Chelsie's Blog

Sibling Love.

2009-12-02T09:02:00.003-07:00

Anyone notice any similarities?

"I couldn't help but notice that you caught the bouquet. My name is Nick"

2009-11-23T09:16:00.003-07:00

Saturday was Jean and Sean's wedding! The day was SO busy. It all started at 445 when I got all ready and headed to their new apartment where Amber did Jean's hair and I did breakfast and her makeup. Jean's ceremony was at 10 so she had to be in Draper by 9- and leave her apartment by 820. I was trying to take as many pictures of the day as I could but as I got busier it started to slip my mind. Here are some pictures from the getting ready part of the morning.What a BEAUTIFUL bride! :)

After Jean was ready Ambs got herself ready. I was all done so I just hung out and took pics:)

After Jean was all ready I stopped by the store and IKEA with Sam and headed up to the temple. It was a cold day and is SO windy by Draper. We were all freezing- I wasn't able to get any pictures there. At 130 was a sweet luncheon at the location of the reception. Jean's dad gave a nice speech and Sean sang a beautiful song to Jean. I think it was called "God Bless our Love". I cried.

That night at the reception we took a few pictures, decorated the car that Jean and Sean drove away in and consumed a disgusting amount of various cakes and desserts. They decided not to do a garter toss because Jean's dress was fitted almost all the way down but kept the tradition of the bouquet toss. Resulting in the following picture and title of this post.Yes, a boy did come up to me and say exactly what is in my title. I'm pretty sure that my "wow, that's awkward" look on my face scared him away though.

one more with the bride-Jean was so beautiful. I really wish I had gotten a picture with her dress and everything.

I really hate getting flowers right before I leave. I had to leave two bouquets in Alabama the day after I got them to travel back to Utah during the summer. I came home on Sunday and really wanted to bring these on the plane with me. I brought them up to the airport in the car and then decided that it wasn't a good idea. Regretfully I had to leave them:( But i took a dark (it was 7am) picture with them at the last moment in the car...You can hardly see them, but it was the best I could do.

The wedding was beautiful- even if depressing to see one of my last single friends go- and I wish Jean and Sean all the happiness in the world. They both deserve it.

Here Comes the Bride....

2009-11-20T23:10:00.003-07:00

Tomorrow is a very very special day. Six years ago tomorrow I was my sister's maid of honor. Tomorrow I have the privilege of being a bridesmaid for one of my best friends:) Looking back, at the tender age of 16 I was a less than satisfactory maid of honor (lets just say its a good thing that I'm the younger sister. When Rachel is my maid of honor she will not have the excuse that she had no idea that a maid of honor had duties of any kind). To make up for my below par bridesmaid past I intend to be prepared it every way for whatever may make Jean's wedding day the best it can be tomorrow. First of all I will be waking up around 445 (in 5 1/2 hours) so that I can be all ready and get to Jean's new apartment by 6am- yes, in the morning. Then as Amber is doing Jean's hair, I thought it would be nice if I made everyone breakfast (I am constantly hearing stories about starving brides). Jean needs to be at the Draper temple by 930- its about 45 minutes away (wow we're spoiled! There are two temples even closer to us than that one!) Since I can't go to the actual wedding I was thinking I'd stop at the grocery store on the way and get some sort of easy to eat snack. Hopefully I can do a really good job tomorrow and everything will go really well! I'm so excited for Jean and happy that she found such a super guy to marry!
Last weekend Amber and I threw Jean's bachelorette party. As you may or may not know I LOVE making unique cakes. Its one of the funnest things I can think of. Here is a picture of the cake I made for the bachelorette party. It was a huge hit. The girls saw it one at a time and the facial expressions were priceless. When Jean saw it she actually screamed....and although it came with some threats we were able to get a funny little picture (which I don't have) of Jean posing with this thing on her- like those bikini t-shirts. priceless.

Field Trip!

2009-11-20T09:41:00.005-07:00

Often when I am watching the kids I like to take them fun places just so that Parker can learn and get out and see new things. Normally I take them somewhere right after Parker's preschool. We've been to Barnes and Nobles many times to read books, on picnics, to Grady's family garden where we picked peaches and looked at all the different growing veggies, and to Weinerschitsel (a fast food restaurant which Parker has always wanted to go to because their sign is a huge W-Parker's favorite letter). Sam's family has two female blue chihuahuas- one of which was pregnant and had its puppies. Parker LOVED Beverly Hills Chihuahua and would often watch a special feature that would talk all about Chihuahuas. So when Sam's family's puppies were a couple days old I decided to take Parker over to see them. The mama dog got a little feisty with Parker but after we had her under control we had a really good time. Parker also had fun playing with Sam's 7 year old brother, Daniel. Here's a picture of Parker with a puppy and then me with a puppy. Their eyes aren't even open yet!

I saw it!

2009-11-20T09:11:00.003-07:00

The other night, a little after midnight, I was at home in the kitchen talking to Kristi and Daryn when everything lit up outside. It was the weirdest thing ever! It was literally like day time out there! We got a flashlight and started looking around outside. We were all pretty creaped out and thought we were the only ones who saw it until we saw this on tv the next day.

