A day in the life of....ME! :)

The Auntie Awards of 2011!

2011-12-27T23:36:00.001-07:00

Even though I've taken a large hiatus of blogging, I had to return for the annual Auntie Awards celebration. Gotta keep the tradition going, you know? For a quick refresher, please refer back to the 2010 Auntie awards. Congrats to everyone that won last year. I know that there are still a few days left in 2011, so if something crazy happens between now and Sunday, rest assured they will be considered for next year's Auntie Awards. Or maybe I'll create a new rule for additional winners. Who knows? You never can tell! Although, I'm not really anticipating anything happening within the next few days to change any of these :) But, enough of that! I know you're not reading to hear me ramble, so without further ado, here's to 2011!

Best Music Artist: I have recently fallen in love with Keith Urban. I know he's been around for a while, but I haven't really appreciated him for what he's worth until probably about 6 months ago. How did this happen you ask? I was house/dog sitting for my parents one week and my mom said that I could use her car. Well, I forgot to bring CDs to play in the car so I rummaged through what she had and what did I find? Good ole Keith. I popped it in and was hooked! Sing it, Mr. Urban. Sing it good!

Most Listened to Song: This one is hard again this year. But, after about 5 seconds of grueling contemplation, I have made my decision *drum roll please* Defying Gravity from the Wicked Soundtrack. I made the mistake once of youtubing Wicked karaoke. Yeah...you know I took full advantage of that! That soundtrack has to be one of the most fun CDs to sing to in the car, shower, around the house, wherever. Ask Amy. She'll tell you that I'm constantly singing songs from it wherever I go. haha. That just so happens to be one of my favorites to sing though. Followed very closely by "For Good" and "The Wizard and I." I can't wait for Wicked in February. Bring it on, Austin! :) So excited!

Best Movie Released in 2011: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. No shocker there, considering that Part 1 won last year :) I admit, I cried... a lot. But, can you blame me? My favorite HP character dies in this movie! And not to mention that Hermione and Ron FINALLY got together. It's about blasted time! I've been waiting for that since book 6. But sadly, its all over now. I'm going to have to start getting more creative with what I get Ben for Christmas now. I've made it through all of the books and movies...I guess next year will be a surprise. But seriously, this movie was fabulous. Easily the best HP movie of all 8 of them. Don't worry though, number 4 will always hold a special place in my heart since it was my favorite book before 6 or 7 came out. I also can't wait for my trip to HP world. I'm hopefully going to do that in 2012. I guess we'll see! :) *Keeping my fingers crossed*

Best New(er) TV Show: I honestly haven't watched a lot of TV lately, but I'm giving this one to Modern Family. Not a new TV show but new to me this year. It is pretty dang funny. I love Phil...so hilarious! I wonder what a TV show about my family would be like...probably comedy, lets be honest. We're a mess but in such a good way! haha There's always some kind of crazy shenanigans going on. Can't be beat! Love you guys!!!

Biggest Waste of Time: Can this go to watching the Mavs play basketball on Christmas day? hahaha jk, jk. You guys know I love you more than I love hoodies (which is a lot), but seriously? Yikes. I know we're still learning to play as a team considering that we only have about 6 of the original members of the team from last year, but still. Wow. I know what you are thinking. Dude, we only lost by 11 points? (please don't reference the game yesterday against the Nuggets...much worse). Do you want to know why we only lost by 11 when we played the Heat? They don't show up for the last quarter of the game...ever. We know this. But it would have been nice to destroy them again. Just sayin'! Either way, Dirk, I'll always love you. I have for so many years now. Something like that just doesn't go away with a really poorly played game. I've got your back, no matter what! :)

Best Place Traveled to: Well, I didn't travel anywhere new this year (lame, I know) but I did get to go back to Lake Havasu earlier this year. It was so fun to be there with Ash-face and her family. We had a great week even though Ashley was pulling for the Heat in the playoffs. *shakes her head at you* I still love you, don't worry :) I'm so glad I was able to come out for that week! Lot's of great memories. And not to mention coming up for Conference later on! We got to sing outside of the conference center by all of the protestors. That has my name written all over it! Such a fun weekend! I got to see Kami a few times too which you can't beat. I have some of the greatest friends!

Best Video on YouTube: Holy DOUBLE RAINBOW! hahahaha Oh my word. Halla showed this to JaeLyn and me on Christmas Eve. So hilarious! WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! We were laughing about this for a good while. Hats off to you, my friend. I'm glad you can find joy in something like a double rainbow. I hope I can get that excited about a naturally occurring phenomenon someday :)

Best Thing I’ve Done: Well, this could be kind of strange, but I would have to go with dating Jason. Weird, for sure, but honestly, even though I'm still struggling with it more than I would like, I learned so much from that relationship that I don't think I would have been able to learn otherwise. And I continue to learn too, even though its over, which is good. I know this is one of those blessings in my life that I don't quite see as a blessing just yet, but will later on. My relationship with my Savior has grown even more and I've been able to understand the healing power of the Atonement just a little bit better than I had before. I've also had a couple of related experiences recently that have really born witness to me that Heavenly Father does know me. He knows exactly what I need to hear to make the sting a little bit lesser and the experience just a little bit easier to bear. It's amazing to me how much the Lord plays an active role in our lives and how He allows certain things to happen to some people in order to help someone else in the future. I know none of that probably makes any sense to anyone except a few of you, but just know that I am grateful for my Father in Heaven who loves me and that while I still don't understand everything about why it had to end, I know that He knows and eventually, things will be better and I can look back at this experience with a joyful and thankful heart. Here's hoping that that day is sooner rather than later :) I'm so blessed to have had the opportunity to date someone of Jason's caliber. He's a fantastic man and he will go far with everything he does and I couldn't be more grateful to him for the time we shared together. I hope that someday, I can find someone as amazing as he is. It was definitely a fantastic experience and makes me excited for what the future holds for me.

Coolest Thing I got to see: I was able to witness one of the best moments in NBA history...the Mavs winning the PLAYOFFS. Booyeah, suckers! :) Not that I had anything to do with their big win, but I'm considering it a victory of mine. 2005 playoffs hurt pretty bad, so I was extra excited about this one. We're Rowdy, Loud and Proud! I puffy heart love y'all! (Please see the previous award they won for referencing). Look at how good they look. Yeah...that's right! *teethy grin* Not to mention that Sandy took me to a regular season game earlier this year and our seats were like row 11 or something awesome like that. I may have melted from joy. Great times!

Greatest Loss: This one is easy...Reggie. I miss you! Most of you know by now, I traded good ole Reg in for my new Honda CRV. 2012 baby! I do LOVE my new car, but I admit, I cried when they drove the Reg-meister away. When I went back to pick up my new car, they told me that they had already sold my old car to someone else (not even a week later). I just looked at them in surprise and said, "Really?" Please tell me you fixed the door paneling that was being held up with push pins? haha true story. I was convinced that they gave me the trade in money based off of character and not parts. :) I still need to name my new car though. I think I've decided that it's a boy, but I can't find a name that really suits him yet. I was thinking of something like Rhett (for Rhett Butler of course) because he's so snazzy and fabulous, but that doesn't really work. I am accepting ideas so please let me know if you have any recommendations. But Reggie, please know that you will never be replaced in my heart. We had some fantastic memories! I was talking to Laura the other night and we were laughing about the blood on the passenger side seat belt from her nose haha Great memories! That car was LOVED. XOXO

Best thing crossed off my bucket list: This was a good year...I got to cross off two things but the winner this year is number 59: Be in a flash mob. (the other was save up to buy a brand new car. CHECK!) Seriously though, the Zumba flash mob was so much fun! I love Zumba so much! It has been such a great outlet! Ever since my surgery I haven't been able to dance or teach really and now that I'm back on my feet again (literally!) I couldn't make everything mesh to teach or to find classes to take again. Zumba definitely isn't challenging as far as technique and such like dancing is, but it is definitely hard if you know how to push yourself and it's so much fun. Love, love, love it! We did a Zumba flash mob in the middle of Southlake Town Square at the beginning of this month and it was actually a lot of fun. Dan and Audi came so that was fun (a little embarrassing but whatever haha). We also did a Zumba demo in the North East Mall on Christmas Eve. Good thing Josh was shopping there that day too! hhaha man...great timing y'all. And by great, I don't mean it : ) Either way, it was so much fun! Thanks Eliana for being such a great instructor and for pushing me during class to be stronger! Booyeah! (speaking of which, I have class in 45 minutes...I should get movin!)

Greatest discovery: New York and Company. Holy crap, this store is nothing but trouble for me. I love it so much! They email me 50% of entire purchase coupons...you can't beat that! Let's just say that I've done my fair share of damage in that store and I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. Turns out my friend Carolyn loves the store too...looks like we're going to do some damage together this week :) Boo freaking yeah! Brace yourself NY&C. Here we come!

Best Production Seen: Amy, Katie and I actually had season tickets to Dallas Summer Musicals this year and I must say that I was quite disappointed. I really enjoyed Guys and Dolls though. That was probably my favorite of the year. I'd never seen that one before and I had always heard how much everyone loved it. Next year will be fabulous. PETER PAN BABY! I'm still hoping to convince my Grammy to come with my sister and me to see it. So many funny memories. For those who don't know, my Grammy had the Broadway Peter Pan taped on a VHS and as a kid, whenever we'd go visit her, I would sit and watch it over and over again because I loved it so much. Which, by default, made everyone else hate it! I can still sing all of the songs and I still get pee-my-pants excited when I talk about getting to see it in July :) My sister is so good to go with me. I know the memories will all come screaming back to her. haha. Can't wait! "If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow UP! Not me!" *jumps for joy*

Best Purchase: Well, I'm not giving another award to my new car because I don't want to, so I'm going to go with Just Dance 3 for the wii. Absolutely fabulous. It may be my favorite video game as of right now. I wouldn't go so far as to say of all time because, hello...Mario All Stars and Mario Kart on Super Nintendo? Yeah, you can't beat those. But seriously, Estrella and I play quite often and I love it so much. It's so ridiculously fun! Mostly because it is, in fact, ridiculous, but that's usually a good indicator that I'll love it. :) I highly encourage all to try it. We were looking through the songs you can purchase and there is one where they do the Carleton. I can't wait to let Puden try his luck at that one. He'll probably high score it on his first try. Blow them out of the water, brother! So fabulous. If you ever have the urge to play, please call me. Even at 3 in the morning. Okay, maybe not, but most other times, I would be more than happy to drop what I'm doing to play :) I just wont sacrifice sleep. Sorry...that's a little important to me. and we know I tend to get grouchy when I'm tired :)

Best Discovery: Texas State Fairs. I'd been before but I didn't really experience the State Fair as it should have been experienced until now. How can you not love crazy rides, greasy foods and friends? Yeah, awesome! The best part is that they have pig races there too. We were going to try to milk a cow, but we missed it. Probably due to the fact that I was indulging in fried bacon or oreos or something fabulous like that. Either way, pig races just aren't the same without you Grammy. Way too many good memories!

Best part of 2011: BABY TYSON CAME! :) Oh my word I love this kid so much. There’s nothing like some good Syd, Malla and Tyson time. He has the cutest smile and stole my heart from day one! The girls and I had a lot of fun with a sleep over the night before and then spending the day together at the hospital and swimming and all kinds of stuff. Good times with the nieces. Man, I love all of them so much! A couple of weeks ago, I went over there to spend some time with them and I walk in and Malla is laying on the couch with a blanket and a movie already in and she just looks at me and says, “Auntie…I’m ready! The big person goes in the back and then I’ll snuggle in once you are ready, okay?” hahah so cute! I don’t know what I ever did without them!

Looking forward to the most in 2012: I'm planning to go visit Laura and Alex in Chicago for St. Patrick's Day. I've always wanted to see the river dyed green for the occasion so I figure that there isn't going to be a better time to do it than now! I can't wait. We've already chatted about tentative plans and such so it should be fun. Now I just have to save up the money to do it :) So excited, LP!

2011 has been good but I couldn't be more excited for 2012 and what is in store. Should be pretty fabulous! Make it a great year or not, the choice is yours :) XOXO

Hats off to Harry Potter!

2011-08-01T21:16:00.013-06:00

As promised, its August so here is another blog entry. :)

I've reached a certain, dreaded milestone in my life. The one where I realize that there are no more new Harry Potter movies or books to get excited for. No more midnight showings and Barnes and Noble excursions. No more taking off work and living off of Doritos so that I can finish the book in as close to 24 hours as possible, with minimal napping. No more turning off my phone and changing my answering machine to let people know that I'm reading Harry Potter and can't be bothered, so I'll call you back when I'm done. (yes, all of these things happened multiple times). No more. No more. No more. So sad. So, in order to properly say goodbye, I have found this little Harry Potter survey to say farewell to a very large part of the last 10 years of my life. hahahaha so dramatic, but I don't even care! :) So, here it goes!

#1. Who is your favorite character?
Fred and George Weasley. Hands down. I like to imagine that if I were at Hogwarts, I would have been their friend. We maybe even would've been more of a trio than just the two of them. I would definitely be okay with that. I had a dream once where we went out to lunch together. It was awesome.

#2. Who is your least favorite character?
Dolores Umbridge. Her sick little chuckle makes me irk. Plus, she likes cats. That should tell you something right there.

#3. If you were one of the Professors who would you be?
Professor McGonnagall. She freaking rocks. Definitely top 5 in favorite characters.

#4. If you were one of the students who would you be?

Easy! Hermione Granger. Please see below :)

#5. Which one is most like you- Harry, Hermione, or Ron?
Well, seeing as how Hermione is the only girl, she takes the cake on that one. Plus she's a goody goody and I usually don't like doing things that would get me in trouble. Love her.

#6. Which house would you be in?
I was put in Hufflepuff once, but I was kinda mad about that. "Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders!" haha so lame. Gryffindor all the way!

#7. What position would you play in quidditch?
Probably the seeker. I'm better off staying out of all the action and having my own job that really doesn't have to do with a bunch of other people when it comes to sports. At least if you want to win, anyway haha.

#8. Which owl would you be? Hedwig the Snowy Owl, Errol the Great Gray Owl, Pigwidgeon the Little Owl, or Percy's Screech Owl?
Probably Errol. He flies into windows and such. Yup. That sounds like me :)

#9. Which would you bring to Hogwarts- an owl, cat, or toad?
Definitely an owl. Cats suck and I would probably lose a toad.

#10. Which subject would you be best at?
Probably potions. That would be fun.

#11. Which subject would you be worst at?
Ancient Runes. I'm definitely not gifted with that sort of stuff.

#12. Which store would interest you the most in Hogsmeade?
Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. If that's where the Weasley twins are, that's where I'll be! :)

#13. Who would you want to go with to the Yule Ball?
This should be easy! Fred Weasley. He's my favorite of the two, but only by a little!

#14. Who would be your number 1 enemy?
Bellatrix Lestrange. Usually, I would say that us chicas gotta stick together, but she's ridiculous! I would like to sit down and pick her brain a little though to find out why she's so crazy!

#15. What would your patronas be?
Can a patronas be a penguin? I think mine would be. haha. Yup, pretty sure that's it.

There you go! Feel free to do it yourself. So good.

And in better news, look at how fabulously cute my new nephew is. Isn't this the cutest picture ever? He's such a little bundle of joy! I'm so glad he's here. It's weird to think of how things were before he got here. I can't wait for all of the fun memories I'll get to have with him too! I need to brush up on my ninja and Jedi skills :) Love you so much, Baby T! XOXO

It was 1980 somethin

2011-05-13T16:24:00.004-06:00

I remember a while back, I decided that I would include in each post that I wrote, ways that I saw the Lord’s hand in my life. Well, we’ve all noticed that I haven’t quite kept up my end of that deal very well. So, before I start my next rampage, let me just say that I am so grateful that the Lord knows me personally; just like He knows everyone personally. He has a plan for me and more often than not, it looks nothing like my plan for me. Looking back at the last two years, I have come to know that the Lord’s plan is always better than mine. No matter how appealing the other road may look. It took me a long time to get passed the fact that I felt that I had to give up a lot of things that were important to me in order to move back home after I graduated, which is what I felt the Lord wanted me to do. Not to mention that I have also felt that I’ve had to give up some things since I’ve been home that I really wanted because I didn’t feel right about them. Some of you know that I tried just about everything to have things my way after graduation, even though I knew, months before, that I was fighting what I felt was right. It wasn’t until more recently that I looked back at those things that were so important to me then, and realized just how amazing being home has been. It doesn’t seem like such a sacrifice anymore. Sure, there have been a lot of hard times and a lot of rough spots, and I am nowhere near where I ever thought I would be at this point in my life. I have had to face certain things that I’ve never really had to deal with before and it has been a wonderful growing and learning experience. I am grateful that the Lord puts challenges, people and situations in my life that have helped me to become more like the person that my Heavenly Father wants me to be. My testimony in His gospel grows daily as does my faith in His timing. I have jumped over, what seem like, very high hurdles that I don’t know if I would have been able to clear, had I not come home when He prompted me to. Everything has a purpose and the Lord will never leave us alone without guidance and direction. Times are getting darker and the world needs that guidance more so now than ever. I am so grateful that the Lord has provided us with scripture and modern day prophets and apostles to help us go and do what He wishes for us to do and to give us hope when it seems like the world around us speaks nothing but sadness and despair.

Whew…I feel better :) Now, on to my post.

We have all heard the phrase, “April Showers bring May flowers,” right? Well, I think April got a little carried away. Not that I’m complaining at all. I absolutely LOVE the rain and sometimes it’s just fun to run outside and get drenched :) Due to the intense tornado season that we have had thus far, it has been raining quite a bit. Although, in all fairness to me, it may always be like this and my 5 years up in Utah made me forget how much it actually rains in Texas during the spring. Provo was a place where I wasn’t at all surprised should I wake up one morning in September and find that there is a new blanket of snow on the ground. Call me sarcastic when I say, “Awesome.” That was definitely not one of my favorite parts of Utah, although I have some mighty fun snow memories :) But, that’s totally irrelevant, so on to the next!

Let me set the stage for you:

Its lunchtime and I am heading out of the office to go lunching with Meredith and Mallory. I look out the window and what do I see? (popcorn popping on the apricot tree!...haha sorry, I couldn’t resist. Gotta love a good Primary song). It is DOWN POURING. Literally, it’s hard to see very far in front of me. And the wind is blowing like crazy, which helps. I was hungry so naturally, I didn’t want to put off lunching any further. So, I pull out my new umbrella that I bought a couple of months ago. (Side note to the story: I decided that it was about time to upgrade to a new umbrella after our first big rain storm because the one I have been using was probably purchased in the 80s or early 90s, judging by the pattern. Not to mention that I can remember my mom using it when she would walk with us to Elementary school. That sucker is old and I don’t quite know how I ended up with it, but needless to say, it has inspired conversation among a few people because it is THAT awesome looking :). Because of its age, I have often wondered if it would be there to get the job done when I needed it most, hence the investment in a new umbrella.) Anyway, I open my new purchase with anticipation and excitement of finally getting to see it in action, as I walk out to my car. Well, much to my dismay, a gust of wind blows and that sucker turned inside out and broke like…something that breaks pretty easily…like the class of the Lakers when they are losing real bad to the Mavs. *smiles* It didn’t even put up a good fight. I was little disappointed. I’m pretty sure the exact words that came out of my mouth were, “WHAAAAT?!” (said like the Minions on Despicable Me…great movie by the way) Needless to say, I was quite wet when I finally arrived at my car.

You may find yourself wondering why something as small and pointless as this would inspire a blog post. Well, for today’s blog post, I’m giving a shout out to things made in the 80s. That’s right: yellowed appliances, VHS tapes, ugly umbrellas and *thinks* HA! ME! I’m talkin' resilient, downright good workmanship stuff. They just don’t make things like they used to, as proven by my near drowning experience. What’s up with people trying to work the system and making things cheap? I want to know that the next time I buy an umbrella (which probably won’t be until my trusty ugly kicks the bucket), that it is going to last for another 30 years. This may be a little unreasonable, but the bar has been set, my friends. There’s no turning back. $10 bucks says that if I go over to my parent’s house right now and I plug in that nasty, old, yellow phone, it will still get the job done. If something is still being used and was once white, but now looks like egg yolk, that sucker was a dang good purchase. Really though, things are cheap these days and I don’t mean in price. Remember when gas was like $1.00 a gallon? Those were the days! Anyway, I really just want to say, thank you 80s for producing fantastically, durable things so I don’t have to keep buying new stuff. :) Granted, I only have a few VHS tapes left, but I think that’s mostly to do with the fact that my VHS player (which was purchased in 2005 by the way) is about dead. Shocker. I don’t know why I’m surprised though. The DVD portion of that bad boy pooped out a long time ago. On that note, can I just ignore anything that comes out after Blu-Ray? I don’t want to rebuild my collection again...

Anyway, that’s my shout out, my tribute, whatever you want to call it. 80s…I’m thankful for ya. Plus, I was born in the 80s, so you know it has to be good *teethy grin*. If you see me when I’m super old and probably look a little worn out and yellowed, just know that I stayed true to the expectation and hopefully, worked my butt off to get that way! Life wouldn’t be worth living without a little adventure and hardship and a LOT of hard work and fun. Live it up, man! And word of the wise: If you aren’t a Mavs fan yet; now would be a great time to convert. Just sayin’ :) Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours and go out and have an adventure today! XOXO

JAMODI!

2011-02-26T11:03:00.009-07:00

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!

