Fall

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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.