Here's another pretty good video showing how bright it got outside.

Check This Out!

2009-11-07T09:59:00.001-07:00

I don't know if y'all have heard about this but out here a ton of BYU people want this chick kicked out of college soccer for good. What do you think?

FOOD! + Halloween

2009-11-03T11:49:00.006-07:00

Recently Ashton has been really interested in food. Whenever I would eat in front of him he would lean over and look really wantingly at the food I had. Sometimes I would even notice that he would make a chewing motion with his mouth as I ate. I never knew whether I should laugh because its so cute or feel bad because I was rubbing it in that I got real food. :) Either way, this was the face I got during meal times:)
This is a picture of Parker eating his dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets during the same meal. He was a little jealous that Ashton got his picture taken so I took one of him too. If you look at Ashton on the side you can notice that he's leaning way over at me still staring at my food.
When Ashton's mom is home she's started feeding him rice cereal. I haven't given him anything other than milk yet, mostly because I'm not sure if Kristi is regulating when he eats solid foods or not. Sometimes I watch her feed him though. Its really interesting because babies don't really know how to eat. Its strange to think about learning to eat. I'm such a natural now... :) Anyways. Its funny because he tries to chew the entire time the spoon is going in- which of course makes it harder for any food to actually make it in his mouth. Then he tries to grab the food and shove it in with his fingers but he doesn't always find his mouth. It's pretty funny. The result is this picture...
HALLOWEEN!
I really hadn't planned on doing anything for Halloween. I knew I'd be working that night so I just assumed I'd only do that and then go home. Hmmmm. let me give you a little background story first. As you may or may not know I started working as a driver at Papa Johns about a month ago. On my first day the boss had a boy named Sam train me. I thought he was cute but was way too scared to talk to him too much cause normally when I do something stupid comes out and then I just feel like an idiot around a cute boy for the rest the time we work together. Needless to say, I was not at all friendly during training or the first few days at work. After I started getting a little more comfortable around him we'd maybe smile at each other or I'd make a face at him or something. Either way, he was fun to work around and a welcome break to the older man without teeth that works there who is constantly over my shoulder and telling me what to do. After a while I started checking to see if Sam was there as soon as I got to work- he normally was:) The last couple days he worked with me I would try to get on any job he was doing during while we were both in the store. Well, last Saturday was Sam's last day to work with me before he moved to a different store. It also happened to be the fateful day of the BYU-TCU game. I'm one of the only LDS people in my store. Everyone knows I'm such a huge BYU football fan so I was getting a lot of harrassment for how the game was going. That night while I was on a run I got a text from a number I didn't know harassing me about the game. Turns out it was Sam and he had gotten my number off of the schedule. I was pretty shocked because I really hadn't thought he'd noticed me at all- let alone that he'd take the time to find my number and text me. So that night we texted throughout work. The next day, Sunday, was our first date. We went geocaching and had hot chocolate. Anyways, we've been dating since then. For Halloween we decided to be Zombie pizza deliverers. We didn't take a picture of me but here's Sam. I did his makeup:)

We worked that night but got off early enough to do a little trick or treating, go by one of my old bishopric member's homes, and go to a party at his friend's house.

That Sunday we went to church and went to his family's house. Sam was a goth in high school so i thought it would be funny to have him try on his old clothes for me. The other funny thing is that these two pictures are the ones I've sent my mom of him. No, mom, he does not normally look like this:) He's actually pretty normal:)

What Happens in Vegas....

2009-10-12T09:13:00.003-07:00

On Friday I drove down to Vegas to see mom and dad. It was a really short trip. I was probably only awake in Vegas for like 7 hours, but it was a good 7 hours. We ate at the Rainforest Cafe in the MGM and then saw KA- a Cirque du Soleil. It was AMAZING!
That night we went to bed pretty early because I had to take mom and dad to the airport a little before 445. After taking them to the airport I started the six hour drive back home. If you've ever wondered what Vegas looks like at 445 here's a sneak peak. Sorry the pictures are so bad. I take all of them with my cell phone because I lost my camera's battery charger in yellowstone in April. Anyways, the roads were so clear. A lot of the time I was in Vegas I couldn't see a single car going either way. All in all the trip was good:) Lots of traveling but really fun.

A Couple Things

2009-10-06T11:38:00.004-07:00

One thing that I've thought was funny about Utah ever since I moved here is how the rain actually makes things dirtier. I know in Alabama people hate to wash their car right before rain because it takes the shine away but that hardly compares to what the rain can do here. We've had a couple rainy nights recently and as I walked out to my car I glanced and saw all the dirt that the rain left on my car. Look at this! It was literally a pile of dirt. Because of the mountains we have really bad air pollution in the valley. When I was student teaching there were days that the kids weren't allowed to leave the building during recess because the air quality was so bad. We depend on the rain to clean it out a bit. It just made me giggle:)

Second random thing. A month or two ago Jean recommended for me to read The Hunger Games. She told me I'd love it. I finally went to the library a week or two ago to check it out and there were about 130 holds on the book. Despite being pretty poor at the moment I bit the bullet and bought it at Barnes and Noble. Jean WAS NOT kidding! This book is amazing! I would recommend it to anyone. Its on a young adult reading level and is so intense. The last two nights I got in to bed around midnight and couldn't put it down until around 1:30. I still have around 100 pages left but as soon as I finish typing this blog I will be back in my book:)

Last of all, I start my new job today! As you saw before I'm already a nanny 3 days a week but I picked up a job delivering pizzas for Papa Johns:) Really putting that degree to use! I'm going to be borrowing Grady's GPS for a while so I can find the homes. I'm also a little nervous because I hear delivering pizzas can be a little dangerous. Cross your fingers for me! Anyways, I'm excited to have something else to keep me busy. Life is good.

