. We left Provo crazy early though, so we were prepared to wait. We just didn't really know what to expect, so we figured a little extra time would do us good. Anyway, when we finally started running, it was about 7 pm, Friday night. We had really quick legs, so I was running mine by about 9:45. 3.1 miles, straight uphill. It was dark, and lonely, but I did pass one really hard core looking guy, and I did it all in 31 minutes. It may not sound impressive, but I promise, it was fairly steep.

Brian and I before my first leg. Brian was our van driver and he did an awesome job.

Me running my leg. Can you tell I'm running up a hill?

The first van took over from there and we checked out all the happenings at our exchange. It was at this crazy nice ski lodge at the top of a mountain (yeah, I ran up a mountain). So we explored it for a bit and then decided to drive to the next exchange and try and get some sleep. We got to the high school (the next exchange) at about 12:30 am and found a bunch of people sleeping in the auditorium. It was silent, and carpetted, so we decided to try to get some shut eye in there. An hour later, we left. And this was the worst part of the race. It was 1:30 in the morning, my head hurt, my stomach hurt, and I was totally exhausted, and we were getting up to go run again? It was nuts. We didn't start running until about 3 am and my leg wasn't until about 8:30 Saturday morning. 5.2 miles, mostly uphill, but compensated with a fairly large downhill toward the end. I did it in 43 minutes. That's just barely over 8 minute miles. That

stretch, from 3-9 am, was awful. Our entire van was grumpy and exhausted. When we were finally done, all we wanted to do was sleep and eat. So we tried to eat some of the breakfast provided at the next exchange, but we couldn't really eat too much. Then we went to sleep--in the van since it was raining outside. So, van one, ran all of their legs in the pouring rain. We felt bad for them, but they weren't the only ones to experience that...

These are the breakfast burritos they gave us at exchange 30. That's a joke, right? It looks like an eggroll.

Mike and I after nearly an hour of sleep on a hard auditorium floor.

And the whole van. Oh so rested after all that sleep.

1:30pm Saturday--we embarked on our last set of legs. We were all exhausted. Not to mention, our diet of peanuts and granola bars was finally getting to our digestive systems (believe it or not, the line of port-a-potties available at every single exchange were necessary). But all in all, we were pretty pumped. The end was in sight! The two hardest legs of the entire race are in the last six exchanges. They are very appropriately called, "You've Got to be Kidding Me" and "Ragnar", to epitomize the hardness of the races in the Ragnar Relay series. They were straight uphill. After a mere 7 miles of running, we got from ground level, to the top of a mountain. No joke. I wish I could really convey to you how steep these things were but I just don't think it's possible. It rained off and on through everybody's legs but we were just grateful it wasn't hot. Our guys that ran those two legs were incredible--10 minute miles all the way up.

Mike running incredibly up the mountain. See how the road drops off behind him? Yeah. That's how steep it was.

Finally, it was time for my leg. The last leg. At about 5:30, I started running. By this time, the temperature had dropped to about 45 degrees. So I took off in long sleeves and long spandex--thank goodness. About two miles in, it started raining. No big deal. I was actually pretty excited. I love running in the rain. About a half mile later, it was pouring. I mean, monsoon-like weather. The wind was ferocious but luckily was at my back most of the way. So the wind was carrying me, and the rain was just pelting me in the back. It was hysterical really. Finally I just started laughing and asking myself, what on earth am I doing?! This is nuts! With about a mile left in the race, the trail took a u-turn and suddenly, that same wind was gusting against me. I felt like I wasn't moving. The rain had gone and turned to hail. Hail! So this hail is pelting me in the face, water is just dripping from me everywhere, my socks are sloshing around in my shoes and I'm thinking; oh my goodness, where is this finish line? Finally, it came into view. Apparently my teammates didn't see me or hear the guy yell our number over the loud speaker but about halfway through the chute, most of my team came running out into the pouring rain to cross the finish line with me. It was awesome. Those poor guys, I think they were wetter and colder than I was.

Not gonna lie, I kind of love the water spot on the lens covering up my teammates cheering me on. I just think it epitomizes the whole ordeal. And there I am, sprinting in for the finish.

We took a mandatory team picture at the finish line. It's the only one we have. Hopefully, you can kinda tell that it was pouring. We ran to the shuttles, went back to our cars, and all met up at the Wendy's in Park City for dinner. Glamorous, I know. :) Finally, we got home at about 9pm last night. What a weekend.

Brian's eyes are closed. But other than that, this is a pretty great picture.

I'd just like to point out that I was pretty spot on with my pace predictions in my previous post. Our team finished 99th out of 446 mixed (guys and girls) teams. Even better--in the mixed coed open division, we took 65th out of 330. 28:32:51 was our official time. Really, not bad for just entering the race for the fun of it. That means that our average was 9 minute miles. Holla! When you pass a runner on a leg, they call that a "kill". On the last four legs of the race, we killed 61 people (10 of those by me--the low end of 61 but I'm still proud)! That's 61 teams. Yeah. We rock.

So the Wasatch Back? A great experience. I reccomend it. Will I do it again? You betcha! Plans are already in the works for next year. :)

So, I'm Running This Race...

2009-06-17T17:42:00.001-07:00

You may have heard of it--Ragnar's Wasatch Back Relay. Twelve team members, 187.8 miles from Logan to Park City, 36 legs, 3 legs each, about thirty hours. Thrity straight hours of running, friends, fun, sweat and most likely, tears. Back in November, my good friend Ben Ford and I decided that we were going to put together a team for the 2009 Wasatch Back. I will be the first to admit that I did not know what I was getting into. By January, we had collected $85 each from ten other people crazy enough to join our team. Since then, it's been a whirlwind of logistics, volunteers, training and team meetings. But after more than six months of planning, the race is upon us. In fact, it's in two days!! That's right folks, the Wasatch Back is this Friday and Saturday, June 19-20. And I'm pumped. This may be one of the coolest things I've ever done.

In case you're curious, I am runner 12. This means that I run leg 12, 24 and 36. That's right--the last leg. Leg 12 is the one I'm most nervous about. It's basically a 5k (3.1 miles) straight up. It's a 3% grade which will help me gain a mere 900 ft of elevation in those three miles. Can't wait. The other two should be easy enough. They are both about five miles on relatively flat ground. So that means I only run about 13 miles total. Not bad at all. Based on my very rough calculations, I will be running leg 12 at about 10:30 Friday night (our start time is 1:30 pm on Friday afternoon). That puts me running leg 24 at around 8 am on Saturday morning (hey mom, looks like I don't have to run in the middle of the night!), and running in for the victory at approximately 6 pm on Saturday. Wow, I have no idea how close those approximations are but you get the idea.

