Correction

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yep, it's still swollen...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just getting the ornaments ready for the tree.

Megan made these very delicious and beautiful brownies.

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

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