2011-02-08T18:58:00.004-07:00

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

2011-02-01T12:24:00.003-07:00

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

Fare thee well, 2010!

2011-01-06T16:51:00.007-07:00

With the New Year comes new goals, new aspirations, and of course, new Auntie Awards (please refer back to the 2009 Auntie awards if you are completely lost already)! I know everyone is so excited, as you should be :) So, without further ado, here’s to 2010!

Best Music Artist: I don’t know that this counts as a music ‘artist’ but I am completely in love with the Glee soundtracks. The show itself is kind of raunchy at times so I’m not too fond of it, but I L-O-V-E the music, so I just download the music from Itunes and sing along. The fun part of the show is that their lives are like musicals, just like mine…although, mine isn’t quite as cool because usually, I’m the only one singing unless I get my sister involved :) The best is, when at work, I’ll have my headphones in and I’ll randomly hear Heather say, “What are you listening to, Tara?” “Sorry, was I singing again?” “Yes.” Hahaha I can’t help it. I must sing all of the time. My good friends at PBSI always seemed to catch me too. I guess it’s just one of those things that I’ll never grow out of. I also am recently in love with Daughtry, so maybe they get the runner up award if there is such a thing :)

Most Listened to Song: This one is a little harder than last year. David Archuleta’s ‘Crush’ blew every other song out of the water. This year, I’ve had so many song crushes that it’s hard to pick just one. I think I might have to go with ‘No Air’ by Chris Brown and what’s-her-face. Not because it’s my favorite song or anything like that, but ever since it came out back in, what? 2009? 2010? I don’t remember…either way, it has been the song on my alarm ever since then. I randomly switch it out if the month has a holiday or something fun, but it is my default alarmer. So that you do not think I’m COMPLETELY crazy, in all fairness, while I was at BYU, I only listened to the very beginning so as not to wake Emmy up. Although, I don’t think that worked so well. It’s an alarm. That’s what is supposed to happen. We always laughed about it though *remembers* “Tell me how I’m ‘spossed to breathe with no air, air, air” *smack* It’s a good thing the off button is almost as big as the snooze button. I listen to the whole thing now though, so I can try to wake up a bit before attempting to take a stab at my day. Sometimes, I’m grouchy when I first wake up…at least when it’s dark outside. So really, instead of sometimes, I mean all the time. :)

Best Movie Released in 2010: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. No brainer. So good. Definitely not a feel good movie, but clearly the best HP movie that has been released. I’m ‘pee-my-pants’ excited for part 2 though. It’s going to be fantastic. I can feel it. One of the best parts of this movie is Fred and George. Although, they’re always the best part of any HP movie, but still. They were especially funny in this one. Or the part when there’s 7 Harrys and Fleur is like “Bill, don’t look at me. I’m hideous!” hahah I think I laughed so hard that I was crying. Although, I might blame that on the fact that it was midnight and I was very tired.

Best New(er) TV Show: The Big Bang Theory. I haven’t watched a whole lot of it, but the episodes I’ve seen, I’ve loved. So hilarious. Probably because I’m partial nerd myself so I can somewhat identify with those crazies. My favorite character is probably Sheldon. He’s too funny. If I had to have a friend out of any of that group, it would probably be him.

Biggest Waste of Time: I’ll have you know that I have actually quit Farmville! (the winner of this award last year) Yes, I actually DELETED the application off of my facebook. No need for temptation from those sorts of shenanigans. Although, mostly it was because I just had no time to play anymore and I was tired of getting all of those posts and invites. Blah. Facebook clutterers. If you are a fan of Farmville and I have just offended you, please accept my deepest, sincere apologies, but know that I meant every word of it haha. As far as new waste of time from this year…probably Amazon. I love Amazon. I’m on there all the time trying to see if there is something that I need/want that I can get for cheaper than in stores. Yes, I’m a penny pincher and probably with things that I shouldn’t pinch, but I do. What of it? :) Amazon.com, I love thee and I probably won’t quit you any time soon.

Best Place Traveled to: Nauvoo. Hands down. Although, this one was kind of easy. Everywhere else that I traveled this year were places that I’d already been before haha. Still, it was fantastical. I LOVED it. Definitely a cool experience that I hope I get to have again someday.

Best Video on YouTube: HA! I can’t get enough of the Watermelon business from the Amazing Race show. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched this video thousands of times (okay, maybe only like 10 or 12) but it only just came into my life about a month ago. This is definitely something that would happen to me! Poor thing…that HAS to hurt but really it never gets old!

Best Thing I’ve Done: Hmm…I’m kind of lazy these days haha jk jk. I’ve had a great time volunteering once a month at the Battered Women’s Shelter. Doesn’t quite add up to going through the temple like last year, but this has been pretty good. Right now I’m trying to get in to Psych hospitals/centers to try to put my feelers out for different opportunities so maybe I’ll have fun stories sometime soon :)

Coolest Thing I got to see: I was able to see 2 of my friends get married in the temple this year. It SHOULD have been three, but due to unfortunate circumstances, I missed Jen and Moose’s wedding *sighs* Curse you I-15! Either way, it was a wedding filled year (as per the usual) but I actually got to be there for the ceremonies this year so that was extra special. So, a BIG thank you to Jen and Brent, Marisa and Eric and Emily and Tim for inviting me to be a part of your special day! I am so glad I was able to go! This goes for Kami and Chapan too but they were 2010 haha. Either way, yay for getting to be there.

Greatest Loss: As gross as this sounds, I miss the chunks from my foot that still haven’t grown back yet. Haha. For those of you who didn’t know, I had surgery on my foot back in May. 5 incision sites about the size of bullet holes. (it felt like I was getting shot in the foot every time I walked on it too. Super fun haha). At any rate, two of the spots never healed properly so I’ve been going back to a different doctor to get it taken care of. It’s healing, slowly but surely, but I’ll be glad when my foot is 100% better. Not to mention that walking without pain will be super nice! Although, I might also have to call this one a tie (which is okay because I said so) with my old phone. I broke in half one day. Literally. I probably dropped it. I don’t even remember. It was all a rush of emotions. So, so sad! RIP, ghetto flip phone. I miss you. You stuck with me for a good chunk of time even though I river danced on you and dropped you on hard surfaces all the time. My heart yearns for you.

Best thing crossed off my bucket list: Number 43: Getting to Decorate a house however I want to. So fun! Obviously, I don't have everything I want for the house, but holy geez, that would take a lot of money and that just ain't gonna happen. I definitely love the house though. It feels like home and that's what matters most :)

Best Production Seen: Phantom of the Opera. I’d never actually seen this one in play form. Just the movies. Holy crap, it’s so cool in person! I LOVED it. So good. Minus the fact that I was super sick and couldn’t really feel my head, but hey, I can’t complain :) Love, love, love!

Best Purchase: My green make up for my Elphaba costume. That stuff was awesome! Not to mention that I have more left for when I want to be her again haha. Nothing was better than when I accidentally flushed the make up remover down the toilet though. Thanks for coming to snake it out, Jeremy and JaeLyn! I'd probably still be a little green if it weren't for you :) Not that that would be an incredibly terrible thing, but still. Good times, good times.

Best Discovery: Hobby Lobby and Kirklands. I’ve known these places before and shopped there too, however, I didn’t really APPRECIATE them for their awesomeness until this year. Seriously, I could probably spend all day in these stores and be just fine. I’m all about nice/fun house decorations and crafts for super cheap. That has my name written all over it!

Best Roommate: This is an easy one. AMY you win! :) Although, if I had more than one roommate this year, it would still probably be you. Thanks so much for being so amazing! You have done so much for me and I’m so grateful to you for always being there for me on those crazy nights when I’m just having a hard time or when I really just want IHOP because I’m craving it so bad *teethy grin* You’re the best! XOXO

Best Product of Facebook Stalking: In a strange way, this one is still relevant this year even though I really haven’t spent much time on Facebook lately. When my phone broke. I didn’t have any of my numbers because I was super smart and saved all of them to my phone and not to my SIM card. Nice, huh? Either way, there were a few times when people would text me exciting news about getting married or whatever and I would have no idea who it was. I would ask and sometimes I would get no reply, so I’d turn to facebook and figure it out that way. Recent status or relationship changes can be very helpful :) So, Facebook, even though you are a waste of time, a portion of me still loves you. Thanks.

Most Patient Award: I might have to give this one to Heather. Holy crap work has been CRAZY recently and it’s about to get worse for the next 4 months or so. That’s right, I said it…4 MONTHS. Good grief. Three of our HR team members are going to Afghanistan to work on a transition for a new Task Order that we were awarded so at some points, it’ll just leave Andrea, Heather and I and Heather isn’t even really on the HR team…just by association because we love her and she technically should be anyway. But through it all, she’s laughed and cried with me at all of the ridiculousness. Nothing helps more than our trips to Olive Garden to just talk it out! Thanks for everything, lady! I love thee. DynCorp would be absolutely insane without you!

Looking forward to the most in 2011: This is a new award for this year. I’m not exactly sure which to pick. I have a lot of smaller goals and things that I’d like to accomplish but I think I’m most excited about learning to play the piano. Amy is going to teach me so hopefully we can work something out soon. I took lessons back when I was in 3rd grade or something like that but then we moved and I never picked it up again because I was focusing more on dancing and such. I’m kind of excited although, I don’t want people thinking I can play well and making me play during church. That makes me nervous. So maybe I wont learn how to do anything but the top hand hahaha. We’ll see. It should be fun!

2010 was a great year and I'm looking forward to what 2011 brings. Congrats to all of the Auntie award winners this year and I hope you all have a fantastic 2011! Make some good, attainable goals and stick to 'em! Oh, and go Mavs! :)

Yes, its Christmas time!

2010-12-03T16:49:00.009-07:00

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. People are generally more giving and kind and there is that special ‘feel’ in the air you know? Not to mention that now I can sing songs at the top of my lungs, whenever I want, and the looks I get from people aren’t QUITE as strange :) And it is always a wonderful blessing to be reminded of what the true meaning of Christmas is all about. I’ve decided to discuss some of my favorite parts of Christmas, in no particular order, and I use the term ‘favorite’ very loosely. :)

1) How is a song that talks about a man trying to convince a woman to stay the night with him because ‘baby, it’s cold outside’ considered a Christmas song? I don’t get it. It’s kind of disturbing. Nothing about that song screams Christmas to me, except for the fact that its cold. Could that be an all-the time-song in, say, Alaska? I think it should be. Alas, disturbing as it is, it still remains one of my favorite songs. Every time I hear it, I can’t help but think of Elf and how much I love that movie. It may just be one of the most quotable movies of all time, right along with While You Were Sleeping. “Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?” “Wait, I forgot to give you a hug!” “You’re not Santa. You smell like beef and cheese. You sit on a throne of lies!” And the list could go on. Fantastic.

2) For some reason, between my sister and I, someone always knows what they are getting for Christmas before December even happens. And if not, they find out before Christmas morning. I know, I know, most of you may be thinking, well, say you get Mavs tickets for someone for a Christmas present and the game is before Christmas, you’d have to give it early. I’m not talking about giving them early. I’m talking about can’t keep it a secret any longer because we are so darn excited about it and it slips. Or, in my case a couple of nights ago, just convincing myself that she’d see it before hand anyway, so I just showed it to her haha. Sorry, Amy. You knew this about me when you agreed to be my roommate :) I’ve known what my sister was getting me since early November. Possibly late October. It’s how we roll. My favorite was the Mavs tickets episode of 2002 or whatever year that all went down. My sister made all of us PROMISE with every fiber of our beings (yes, I did just say that) that we wouldn’t say anything to Ben about the most excellent of excellent Christmas surprises. And then what happened? We’re all on the phone together and she is telling my brother about it, forgetting who is on the phone with us. LOVELY. So funny. At least that one was an accident. I usually just get so excited about what I’m getting for people that I can’t wait, so I give it to them early and then it’s up to them whether they open it or not. Haha. I’m so lame.

3) Whenever my Grammy comes to Texas, we make her special sugar cookies and then frost them. While this is a fantastic tradition, it’s not my favorite part. A couple of years ago, we got Grammy some new cookie cutters so we used them (yes, these were probably given to her early because we were excited about it. Refer to number 2). There was this one cutter that we couldn’t quite decide what it was at first, so we made it and decided that we’d figure it out after the cookies were made and we were frosting them. I decided that at first glance, it looked like an eyeball. We later discovered that it was a Christmas ornament, but an eyeball is just so much cooler. So, naturally, I frosted it like an eyeball and every year since then, whether Grammy has been here or not, there is always that obligatory eyeball sugar cookie set aside for yours truly. :)

4) Mind reels that there could be more, right? And by the end of this post, I’m sure you’ll all realize just how ghetto fabulous our family really is. We have another tradition of making a gingerbread house together with all the girls. The first few years we had strokes of genius and decided to make cool things for the house with the left over frosting but it always turned out really bad. Please see exhibit A: The melting snowman. I believe we had something that turned out to look like a large pile of tires with snow on them the next year, but I’ll be darned if I can’t remember what it was initially supposed to be. So, there’s usually something very out of place on our houses each year and it’s fantastic.

5) It’s a new tradition to take Sydney to see the Nutcracker every Christmas. We took her for the first time last year and during intermission my sister was taking her to the bathroom and she asked if she was enjoying it so far. In a loud voice she exclaimed, “Mom, I just love it. But, why are none of the guys wearing any pants?” hahaha too classic and now a long standing joke in our family.

6) We all know the weird thing about my sister and I loving those Gerber baby meat sticks, yeah? (sorry, Meredith…this is turning out to be a ‘why my sister and I are ridiculously awesome during Christmas time’ post haha). Well, every year, Santa brings us some in our stocking (thanks to some tip offs from my dad :)) and then we eat them together and it is fantastical. I get excited about it every year, but I think it grosses everyone else out. It’s funny that for our picture every year, everyone has cleared out while we’re eating them except for the picture taker. The pour soul. They just don’t know how good they really are :)

7) At some point during the Christmas holidays, we have a Rock Band jam session. There's nothing better than watching my dad get down to some good ole Creedence Clearwater. Dang, I love my family!

8) Last, but definitely not least, if you aren’t bored yet, one of my other favorites of Christmas time is that, with all the family in town we play an endless set of board games. We are definitely a board game family and two of our favorites just so happen to be Cranium and Dominoes. There’s nothing like catching Grandmama cheating and have her act like she’s so surprised :) Love, love, love it. Now you know where I get it from *teethy grin*. We always play boys against girls at Cranium and we USUALLY win. At least when Meredith and I are both playing. We have that cool mind reading ability so the guys say that that is unfair, but I submit that they are just jealous. Two examples just to show how crazy it is. Earlier this year, Meredith was trying to get me to guess who the person was and she could talk like the person but couldn’t say names or places. It went a little like this:
Meredith: I am on a TV show.
Me: Lucille Ball?
Meredith: YES!
All the guys faces: *astonished*
hahah love it. We also had to make a list of something once and you have to get two out of the three to match or something like that. Not only did we get all three the same, but they were even in the same order. You can’t beat that. I’ll never forget the one year when the guys’ winning question was “Who was the founder of the LDS church?” Really? And they say we cheat.

There you have it. My Christmas in a nutshell. Of course there are thousands of other things that I love about Christmas, but my fingers kind of hurt so I’m calling it a day :) I hope you each have fun Christmas traditions that you’ll be able to be a part of this year and to always remember what the most important part of Christmas is: Celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for the Plan of Salvation and that Heavenly Father was willing to send his only Begotten Son to earth to atone for our sins. I’m grateful for this opportunity to celebrate that most wonderful blessing and to be able to share it with so many people. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Oh, and PS, its like 70 degrees outside. So fantastic. :)

Decisions, Decisions

2010-10-22T17:03:00.003-06:00

So, I need to just write my thoughts out, not necessarily for advice or for your gee-whiz factor, but it usually seems to help to 'talk' it out sometimes...

I've been thinking a lot about going back to school lately. Funny since my mom just graduated and we all laughed about none of us ever doing the school thing again. It's always been on the back of mind since I got accepted into the Dance/Movement Therapy masters program in Colorado. For those who don't know, I ended up rejecting that offer to move home since I felt like that's where the Lord needed/wanted me. It wasn't TOO heartbreaking though...while I was at the interview in the school, I just didn't feel right and I realized that that wasn't what the Lord wanted me to do, so it's not like it was a hard decision, but still a desire of mine to get a masters degree.

I've always thought that I would, growing up...not sure why, exactly, but I always have. The problem is, is I don't really know what I would get it in. There isn't a dance/movement therapy program here and I still feel like this is where I need to be for various reasons, so whatever program I do should probably be local. I've thought of doing online classes, however, my learning style is definitely not reading and absorbing...its more visual and auditory, for sure, so being in a classroom is important to me. But that runs in to fitting it in while still working full time and maintaining some what of a social life. I can't work less because I need to pay for it, for sure, and I need to be active in church for my sanity and because well...it's not an option not to be :)

So the next question is, what would I major in? It's so weird to feel like I need to go back to school but have no idea what to go in to. I thought for a long time that I would like to go in to Conflict Resolution and Mediation. SMU has a good program that I could try to get in to. There is a fast track certificate program to where I could do that and still be a certified mediator in the court system, but no degree...kind of a bummer if you ask me. I think it's a 2 year program. To get my degree would be 3 or 4. I cant remember. Either way, I'm still not really crazy about going that direction. I was at one point, but that's kind of gone now and I'm not sure what else to consider at this point.

Where is all of this coming from, you ask? I've been talking about it with Amy for months now. I had kind of given up on it for a while, thinking, I have a job that I enjoy, so I'm good to go. But the more I think about it, the more I feel like I can amount to so much more than what I have amounted to. And I expect myself to reach my full potential, educationally...I just don't know which route to take. I was asked to give a talk on the importance of education on Sunday which was kind of funnily ironic and Adam asked me how my masters education pursuance (haha I don't feel like that's the right word..) was coming along, yesterday...it's coming at me from all angles! :)

Anyway, lots and lots to think about. I don't really want to go into the counseling field, but I THINK i would really enjoy working with Psych patients. Amy told me at one point that they were maybe looking for an activities director for the psych unit there which would be fun. But who knows...

There you have it. This is where my brain has been for the past few months...and dreaming about the GRE...ew lol :) XOXO

Let the Good Times Roll

2010-10-09T19:40:00.006-06:00

Guess who is the newest college graduate in our family?!?!? BOOYAH! Congrats Mom! I'm so excited for you. You've worked really hard and put a lot of hard work, sweat and tears into getting your degree. I can speak for all of us by saying that we are SO proud of you and SO happy that you are done :) The party was definitely good times! Look how fancy she is at our makeshift graduation ceremony...I just love my crazy family :) Unfortunately, this picture was taken about 20 times to try to get one without someone's eyes being close, but its the best you're going to get. Love, love, love you guys!

This weekend, my mom, sister, Amy and I went to Time Out For Women. Its like the mini equivalent of the Women's Conference that BYU puts on every summer. It was so fun to be there! Lots of fantastic messages and performing artists. There is a famous LDS pianist/songwriter, Michael McLean and he sings this song about adoption and its so fantasticly amazing. I know a few of my close friends who have walked the road of adoption and I cant imagine having to give up my baby. I guess it's a little easier knowing that you are giving them up for the opportunity to be in an environment with better opportunities and such. Still, I know it wasn't easy for any of them. At any rate, this is such a tender song and I love it :) He wrote it for a girl that was pregnant and decided adoption was the road she was going to take and she asked him to write a song to convey her feelings and emotions about the situation.

Fantastic, yeah? My favorite speaker was Brad Wilcox (all the others were fantastic, but he was either my Stake President or one of my professors at BYU...I can't remember) so, I have soft spot for him :). He talked about the scripture in 2 Nephi 25:23 that says, "For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do." He focused on the '...after all we can do' portion. He broke it down one word at a time and really focused on what this phrase means. At the end, he focused on the WE part of that phrase. He didn't use 'we' as all of us, God's children, but 'we' as me and Jesus Christ. That through the Atonement, He has made up all of the difference between each of us and our Heavenly Father so that we can return to live in His presence again. That, if we go through life, hand in hand, with Jesus Christ, and do what is required of us, each of us can make it back to Heavenly Father. I wont get more in to it because it got pretty deep/intense in an awesome way, but it was fantastic, nonetheless. Loved it! I'm definitely thankful for all of the knowledge that I have and the testimony that I have been able to develop throughout my life. I couldn't make it through much without the help of my Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and Holy Ghost. I love them :) And I love y'all! For now, I'm out. I hope y'all have a fantastical rest of your weekend and all that jazz :)

Holy Long Time!

2010-09-16T17:32:00.011-06:00

So, I realized that I haven't blogged in MONTHS...my bad! So much has happened since then, but to spare you from my usual game of 'catch up' I'll just tell you about my amazing trip to Nauvoo a couple weekends ago. But before I do that, I have a little something to say...

I absolutely LOVE that I get to go have lunch at my sister's almost every day. Seriously, its my favorite part of my week. I love the random phone calls I get from Malla about how I should just come over now. Today was especially hilarious! She went potty all by herself and my sister and I are telling her how proud of her we are and she runs up and gives me a big squeeze and says, "AUNTIE...I JUST WENT POTTY! I'M SO PROUD OF YOU!" hahaha apparently, that's just what you say when someone does something good! LOVE LOVE LOVE. Seriously.