Basically, this weekend is going to be awesome. Whether or not I'll be able to stand on Sunday is debatable, but you can bet it will have been worth it. :) Wish us luck and stay tuned for the results of the race.

*Curious about the Wasatch Back, or some of the other runs Ragnar Relay puts on around the US? Check it out here.

2009-06-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

For any of you who may be debating about whether or not to make your bed today--do it. I just found my CTR ring and one of my favorite socks in my bed. How great is that? And on top of that, last night I watched the BBC movie of Jane Austen's book "Persuasion" and have been seeing this man in my thoughts all day.

It's gonna be a great day. :)

Culture

2009-06-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

I figured today that since I spend most of my time attempting to appear more hard core than I really am, that I would add this little gadget to your right to also attempt to appear more cultured than I really am. Or maybe we'll all actually become slightly more cultured by knowing exactly what happened "On this day in history". Enjoy.

Just Call Me Rachel Ray

2009-06-04T11:46:00.001-07:00

For my graduation from high school, my kind sister Jennifer gave me a Rachel Ray cookbook. It's a great cookbook and believe it or not, I really do look at it often and think of making lots of things in it. But I have unfortunately failed to ever put it into practice until--last weekend! Jen and I were bored and hungry on a Friday night (a terrible combination) so we decided to make ourselves a delectable salmon dinner from my Rachel Ray cookbook. It was stellar.

Pretty, huh? We had a great time making dinner and then finished the night off strong with a beautiful sunset and a few episodes of Planet Earth. It was a night to remember. :)

PS

2009-05-27T21:06:00.001-07:00

MY CAMERA IS BACK! And better than ever. Just thought you all might appreciate that knowledge.

Peace.

Capitol Reef

2009-05-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

As you all hopefully know, this weekend was Memorial Day. Brian and I decided to take advantage of our day off of school and enjoy a little camping with our cousins. On Friday afternoon, Brian and I drove down to Capitol Reef National Park. I really don't know exactly where it is--south about three hours? That's pretty descriptive, I know. :) We got to the park at about 6 pm and there was sign outside the campground announcing, "campground full". We knew that was a possibility but it still sort of caught us off guard and we weren't sure what to do. Luckily, we didn't let ourselves be deterred by the sign and continued on into the camp. One of the sites had just been emptied and they hadn't had time to change the sign! So we got it. It was great.

We've kind of been thinking about buying a tent for awhile now and we found a good deal the other day so...we bought a tent! It was pretty exciting. The only problem, the tent guaranteed to keep us dry but...it didn't. More on that later. Brian kept dropping hints to the people taking this picture that we were siblings and not married. It was pretty funny.

It was just Brian and I that night because our cousins weren't arriving until the next afternoon. So we played a little frisbee and I got a bruised lip...

And Brian did a superb job cooking our tin foil dinners. It was rather impressive.

That night, we went to the camp amphitheater and listened to this retired professor from Indiana University talk about some space probes that have been around our solar system. It was actually pretty good. And he had some neat pictures. It started raining at about 10:30 that night so we stayed up for a bit playing cards in our tent and then went to bed. It rained non-stop until about 1 pm the next day. Yeah, how's that for awesome? So we spent about 12 hours in our tent, mostly sleeping. When we finally decided to brave the weather, we realized that our trusty no-leak tent had sprung several leaks. So Brian went out in the rain and tried to fix the fly with me directing him from inside the tent for about 20 minutes. It didn't really help. So we resorted to using towels to soak up the puddles.

Finally, we realized that getting at least a little wet was inevitable. I hate rain, but I tried really hard to embrace it. We went on a scenic drive and even hopped out to take a few pictures of the scenery that was beautiful, in spite of the rain.

It stopped raining just in time for Mark and Jamie to arrive. They brought their 20 month old Charlie and also two of Jamie's brothers came. It stayed dry long enough for them to set up camp, rained during lunch and then stopped long enough for us to decided to venture out on a hike. When we were almost to the top, guess what happened? Yep. It started raining.

The funny thing is, we had a pretty clear view of the scenery until...we reached the top. Suffice it to say, by the time we reached the bottom, we were drenched. Sopping wet. I wish I'd gotten a picture of my shoes. They were totally caked in mud. At first, I tried to avoid it, but it soon became clear that it was a waste of my time. I might be bad at embracing rain, but enjoying the mud was a little bit easier. :) This picture fairly accurately displays my feelings at this moment. Jamie's brother Micah is standing behind me. And another fun fact--those shorts I'm wearing? Turns out they're really see through when they get wet. Yeah. Didn't know that.

So after we got drenched on our hike, the rest of the night cooperated fairly well for us. It started sprinkling again when we were trying to make dinner and we must have looked really pathetic because this man came over with a canopy and told us that they weren't using it if we wanted to. Bless his heart. That canopy rocked. We successfully made dinner that night, went to another slideshow by the astronomer, stood by the fire for a bit and then called it a night.

Sunday morning was...sunny! It was a miracle. We had a delicious breakfast and then took off as early as we could to try and enjoy as much of the nice weather as possible. We hiked to Hickman's Bridge and through Cohab Canyon. They were both really great hikes.

This is Hickman's Bridge.

Jamie told us that you could get on top of the arch so for about half an hour, we followed Micah through the craziest "trail" in an attempt to walk on top of the arch. Finally we got up pretty high and looked down at the people below us. We heard this little kid (one of those people at the bottom that you can barely see) say, "Mom, I want to go up there!" and...that's when we decided to just give up and head back down. It was worth a try.

This is one of the views through Cohab Canyon. That's Brian and I with Jamie's brothers, Micah and Adam.

The rest of that afternoon threatened rain so we spent it exploring the visitor's center. We watched a pretty great movie about erosion and listened in on some french people's conversations. You know, a productive afternoon. :) It cleared up later so we went to the park and threw a frisbee around and then decided to take advantage of the nice weather and go on another quick hike before dinner. It rained again after dinner that night but we got a sweet double rainbow out of the deal so all in all, it was worth it. :)

The canopy donated to us by that kind, kind man.

And a lovely view of the double rainbow. If you look closely, you can see it.

Monday morning was sunny again so we picked up camp and hiked Chimney Rock on our way out of town. It was a pretty great view. You can see it behind Brian and I in this next picture.

I decided to include this one to prove that Mark, Jamie and Charlie were actually there. This was taken on the Chimney Rock hike.

