My life as an open book

A Spewage of Thoughts

2011-10-12T16:34:00.000-06:00

I just felt like I needed a venue to release some of the thoughts in my head. For those of you who don’t know, I’m trying to finish up my Thesis to turn it in on November 11^th! In case you didn’t realize it’s October 12^th, you know may deduce that my time is extremely limited!

I’ve started to feel close to a mental breakdown today. Sigh. And I’m trying not to be. The past few Sundays, I’ve hoped to get a blog post written, but have been busy with lots of things (I actually tidied up my room so you can walk this last).

If I don’t finish this semester (and it has to be turned in by November 11^th to the Grad School to graduate), then I have to pay tuition for a credit. Granted it’s only $455, that’s still $455 I don’t have! Sigh. And I just want to have it done and behind me. I think there are a lot of reasons why I hate it so much and am having a hard time doing it. But perhaps largest is that I don’t know what I want to do when I’m done, so I don’t have anything specific I plan to use a Master’s degree in Chemistry for. It’s all sad, and could be depressing if I were to dwell on it.

But I’m still happy overall, and positive about life of course! It’s only another month afterall. You can do anything for a month!! But there is an inordinate amount of work that still needs to be done, and a whole lot of writing that’s going to have to almost magically happen. I’m trying really hard to keep perspective.

I’ve been careful not to leave the Lord out of my life (not like I could ever truly leave Him out—He’s always going to be there). I continue to start everyday in the scriptures! I’m still making my way through the New Testament and am right on target to read the entire Book of Mormon before the end of the year starting September 1^st. And reading a column of El Libro de Mormon (in Spanish) everyday. I even have managed to go to my Institute classes. And of course I’m not doing any school work on the Sabbath. I know that, only in putting the Lord first, will I be able to accomplish anything. I know that with the help of my Savior, Jesus Christ, that I can do anything. Even finish this ominous, pressing degree.

Anyhow, just wanted to get those thoughts out, I do feel ever so slightly better already.

Keep praying for me, I know your prayers help!

Is this a problem?

2011-08-08T10:58:00.003-06:00

As I drove back into town Saturday night I stopped at the grocery store to get sandwich fixins, see what fruit/veggie they had on sale, & check out the day-old rack. I was pretty happy to see that grapes were on sale for $1/lb! I'm typically pretty wary of purchasing grapes because I'm quite picky about them, a bit of a grape snob if you will.

But they luckily looked pretty good, so I chose a bag (hoping it'd be the ticket) and bought it. It was Fast Sunday though, so I didn't get to start in on them until last night. But I was very pleasantly surprised. They were delicious & I probably ate half of them last night!!

I'm trying to keep myself from finishing them off today, but am considering it, justifying it by stopping to get more today so I can also freeze some for future smoothies...

hmm...all of a sudden I just can't get enough grapes...

(My grapes probably didn't look quite this good...but I liked this picture!)

I'm still alive!

2011-07-09T13:42:00.003-06:00

I've been sad that I haven't posted on my blog in SOO incredibly long! I always want to do a long meaningful post. Especially, most importantly, post fun pictures of all the things my life's busy with. Sigh.
But alas, I never make the time to do it. So I was sitting on my couch eating a little lunch this beautiful Saturday before heading out to go play a little Ultimate Frisbee (which I'm finding I can actually enjoy--who'd've thought it was possible?!), & thought I might as well post a little something.

I think it's safe to assume that any of you still reading my blog (more specifically this picture-less blog), do know (or assume) that I am alive because you're also on facebook. But I still thought this could be a good transitional blog post.

So, yes, I am alive. I've even found some motivation (of sorts) to actually be doing my research towards my Masters degree. Sigh. That's been, seriously, the bane of my existence for the past, oh gosh, two years of my life! I still don't know what exactly I want to do whenever I manage to finish this degree and feel that I've validated the past four years of my life here in Greeley. But something'll work out, right?! That's what I keep telling myself.

I'm loving life, being very busy, and trying to stay cool here in Greality, CO! Too many things to do and people to be with constantly. I love it! Summer's actually been quite beautiful so far, and I'm loving the opportunities I've had to be in various bodies of water--awesome!

K, I oughta be heading out to play a little Ultimate (or at least watch) now...maybe I'll post a "real" picture-ful post sometime sooner than ~7.5ish months! Haha.

Signing out for now.

Wee Post

2010-10-27T02:03:00.002-06:00

I was walking to switch my laundry earlier tonight in the dark across my parking lot. I love this 'cold' Fall weather, and I just thought it was beautiful outside. But for some reason the short jaunt made me wish I had someone to take a walk with.

This is all.

The Lord's hand IS in my life--& YOURS!

2010-10-25T23:00:00.004-06:00

I really need to go to sleep. But I've just had such an amazing day. The Lord blesses me with so much everyday and today was especially great. I often wonder what I ever did to deserve it. But it just goes to show how much our Heavenly Father loves us all and wants to bless us! I just feel SO blessed and loved and would feel ungrateful if I didn't share.

Thankfully today started well because I remembered before going to sleep that I was teaching a professor's lecture for them at 10 this morning. Had I forgotten, it would have been disastrous! I even got all ready for the day (including makeup--shocking) before class.

It was SUPER windy here today, and I loved it as I walked into school. I got to wear my red pea coat, and I loved my outfit today, so that was a good start. But it wasn't an absolutely freezing wind, it was still only around 50 outside. So I just enjoyed the leaves blowing, and actually felt the wind had a calming effect for me. I was walking across some grass to my building, and the wind was so strong that the grass (which isn't very long) just blew in waves, and it looked like water to me. I thought it was so beautiful! I felt like I was walking on a sea of grass. Really I was. It had to be a good thing that I was finding beauty in such a simple thing--the Lord was making sure I was a little extra sensitive to His Spirit today.

I ended up getting to play the piano for a while at the Institute, and that is always relaxing/soothing/fun. Our last Choir piece got copied today, and I feel much more prepared for our big Fireside on the 14th of November!

There's a girl in my ward who I was assigned as her visiting teacher last year when she was a freshman. Almost no one knew who she was, and I just did 'what I was supposed' to, called/texted her, visited her, brought her cookies, and invited her to everything. She never really started coming, but I was fairly persistent through the summer, and the missionaries and I have worked to get to to come to things (she's come to a few lessons, and church once). Her phone was broken for a while which complicated things, but I did what I could.

This afternoon, I got a text from her asking if we could get together sometime this week! I was thrilled because she hadn't really done that yet. So I responded that we could today, and invited her to come to meet with the missionaries with my already scheduled lesson. She said that that was just what she needed.

It was one of the sweetest, and most sacred experiences that I have had. I was able to help this girl decide to make some needed changes in her life, and she's ready. (I don't think she'd mind me sharing this much.) I'm just so happy, humble, and grateful to be able to have been an instrument in the Lord's hand in her life. I really did hardly anything! And even she said that I was just there. And that's what she needed.

That's all that someone needs sometimes, and how incredible is that?! It was so easy, but it helped her see the need for the Lord's love she had and she had the courage to do something about getting it back in her life.

I was in tears with her earlier, and I'm definitely crying just writing about it and feeling SO overwhelmed with gratitude and love that it's hard to express what I'm feeling. I'm so pleased to have this opportunity to grow and help another of our Father's children to grow. Today was just such a sacred experience for me, and I have already grown today in my testimony, which was already strong, of our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ. They love ALL of us so much! I got to feel that again today, and it was absolutely beautiful. They are SO in the details of our lives! We ought to recognize it more.

There are so many times that other people have been the hand of the Lord in my life, and I'm genuinely humbled to have the opportunity to be the hand of the Lord in someone else's life!

I wanted to share a little of this experience I had the privilege to have today with those of you who read. It was SO powerful to me, and I hope that it helps you to realize the Lord's love in your life a little more as well!

Have you ever?

2010-10-10T16:46:00.002-06:00

So, have you ever had something coming up that you were nervous about, & then it turned out so awesome after that you couldn't stop smiling & even maybe felt like crying because you were so happy?! Well that's how I feel today.

I don't even know if that description makes sense or not. But, okay, I'll explain. It does have to do with this combined Choir this weekend. Our Stake President asked me to conduct it about 6 weeks ago. I thought he was a little crazy because I'm not a 'real' Choir director. So I've had a while to worry about it. Yesterday we had our only rehearsal. I mighta had a bit of a spaz attack Saturday morning. I was just stressing about it. So I really hated myself and felt bad for my friends in my car with me. It luckily didn't last very long. I didn't get there as early as I planned.

Choir members filtered in for a while and Kati was able to get some presets ready on the organ, she ran them through a bunch of warmups (I definitely don't know my scales well enough, nor any exercises) we tuned Andy's viola, and got started. It was AWEsome! They followed well, and they sounded great.

I just had to tell them to watch a couple things and I had to remember my cut-offs. Really, once we got started practicing I was fine, I didn't even feel all that nervous anymore. And it became fun. So today when we met I knew what was going on, and they sounded even better. Sigh. I am SO blessed!!

We sang 3 songs, and I directed for the 2 congregational hymns, and it was just so much fun and awesome. Both yesterday and today when they were over though I felt such a huge relief. The Spirit was so strong in that meeting, especially for the music. It was so clear how people felt from it. During the last song (Let Us All Press On) Elder Hillier (the presiding G. A. from the 70 who chose all the songs & wanted tons of music as a stipulation) turned around to look at the choir! That's a huge compliment.

I don't know if I've stopped smiling. It turned out so well and I'm just so happy--I am so blessed. All those prayers asking for help sure were answered. President Packard shook my hand after and told me, "See, you did it. And you did great." And I was able to genuinely thank him for giving me the opportunity. A few other people stopped me to thank me, and I really just felt so good, and so loved. It truly was a wonderful experience for me, and I'm impressed, pleased, and relieved that I did it!

One woman was super cute, she grabbed me on my way out and gave me a huge hug (thankfully I don't have a bubble, lol) and thanked me profusely for a while, she even went so far to say we sounded exactly like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Hah, that's just too cute because we did sound awesome, but definitely not that good. But I'm sure to some people there may not seem to be as much of a difference between choirs as there really is. Haha. She was fun, Sister Lane.

I would write more, but I've been going for a while, who even knows how many people are still reading? And I've gotta go. The Conference was fun.

Ashley stayed with me since after Choir Thursday night, and we got up early Saturday to 3-barrel my hair for the Conference that day! I may have been (just) a tad vain about my hair yesterday...hah. But seriously, look at how awesome it looks!