Okay, so here's the Nauvoo breakdown...this was SUCH a beautiful place. I think my favorite part was that I didn't get reception hardly anywhere in the town except for inside Joseph Smith's first homestead. Talk about hilarious. I had my phone in my pocket (not sure why) and we're walking around in his house and it starts to vibrate...I admit, I was very confused all of a sudden. I exchanged a confused look to Amy, checked my phone and was followed by a, "really?" hahaha too good. Why not have reception in a home that was built in the 1700s! Isn't it beautiful though?

Around the corner is the Mansion House which was really cool as well. It's weird to think that this was the last place that Joseph was before he was taken to Carthage Jail. I cant imagine what Emma and their children felt like as they watched him ride away, not knowing if he'd ever come back....

One of my favorite places we got to see was the Cultural Hall. This was where they used to have all of their theatrical performances and then upstairs was a dance hall that had an indoor balcony for the band to play. Naturally, if I were alive back then, that would have probably been the place where I spent most of my time :) I couldn't help but think of what it would have been like to be there with close friends, all dressed up in old timey dresses and dancing the night away to live band. I can't even imagine! Sounds like good times to me.

The last big place that we stopped was Carthage Jail
where Joseph and Hyrum were both martyred. This place was fantastic. The spirit was so strong the moment you walked into the room where they were held. I can only imagine what was going on through their minds when the mob was about to attack. This is a picture of the window that Joseph tried to escape out of during the shooting.

Now, I must show you three of the most beautiful sites of Nauvoo, only because I love looking at the pictures :)

3) This was the entry way into the Pioneer grave site. So pretty. Not to mention that the weather couldn't have been more perfect, which added to the awesomeness. Because not all of the graves are marked, it's hard to path out how to walk...I definitely felt some of the ground moving out from under my feet and I've heard of ppl falling in before if they walk over just the right places so I'm pretty sure I split outta there after a good 10 minutes haha. Still, so beautiful though.

2) This was where the Trail of Hope meets the Mississippi river. And at sunset, you can see why it made the list! The trail of hope went down Parley street where it is lined with journal entries from saints who had to walk down that street in order to cross the river when they started their trek west. It amazes me how much faith they had to have to be able to leave everything behind, in the dead of winter, to go to a place that they had no idea about. And for most, this wasn't the first time they had to flee from oppression. I don't think I could do it that easily. They were definitely strong willed people. Nauvoo would have been very hard to leave behind.

1) HOLY FANTASTIC! I LOVE this temple. Everything is absolutely gorgeous inside and out. Not that the other temples aren't, but holy cow. This made up for the fact that everything closed down at 6pm and we had to go into Iowa for dinner...or eat PB&J sandwiches, but I think we were kind of spent on those since that what we had for lunch every day. Still...so fantastic. We were able to do baptisms and endowments twice. SO GREAT. I loved every minute of it. One of the best parts of Nauvoo is that no matter where you go, for the most part, you can see the temple in plain view and you'd pass it all the time. It's such a great reminder of what things are important in life, rather than letting wordly things get too prominent in our minds. Seriously...favorite part of the trip, easily.

In all, it was a fantastic trip. One that I'd easily take again. Next stop, Palmyra! :) Actually, next stop Utah but Palmyra is my next destination of choice haha. I would also LOVE to hit up the Jerusalem Center someday. If it was this fantastic to walk where Joseph Smith walked, can you imagine how wonderful it would be to walk where the Savior walked? Dude...I really hope I get that chance someday. Until then, its back to real life for now. Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours. Love you long time! XOXO

Short and Sweet

2010-07-23T23:35:00.004-06:00

Okay, so I know I haven't blogged in MONTHS...that's my bad. Things have been CrAzY around here lately and unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately for some haha), blogging has taken a seat on the back burner for a while. I did put two of my new favorite songs on here tho. (Love love love!) And that's gotta count for something!

Today's post will be short and sweet:

Short
I was at the store the other day and I saw something that immediately grabbed my attention and I thought to myself, 'self...that's retarded. Really?' What was it that I saw, exactly? Well I'll tell you. This girl had on a pair of cut off jean shorts. And by cut off, I mean cut off! The insides of her pockets were LONGER THAN HER SHORTS! I'm sorry...but there's a problem with that. If your pockets go further down your leg than your actual shorts do, you have a problem. And frankly, its a problem that I don't want to know about. Ew ew ew! Who thought that would be a good idea? I'm not sure. Why don't you just wear your underwear around outside...its basically the same deal. Yuck.

Sweet
So, we all know that I LOVE my nieces...my sister wrote a funny post about the things we aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. do for our nieces/grandkids while we're playing. She posted a bunch of pictures and it was fun to go back and look through all of them. Sadly, this wasn't even like half of the stupid things I've done in efforts to satisfy their imaginations. Here's the newest picture though...Malla and Syd and I end up dancing to 'Auntie's song' (aka Party in the USA) while I'm over there for lunch. One day, the girls decided that we had to have dress up gloves, but alas, we had none. So, what did they run and get? Socks...yes socks. And yes, I gave in to the peer pressure and joined in on the fun! Not exactly sure what I was doing in this picture, but when am I ever? :) Her post was funny to read tho...take a gander if you so choose. Anyway, friends, family and whoever else...I'm signing out for the night. Its definitely long passed my bedtime and I'm ready for some sweet dreams about Chuck and Ireland *hopes for something good tonight* XOXO

Jen, Moose & Provo!

2010-05-25T19:26:00.010-06:00

So, I got to go to Utah again and I absolutely LOVED every minute of it! I think it turned out so well because my flight was on time, non-turbulent AND (mind reels there could be more right?)I didn't get stranded anywhere....I don't think that has ever happened...maybe once, but that's pushing it haha. Naw, its usually not THAT bad, but I have been given the reputation of the cursed flyer as something unfortunate usually happens. I've just grown to expect it tho. Seriously tho...one of the best flights I've ever been on! Anyway...here's my trip in a nutshell (remember, this is basically my journal, so I wont be offended if you stop reading out of boredom haha):

Day one: Kami and Chipin came to get me from the airport which was awesome to see them. We went to Dee's for breakfast/dinner (still not as good as IHOP...sorry Chips)and then hung out and such. Lovely :) I hadn't realized how much I missed the mountains...and not to mention that it gets darn cold in Utah at night...I definitely forgot that. Its a good night here if I dont wake up sweating haha. This was also the day of the 'hooker story.' Should any of you be interested in hearing that one, you know how to get a hold of me :)

Day two: Kami and I went shopping because I needed pants. Good thing too because the only pair that I brought with me got a huge hole in an unfortunate spot on Saturday. While we were there, I felt like being sporadic and suggested that we hit up those little photo booths for a good time. The first one totally gypped us...it chose our background so it turned out to be these really gay "sugar and spice" thing. Weird. Needless to say, we tried it again at a different one...as luck would have it, the camera wouldn't move so we looked like floating heads, but all the better for good memories right? Classic. Definitely some great Kami time...Just me and my bestie! :) Later on, I went to Jen's grandparent's house to hang with her for a bit before her big day. It was so fun to have all three of us together again! (Me, Jen and Emmy Pants)...LOVE you girls SO bad! I always LOVE spending time with these girls...never a dull moment and always so therapeutic. Don't you love when you can be apart for so long and when you come back together, its like no time has gone by? So good! XOXO

Day 3: Jen & Moose's BIG day!!! (Yes, we call Brent, Moose...but that's a story for another day!) It definitely didn't start off well...there was a HUGE wreck on I-15 and it ended up taking us 2 1/2 hours to get to the temple when it should've taken like...40 minutes MAX. So lame....I was sad that I had to miss the sealing, but no sense in getting upset for something outside of our control right? They got married and that's what counts! I'm sure I'll get to go back to the Salt Lake temple some day and it'll be awesome! We had the luncheon which was fun and then the reception later on at night. It was SOOOO great to see Erin, LP and Alex at the reception. It was seriously, just what I needed...Emmy and Jen the night before...Emmy all day and then add in LP and Erin and its like YEAH BABY! We just talked about life and caught up with stuff...seriously, Erin...thanks so much for talking to me for so long. It was definitely an answer to prayers! We ended the night by cleaning off the car as the ppl decorating it thought that they were taking Jen's car (the one we were using) instead of Brent's...yeah. Good times. I vaguely remember falling asleep on Emmy's bed while they were talking, but who is surprised? haha. Either way, Emmy, Laura, Matty and I had a great time!

Day 4: Marisa came to get me from Emmy's house to take me down to Provo. It was so great to be on the old stomping grounds again! I went on many trips to the bookstore (haha sorry about that, by the way) and saw my old coworkers which was FANTASTICAL. They are going to publish an article about the study I was on when I left a year ago so they're going to involve me a little and keep me posted with that so I can add to my article library (all of one journal, but still...). I saw quite a few ppl on campus too, so that was great! Marisa and I went to Tucanos for lunch...its all you can eat meat, basically. I was definitely ready for a nap afterward, but I would have none of that! Later that night, I went out with Adam Arnett...we went to Los Hermanos for dinner, to Sammy's for Pie Shakes (yummy), stayed around for the outdoor concert and then went to our designated Star Gazing spot and chatted it up for a while...mostly because there were definitely no stars this time *sad*. The night ended with getting down poured with rain...talk about good times! haha.

Day 5: started out awesomely with a trip to the Provo temple with Adam Borgia and Marcus...thanks for the invite, Adam! It was definitely good to be back in there...so many great memories in that temple. We hit up Panda Express afterward and then I met up with Joyce! YAHOO! She was so nice to take me to see my friend, Meth (aka Michael), in the hospital. He had a motorcycle accident almost 2 or 3 months ago. He's still not doing all that great, but he's awake now...just not very responsive. I guess the damage was all done on his brain stem which complicates things quite a bit. It was really hard to see him like that...it definitely puts things into new perspective. At any rate, I'm SO glad that I got to go visit him. Afterward, Joyce and I met up with Klark at the park and we hung out for a while. MISSED YALL SO BAD! Then, I went on a date with LP and Alex and their friend, Michael...haha that's two sets of names of friends that are the same...I really should make friends with different names. Its definitely easier this way tho. haha. We had a great time tho. We hit up a pizza place and played phase 10. Mike was cracking me up tho...he LOVES Texas even though he's only 'lived' there for 3 days. lol. Loved it! So great...it felt like back in the day when I used to double with them a couple of years ago. LOVE LOVE LOVE you guys! XOOX

Day 6: I ended up recruiting some old timers into going to our old ward with me. It was so fun to be back and see our old bishopric! Definitely different, for sure tho. Brother Clay took us for a ride in his new "bumble bee" car which was FANTASTICAL. :) It was definitely good to chat it up with them tho. I definitely miss those men! They helped me do so much and helped me get thru so much during the last couple years of my BYU experience. LOVE YALL! After church, we partied it up at my place for a bit. Melly came over which was such a fun surprise. You always make me smile, Banjo Pants! :) Please come visit me soon! I didn't get nearly enough time with you! :) Then...it was time to go... Adam A came and got me and brought me to the airport and I had to say farewell to Utah.

The plane ride was definitely not as good as the first one, but it went by a lot faster (and yes, it was delayed haha). Time flies when you have a lot of things to reflect about and a Relief Society lesson to prepare :) In all, it was a fantastic trip and I loved, absolutely every minute of it. Thanks for all of the wonderful times, friends and for making time to spend with me while I was there for such a short time!

Its Update Time! :)

2010-04-28T20:06:00.011-06:00

Okay, so I realize that I haven't blogged since Dinosaurs roamed the earth, however, I've decided to repent of my sins and write so as to not disappoint. I distinctly remember telling Adam that I would write every Thursday so he had something to do during class...so Adam, if you haven't given up on me yet...this one's for you! And my apologies for not delivering the last, oh....15 blog entries. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Seeing as how I have neglected to write in the last two months, almost, I'm going to do a very short update from all the cool things that have happened since I last wrote. If you would like the full account of these activities, you may read my sister's blog as pretty much everything I do, is with her and she blogs much more than I do :)

Dancing the night away...

It felt so good once the dance recital was over :) So much stress had been building up with teaching and making the costumes and yada yada, but you know I loved every minute of it. Now that I'm done, all this free time has been kinda weird, but I'm soaking it all up. I'm sure I'll start teaching again once all this junk with my foot is over. Either way, the girls did great. There were a few bumps in the road, but I think it went pretty well. I really miss getting to teach those girls! They're so fun. I think one of my favorite moments from teaching was when one of my hip hop girls said, "Miss Tara...you're hip hop moves are just SOOOOO HIP!" hahaha so funny. You probably had to be there and know the girl, but it was just so funny because she's one of the shyest girls I've ever met and I got to see her come out of her shell so it was fun.

Arizona

I had so much fun with Emily! We did a lot of reading, relaxing, napping...yeah good times! :) It was fun to just relax and not worry about anything for a few days, although the airport on the way home was definitely not fun, but its all good. I made it home and that's what matters :) I think my favorite thing that Emily and I did was going to Borders to sit and read for a while...I seriously haven't sat down and read in a long time and I've missed that. But the top of my list is getting to go visit Beth, Sister Borgia and little Elsie Rae. I was sad that we didn't get to spend more time together, but I was definitely glad that I got to see y'all a little bit. Thanksgiving, Beth? Yeah? good....hahaha Love you guys! And Emmy, I had a BLAST with you, as I always do. I cant wait til May when we'll be in Utah for Jen's wedding! :) XOXO

Disney On Ice

LONG story short...Syd woke up with a fever and flu the day we were supposed to go to Disney on Ice. She had been so excited about it for MONTHS and she just laid on their couch and cried since she didn't think she was going to get to go. But...luckily, prayer and faith work! My sister and Syd (as I'm sure along with the rest of us) prayed all day that Syd would feel well enough to go. I would've hated to have to have my sister tell her she couldn't go because she was so sick. We decided to take her and she did just fine through the whole thing and LOVED every minute of it. It was more fun watching her than the ice skating! so great. Needless to say, we brought along the trusty barf bucket just in case :)

Malla's Birthday

I can't believe this girl is TWO! Man how time flies...One thing I learned...Malla LOVES Dora! haha Well, technically, I knew this already, but seriously...every present she opened, I'd see this excited look on her face and then hear her exclaim, "DORA!" hahah love, love, love it! She's so cute! I'm so lucky to have such awesome nieces! :)

Kami & Chipin

Kami and Chapan came to visit for a week and Malla kept calling him Chipin, so naturally, that's his new name :) It was so fun to see them! I needed a good Kami fix :) And as always, when someone visits, we got to go to BABES. YES....the best country fried steak, biscuits and mashed potatoes with cream corn. Dude, its good! We got to do our traditional facials and our playing with hair/back scratch trade offs....love that. Not to mention having all around good times, all the time. Our Cranium game was quite awesome! Loved it! That has got to be one of my favorite games to play. I was sad that I had to work while they were here, but we still had a good time! I miss you already, lovely head! Oh May...will you please come now?!

Temple Time

While Kami and Chipin (hehe) were here, we had the fantastic opportunity to all go to the temple together. We did an endowment session and then took my family names that I've been compiling to do sealings, afterward. It was such a tender and special experience. My brother and sister and Ben were there, Kami and Chipin, Ron Dude and Jeremy and JaeLyn. I was sad that all of our family couldn't be there to be a part of it, but I was glad that we were able to have so many of us there. It was so cool...for both of the families that we sealed together, all of the siblings that were there (either Breinholts or Andersons) were all sitting in so it made it even more personal and meaningful. The sealer was hilarious...he kept trying to figure out how all of us Andersons, Breinholts and Konkrights were related. I think he finally figured it out toward the end of the session, but lets face it...there aren't many compilations of family like us haha. It was so wonderful though. I wish we could do that every weekend! Lots of tears of joy for getting to do temple work for our family. Very special...I cant wait until we get to do it again :)

Women's Shelter-ness

Last night, I got to volunteer at the Presbyterian Night Shelter for women. It was such an amazing experience. For those of you, long time readers, you remember me telling you that if I could work anywhere and do anything, that that's what I want to do. I LOVED it and absolutely ate it up. There's just something about seeing the kids smile and get so excited to have someone new to play with that just brightens any bad day. This one little girl came running up to me and gave me this huge hug and said HEY! DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME?!?! With this huge smile on her face. How can you say no to that? By the end of the night, I had made good friends with around 4 or 5 of the kids there and it was just so much fun. My favorite was this little shy girl, Manya. She hardly spoke to me, but would just sit on my lap and play games with me. Towards the end of the night, I couldn't get her to stop talking! She was on a role and such a cutie! I hope I get to go back soon so I can play with them again :)

So there you have it...I tried to keep it short, but alas, it ended up long anyway! I'll try not to let the next two months slip by me before I write again :) Chao!

It's the small things in life...

2010-03-04T17:47:00.004-07:00

I’ve been thinking recently about some of my favorite moments in movie history. There are plenty…but the more I’ve thought about it, there are three moments that particularly stand out to me. One is more of a “wow…that really bites.” Like, more than your normal suckage factor. Another encompasses the feeling of “dang…that’s so absurd that its hilarious” and lastly, “How hardcore…I wish I thought of that.” So...here we go! We'll do the bad news first and work our way to the good :)

Movie Bite-age
Phantom of the Opera

One of the best musicals in my opinion, but the worst thing, ever, happens at the end. He’s crazy and in love with Christine and the whole, “I’ll kill Roul if you don’t stay with me” deal goes down. She decides to stay with him to save Roul’s life and because of her kindness, he lets them go, right? Great…that’s fantastic. Everyone is happy except for the crazy man. That’s not the bad part tho. One of the worst things happens after this point. As they are leaving, (I’m sure he’s heartbroken, by the way…no love, no friends, he just killed a bunch of people and he’s all alone in the dungeon thing again) and what does he hear? The two of them, singing about their love for each other. It’s like, lets pour some lemon juice on that insanely large gash in your soul, shall we? Hahaha Maybe because I’ve experienced something similar, it really gets me…although my experience was not quite the same though. I mean…there was no murder, no dungeons, but some crazy guys and some not so thrilling love moments. So, in a nutshell, pretty dull compared to a murdering, singing phantom, but I'll take what I can get. Haha Either way, Phantom…my heart reaches out to you and your lame situation :)

Movie Absurd-ness
Sleeping Beauty

This part just cracks me up…Aurora is in the meadow singing with the animals as per the usual, and Prince hottie comes along. They sing their song, all is well, right? The absolute funniest line is this… “Who are you? What’s your name?” And what are they doing when he says this? Snuggling by a tree... something doesn’t quite add up. Don’t get me wrong…snuggling by a tree is nice, and I have been called a ‘cuddle slut’ many a time in my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever snuggled with a guy who I didn’t know his name…not to mention snuggling with a guy that I met like 2 minutes before…and not really met but he found me while I was cavorting around in a forest. Kinda stalkerish and creepy if you ask me. Although, he’s hot, so if it happened to me, I’d most definitely let it slide. Please don’t think I’m blaming Aurora, because I’m not. I applaud her actually, and frankly, I'm a little jealous…but really…who does that?

Move Awesome-ness
Star Wars Episode 5

You all know the part that I’m talking about…they are about to lower Han Solo into the Carbonate chamber to freeze him. Leia says “I love you” as he is lowered…not knowing if she’ll ever see her true love again. And how does he reply? Like a pimp, he goes… “I know.” HA! Love it. Fantastic. None of this heart to heart mushy stuff from someone as hardcore and manly as Han Solo (one of my childhood heartthrobs by the way…and by childhood, I mean now) haha. The best is in episode 6, he tells Leia that he loves her and she comes back with an “I know.” BAM. Love it. I was watching a Star Wars documentary on HBO one time (yes…I’m a nerd. I know) and they did a little interview with him about that part, and I think I remember him saying that that was not what was in his script, which makes it even better. That was pure Harrison Ford awesomeness. You can’t beat that. Why wasn’t I born with Jedi powers? Princess Leia is so lucky…minus the part where she kisses her brother. Sick.

Anyway, its been a while since I've blogged and this was the best I could come up with in the short amount of time that I had. Our dance recital is tomorrow night, so stay tuned for cute videos and pictures of little girls in tutus, skirts and hip hop splendor! Until then, be on the look out for some of your favorite movie moments...

Overheard @ BYU

2010-02-09T19:20:00.002-07:00

Okay, I know I just posted like an hour ago...but this was too good to not share with everyone.

There is a facebook group called Overheard @ BYU. If you are on facebook, please give it a gander. Basically, people post things that they hear people say while they're walking around on campus or in class.

Example:
*In a religon class*
Teacher: Why are you obedient?
Student: Because I like pissing Satan off.
HA! Brilliant and probably only something you'd hear at BYU...although, most everything on this list is.

Here's another of my favorites:
*Guy saying to a girl*
"You have great birthing hips!"....sadly this doesn't surprise me.

"She's the weirdest girl I've ever met. I'm going to marry her...yup, I have to."

And one more personal favorite:
Professor, His 202- You all look dead. Wait- you all had this paper due last night, and this is a school where you don't drink coffee.
Anonymous student- Mid-terms.
Teacher- You all stayed up all night, didn't you?
*students nod*
Teacher- Without caffeine?
*students nod*
Class dismissed!

hahaha now you all know why I miss BYU so much. Never a dull moment :) Although, if you want to hear about another not so dull moment in my life, Heather blogged about my recent dating experience the other week...feel free to take a gander. Its pretty funny.

My New Abode

2010-02-09T18:06:00.005-07:00

I've had requests for pictures of my new house that I'm renting with Amy...so, as promised, here it goes! :)

Here's my bedroom! May I just say, thank you, Grandmama for picking great mattresses. :) I love this bed.