So in spite of the rain, we had a great time. It was really fun to actually be able to spend quality time with some extended family (something we never do) and to be in nature for a few days. Can't beat that combo. The goal for now--survive the rest of the term.

Lens Error

2009-05-19T10:52:00.001-07:00

There is only one person who will fully appreciate this post--Stefanie Tanner.

The other day, I got my camera out to take a picture. This one as a matter of fact.

It was a fairly inconsequential picture. Brad and I just happened to be eating a very large amount of tater tots at a rather late hour. FYI--in case you're wondering this was not a good idea. Playing racquetball the next morning did not feel so good...

So after my faithful camera took this picture, the unthinkable happened. It made some really ugly, uncomfortable grinding noises and then beeped and flashed to me the angry message, "Lens error. Restart camera." Well, it's sort of hard to restart a camera that is never truly on or off but in limbo because its lens won't close. To all of you who aren't Stefanie, in New Zealand, Stefanie's camera (which happens to be the exact model I have now...) had a "lens error" and then...it was no more. So I was pretty worried.

Don't you worry though--this story has a happy ending. With some coaxing from friends, I realized that I have not yet had my camera for a year and it is most likely still under warranty. Well, it is and I called Canon and this nice man from India helped me ship it off to Virginia to be worked on for FREE and returned to me within 7 business days from yesterday. Holla.

So take a few deep breaths. This picture hiatus will only be temporary. And hopefully when they resume, I'll have something more exciting than tater tots to show to you.

Reasons why I love Utah

2009-05-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

Welcome to spring in Provo. Granted, it may be slightly more enjoyable if I wasn't taking classes but was making money instead. But what can you do? Classes aren't swamping me yet, which is always a good thing, and I'm finding time to do everything I love about spring in Utah. Here's just a few examples (sorry ahead of time that I don't have pictures of everything):

Hiking. I love to hike. It's really just walking for a long time, uphill, if you think about it, but there's just something inexplicably fantastic about it. I think most of the enjoyment really comes from the views that come when you get to the top.

Bonfires. You just can't beat a good bonfire. On Friday, we hiked up rock canyon about two miles to a fun little cave and had a bonfire. It was a great time. Fire, hotdogs, mallows. Those three things in one place basically spell happiness.

Mountain Biking. Last spring, I took a mountain biking class. And it was awesome. This year, my roommates and my brother are all taking the class so a friend and I decided to audit the class so we could go with them on all their rides. Mountain biking is probably the most physically demanding and terrifying thing I have ever done. That's probably why I love it so much. :)
Rock Climbing. Thanks to Ben first of all, for having the equipment needed to make this awesomeness happen. I love rock climbing. We went for on Friday for a few hours and took some pretty great pictures. I'm really not very good but we've already gone a couple times this spring so I'm hoping we'll keep going pretty regularly throughout the summer.
Oh, and rock climbing also provides sweet views. As demonstrated below (not above...)

Intramural Sports. Ok. You got me. These are fun all year round. But only in the spring do they have...kickball. Our first game was on Thursday and it was a pretty good time. The best part is, very few people (and no sane ones) take the game of kickball too seriously. So it's really just a bunch of college kids reliving 5th grade. What could be better than that? Sweet action shot, huh? :)

Ultimate Frisbee. I haven't gotten around to playing this yet but the day is coming and I can't wait. Frisbee is another thing that I'm really not very good at. Actually, I'm really not good at all, but heck, it's fun, and it's spring, so I'm going to play. :)

Camping. Haven't done this yet either but you better believe that I will. Hopefully I'll sleep better than my last experience sleeping in a tent when we all woke up feeling a little bit like this...
But again, somehow, it's fun.

Ok, my apologies for the spastic bullet points in this post. I think this is the last time I'll ever try to use bullet points in a blog post. Maybe I'm the confused one, but it feels to me that blogger is just throwing in bullet points whenever it wants to. And the spacing is a little off... Anyway, the point is, it's spring and I'm having a good time. I'm excited to keep enjoying the outdoors and the good weather.

2009-04-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's spring! I got a whole glorious four days off of school before spring term started on Tuesday. We had a pretty good time in those few days though. Here's the highlights. Sorry it's an insanely long post.

The day after my last final, Megan and I celebrated with doing...a whole bunch of fun things. Shopping mostly. We took a picture at every step of the journey so I decided just to include one. This is symbolic of our trip to Costco where Megan bought batteries and a diet coke with lime. Exciting, I know. We also decided that we were going to make friendship bracelets. You know, 12 year old style. I remember making them. And I remember it being fairly simple. Well, after 2 movies, and about half a bracelet, we realized that friendship bracelet making is actually a skill.

I moved. Not very far. Just across the way into a different apartment in my same ward. Three nice boys helped me move my stuff in the pouring rain. This picture is of my friend Brad trying to be as efficient as possible. So thanks boys for moving my stuff and getting soaking wet in the process.
Brian and I went to visit Jen at school after we finished with our finals. She asked us to pick up some sea shells for her before we came. And we did. But we also had a little extra time so we stopped at the Target dollar spot and picked up a nice metal pail and a gnome for Jen. I know, we are hysterical. Anyway, it was a good time. And a fun way to liven up the fourth grade.

Since it's officially spring, we all have this very intense and uncontrollable desire to be outdoors as much as possible. It's extremely conducive to studying... We decided the other day to hike Stewart Falls. Supposedly it's a quick hour to hour and a half hike up the canyon. Well, we found the trailhead, but due to a large and unexpected amount of snow, we never managed to actually follow the trail. So instead, we wandered around for a couple of hours falling into holes in the snow and crossing rivers. It was pretty great.

This happened about a hundred times that day. Funnily enough, Megan was running away from me after chucking a snowball at me and then one of her legs broke through the snow. I was laughing at her and still running to attack when what should happen--one of my legs fell through the snow. It was pretty great.

This is our good friend Stephanie attempting to cross this raging river. The really funny thing was that there was a bridge about 100 feet away. And we all knew about it. I think we would all agree though, that doing it this way was much more entertaining.

Look how deep the snow is! Isn't that crazy? Megan is standing on top of a picnic table. In case you couldn't tell. Yeah, three feet of snow? Crazy.

I love this picture. We spent a long time and a lot of takes of this picture trying to make it perfect. Scott and Brian were too tall so they kept having to duck awkwardly. So finally, we just decided to have everyone stand up straight and just take the picture. And this is the amazing result. I love it. Megan and I's faces are both completely visible, Stephanie's half visible and the boys just completely covered. Oh man. It's so great.