Here it is from the back! ;) Oh, and Megan braided Ashley's Friday night, so hers was fun too.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures during the dance, but my hair stayed in pretty well, and the dance was a ton of fun! :) (I know that for many of you that's hard to imagine--me having fun at a dance.)

My friend Chanae graduated from Cosmotology School, and there was a surprise party for her Friday night, look at my friend the balloon that stuck to my hair from the static! It was funny.

Clearly I had a phenomenal weekend! What did you do?

58?!?

2010-10-08T14:23:00.002-06:00

So this is the big weekend, I was asked to conduct a Multi-Stake YSA Choir for this YSA Conference that we're having in Fort Collins. Scary. I'm not entirely sure they realize I'm not a trained choir director. Hah.

I was only allowed to pick 19 singers (ideally even parts) from my own 35ish person choir here in Greeley! That was too bad. But there's supposed to be 39 other singers from the other stakes. Unfortunately (though maybe fortunately really, the other stakes were unable to get the numbers, and of course I found out late and couldn't fill in completely.

So 58 is misleading, but it's supposed to be a 58 voice Choir! I was given 3 hymns (that I wouldn't have necessarily picked myself) and I've gotta be ready to go. Gah!

Wish me luck. I just practiced a little with a couple people. I hope I don't have a heart attack!

Uh, only since April...

2010-09-18T11:53:00.003-06:00

So it's a bit embarrassing that I've let my blog go SO long without updating it! I don't really have a great reason for not updating it. Though I could give a huge list of things I've been doing. I think part of my problem is that I want to put everything I've been doing up, so I feel like I can never get enough up to get caught up. But clearly I need to just get over that.

In no particular order (and perhaps not an exclusive list):

I had 11 wedding receptions to attend since April, I made it to 9!
I went to Utah for a weekend.
I went to California for a week and a half.
I saw lots of people.
I watched a few movies in the summer.
I went to the Drive-in for the first time, and then another time since.
I met my brother's girlfriend--not fiance!
I read Peter Pan out loud with Alessandra.
I moved apartments.
Joan came out to Colorado to help me move into my new place.
I cleaned the new place.
I moved my school stuff out of my office, back into my office, and then lastly into a new office.
I no longer get to teach Sunday School.
I am now a Ward Missionary--that's been a big change.
I helped a lot of people move.
I went tubing on a lake--got WAY burned on my legs.
Went to quite a few Bridal Showers.
I made a bunch of boutonnieres.
I went to a dance that I actually had a TON of fun at--much like my Stake dances of yore.
Best of EFY.
I did get a little cold for a few days and fairly lost my voice.
I said goodbye to quite a few people who left Greeley.
I welcomed people who moved to Greeley.
I gave rides to people.
I made sure to take care of a friend who had his car taken away.
I talked on the phone/skype to a number of different places!
California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Utah, Australia, China, Peru, Colorado.
Went four-wheeling for the first time.
Watched Little Dorrit again. :)
Cooked a lot of food.
Had a 'summer choir' for a week.
Started to get ready for Choir this year. Yikes.
Got rid of a lot of stuff.
Went hiking some.
Lol, had a few swim lessons.
Still enjoying my long hair!
Started and finished reading Preach My Gospel!
After much work, got a shelf up to help alleviate floor space, found a place for everything.
Went to the Temple, a few of them, and all ordinances!
Making a dent in my food storage.
Laughed.
Played.
Swinging on swings.
Swimming in a river.
Caught up with old friends.
Finished a lot of crocheting.
Made my first apron.
Mailed my first and likely last package to Australia!
Played the piano & sang a lot.

There are many more things I've done I'm sure. But I suppose that's a pretty good list. Lol. Now I've got a lot of things to get done. I need to clean the apartment--the kitchen, bathroom, my room. I need to do some laundry, & put away the laundry that I have still in a basket from earlier this week. I need to take a shower. Get ready for Stake Conference this evening. Give rides. Have a movie night with Sister Huffines. :) I anticipate a great rest of the day. But I've gotta get going. In my defense I did get to sleep in a little (which is good because I need the sleep), but I have already studied all my scriptures!

Maybe it won't be another 5 months before I post again. :/ I hope it won't be...

Retreatness

2010-09-18T11:50:00.002-06:00

So I looked at my posts, and I had this one all typed up and ready to go from back in the end of February! I'm not sure whether I was gonna add something else to it. but I just looked through it and it looked pretty done to me! So here's an old post. Lol...

So we had our Institute Retreat up at the YMCA in Estes Park. Sam and his roommate, Rhett Garrett, came out from Orem to join us. It was a great time! We were a bit crazy, of course.

Megan french braided my hair friday and I was going to just take them out to leave my hair a little crimpy on Saturday so I didn't have to wash it. I forgot jaw clips to hold the braids up while I showered. So I improvised with crochet hooks! ;)

Andy's just so tall, and funny. Lol.
Pretty cute of Sam, Sanra and me as we were gathering for our huge group picture.
I tried to count, it was over 100! Crazy! (Looks like I accidentally uploaded one of the blurry ones instead of the clear, whoops.)
Look! Alessandra's taller than Sam!!
A little photo shoot with Sam, this one's pretty cute.
Hah, I'm threatening to lick his face here.
I'm clearly disgusted at the thought of Sam licking my face...hah!
One of the group games thingies was walking with these boards. Our team was WAY good, we smoked the other team. Amanda was awesome at leading and Josh was a good caller from the back.
I did get some grading done in the car.
Yay, it was great to have Sam here, it just was way too short! Poo. At least he lives much closer now. And the Retreat was good. We also played Family Feud and Human-sized Institute Clue but I didn't get any pictures of that. Oh, we also did a 'get-everyone-through-the-spider-web-through-a-different-hole' team building type thing. I thought I uploaded one of those pictures, but guess I missed it. Whoops. Oh well. We had a good time. As always.

Full Day(s?)

2010-04-30T22:05:00.003-06:00

Today:
11:15 Friday Forum
Take Car into shop. Listen to Alessandra practice her English Horn piece for her Jury next week.
2:30 Undergraduate Poster Session
Phone with Maureen! ;)
4:00 Institute Field Day Activity
Start Laundry
Get car back
Start crocheting baby beanie
6:00 Vanessa (Yahosh's wife)'s Baby Shower
7:00 "Girl's" Dinner at Kathryn's! (YumMY!)
Finish Laundry
Should have bought gas

Tomorrow, Saturday 1st of May
Sometime really early: Wake up and get all ready for the whole day! (Blow dry hair and all that kind of stuff.)
7:00 Meet at the Institute for the Temple Trip
Buy Gas on the way down since I didn't get it Friday night
9:00 Endowment Session!
11:00ish Eat lunch at Temple
Drive down to Colorado Springs.
Practice Choir Stuff (honestly because the Sopranos want it, well the basses could probably use it too, lol)
3:00 Actual Tech Rehearsal stuff
5:15 Driving to different building for Dinner
Eat, Chat, Change
7:00 Combined Choir Fireside! (Greeley, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins Institute Choirs and Air Force Cadet Choir!)
Uh, maybe start my fast nowish...?
Drive back
11:00-12:00midnightish: Arrive back in Greeley and die of exhaustion! ;)

Sunday:
Up early to get ready and do more work on my lesson
9:30 Church
10:45ish: Teach Temple Prep Sunday School Class (as always)
12:30ish: Done with Church
Get things done.
Maybe nap.
Get some notes written. Sigh.
4:00 Pending baptism
Eat some dinner sometime to break the fast
6:00 CES Fireside with Bishop Burton
7:10ish: Institute Graduation at the Institute (yes, yet another Advanced Certificate...)
Cookies or something fun.
Maybe a Disney movie? Dunno...
More notes to write...

Be ready for the week...

Sound like much? Hah. It kinda is...

Sigh

2010-04-25T16:17:00.002-06:00

Well. I don't really have any pictures. &/or I'm not feeling like going to find them. & I only have like 10 minutes. Agh!

So my Seminar is over! It was mildly a disaster. Now before some of you jump down my throat saying that you're sure it was fine, yadda, yadda, let me explain. Now I know that it could have been way worse. But I definitely was not prepared. Whoops. All my fault. And I'm aware of that. So the fact that I was not prepared did not help.

I was also exhAUSted! I'd gotten up at 4:00 and 4:30am Thursday and Friday, and had gotten up a little earlier than usual (haha) the other days. So I also kept saying things wrong. Really, it was kinda bad. One on of the slides I said something outright blatantly wrong and just kept going. By the time I went to the next slide I realized that I'd said it wrong, but didn't really know if I was allowed to go back and explain. So I didn't. One of my professors called me out on it after everyone was gone. Whoops.

My other professor called me out on one of my structures because I'd used the wrong form. Don't worry, I didn't have an explanation for why because I just honestly used the wrong one. It was pretty awful. Funny. Well a little. Eh, oh well.

So trust me when I say that it really wasn't very good. Hah.

But it still feels good to just have it out of the way. Now I have lots of research to get figured out. But it will be better.

K, I gotta get to dinner, and then a fireside in Fort Collins. Yikes. no rest for the weary. I will write again. ;)

A Day In My Life...

2010-04-18T23:20:00.005-06:00

So Vanessa had a blog that I loved earlier this week: here
It inspired me to do one the same way. And I'm a bit out of ideas tonightish? At least I'm a bit out of energy. So I hope this can still be funny. At least a little bit to the few of you who read this. ;)