The little entry way when you walk in to the house...home sweet home!

This is where I spend my time watching Chuck and reading and all that jazz :) I'm grateful for slip covers as they turned my mom's old couches into something cute. Nothin like goin green :)

Here was my big project...this is the before picture.

And here is the after! :)
Through all of this, I have learned 3 things:
1. I have entirely too much stuff. It would surprise you how amazingly little I had to actually purchase in the decoration of this house
2. I still hate moving. Especially when its icy cold outside. Good timing huh? Pretty sure it was like 70 degrees the week we moved in and then Friday morning it dropped down to the 40s or something. BRRRRR
3. I'm still as OCD as I was before...I didn't sleep much knowing there were still boxes to be unpacked and/or dishes in the sink, etc. That may be something that I never grow out of.

I didn't take pictures of EVERYTHING...mostly because the computer room still isn't done yet :) But that's not going to be too exciting anyway. Its definitely not much, but its home...:)

It's Amazing What's Out There...

2010-01-31T12:49:00.002-07:00

Pardon the extreme blogging-ness all of a sudden. These things just keep happening/me thinking of them and I think to myself…hmmm, self…we should blog about that. So, here’s the next one:

Websites, websites, websites….what’s out there amazes me. Recently, I have stumbled across a really awesome website and another not so really awesome website, although, because of the horribleness of its nature, I find it very funny, albeit, sickening. So, let’s get the bad news out of the way first and end on a good note, shall we?

I saw a commercial the other day for a website called WhoCanISue.com. That’s right, Who Can I Sue .com….really? Are we that desperate for money that we’d hire a lawyer to tell our stories to and have them figure out who I could legally sue so I can get some money out of the situation? I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not spend the money, and more importantly, the time for something like this. It’s sad that people are going to these extremes. Is it just me? Or are people getting more nasty? More selfish? More just, downright inconsiderate? Don’t get me wrong…I am a firm believer that there are opposites in all things, so with the nasty come the more sincere, kind and all around amazing people who are even stronger than in times past. Either way…it’s sad that a website like this exists. Although, there are worse things out there, for sure.

Now, onto the hilarious website. There is a website that, probably most people are familiar with called “Stuff White People Like.” It’s pretty popular, especially with…you guessed it…white people. There are quite a few things listed, so it takes forever to read thru them all, but I’ve read some of them and I admit…I laugh, or sometimes chuckle, to myself. However, this is not the website I’m talking about. ‘Stuff BYU People Like” was inspired by the said website and is much shorter. I believe there are only 10 or 15 things, but it goes into great detail as to why we like these things. I seriously cried from laughing so hard. If you didn’t attend BYU, you may not get some of them, but either way, it’s a great look into what my life was like for 5 years. May I add one more to the list though? BYU People like putting their car in neutral and coasting down 900 East to see how far they can get. At first, I thought it was just my friend and I that did it. We’d hit the spot at the top of the hill, marked by the MTC (missionary training center), we’d shove our cars in neutral and see if we could get through all of the lights, all the way down to the bottom of the hill (about 2ish miles down), and into a parking spot in our apartment complex, right off of 9th without putting our cars back in drive. We would have these competitions to see who could do it the most in one week. The funny thing is, is while I was in the car with other people, they would do it to. Of course, we’d never draw attention to our gas saving scheme, but I noticed…mostly because I was looking. It’s fantastic and we all do it. Well, maybe not ALL…but a good chunk of us did it. Good times. I tip my hat to you, BYU…thanks for the good times and all the fantastic, ghetto memories! I miss thee… :)

What did she say?!?

2010-01-27T19:40:00.002-07:00

In 1995, when we moved to Texas, we were given a little something that others thought might help us to make the proper adjustments to living in the Lone Star State. We already knew it was hot and we’d need new wardrobes that consisted of t-shirts, shorts and sandals (which were hardly ever used in Washington…maybe for that one week in the summertime when it got above 80 degrees and it didn’t rain :)), but we never anticipated all of the new words we’d need to be familiar with in our day to day conversations with people. This is where the Texan Dictionary came in handy. Yes, there is an entire dictionary dedicated to helping outsiders understand the way we talk. Words like ‘fixin to’ and ‘ustacould’ are common phrases that we have come to learn and love (and yes, I have been known to use both in my every day vernacular from time to time). So, with that on my mind, I’ve decided to start y’all off on a little Dictionary to help you understand the words I use. So many times, I’ve used these words and people look at me like…wha? And to me, it’s common knowledge. So, now, if you ever hear me use these words (which are all non-Texan by the way), you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. If, by chance, I say something that does not appear on the following list, and it sounds Texan in nature (you can tell by the simple fact that it could be the combination of 2,3 or 4 – sometimes 5 – words put together merely because we’re too lazy to say the whole thing), then you can pick up your own Texan Dictionary at your friendly neighborhood Wal*mart. I guess you could always just ask too, but I promise, the dictionary is a great read.

Number 1: Stinky Cheese – yes…I actually call parmesan cheese, stinky cheese. If I remember correctly, this is what my grandpa used to call it. Something about it smelling n such. I grew up calling it that, and I still call it that, to this day. I remember the first time I used this word around non family members. I was at a friend’s house for dinner and we were having spaghetti. I asked them to please pass the stinky cheese, thinking that’s what everyone called it and wow…I wish everyone could’ve seen the crazy looks I got from everyone at the table. Not to worry though, we’re still friends and now I can call it stinky cheese whenever I want! :)

Number 2: Druthers – ….is this such a weird word to everyone? No one understands it and we’ve been using it in our house for years. I believe it’s a combination of “would you rather,” but I’m really not sure. You’ll have to ask my mom since it’s her fault that I say it in the first place. Used correctly, it’ll go something like this: “Does anyone have any druthers for what we have for dinner tonight?” Simple as that. I said it during Disney night once…again, the looks astounded me. No one knew what in the world I was talking about, and it literally confused me. I really should stop assuming that everyone uses the same words that I do. Druthers is a real word you know…I just looked it up on dictionary.com, so you know its legit. :)

Number 3: Peachie – meaning folder. Like the school folder with the pockets and sometimes the brads in the middle. It’s a peachie. Always has been and always will be. I’m not really sure where this came from. Everyone called it that in Washington, where I grew up, although, my roommate that lived just a town over had never heard of the word before…maybe we were the elite town in the area and could make up our own words?? Or maybe we were just all off our rockers….

Number 4: Quee – a combination of ‘sweet and cool.’ I usually reserve this word for use only when I’m around those who understand its meaning and power. But, now that those who read this will know about it, I guess I can use it more :). The great thing about quee is that, as long as it has a positive connotation, it can be used for just about anything. Ex: ‘that skirt looks so quee on you.’ ‘I rocked that test. Quee (said with the ee’s elongated and accompanied with a power knod/head shake),’ etc. This wonderful word came to be, one night during the early morning hours while staying at J Tal’s apartment for about a week or so. We were really tired from moving all of my stuff over there and, of course, we were out partying that night, or something fun. I was really tired, and she said something to me that was really cool for her. Instead of saying cool or sweet, it came out quee. If I remember right, I kind of sounded high or something…probably looked it too since I was so tired. We laughed (a lot) about the word and started using it in the magnet poems that we’d write while bored at work. We also made up the words nessing and truthtion, by combining two magnet words together, however, I don’t use those enough to warrant them making the dictionary. The only places they appear are in our poetry, and they are so abstract and make so little sense that most people don’t really ask anyway…

So, those are my main four. I’ll have to start using quee more often, for sure. Maybe it will catch on. Number 53 on my bucket list is to invent a word that makes it into the dictionary…or at least one that the general population uses, whether its counted as real or not. *crosses her fingers*

Random aside: I realized two things about me recently that are quite strange. (I know there are a lot of things about me that are strange, but I JUST realized these ones…that’s why I’m announcing it). 1) Whenever I drive under a yellow light, I always look into my rear view mirror to see how many people followed me thru. It always intrigues me. 2) Whenever I hear the song ‘Baby Love,’ it always makes me think of that episode of Full House when Michelle is sick and Uncle Jesse gets worried about her and he has a flash back of all their good times together…the song is playing in the background. I’m not sure why I remember that. I haven’t watched the show since Syd was born…and who knows if I even saw that episode. Meh…it’s hard to tell, but either way, it’s a fun memory. :)

Wanna Spoon?

2010-01-20T20:40:00.002-07:00

I am about to address something that has had me perplexed in the last little while. I’m sure no one else ever thinks about this, but it’s a constant problem that I’m running into lately, so what better way to vent than to turn to my trusty blog? Here it goes:

What’s with those spoons that are so deep that you have to literally dig your upper lip down into the spoon in order to get everything that’s on it? Why can’t all spoons be the same depth? I realize, you have your soup spoons and such that are meant to be deep. That’s fine. I can make my peace with the deep, soup spoons. Those, I’m prepared for, but I’ve used about 4 different types of regular, plastic spoons recently and some of them are great, like the normal, dinner spoon. Others, I feel like I’m in a constant struggle to get that last little bit of applesauce that is taunting me from the depths of the spoon. Having to dig my upper lip gets tiring…maybe I’m not making out enough. That might solve my problems. ... Anyway, back to the spoons…I guess, for normal people, they can just maneuver the spoon upwards a little bit to eliminate the digging situation. However, for people like me, with enormously large schnozes, that is not an option. The more upward I position my spoon, the more danger I put myself in of accidentally picking my nose in a very uncomfortable way. Rather that, or a nice little side swipe to the nasal area….I’d rather not come back from lunch, looking like I got in a fight. Imagine everyone’s shock and surprise to find out that I had lost in an epic battle with a plastic spoon. That doesn’t make me come across very well.

What are some solutions, you ask? I’ve tried many and none of them seem to be a sure fire way to solve my problem. I’ve tried to eat it from the side of the spoon…that works sometimes, but maybe because of user error, a mess always occurs. I feel like a 2 year old who is still trying to learn to use utensils. Again, I’ve tried lifting the spoon, but the nose presents a problem. Although, now that I’m sitting here, writing this, it has just occurred to me that I should try pulling up, but off to the side…hmm…I’m sad to admit that I’ve had this problem for a while and that never occurred to me until just now. See…the glories of talking out your problems. A solution, almost always presents itself. I’ll try that tomorrow and let everyone know how it all worked out. Cross your fingers for me!

Either way, triumph or loss, I still think that they should make spoons the same depth, preferably more shallow so that this problem wouldn’t happen. I have too much to think about without having to maneuver my spoon when I eat. Yes…I am THAT lazy. With that being said I'm going to call it a night. Just something to think about the next time you're enjoying some liquid matter requiring a spoon. Food for thought, for sure. Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours :)

Peace Out, 2009!

2010-01-04T20:55:00.002-07:00

So, it’s been a while (as per the usual) and I figured I should send 2009 off properly. So, in honor of this past year, I have decided to give out meaningless awards called ‘Aunties.’ Kinda like the Grammys, but better because they are from me. :) So, 2009…this one’s for you!

Best music artist: Carrie Underwood. The runner up goes to David Archuleta, easily, but Carrie has recently outdone herself again with her new album. I spent many a cleaning check night cleaning away to her wonderful country sound. Sing it, Carrie.

Most listened to song: Crush by David Archuleta. I remember chatting with Erin about this all the time…before his album came out and it was just the single, that’s all we listened to over and over (and over) again. It made us kind of sad that itunes kept count of how many times it’s been played. (109 just for the record) It showed how truly pathetic (and awesome) we are. Sadly, the count isn’t even accurate as I’ve listened to it in my car and at work on youtube endlessly until the album came out. Oh David…how I love thee. (an appropriate amount, by the way…he is only 18 ya know :))

Best movie released in 2009: The Dark Knight. Hands down. So good. And the Joker: so appealing for whatever reason. Yes, sadly, I still love him in a creepy way since he, himself, is very creepy. It creeps me out that I am intrigued by him so much, but if you can’t fight it, embrace it!

Best new(er) TV show: Chuck. I was first exposed to Chuck in 2009 and I thank my brother, whole heartedly. So with that being said, brother…you get an Auntie too. Well done, well done :) A close runner up was Psych, but sorry…Chuck wins this one. Season three…please come now!

Biggest Waste of Time (and yet I still do it): Farmville on Facebook. That’s right, ladies and gentleman…I’m an avid farmviller. I haven’t farmed quite so much since I’ve started working, but those dreary days of unemployment were countered with a trip to my sister’s house and extensive plowing, seeding and harvesting each day. Although, I must admit that anytime a cat ‘wandered onto my farm’ and it asked me if I’d like to help the cat, I said no. Call me cruel and heartless, but hating cats is in my blood. I can’t even pretend to like them. Although, I take that back…I tolerated one cat and that was only because she had leukemia or something. I really don’t know what she had. I asked Jeffrey every time I was over there, but I couldn’t ever remember, so it was tradition to make up a different disease for her every time I went over there and leukemia is the one that stuck. I believe my tolerance was due to mere sympathy for the poor thing than anything else. Either way, it’s the only cat I’ve let lay in my lap and actually pet it. I hope my Grandpa didn’t accuse me of betraying the family creed from up in Heaven. I’m sorry Grandpa. It won’t happen again!

Best place traveled to: Ireland. No competition. It was so fantastical. I wish I was back there now. I’d totally live there. My apologies to Utah, Texas, California, Colorado and Arizona. I love you all, but you’re definitely not as exotic as the motherland. Where else can you find rainbow painted sheep and dancers whose legs flail about as if independent from their bodies? Fantastic.

Best video on Youtube: A Very Potter Musical. Closely tailed by this fantastic compilation of gymnastics bloopers. Pain can be funny sometimes. Especially when it’s not me.

Best thing I’ve done: Taking out my endowments. That was seriously the best thing I’ve done my whole life...not just 2009, so it gets two Aunties. I can’t express how grateful I am that the Lord prompted me to do that before I came back to Texas. On the more dark and dreary days, the only place I could find and feel peace was inside the temple walls. It has been a wonderful blessing in my life and I hope that I will always hold the temple as dear to me as I do now.

Coolest thing I got to see: My best friend, Kami, get married in the temple! I could relive that moment over and over again, even though I cried like a baby. :)

Greatest loss: Cumby the fish. His funeral was truly touching (and kind of smelly since we dowsed the Viking boat in hairspray before we set it on fire)…I will forever remember the good times we’ve had together. Oh Cummerbund, the lives you’ve touched… *sheds a small tear*

Best thing I got to cross off my bucket list: Seeing my first shooting star. (technically this one would be Ireland too, but I can’t use it for two. That’s against Auntie rules and regulations) I’ve been waiting to see one my whole life and every time people saw them, I was never looking at the sky for whatever reason…blah. But booyah, shooting stars. I totally caught you in the act!

Best Production seen: This is a hard one…it’s got to be between Wicked and Riverdance. I’ll probably go with Wicked since I’d first seen Riverdance in 2008. If there were Auntie awards back then, it totally would have won, easy peazy. Both were so fantastic though that it’s hard to chose and be completely happy with my decision. Maybe we’ll call it a tie? Let me check the rules…yup, that’s allowed. Cool…so they both get an Auntie. Congrats!

Best purchase: My GPS. Even though it led us astray in Montana (curse you Garmin), it provided us with some awesomely hilarious memories after it was all over and we met some really nice people and some people who were kinda retarded, but were fun to laugh at *remembers the car shop guys* Me: My tires are flat, and one is off the track, can you fix it? Tire shop guy: What? That’s a strange thing to request. Me: Uh, you’re a tire store right? That’s what you do? So, do it! :) Good times. Other than that little hiccup, it has saved my life quite a few times. I’m notorious for getting lost and reading maps while driving is never a good idea. So, GPS, I thank you for being my constant guide, even though you almost killed me once. A small thing that I will overlook just this one time. Loose gravel signs still give me the heebie geebies….and so do ditches.

Best discovery: Propel and Chex Mix. Another tie (please see above rules). My life wouldn’t be the same without them.

Best Roommate: Emmy Pants. She’s been there through it all with me and never failed to help me when I needed it, make me laugh everyday and just accepted me 100% for who I was, flaws and all. I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate, especially with everything that happened this year. I don’t know what I would have done without you. The Lord definitely knew I needed you when he put you in my life so many moons ago. I think life was a little grayer before you came along!

Best product of Facebook stalking: Bethers, Bethie-poo, the mighty Ogg (all of the above). I dunno what I would do without you. You complete me haha. I’m so glad we have a wonderful thing called Facebook so that we could be brought together :) Getting to meet you and then coming out to visit you this year was absolutely fantastical. You have been an answer to many heartfelt prayers and I’m so grateful that you’re always just a click away (or phone call if either of us ever get up the guts to do it), whenever I need you.

Most Patient Award: My family (I guess this is technically a 5 way tie, but its okay because I said so). They’ve stuck through me and tried to be understanding when I was moody and grouchy and my gloomy pants were not coming off. Thanks for sticking with me y’all. Not that you have a choice really, but you made my transition period, when I moved back home, a little more bearable than it would’ve been otherwise.

I could keep going, but I won’t because I’m sure I’ve blogged about each of these things at least once so you’re probably tired of hearing about them all. So, thanks for the good times, 2009. May 2010 be full of more facebook and less moving. :) HA…so just kidding. That wont even happen cuz Amy and I just got approved to rent the house we were wanting to rent. BOOYAH. We move in on Februrary 1st! More on that later. I have decorating to do...XOXO

Beats me...

2009-12-16T15:14:00.002-07:00

So, there have been a few things that have been brought to my attention lately that I really just don’t understand. No amount of explanations or excuses or what not, seem to validate why these things happen. At least, not in my head. Maybe they do for other people and that’s why it isn’t constantly boggling their minds…or maybe it is and I’m just the first person to ever throw it out there. Who knows? I kinda hope that I’m not the only person that thinks about this stuff, but if I were, it really wouldn’t surprise me…

Traffic
I’ve never understood traffic. At least not when there was no cause for it anyway. I mean, I can understand crawling traffic when there has been an accident or there’s construction or bad weather or something, but seriously…a few times in the last month or so, I’ve been driving and all of a sudden, we’ve slown from about 70mph to 35mph. I think, wow…maybe there’s an accident up there or something. Nope. Nothing. We start back up at 70 again in a matter of a few miles and then it happens again. It’s not even people not knowing how to merge. I mean, maybe it has something to do with them, but still…I just don’t get it. Why can’t everyone just keep driving?

Losing Hair Ties
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to buy another package of hair ties because all of mine have mysteriously vanished. I use them every day and they never fail to sneak away into the depths of the earth within a matter of months. You would think they would be easy to keep track of. I used to blame it on roommates stealing them, thinking they were theirs. That’s easy to do. They all look the same. But, alas, I’m still having the same problem here in Texas as I was in Utah. Yup…that’s right. User error. Or maybe there are little gnomes that come and steal them to use as hula hoops or something in the middle of the night and never bring them back. I personally think it’s the latter.

Finally...

Christmas Shopping
It’s NEVER done! Even when I think it is…remember when I boasted that I was finished before December? Yeah…definitely tooted my horn a little too early on that one. I’m STILL not done and there’s less than 10 days til Christmas. I need to start planning for this around mid October, then maybe I’ll be able to cross it off my bucket list.

Other than that, life is good. Busy, but good! I always laugh to myself because back when I first got here, I kept saying to myself that once I got into a routine, I would feel a lot better about being home. Well…routine definitely found me. Each day of the week has its own, specific itinerary and it usually doesn’t vary too much. My favorite part of my day is lunch time though. Not only is this usually around the same time every day, but it’s always filled with the exact same activities. There’s always a random thing that happens, generally, but you’d better believe that when I walk into my sister’s house for lunch, it isn’t too long before Syd grabs my hands, pulls me into the kitchen and we do our little ABC’s dance in the kitchen a couple of times. Then, I announce that I have to go potty, so I head over to the bathroom. While I’m doing my business, the girls decide that it’s funny to shove things underneath the door crack at me. They giggle. Ask if I can see it and then run back to start eating their lunch (or finish eating it if I decide I don’t have to go number 1 until after I’m done eating). One day was a particularly slow day at work so I definitely hit up the bathroom before I left for lunch and when I had finished eating, Syd goes, “Hey Auntie, are you just going to go to the bathroom now?” Yeah…there was an array of shock going around the table when I announced that I didn’t have to go today. Love it. Consistency. It does a body good.

Muchas Gracias!

2009-11-24T17:58:00.004-07:00

Okay, real quick, I just want to say a few things that I'm thankful for since I haven't been doing this as often as I should!

1) Crossing things off of my bucket list. Its seriously one of the coolest things ever. Although, it wasn't a very HARD one...it was to finish my Christmas shopping before December starts and I'm happy to report that all of my shopping will be done by Friday. Can we say, 'boom baby?' Yes...yes we can! :) I guess I can't REALLY cross it off yet. Knowing my luck, I'll think I'm good to go and then Christmas Eve, I'll remember that I forgot something. Its very possible that I'll just wait til after Christmas and decide to randomly give a New Years gift...a part of me says that's cheating. But the other part says, who cares? :)

2) Volleyball. I know I hate on it all the time...mostly because I'm terrible at most sports and I always feel bad for the people on my team when, by some strange coincidence, someone forgets to jump in front of me and I get to take my shots at the ball and then it turns into some huge monstrosity. I'm really there as a place filler when needed and to provide accidental entertainment to the other team. :) But for real though, last night, when I played, it was really a lot of fun. Maybe its because none of the big, scary Tongans were there to crush me...its possible. Not to mention that everyone that stayed to play were all of my friends so they didn't really care...when volleyball isn't lame, I like it :)

3) Being organized and planned out. I bought myself a good planner the other day as a 'good job for getting a job' present. There's nothing like getting to cross things off of my list of things to get done (see above...I must have problems haha) or just knowing that you're not forgetting anything because its all written down and planned out. No mess ups except for user error :) I can cope with that! Its peaceful and calming to me. So its good to have that peace of mind on those stressful days!