My new life

2009-10-05T11:11:00.010-07:00

Since graduating, and especially since starting nannying I've found a lot of extra time on my hands. So, I thought I'd start this baby back up! First let me introduce you to my boys. Here's a picture of both of them. The older one is Parker, he's four. The baby, Ashton, is about 4 months. They are so much fun and keep me on my feet during the three days a week that I watch them. Parker is SO smart! Right now I'm teaching him how to read. He has about 70 or so words that I've taught him how to read but his curiosity is constantly making him want to read more. Whenever we're in the same room he asks me how to spell different words. He also can read many words by just sounding them out. Yesterday he asked me how to spell tornado and I sounded it out for him to spell and he got it right! I'm excited to start reading actual books with him. Parker loves cars, tornados, and making things. He also LOVES the School House Rock DVDs that I have. One day a couple weeks ago we were watching a cool cake show on TV and Parker asked me if we could make a cake. I suggested making Lightning McQueen because he loves cars and this is how it turned out. We had a lot of fun with it! Parker is also such a funny kid. If its his parents' day he is always hanging out with me, but if its my day he hates seeing his parents leave. To be honest I think he wishes we could all be here all the time. Parker also loves to hang out with me and my friends. One thing Parker can't handle is when I go in to the bathroom. I'm not used to locking the bathroom door because I never did back home. Since moving in, I've learned better. When I first moved in Parker would stand outside of my bathroom and scream my name and bang on the door when I was in the shower until I would come out. He doesn't do that as often but yesterday it happened again. I decided that if I could just ignore him long enough he'd probably go away until I came out. After a while he stopped yelling my name but when I got out of the shower I looked down and saw this! I couldn't help but laugh and take a picture! SO CUTE! My bedroom doesn't have a lock on it so Parker comes in and out whenever he wants. I can handle it, I just have to stand up against my door when I change my clothes if I know that they're home. Another thing that Parker likes to do is wake me up in the morning to eat breakfast with him. Its not so bad because that way I don't oversleep in the mornings. Its fun to be loved:) One more cute little story about Parker. He goes to preschool at noon every day. So while I get Ashton all ready to go out and make lunch for Parker and me I have Parker change his own clothes for preschool. The other day he was changing and came out looking like this. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he couldn't wear his mask to preschool but luckily he didn't even try. Funny little boy! Now, on to Ashton. Ashton is probably the best baby I've ever met. He hardly ever cries. He's happy as ever in his little bumbo- that chair that helps babies sit up. I can tell that when Ashton grows up he's going to be very smart because whenever I look at him he has this look on his face like he knows what is going on. Its pretty funny! He's also a very smiley little man. Here's a picture of him sleeping. The boys really love each other. Parker always wants Ashton to be awake so that they can play. He also loves to make Ashton smile at him.

This last picture is a little update for people back home. A few weeks after being here and having my hair pulled out every day by Ashton I decided to chop my hair off (I thought something new would be fun too). Here's the new do. :) I like it. Its so easy to do. It looks pretty cute curly too. I'll have to make some more updates soon. Maybe a couple things about Europe or something. We'll have to see. I hope y'all enjoyed!

Cheers!

2008-01-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that I could raise my glass to at this moment. First of all, I got to go home and see ALL of my family (except for one uncle) over the christmas break. I got to hang with the crowd and see some more of my cute niece!

Also, on New Years I got to go down to Tuscasloosa with some of my U of A friends and partied it up. It was really exciting because it was a black and white party so I got to get a cute new dress. I also learned several drinking games... they're actually not that bad. Of course, I played with water so after a few rounds I definantly had the advantage.

Secondly, happy birthday to me! Yay! I'm 21! For my birthday some friends and I went out to sho-gun and i had a nice little virgin daqueri. After shogun we all went to my house and played the wii and had more virgin daqueris. It was really fun to see everyone again. It was like the high school days (except that all of our boyfriends were there). The next night-on my actual birthday- a few friends and i went bowling and dancing. After my friends were gone I went over to taylor(my third happy thing)'s house. When we got to the doorstep there was a cute basket there. well, happy birthday to me! The basket was so cute. It had a martinelli's two wine classes (cause it was my 21st) and chocolate, a candle, and some sweet jewelry- a RL pearl necklace and bracelet. Anways, it was all very cute. So-cheers to that! Fourth, grades! the end of last semester was horrible with grades. It seemed like if something could be lost by a teacher it would be. If the computers could mess up, they would. If something could be assigned, it would be assigned. Anyways, with the loss of several assignments my grades were looking horrible! I was even going to have to retake two classes! Well, luckly i have been able to talk to some of my teachers and work things out so that I no longer have to retake ANY classes! YAY! Anyways. As you can see from this post, things are going really well!