And here's the one that actually worked. Stephanie, Megan, Brian, me and Scott.

Locked Out

2009-04-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Generally, I am a very structured person. I like to have plans and I like to stick to them. Spontaneity is not something I'm very good at. Which is why I think it's really good that days like today sometimes happen to me. This morning, I had a final. Of course, I didn't study for it Friday night, so I got up super early to go to campus and study and take my final. I was coming back home from my test this morning at 8:30 ready for my planned day; a quick nap, a run, shower, lunch and then studying. One problem: I was locked out. Last night, I played racquetball and left my keys in my racquetball bag. Oops.

So what did I do? I spent half an hour trying to break into my apartment. I unfortunately know it's possible because my roommate used to do it last semester. I couldn't figure it out though. I tried a few windows, a credit card in the door...nothin. So I went to Brian's. No answer. Then I see my good friend Lee. I convinced him to come back to my apartment and try to break in again. Because I thought, if anyone can break into an apartment, it would be Lee. We were unsuccessful but we did however do a service to mother nature. I have never been more disappointed not to have a camera. So I apologize for the lack of documentation because it would have been good. While trying to pry my bathroom window open, we saw a robin stuck upside down in a tree, with its foot caught in a string that was tied to a branch. So of course, Lee ran home for his pocket knife, climbed the tree and set the bird free. It was magical. Especially when the bird started attacking Lee. After a few more unsuccessful attempts at forcing ourselves into my apartment, I spent the next two hours watching Lord of the Rings with Macsen, Lee's roommate.

Long story short (too late, huh?), I didn't do anything I meant to do today. But somehow, I had a very fulfilling morning. I guess a little spontaneity does a body good. Especially in the middle of finals. So here's to hoping we all get locked out. Just once.

Nationals!

2009-04-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

So, Nationals blew my mind. I watched more racquetball than I have seen in my entire life in four days. Some people might think that this would make a person really sick of racquetball. But pretty much all I've wanted to do since I got back from nationals is play racquetball. Which is a problem considering I have finals a week from today. There's not exactly a ton of spare time to fantasize about racquetball. But who cares about grades anyway? Don't worry, mom and dad, that was a joke. I do care about my grades...unfortunately. Life would really be a kick in the pants otherwise. :)

Anyway, I did pretty well individually and our team did awesome-ly (that's my attempt at being grammatically correct while still using the word that I feel best fits there) as well. I placed third in singles and first in doubles in my division. Our overall team got third place and our women's team took second! We were all pretty excited. Apparently ( I wouldn't really know since this was my first year) the competition, at least for the girls, like doubled in intensity from last year. So I guess we should be doubly proud of second place.

So, all in all, I had an absolute blast. I love racquetball, I love our team, I love warm weather, I love my family and I love winning. :) I got to experience all of those things at nationals. It was really great. So here's some pictures in review. Enjoy!

PS- Brian did come. I promise. Sorry I didn't get any pictures to document his being there. Maybe he got some??

Sightseeing with mom and dad in Sedona. We had a nice old lady take this picture of us. I'm glad it turned out because it was so windy the poor thing almost blew over while trying to take the picture!

These signs were pretty ridiculous. I just had to disobey them. Just a little bit. In case you can't read it, it says no in about 20 different languages and then says, "Don't climb on the rocks!" or something to that effect.

I thought this picture was pretty cool. Especially considering I took it out of the window of a

moving car. New Zealand style. :)

The girls. Top row: me, Hilary, Katherine. Bottom row: Liza, Charlotte, Jessica.

Coach Val! I love this woman.

This is just everybody watching, or trying to watch, an intense match. Men's doubles I believe.

This is me and my doubles partner, Hilary. Getting a normal picture of this girl is about the hardest thing on the planet. So believe it or not, this is the best one we got.

Me with my medals. A bronze and a gold. They say "national champion" on them which, not gonna lie, makes me feel pretty important.

The team. I could've put a serious team picture up here but they all looked funny. Surprisingly enough, this was the best option.

Yes, Those Are Racquetballs

2009-03-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

No need to worry anymore--the drought is over! To tell you the truth, I haven't really been neglecting my blog. It's just that...life has been rolling along as usual, busily, and without a lot of events in my mind that warranted pictures. And thus, couldn't possibly be worthy of the blog. But I have taken a couple and I figured I should probably write to say that I'm off to Nationals! We leave in about...3 hours. I'm pumped. And nervous. But mostly pumped. So, that being the main function of this post, here are some other random happenings. Just in case you're bored.

On Sunday, I made bread. For the very first time! Thank you Trudeaus for the delicious recipe. The best part is, it worked! And tasted good! I felt very accomplished. And domestic. Bring on the children! Haha. Just kidding. No kids yet. Please.
And also please try to ignore the fact that this is a really awful picture of me and focus your attention on the gorgeous bread. Thank you.

The other morning, I woke up and my hair looked like this. I know, right? Generally I wake up and look about the same as when I went to bed, but I could not tame this. I thought it was pretty hysterical. But then again, I think a lot of things are hysterical that really aren't. So, you be the judge.

And now for the randomest side note of them all, a couple weekends ago, I went to the Wilk on Saturday morning to watch Brian and his little sixth grade engineers compete with the robot Brian helped them build. The robot had to go up and over a set of stairs, and then go backward over them again. Brian's group was the only won that actually fully achieved that goal! It was awesome. I was so proud. That's why I took pictures. Like any good mother would do. Except I'm his sister. Here's a video of the sweet sweet victory.

A day as a spectator

2009-03-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

So I like BYU sports. Obviously, my major has just a little bit to do with them. But, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a zealot. For example, I'm not one of those people that would camp out two nights before the BYU v. Utah basketball game to get a good seat. However, I did wait in line. So I felt a little more hard core than I actually am. Which is generally a pretty good feeling. Anyway, here's what happened: some of these zealots of which we speak are in my ward. They camped for at least one night, maybe two, I can't remember, before the basketball game. Lucky for me, I only had to come get in line two hours before the game actually started. We ended up actually running around the Marriott Center trying to find our group and get in line before they got into the building. It was pretty exciting. We ended up on row 22. Pretty sweet. I felt only slightly guilty that I didn't actually do much to get those seats but nobody seemed too terribly angry. At least we weren't wearing red.