For sure a pretty typical day a month and a half ago:
Between 6:30 and 7:00 am - definitely sleeping. Probably didn't even consider setting an alarm nearly this early the night before!
7:15 to 8:40 am - And still sleeping! Well there may have been an alarm that went off in case I miraculously felt like actually getting out of bed to go to the gym. Well, I probably had one set for 8:00 anyhow, so I could "get up and do something"
8:40 am - By now I bet that my alarm was going off and I was doing the 5 minute snooze sleeping routine where I have crazy vivid dreams about all kinds of random stuff
9:15 am - Pretty close to dragging myself out of unconciousness to say morning prayers that will hopefully be meaningful. (Well I think they were more often than not.)
9:15 to 11:30 am - Oh yeah, at least 95% of the time I have definitely dragged myself out of bed by now and showered (which we know especially if I wash my hair is a long ordeal), I may be on my way up to campus by now.
11:30 am - This is often around the time I would be wandering through the Institute on my way to Ross Hall (Chem building) and that was inevitably a bad idea if I wanted to actually make it beyond the black hole that we fondly call the Institute building. I would start talking to Sister Huffines (Sec) or Brother Coleman (director) or whatever person happened to be sitting in the foyer, or the library, or the game room. Any person who would listen to my voice. Normally I was whining about having to go do Research (that I really ought to have been honest about the fact that it wasn't going to happen that day either). Or I'd talk about Choir stuff, or ya know, try to solve the problems of the world.
12:30 pm - It was usually around this time, or a bit before that I would most often make it into my office. I would be chatting with Erica, Kevin, and/or Dennis. I would grade. I would work on quizzes, look at labs. Somehow I was always busy. Just not as much with Researchy type things I should have been busy with.
2:00 to 2:30 pm - Still at school, quiz stuff probably.
2:40 pm - May have wandered over to chat with Tessa and Chelsea in the Stockroom (or teaching my lab on Wed's)
3:15 pm - Probably home by now. For something important. Reading the Bible--literally. I wouldn't let myself read my scriptures when I woke up so late because I didn't deserve to start my day with it when I didn't wake up when I should have. Perhaps not the best, but I was trying to motivate myself to wake up earlier. Maybe giving someone a ride somewhere. Or baking something for Choir. Or doing our dishes, or cooking. Or taking a nap. Or getting stuck at the Institute again. Or running errands to go get things.
3:15 to 4:00 pm - Same as above.
4:00 to 5:00 pm - Same
5:00 to 5:30 pm - Eating. Napping. Could be doing something to give someone a ride. Or talking with someone who needs it. Choir things.
5:30 pm - Gah, Vanessa's days are broken down way different than mine would have been. Gah, same as above.
5:45 pm (or so) - Definitely hadn't had enough change in these 15 min!
6:30 pm - Oh, by now I'm waking up from my nap or starting to wrap up whatever I'm working on because I'm on my way to go to an Institute class or some performance of sorts, or I'm runing errrands with people. Or we're on our way to watch a movie with someone, or there's some party I feel I need to go to support, or Alessandra's over while we're all working on important things mainly on our computer while we watch some movie. Maybe by now Alessandra and I have read El Libro De Mormon for the day.
7:30 pm - In the middle of all this stuff right above.
8:00 pm - And definitely still early in the night. Always had the goal to go to sleep by 11 or so--at least before midnight, and never making it before midnight! All kinds of important things. Like solving all problems of the universe with Kristin!

So what I should have been doing:
5:30am Wake up; pray, read scriptures.
6:00am Gym
by 7:00am Shower, eat a little somethin and make it out of the house before 8 for sure!
by 8:00am In the office! Doing reasearch.
A bit of a lunch in somewhere...
But maybe by 6:00pm Come home. Do other commitments stuff. Grading, Institute Class, Choir, Chatting/Being Social with people. Dinner.
10:00pm Start getting ready for bed, picking clothes and stuff
by 10:30-11:00pm-ish Praying, Journaling, and ASLEEP!

Hah. Well that's a little shot out to Vanessa. And it was fun to try using her blog. ;)

Hope you enjoyed laughing at my ridiculousness. I cracked myself up at least. Wish me luck this week (and pray for me of course), I'm gonna be giving my Seminar this Friday after all. But I think it's gonna be alright. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Eh, not as bad as I thought it would be.

2010-04-11T23:08:00.002-06:00

So, in case you didn't see on facebook, I ended up canceling my Seminar this week because I definitely couldn't get enough research done to be ready. Whoops. But I did get some work done, & a fairly decent start on what to do for this research stuff. Sigh. I still don't really like it. But I am almost always in the lab by myself so I just listen to my ipod and sing along which is kind of fun. & I suppose that overall it isn't too horrible.

I can do this! That's my new attitude. Last week I did get up to my office before 7:00 in the morning 2 days. It was crazy. I stayed there in the office/lab for 11 hours on Monday. I was pretty proud of myself! I haven't had those kind of hours since my first year here and I worked on homework tons, everything was new & Kelsey & I had fun working on classes.

It's still going to be tons of work, discussing all the details with Dr.'s Hyslop & Pringle helped tons but I also saw how much I have to do to make the whole thing legit. It may get interesting. I love that Dr. Pringle seems so excited to help me figure how to do everything, and that he's going to let me work on his lab bench! That really is a big deal because he's a super clean freak & doesn't want anyone to touch his stuff & definitely won't let anyone touch it who he doesn't like. So he doesn't hate me! Whew.

Well I was going to get to sleep much earlier, but I got my clean towels and socks folded and put away. I washed 33 pairs of socks yesterday--& that's not nearly all my socks! So I also organized my sock drawer for the first time since Omaha I think. Haha. It was funny. But then Alessandra & a couple other people were over. We watched a Vegietale, & we looked at some pictures. Ya know, the really important stuff.

Love to you all! I hope I can get a bunch of NMR stuff figured out in the next couple of days. Wish me luck!

Hmm. Hair

2010-04-11T22:17:00.004-06:00

So I've been growing my hair out for a few years now, and I love it. I was sure that it was gonna drive me crazy! But, huh. Now I don't wanna cut it. See my intent is to donate it--and I know I will, but I'm loving having it long so much. I haven't had it nearly this long since high school/halfway through Freshman year.
Randomly my friend Bryn started telling me that I ought to cut it. Sigh. It seems everytime that I look at pictures when my hair was short I don't like it. So I looked through my pictures and I found a few of my short hair that I feel explain my dislike for the shortness. I don't think it's very flattering to my face, and I apparently was never very satisfied with how it was styled or something because it was never perfect. It's way more noticeable when it is short. I used to love getting it cut though.
Lemme know what you think.

You can totally see the highlights I had here too. These old classes were definitely not the best for me either...

Maybe I just have a weird expression in this picture, but see how it just doesn't do much for my face.
It just makes my hair look a lot thinner too. Weird. And highlights here!
Another weird expression, but I still don't like it really...
And I think I spent a fair amount of time on my hair this time because this is at a wedding reception, but I dunno, it just doesn't look so good, my hair...
Another wedding reception, and huh, I don't think it looks so good.
Weird expression before I blow out some birthday candles...I look like I'm about to sneeze!

Ahh, so whattaya think?

Oh Boy!

2010-04-04T22:12:00.002-06:00

So it's April now. Crazy!! How'd that happen, and who thought that was okay?! But April did bring Conference (as usual) and Easter! I love Easter for a few reasons. First of all I love Easter because it is an extra reminder of what our Savior Jesus Christ has done for us. I love the account we have of His resurrection in the Book of Mormon. It is such a powerful 2nd witness to the Bible! It was glorious having Conference on Easter this year. The prophets and apostles bore powerful testimony of His Atonement. It's been great. I wish I didn't have to go "back to the real world."

Another reason I love Easter is: Jelly beans, Cadbury mini and creme eggs.

And Robin's eggs. Sigh. They're so great. Look at what you can do with the blue ones! :

This is what we did with them at Stake Dances growing up. I don't remember who did it with me but I remember going up to boys and asking them if they wanted a kiss. Lol. I look ridiculous! Love it. We decided today that I ought to have told them my lips were cold and would they like to warm them up. That would've been a little too out of control. I did kiss a post-it note with the blue to mail to Tanner. Haha.

Anyhow, I have not been very good about the whole school thing this semester (well or the last year and a half really, let's be honest)! Ugh. I have a Seminar this Friday. :( Poo. I have LOTS to do this week. I'm quarantining myself to school for everyday! Sigh. Wish me luck and pray for me, I'll need all the help I can get!

Where's Waldo?

2010-03-28T14:06:00.003-06:00

We played Where's Waldo last Saturday at the tiny Greeley Mall. It worked out pretty well, there seemed to be way more people than usual--and some of them dressed mildly suspiciously. At least suspicious enough that it took effort to find out if it was one of our Waldos. We had 8. A member of our Bishopric and his whole family and a few others. Diane won hands down for the best costume, she wasn't even found by some who she was right next to because her costume was legit! Andy was close, it felt like it took us forever to find him.

It was Alessandra, Amanda, Kristin and me on our team. We found everyone, and we found them first. We had somewhere around half an hour to spare even! It's because we're awesome. ;)

I like Jamie's deal with making collages to make uploading pictures easier on this blasted thing. So here's a picture of them all.

After we won, Amanda wanted to see what she'd look like as a blonde--doesn't she look FABulous?!? Hehe. (Oh, she's my pianist, and she's also AMAZing!!!)

I just think this picture of my punching Andy's fat belly is hilarious! (Okay, it was a pillow, Andy's not fat.) I think I look pretty funny, but Andy's face is amazing!

Oh, it was fun as always, and we didn't even get kicked out of the mall! Go us! Ah, still one of my favorite activity to ever do!!! Sigh.

Baby Mikey!

2010-03-21T15:58:00.005-06:00

It was so worth it making the 5 hour trek to Grand Junction to get to have this cuddle time:

Jamie & I loved this picture because he looks like a baby doll here. Hah.

Jamie handed him to be just before I left, and he just went right to sleep on me, SOOO cute!!

I'm SO happy!!
Look at the lines on his face from sleeping on my shirt. We decided we needed to get him awake for feeding...not too quickly
He face planted, and curled up all fetus like in my lap, it was great, Jamie & I laughed. SOOO adorable!
Jamie likes to let him sun bathe. He's yawning (clearly).
His big beautiful blue eyes!
He's smiling!
This is the hat I made for him before I ever met him. I'm so glad it fit!
He had the hiccups here, and he shortly did go to sleep, and we slept together after this picture.
This is the face he made when he found out I had to leave! I made a similar face--though maybe mine had more tears shed!

Oh I hope I can go again sometime soon. It was too fun. And I loved vacuuming, doing laundry, and putting dishes away for someone else! Now my own on the other hand...hah...

Free Museum Day

2010-03-14T15:58:00.005-06:00

We like to catch the musuems and whatnot in Denver on their Free Days because we're cheap (I mean who has money anyway right?). The first Saturday of every month is Free for the Denver Art Museum. I had Alessandra and Ilyssa in my car (I looked up directions for the wrong city to pick up Ashley--yes I'm lame!). So we got there well before the other group. So I got to finally go to the Denver Public Library that everyone raves about. (It's been closed every other day I've been down there and tried.

We never made it out of the children's book section! I did read some libros en espanol. Well attempt to, it was fun. I could have spent another 4 hours in the children's section alone and been perfectly happy.

There was this giant checkerboard (okay, really just a bit oversized) that they played on. We found out that Alessandra's not so great at Checkers. Hah.Here I'm reading a book about Punctuation taking a day off to Alessandra, I thought it was going to be a cute book, but it was not quite as good as I'd hoped.

I only have a couple pictures from the musem. One is this one. They had a little part where you could dress up in cowboy so of course we had to take pictures (though I'm not so sure we were even supposed to, oh well?).

