Nauvoo or Bust

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...

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?!

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!

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!

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?!

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

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

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!