It is time!

2007-12-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

I have been alerted by several of my friends that it is time to post! They are right. It has been just over 3 weeks since my last post. However, these last weeks have been very hectic and not very interesting to most people. I had "hell week", or so I will call it, right before finals. Then was finals week. I feel like I've been so busy yet haven't done anything! I blame that on school! It seems like every time I was catching up 3 or 4 things would go wrong that would put me behind again.
I got home on thursday! It was wonderful! Time to relax! However the bad luck with school didn't stop there! Friday morning I got an email from my teaching p.e. teacher. I had to take that final online but for some reason it didn't show up that I took it! Such bad luck! Hopefully he believed me, otherwise I'll have to retake that class. :(
Tomorrow is the big day when all the family comes in. My sister, brother-in-law, and niece will come in along with my granparents and cousins. Tally of people staying at my house:15
I have also spent a ton of time working on a big christmas present for my family. I'm making a book of my extended family. It'll probably be about 40 to 50 pages when it is done. Hopefully I will be printing tonight!

Anyways, there's just a little update of what is going on with me! I'll post soon!

Nutcracker 5k

2007-12-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

This morning Jean and I ran the nutcracker 5k. Thats the race I mentioned earlier where everyone wears tu-tus. When I woke up this morning, I looked outside and this is what I saw! YIKES!

Jean and I figured that it would be fun to run in the snow, plus I really wanted to run a race in a tu-tu! :) So we went for it. A couple of things bugged me about this race. First of all, they don't have any mile markers at all. I never knew how far I had gone and how much farther I had to go! The only other rough part was the snow! It was coming down the entire time and we were running in slush! The course was also kinda hilly so it felt like I was going REALLY slow. However, Jean decided that she wanted to run with me even though she is WAY faster. So, with Jean cheering me on I was still able to finish at a little quicker than an 11 minute pace. I was pretty happy with that considering the conditions. :)

After the race Jean and I had to hurry because we were throwing a bridal shower for our friend Amber in less than 2 hours. By the time we got the balloons and everything we had less than an hour to get ready and set up! I'd say the shower was a success. Next up, bachellorette party! Jean and I have quite a few exciting things up our sleeves! :)

The rest of the day was full of sports, BYU football beat San Diego State. And now, I'm watching BYU basketball against Portland! We're winning! What a day......

Thanksgiving

2007-11-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving break is over... I'm actually kinda glad in a way. This break wasn't the best. Hopefully this post doesn't sound whiney....

I spent most of tuesday and wednesday sitting on the couch. It was good to relax but Andres was at work all day and I don't have any other to hang out with so i got kinda bored. Thursday started out with me and Andres hiking the Y. This normally would have been really fun but Andres and I were bikering so the fun was lost. Then around 3 we left for his sister's for dinner. Recently my acne pills have been giving me really really bad stomach aches. Unfortunatly I was having one of these stomach aches all afternoon. The ride up to his sister's house was really really painful. I just kinda sat there and tried not to puke. When we got to his sister's I was too sick to eat. After about an hour there I started to feel a little bit better and was able to eat a little bit of turkey and some yams. That night we came home early-ish so that Andres could go to bed. He had to be at work at 3am for black friday.

The next day I went back to sitting on the couch and doing the occasional homework. Jean came over for about 2 hours and we did some homework and extra credit for music. That night after Andres came home from work we broke up. It was really sad. He's been my best friend since i moved here so its been really hard. We both know that its for the best though.

The good news is that since Saturday was full of sporting events, I was able to get my mind off of the breakup. The BYU-Utah game was AMAZING! It was definantly a nail-biter! We were ahead the entire game until Utah scored a touchdown with 1:35 left in the fourth quarter. I definantly thought it was over when we were 4th down and 18 to go. Luckily Max Hall made an amazing pass. We made a touchdown with about 35 seconds left and were able to stop Utah from scoring. It was so happy! After the game I stayed at home and watched the Alabama/Auburn game! War Eagle! Then BYU basketball played #1 North Carolina. This game was really good. The night before our basketball team had beaten #6 Louisville. We stayed right with North Carolina the entire game until about 2 minutes left. It was a really good game and we got some good recognition.
Anyways, school is back in. Although its stressful, I'm just glad to have something to do. I'll really be happy when I get to go back home in a few weeks! YAY! It'll be good to have some time home to breath and hopefully get back to normal.....

LA/Vegas trip

2007-11-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

So about a week and a half ago Andres and I went down to LA to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and niece. We left thursday morning and stopped in Vegas for the night. Andres served his mission in Vegas so we visited some of the people that he knew and then we stayed with a man who he taught. It was pretty fun. We were going to go on the Strip that night but we were both so tired that we hit the sack early instead. The next morning we got up around 9 and left for LA. It took way longer to get to LA than it should have because we got lost once and got on the interstate the wrong way once. When we finally got to LA I was SO surprised at how big Rebecca had gotten, SHE'S HUGE! Later that night Rachel cooked yummy Stromboli for us and we watched a lot of The Office.

