JAMODI!

Basketball: a game of agility, strength and really tall people. Yes, this commonly known sport is one of my favorites. Definitely not to play...just to watch. The thought of me being any sort of usefulness on the Baskeball court is absurd, but I have been known to win a Blackout round or two in my prime. : ) I have been fortunate that this last little bit has been filled with fantastic basketball. And it’s almost March which means the start of March Madness and the NBA playoffs! YESSSS! This is also when I suddenly become very unavailable to do anything besides watch basketball. I remember the last couple of years (sadly) whenever the Mavs were out of the playoffs, I felt like they broke up with me or something. I felt sad, lonely and suddenly my schedule was a lot more flexible. Maybe not so much on the lonely side, but you get my drift. :) Don’t get me wrong. I still watched the interesting games but having less games to watch per week frees up more time than you’d think. Either way, I’m quite excited for March to be here. I don’t know how far BYU will make it in the bracket, but I feel good about them getting further along than they have in the past. Of course, I’ll still probably have them winning the whole thing like I usually do. I feel like I should have Duke in the finals as well. I don’t really have many allegiances to them at all aside from the fact that Amy is a crazy Duke fan and last year, they helped me win second place in the ward bracket (Amy got first…take that Elder’s Quorum!) haha. I do feel like I owe it to them, in a way. Good times. If that's what it takes to win, then sign me up! :)

But, before I talk more about that, I'm going to do a short recap of our recent Houston trip :).

The trip itself was really good. We all had so much fun! Although, I will say this: never book a hotel using priceline, hotwire or anything like that. Absolutely ridiculous! They didn’t end up having the type of rooms in our reservation. It still worked out fine, but the hotel was super ghetto compared to what they were rating it as. It was SO dirty, but we had a great laugh about it. There's nothing like a group of chill friends in a lame situation. Definitely something to look back at and laugh about. I wish I had pictures, but I’m still trying to get the images out of my head. For example: The bathroom door was warped so that when I was occupying the facility, I look at the door and I could see out into the rest of the bathroom area. And yes, the door was closed. :) Good thing everyone else was hooked on the Food Network! Haha. When we walked into the room, my first thought was, oh no…is this one of those places where you have to pay extra for clean sheets? Siiiiick, but so funny. I’m so glad I had the thought to grab a blanket for each of us before we left. They didn’t have those either. Just a little ‘table runner’ thing going across the bed. And yes, that was nasty too. Oh man, good times. We did get to go to the Houston temple which was awesome (despite the fact that I only got about 45 minutes to an hour of sleep…I was SO tired). I loved it! It was definitely a lot smaller than it looks on the outside, but still amazingly breathtaking on the inside. That reminds me…I need to add Houston to my temple scrapbook :) I’m determined to fill that thing up!

After the temple, we met up with Renee’s brother and sister-in-law for lunch and then high tailed it downtown to see what Houston had to offer, aside from ghetto hotels and Red Robin. They had this fantastical community park thing that we walked around in and then just sat and people watched for a while. It doesn’t get much better than that. Plus we were all so tired from the severe lack of sleep that I think to just sit and zone out was kind of a welcomed activity. Jen and Derrick came down to visit as well! It was so awesome to see y’all! I can’t believe how big Caleb and Zach are getting. They are the cutest! I sure miss getting to hang out with y’all more often. Thank you so much for venturing downtown to see me for a bit. It meant a lot!

[Insert Mavs vs Rockets game here] Booyeah!!!

We were on the VERY LAST ROW, but it was still great. This does mean, however, that we were definitely closer to the nachos than I've ever been before, which made it hard to resist. You know I was all over that business. I still submit that I do not like the Rockets very much. Especially since our tickets cost almost $40 for last row seats. I’m pretty sure that’s due to the fact that they were playing the Mavs tho. :) LOVE THEM

My other new love from this trip is Buc-ees. We decided to stop there to fill up with gas, both ways, and it was actually quite a fun environment. The bathrooms were insane! It was the best, darn truck stop I’ve ever been in. Hats off to you, Buc-ee.
But, enough of that. Let’s get back to basketball!

The next game on the itinerary is the Mavs vs Kings game. Sandy took me as a belated birthday gift. I will love her always for that! :) Our institute teacher has season tickets and couldn’t go to the game so he handed them off. ELEVENTH ROW BABY! I’ve never been that close to Dirk before in my life. It was the absolute best thing ever. I had SO much fun! The game is much more exciting when you can see the sweat on their faces! Look at this! Granted, Sandy was using her zoom, but I don’t care. That’s so awesome. Thank you for having such an awesome camera, Sandy. And thank you for taking me! Someday, I’ll have season tickets like this. *hopes really hard*

Last but not least; the BYU vs TCU game. HA! What a joke. TCU held their own for about the first 5 minutes haha jk jk. They put up a good fight, but we still won by 20 points or something like that. Jimmer Fredette is the MAN. I can’t believe how well he is doing this year. It’s absolutely amazing. People start chanting “SHOOT IT!” right when he walks across the half court line. Mostly because he has before and he’s made it a lot of the time! so insane and I love it! Oh how I love basketball and yes, I have been Jimmer'd :) Have you?