Happy Thanksgiving to all y'all faithful readers. I love ya like a million pumpkin pies (with whipped cream on top, of course) :)

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

2009-11-14T19:09:00.006-07:00

Wow geez...I cant believe that I haven't written in so long! Please accept my apologies for being lazy :) Seeing as how its November, I want to pick three things that I'm grateful for and write about them for each entry this month. I need to be better about recognizing the blessings in my life! So, to start off, I'm thankful for finally getting a job! WOO HOO! It's not exactly what I would like to be doing, ultimately, but I have enjoyed my first week so that's definitely good. I was originally going to be an administrative assistant in the HR department, but long story short, they moved me over into accounting to be the new Travel/Expense Report guru for the Civilian Police department. Dyncorp has a lot of contracts with each of the branches of the US Military and basically, we send police over to Afghanistan, Iraq and other places like that to have them help train the police departments over there so that the security will be better. Dyncorp does a lot more than that, but that's pretty much my department in a nutshell. I really enjoy the people that I work with. My trainer, Heather, and I kinda bonded cuz she doesn't drink or do anything like that so its nice to have backup...I've already noticed how much everyone loves a little alcohol in that office. We had a department meeting on Thursday and when we walked in, we were given two tickets each, representing how many alcoholic beverages we were allowed to consume during the duration of the meeting. haha. Good times, right? My new cubicle has a label on one of the filing cabinets that says "Liquor cabinet" lol. I'm definitely not in Provo anymore, that's for sure! :) Heather's husband is a Baptist minister so we've had some fun little religious discussions too so its been good. And I'm so excited that I get my own cubicle! Sad, I know, but its still exciting for me anyway! :) I've been figuring out how I want to decorate it this week and I think I might finally get my laptop and phone this week, so I should be able to "move in" sometime soon :) YAY! I have a lot to be thankful for, that's for sure!

I'm also thankful for my little nieces. I know I talk about them ALL the time, but holy poop, I love those girls. It was interesting to see how much I really missed them this week since I couldn't go over and play with them everyday like I have been able to for the last few months. I stopped by on Thursday night after work and when I walked in, both girls came running to give me a huge hug and they pretty much wouldn't let go for most of the time that I was there. As Ben put it so well..."Its hard to have a bad day when you come home to that, isn't it?" Seriously...I'm pretty sure that those girls have made it so I didn't completely lose my mind during the first couple of months that I was here. They made the bad days into happy ones and put a smile on my face, for sure. I don't know what I'd do without them!

And the last one for today...I'm thankful for my new calling. Its funny that I'm actually excited about it. For those who don't know, I got put back into the Relief Society Presidency and this last week has been absolutely amazing! This is where I love to be, for sure. I'm the 2nd counselor this time, so I get to be in charge of activities, formerly known as enrichment. :) I almost feel like some kind of Relief Society junky or something...as soon as I got the calling, I got so excited and that familiar feeling that I had when I was RSP in Provo came back and it made me so happy to feel it again! I cant wait to serve the sisters of the Colleyville 2nd ward. We have a lot of work ahead of us but some wonderful things to work towards and I'm so excited about it! Not to mention that I'm going to learn so much while I'm serving in this capacity. The experience will be new and exciting, for sure! Yahoo! Bring it on!

Anyway, happy Novembering to all of you! I hope you can all find at least one thing that you're thankful for each day and try to remember it throughout the day! XOXO

A Taste of the Sweet Life

2009-10-21T18:46:00.015-06:00

FYI: Seeing as how I usually just copy and paste this stuff into my electronic journal, its going to be a pretty long entry, so feel free to skip over reading all this stuff...it probably wont be very exciting :) This last week and a half I've been up in Utah for Kami's wedding. It was seriously one of the best weeks and a half of my life! That may have something to do with the fact that I got to go to the temple 5 times in less than a week and see my best friend get married. Not to mention that I got to catch up with all of my friends back in P Town and really live up the life I used to have there. I definitely didn't appreciate it well enough when I was living it.

Friday
I flew in (a little late as usual...my flights are hardly EVER on time) and right when I landed I get a text from JaeLyn telling me not to tell Kami that I was there yet. Chapan wanted to surprise her. I was supposed to meet her after work and head up to SLC with her to go get her marriage license. So, they called and told her my flight was late, which it was, and that she would just have to go without me. Luckily, it was only like 5 minutes late, so I was still able to surprise her :) JaeLyn took me over to where Chapan works in SLC and then we went up to the court building together and I got to pop out from behind a car to surprise Kami. She cried...I cried...lots of crying, but it was good. She was only mad at us for like 5seconds :) Later that night, we threw Kami a bridal shower and called it good. I've never seen Kami look so stylish! :) We stayed up talking as usual, ...and Kami ended up carressing my face when she was sleeping. Definitely hilarious, although, I suppose I deserved that after carressing her face with my foot back in high school while I was sleeping. I think I got the better end of the deal :)

Saturday
Kami took her endowments out on Saturday morning. It was fun since she took hers out at Timpanogos, where I did mine. It was fun to be back there. Momma Bear was right...she told me that when she came back to Utah and went through the temple after being in Dallas for so long, the big temples kinda feel TOO big. I kinda missed my little me sized temple. But I got over that soon enough :) After hangin out and lunching and stuff, Kami, Chapan and I went back to the temple to do a session that night at the Jordan River temple. Momma and Papa bear are temple workers there and Papa Bear was officiating so Kami wanted to go. That makes my temple count up to 6 at this point. Bring it on, baby! P.S. I decided I'm going to start doing a little mini scrapbook thing with all of the dates I went through each temple for the first time. I don't know why...but I can still remember each day for each of the temples...I'll count myself lucky cuz that usually never happens unless its in the form of a movie or song. :)

Sunday
Papa Bear gave a talk in church about temple worship which was so good! Although, I think one of my favorite parts of church that day was when Kami came into Relief Society, she pulled out a package of fruit snacks that she had packed extra for me :) It made me so much happy! I used to eat snacks during Sunday School all the time and for whatever reason, I haven't done that since I've moved back. Its the small things in life, right? Jeremy, JaeLyn, Papa Bear and I played a little round of Hand and Foot (JaeLyn and I stomped on the boys, by the way...totally awesome!) And then we wrapped it up with a little crud tournament. I must say that I wasn't quite as lucky at that game :) Emily and Matty came over for dinner and then we headed back to Provo. I made my rounds and said hi to everyone and then I got to go to singing time (one of my favorites that I've missed so much since I've been back), ward prayer and Disney night. It was so wonderful! Such a great day!

Monday
I woke up early and went to do a session with my friend Natania, in the Provo temple. It was so amazing...I turned around and guess who I saw, sitting in the chapel? ASHLEY STADLER!!! She's been in the MTC for like 3 weeks now and it was so wonderful to see her. We hugged and cried (yet again...I really should've kept count to see how many times I cried during this trip haha). It was so wonderful though. And Natania is serving where Ashley and her companion are going, so that was fun for them to tell her what more to expect and for Nat to know familiar faces when she gets there. Kami came down to Provo later on so we could do some last minute wedding shopping, which took just about all day. I think I pooped her out. :) But we got a lot of stuff done so that's what matters, right? Klark met us for lunch at Kneaders which was AMAZING. I've never been there except for breakfast before and it was so good! We went to FHE at the Stake President's house and then Jason came over and played yahtzee with Emily and I once we got back. I freakin love that game!

Tuesday
Verdon and I went to the Draper Temple (temple number 7) and we decided to do sealings. It was really cool...neither of us had done them before so it was neat to hear the promised blessings that you recieve when you are sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. Everyone else in the session were married so naturally they all gave the two of us a hard time. They kept tellin him that he needed to put a ring on my finger or that we should come back and do it for real next time. hahah cute old men. Definitely a funny experience. We both just laughed it off but definitely good memories, for sure. We met up with Marisa for lunch at this chinese buffet place and then I headed up to campus to visit with my old supervisors and coworkers. It was great! A little later, Erin and I went out for ice cream and to see Fame. We were so excited because Kherrington was in it and she was one of our favorites from SYTYCD. I remember, after it was over, we both just kinda sat there and were like uh...that's it? hahaha Apparently, it wasn't much like the broadway show of it. Erin remembered someone dying...and no one died, unless we both fell asleep. haha. It was still good times though, for sure. It was fun to catch up on life with her.

Wednesday
Wednesday was super fun! Emily didn't have to do her student teaching and her sister, Jen was in town. We met up with Jen Braithewaite and Britt (two of my old roommates) and went to Zupas for lunch. SO GOOD. That was probably one of my favorite restaurants in Provo. They have the BEST soups and sandwiches. After lunch, we came back to the apartment and played some songs on the guitar and pretty much spent about an hour watching funny youtube videos. We were all laughing til we were crying (count it...that's 3) and our sides hurt. So classic! Again...its all about the simple things in life, right? P.S. I learned how to play an A and a D chord on the guitar...watch out world, here I come! :) Afterwards we went and did some "girl shopping" which was a lot of fun. We finished up the night by watching Bolt with Adam...one of our favorites. So classicly awesome. "I'll snap his neck!" lol. I just cant get enough of that movie.

Thursday
I woke up a little early and went to breakfast with my friend Josh, from freshman year. It was fun to catch up with him. We went to Kneaders to get the all you can eat french toast! *melts* When I got back, we lounged around for a bit and ran some errands. Then, my sister and the Breinholt clan came up to go to the creamery...of course! :) There's no way that we could be in Utah without going to the creamery. This was Kandace's first time to experience the joy of the creamery ice cream too which was a tender experience for us Anderson sisters. Sadly, the girl that scooped my ice cream was no where near as generous as the dude scooping for my sister and Kandace. Hence my staring over at my sister's stash :) We headed back and attempted to take naps, to no avail. Later that night, we went to Kent and Kandace's boys' soccer games. Most of my time was spent on the playground, watching the kiddos...and playing a little too :)

Friday
The day before the wedding! Buckle up! We ran errands all day. We took the kids to the pumpkin patch so they could paint them while we were doing all the wedding stuff so they weren't bored all day. There were some last minute things that we needed to take care of...one of which was making picture frames to put on each of the tables at the reception. We came up with a plan and then got to work. It started out with me, JaeLyn, Meredith, Kami and Kandace and then they slowly left, realizing that we were in our element, leaving JaeLyn and I to finish it up. Chapan's family came over for some yummy homemade chinese food and we stayed up partying most of the night. Once everyone was gone, Kami and I stayed up for a while making sure she was packed and had everything ready to go for the next day so that nothing was forgotten.

Saturday
The big day finally arrived! Kami and I woke up dark and early to go get our hair done and then high tailed it off to the temple. Their sealing was BEAUTIFUL! It was really cool, because on the front row of chairs were all of us...all the brothers and their wives (and me)...just enough seats. It was perfect! I was doing okay until I saw Kami start to cry a little. Halla heard me whimper a bit and then reached over to grab my hand and that's when I kinda lost it. haha (count it...4). I didn't actually lose it til Kami gave me a hug afterwards. Holy crap we were crying like babies. haha. Loved it though. It was so special for me to get to be there. I absolutely loved it. It was just perfect. We took pictures outside, naturally (so cold!) and then headed over to Johnny Carinos for lunch. The reception was rockin too! It was so pretty. I wish my darn camera worked in dark places, but it doesn't so I have nothing to show for it. But it was fun. I got to see a few ppl from back in the day that lived in Texas while I was growing up and then moved to Utah. I saw a couple of my friends from Rexburg too so that was a fun surprise! The big joke that day was that since everyone else that was there was married, that Ron Dude (the Breinholt's youngest son who is on a mission) could be my date for the day. Good times dating cardboard, huh? :) In all, it was a stressful but WONDERFUL day. I'm so glad that I got to be there to share her special day with her.

Sunday
Emily came and got me from the reception and I spent my last day in P Town again. We had ward conference which was AMAZING. I loved getting to go back to my old ward and hear our bishop and stake president speak. They are just so wonderful. Afterwards, the Shell's (my old bishop and his family) came and took me up Bridal Veil Falls for an afternoon walk in the canyon. I don't have the pictures yet, so I cant post them, but it was SO beautiful. I showed my sister one of them and she said it reminded her of Anne of Green Gables. yeah. Loved it! It was so fun to be with them again. When I got back, Tiffany, Jen & Derrick, Mellissa and Zarah & Ashton came over for some good times. Klark came over to make us dinner...SO GOOD and then J Tal and Chris came over too. It was so much fun to visit with everyone! I loved every minute of it. Emily's apartment was in charge of ward prayer that night, so we skipped singing time to prepare our plans and then high tailed it off to ward prayer. It was fun to be a part of that again! We had disney night, one last time and then played Bang! after most people left. It was such a wonderful Sunday!

Monday
I woke up early and got all packed n junk and then walked up to see Adam at work until it was time for me to leave. I figured it was much better time spent than sitting around the apartment while everyone was at work and school. We had ourselves a nice little chat and then Marisa came and got me and brought me to the airport. Good times, right?!?! I headed up to FHE when I got back to Texas and actually had a great time with my friends playing Bang! (again...love it!) and then a few games of Volleyball. Let's just say that people want me to play, more because its funny to watch me attempt to play, than because of my skills. haha. Justin says that I look like someone from High School Musical when I try to spike the ball over the net. Not to mention that I make ninja noises anytime I hit the ball...needless to say, Will took it to another level and started using phrases from Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter everytime he hit the ball to go along with the ninja theme. hahah Good times, good times. Anyway, this is forever long and I've gotta go learn how to do the thriller, so I'm out! XOXO

Family Fun

2009-10-05T07:50:00.004-06:00

Conference weekend was great! Its usually one of my favorite weekends of the year. And by 'usually,' I mean, 'always is.' :) I kicked it off by watchin Syd and Malla on Friday night for my sister and brother-in-law so they could go to the temple together and we had a blast! Those girls crack me up and they're so sweet! It was fun to kneel there together and listen to Syd help Malla say her bedtime prayers. Love it! So cute!

Saturday, I taught my dance class and watched the two sessions of conference with a nap somewhere in the middle. (in between sessions of course *teethy grin*) and then I babysat again. These kids are great though. I was sitting there and somehow we got on the subject of Star Wars and they pulled out all of the cartoon DVDs and laid them in front of me. I thought I was looking at heaven itself. haha. Needless to say, we all bonded through that experience. :) Once they were all in bed, I watched 27 dresses...that movie is more like my life than I thought. lol. It almost made me laugh cuz I'm almost positive that I've had some of the exact conversations that they have in that movie. Good times.

Sunday we had our traditional family breakfast, although a part of me did miss the 'conference pancake' from the last three years. The story goes like this...three years ago, we decided to make breakfast with a big group of people before the Saturday morning session. I was in charge of flipping the pancakes...I bet you can see where this is going. lol. I was trying to flip them onto a big plate and I missed... *blushes* Everyone thought it would be funny to leave it there throughout conference and then throw it away once it was over. You can imagine the questions we got when ppl came over. Uh...you know there's a pancake in the middle of your floor right? :) YOU BETCHA! Each conference after that, we always threw one of the pancakes on the floor in spirit of tradition. Conference pancake...how I missed this this time around! We also started up the traditional family back scratch/massage train. We even got Syd and Malla in on it. I'm sure we looked cool. Syd had put bows and crowns in all the girls' hair and we were all layin on the floor in pure bliss. It was great!

Oh, and my favorite talk of conference was Elder Holland's talk. Although, I think that might be everyone's favorite talk! lol Give it a listen if you feel the need! :)

And in super fun news...I leave for Utah this week! *jumps for joy* I cant tell you how excited I am to be back in Provo for a few days to be with my friends. I miss them so much! Provo, here I come!

Conference Weekend 'Miracles'

2009-09-29T09:30:00.009-06:00

I LOVE Conference weekend. Its seriously one of my favorite weekends of the entire year. We had the General Relief Society meeting on Saturday which was amazing as usual. It was weird not being in Utah for it though. I was definitely spoiled with getting to go to at least one session each time conference rolled around. I guess it's time for other people to have the opportunity. Before the Relief Society session, we had a musical fireside for our Stake where my mom, sister and I got to sing the song 'Miracles,' by Sally DeFord, together. It was so special for all of us to get to do that. We used to sing together all the time. I remember when we sang for my brother's farewell, the Bishop got up and said something about the "Anderson sisters striking again!" It was good times! I remember when I was younger, my mom would play songs on the piano and my sister would pull out her flute and I would sing and we'd just do that for an hour or two. I remember doing "The Hearts of the Children" from the Primary songbook all the time! Maybe that's why I love doing genealogy so much now... Definitely one of my favorites. My sister videotaped us practicing and she put it on her blog for y'all that wanted to see it and weren't there. This one was probably better than the actual thing anyway since our knees weren't shaking with nerves, this time around :) We definitely weren't used to singing in front of people anymore...its been almost 10 years since we last sang together...woooo! Man how time flies! Anyway, here's the link: http://thetexasbreinholts.blogspot.com/2009/09/miracles.html

I cant wait for this weekend though. What can be better than two full days of uplifting messages and feeling the spirit. Bring it on! Sunday morning we always go over to my sister's before hand and we have quiche and...food? hahaha All I remember is the quiche. Cut me some slack...it's been 5 years since I've watched it at home. For some reason, I remember a lot of rolls too...but that shouldn't surprise anyone :) Most of my memories have bread in them. I'm in charge of the quiche this year tho and I'm using Beth's yummy recipe to change things up a bit! YUMMMM! My brother was pretty excited when I told him about it. The other quiche is good, but you can only have so much of it cuz its rich or something...I dunno... I hope it turns out well! :)

I don't know if I'm allowed to have a favorite apostle...but I do, so whatever! :) I always LOVE hearing from Elder Oaks. Not that I don't love hearing from the other's. I love them all...but there's something about Elder Oaks that I cant get enough of. I think it's cuz he's so intense that it kinda scares me a little and just zings me! Plus...he's the cutest old man and whenever he speaks, its always so wonderful! His voice also reminds me of the guy at the beginning of those Living Scriptures videos that's like "...please don't make a copy of this tape..." lol I love it and I love him! I hope everyone gets to watch it and has a wonderful experience. About 4 years ago, when I took a 'Teachings of the Living Prophets' class at BYU, she challenged us to pray and fast before Conference started and to ask certain questions. She told us to write them down and then take good notes throughout conference. Each time I've done that, each of my questions have been answered, if not through a talk, directly, through the spirit. I always laugh when the Conference issue of the Ensign comes out and I'm rereading the talks and comparing my notes and I had written things down that had nothing to do with anything they were saying. Its wonderful to know that the Lord communicates to us, the things we need to hear and know, through the Spirit and through his called prophets and apostles. I'm so grateful for this gospel and for the guidance, direction and peace that it constantly brings into my life.