The next day was when the REAL fun began! We got up and went to the swapmeet and got some cool stuff. Next we went to my sister's favorite sushi restaurant which was SO yummy. That night we went to see the stars on hollywood. That was really cool! We took a TON of pictures. Unfortunatly my camera acts funny....i'm gonna have to return it. Anyways, we also went to a really cool mall that was partly inside and partly outside. Here's a picture from Johnny Rockets of me and Rebecca. :)That night we got home late and crashed! Here are a couple of picture from that night for Rachel:

The next morning we got up early and drove back to Vegas where we went to one of Andres' old wards. This ward also happened to be Gladys Knights ward. I had Andres take a picture of her:) I felt kinda bad though cause it was in the chapel. After sacrament meeting we went to visit some people again and then went to The Strip. We couldn't take too much of that- Vegas isn't really the cleanest place. However, we did see this fun water show. As you can imagine, it was better in person, but here a part of it:

Then we went to the in-and-out burger before we finally came home. We got home really late, but the trip was really fun and totally worth it. We both want to go back in a few months.

I've been tagged!

2007-11-16T11:21:00.001-07:00

Well, Rachel tagged me so I'm supposed to say 7 random/interesting facts about myself. Here goes:
1. I've had four pairs of front teeth. I'm sure all of y'all know that but they just keep getting knocked out. Also, I've broken several other teeth and my friends joke that they're in the "I've broken one of Chelsie's teeth" club.

2. My roommates always make fun of me because I'm the messiest one. I probably hear about it 3 or 4 times a week. Well, yesterday we had cleaning checks and guess who was the ONLY one who passed! Thats right, ME!

3. I am currently in class for 27 hours a week and only get 16.5 credit hours.

4. I want to be a runner. I enjoy races. My next race is called the Nutcracker race and is at UVSC. The cool thing about this race is that everyone runs in tu-tus. :)

5. My weakness is ice cream. Specifically moose tracks! If I'm ever down, a good cup of moose tracks will make me happy.

6. I really like to cook. Specifically bake. If you come over to my house there will most likely be some type of goody for you to eat. Right now there is a cake(it was just my roommate's birthday), rice crispy treats, and jello(my friend got her wisdom teeth out this morning.

7. I love to play! I love all types of games! I have a kickball, volleyball, fooseball table, chalk, and cranium turbo! I am the game lady!

I would tag somebody but my only friend who blogs is Rachel, and she tagged me! :)

long time, no talk

2007-11-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't really been feeling like a lot has been happening so I haven't written in a while. I've decided that I'm going to try to get back to posting now. Lets see... recent news...

School has been going well. I am VERY busy. It seems like I'm in class during the entire time the sun is out. However, classes are really fun and I don't normally dread going to class.

Also, I have a boyfriend. His name is Andres, he's fun. He's from Connecticut. We've been dating for about 2 months but we just recently decided to become exclusive. Here is a picture of us from the other night right before we went in to Olive Garden for dinner. It was yummy!

Also, Andres and I got a little gerbil. His name is Gilbert. Here he is. He's pretty cute but he bites. His bites don't hurt, they just startle you. Anyways, now both Andres and I are scared to touch him. Hopefully as he gets settled in to the new home he will bite less.

Last night a few of us went up into the canyon and drove up and around on the mountains. It was really cool. There were a bunch of places with AMAZING views. One that I really liked was from the other side of Y-mountain but we were way high up and we could see provo through a small slit between Y-mountain and another mountain. It was really pretty but couldn't be captured in a picture because it was night time. Anyways, here's another picture...

Anyways, this semester has been pretty fun. I'll try to keep y'all !

EFY- week two!:)

2007-07-06T12:44:00.001-07:00

So here are some pictures and quick commentary on week 2 of EFY!

This is all of the girls with Timothy! Aren't we cute? I thought so.

The boys all wanted to pick me up. I was somewhat surprised that they could and I could stay modest. It was pretty cool.

Me and the boys again. Aren't we cute? Timothy told me that about have of them had real live crushes on me... weird!

All of our darling youth! I loved these kids! They were my only 16-18 year old group.

These are a bunch of the counselors. Timothy is to my right, and then is Blake(My co-counselor of week 3), then is my good friend Linnea who happens to be with me in the el ed program at BYU. On my right is Terrell. He is absolutly hilarious! And all of them go to BYU! YAY!

So after the variety show on thursday the boys in our group wanted me and Timothy to fight. This is me getting pumped up for the big fight!

Unfortunatly I found out the hard way that Timothy took Jujitsu. or however you spell it. This was his most effective move of the day. He put me to the group four times with this one move.

At the end we were still friends! :)

These boys wrote a song for us that they sang on both the last night and the last morning! It was really sweet! and they gave me the original text to it. Who knows, maybe one day it'll be worth millions!

EFY- week one! :)

2007-07-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

These last 3 weeks of EFY have been absolutly AMAZING! I have had so many awesome experiences with my girls and have made so many new friends. I can't even begin to say everything that is exciting that has happened so I'm going to post a bunch of pictures and just give them captions. Tonight I'm only going to do the first week because its 11:45 and I still need to write a lesson for tomorrow and take a shower! Anyways, here goes:

This is a picture of all of the girls in my group for the first week. We were in a trio and the other counselor is right next to me. This group was AMAZING!