On a side note, I have successfully decorated my abode for St. Patrick's Day. So happy and so excited for one of the best holidays ever!

Bon Appetit!

As I was contemplating what I should write my next blog post about, my honorary muse inspired me with the idea of sharing all of my cooking mishaps that have gone down in the past. Naturally, there are far too many for me to be able to write about, but I figured I’d pick some of my favorites and pay tribute to the good times and fantastic memories. Naturally, none of these include those less than tasty dishes that just didn’t make the cut. I really need to learn more about cooking. It’s not my strong point, for sure. Laura said that once work calms down for both of us, she wants to have me over once a week and we can cook something together so I can learn all of her snazzy culinary tricks. I’m excited! The couple of times I've been to her place for dinner, it has been absolutely delicious! Now, I ask you to have an open mind as I tell you these stories. Many of them may not be too funny to you if you weren’t there, but just know that those that were involved had a great time laughing with me about it. So, if you don't find this quite as entertaining as you were hoping for, my deepest apologies are sent your way :)

The most recent mishap made me realize that I was not wired correctly to flip pancakes. It’s a sad truth, but one that I am coming to terms with. Bethers sent me some of the COOLEST Star Wars stuff for my birthday, including, but not limited to Pancake molds and a Darth Vader spatula. Boo yeah. That’s all I have to say. Naturally, I tried my luck at making Amy and I some Dark Side of the Force pancakes. Let’s just say it’s going to take some practice. :) It wasn’t even the fact that they were shapes that caused the problems. Whenever I slid the spatula underneath the pancake to flip it, the pancake actually slid right off the griddle about half way. Maybe I’m just really strong. I don’t know. But needless to say, they lost their shape, broke a few places and were all around ghetto, fabulous. But, not to worry, I’ll keep trying. I’m now a pro at cleaning up pancake batter from all surfaces, because you know I got that stuff everywhere! At least they still tasted like pancakes :) I'm chalking that one up for a partial success, at least.

This makes me remember about how the traditional conference pancake got started. It really all goes back to flipping. (this is a constant problem, much like my inability to wink, in case you haven’t noticed yet). This may also be the reason for why I have subconsciously chosen to make waffles every Sunday for my lunch instead of pancakes haha. Anyway, I was trying to flip the pancake onto the stack of pancakes to bring to the table and I completely missed the plate. Not even hit it and it just fell off. Oh no…I completely air balled it. It fell on the floor and there it remained until the end of conference. Kind of gross since it’s two days long, but it became known as the traditional conference pancake and we had one the year after that in honor of my lack of aim. I’m sure my reaction probably made it a little more funny than it sounds, but either way, that’s one of those moments that I’d like to replay when I get to heaven and we can watch each other’s ‘movies’ of their lives. That’s probably not quite how it’s going to work, but I’m sticking with the idea that it’ll be possible. John Bytheway had the right idea when he said that every now and again he’ll randomly wave at the “camera” just for fun. Hahaha. Good times.

My next notable mishap was while I was actually visiting Bethers for a little gal pal time, in Arizona. Beth makes some of the most delicious healthy food and she was making some of her healthy cookies. Not quite sure what all is in them, but they were so yummy! Anyway, she had her hands full and the timer dinged so she asked me to go rotate the cookies (maybe she said flip…I don’t quite remember but that point is irrelevant). In my head I was thinking that I needed to actually FLIP the cookies over and not just turn them around in the oven. So, I grabbed a spatula and tried to flip them like pancakes (again…I’m starting to notice a pattern in all of my cooking tragedies. Maybe I should stop using spatulas haha). Naturally, they weren’t done cooking yet so the flipping didn’t work so well. Finally, Beth was like, ‘what’s taking so long?’ hahahha I went on to explain how I had been flipping each individual cookie and it wasn’t working so well so sorry for messing them up. That’s when the crazy laughter started and her explaining that she just wanted me to turn the pan around so the opposite side was facing the back of the oven hahahah. Oh good grief, Charlie Brown. I think that using my brain while on vacation is not something that I’m keen on doing :) So hilarious to me!

This next one has nothing to do with flipping anything so that’s comforting, I guess. I had just gotten back to Provo after Christmas break and Joyce came over to keep me company. Well, I decided that I was going to make some muffins because I randomly had muffin mix but no other food and it was too late for me to go grocery shopping. I get the pan all loaded and I was so excited and then what happened? I open the oven to put them in and apparently forgot that I have to wait until I set the pan on the rack before I let go. That’s right, ladies and gentleman. I dropped the pan into the oven. Needless to say I didn’t have muffins for breakfast the next morning, but we definitely had a great laugh out of it.