Reunions of the Arizona Kind

2009-09-23T17:30:00.004-06:00

I spent the last week-ish in Arizona and it was so much fun!!! I started out in Mesa to spend time with Beth and her family before I headed over to Havasu to see Ashley before she left on her mission. This was my first trip to the Mesa area and I LOVED it. It was so much fun to be there with my friends :) They introduced me to "gelato" which is an Italian ice cream...*melts* Yeah, so good! And we got to go to a few little craft/decoration shops which is definitely right up my alley! I probably could've stayed in those places all day. I played with Will a lot too which was totally different from what I'm used to. Instead of playing dress up and having Syd cover me in make up and hair clips and dancing around the room with Malla in my arms, I was playing pirates, star wars and baseball! Definitely a flip flop, but still really fun! Beth told me that one night, Will was talking in his sleep saying "Tara...I just want a cookie!" over and over again. haha. Gotta love it. I think one of my favorite parts of being in Mesa (other than just hangin with the Borgia's) was getting to go through a session at the Mesa temple. Brother Borgia ended up officiating at the session we were at, so that was cool. While he was standing there, I got to thinking....I wonder if it's weird for them. An entire room full of people is sitting there staring at you and you're looking back at them and not saying anything. hahaha Meh...they're probably used to it. It would be hard for me to not slip in a weird face every now and again though :) Seriously though...the Borgia's were so great. I think they feel bad because I was "bored" or something crazy...psh! please! I'm such a boring person...I did more there than I usually do here. haha I'm used to being unemployed and doing nothing all day. lol. I really did have so much fun and they did so many wonderful things for me! I really appreciate them so much. It definitely felt like a home away from home. Oh yeah....they introduced me to the gloriousness that is the cream puffs in the temple cafeteria. Holy, wonderful! Beth also introduced me to these SWEET baking pan things that you never have to spray or anything and the food pops right out (and very nicely browned too). It was so fun to bake mini muffins with them! And so easy too! No more hassle of muffin liners or cleaning up spills when you miss the cup part (which I do on a regular basis). When I'm rich, one day, I'm going to buy some. The end. I hope I get to go back soon...I really did love it there. AND not to mention that Emily is moving there in November so that's an added bonus! All of my favorite people, minus my family, are moving to Arizona...apparently its the place to be! :)

Havasu was fun too...we ended up cramming all of us into their house instead of me staying somewhere else which was definitely more fun but maybe more cluttered than they would've liked. Ashley and I were sharing her bed which is in between a twin and a full bed. So needless to say, we had some funny accidents. lol. Apparently, one night, I was dead asleep and I started playing footsie with Ashley's foot. She laughed and scooted me over a little. No harm, no foul right? HA! A little nudge isn't going to keep me away! Apparently, no matter how far away she moved her foot, I would keep searching for it with mine. This went on for a while. I would find her foot and be set at ease and she'd move it and I'd search for it again. :) Finally, Ashley just bent her knees so her feet were behind her. I started searching as per the usual and I got frustrated that I couldn't find her foot so I let out a big puff of air and retired to sleep on my other side as a sign of defeat. Definitely funny to laugh about when I woke up the next morning. The last night was hilarious because she had put off packing until the last possible hour. Naturally, I stayed up with her to help her pack since packing happens to be one my super powers. I can always get anything to fit! Anyway, by about 1:30 we were both slap happy from running around so much the previous couple of days that we would just start laughing hysterically out of no where and it wouldn't stop until we got too tired to laugh at all. OH and deal of the week...we went to walmart to get some last minute things for her and we saw that the clinical strength dove deodorant (so wonderful during hot weather) was on sale so we took it up to the register and the guy had his list comparison thing as to what other stores were selling it for and they rang up as 2.00 each when they're originally like 8.75. Naturally, we both ran back to grab armfuls of deodorant. I'm sure we looked retarded, but I'll do what is necessary in the name of a good sale such as that one! Her setting apart was wonderful too. The Spirit was so strong. The tradition in Havasu is to go around the room and say a part of your testimony or whatever else you feel impressed to say before they set her apart as a missionary which was really neat. I'll miss my Ash-face but I'm so excited to hear about all the crap she has to eat down there! hahahaha. (and all the other stuff too)

And I'm happy to report that since its been raining here so much, its actually green AND for the last two days its been like 70 degrees outside. I was actually COLD today. Weird, I know. But it definitely feels more like fall which is something I'm not used to happening here until December...MAYBE by Thanksgiving on rare occasions. Although, I'm not banking that this weather will last long :)

Nine

2009-09-08T19:53:00.008-06:00

In honor of it being 9/9/09 tomorrow, I decided to do a little somethin' somethin' with it! Plus, I'm really excited for the new movie, Nine, to come out. :) Holy jeez, its gonna be good! Seriously though, nine has proven to be a particularly good number for me. We moved to Texas when I was 9 which has turned out amazingly. I met my best friend of all time when I was 9...Kami and her family came over on our first Sunday there and we hit it off. We've never failed to have ourselves a great time since then. When I moved into Sparks, I moved into apartment 9. Sparks was seriously one of my favorite parts of my BYU experience. So many of my favorite memories and so many of the people I met that impacted my life, happened there. No, nine is NOT my lucky number...but 8 is, and that's pretty darn close :) So see...nine is great! :) Anyway, I decided, in honor of the number 9 (haha I feel like I'm doing a Sesame Street tribute or something), I decided to list 9 things that most people don't know about me. That is...unless I know you really REALLY well, and/or you've ever lived with me, cuz you just sort of find these things out... Although, some of these, I dont think I've ever told anyone so enjoy!

1. The last time I watched the Land Before Time (a couple of months ago...shocking, I know), I cried when Little Foot's mom died. Yes, some may say I just have a tender heart. I say its because I'm lame and internalize movies too much. haha.

2. Speaking of crying...for a couple of years, I only cried out of my left eye. I have no idea why. That's just the facts. Someone else can explain it to me if they wish, but I'm happy to report that I'm back to normal and have two, fully functioning tear ducts.

3. The two playlists I listen to most on my itunes are musicals and instrumental music. They make any day a brighter day. :)

4. And speaking of musicals...I was thinking the other day about if I could play any role in a musical, who would I most like to be? I haven't succeeded in narrowing it down to the final winner, however, I have managed to narrow it down to...nine! haha jk, although, it did seem appropriate...no no, I narrowed it down to four: Ado Annie, Oklahoma!; Millie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; Penny Pingleton; Hairspry; and Eliza Doolittle, My Fair Lady.

Mind you, I'm not counting singing or acting ability in these...that would certainly narrow it down to zero. But in an ideal world, those would be my top four. Which is ironic, seeing as how The Sound of Music has always, and will always be one of my favorite movies, not to mention, my favorite musical of all time. There are just some scenes that I could never get through...mostly the part when they're singing about "I must have done something good." I always laugh far too hard for any normal person, when I watch that part. :)

5. If I could do absolutely ANYTHING for a career (and if it still even existed), my ideal job would be to be a performer on a Show Boat. Again, I'll insert that talent (and I'll go as far to say, dress size) will not be taken into account on this one either. But it would be AMAZING and I'm sure I'd love almost every moment of it! :)

6. I have another favorite flower other than daisies...I just don't tell people about it :) I LOVE pansies. Like seriously LOVE them. I could look at them all day. They just look like they're smiling at me all the time. Although, sometimes they make me think of Alice in Wonderland and that movie kinda creeped me out as a kid. The flowers weren't very nice, and that wasn't cool...

7. Ever since I took my endowments out a couple of months ago, I have made a new goal to do temple work in as many temples as possible in my life time. So far, I've done a sesson in four different temples: Timpanogos, Provo, Salt Lake City and Dallas. I'm hitting up Mesa next week and possibly Vegas, but we'll see how that goes. Verdon said he'd go with me to Manti when I come up to Utah in October. And I'm counting sitting in Kami's wedding in Oquirrh Mountain as doing temple work. I know it's cheating, but until I can go back and do a session there, I'm counting it :) My game, my rules :)

8. I am superstitious. Not like CRAZY amounts, but enough to make me do stuff. Example: I always try to hold my breath when we pass a cemetery and I keep a troll in my car for good luck (a family tradition). I dont think that anything terrible will happen if I don't do all of these things, but I do feel a sense of "luck" when I follow through with them. Like, maybe everything will go my way or something. It's almost like drinking my own Felix Felicis potion (for all you non-Harry Potter fans out there, that's liquid luck basically. Although, I'm not sure how we're friends enough for you to be reading my blog if you don't know anything about HP). :)

9. Here we go....the last one: I have a slight obsession with shoe horns. And when I say slight, I mean, really big. Example: I almost cried when I bent my last shoe horn out of commission. And yes, both of my tear ducts were working at this point. Its a good thing I controlled it, right? :) My fun moment of the day last week was when I was in Ross and I found a decorative sign that says "Life is made of choices...remove your shoes or scrub the floor." Attached is a shoe horn. I saw it and knew that even if I had no use for it, I had to have it. I also have a gargantuan shoe horn that's at least 2 feet tall, compliments of Melly. Thanks, lady-face. You're my hero. And if that's not enough, I always make sure to have two spares just incase of an incident like when I became the incredible hulk and bent my metal one.... *sighs* What a traumatic day. I'm glad that's over...

There you have it...Nine, nine, nine! How I love thee, number nine! I hope yall have a splendiforus 9/9/09 day! XOXO

A New Chapter of Life

2009-08-29T14:13:00.002-06:00

Hey hey hey! So, I've been back in Texas for 2 weeks now and its seems like I've been here for at least a month, if not more! Its going by SO sllooooooowwwwww. Despite all the suckinesses of being home, it has been so much fun getting to be with my family. My mom and I roadtripped down to Austin this week to see Wicked and it was AMAZING. Two thumbs way, way up! :) And its been great to spend everyday with my sister and my nieces. There's always something funny that Syd or Malla do or say that keeps a smile on my face. I haven't been able to find a job yet, but its been a blessing actually because I've been able to still go to the temple once a week. I stayed there for about 4 hours this week...I never want to leave. Its the one place where I can feel complete peace and I definitely need that! I am starting to teach dance lessons again though, which is good. I have about 15 students so far, so its taking off :)

I think I may have figured out one of the reasons why Heavenly Father wanted me to move back despite all my protesting...everyone that I've talked to (and that's been a lot actually) that goes to the singles ward here has told me how it has just plummeted steadily down since about a year ago. I haven't quite figured out why yet, but not many ppl like it and there's not much of a ward family connection there anymore. I have a couple of friends that have been struggling with it especially and so its been good for us to stick through it together...but now that I'm here, they were saying that they want me to try to help them figure out things to do to bring the ward back together...maybe that's why I'm here. I dunno...but either way, I've got my work cut out for me!

But instead of going on about how much I miss Provo and wish I were still there, I've decided I need to be more positive about my situation. I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm genuinely happy to be here yet, but it'll come...I just have to keep my faith and my hope that the Lord will help me to turn things around for myself. I found this song that I REALLY love...and sadly, its by Miley Cyrus hahaha....I never thought I'd ever admit that I liked one of her songs. haha. Oh well...at least its not Hillary Duff or anything. Then I know I'd be going insane :) Here's the lyrics...they're pretty good!

The Climb
I can almost see it
That dream I am dreaming
But there's a voice inside my head saying
"You'll never reach it"

Every step I'm taking
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying
Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing
The chances I'm taking
Sometimes might knock me down
But no, I'm not breaking

I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I'm gonna remember most, yeah
Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on

'Cause there's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah!

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Somebody's gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb, yeah!

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It's all about, it's all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa

7 Wonders of Provo

2009-08-11T19:55:00.011-06:00

So, my time left in Provo is short so I thought I would do a shout out to my 7 favorite places in Provo. This was kinda hard seeing as how most of the things that I do are outside of Provo, but I made it work :) Just know that most of them have to do with food and/or ice cream. But that shouldn't surprise anyone. These are in no particular order except for number 1. :) Here we go!!!

7. Provo River
I've only floated down this place twice, but both times were absolutely hilarious! Not to mention that its BEAUTIFUL during the summer. There is this point where there is a bridge with pillars and when your tubes are tied together, if you don't all go through the same gap, you can imagine what would happen. haha So classic. Not to mention that the last time I went, I was given the partially deflated tube. My tail bone was NOT happy. Those rocks are ruthless. :) But still...I had the time of my life. Except for when I thought that wearing SPF 4 would be good enough. hahahahaha. Holy burned. I'll never forget that summer....yikes!

6. Center Street
I LOVE Center Street...especially during Christmas time. Its so much fun to walk down at night when the trees are all lit and fun. Its just old timey feeling and I LOVE it. Not to mention, that two of my favorite places are on Center Street: Gloria's Little Italy (some of the BEST Italian food ever) and Sammy's...they make pie milkshakes...SO GLORIOUS.

5. BYU Baseball/Football fields
These share the same parking lots, so I figured I could bunch them together. :) I've had so much fun with my friends going to baseball and football games and cheering on my friends that are playing on the teams. Go Cougars!!!! (p.s. our shirts say "Even Saints Play Nasty" just in case you couldn't tell) haha

4. J Dawgs/Smart Cookie
Oh my yummy. J Dawgs has the BEST hot dogs EVER. Their secret sauce is like the best secret ever kept...holy yummy! I'm gonna miss you J Dawgs. :) Right next to J Dawgs is Smart Cookie. Also to die for. Two cookies of your choice on the outside of some delicious ice cream. Oh. My. Word. Two dollars has never brought so much happiness to my life before. Except for when Star Wars and Harry Potter are in the dollar theater. But, that should've been assumed :)

3. King Kong Kone/Sub Zero
Okay, the King Kong Kone (from now on will be referred to as the KKK...classy, I know) is HUGE. Seriously...they pack this frozen yogurt taller than my head. I almost didn't finish it and that's saying something. I never leave ice cream uneaten. I'm proud to say that I've successfully conquered the KKK!!! SO GOOD. And its only like a buck. So, I was wrong...there's one more thing that under 2 bucks that makes me feel like I'm in a total Utopia. Go figure that its ice cream right? :) Sub Zero is way fun too. They make the ice cream how you want it (flavors and mix ins) in front of you with liquid nitrogen. You can imagine how much joy I felt when I heard they were moving it closer to my apartment complex. Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't blog about it :)

2. Y Mountain
I've had some good times trying to hike up this mountain despite the fact that I'm a wimp and can only go so far without stopping. Its always way fun to hike it at night though and then get to look out over Provo and see all of the lights and fun things to see. I also wet my pants on top of Y mountain before which is always a great story. :) I slipped as we were coming down and it scared me. Yeah...good times. This picture was taken after we'd hiked up it once and Melly dared me to lay upside down on it. Dont you just LOVE my yellow pit stains? hahah Sick...that shirt as been good to me. Good thing I cut it up and sewed it into a blanket, huh?

1. Provo Temple
The Provo temple has gotten me through so many good and bad times. Its the one place that I could go to find peace, no matter what. Sometimes, we'd just go and sit on the temple grounds if we didn't have time to go inside so that we could just be there and feel the spirit. One of my favorite parts is when I walk outside and the sun is setting behind the mountains. Its SO beautiful...hence the picture. I'm really going to miss having a temple so close to me. Its so nice to pass it multiple times a day and remember why I'm here. The 5 minute drive will be sorely missed. As will my weekly, sometimes biweekly visits to go inside the temple walls and stand as proxy for those who have passed. Its one of my favorite things to do and I hope that I can still find the time and money to go constantly once I move home, despite the distance.

So, friends...there you have it. My 7 favorite places in Provo. Despite all the sucky things there is about it, its been my home for the last 5 years and I will miss it dearly. So, Provo...here's to you! XOXO

Over the River and Through the Woods. To Grandmother's house we go!

2009-07-28T09:58:00.009-06:00

I went to see my Grammy Bear in Montana last weekend! It was so awesomely wonderful to be there again! I don't think I've been to my Grammy's since I was like 7 or 8. It was so much fun and we defintiely had some great adventures. The drive up was INSANE. Emily and Matt came with me because they have family in Billings, so I just detoured a little to drop them off there before I headed up to Great Falls. On the way, my dumb GPS decided to take us this random back way...not good. Never trust a machine. haha. Anyway, the speed limit was 70...I was definitely only going 35 at the MOST. We're goin straight...its all good, then suddenly my car starts to spin out of control and we land in a ditch. In that process somewhere, my front tire fell off the rim and my back tire started leaking air like crazy. We got it out of the ditch and right as I turned my hazard lights on, this couple drove up behind us which was such a wonderful blessing. I dont know what we would have done if they didn't show up. They followed us down to the nearest air pump so we could pump up my spare and then they dropped us off at the tire store so I could leave my car there (it was like 9:30 or 10 at night by this point) and then drove us over to the hotel where we would stay until the next morning so I could get my tires fixed. We walk into the hotel with all of our stuff and the lady was like, "So you think you're going to get a room here tonight, do you?" I just looked at her and was like...YES! She goes...well, you chose the right place (as if there was anywhere else to choose. Actually, I take that back, there was a Lazy J's down the street but you probably had to pay an extra 20 bucks to have clean sheets, by the looks of it). She continued to tell us that they have a continental breakfast. In my head, I'm thinking...YES! DONUTS! No...toast and cold cereal. *sighs* Definitely better than nothing though, for sure. :)

The next morning, we walked over to the tire shop (happy Pioneer Day by the way) and I started talking to the guys there and was like sooo...my back tire is flat. And they looked at me like, what the heck? Why did you bring it here? We thought that was particularly funny, so we had to document it... So, they fixed my tires and we went on our way. Sadly, once I hit about 60 on the highway, my car was shaking out of control. So, once we got to billings, Emily's family came and picked them up and then I stayed at another car shop until they could fix it. Here's the lesson I've learned....if you look like you're about to cry, guys will do ANYTHING so that that doesn't happen. haha. I walk in there and the guy was like, we dont have time to fix your car today. We could fit you in tomorrow. I told him the situation, and actually, my dad had called before to make sure that they would be able to and they told him that they could, so after explaining it all, they were like sorry! No can do! So I asked where else I could go and he called around and no one else could fit me in either. I started the lip quiver...mostly on accident. I was quite distrot by this point, and he was like uhhh...you know what? We can totally move some things around and get you in RIGHT NOW! hahahah it was classic. So, a couple hours later, I was on my way to Grammy's house!

Once I got there, we had SO much fun! We went to have the notorious fluffy tacos which were HEAVENLY. These bad boys were one of my favorite parts of going to see Grammy when I was younger. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THEM! The rest of the night we just talked and had some classic Grammy/Bandaid time. It was wonderful! Not to mention that I had a very nice reunion with one of my favorite toys that I used to play with all the time.

The next morning, we high tailed it out to the farmers market where I met all of "Maggie Mae's" friends...she's so darn popular. It was awesome! We had some YUMMY Navajo fried bread and looked around at some stuff. My two cousins came over who I haven't seen since I was around 7 or 8 too...so that was fun to see them again. Later, we went to the State Fair where we tried Grammy's favorite State Fair novelty....Vikings! These things were so manly...pure beef wrapped in bread and stuck on a stick. Talk about good for you, yumminess. haha. We got to see a Johnny Cash impersonator guy which was GREAT...I LOVED it. And, of course, my favorite part was the pig racing. I had no idea it even existed...but we definitely laughed for a while about it. Check out this awesomeness!
CLASSIC! I had such a great time with Grammy...it makes me sad that I couldn't stay longer. Grammy Bear...here's to you! I love you BAD!!!!

Another tribute to...

2009-06-29T13:53:00.006-06:00

This tribute is gonna be a little uh, different, but just go with me. I'm gonna send out a tribute to all of those dead guys that I wish were still alive because they're just so dang attractive. So, here's my list: Gordon McRae, Clark Gable, Howard Keel, Gene Kelly, Heath Ledger (of course), and uh...Prince Philip on Sleeping Beauty. I know he's a cartoon and not a real person, but still. He's hot. Don't judge me.

Just look at these guys. They don't make them like that anymore! They just have this charming look about them that invites me in. Maybe they're vampires....hahahah oh Edward. :) Anyway, I find it funny that most of them sing and dance...but really, that just adds to their charm and all around attractiveness. I would be very willing to be swept off my feet by any of these guys. Bring it on... :) Seriously, Gordon, Howard and Gene could sing me to sleep every night and I think I would go to sleep 100% happy without fail. haha. Maybe I was born a little too late... who knows? Or maybe I shoulda just been a cartoon character. lol *sighs* Although, I guess if I was born before, I wouldn't appreciate the beauty of people like Hayden Christensen and Will Smith. *melts* Anyway, here's to all y'all heartthrobs out there, dead or alive. Any time I watch a movie with any of these guys in it, I cant help but smile and be completely happy in my own little world. lol. Does this make me lame? Yes...yes, I'm sure it does. But, I dont care. :)

In other news, the temple was AMAZING on Saturday. My sister came and surprised me on Friday night which was probably the best thing ever. She put up the video and the pictures she took on her blog, so you can check them out there seeing as how I don't have them. :) We had a great time, as we always do. And i cant wait to go back to the temple again and again! Thanks to all of my wonderful friends and family who were there. It was amazing to be there with all of them...I know this probably doesn't mean a lot to everyone, but seeing as how I usually copy and paste these entries into my journal, I'm gonna list off who was there, more for my sake than anyone else's. :) My sister was there, obviously, Mom and Dad Breinholt, Jeremy and JaeLyn, Bishop and sister Shell (my old bishop from a couple of years ago), Brother and Sister Clay (my current 1st counselor in the bishopric), Laura and Alex, Zarah and Ashton, Jen, Melissa and Mom Jones (who drove out from Colorado...I just love y'all for being there!), and Adam was there too. I'm sad that the rest of my family, Bishop Stoneman, the Borgia's (+Beth), and Michael and Jason couldn't end up coming, but it was still absolutely wonderful. Seriously, the best thing I've ever done. I love this gospel and the opportunities I have to be a part of it! :) XOXO

The month that never ends

2009-06-24T15:25:00.004-06:00

Holy long month. For those of you who don't know, I've been preparing to go through the temple to take out my endowments and ever since I've picked the day I wanted to go through, it has seemed to be so far away! I have been waiting for it to be the 27th for what seems like an eternity, and it's only Wednesday. haha. This whole week I have been a day off. Yesterday, I was convinced that it was Wednesday. Today, was Thursday, in my head, and now everyone thinks I've completely lost it. haha

It has been an interesting month for sure. With all this planning and preparing, there has been a lot of opposition. Now that I look back on it, it doesn't seem that bad at all, but when I was actually going through it, I was so frustrated! It was more a lot of little things that were coming up...the Stake President had to leave the country unexpectedly and no one knew when he was getting back (he got back just in time for it to work out that I could interview with him this last Sunday before I met with my Bishop and I have my final interview with him tonight so he can sign my recommend). Good timing huh? When I did find out that he was back, his secretary lost his phone, so my wonderful bishop kept bothering him at home so that we could schedule the appointment for Sunday so that it would be possible for me to go through when I wanted. My bishop was out of town for a while too...which is why things were so crazy. Then there was just a lot of other random stuff going on that made me lose my patience and I think I was more frustrated with myself for letting it bother me so much, than the situations really. I'm so glad that I have wonderful friends who hold the Priesthood and could give me a blessing. Once I got one, things went much better. Now that I think of it, it wasn't until after I had the blessing that all of the stake president and secretary stuff started happening...so I'm glad I got the blessing, cuz otherwise, I might have exploded. hahaha.