These are the counselors in our first group- Nicole, Travis, and me. Travis is a professional comedian so needless to say the week was hilarious! :)

This is Vanessa and Codi! These girls are the sweetest girls ever and they absolutly crack me up! I miss them a lot!

Our group name was Love Thy Neighbor and this was our banner! WE WON! :)

These are the beautiful ladies that I was able to be a counselor to! The worst part of my job is having to leave them! I miss them a lot!

A couple of things...

2007-06-06T13:10:00.001-07:00

Well it seems like alabama moves so slowly, but i guess a couple of things have happened in the last little while. Well, for my brother's graduation a bunch of people came in to town. On memorial day my sister, walter, and gary (walter's brother) did the cotton row run which is a 10k race! It was really fun! Walter and Gary ran together and my sister and I ran together. I decided that I could probably keep up with her since she was 7 1/2 months pregnant. We did really well until almost mile 5. A little before mile 5 my sister started getting cramps so we had to walk the rest of the way. I also made these shirts for everyone to wear! Cute, i know!

Then, after rachel and walter left we went up to kentucky for my cousin's graduation! It was really fun! It had been more than 2 years since i had seen my cousins. I had a fun time! My little girl cousin is 14 now and it was really weird but cool to be able to go shopping with her. I also had a really fun time playing with their dogs and it was a good time for me to get some reading done for my elementary literature class.

In other good news, i only have a week and a half until EFY starts! I'm so excited!

bike ride!

2007-05-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Today E.V. and I rode our bikes from my house to the river which is about 15 miles there and back! We went in the middle of the day so it was pretty hot, but it was still a really relaxing trip! The really nice part about going with E.V. is that her house is about 5 miles from me and 2 1/2 miles from the river so we were able to stop there on the way back to fill up our water and eat some watermelon. I am exhausted from the trip! I can't wait to hop in bed!
Today I had a dentist appointment and found out i have a cavity! :( I'm pretty bummed because the cleaning lady told me that my teeth looked really excellant and that she could tell that I was a flosser! The reason it is so lame is that my tooth that the cavity is on has a disformity where there is like extra tooth that makes a sort of archway-so there is a sort of hole in my tooth... (sounds a little complicated). Anyways, I think he said the cavity was formed in there- so I couldn't have cleaned there anyways! LAME! Oh well... there's only so much you can do! Anyways, I have an appointment to get that fixed tomorrow morning... We'll see how that goes....

WII!!!!!

2007-05-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Well, they said the wii was fun and they sure were right! I went over to my friends house this morning and played on her new wii. After boxing I was seriously sweating! It was kinda like tae bo with a purpose, i mean, i didn't want to lose!
In other news, I am now planning on doing the cotton row run! Rachel says that she wants to do it, and i should be able to keep up with someone who is 7 months pregnant! So I did a little running today. Only a mile and a half, but i figure some is better than none. I probably could have gone farther but i was on a tread mill which isn't very fun and my exercise buddy finished her warm-up so i thought i would be done too... Its also good because I decided that im going to do the triathlon this august again... i just need to find a running buddy...

2007-05-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

So, i just signed up for an online elementary literature class. I mentioned in an earlier post that i hope to read about 20 books this summer. Well, as luck would have it i will have no problem reading 20 books since it is required for my class that i read 71 childrens books! Yippee! Thats like more than one every 2 days!!! I guess i better get started on that....

I'm HOME!!!

2007-04-28T19:55:00.001-07:00

Well, over two days after leaving BYU I'm finally home!!! The flights were good, although I'm totally bummed that BOTH of my bags were overweight! 55 lbs and 65 lbs- not exciting when it means 50 bucks from the wallet, is it? I guess it is still better than for my friend amber who is spending the entire summer in italy but can only bring a carry-on! THAT would be tough! The really good news is that from now on I will never be car-less again... i hope! I'm also really excited for the summer to get started! Tomorrow I get to go to the grandmother's and look at a possibility for a lakehouse. We'll see if i can't get a job from the G-ma! In other news, I had to send back my new camera for repair. :( That means no pictures for a while... But i should get it back before too long!

FINISHED!

2007-04-23T18:26:00.000-07:00

YAY! I took my last final today and now I'm DONE! I don't leave until Thursday so I have 2 more days to pack... Kelly sent the TV home with her mom so now I have nothing to do all day. Hopefully I don't drive myslef crazy!
On other news, if you've never played "Guitar Hero" you should really give it a shot! I played it for the first time last week. Its so fun. I should be going to my friend's to play it tonight. He also has dance dance revolution so i may try that tonight as well. So hopefully as long as he stays available to play I won't get TOO bored! Anyways, I'm off! Yay for going home in 2 1/2 days!!!

Hallelujah!