All in all, this game was a big day for me. One, I came multiple hours early to a sporting event. Something I'm usually not a big advocate of. Two, I went to a sporting event as a spectator. You have no idea how much you appreciate doing this until you've had to work one, either selling stuff from a box around your neck or taping athletes. Spectating is the way to go. Three, I painted my face. Turns out I've never done this. I mean sure, I've let a clown give me a little flower on my cheek or something when I was six, but never for a sporting event. So I figured there was no better time than the present.

And here is my lovely face paint. Some important information about this picture--these are my future roommates!! Yes, it's true, I signed contracts to Victoria Place II (more affectionately known as The Sequel) with these fine girls you see here. Starting on the left we have me, Marie Chilton, Megan Robinson and Jenny George. They are all fantastic and I can't wait to live with them. And, it turns out we all look ridiculous trying to make the traditional tough face. Notice Jenny's in particular. Gets me every time.

This is me and Scott. I know that face paint is kind of distracting. Sorry. Scott is on the racquetball team with me.

And just for the record, that was my first and last time using face paint. I was tired of it after about five minutes. The first thing I did when I came home was wash it off.

More free food and off-roading

2009-02-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

Remember how a few weeks ago, I stood in line for free breakfast at Denny's? Well, it just so happens that Tuesday was free pancake day at iHop. Free! Pancakes! Two of my favorite things. So of course, I had to go. I had plans to go with a couple of my athletic training buddies but that morning, I was trying to finalize contract signing so it was a little confusing (But yes, I HAVE a contract!! More details on that in a later post when I have a good picture or two to go along with it). But, it was my lucky day and I had plenty of time to make it to iHop. Three free pancakes. You just can't beat that. I love life.

Sorry, it's a bad picture. I would have had the waitress snap another one, but I think I ruined her day just by asking her to take this one. So I figured I wouldn't push my luck. Dad, this is for you :)-- These are my friends Sam and Matt. They are both in my program. Sam works gymnastics with me so, I see her... a lot.

Tuesday was actually just a great day. Do you mind if I tell you about it? Well, I woke up and went for a run. A great one. And then I clocked it and found out it's farther than I thought it was, which means I've been running faster than I thought I was which is always good news. I took a shower, put on chacos and no jacket, and went outside into the 55 degree weather. It was sunny, with a light breeze...beautiful. I drove to the management office, expecting bad/frustrating news about contracts. Instead, I walked in, she looked up my application and happily announced, "You're first in line for the apartment! Do you want to sign your contract now?" Hallelujah! I signed my contract, hopped in my car, rolled down the windows, blasted the music and drove to iHop. I was greeted by two friends who were already there, a glass of

chocolate milk, hash browns and FREE pancakes (give me a break, I hadn't eaten all day...). We ate and then went to gymnastics which was just fine. I came home, ate dinner that I'd been craving all day, went to institute, enjoyed the lesson, visited Jen and then went to the grocery store with Brian. It was great. Sorry. That was long.

This picture didn't turn out super well either, but I thought it was pretty hysterical so I'm going to throw it in anyway. After the gymnastics meet last Friday, one of the trainers drove the three of us student trainers home. It was probably about 11:30. When we started approaching my apartment, I tried to point out where to turn off into my parking lot, my friend got confused and somehow, decided to just drive through the parking lot, over the sidewalk and onto my front lawn to drop me off right by my front door. Admittedly, not the best idea, but at the time, pretty dang funny. And don't worry-- no grass was harmed.

My hair!

2009-02-26T19:38:00.001-08:00

I know to most of you, the title of this post may just seem really unimaginative but when you say it in the right tone of voice, I'm actually quoting George Clooney in O Brother Where Art Thou. "My hair!" Good movie, sort of crazy, but good. If you haven't seen it, you might consider watching it. But in reality, this post is about my hair. I got it cut! And it needed it so badly. I didn't originally have plans to chop it all off. However, somewhere in between deciding to get my hair cut and actually getting it cut, I found pictures of myself from last summer when my hair was pretty short and remembered that I really loved it. So...I cut it. Well, someone else cut it for me. Thank goodness. Hair isn't exactly my specialty... So here is the final product. I think it's the shortest I've ever had it but I really like it. I find it very...refreshing.

This is precisely the picture that made me miss my short hair. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I look like a complete dufus.

And this is my hair now! I like it a whole lot.

Emotional Roller Coasters

2009-02-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve decided that I make my own emotional roller coasters. Life is generally only hard because I insist on making it that way. I have experienced this most recently with racquetball. For those of you who may not know, I am on the BYU racquetball team. Trust me, it exists. Either that or it’s an extremely elaborate hoax… There are 24 members on the team—12 guys, 12 girls. At least we started with 12. After one pregnancy, one mission, and one hip injury, the girl’s team is now down to nine competing members. This entire semester, every day at practice has been part of a challenge ladder to assemble the nationals team. This team is comprised of the top six men and six women on the team who will compete in the intercollegiate nationals this April in Arizona. Basically, all this means is that I’ve been a nervous wreck all semester. It’s been a long couple of months, complete with drama, tears, wins, losses, and eventually my feeling certain that I was not going to nationals. To my complete and utter amazement, I checked my email on Friday afternoon, butterflies in my stomach, to see my name in the last slot on the roster for the girl’s nationals team. I seriously just sat there, at a kiosk in the Wilk, and stared at the screen, not really knowing what to think. So, I’m going to nationals. It’s crazy! I’m still a little confused how it all worked out and how on earth I managed to achieve something so wicked cool but it is what it is I suppose and now…I just have to get a lot better at racquetball before April. So that’s the update. I thought you might all appreciate knowing.

Hey that's what I look like playing racquetball! Or...maybe not. But--close. :) Just for the record, I do have some pretty sweet dives to my name.

My Hero: The Piano Man

2009-02-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

Four times I have seen Jon Schmidt in concert. And four times, it has been life-changing. When Brian told me that Mr. Schmidt would be gracing the BYU campus I was beside myself. So, we of course got tickets and invited a whole bunch of people to share in the experience with us. I think everyone enjoyed it. We were super close (the third row) but on the right side of the stage and couldn't see his hands. For anybody who's been to a Jon Schmidt concert, you know that seeing his hands is half of the amazingness. Maybe 75%. But it was still awesome. No pictures of the man himself, but one of us enjoying ourselves in his presence.
And as a sidenote (and because I don't want to start another post because I think people will already be upset that I have once again purged five posts all at once) we had a little superbowl get together with our now married friends Zach and Emily. They were gracious enough to invite us all over. The game was alright, but it really was just fun to be with everybody. And to eat the bean dip.

Did Somebody Say Free Breakfast?

2009-02-04T21:43:00.001-08:00

Why so happy? Free breakfast.