The little girl in the back just came running in and practically pushed Alessandra off the horse. The girl's dad didn't even try to tell her to wait her turn. It was kinda weird. Though he may have just thought we were too old to want to ride a horse. As you can see, the hats were even small for Sanra's head. Hah.

Those are basically all the pictures I took. I know, pretty disappointing. But it's partly due to my camera being a bit out of commission. Gol, I need to buy a new one. Oh yeah, Best Buy in Greeley has the worst selection ever! Someday...

Michelle, I'm not Josie Grossie anymore either!

2010-03-07T20:38:00.005-07:00

We had a dance last night that was a Spring dance and we were told to wear bright colors. Hey, you tell me that I can dress up--and I'm gonna do it, and I probably won't do it halfway!

So of course I pulled out a bunch of the bright colored clothes I own, and tried to put on as many different colors as I could!

My friend Bryn (who I'm 'dancing' with in this picture) had these ridiculous glasses to complete his ensem, and I was wearing them right then. They make me look even more awful! Wow. But they made me think of Josie Grossie from Never Been Kissed. And I thought of an old blog post of Michelle's. Figured I'd give her a shot out.

This is most of of who dressed up, crazy, huh?
And then another one...we're crazy...hah.
It was pretty fun needless to expound upon... :)

Retreatness

2010-03-07T15:20:00.006-07:00

So we had our Institute Retreat up at the YMCA in Estes Park. Sam and his roommate, Rhett Garrett, came out from Orem to join us. It was a great time! We were a bit crazy, of course.

Austen-unfortunately-not-so-tastic

2010-03-02T18:26:00.004-07:00

Wow, so I've completed 5 of the 6 of these movies. For those of you who don't know, I consider myself a pretty big Austen/period movie fan. A friend of mine gave them to me for CHRISTmas (from her own collection, very appropriate and economical). I'd thought of just buying it to complete my collection...

Boy am I glad I didn't. I do feel bad that my friend ever spent money on them--or really maybe anyone. But yeah, wow. I only have Northanger Abbey left, I've 'saved' it for last partly because it's the only one I've never read the book of, I've only seen one other version of it, and it's the shortest of them all (in length of course).
I don't have high hopes for it, I believe the only thing it'll have going for itself is that it's only an hour and a half.
Every single one of the other ones were pretty painful for me to watch. They were all HORRibly acted! I don't know how many of you have seen them. But I suppose if you want a good laugh and just need something to play in the background (like while you're grading or something), you could waste your time watching them. They were all really awful! I'm totally serious. Horrible crying. The acting was terrible. The cinematography wasn't good either. There was almost no music during the movie. Wow.
I dunno who these people are who wrote reviews about them saying they thought they were great, I even read a review that it was really well acted and casted. I don't understand what that person's standards are, but they're clearly low! Much of it, line delivery and what not, I feel fairly confident that I could have done a better job. Perhaps not, but that may give you an idea of how bad they were.

Okay, just wanted to take a moment to rant real quick. Now I'm almost done. Really once I've watched it I'll have come close to watching all versions of all Austen books (well definitely more mainstream versions). Somehow that's satisfying to me? Yes, weird I know...

Tim Tam Slams!

2010-02-28T16:30:00.004-07:00

So Sam taught me about Tim Tams, an Australian cookie that you "slam." He learned it on his mission in Tahiti. Jill served her mission in the Philippines and learned about them there. Last year when Sam came out here to Greeley they talked about it.
There's a grocery store back home who carries them. So I bought some while I was home and brought them so Jill and I could tim tam slam! Haha, that was quite a while ago. But on Thursday night we finally did. Jill introduced it to Meagan Krammer too, she's the one in green, can't you tell she loved it?! We used 'flavored' hot chocolate. Hah, that means orange or mint hot chocolate in this case.

It was great watching Meagan because you could tell she was a little skeptical before her first slam, but then her face and reaction was amazing. Something along the lines of: "Mmmm...this is soooooo good [muffled]! [Then,] It melts!"

AWEsome! Tim Tam Slam again sometime!

Lembas Bread Anyone?

2010-02-21T21:42:00.002-07:00

Okay, I think this is hilarious, stumbled across this website:
http://lotrscrapbook.bookloaf.net/other/recipes.html

LOL!

(Guess it is along the lines of a recipe for Butterbeer, but this cracks me up way more!)

Tanner Huffines LIVE: 2010

2010-02-21T13:37:00.008-07:00

My friend Alessandra worked at a calendar place over CHRISTmas break and our friend Tanner who is on a mission has a little bit of an obsession with Zac Efron (the star of High School Musical). So she bought this calendar and we put our own pictures over the faces throughout and mailed it to him. It was awesome. It was a ridiculous amount of work because we had to measure each head after we perused all my pictures and found a picture that was roughly the right angle and size it in Word and then print it off. Oh, then cut it out and glue it on. Wow, may never do something quite to that extent ever again. Whew. Way too many hours...but it turned out AWEsome!! Here are my most favorite pages--though it was all great. A mildly more complete set of pictures is in a facebook album.
The main six of us: Bryn, Megan, Ryan, Me, Tanner, Alessandra. These pictures were some of the most fun to pick.

Devin and Sean do love to play basketball. It was fun to put people's faces over Corbin's face because his hair almost always stuck out.This was a favorite too!! I had to flip Cam's face so it was facing the correct way. Lol. Too perfect though and Bryn brushing his teeth--so funny.

I love that in this one we put Tanner and Devin on girl bodies--SO funny!
I can't believe how funny Amy's face turned out here, and Kennedy's was great. We had to leave some Zacky-poo's as himself. I can't believe I already had such a perfect picture to take over Corbin's picture here! (It's from a dance from a couple years ago.)
This was July, and I love these faces. They're hilarious! Look at my face--scary! (Course Vanessa's face that was in that same picture with me was pretty great too.)
The three girls--I just think our expressions are way funny. And now I know what I could look like with dark hair.
Look at the hands here--no words to explain...
Way too perfect that Ryan was the name of the character in the show and we could put Ryan in as the "Most Stylin' Dude." As a cowboy too--Tanner's companions will always think he's a cowboy--lol!
I think this one is hilarious. Ryan's face ended up a little bigger than it was supposed to be, but my face here is awesome with the hands the way they are...oh man, these three are one of my favorite pages.
Kristin and Bryn's faces here are priceless. And we got a 3rd arm in there--all in honor of Alessandra in Loaded Questions. :)
This always makes me laugh how huge Cam's head is in comparison to the picture, but also in comparison to Josh's!
We decided to put our back bumpers from our drive-in movie on the back! Haha. We made little smart cars.

WAY too much fun, hope you all enjoyed it! Probably not as much as we did though for sure.

New York, New York!

2010-02-14T22:30:00.006-07:00

I went out to Massachusetts to visit Maureen after CHRISTmas! Her Birthday is New Year's Eve so we celebrated that and had a GREAT time being together. I loved getting to be with her.

This is pretty much the only picture of the two of us while I was there--we were cracked out. This is at the end of her Birthday.

The main thing we did was go to New York City!! Yee-ah!
Unfortunately we couldn't go to a show because no one was in town to take her shift for her.

This is New Jersey, we didn't get to go there either, but at least New York was a new state for me...

The Manhattan New York Temple! It's all hidden... ;)

When we first walked by we missed it because we thought it was on a different corner, and this was all you could see as you walk by...

Angel Moroni in the middle of Manhattan!
BROADWAY!!!!
It was just so amazing to get to walk down Broadway, it's just sad I didn't get to see Lion King.
Ahh, Dave...
And we walked through some of Central Park, it was great.

This should be familiar to some people...hehe
I loved all the bridges, they were all so cool!

The skating rink at Rockefeller Center.
I decided I had to buy something from a street vendor in Central Park. I decided on a pretzel. It was pretty good!
I loved the bike light! Look at how cute it is...
This is me with my spoils of the day. I bought some postcards as I always do, and if I wasn't going to buy an I heart NY shirt (I decided I have probably too many t-shirts as it is) I had to buy an I heart NY magnet. It's actually pink, and I thought it was cute. And I don't remember how much it was, but it was cheap. I really didn't spend much money.
Well except for our lunch. We ate at a place called the Stardust Diner on Broadway. I didn't take a picture. I'm way sad! I wanted to, but we walked for quite a while trying to decide where to eat, she said I needed to get a deli sandwich. We walked in just to see what it was like, but it was awesome! I loved it. Well my sandwich was actually dry and not very good, but it was the coolest atmosphere! The waitresses sang and it was SO cool. When I go back to NY, I wanna eat there just for it. I'll get a burger next time. :) It was freezing while we were there, there were times I thought my face might fall off, but it was really fun. I enjoyed my day a lot! And of course all my time with Maureen.
It had definitely been too long since we'd been together. Hopefully it'll be closer together next time I see her.

Test, this is only a test

2010-02-14T15:27:00.001-07:00

I'm checking out Microsoft Word 2007 and its ability to type up a blog post and hopefully easily upload it to my blog. We'll see how this goes. My hope is that this will increase the ease with which to post pictures, because pictures are my favorite things about blogging and I hate blogger's photo uploader thingy.

This is a picture from Free various museum type places down in Denver. This is at the Botanic Gardens (Jan 18^th isn't the best day to see foliage, just sayin).

Emma Came!

2010-02-13T17:35:00.003-07:00

Sigh. My copy of the new Emma came! It's so great, and I'm so excited that I had to just announce it here...I'm glad I don't have to watch it in 10 min increments ever again.

I first opened it, popped it right into the dvd player and had to watch the end! So happy...

Anybody have the time?

2010-02-11T00:18:00.004-07:00

So I teach 3 labs right now, O-Chem 1 wednesday afternoon, and 2 O-Chem 2 labs thursday morning.

Not that big of a deal. Well labs are 3 hours long. Today was the first real wet lab of the O-Chem 1-ers. It's a full lab-time deal. It involves a simple and a fractional distillation. Kevin's lab last night went over apparently. So I was feeling the push for time.

They had a 15 minute quiz, started at 2:30, and they ended at 2:45. Fair enough. Then I had to teach them everything I know about distillations and setting them up. So I lectured and walked them through everything they would be doing. I look at the clock when I'm done saying everything I HAVE to say before they start working. It's 3:00. Well, for some reason I had a brain aneurysm (is that really how you spell it? that's what spell checker went for), and I thought, oh gosh, I just talked for 45 minutes! They only have 2 hours to get through all this stuff!

I then proceeded to 'run' around the lab like a panic-stricken crazy person trying to make sure everyone had things set up correctly with no water condenser tubes popping off and spraying water everywhere (I in doing so did cause one groups to spray). Seriously I was all rushed feeling and worried that we wouldn't get out of there ontime.