2007-04-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

Today was my last day of classes! HALLELUJAH! I get to rest for 3 days until finals begin! I've also already taken half of my finals! YAY!
Tonight for family home evening we were supposed to play outdoor games. I got that bright idea that since the pool had been emptied we should draw a four square box and play in the pool! It was so much fun! We basically got a crowd!
Here are some pictures from fishing! I had a really fun time! We fished for 10 hours! I thought I was going to DIE! I did catch a big rainbow trout though. Between everyone in the group we cought 6 rainbow trout.
This is the Heber Creaper- the railroad that drives by. As you can see from the picture, it was VERY cold outside! Needless to say, I did not get sunburnt! :)
This is me with the days catch! These fish were HEAVY!
Me pretending like I was the one who cooked the fish. In reality I wouldn't touch them until they didn't look like fish anymore.
The days catch! Look how Will ripped their heads off! Not very appetising- i know. They did end up tasting really good though! :) We also got some of the people in the enclave to come over and eat some! Everyone approved!

Goin' fishin'!

2007-04-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well thank goodness the finals for this week are over! I am half-way there! YIPEE! I'm going fishing tomorrow morning...in 6 1/2 hours to be exact! YAY! I can't wait! Hopefully I will have some pictures to post tomorrow! :)

STRESS!

2007-04-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

This week has been CRAZY! It is one week before finals begin and I somehow still have 3 finals scheduled for today and tomorrow. I just got back from my D&C final and have another one at 4. The final at 4 requires a 5 minute presentation and 3 page paper. Have I started working on either? Nope! In fact I need to make a power point for my presentation and the power point program on my computer isn't even working! YIPEE! Also this morning I got an email telling me that we will have a potluck at my final and that I need to bring some baked potatoes! Do I have potatoes? Do I have a car to get to the store? Do I have time to back these potatoes which I don't have? No to all of the above! Anyways, I am a little bit stressed! I seriously have not had a free moment since sunday! AGH! I guess the only thing I can do is get back to work....

DARK, DARK, DARK!

2007-04-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

I dyed my hair again. It seems like each time I go in to get it dyed, I come out with it being a little bit darker. Well now it is VERY dark! I do like it though.

I love easter! Yesterday in celebration of easter I went to my friend's house to dye and roll easter eggs with his family. It was really fun! You guys know those little plastic wrapper things that always come in the dying kits that seem to just sit on the egg like a skirt? Well I found out what they do! They are shrinkers! All you have to do is put one on an egg and dip it into boiling water and it shrinks around the egg! I was so amazed! I think my favorite egg that I made was my Auburn egg! I made it in honor of Laura. I was going to make an Alabama egg too so that EV, Steph, and Megan wouldn't be mad but we didn't have any red dye... sorry!

Have y'all ever done egg rolling? Me neither! I had never even heard of it. So basically after you dye all of these eggs you go to a large hill and just start rolling them down. You can also play catch with them, see how far you can throw them, or see if you can hit a seagull. After you throw them you see which ones have survived! Its pretty fun, even though one of the seagulls decided to retaliate and almost pelted me!

Also while I was over there we had a picnic! This family loves to hunt so we at ELK BBQ!!!! Awesome, huh? It's actually pretty dang good! :)

Wish granted!

2007-04-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

Well I finished my last post by saying I wish someone would make a decision for me on what to do with my summer. I guess the decision hasn't really been made, but I did find out that the place where I was hoping to work will not have a job open for when i was hoping to work there. I guess that at least narrows down one option.
Also, I finished my book today! YAY! I think I should make a goal to read a certain number of books this summer. Maybe 20? That wouldn't be too hard...

Conference Weekend

2007-04-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

I have learned that conference weekend means two things for me. First, I will spend my weekend glued to the t.v. to hear many uplifting and enlightening talks. Secondly, there will be food involved.
For the first part, I just wanted to put up something that was said that really made sense to me. In the saturday morning session Jeffrey R. Holland was talking about how it is important to be aware of the things that we say and how they affect ourselves and others. My favorite thing that he said was "No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse." Pretty powerful, yet simple. Don't you think?
As for the food, lets just say that i am VERY full. Today started with an apartment breakfast. Wow, there was a lot of food! We didn't even finish it all. I pretty much snacked on that through this morning's session. Then Kelly and I realized that we needed to take some stuff to the girls that we visit teach. One of the girls that we visit teach is allergic to flour so we have to get pretty creative. We decided to make some cool-shaped Jello Jigglers for her. The for the other girl that we go see I made some Andes mint cookies. So of course while I'm making those things, a little bit of them gets eaten. THEN for the afternoon session we had some carmel popcorn- really yummy, but not very good for you! Needless to say, I feel like I should go on a LONG jog right about now.
In other news, I've decided that I am going to try to read a bunch of children's books. It would be really hard for me to tell the kids that I will be teaching that they should read if I haven't read in years. Make sense? So I went to the library on thursday, got a library card, and rented 3 books. I am almost done with my first one which is The View From the Cherry Tree it's really good. I hope to finish it tonight.
Last thing I have to say is- I HATE GROWING UP! Ok- there are some good parts about growing up, but come on! Who wants to make so many decisions! Right now I am really just trying to figure out what I want to do with this summer! Im now thinking of going home from the end of April to mid June, then doing the 3 weeks of being an EFY counsellor that I am signed up for, and then coming back out west to work for a month and a half where one of my friends works. For some reason moving to work scares me a whole lot more than moving away to go to school. The good part of that plan would be that for the beginning of summer I wouldn't have a job and could to a lot of visiting family. Anyways... we'll have to see. If only someone would make the decision for me!