I think this is where I’m going to stop before I talk my way into the lonely, dark corner of shame, but I do have one more funny moment that actually wasn’t me, but I was there for it and it still brings a smile to my little face. Jen was making something…no idea what, but it sure smelled good. Anyway, she had to drain the grease from the pan but we didn’t have anything to put it into. Well, she looked around and grabbed a Styrofoam cup thinking that that should serve it’s purpose well. As I watched her pour it into the cup, the cup began to melt and soon, there was grease all over the kitchen counter. SO FUNNY. Again, I think her reaction was better than the actual grease problem, but it was so classic. If you choose to share a cooking mishap that you have had, there is plenty of room in the corner of shame. I don’t mind scooting over a bit :)

On a completely different note, I finally bucked up and wrestled Amy after much poking and proding and I actually held my own quite well. I attribute some of that to the fact that I was wearing slippery pants so I could slide around easier and she had just wrestled two other people before that, but I totally pinned her down. Boom baby! We’re now tied. Naturally, she wanted another go because losing isn’t her style, and she got me the second time around. I decided it’s better to quit before I’m behind :) Either way, I was quite proud. She said I did real good haha With that, I'm signing out. Please share your stories should you feel so compelled :)

If Cars Could Talk

I've had a few realizations and 'I wonder' moments in the past few weeks. I'm not sure what I can attribute this to, but it's been kind of funny, so I'll take it! One of my favorites hit me the other day. I come home from work and what's the first thing I do? Change into jeans or sweat pants and put on my slippers. It never fails. A couple of days ago was no different from any other day, except, as I was in mid slipper-fying myself, I paused. Lightning had just struck my brain: I was just like Mr. Rogers! Minus the whole make believe puppet world and a snazzy mail man that delivers my mail right to my door (we're lucky these days if our mail man even picks up/drops off our mail at all, let alone to our front door). Either way, Mr. Rogers is the man. Now, every time I come home and start my daily ritual, I cant help but sing to myself, "Wont you please, wont you please, please wont you be my neighbor!" Love it. Love him. Love Mr. McFeely's Speedy Delivery.

The best 'I wonder' moment came the other day whilst Heather and I were heading over to Olive Garden for lunch. I don't quite remember how we got on the topic, but I started thinking, huh...I wonder what Reggie (my car) would say to me if she could talk. It was a perplexing question and as I thought about it, I came up with some pretty good answers. Seeing as how good ol' Reg and I are like this *intertwines her fingers* I think I have a pretty acurate idea. In my mind, Reggie is a spunky/chill sort of car whose favorite music artists probably consist of Journey, Frank Sinatra and the ocassional Michael Jackson song. Lucky for me, she also digs country music. With that being said, I'm sure she hates it when I bust out my musical soundtracks or am feeling old school and whip out my Nsync CDs. I'm sure she would grumble under her breath and mock me for my song choices. That would probably explain why she tends to run a little better when I'm playing Cartel or something of that nature. :) I also think it would be funny to hear about all the crap that happens to her from her point of view. Exhibit A: all of the weather stripping has been successfully melted or broken off through the years. I'm sure every time it happens, she would pull a, "Really?" in one of those snooty, annoyed voices. I know I would. It probably doesn't feel good. I can also feel an, "OHHH YEAH!" coming on when a good rap song hits the stereo too. I'm sure no one enjoys a nice sunny, warm day with the windows rolled down and some awesome music to drive with more than Reggie. I would love to hear what would come out of her mouth when someone cuts me off or we're stuck in traffic. Nothing annoys both of us more than crappy drivers. I also like to think that Reggie makes friends with all the other cars in the parking lots. Especially Heather and Amy's cars since we park close together so often. I'm sure they are friends. Otherwise, these 10 hour shifts I've been pulling would be quite boring indeed. Now, I realize that this makes me a complete crazy person, but it's what happens when I go from having to think about a million things at once to not really having to think about anything at all. My brain forces itself to think about something and this is what happens haha.

I've also realized that the new song of choice when nothing is going on in my head is Piano Man. Billy Joel soothes the soul, my friends, and you can't beat that. Although, I should probably learn the words to the verses if I'm going to be singing it as often as I have been lately. Maybe that will be a project for my 'snowed in' day today. Yuck. What the Texas weather is going on? It was like 70 degrees this weekend and now it feels like negative 1 outside, and that isn't even an overreaction! I am deeply anguished and full of cabin fever.

Also, operation temples has commenced. A small group of us at church decided that we wanted to go to as many temples within reasonable driving distance this year as we could. We're planning on hitting up Houston next weekend, then depending on the Mavs schedule, we may hit up San Antonio at some point when they are playing down there. Naturally, it makes sense to go where the Mavs are playing so we can go to a game as well haha. We're also planning on going to Lubbock and Oklahoma City and then decide how we want to go from there. It should be lots of fun. It'll get more pictures in my Temple journal, that's for sure. I was quite disappointed in myself: I only had two new ones in 2010. I had 8 in 2009, although, I lived in Utah for part of it and that definitely creates a large advantage haha. Either way, I'm excited. I'm sure I'll update y'all about that when it happens. Until then, I'm peacing out. Maybe I"ll go learn that song now... *sings* "Sing us a song, you're the piano man..." Tootles! XOXO