For almost an HOUR AND a HALF! At 4:20 I'd checked on everyone, had been all along, going around fixing things, making sure they all understood. I was walking back to my stool to sit for a minute, and it dawned on me! Lab had started at 2:30, it was Wednesday, this was not a Thursday 2:00 lab! My students had another hour to finish, not a half hour! I felt so relieved. I immediately started laughing, and proceeded to announce to everyone that they had a full hour and since they all had their fractional set up they'd all be good and didn't have to feel rushed.

They all (really I think all 14 did) looked at me like they weren't sure what I was talking about. They all knew they had another hour. No one else had gotten all mixed up and tried to cut the lab time short. It was hilarious to me. I asked if they had felt rushed because I'd been feeling very panicky and pressed for time. But somehow none of them picked up on that attitude of mine.

It was just me. It was really funny to me, I really did keep laughing. One of the students thought it was funny how much I cracked myself up.

Anyhow, it was great. Thought I'd share. I thought this could be short to type up, hah, I should never think things like that. I still have some grading to finish for tomorrow morning. I'm nuts.

Good night.

My Birthday!

2010-02-07T15:58:00.006-07:00

So it's been WAY too long since I've blogged. I'm a slacker. I decided that on Sundays (as I had planned when I started my blog) I need to update it. Yes, my Sundays are crazy busy for the most part. But so are all my days. But on Sundays I don't have to feel guilty about blogging instead of school work.
So the next thing that really happened since my last blog was my Birthday--which of course this year (November 26th) fell conveniently on Thanksgiving.
I am poor-ish, and so I didn't get to go anywhere away from here, but I did start my celebration on Wednesday of that week!
I went to the Temple and did my favorite (Initiatories)! Alessandra was with me (of course). Really, she stayed in Greeley so that I could be selfish and have her with me for my Birthday, hah, sad that I'm so crazy I know...
We then went to Sweet Tomatoes (a fantastic buffet, of course I had to pre-pare myself for Thanksgiving the next day) because it'd been years for me, it was yummy!
This picture was taken because I had to try all 3 of the pastas, and it was funny how little of each there was, I'm nuts.

Alessandra was worried about using the ice cream soft serve machine itself straight on the wee Sanra-size cone, so she scooped it in herself. I just thought it was really funny, she's just the cutest little girl ever!

This is what happened when I did put the ice cream directly in the cone. Lol, I thought my face was funny here!
Alessandra was then cold.
We then went to Riverdance downtown at the Denver Performing Arts Center! It was one of the most amazing things I've ever been to in my life! I drank in the whole thing and felt like I couldn't get enough. The music was phenomenal, and of course the dancing was ridiculously good! Sigh. Just remembering how good it was I wish I could go again...
We thought this statue outside of the Center was so cool we had to try to pose like them (this is with us placing the camera on a wall and using a timer, we had to run down stairs--about 20 feet away after pressing the button, haha).
Then we went to the IMAX theater in Westminster (N. Denver) to see A Christmas Carol (very appropriate name choice) on our way back up to Greeley.
We even then stopped at the Denison's (a member of our Bishopric's house) in Johnstown on our way home for their pie party. We missed some of the best of the ~20? pies they had. It was still fun.

When we got back we popped in Funny Girl and I worked on a puzzle. Alessandra almost fell asleep on the couch--it was a crazy long day! She did move to Kristin's bed to sleep, but we did stop the movie early so she could sleep.
On my Birthday itself, I started the day giving a friend a ride to work since jumping his car didn't work. Then I slept more, then we finished our movie, and I did more puzzle.

We double booked ourselves so we had TWO Thanksgiving dinners! (Remember, I'm crazy, and selfish about my Birthday.) Hehe. So we started at 2:00 with a dinner at The Coleman's (the Institute director here in Greeley).
The oldest Dalton boy who was there was cutting his roll on his second helping and the butter knife sliced his finger open and blood was squirting all over the table. This is the crime scene, there was blood that squirted over to my side of the table and we had to wash it from the wall and carpet. It wouldn't stop, he ended up at the ER with some stitches, it was crazy!
They could only find this votive candle for me when they sang to me over the pie, it was awesome! I loved it. Two years ago I had a cream puff 'cake' with tea candles. Love it!
After that we went to our Bishop's house with the Sisters and a few other kids. This is one of the only pictures I have, lame right?! I know. They were folding the napkins under Alessandra's direction. This was SUCH a great ending to my Birthday. They sang to me before we ate, and it was really really fun! Alessandra and I played the piano and sang for forever after dinner. It seriously was at least 2 hours. Hah. Perfect. Their son David even sang with us some, made me feel like I was at home with my brothers. Awesome. We ended that night with a conversation about Jane Austen/Elizabeth Gaskell!! Yeah, how ya gonna go wrong with that?!?
Josh and Serena called and talked to me, lotsa ppl wrote on my facebook and/or called/texted me. Great Birthday.

Friday was 'still' my Birthday, we got Bryn to work (4:30 am) and to buy a battery after. He passed out in my back seat. I got an oil change.
We (Alessandra of course, and Corey joined us) went to dinner at TGI Fridays (in true tradition), and I got my vanilla bean cheesecake!
I gave Alessandra the strawberry since she shouldn't have much cheesecake.
We then went to Ryan's where we played Rummikub (yes, a more complete Birthday) and watched Star Trek (I actually hadn't even seen it yet before then, whoops). I got a letter from Tanner! (He'd just gone into the mtc.)
After getting home a bit late I started watching the new Emma online...it's fanTAStic!

Saturday I also decided was an extension of my Birthday, haha. Corey's Birthday was Monday, and she said, oh, well maybe mine can start today, and I said of course, so we decided our Birthday's overlap even though their 4 days apart. Funny I know. So our ward had a Temple trip on Saturday, so I went and I did sealings which turned out perfect. Then we went to the mall and to the Container Store (the BEST and only place to get hangers, thanks to Vanessa). It was good because I hadn't gotten to stop there on Wednesday. Yes I'm crazy.
Saturday night Ashley joined us, and we had some fun leaving notes for our friend Ryan who had an eye infection in one eye and pink eye in the other.

Anyhow, the point of this was to tell about my Birthday, which of course was forever ago, and this is insanely long (though believe it or not I did leave details out), so I must be done! Maybe I'll get another blog in before it's been 3 months or something! Lol. I'm ridiculous. But I do want others to know what I'm up to. I, as any of you reading this probably know, love to just let everyone know what's going on with my life. Hence, the title of my blog site. Hah.

Oops, August, September, October?

2009-10-30T20:56:00.002-06:00

So we've all discovered I'm AWFUL at blogging! Lol. I always want to do some sweet clever elaborate post with pictures and witty captions. Then I get behind, then I can't get caught up. And I'm always busy with something, so it just never gets done. :( But I decided that I can still post something without pictures. Though it makes me sad. The pictures just drive me crazy because I want them to upload a certain way, and I have to post them in backwards order if I don't want to have to move them around. It makes me tired just thinking about it. Sigh.

August started out with me in California with my family. My friend Alessandra came with me and that was awesome, we got to do some fun things. See some wonderful people who I wasn't expecting to get to see, it was great. My newest nephew was blessed. Then I got back and school started. Not teaching what I wanted, and ended up taking a class and started to get ready for my huge "Comp"--a comprehensive chemistry exam I have to take for a masters degree. And started as the Choir director for our Institute Choir here in Greeley--very daunting! Our school is known for teaching, and for music! We have bunches of music majors--singers even--and I am very underqualified. It was terrifying for me (believe it or not) but it's working out well so far! They're amazing!

As school started and life got crazy (since that seems to be always the time that things start to work out?), I decided to finally revamp my scripture study, with the little prodding from my new Stake President. And that's been wonderful! I think it's better than it's ever been. As it should be, right, we should always be improving our scripture study huh? ;) And I go to way too many Institute classes! At least one everyday, literally...crazy I know. Ugh. But there were too many I wanted to go to. One is a Spanish Book of Mormon class, I haven't gone every week, and I don't understand a whole lot, but it's been good. My Spanish reading & translation has been slowly improving (though I'm starting to feel at a wall because I'm not doing enough Spanish to really get very good).

September, still school, preparing for the comp, teaching, helping with a Best of EFY day camp, a barn dance, finishing up our Temple Prep class at church for the last few missionaries who've left or who're leaving shortly. Oh and throughout all of this having started sometime in June or July I think, I may have been getting caught up on all the seasons of 'The Office.' ;) Zuchinni, summer squash, tomatoes (oh reaping the benefits of knowing people with gardens), cooking, studying for my comp. I did get to fly home to California for a weekend for my niece's baptism! That was wonderful, and I got to sing with my family and hold baby Paul some more.

October, my Comp finally came. Ugh, had to be the worst test of my life! It took me 6 hours!! Very literally, I started at 8:00 am friday the 9th, and did not finish till 2:00 and I had not really finished everything because I couldn't figure it out. It was an Analytical Chemistry Comp (for any of you that it might mean something), and it just worked me over like I haven't been worked very often. I was wiped out beyond belief. But I did get to end that day wonderfully in the Temple with a girl who leaves on her mission soon, it was beautifully perfect. I did get my results the next week and I had failed--a 60%, but my professor let me redo it all, with notes and he and I discussed the problems and I got that back this week, I passed with an 89%!! I'm happy with that score! It has been a huge relief.

Now I get to focus on research somehow. :( Someday soon--like next week. I also get to finish getting ready for our Institute Choir fireside! Eek, November 22nd is the day, it's going to be pretty intense finalizing the preparations. My pianist is thankfully AMAZing and pretty close to literally a professional! So she's been a HUGE help for me, who knows close to nothing about directing a choir. But she is also the lead in the Opera here the week before. So she's insanely busy, got the swine flu and will have missed a few of the practices beforehand. A little crazy, but I'm flexible. I'm trying to learn how to use my left hand while conducting--it's so inept and I haven't been successful yet. Hah. So sad.

Well that's sorta a quick rundown of my life right now. Oh, haha, so part of the reason why I'm having a successful choir experience is because I've promised treats every week. And I make them. It's way fun for me, and a stress reliever so I love that. And they really love it. I try to make them somewhat interesting. It's helping me get to flex my domesticity skills. ;) And we're getting more guys in choir than they've ever gotten here and than I've seen in any ward choir, I'm pretty sure that it really does relate to the food.

Conference was WONDERFUL right at the beginning of October (of course)! I loved every talk, and have already gotten caught up on Priesthood, which was awesome. Then I got to start teaching the 'Teaching, No Greater Call' Sunday School class. I just love that book--it's amazing! I have amazing people in the class, I have something like 30 people who are on a list that are supposed to be in it. But some are teaching during my class, and some took it last year from me. So I've had 22, 19, and 20 in there each week so far. It's great, and I love it!