Pictures from Southern Utah!

2007-03-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

I just decided to add a couple of pictures from the trip down to southern utah! I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living them!

An adventurous weekend

2007-03-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

I really should be studying for the two tests that I need to take today, but instead i decided to create a blog- go figure.
Well this weekend sure was an adventurous one! I guess my weekend officially began on Wednesday night when I went to a Goo Goo Dolls concert and to P.F. Changs with Grady. It was really fun! Believe it or not, I had no idea who the Goo Goo Dolls even where before tuesday night when he asked me to go. We got home so late from the night out that Jean and I had to miss our classes the next morning to get ready for our next adventure- BACKPACKING!
My Outdoor recreation class left for southern Utah around 1 o'clock on thursday to go on a big packpacking trip. After 5 hours in a 12 person van and 1 hour on a very unpleasant bumpy, rocky road (which included a broken window from a rock hitting it) I was very relieved to see the mountain ledge which we would be sleeping on that night. Jean and I pitched our tent right near the edge so that we would have an awesome view when we woke up. I was kinda surprised that the rest of the group chose to sleep near the van instead... Anyways, the next morning we got our packs together and hiked through the desert down to the valley and then in to a canyon. The hike was about 3 miles long and not to strenuous because it was almost all downhill.
When we got to where we were going to camp it was raining so we set up our tent as quickly as we could and made lunch. By this time jean and I were so freezing that we decided to climb into our mummy bags for a nap! At about 2 about half of our group (including the teacher and TA) decided to go for a hike through the river to Neon Canyon. The rest of us didn't want to go because we didn't really believe that we would dry off by nighttime. When Jean and I woke up around 4 we went for a hike out of the canyon and on to some cool cliffs. When we got home the group still wasnt there. At 8 when it was almost completely dark and the group wasn't back we started to get worried so we came up with a plan to hike back to the car and go get help.
Jean and I were a little bit scared because we were a camp made up only of girls so we moved our tent next to the other girls so that we felt safer. Then I went to bed to one of the girls reading scriptures to us to make us feel better. The next morning we woke up and hiked back to the car in an hour and 20 minutes (great time) and started driving back down the rocky road to look for help. When we were about a mile down we passed a truck with a horse trailer on the back and flagged down the man who was driving. As luck would have it, he was a member of the search and rescue team! It was our lucky day! So he called the sheriff's office and several more people were sent down to help look for our group.
Once all of the searchers had left we were supposed to go back to the campground in groups of 3 to get our backpacks and head back up. The first group left and got back in about 3 hours. While they were down there we saw the patrol planes look for our group. Once the girls got back they told us that there was still not sign of our group back at camp. Then I went down with my group of three. Part of the way down the clouds got really bad so we had to hurry. We barely even took a break at the bottom. The way up was VERY hard. It was uphill most of the way with 30lb backpacks on walking in sand-NOT FUN! About half the way up it started to rain. At the very end of the trail home you have to climb a really big mountain to get to the cars. I was already so exhausted that I wasn't sure I would make it. But by this time it was thundering and lightning in the valley and it was beginning to hail. So i did by best to climb up this mountain. About half way up the hail was coming down so hard that it actually hurt when it hit you and it was starting to create little muddy rivers going down on the pathway up. I really thought that I wouldn't make it but by this point the thunder came only a second or 2 after the lightning. I really thought that I might get hit. Jean and Rebekah from our group were at the top of the mountain cheering us on and they said that they saw a lightning branch out and hit in the valley right behind us- SCARY! When I finally made it to the top I could barely walk and almost fell over several times trying to get to the car. When we got in the car Jean and Rebekah started passing out dry clothes for everyone else to change in to.
Once the storm passed (around 5 p.m.) we got out of the car and went to talk to the Sheriff who told us that they still hadn't found them. The sheriff also let us get into his car and call whoever we needed to call- he had a special antenae on his car that gave him cell phone service. i called my mom and the bishop and told them what was up. After everyone made their calls the sheriff asked us to find the parents numbers of the kids who were missing. He also wanted us to call their parents! We graciously turned down that opportunity! They also told us that the news had been alerted and that there were helicopters looking for our friends.
We waited around until 7:30 and then decided that we needed to go in to town to get a hotel room for the night. We began to pull away in the big van when we saw helicopters flying that looked like they were about to land! We all hopped out of the car and ran over to see what was going on! It was SO exciting to see our group hop out of the helicopters! Everyone was safe which is a pretty big maricle considering that they spent a night without food, water, flashlights, or fire and dressed in wet clothes in 40 degree weather for an entire night! That night we went into town and stayed at a motel.
The next day we went back to the ledge so that those lost could hike down and get their packs. The rest of us spent the time cleaning the car, having a small sunday devotional and getting VERY sunburnt. It was pretty fun though. As we were about to leave we noticed that the trailer had a flat tire and that the spare was also flat! We thought the trip would never end! The ride home was about 7 hours but when we were finally home (a day late and very tired) it was magnificent... until the tests started....