Welcome to Things Alison Loves 101: BREAKFAST!!! Any kind of breakfast. The bigger the better obviously ( like pancakes, bacon, hash browns, French toast...), but I also love simple things like toast and cereal with a fiery passion. The only thing I can think of that I love more than breakfast, is free breakfast. And that is just what I got yesterday. My friends and I were watching the superbowl on Sunday, when up pops this Denny’s ad advertising free grand slams on Tuesday, February 3, 2009. I immediately thought that this was too good to be true. We looked it up later and not only was it too good, it was true!! So myself and two devoted friends showed up at Denny’s yesterday at 10 am to claim our free breakfast. This line greeted us upon our arrival. It was slightly discouraging but nothing I wasn’t expecting so we got in line and waited it out.

It took us a surprisingly short amount of time to get into the restaurant. I think we stood in line for about 50 minutes before getting to a table. And then, we got free grand slams. For any of you who aren’t very familiar with Denny’s, a grand slam is one of their breakfast platters that features two pancakes the size of your head, two strips of bacon, two pieces of sausage and eggs. Usually I like to substitute the eggs for hash browns (I mean, who isn’t skeptical of eggs from a restaurant?) but not surprisingly, they weren’t really down with substitutions yesterday. The whole experience was really awesome. We all splurged on drinks since the rest was free, and then left just in time to get to gymnastics practice. It worked out great. So thank you Denny’s. I don’t know what possessed you to do it, but I will never forget it.

Six Hours a Day

2009-02-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

Gymnastics. That’s what I do for six hours every day. Probably most of you are thinking: Am I on the right blog? Because the Alison Spencer I know would make the world’s worst gymnast. Well, that is true. I would. That’s why I’m just an athletic trainer for the BYU women’s gymnastics team, which means I go to their practices everyday, which insanely enough, take up about six hours of my day. It’s fairly entertaining, I’m learning a lot and seeing a lot of injuries but there is a little bit of downtime. So the other day in some of that less than riveting time, I decided to take a picture of me being where I spend most of my time; Gym, Smith Fieldhouse, BYU, Provo, Utah. And there you have it.

Today's Revelation

2009-02-04T21:40:00.001-08:00

While in the shower this morning, I realized something. Don’t worry, it’s appropriate. I realized as I stood there, soaking in the hot water, that I have the biggest loufa on the planet. And no, I have no idea how to spell loufa. But I took a picture to illustrate for you guys just how huge it is. Notice the cute little pink loufa on the left. That is normally-sized. See the off-white beast on the right? That’s mine. Did I buy it this big? Who knows. Maybe. Have I somehow just used it in a way that it is now twice as big as it originally was? Also very possible. I mean, it’s not that having a ginormous loufa is necessarily a problem. It’s just weird. And I decided that since I’m trying to avoid studying, I’d blog about it.

The end.

Scraps

2009-02-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

This story is a little old but I neglected to blog about it before so I figured I better do it now. For Christmas, one of my good friends made me this! For those of you who don’t know, I sort of got on this kick when I was in high school, maybe even junior high, to start collecting a deck of cards from different places throughout the states mostly but the world as well. My friend, as I’m sure you can tell, is really good with wood. Knowing of my overabundance of face cards, he made me a shelf for them. Isn’t that just the neatest? He insisted that it was no big deal and that I not look too closely because it’s made of scraps. Scraps my eye. The thing looks perfect.

My Latest Encounter

2009-01-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

In my complete disregard for news that is actually kind of exciting, I failed to mention the best part of the basketball game last Saturday. We had a very close encounter with fame--Elder Nelson. Yes, the apostle. I literally almost ran into him. And when I finally realized who it was, I stopped dead in my tracks, he was looking straight at me, and I'm pretty sure I pointed, stuttered and spluttered into nothing.

For a better-written story, and a more complete account, please see the blog of Megan Robinson.

What not to do

2009-01-27T22:56:00.001-08:00

A few sundays ago, I very aptly demonstrated how not to open a package of powdered cookie dough. Last time I was home, mom sent me back to Provo with a just add water mix of caramel apple cookies. And Sunday being the best day to cook, I decided to make them. The best way to open stubborn packages is scissors. Some advice: If you can't get the bag open, just reach for the scissors. It will save you all kinds of grief, and hours that you don't have to spend shaking powder out of every crevase of your clothing.

So...I tried for far too long to open a plastic bag with my bare hands. And it exploded on me. The end.

Not gonna lie, the pictures are hysterical. Note the powder even got on the tip of my nose.

Obligatory Blogging

2009-01-26T18:06:00.000-08:00

Dear readers,

You are about to read an obligatory blog post. What is this you may ask? Well, my life is great right now. Really, no complaints. But...bloggable?? That's debatable. However, since I have a blog, I feel this obligation to post. I don't know, maybe it's a good thing. It forces me to make

things that might seem rather mundane kind of exciting. And you better believe I've been taking my camera everywhere with me secretly thinking, "maybe something cool will happen, I can take a picture of it, and then I'll have something to blog about!" Since you all know my basis for blogging is pictures, I have finally taken a few and have decided to give you all something new to look at. Please, lower your expectations right now so that you won't be disappointed.

This picture is a great example of why I really don't have much to blog about; too much sitting around and doing...this. I have no explanation or anything. My only defense is that boredom and sleep deprivation drove me to it.

Last week was official "Sister Appreciation Week" in the BYU 11th ward. The boys do their best to keep it a secret, and they do ok but 1) if you were in the ward last year...the whole thing seemed a little familiar. 2) you tend to start to wonder what's going on after a different apartment of guys shows up at your place every night wanting to sing to you and clean your kitchen. Don't get me wrong, they're good guys but...this isn't heaven.

Anyway, to sum up the week, they fed us ladies dinner on Friday night and then did a talent show for us. It was seriously entertaining. And the food was good. I took my camera, thinking if any night could wield good pictures, this would be it. Unfortunately, I didn't really get any good ones until after the thing ended. But, lucky for you guys, I think they are pretty hysterical. It's a series of pictures. Here's what happened:

They gave me free ice cream!

Macsen came over to Megan and said, "Here, have this leftover ranch." Megan got really excited.

About two seconds later, Brian Wood came over to Megan and said, "Hey, can I take that ranch?" And she reluctantly gave it away. So, before we were excited, and now, we are both without our ice cream and ranch (respectively) and...sad.