The closer it gets to August, the more conflicted I'm feeling about moving home. I'm so excited to be back in Texas with my family, but I'm dreading going back to living at home...not because of my parents or anything. I love them to pieces...my family rocks my socks off. It'll just be different not being so close to everyone in my ward, where there is ALWAYS something going on. I love the social life out here and I will greatly miss it when I move home. Other than that, though...I'm so ready to leave Provo, minus missing my friends and such. I'm excited that Puden will be moving with me too. That'll be fun. It'll be just like old times! I'll be glad to have a different guy situation though. I dont say this to sound ungrateful or anything, cuz I've definitely been on both sides of the dating spectrum and not having any dates EVER really sucked, but I'm so tired of having so many guys show interest in me and not having that same interest in return. It makes me wonder if I'm broken or something. haha. There's nothing wrong with these guys at all...and they're here, wanting to try to move in a direction that I want so badly to go in, but I can't because I'm not in the same place. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't happen all the time...but seriously, in the last couple of months, its happened with at least 3 or 4 different people. *sighs* Maybe it'll be good to move away and start fresh again. I sure hope so! But I'll worry about that later...right now, I'm just keeping my eyes toward the temple! WOO HOO! I can't wait. Saturday wont come fast enough! :) Thanks to all of you who have put up with my retarded, frantic phone calls and texts...I really appreciate yall talking me through stuff and helping me feel better! Love yall! XOXO

A Whole Lotta Nuthin

2009-06-11T14:24:00.004-06:00

We talked about keeping journals in Relief Society on Sunday and I have no idea who said it or what, but someone said something about trying to write at least one way they saw the Lord's hand in their lives each time they write in their journals. Since I pretty much use this as my journal, I figured that that would be a fun thing to do. You can't go wrong in finding blessings in your life, eh? So, today's is going to be the fact that I have seen, especially these last couple of weeks, how the Lord is simply involved in my life and guiding and leading me where He wants me to go and what He wants me to do. I feel so blessed to know that He is watching over me and that He has a plan for me. No matter what direction I decide that I'd like to go, He quickly tells me if that's not in His plan for me. I love it! I love knowing that I'm following Him and doing my best to follow His plan for me.

In other "news," I feel like I've been so boring lately. I don't have much of anything to write about since I've been back from all of my trips. Although, I shouldn't be surprised. I remember being called 'boring' by some ppl in my ward. All I have to say is that just because I'd rather sit in my apartment and do puzzles *laughs* baking or crafts while playing a movie in the background, does not mean I'm boring! :) I think its because most of the ppl I hang around with are all quite a bit younger than me. At least the ones that are doing the complaining are younger anyway. hahaha. The ones that are my age or around it, have no problems bunking around with me every night. :) Which is funny cuz we're really not that old at all...but its funny to look back at my freshman year days when I was 18 and 19 and saw how different I was back then! 5 years is a long time! Don't get me wrong tho...a fun night out to the dollar theater or something else cheap is way fun, but you know, once it hits 10:00, I usually start winding down the crazy activities. :)

I've been doing a lot of reading these days. I have two more chapters in "The Holy Temple" and then I can get back to reading LOTR. I think I read up to page 22 or something and then got busy with other things. Emily laughed at me cuz the last time I read, I read like 2 pages and then fell asleep pretty much. Two pages a day means that I'd probably have all three books done in like 5 years. haha. It doesn't help that I have like 3 different "Sunday books" that I try to dive into on Sundays too...that's my huge reading day, so needless to say, I get done with my church books a lot faster than my other books.

Other than that, I've been finding random crafts to do since its what I love! :) I'm in the process of making tutu's for Syd, Malla and Elsie. I have a good portion of them done, but there still is a good hour or two ahead of me which I couldn't be happier about. The problem is, is I get so excited about the projects that I just want to keep working until I finish them instead of spreading them out so I have more to do later. Meh well...I'll just have to come up with more ideas later! I love me some craft time! Also, I fell off the top bunk the other day. It was...classic. Head first too. And Emily got to see it all on webcam! Booyah. That was probably the best thing ever. I know I woulda loved to see it. Good to know I still have all my falling abilities in tact! :) I'm an Anderson, afterall. This is what we do! :)

Around the World in 30 Days

2009-05-28T16:11:00.007-06:00

Okay, maybe it was more like 'around the Western United States in 10 days' but still...it seemed like my latest excursions lasted a good 30 days. :) So, here goes nothin...

Destination 1: Boulder, Colorado
I drove out on Friday afternoon and spent the next day and a half with Jen's mom and dad. I LOVE the Jones's! It was so fun to see them again! When I got there, Mom Jones and I sat and talked for a little until Papa Jones got home and then they took me out to this little, quaint restaurant for dinner. It was fun to catch up with life and just relax a little before my interview. I was planning on getting to bed early-ish since I'd been driving all day and I wanted to be all rested for my interview the next morning, but I just couldn't tear myself away from Mom Jones that night. We stayed up talking about life n stuff for a good chunk of the evening which was just so good!

The next morning, I went to the interview. Long story short, I got accepted into the Dance/Movement Therapy program, but I'm not taking their offer. The whole time that I was there, I just felt really badly about the whole thing. Not to mention there were a lot of other negatives that were brought up throughout the whole thing, but it was a really good experience and I'm glad that it was so easy for me to feel that that wasn't the best place for me. Don't get me wrong...the decision to decline their offer was really hard. As much as I didn't feel right about it, I still wanted to to do it...but, I'm hoping that the Lord has something even better in mind for me that I don't know about yet! :) The day ended with me making the long drive home after my intensive interview...good times in the car! With that said, I've decided to move home in August. August 14th to be exact actually. I've been job hunting a little bit and I hope I'll find something that I'll really enjoy doing. I'm also planning on doing dance lessons again if I can find a place to do it. I think it would be fun to do an adult tap or Irish class or something too...who knows. There's still plenty of time to think about it!

Destination 2: Lake Havasu, Arizona
Sunday morning, Ashley and I woke up early to go to church and then spent the rest of the morning loading up our cars with all of her stuff. She's going on a mission and didn't have enough room for all of her stuff in her car and due to a lot of different family circumstances, it didn't work out that someone from her family could come with an extra car, so I volunteered mine! I spent most of the week in Arizona with Ashley and it was SO much fun! We got to go to the London Bridge which was fun...Ashley has those pictures though, so you'll have to wait to see them until I get them from her. :) I'm so glad I went though. Her family is amazing and I seriously had such a blast while I was there. I don't think I could ever get tired of being around Ashley...good times, sister...good times!

I had to drive back to Provo on Thursday because some work junk happened and I had to sign this paperwork, otherwise I wouldn't get paid and I had to do it that week for some reason...blah blah. Anyway, I drove back to sign the papers and then left the next morning for Cali!

Destination 3: Malibu, California
I'd never been to California before so it was definitely fun to go. I went up for Elsie's baby blessing and to meet Beth for the first time! It was SOOOOOO good to finally meet her. I had so much fun with her and her family! Adam drove with me for this trip so it was nice to have someone else in the car to talk to when he wasn't sleeping. haha. Here's my funny/retarded moment on the way up (I have to have one, right?) I'm gonna go ahead and name this a Rome/Italy moment, Meredith...yeah, good to know it runs in the family. So, here's how it went...We stopped at Wendy's for lunch and Adam grabbed a spoon out of habit and he didn't need it. So, he turns to me and says, "Hey...want a spoon?" Well, 'action deprived me' heard, "Hey...wanna spoon?" In the back of my brain, I knew what he really meant, but instead of responding accordingly, I said, "You bet I do! *pauses* want...a...spoon." I'm pretty sure that Adam just thought I was very enthusiastic about getting a free spoon....too bad I wasn't so smooth in covering up my idiocy. haha. I need to have a summer fling...fast. :) The blessing was really good though. It was fun to be there, for sure! Thanks for helping me feel so at home even though I was the only non-related person there. I love me some good times with the Borgias!

Anyway, while we were there, we went to the beach and had BBQs and such. It was so much fun! I loved getting to play with Will (Beth's son) too...he kept calling me 'my girl.' Lol...all the time..."Hey mom...where's my girl? I want to play with my girl?" lol Love that kid. We wrapped up the trip with helpin Beth and her family get all packed and on their way to AZ where they were moving. They left on Monday a little bit after Adam and I left to come back home. It was good to be there to help a little...I hope I was more of a help than just being in the way...

Now, I'm back home and my butt still hurts a little from sitting in a car so much, but it could be worse! :) It's good to be back in good ol' P Town. I'm gettin ready to soak up as much of it as I can in the next 2 1/2 months!

Water, water everywhere and not a drop I want to drink...

2009-05-13T14:42:00.004-06:00

Okay, so before I tell the story that I'm about to tell, I have to just say that I'm completely addicted to Wicked. Seriously, the music is SO good. I've never actually seen the play, but I can't stop listening to it. Definitely the album crush of the month, for sure...

Anyway, so Friday night was absolutely hilarious...its about midnight-ish and I'm gettin ready to turn in for the night. Ashley is in the bathroom and all of a sudden, this is what I hear..."Uh Tara! The water is overflowing!" hahaha oh man...I go runnin in there and the toilet is seriously spewing out everything that it ever held. Luckily just water tho...not the other stuff. We try turning the water off with absolutely no luck. Well, okay, we turned it off but the water kept coming. Finally, it just randomly stopped and we spent the next while trying to soak up all the water that was in our apartment. I washed the towels and everything was hunky dory, right?

I told you that story, to tell you this story. Last night, me and a bunch of people decided to hit up the swimming pool for some 'good for the soul' swimmin time. I get back in to the apartment, put on some warm clothes while Ashley was showering and wrapped my hair in a, nice, clean towel. I went downstairs because some people came over to bond and as I was sitting there, I kept smelling this faint poo smell.... It was seriously nasty and it wouldn't go away. At first, I thought maybe someone tooted a little and didn't want to own up to it. So, instead of asking if anyone could smell that smell, I just suffered through it. About 10 minutes passed and the smell didn't go away so I thought something had to be goin on. Ashley came downstairs and I asked if anyone could smell the poo smell? Everyone said no but as Ashley started walking more towards me, she realized it was getting stronger. That's right...she followed her nose to my TOWEL! AHHH IT WAS SO NASTY. I ran upstairs and got the towel off my head and proceeded to smell the other towels that were used to mop up the nasty poo smelling water. Good thing all of my towels now smell like poo, huh? I tried washing them again today in hopes of getting the smell out but seriously...EW! Anyway, that's my funny story of the week. The poo towels are now famous across quite a few apartments in the ward. Man, how news travels! hahaha Good times in Provo...I did always say that I wanted to go out with a bang...I guess I got my wish! haah Siiiiiick...

Women's Conferencing

2009-05-04T16:04:00.006-06:00

This weekend I got to go to Women's Conference at BYU for the first time. It was so awesome! Thursday Beth, Ashley and I hit up the sessions together which was definitely fun! We made the mistake of picking all the ones that had to do with overcoming and finding strength in our trials though. It was definitely my favorite day becuase everything was so great and inspiring, but it was EXHAUSTING. When we got to the closing session where everyone came back together that day, Ashley asked me what the topic was that the speaker was speaking on and I pulled out the program and read, "Finding strength in our trails." We all paused and proclaimed, "NOOOOO!" hahaha It was way funny though...but we definitely mixed things up a bit the next day.

After we ate up and took a little break from the hoards of women that were surrounding us, we went back into the madness and made tutus for battered women's shelters. It was definitely my favorite part of the Conference. We were at a little table of like 5 or 6 of us and out of everyone that sits next to me, guess who it was? The wife of the Bishop for the ward that I'll be in if I move to Colorado! Yeah...good times. I'd been getting a little discouraged about it lately...trying to figure out if that was really the path that I needed to go down and this totally re-pumped me up! We talked all about the area and the ppl in the ward and such. She told me that most people in that ward are all Graduate students at CU so they'll be older which is nice. She said that they were just wonderful and told me about their institute program which I've heard great things about. It was awesome. And of course, we found some time for some goofing off time too....

Righ when we took the picture of Ashley with the tutu on her head, we look over and Sister Beck is standing like 20 feet from us. Her second counselor was there too and she looked at us and started laughing. lol. Thats probably why they allow women our age to go...they need some good laughs :)

Friday was just Ashley and I and we got to hear John Bytheway and Bro Wilcox speak which was AWESOME as you could imagine. We decided that instead of moving around all over campus that we would just stay in one building and bring uno cards to keep us entertained. The day before was nice to get up and walk around but some of those ladies were rutheless! You'd be surprised how much pushing and shoving was goin on. haha. It was definitely funny to watch for sure. And I would just like to say that I was crowned the Women's Conference Uno Champion. That's right...don't mess with this. :) We got to hear Sister Beck and Elder Perry talk which was AWESOME. And not to mention that Sunday's CES Fireside was given by Elder Bednar, so its been an awesome weekend. I highly recommend Women's conference to everyone! Although, I must say...I did miss being surrounded by my male counterparts those couple of days. Sheesh...so much estrogen. haha. Seriously though...so wonderful and it was SO much fun!

I'm All Growed Up and Gradiated (again)

2009-04-28T16:20:00.004-06:00

Hey hey hey! Graduation was this weekend...I don't have pictures yet, but as soon as I do, I'll post them, I promise :) Thursday was awesome. Marcus, Irene, Marisa and I went to the festivities together. We marched into the Marriott Center, looked for their families, and heard a bunch of ppl speak. Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Nelson were part of the line up which was definitely awesome to listen to. After we got outta there, everyone went their separate ways with their families and I scooted on home to eat some mouth watering ramen noodles and oatmeal (yummy, I know) and then headed up to West Jordan to kick it with the family for a few hours. Everyone was mostly beat that night so if I remember right, we all just kinda laid around like bums all night long. Can't really complain with that though, you know?

Friday was the big "walking" day. I walked into the Marriott Center, not ready for the almost 3 hour ceremony that was ahead of all of us, and as I was looking for my family and their promised social cues ("We're the ones waving...yeah, that's helpful...I'm the one in the blue gown with the matching hat and yellow tassel...), I couldn't find them, no matter how hard I looked. Eventually, Jeremy came running down (I was on the end of one of the rows) and got my attention and showed me where everyone was sitting. It took me a while to find them, but I finally did which I was definitely impressed with. :)

It was finally my turn to walk across the stage and receive a "diploma" of which I already had. Kinda anticlimactic, but whatcha gonna do right? They said my name and apparently, my family cheered. I heard nothing though. When asked why I didn't acknowledge them or wave or something, I replied with, "Are you kidding? I was so concentrated on not falling that I almost didn't even hear my name called!" Wearing heels may not have been the best idea, but I survived just fine. After I got my picture taken with Dean Magleby, there were four people in line after her to shake my hand. I didn't who know three of them were, but the second person in line was Elder D. Todd Christopherson! It was so exciting to finally "meet" an apostle! I was actually just complaining to my friends the night before because they had all met a countless number of apostles and I was so jealous. It's been on my list of things to do before I die to meet one for as long as I can remember, and no matter how hard I have tried to see one, I could never get close enough. haha. But, now I've proudly marked one off of my list. I didn't technically meet him, but beggars aren't choosers you know? It was kinda funny because Elder Christopherson was second in line to shake my hand, and as I was moving from the first person to him, he stepped out of line towards me(I'm assuming he was moving somewhere else...I'm not sure where to, but whatever) to shake my hand and then I moved on. It kinda scared me...I was like uhh whats happening? Wait...where are you going? You can't jip me! haha. I seriously woulda chased him down if he left. lol. He said the coolest thing to me though. He grabbed my hand to shake it and then said "Congratulations!" HA! He said congratulations...to ME! Yeah...definitely a conversation I'll remember for the rest of my life. haha. Good times.

After it was over, we high tailed it off to the creamery to have some double scoop, waffle cone, bonding time. It was soooo yummy. My favorite quote of the day from Sydney was "Auntie...sometimes my panties get dirty" hahah I was like uh well...it happens to the best of us kiddo! lol. After a little contemplation, I realized that she was talking about her tights...but it was still hilarious.

The festivities still continue as my sister and her fam are still here. It's been so fun to spend everyday with them! I just love my family! My "no sugar" diet thing isn't working so well....I didn't even last one day. Well, technically, I did if you let me say that that day was my sugar day. Then I cheated on all the other days. lol. I decided that I'll start it after my family leaves. Maybe. The Sunday that I was going to start it was the Sunday that I got released from my calling. I wasn't taking it very well...crying all day n such...and a lot of people gave me chocolate, ice cream and taffy to soothe my soul. hahah it worked... My home teachers took me out for ice cream and ever since my sister has been here, I'm pretty sure we've had some kind of ice cream or Boston cream pie at least once a day. hahaha. Love, love, love it. Maybe I'll try again later...we'll see! haha. Anyway, my fingers hurt from typing so I'm outta here. Love love love yall! XOXO

A New Goal

2009-04-16T13:43:00.002-06:00

Holler!!! :) So, I've decided something yesterday....starting Sunday, I'm going to start trying a new uhhh...diet? lol It's not really a diet or anything, but kinda. I figure if I tell everyone about it, then I have to do it, so here it goes...I'm going to allow myself to only have one small amount of sugar per week (not including weeks with Holidays, of course). I decided that every time I slip up and have more than one thing of sugar for that week, I can't have milk in my cereal for breakfast the next morning. That should be a good incentive for me to actually do it! :) I also want to try and not eat after I have dinner each night. Back in high school I tried not to eat after 6pm cuz we always eat early and it was nice. I rarely felt like I'd eaten so much during the day that I wanted to die. I hate that feeling, and I tend to eat when I'm bored. :) Alicia and I did the sugar thing back during Freshman year and it was definitely fun. It was hard because well...I love ice cream a LOT, but I think it will be better for me in the long run. I'm kinda excited to see how it turns out! :)

With that said...I opened my daily pack of fruit snacks today and there was one that was in the shape of a person with something weird growing out of its' neck. haha it was the strangest thing, but it made me laugh...a lot!

Everyone is starting their finals now so its kinda fun that people are around more than usual. Although, they are (or at least should be) studying instead of playing, but who cares...it's been fun! :) Ashley and I went out to lunch yesterday, my roomies and I went to dinner (I know...talk about LOTS of food yesterday) and Jeffrey and I went out for a night of putt putt where he easily schooled me in the art of mini golfing. But, I kinda figured that would happen. Mini golfing isn't exactly my forte by a long shot. Emily and I are goin to see Mall Cop at the dollar theater tonight and then hitting up YOGA with another girl in our ward. We LOVE Yoga...its so great and so relaxing. I suck at it, but its still awesome! :)

My family comes in a week from today!!! AHHHH! I'm so excited to see everyone. I'm sure we'll have plenty of fun stories and things going on. We talked about Sydney maybe coming to have a sleepover at my apartment one night just cuz it would be way fun. All of my roommates will be leaving so it will just be me (and I think Ashley is going to stay with me for a couple of weeks until she moves home) so it will be fun if she decides to come party with us for a night. Anyway, I've gotta go get something for Irene's bridal shower on Saturday so I'm gonna split...love y'all bad! XOXO

Strange things are happening to me

2009-04-04T20:07:00.004-06:00

So, the last couple of weeks have been filled with some random, funny things goin on. For starters, I've been quite the sicky pants for the last two weeks...because of it, my sense of smell and taste have gone WACKO. Natania and I walked into one of the schools that we observe at for work, and I was like,*sniffs in really big* "Nat...do you smell that? That smells soooo good!" She just started laughing and was like, uh...we're right next to the gym...what are you smelling that I'm not? I responded by telling her that I smelled mashed potatoes and chicken noodle soup. Apparently, all she smelled was smelly kid...weird. But ever since that day, I've definitely been craving some good ol' mashed potatoes and gravy. Earlier that week, Ashley and I went to the temple to do baptisms and I thought the water tasted like slurpee...Not that I was complaining at all. I'll take slurpee water over chlorine water any day. :)

Here's the kicker though...I opened a bag of "Smiles" fruit snacks from walmart (sent directly from heaven, I think...seriously, the best things ever). And this is what I found... Weird huh? Talk about a shocker! Definitely funny though. I was quite honored that it was a purple shark. Purple is the best color, easily.

Also, to update everyone, I got a call from Naropa University and they want me to come over for an interview in May! WOOP WOOP! I'm excited about it for sure. They told me to come in professional dress but to wear something that I can dance in...*confused* I'm not sure what kinds of professional clothes they wear, but shoot...I'm not sure that my dancing abilities will be magnified in my most professional wear...this could be fun! haha. Anyway, I'm gonna go reorganize my DVDs or something cuz they're all outta whack and its killin me! I heart yall bad! XOOX

The Festival of Colors

2009-03-30T10:26:00.008-06:00

So I've recently been chastised about not putting enough pictures on my blog, so I'm gonna try to do better from now on in hopes to please Ashley's boredom. haha. Although, most of the stuff I blog about are things that she was there for, so I dunno what she's so sad about...lol jk girl! I heartcha!

This weekend, I went to this thing called The Festival of Colors. It's held every year at the Krishna temple in American Fork. Holi is the "holiday" where Hindu's celebrate the coming of Spring (even though it definitely snowed yesterday and today...lame). They burn a fake witch to start off the celebration and then everyone throws colored chalk at each other.

We got there a little bit late so we weren't there for the initial attack, but we still got our fare share of chalk-age. The best part was that the pink didn't come out as well, so the 5 of us went to church yesterday with random bits of pink left on our skin and hair that wouldn't come out no matter how hard we scrubbed. Good times! :) I sure love my friends!