Oh, exciting, I started a puzzle before school started, a 1000 piece puzzle (my favorite), of daisies, and once school started and I wasn't around, and if I was, I always had to grade, or study. Anyhow, it's just been moved all around our living room for months, and I finished it this morning! Yay! There is one piece missing, but I bet it's around our living room somewhere, it was moved around so much. But that made me really happy.

I'm gonna try to not let it be 3 months till I post again, course it won't be 3 months till tomorrow, lol. ;)

Love to all,
Carol Joy

Grapes of Frath Murder Mystery Dinner

2009-07-31T11:57:00.008-06:00

The year was 1920, and here are,

The Suspects:

Fearless Captain Mal, with his medals from war where he received the injury necessitating the use of a cane

Jules, the jewel thief

Bella Maria, the conturasoprano

Nadya, the Russian brothel owner

Lucie

Miles, the race car driver

Desiree Fambeau, businesswoman, proprietor of Flambeau vineyards

Wellington, businessman and expert on fine wines

or could it have been Lily, the flamenco dancer on board?

Some of the facts unravel...

Miles and Desiree may have had something going on, and Miles kept trying to hold her hand, but she was resistant in public.

She had to hold his wrist to stop him.

Jules didn't only like the jewels, but he also liked the ladies!

And liked to share the jewels with the ladies...

Miles likes to drive the cars. Fast.

It was quite the night of crazy mayhem. Lots of French accents, accusations, laughing. Good food. Good times! 'Twas a blast. As for who committed the murder?! Well guess you'll just have to do this one yourself sometime... ;)

Utah! Utah! Utah!

2009-07-29T20:44:00.005-06:00

July has been nuts. First weekend was the 4th, and I got to pick up Alessandra from the airport in Denver as she arrived back in the US after a month studying abroad in China. It was awesome! She was only in Greeley for 4 hours. Hah, Chelsea was able take her back to the airport in the morning, but of course we got pictures in.

This was a picture Alessandra was taking of a drum she bought so she wouldn't have to take it to Utah for her family to see...

Chelsea got to come over for a bit after the Greeley Stampede, so, like I said, she was able to take Alessandra back to the airport on her way home, it was a huge help.

The second weekend of July our friend Ryan was going out to Utah for his mission president's homecoming talk, so I went along for the ride, and to see Alessandra. We were originally going to pick Alessandra up, but her parents didn't want her to leave. And her family had tickets for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House, so Ryan and I worked friday night (till 10:30pm), I went and took a couple hour nap, and we left Greeley at 3:00am Saturday morning! Ryan, has a manual so I couldn't help drive, just help keep him awake, but he was crazy fast, and we made REALLY good time to Alessandra's house. We even had time to take a wee nap. The open house was amazing! The temple is so beautiful. I look forward to going back after it's dedicated.

This is a picture Alessandra took so I could see what I looked like with her sister Luli's glasses. I wanna get new frames, so I was just curious what I looked like. I don't think they're me...

You can't see us very well, but here we are in front of the temple. Ryan, Alessandra, Michella, Ruth, and me.

After the temple, I went down to Provo and got to hang out with Nicolle and Jillaine. Michelle was at home in California.

Sunday I got to go play with my cousins. It was really fun. Here I am with Deborah and Liza! Love those two bunches and bunches!

So the next weekend, Diane was going out to Utah for a wedding reception. So her job was to pick up Alessandra. She wanted me to go with her. Of course I wanted to. I really didn't want to cancel my Sunday School class for another week, so I told her that I'd go if we could make it back in time for church sunday morning. So we decided we'd leave Utah whenever her reception was over saturday night. Crazy, but I figured we'd be able to take turns sleeping in the back seat.

So next the question was when we would leave Colorado. Originally I thought the plan was to leave on friday morning. Then maybe friday night. But that didn't work out for Diane. So we left Saturday morning at 8:00am, and we left Utah at 9:00pm to come back. It was nuts! I hung out in Provo with Michelle, where Alessandra met up with us, and then we met back up with Diane. We got into Greeley at 4:00am sunday morning. I got 3 hours of sleep before church! It was crazy! But we all survived. Whether we've recovered or not is another issue. ;) It was fun though. And how many people can say they've gone to Utah and back from Colorado in one day?! Hah, not many. But Diane and I can. In fact it was so fast there and back that I have no pictures to show from it. How'd I manage to not take pictures? I'm really not sure.

So I got Alessandra, and sunday afternoon we made a big dinner for the Toy Family who was moving away to Mississippi on that next tuesday. We ate with them of course (oh, the food turned out amazing, orange beef with broccoli, and tons of vegies), and then hung out with them till birthday cake for Kristin Nelson followed by games at the Huffines called us away.

Alessandra got quite the workout playing with the 4 adorable kids (especially since it was so hot)!

How cute is baby Ammon?

Thursday of that week we were going over to Ryan's to have some dinner, watch some of The Office, and I had some zuchini bread to make (with yellow squash as an experiment). As I took a corner a little too fast to make the light (the one at 34 and 47th Ave, horrible light), two of the eggs jumped out and cracked. Of course I had to take a picture of Alessandra with the dripping egg. Hah, I was laughing so hard. The bread turned out awesome though!

Alessandra had to be in Colorado primarily for Chelsea & Sean's wedding and reception friday the 24th. It was great, and I'll post a blog entry about it, but when we got home we were beat! It'd been a really long day--over 12 hours down in Denver area, and dancing on hard wood with bare feet (couldn't do it in my 4-inch heels), so we soaked our poor dirty and tired feet in hot soapy water while we watched an episode of Robin Hood with Ashley! It was fun. We felt better after that.

Saturday was another wedding reception, then Sunday was filled with church (of course), choir stuff, visiting teaching, the Nursing home, packing, dinner, fireside, and finally we left Fort Collins at 8:55pm for Alessandra's house in Sandy. Doesn't Alessandra look so happy to be driving? She drove first of course.

I slept in the back seat while she drove for the first 4 hours. I slept for prolly around 2.5 hours. Not bad! Would've totally thought that would've been enough. She was still feelin alright to drive when we filled up on gas at 1:00am. Look at that! We didn't even end up having to buy gas on the Sabbath!

But we decided I'd drive anyway since I'd slept so much.

Well turned out I was WAY tired, normally I'm way good to go late at night and stuff. But turns out that was a big negatory. I was okay driving, but I was way tired. So after trying to get some Taco Bell and failing (apparently Wyoming doesn't believe in 24-hr Taco Bells, a friend mentioned Taco Bell a few too many times during the month of July, and I really wanted some), I lasted only until 3:00am.

We were already in Utah at this point. I knew we were close to Sandy, about 45 minutes away was all. But I had to close my eyes for a bit. So I pulled into a rest stop, Alessandra stirred in the backseat and I told her where we were. I curled up in the drivers seat thinking that I'd sleep for a half hour or maybe an hour. (I don't normally sleep very well in cars.) Yeah, Alessandra and I woke up at 6:00am! We slept for 3 hours! So I drove the 45 minutes to her family in Sandy, where I then slept for another 5 hours! Guess everything else in July just wore me out!

So I drove to Utah for 3 of the weekends in July (hence the blog title, know what movie it's a play on? I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard of it anyhow). And I saw Alessandra every weekend of July! It's been crazy!

Now Alessandra and I are at my house in California. Again, more to come later.

Till then...

Life since Nauvoo

2009-07-02T14:57:00.004-06:00

So I decided I oughta put a little about what I've been doing since then. I decided (prolly dumb, oh well) to do them backwards chronologically. Well I have been super cleaning/organizing (for me at least) my room, and I will do it's own post with pictures when I'm all done, there are still some finishing touches I've been working on. It's been quite the process. I also haven't been taking that many pictures, and some that I have taken are still on my camera. Hah.

Many of you may know that I'd gotten fairly addicted to Alias. Well we finished all 5 seasons just last week! It was very exciting, started April 7th, finished June 26th. Not too bad. On one episode in season 3 or 4 (shoot, I can't remember) Jennifer Garner had her hair in three braided buns on the back of her head and I LOVED it. So I tried it once, and it was a disaster, but then one day I tried it and was fairly successful if I do say so myself. ;) I should have used clear hair ties, it could still take some perfecting, and my hairs a little long for it, but it was fun. Nerdy I know, haha.

Alessandra's in China for study abroad, and we were video chatting on Skype, and she took a picture of me and sent it to me. It's always funny because the video will pause momentarily on the funniest facial expressions. She caught me at quite the moment with this picgture, Jessica was staying at our hours that night, so she was talking to her too.

It was a friend of our's birthday, so we bought some army men and bobble head people, made signs and put them all over his car and front porch. It was awesome! Unfortunately he figured out was us and a member of our band ratted us out. Oh well for anonymity...

Tanner and I went put-put one night, it was fun, I actually beat him (by 4) which is amazing because I'm TERRible at it. We both had way high scores, but it was fun.
Aagh, who's hands are whose?! Wacky...

The night we got back from Nauvoo we went to a baby shower, and my foot ran away with me hypermimiating a little too much, and dumped Cheche's chocolate all over her. I felt so bad, but it was really funny too! I'm ridiculous.

Almost caught up...yay!!

OMAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-07-02T13:12:00.002-06:00

So I feel the need to explain a little, and no pictures of Omaha/Winter Quarters made it in my last post. Oh yeah, that's because strangely enough I didn't take any. Lame, right? Oh well. I guess I figured I had enough pictures from when I lived there. It was awesome going to the Winter Quarters Temple because I was just going home. It was amazing.

Here's home for me:

So I was of course excited to go to Omaha because I hadn't been there since I moved (almost a full 2 years). So before we left on the trip I got excited talking about it. I always hypermimiate (excessive use of the hands while talking) in general, so especially as I was excited about Omaha I guess I threw my hands up in the air because I couldn't contain it very well. So as we were driving in everyone (well Bryn and Bishop Hatch led it, I think Bryn started it) started shouting OMAHA!!!!!! And throwing their arms up in the air. I was excited to see familiar places, and everyone just made fun of me. Bryn and Bishop Hatch were dancing in their seats, then standing up. That was probably the loudest the bus was the whole trip! It was really hysterical really. Embarassing to some degree, but SO funny!

While I was in the temple Alessandra and Megan took this picture in honor of me, that's what any of them do now anytime Omaha may come up, throw their arms in the air as they say it and act really excited. It's crazy. Just a little odd that everyone on the bus was making fun of me. But it was all in good fun.