The next night, a ton of us went to the basketball game. Thank you to Mike Barney for going ridiculously early so that we could all sit on the fifth row. The best part of the game was that Brian Wood caught a t-shirt. But it was a small t-shirt so he gave it to me! And then Brad caught a t-shirt, but it was a shade shirt, so he gave it to Megan! A free shirt each--that neither of us actually caught.

This is again at the basketball game. And it's really not even that great of a picture, except for Jenny's face. She's the one poking in with the goofy smile at the top of the picture. Good times.

And this is just the boys playing a good old-fashioned game of speed Yahtzee fifteen minutes before ward prayer. Hence--the speed Yahtzee.

And that's the latest randomness from my life. I hope you at least enjoyed the pictures. :)

Remember Lot's Wife

2009-01-17T15:44:00.000-08:00

This Tuesday, I almost didn't go to devotional. We have these weekly at 11 am. At 10 on Tuesdays I have a class in the Smith Fieldhouse. Anyone familiar with the BYU campus knows that this building is not really close to any of the key buildings on campus. In order to go to devotional, I have to walk up a very large number of stairs and then find a building that the devotional is actually playing in and isn't already packed with people. And then I have to rush back down to the fieldhouse for gymnastics practice at noon. A terrible excuse, trust me, I know.

So, this past Tuesday, the devotional was Elder Holland. He is hands down my favorite apostle. I think I like him because everything he says just seems to be dripping with power. He's one of those pulpit yellers and hitters and what can I say, I like his enthusiasm. So I realized, at about 10:45, that I needed to watch it. Dreading my walk back up to "upper campus" I left my class. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, but as I was walking out of the building, I remembered that there are like three TVs in/near the athletic training room where I spend all of my time. So I parked myself in the doctor's office waiting room, seconds from where I had had class, with my lunch. :) And I sat there, by myself, for the entire devotional. I don't know if word has leaked out yet, but I really think this is the best devotional I have ever heard. It's called "Remember Lot's Wife" and focuses on forgetting the past and moving on to the future. It's not like I'm stuck in the past or anything, but this devotional really spoke to me. I wanted to put a link of the written copy up here but turns out BYU makes these devotionals kind of hard to get a hold of. So here is a link to an mp3 file of his talk. If you can find the time, or even if you can't--read it. It's awesome.

Remember Lot's Wife

Christmas in Photos

2009-01-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

I've decided that for my Christmas post, I'm just going to do a whole bunch of pictures with captions as needed. And, mind you, these pictures are not necessarily in chronological order. Believe it or not, it's super hard to move pictures around to where you want in this thing (or I just having beat that learning curve yet...) so I'm just going to leave them be where they want to be. Enjoy!

We laid around and did nothing. Opening those presents can really take it out of you...

Santa brought us a hotdog tube.

Jen got sick. On her birthday. And apparently Brian had something in his teeth...

We made gingerbread houses.

We built the best snowman I have ever seen.

And this is all that was left a few days later.

Adorable children slept in our basement.

We went to the Jelly Belly "factory". Again.

We went to Chicago. It was windy and cold.

We listened to this hamster sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" with a lisp about 40 million times. Anything to keep children happy.

I rode on a train!

I also went to five movies. I love movies. :) And I forgot to take a picture of my tickets but don't you worry--I still have all five. And there you have it. The summary of my two weeks of relaxation. And now, just like that, here I am again. Buying books and back in the library!

Deja Vu

2009-01-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

Molly and Kirby's mom, Suzanne, came out to Provo the last few days of the semester. It was super fun to have her out there. Not only did I enjoy the residual effects of having a mother around, but she also supplied us with crafts! When Molly, Kirby, Brian and I were younger and crazier, Suzanne used to always pick up little crafts that became ornaments to keep us out of trouble. So this year, for old times sake (and for a flat out good time) Suzanne came prepared with

ornament crafts. Thanks for the blast to the past!

Ok, this video is really obnoxious I know. I watched it the other day and thought it was hysterical mostly just because of Brian's antics. But really, posting the video was just an experiment because I've never done it before. The consensus is: it takes too long.

Back to 4th Grade

2009-01-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

Jen gave me some good incentive to not leave all of my finals until Friday. Kirby, Brian, Suzanne and I all accompanied Molly and Jen to school! A day in the 4th grade. It was fantastic. I would have posted this earlier but I thought I lost my camera before break. But---I didn't! However, it was in Jen's car these past two weeks so I didn't have pictures to go with the story. And who wants the story without the pictures? I mean really, do you guys even read what I write? Thanks if you do, but know that I totally understand if all you do is look at the pictures.:)

We arrived at the school just in time for the school-wide assembly. Each of the grades performed a cute little Christmas song. The fourth grade sang "I'm gettin nuttin' for Christmas" with some edited lyrics to fit their daily lives. For some reason, I was given the privilege of playing the piano while the kiddies sang. The performance was my second time seeing the music. The combination of my sightreading and anxious fourth graders singing too fast made for a pretty interesting rendition. But it was fun anyway.

Jen turned my pages.

Let's face it; the best part of being a teacher is all the sweet presents your students give you! Granted, most of the time these gifts are tacky statues, mugs or cheap candy. But sometimes, just sometimes, you score and get a magnetic dry erase marker holder and eraser! Lucky dog.

Molly is a rockstar. We all know that. But I have never heard so many nine year olds scream so much. They love her. It was absolutely insane. But hey, I'm not complaining because in being one of Molly's back up singers for the snowman song meant I got to share in a little bit of the spotlight.

This is Molly and the entire fourth grade. I wish I had a picture of this so I could prove it to you, but while Molly sang a couple songs for the kids, I saw two girls near the back of the pack bawling. Just bawling.

And this is Molly literally being mobbed by fourth graders. I was honestly slightly scared for her life. And honest to goodness, she actually ended up on the floor and the other teachers had to pull the kids off of her. That's why I've chosen not to be famous, it's too dangerous.

After the assembly, we had lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon helping Jen out in her room and participating in her classroom Christmas party. Ah, to be a kid again...

FREEDOM!!

2008-12-18T16:34:00.000-08:00

Finals. Are. Over. That's all. I'm done!!!!! With this semester at least... The depressing part that I choose not to dwell on at this moment is that it all starts over again in a couple of weeks. On the upside though, it does give me a good excuse to be in Provo. The place that I love. But for now--it's Christmastime!!!