Nauvoo or Bust

2009-06-18T20:22:00.017-06:00

So we had to be to the Stake Center by 5:30 in the morning Monday 11 May 2009!! It was nutso! We were supposed to leave at 6:00. I don't remember what time we actually left. I think we were fairly close to that time, but we stood/sat around in the cultural hall for a while. We were all lookin ready to try to be comfy during a 10 hour (ended up being closer to 12 if I recall correctly) bus ride--and to try to sleep.

This post is mostly is pictures, I took about 300 pictures throughout the trip, and a few videos that were pretty great. So I rifled through, and chose I think about 40--haha, couldn't resist too many of them--for this post. So I'll just kinda explain/caption each picture and that'll be how you will all experience the Nauvoo trip with us. ;)

So Diane out of all of us was prolly the most used to being up this early, teaching Seminary and all... (don't worry, she definitely got some sleep on the bus, hah)

Sean of course picks up Alessandra on a relatively regular basis...I mean who can resist the absolutely adorable wee one?! ;) Love her!

Do Chelsea and I look excited or what?!

And of course Alessandra can hardly contain her exhilaration at the prospect of being on a bus for 30+ hours with all of us! Oh and Bryn was trying to show off his tongue?!

Alessandra all ready to try to sleep...isn't she just the cutest ever?!

I attempted to sleep (was almost never successful), and Michella actually did fall asleep, even though it doesn't look like it in this picture--haha

Bryn and Tanner were 'so far' back there for that whole first day (well until they wandered everywhere on the bus), oh and Ryan who constantly looked like he was asleep but also almost never was...

Another attempt at falling asleep. Bryn and Tanner yelled for me to put my feet down, of course all I did then was wiggle my toes at them, I was surprisingly comfy!

At this rest stop it advertised a look out, so we hiked up it (aka walked up the stairs) to check it out, it really was thrilling as you can tell from Ryan and Tanner's faces displaying the excitement at the view...

We had to take a picture at the state sign of course...not sure why The Megan decided to stand over there on her own, but it cracks me up everytime I look at it!

Duh, had to take a picture with the buffalo!

Another rest stop, Bryn tried to give me a piggy back ride, but his lack of hips prevented this from occuring, but we got a couple of funny pictures from the attempts.

Ryan was 'charging' Tanner in a field (a Loaded Questions reference), then Sean jumped in and picked Tanner up by his legs, it was really funny. In this picture it looks like Ryan's trying to whack them with his hand, I just thought it was a pretty awkward picture.

Tanner is crazy as everyone knows! He prolly spent a couple hour or two on the floor in the aisle, someone gave his this neck pillow, and this is one of the many ridiculous pictures taken while he was on the floor.

I have no idea who took this picture (yes on my camera), nor am I entirely sure what I was doing here, but I thought it was SO funny! It really almost looks like I have no teeth--Hah!

Yay, now we were in Nauvoo, one of our very favorite stops was the Schoolhouse! It was way fun. Look at us playing school, Ryan made good stern teacher faces, and Tanner was a pretty good dunce on the dunce stool, I think I got in trouble because I wasn't turning and looking at the camera.

A Sanra size rocker! (hah, k, so prolly actually even too small for Sanra)

Kristin and I never stayed in the same hotel room so we never could've planned on matching, though Megan and Alessandra can't say the same. However it happened, of course we had to take a picture of the two sets of twins! Hehe.

There were Sanra-size ponies randomly!! We made her climb the fence so we could take pictures of her with them. It was the cutest thing ever, I almost wanted to cry!

We were so tired (of course), we almost did fall asleep like this in our rather large hotel room suite thingy (where 10 of us girls stayed, fun fun).

She just looked SO cute with her umbrella sitting there eating under it! (It had sprinkled a little on us when we were eating, one night it poured for a fair amount of time.)

While we were walking Bryn picked this nut shell thingy and called it a pig's nose fossil, he was WAY funny about it, he kept playing with it...that boy was really just constantly cracking us all up of course.

Ryan said we needed to take a picture on the "happy bridge" so of course we have a few.

Bryn put his backpack on completely backwards, it was pretty amazing. We gave him a hard enough time he ended up fixing it shortly after this was taken.

There were so many dandelions mostly Tanner and I kept picking them and making wishes. Then we all did it.

After eating lunch at Carthage jail. We wanted to take another when Tanner was around, but he'd gone off talking to someone and we forgot to do it again. So this is the only one we have like this. These pictures of heads all close together were always my favorite growing up.

Sanra piggy back ride

All of us at Carthage Jail. This picture turned out pretty well, can see everyone fairly decently, and hello, Carthage Jail right behind! Good job Elder.

This sign was in the Red Brick Store and I thought it especially combined with Bryn's brilliant face in this picture was so funny!

Had to stop at my 4th-Great Grandfather's home.

We went to see the Joseph Smith movie, nice face Megan! ;)

Nice face Ryan, don't look too excited to see the movie.

We were having a 'staring contest' and it took forEVER because we kept laughing. I think I was actually the best at keeping a straight face, which is nuts. Too bad we don't have a bajillion pictures of our attempts, they would've been funny, oh well.

Tanner really wanted to do stick pulling, but the sticks were put away, so he found this huge branch and it was hilarious as he tried to break it into something smaller, and then as he and Ryan attempted to stick pull with it. The video is practically priceless.

My feet resting on Alessandra in my almost most successful attempt at sleeping, draped across the aisle. The problem mostly arose from having to move my legs for people passing by. So sad, I got MAYbe tops one hour of sleep during the 30+ hours on that bus...

Some of our creepy eyes staring at Tanner and Ryan, hah. (I'm pretty sure Ryan was 'asleep' while Tanner took this picture.)

A road trip would not be complete without a picture of Bryn brushing his teeth!! I'm pretty sure this was taken as we were driving into Greeley.

Ryan's bag was so big we had a joke that Alessandra would fit inside. So when we got back, Saturday 16 May, of course we'd gone over to Ryan's to watch some Alias, so Ryan emptied it out so we could try. Clearly Alessandra fit, so this is her breaking out of it. So great!

So this is just a sampling (a big one albeit) of the pictures from the trip, and still only a sampling of the stories. We had tons of fun, definitely didn't get enough sleep, as I'd known, and had some great experiences. I got to do an endowment session in Nauvoo and Winter Quarters! Amazing. It's perhaps mildly unexpected that we could have a spiritual experience on such little sleep and a whirlwind or a trip. But it's great how the Spirit works on you when you may not expect it. It was a great opportunity none of us will ever have again and I think I can look back and honestly say that I loved every minute of it! Okay, maybe not running down main st in Nauvoo to try to catch the bus, but that's just because I'm weak and I can't run. Hah. But even that is way funny to look back on. Yep, it was all fantastic, LOVED it!!

At Conference Time...

2009-06-13T12:52:00.010-06:00

It was supposed to snow a ton in Wyoming and Utah on friday (Conference is Saturday and Sunday of course), and we wanted to miss as much of the snow as we could, so we decided to leave at midnight friday. Hah, that was nuts! I got a one hour nap before we left (and was the only one who'd gotten any sleep), so I drove first. These are our 'solo' shots of when we first were leaving. Diane's point to the clock which reads 1:08 when we left Johnstown with her. Oh, and this is Bryn's aMAZing van that we took! Oh, so these are Alessandra and Megan, Ryan, Bryn, Diane, and me.

Bryn looked a little tired before we left, and Ryan is really excited about his first all-nighter! (Can you believe it was his first?!)

Little did we all really know how this would be the longest/shortest 72 hours of our lives! Hah. ;) It was ridiculous, and I loved too many of the pictures to only post a couple...enjoy!

We were all pretty beat and tried to get some sleep by the end of that first night.

Diane, Alessandra, and maybe Megan are the only ones who really got any sleep that ride though.

I attempted to sleep in the back seat during Priesthood Saturday--didn't ever make it asleep...ugh

Even Bryn tried to crash after getting his pants Peruvian food-infested. Hah!

We met up with Austin, which you can see was quite a bit outta control! Hah!

a nice tea party in the middle of Smith's...

And Alessandra's twin Michella hung out with us Saturday night! (Oh yeah, I went to the Powell's for dinner because their mom made some Peruvian food for us!)

Our base camp, you could say, was Bryn's grandparents, the Petersons in Salt Lake, here we are with his sister Sarai, and hosts after eating Thai food Bryn's dad made for us! Gosh, it was great!

Always had to check the oil! At least Bryn didn't use his sock this time--prolly just because we stopped him. Hah. I joke...mostly...

On the ride home I finally finished Chelsea's hat! Here Alessandra's modelling it, just to clarify, the plan isn't really to wrap the ties around the head like that, cute though it is.

I worked on Kristin's scarf as well, which I finished on the way to Nauvoo, hah.

Ryan finally got to drive! He drove all the way to Cheyenne (Cheyenne, WY that is) that night, like a champ!

So many ridiculous things happened and were said during these 72 hours (as you may imagine, being in small quarters with virtually the same 6 people, and all quite sleep deprived).

Just a taste: "I just needed something to hug."

"I don't like your pillow, it remembers my fist."

"I keep getting excuses but not answers." "That's life."

"Professional minivan drivers association"

"with my own very eyes"

"CHEYENNE!!!!" (anywhere, UT, CO, WY, whatevs)

"still the same buttocks"

Oh, good times...

Where to start?!

2009-06-13T11:18:00.006-06:00

Wow, it's been WAY too long since I've posted anything! And I've definitely done quite a bit of stuff since then (well I'd hope so, right?). Now I have to decide what/how I wanna post. I think I'll make this one a fatty huge post, the pictures'll be small to take up less room (although that's lame, oh well).

A few days after my last post we made a completely ridiculous 'work out' video in response to the boy's video. Now it's been months and they never did anything back--guess we win! ;) Hah.

Sam got home from his mission and came out to visit for 2 weeks--that was a blast! He was here for our retreat up in Estes Park, it was ridiculously fun!

Chelsea and I were a little outta control at 2?ish in the mornin...

Don't we look like sisters in this picture? Love it...

Sam left the beginning of March and I continued to have fun. Birthdays, the temple, sleeping, puzzles, spring break. I have virtually no pictures from spring break--which is very different from last year. Oh well. I guess nothing too exciting.

We did get a bunch of snow! We went and played in it one night, it was WAY fun!

This is the best snowman we could muster unforotunately. We couldn't even have a decent snowball fight because the snow was way too powdery and wouldn't stay together at all.

But it was the best goin down this wee hill face first!! Can't you tell?!