Gingerbread Courts

2008-12-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

Last weekend. The weekend right before finals. But not the one right before Christmas. The one that you can be guaranteed all of your friends can be in town for. So naturally, what do you do this weekend? Throw Christmas parties. Don't worry, I didn't ahve to thrown one. But I attended quite a few. It all started on Thusday night with our racquetball team dinner. It was a good time, fairly formal (which is odd for a group that meets at 6am wearing shorts and t-shirts), and there was plenty of good ole BYU-catered food. The best part was that our coaches gave us all jackets! With our names on them! They are basically the coolest things ever. Anyone that knows me well, knows that all I need in life to be happy is a good jacket. Or a good bag. Or heck, even a good pair of shoes. :) (Ok, the bottom line is, I'm easy to please...). So needlesstosay, I was all but thrilled to receive a jacket declaring my status on a sports team to the world. I think Megan and I have worn them for at least a few minutes every day since we got them. :)

Friday night wasn't exactly a party I guess, but an event nonetheless. I went to the Jon Schmidt Christmas concert!!! This thing is pretty much legend around these parts and Stefanie took the initiative and got tickets for us and our friend Megan Bird. It was a good time. Jon Schmidt rocks my world. Basically.

Saturday was the real kicker. I spent the entire day at the library attempting to be productive prior to finals week. I'd say I was successful for the most part. Originally, I had three parties to attend but lucky for me, one got cancelled. And honestly, I'm really not crazy popular. It's just...people like to throw parties that weekend. So the first one was Cameron's. I dragged Megan along with me and we bascially just spent the entire time building the coolest gingerbread house I've ever made. Megan and I, naturally, decided to make a racquetball court. And with the valiant help of Marcie, we made our wonderful creation.

We decided to make it a game of iron man (two people against one) with two elves against santa claus. And I know, Santa Claus is massive. It's actually quite hysterical I think. That thing with the green m&m as a head is an elf. Just so you can now appreciate the magnitude of Santa. :)

Here's another view. From here you can see the spectator stands. Granted, I've never actually seen any kind of racquetball court with these kinds of stands but hey, it works. Also, we came up with the idea to have Rudolph ref the match. And then, innocently, Marcie called him "Rudolph the Reffing Reindeer." Oh, and NPU of course stands for North Pole University.

And the proud creaters of the coolest gingerbread contraption ever made. Usually, when I'm handed a bunch of graham crackers and some frosting, I lose all motivation and creativity in about 10 minutes and just start eating candy. But this bad boy, held my complete attention until the end. :)

From there we left and after wandering around Springville for awhile, we finally found our way back to Monticello. After finding Brian, the three of us headed over to Kat and Annie's. Kat and Annie lived with Megan in Monticello last fall. I spent a few nights on their couch. So...I guess you could say I know them. :) It was a fun little gathering though. We spent the majority of our time there singing Christmas carols at the piano. It was great.

On Sunday, after a full day of choir and other assorted musical numbers, Brian and Jen and I headed up to Salt Lake for our Spencer family get together. It was really great to see everybody. There are so many little kids running around these days! We counted and the great-grandchildren have officially overtaken the amount of grandchildren. And as grandma would say, "There's not a bad one in the bunch!"

All in all, it was a full, festive weekend. I do enjoy a good Christmas party. So a weekend full of them was just great. I can't wait to continue the festivities when I go home in just TWO days!

The Birthday Boy

2008-12-04T15:22:00.000-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving was Dave's birthday. So we of course couldn't let that go by unnoticed. After a little bit of brainstorming, Jen, Brian and I decided to get Dave what he really wanted for his birthday. A 5-photo picture frame filled with pictures of his favorite sibling-in laws. And we had a great time with the photo shoot. Here's the results.

This one is actually a really cute picture. I like it a lot.

I can only give Brian credit for the genius of this picture. He posed it himself. I still die laughing every time I see this picture.

Before you judge me, let me tell you the story behind this picture. You know how picture frames come with fake pictures already in them? Well, the one we got for Dave came with a picture of a little boy doing this exact pose you see me striking. We thought it would be a fantastic idea to leave the fake picture of the little boy in and add in this one of me copying him.

Brian also gets the credit for posing this picture. There was just something missing, and then Brian suggested Jen hug a bowl of fake fruit. Et voila!

Mom also had a fantastic birthday treat lined up for Dave--in the form of a pin and glasses. To Dave's credit, he wore them both proudly the whole time we were at the tree lot.

The Giving of Thanks

2008-12-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

THANKSGIVING! What a great holiday! Only Americans could think of that one: "let's have a holiday set aside where all we do is eat and play football one day, and then blow all of our money at the mall the next day!" I do love Thanksgiving though. The best part--I got to go home! Thanks mom and dad. :) The whole family was in Thanksgiving for turkey day and that was fantastic. We didn't do a whole lot over the weekend but it was perfect. We ate, slept in :), watched home videos, watched movies and got our Christmas tree! We go to a tree lot about 45 minutes from our house and cut down our own tree! It's super fun. Last year, it was bitterly cold, so the moderate cold was much easier to deal with this year. And none of Jen's fingers turned white so that was good. :) I think we set a record on Christmas tree height this year--11 feet. Yikes! But it's a beauty and from what I hear it looks even more amazing all decorated. Here's some pictures from the weekend. Enjoy!

On Thanksgiving day, we got a little tired of waiting for the food to be ready so we decided to distract ourselves with a little bit of basketball. Some of these may be posed....but some really aren't!

Ok, so this one is posed. I mean...Dave's just really that good.

Style points for Dad.

I was just amazed that went in.

Points to Brian for not settling for a posed picture.

And yay Sara!

The tree! And those big, strong men carrying it...

This picture is hysterical. I think that Sara, Jen, Dave and I might all have our eyes closed (it was sunny). And, I just realized today that dad is holding the saw to Brian's neck. Good one, Dad!

The big day! Obviously, we are now on to the pie. And sorry Dave looks so creepy...

Jen and Brian and I all flew out to Chicago together the day before Thanksgiving. It was uneventful, as most flights are, so I thought, what the heck--let's take some pictures!

And this is Brian wearing all of our luggage tags. Don't ask.

Twilight: The Movie

2008-12-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true. I did go see Twilight on opening night, at midnight. We even drove all the way to South Jordan because it was sold out all over Provo. For those of you who don't know, that's about 45 minutes. Now that's dedication. The movie was...hilarious. I think that's the best word for it. Not the greatest acting or special effects I've ever seen, but entertaining. :)

Excited for the movie to start, despite the hour.

This is how we felt when it was 12:25 and the movie still hadn't started!

I don't feel like Twilight is very exciting to blog about, but not a whole lot super excited has happended lately. Other than Thanksgiving, which is so exciting that it gets its own post.