So March ended and it was General Conference time. A few (5) friends and I got tickets, hopped in a van and went out. I can't stand all the reformatting everytime you add pictures, it's driving me nuts so I think I have to do a new post for Conference...gah! So much for consolidating. ;)

Come what may and love it!

2009-02-09T22:32:00.004-07:00

So this happened last sunday, but I think that it's too funny, and I think one of the main reasons I have this picture was to post it.

The toilet had been pretty finicky, but it decided to really go outta control. It was what I got for being up absurdly (well not too much) late. So I was standing in half an inch to an inch of water. But the picture's just sad because you really can't tell anything about the water, even if you zoom in. Except that the towels are obviously soaked. It was nuts.

I had to yell from the bathroom to wake up my roommate. She was really out of it, it's frankly amazing I was able to get this picture because she was barely functioning. She thought I should leave it for the morning. But don't worry, I cleaned it all up. We don't own a mop because our kitchen and bathroom floors are just so small and we have zero storage space. So I had to mop up all the water with the towels. Then I bleach watered the floor, then rinsed it with water, then dried it. It was intense!

But honestly I couldn't stop laughing, because it was so preposterous. And getting angry was only going to make me, well, angry. So I decided that it really was hysterical, let's be realistic. So I decided to have the attitude at Elder Wirthlin's suggestion, "Come what may and love it."

What a crazy week!

2009-02-07T01:28:00.004-07:00

So I need to just go to sleep. I am tired, but not entirely sleepy at the moment, so I decided to blog for a minute. Sam got home from his mission this afternoon, so I got to talk to him for like 40 minutes, and I get to see him in a week and a half! So that was really exciting. And my friends and I are all caught up on that tv show Heroes! Wow, it's gonna be intense waiting a whole week in between episodes. But I know I can handle it.
Yep, that's about it, good night!

Oh yeah, and so weird! Last night, to watch Heroes, I missed the ward activity, which was dodge ball, so I didn't really wanna go that bad anyway. But that was kinda weird when I thought about it later, I'm not sure I've missed a ward/institute activity since I've been here. But oh well I guess. They said it was fun and that they had enough people, so that's good.

Am I 19 again?!

2009-02-01T23:24:00.007-07:00

So we were gonna play games at our apartment tonight. But we didn't really get the word out very well. So we didn't get very many people over, which was fine. No big whoop right? Anyhow, we were dumb and there were five of us girls, and we wanted to do something really fun, and some freakishly ridiculous plan surfaced, and somehow we followed through with it.

5 boys in our ward did a Karaoke of Backstreet Boys song 'As Long As You Love Me' and we decided that we'd take a video of us imitating them. Don't ask me how that came up, it's preposterous! So we proceeded to go through it once, and then here's the final product. I also am posting my recording of them doing it at the Karaoke night. We actually used a different copy of their song because we used one that another person posted on facebook. But it's pretty close.

So anyhow, I feel like I'm 19 again with us doing that, it was crazy. We even sorta tried to dress like them, in case you couldn't pick up on that...just ask Michelle. This is totally the sort of thing that we would (or did) do when we were 19!

Especially how the boys ended up finding out about the video. We had made some brownies, so we called them, (4 of the 5 boys were at the same place playing games) and brought them over the brownies in costume. Of course we acted like nothing was weird, the one who is dating one of us girls was just freaked out or worried that he shouldn't eat the brownies. They thought we might've done something to them. But when we left, Alessandra, the red head in the video, said, "So maybe you guys should look at your facebook." And we booked it out of there! It was really funny.

There's supposedly a video of retaliation they're going to post, but they haven't yet. It's takes forever to upload these videos! Of course they're like 3 minutes each...haha.

Good night!

Karaoke craziness

2009-01-31T15:52:00.008-07:00

So last night we had an activity at the Institute that had been entitled Institute Idol. Really it was just a Karaoke night. They didn't feel like they could do a competition because too many people would get their feelings hurt and then some people wouldn't have sung, myself prolly included. I can really love myself some karaoke, but I have to A. be in the right mood, and B. have sorta the right crowd to do it. Yes, some of you may be surprised with that piece of information, but really, it's true.

I wasn't sure if I'd go up there last night, I never even looked through the songs, but some girls were going up, and told me to go with them, I asked what song and they said a Britney Spears song, so I went. Don't worry, I'm quite positive I'd never heard it before! And if I had, I definitely didn't even recognize it! So that was sad because I couldn't even follow along with the tune. So I just danced, and then echoed some words. I'm pretty sure I have the whole thing on video.

I went up a couple more times dancing and stuff, not sure how much I wanna see those videos because then I'll actually see what I look like when I dance. I only really have videos of me dancing when it's been choreographed (and almost only by Michelle because she's amazing). So it could hit a little too close to reality. But one thing I know, I'm pretty sure it won't really stop me from dancing, although I'm sure it should. Haha.

It was fun, just weird that I left that activity, of all activities, before it was even officially over, to watch Heroes. As the friend who owns Heroes stated, "A little part of Carol died tonight."

We'll see if I'm up to posting the videos when they make it to my computer...it depends on how much I get a response for the request of (oh, right, from the 3 people who might read this blog), or mostly by what I think of it when I actually see it!

Cheers!

Here's one video of me...I didn't know the song at all! I can't believe I really look like this while I dance...prolly not good for me to see this...haha

Heroes

2009-01-31T15:32:00.004-07:00

So I'm ridiculous, and I let a friend of mine get me mildly addicted to the TV Show Heroes. He owns the first two seasons, and throughout the month of January, we've watched the entire 1st and 2nd seasons! Last night we also watched the first episode of the 3rd season. The 1st has 23 episodes, the 2nd only 11, so that's only 35 episodes! Haha, it's crazy. We've just been watching after fhe monday's, after Institute class wednesday's and after our friday night activity. There are three of us who have never seen it before, so we have to work around all of our schedules. The one who owns them though's been very willing to watch whenever possible, it's pretty funny because he's definitely seen them all before of course.

The new episode comes out live on tv monday night, and we only have just about 9 hours left to get caught up, but unfortunately we won't be making it in time to watch it live. I would have been able to do it today, Saturday because I really don't have that much to do today, but the other two have too much homework. Sad day for me. Oh well, we'll most certainly be caught up in time for next monday's new episode! It'll be great.

It's been making me dream a ton about it, I keep dreaming about some of the characters, and it's nuts! If you watch the show at all, I think I primarily dream about Sylar (unfortunately), Claire, Nikki, and maybe Peter? Anyway, I look forward to being all caught up so that I don't have to watch so much of it at once (although I've always been a marathoner), and I can know what everyone else knows and we can discuss the whole show without discretion. The ones who watch it with us who have seen all of it before are pretty much sworn to silence becasue I'd kill them if they ruined anything for me, I'm way too much of a purist. Haha.

Anyway, unfortunately that's been a large part of my life (or fortunately). No, it's been fun, but it's gonna be nice to not have to leave from activities and stuff as soon as they're over. That kinda kills me. But I am enjoying it a ton! My superpower would have to be to be able to be in more than one place at once--of course being able to experience all of them at once. So definitely not possible, but it could solve so many of my dilemmas in life!

CHRISTmas 2008

2008-12-30T01:57:00.001-07:00

Sunny California wasn't quite so sunny this December. It was--for California--quite cold. The biggest thing was that I round out yet again that the house I was raised in has poor insulation, and my little brother didn't wanna ever have the heat on downstairs. Ugh. Eventually I survived fine. And seriously, he can deal with it because honestly the heat's never on otherwise.

I got to spend lots and lots of time with my adorable neice and nephew, Serena (7) and Josh (5)! I crocheted a ton, because I was making hats, a purse, finger puppets, and a scarf for my family members and didn't have them finished before I came home. Consequently I also watched a significant amount of movies. Quite a few that I'd never seen, so that was pretty fun. Most of you ought to know that I love watching movies so it has been great. I also played more Rummikub over the past 10 days than perhaps any other human. With anyone that would play with me, I did lose some, but I think I won more than I lost--yay!

K, so I wrote this way long ago, but I don't feel like finishing it or connecting

The Beginning of My 28th Year

2008-12-03T22:43:00.005-07:00

I figure that this is as good of a time as any to finally start my own blog. I was feeling like it was totally lame to have a blog when I'm single and all, but my girls Michelle and Christy inspired me that maybe I can have a cool one too.

So here goes. It's a little late now, but it was my 28th Birthday last wednesday! I love birthdays. This was a pretty good one too.

Thanks to my students, it started on Tuesday when they threw me a liquid nitrogen ice cream party. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's when you mix all the ice cream fixins, ya know fatty things like half and half, heavy whipping cream, and sugar--then you stir it while you pour liquid nitrogen (which is at -196 degrees Celsius in case you're wondering, and it's COLD) to freeze it into ice cream. It's pretty fun in case you've never done it.

Then we went to eat at the dining hall since so many of my friends have a lot of meals left. I actually cleaned up my room and apartment (of course it's not perfect, but it's zillions times better than before)! We had a birthday party for a bunch of us who were born in November that night. It was pretty fun. We some games and talked; most importantly I got to play Rummikub later too!

Phillip did the ‘fat guy in a little coat routine’ with Elaine’s coat. Not gonna lie, it really seemed like it would’ve ripped. Then we went to eat at the dining hall since a few of my friends have a lot of meals left. It was great fun, but then again things are pretty much always guaranteed to be fun when Phillip’s around.

I went home and actually cleaned up my room and apartment (of course it's not perfect, but it's zillions times better than before)! We had a birthday party for a bunch of us who were born in November that night. It was pretty fun. We some games and talked; most importantly I got to play Rummikub later too!

Wednesday morning I woke up to my apartment being sort of covered in signs that my friends made me! They’re stinkin awesome! I have some of the coolest friends!
Then I went to the temple, it was awesome of course! Afterwards Cam, Erica, and Kristin met me for lunch at TGI Fridays (it’s become a bit of a tradition). At Barnes and Nobles I found a puzzle and book on butterflies that I didn’t already have. I found another puzzle at the mall. And I got to go to The Container Store! I love that place, it’s amazing! Erica thought I was crazy because I only bought 4 hangers. Haha. When we got back to my apartment, Erica and I ate Papa Murphy's pizza and watched a Jane Austen movie, Persuasion. One of the best!

So there were gonna be a bunch of these pictures that I was gonna put all in the middle of this post. But now this post is WAY obsolete, and it's a nightmare putting them where you want them. I think pretty much all the pictures are on facebook. And I assume that most anyone reading this is on facebook, so go look at those. I've gotta work on a CHRISTmas one now that that's over. But since this post was already typed up, I figured I'd at least post it.

Just ran out of steam, but hopefully if someone reads it they'll enjoy it. ;)