Babies and Blessings

2009-03-23T12:38:00.002-06:00

So, in the last couple of weeks, two of my greatest friends (Bethers and Leash-face) have been blessed with beautiful baby girls…good job popping on St. Pat’s Day, Leash. I’m definitely proud. Haha. Ever since little Elsie Rae was born and then followed by Addie almost a week later, I’ve been able to reflect on some of the greatest blessings in my life.

Obviously, my family was the first thing to come to my mind. They are seriously the greatest family I could ever imagine. I’ve learned so much from them and felt so much love from them, everyday of my life. One of the greatest things about my family (not including our supreme love for board games and all of our inherent abilities to unknowingly cheat…something we got from Grandmama, for sure) is that they are stubborn. Why is that good you ask? It’s plenty good for lots of reasons…the biggest one right now is that despite my insisting that I didn’t want them to spend all the time and money to fly out in April for my graduation ceremony that I finally decided to be a part of thanks to some coaxing from my coworkers, they are all coming with happy hearts. I know its definitely not in the budget or time frame for any of them and I haven’t heard one murmur of complaint except for when I reminded them how long the ceremony will be since its all of December’s grads AND April’s grads. Heheh I just love you guys and I’m so excited to see y’all next month.

Another huge blessing in my life are my friends. Jen has come back from Chile after almost a year of hearing all of her stories of warmth and good times, so Emily and I went to visit her this weekend and it was so fun to have the three of us together again after a years time. I’ve thought a lot about my friends that I have now and ones that I’ve had in the past that I may not keep in the best touch with, and I have been so blessed to have so many wonderful people come into my life. I have learned so much from all of them about myself and seriously, some of my favorite memories in life are those that happen when I’m with my friends. Provo has felt like home now for quite some time and I know that that has to do with the people who are constantly making me feel wanted and needed. My BYU/Provo experience wouldn’t be anything without y’all. I couldn’t possibly name all of you because it would take far too long and I know I would run the risk of missing someone…but you all know who you are. I love y’all bad and wouldn’t trade any of our moments, good or bad, for anything. Y’all are the peaches to my cottage cheese! 

Also, I have a job! Its not full time or anything that I hope to keep doing for the rest of my life, but for about a month there, I was jobless and it was a very scary experience. The economy crept up on me and almost let me loose…but I’m so lucky to have supervisors and a boss who really care about what I have to offer here at PBSI and I’ve had so many wonderful learning opportunities in my last 3 ½ years of working here. I’ve learned so much and I’m so grateful for the opportunities that I’ve been given because of working here….getting to present our research at conferences, getting to conduct my own research, getting published, learning more about research in general…it’s been great and despite the sucky times of transcribing and data entry for hours on end, I love it here. They are my third family away from home and they’re constantly looking out for me and have my best interest at heart.

The last thing that I’m going to mention is my calling. I’ve been very fortunate to be the Relief Society President of my ward for the last two years which is a very unique blessing as usually, the Presidents are only kept in for around two, MAYBE four semesters at a time before they are released. It has been one of the hardest experiences of my life but definitely one of the most rewarding. Not only have I been able to become very close with a very large number of the girls, but I have been able to experience new levels of learning how to receive revelation for myself and those under my stewardship. It has been the best two years of my life for that reason. Going to the temple at least once a week, sometimes more, has been so wonderful. And each time I went, I was always impressed about something…whether it was a specific person that needed my help or something about a lesson, or an activity…you know the drill. Its been so cool to pray for guidance and see how well it has come into my life. It has happened two specific times that I can think of where I have made one decision and felt impressed to go another direction and its been awesome to see how the Lord has guided me in my choices (both personal and within relief society) and how they have definitely worked out for the better in ways that I never could have imagined. I’m going to be so sad when it’s all over. Seriously, I can’t think of a better experience that I’ve ever had in my life. On Sunday, we were singing “Nearer My God, To Thee” in acapela for our music appreciation number and after the second verse started, I just completely lost it. I felt the spirit overwhelmingly strong and the Love that the Lord has for each of the sisters was so strong. It made me love them even more which I didn’t think was possible. They are seriously like angels in my life and I’m so thankful for those experiences that I’ve had thus far.

Edward = Ice Cream Truck

2009-03-17T14:28:00.002-06:00

To preface this entry, I'm going to expose you all to a little bit of Twilight goodness. For those who have never read the books, nor seen the movies, there's a part when Bella finds out that Edward is a vampire. He's telling her about what it's like to be a vampire and here's what he says: "I'm the worlds most dangerous predator. Everything about me invites you in. My voice, my face, even my smell. As if I would NEED any of that. As if you could out run me. As if you could fight me off. I'm designed to kill." With that said, I'm going to continue on with my story...

I made a very large connection/realization yesterday when Emily and I were on a bike ride (yes the weather IS that beautiful) and on the way back, we passed an ice cream truck. One of my weaknesses. When I was a kid, I heard that annoying song, and I couldn't help but go inside and beg my mom for money. When we heard it, it made all of my memories of childhood summers come screaming back to me. Then...it clicked. Ice Cream trucks are like Edward...just not very hot. They are very vampirical in nature....they may not be predators, but really, they kinda are. To quote Edward: "everything about them invites you in (minus the annoying song, but really, how would we recognize that it was coming without it)...as if it would need any of that. As if you could out run me!" hahahahha We were seriously cracking up with the image of an ice cream truck making the chase to lure some kids into buying ice cream. With that said, enjoy the image everytime you hear the ice cream man coming around the corner. :)

Anyway, it's St. Pats day and I'm lovin it. I lost my keys...and I use the term loosely. They were inside my tennis shoes....but I didn't know that until I was turning my room inside out to try to find them. We had an Irish pot luck at work and I got to do a presentation on Ireland and it made me yearn for it just a little. And in better news, Beth had her baby on Wednesday! YAYUH! She's so beautiful and I'm so happy for her! Not to mention that I bought little Elsie Rae a St. Patties Day outfit and she definitely makes it look so cute! AND Jen came back from Chile. Emily and I are going to see her this weekend and I can't wait. It'll be so good to see her again! We've missed you soooooo bad, Jen! Anyway, I'm gonna go do some more St. Pat's Day celebrations. Heartcha bad! XOXO

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

2009-03-10T14:04:00.002-06:00

I saw this on Zarah's blog and I thought it would be a fun idea. I love creating things, but I usually keep so busy with other stuff that I never justify making stuff...We'll see how it goes though. Most people say that instead of being artsy fartsy, I'm just fartsy....lol. Comment at your own risk! *silly giggle*

So, here's how it works: the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year a handmade gift from me. What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise! The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going (or copy and paste like I did). Then come back, let me know you're going to play and sit back and anticipate the arrival of your gift!

Just the thought of receiving something in the mail that isn't a bill is delightful!

Come and play!

Now, remember "ya get what ya get and ya don't throw a fit".

XOXO

A New Twist to Life

2009-03-05T10:18:00.001-07:00

It’s almost been three weeks since I’ve been back from Ireland…I think instead of being on cloud 9, I’m now on cloud 8 or 7, but anytime someone asks me about it, I get this huge, retarded grin on my face and start jumping up and down. I feel like a little kid that’s waiting to open her presents on Christmas day. But, that’s good right?

These last few weeks have been quite eventful! For starters, the week I got back, I decided that I was going to suck it up and apply for Grad School at Naropa (in Boulder, CO). I’ve been thinking about it ever since the post that I wrote about the possibility of going forever ago and I’d been feeling iffy about it. I think being in Ireland, away from my responsibilities and other distractions, gave me a lot of time to reflect on what I wanted to do with my life. I never really thought about grad school as an option before and the very idea of leaving kinda scares the poop out of me. The more I thought about it though, the more excited I got and I realized that I shouldn’t let being afraid of starting fresh again (new friends, new place, new experiences) hold me back from doing something that I would love to do. I realized that I’m holding on to certain things that are engulfed in Provo and I just needed to let go of them and let life take me where it wants to. I think it will be great to get out of Provo where there’s so much pressure here to get married and to be constantly dating and blah blah...its hard though. It’s home. Not to mention that I still really want to live with Em and Jen in the Fall. Although, that will happen if I don’t make it in and I find another job outside of Provo…I’ll still be here if I can’t find something else though. I’d rather have a part time job and stay in Provo than no job and move home or somewhere else. I think I would go crazy without a job.

Other than that, I’ve been keeping insanely busy with Relief Society stuff. We’ve had a couple of enrichment activities that have been really intense on the planning end of it and I’m still not all caught up with everything even after they are done, but it’s been good. I love serving, and it keeps me busy! Along with that, I’ve been learning to crochet! It’s kind of the cheater way though…I have a loom thing that I bought at a craft store, but it totally works :) Beth asked me to help her make hats to donate to the NICU so I decided to extend it to our Relief Society for anyone who was wanting a service opportunity. It’s been fun to learn to make them…and they are so cute! I love little things. :) Also, here’s the story of the day for you: the zipper to my Ireland jacket broke a couple of months ago, so while I was at Walmart the other day, getting things for the starter 72 hour kits that we were making for our girls, I thought, hey…I’ll buy a zipper so I can replace the one in my jacket, right? Well…I was kinda distracted and making sure that I wasn’t forgetting anything else for the kits, that I wasn’t really thinking about the whole zipper thing….I got the kind that you put in dresses, that don’t come apart at the bottom….I didn’t really think about it until after I sewed the first side of it onto my jacket, so now, my jacket is no longer a jacket….it’s a hoodie with a zipper. Lol. Since it doesn’t come apart at the bottom, I just leave it zipped now and slip it over my head. Still very funny though…I am living proof that things as simple as zippers can get messed up. Lol. Anyway, this is getting kinda long, so I’m outta here! Love yall bad! XOXO

Pictures of Ireland

2009-02-21T13:33:00.001-07:00

Here's some of the pictures...it wasn't working on the other post :) Cheers!

Videos of Ireland

2009-02-21T12:19:00.006-07:00

Here are the videos and pictures that I promised. The internet was a little better today :)

This is the band and the dancer that they hired to show us some good old fashioned Irish culture while we ate our dinner in Dublin. They were pretty awesome. The dancer girl pulled me up on stage though and I'm more surprised that I didn't fall over seeing as how I'd been awake for at least 36 hours straight. hahah good times! :)

Ireland, Oh Ireland

2009-02-20T14:20:00.008-07:00

Okay, so many of you have been requesting a full account of my last week in Ireland so buckle up and get ready for probably too much information and pictures and videos! This is gonna jam packed of Irish loveliness! :) But actually, I just tried to upload some stuff and the internet is going bonkers so I'll have to put them on when I get back to Provo on Sunday. If you can't wait until then, I put them all on facebook, so look and enjoy! So, here it goes....

The flight wasn't as bad as I thought it would be...it was a good 7 hours and "farty-five" (said with an Irish accent...yeah, EVERY time someone said that, I started to giggle" minutes, in the middle of the night. I didn't sleep at all, but I think all of my adrenaline helped my legs to not hurt which was awesome. After they gave us breakfast, I was looking out the window at the beautiful green sights that could be seen and I think the guy in front of me could feel me being tickled with glee cuz he turned around and started talking to me...from the moment he opened his mouth (his name was Paul by the way), it was pure bliss...yes, my friends, he was from Ireland, returning home from a trip to South America. It was glorious. We talked the rest of the flight and then we split once we started getting off the plane. He randomly found us in the craziness that is the Customs station that was there and we talked some more and he waited with me until my mom and I got our luggage and oh man...did I ever enjoy it! He was so dang cute too. He kept touching my arm in that cute flirtatious way, you know? AHHHH loved it...it was from that moment on that I decided that I need to find a good, mormon, Irish boy to marry. All I would have to do is listen to him talk and a bad day would be turned into a glorious one! hahaha. Anyway, we shuttled to our hotel and got to walk around for an hour or so before our actual tour started. Everything in Ireland is cute and old-timey which was awesome. There weren't a lot of high rises and tall buildings either. I think the tallest was about 5 stories high, that I saw...and then the Cathedrals and Castles but those are a given :) The people weren't incredibly tall either...everything was 'my sized' and it was great! I've never felt so peaceful in my life! For every meal, we had at least one thing of potatoes...it was awesome. Their food was more bland that I'm used to, for the most part, but still really good. A lot of it was blended together too...for example, their apple pie, instead of having chunks of apple inside, it was this apple mush stuff...still tasted great, but different texture. Any of their soups were all creamed together too...no chunks...just blend! Still great and yummy! :)

Dublin

Later that day, we went on a bus tour around Dublin and they showed us all the different sights to see. I wish we could have stayed there an extra day so we could explore Dublin a little, but with all the things we did while we were there, I understand why they couldn't let us have free time there! We made our way to the Dublin Castle which was really cool. It wasn't the original because that one burned down a while ago. So they had to rebuild and modify it because they used to use it for housing important visitors after the kings and queens decided to move to a different place. They said that they created a "summer home" for them to live because they started getting annoyed with hearing the prisoner's moan and complain while they were trying to sleep. hahaha nice, huh? Anyway, afterwards, we went to dinner at the Three Rock Pub and they had little entertainment groups come to perform for us while we ate and made merry. You know the drill. :) Here's some videos that we took from that night...

Blarney

When we got to Blarney, we went up to the Blarney Castle grounds and walked around for a bit and then climbed the 110 steep steps to the top and I didn't trip once :) We got to the top where I kissed the Blarney Stone and did all that jazz...so now, I have the gift of eloquence. Beat that suckers. :) It was fun though because you had to lay on your back and kiss it upside down. Good times :) After me n the stone kissed it up real nice, we went to the Blarney Woollen Mills shopping center where we got all of our souvenirs n such. My mom and I had traditional Irish Stew, complete with potatoes and water :) We drove out to Killarney and we went shopping and looked around the town for the rest of the night.

Killarney

At the beginning of the day, we went on a Jaunting Car Ride. This is where we met Mark, our other tour guide (by the way...most of the guys that I met there, had Bible names...it was great. And there were LOTS of Johns there). Anyway, he took us on the ride around the National Park which was BEAUTIFUL. I can't believe that it's winter there. I can't wait to go back during the spring/summer time when everything is green. I can't even imagine how pretty it is there. I hope its what heaven is like :) There was this island that in the middle of the park that they call "honeymoon island." Mark told us a little joke..."What type of salad do they serve on Honeymoon Island? Just lettuce alone and no dressing" hahahaha...yeah, I thought that was funny. Mark was absolutely hilarious and not bad looking either ;) As a matter of fact, most of the Irish people there that I met were extremely funny which makes them that much more awesome. :) We ended the car ride at St. Mary's Cathedral and then started our trek through the Ring of Kerry.

Ring of Kerry

The Ring of Kerry is a 110 mile long stretch of pure landscaping. It was so beautiful! There were so many cool sites to see and fun times to be had! Our bus broke down though, so we had to stop at this po-dunk of a place for lunch while we waited for a new bus to arrive. After we finished the Ring, we drove out to the Gardens at Muckross House which was really pretty. They had a waterfall, rock, river and regular gardens. There was so much to see so I'm kinda bummed that we didn't get to stay longer. There were a bunch of families there that went to play ball games and walk their dogs n such...how cool would that be, ya know? Anyway, it was great.

Cliffs of Moher & Bunratty

The next day we took a ferry out across the atlantic ocean to get to Shannon and then drove out to the Cliffs of Moher to see that. They were so pretty, per the usual. It was so windy and cold, but definitely worth the climb to the top. After that, we drove out to Bunratty and did a little more shopping and we went to a medieval dinner that night in the castle. It was fun to walk around the castle grounds and see all the old stuff. When we got there, they took us into this one room where we had a welcome drink and they sang a couple of songs and then we walked down the steps into the Great Hall where we had a four reserve (course) meal and they had a little show for us there too. It was great!

I'm seriously so bummed to be gone...I freakin loved it there. One day I'd like to go back and see more things that I didn't get to see this time. The flight home was actually really good...it was during the day so I wasn't really that tired and I got to pick which movies I watched so I saw two that I'd kinda wanted to see but didn't want to pay to see them (The traveling hood of the sister pants 2 and High School Musical 3) That made it go by pretty fast. The flight from JFK to Dallas tho was HORRIBLE. I was so tired and my legs hurt so bad that they kept spazzing every 5 or 10 minutes and I couldn't sleep because they hurt so bad. I tried reading to take my mind off of it, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't keep my eyes open...lame, but I made it through! Anyway, get ready for pictures and videos once I get back to Provo...or maybe once the internet stops sucking here! Love y'all bad! Cheers! XOXO

You know you go to BYU when...

2009-02-05T12:00:00.003-07:00

Okay, so I was jamming out to my Irish Pandora station at work, and a song came on that I seriously haven’t heard in AGES…Ashokan Farewell. (the new one on my playlist)…My mom and sister used to play it on the piano and flute back in the day and I LOVED it. When I heard it, it reminded me of all the fun times we used to have back when life didn’t seem so busy and/or stressful. It was fun to hear it again and go back to that place! Anyway, that’s really all I have about that…it’s a great song and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it!

As for today's REAL post...I've decided to compile a list of "You know you go to BYU/live in Provo when..." list. Emily's friends in her class did one kind of similar, only specific to her major and we were laughing our heads off. So here's my feeble attempt to be as truthful as possible. :)

You know you go to BYU/live in Provo when...

1. You leave your apartment and as you are walking across the street, you hope and pray that someone doesn't drive over you with their car...especially if you are riding a bike.

2. You see signs and billboards everywhere for bridal fairs and "Single? Call this number."

3. You've actually thought of calling those numbers...

4. You dread the 5th Sunday because those are the "chastity talk" Sundays from the Bishopric.

5. Sundays, in general, are very busy for you. They usually consist of going to meetings, finishing lessons/talks, going to church, then more meetings, visiting/home teaching, calling family, ward prayer, and some form of tunnel singing/singing hymns in someones apartment.

6. When you leave Provo, you are shocked when you see girls who are dressed immodestly, and people with cigarettes and beer bottles in their hands.

7. Every time you leave your apartment, you always see at least one person running...no matter the time of year.

8. Your friends, who are younger than you, ask you if you can babysit for them sometime that week.

9. Your roommates are confined to their rooms or have to leave the apartment because your visiting/home teachers came over.

10. You know what the phrase "the Spirit goes to bed at midnight" is referring to. You also know that that same said Spirit, goes to bed at 1:30 on Fridays.

11. Your friend comes over and tells you that they NCMOed (non committal make out) with someone, and you are completely shocked that they would do such a thing.

12. The acronym DTR, scares the pants off of you...and you cant help but wish that it stood for "Dell Taco Run."

13. You have to buy your tickets to the dollar theater at least 2 hours in advance on weekends...and you know its smart to go about 45 minutes early so you can sit with whoever you came with.

14. In dance and other exercise classes, everyone is still wearing long shorts and t-shirts even though tank tops with thicker sleeves are actually allowed.

15. You have experienced all new levels of creative dating that you didn't think were possible.

16. The entire ward seems to be in a giant cookie exchange.

17. You have to drive around to find a parking space where your car wont get booted or towed, longer than it took you to actually drive there.

18. You come home after midnight, and find all of the couples standing outside their doors because midnight just isn't late enough...

19. You wish that everything was open until at least midnight, if not longer.

20. You go to the temple and see at least 3 people you know.

21. You see people that you've only seen in the temple before and get weirded out because they are in real clothes.

22. You have to choose which bridal showers, baby showers and wedding receptions you will go to because they are all scheduled on the same day.

23. On the first day of class, you look around the classroom to scope out who you want to sit by, with hopes that they will talk to you and maybe ask you out.

24. You find someone in the said class and realize they are married

25. You come to find that there is ALWAYS someone that knows someone else you know because they served together on their missions.

26. Someone that served in your home ward, while you were going to school, has called you or seen you on campus and asked..."are you so-and-so's daughter? Your mom told me to look you up when I got off my mission..." True story.

Okay, there are plenty more...but this is a pretty good list for now. As funny/strange as it is to live here, I sure love it! :) I'm sure I'll come up with more later, too so keep your eyes peeled. (that expression always used to scare me when I was little...it didn't produce the nicest images in my head. hahaha) I hope everyone has had a WONDERFUL day so far. XOXO

My Family

2009-01-23T16:06:00.001-07:00

I’ve decided that since I’ve done a tribute to my brother, Sydney, my car and to my roommates, I should probably step it up and throw down a little shout out to my wonderfully awesome sister and the parental unit. So here it goes…

Meredith…*singing* how do you solve a problem like Meredith? HAHAHAH SO just kidding, sister-face! I love you so freaking bad that I can’t even express it how it should be! We have so many awesome memories that it’s hard to pinpoint them all down, but seriously you’re my heart’s duet. Hahahaha. Life without you would totally suck in a bad bad bad way! I always look forward to coming home and spending every day, all day at your house. Of course, whenever we’re together, While You Were Sleeping and Anne of Green Gables are definitely an order. Nothing was better than when we road tripped it to Vegas last year and we turn on the TV one morning and what was on? That’s right...a little Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman goodness. I think the universe knew we were together. Lol. Meredith is one of those sisters where you can just sit around all day with her and you’re never bored. I don’t know if that’s because, between the two of us, we’re very clumsy and we say stupid things all the time or if we’re just that cool. I’m surprised we have to talk at all considering that we can usually tell what the other is thinking at the very moment. Never try to beat us at Catch Phrase. We will destroy you. :) I think one of my most favorite memories of Meredith and I was when she used to let me sleep in her room when she was in high school. She would pull out the trundle bed and she’d read scriptures while I practiced how to braid hair and then we’d stay up giggling for a few and then it would start all over again the next night! Good times, sister girl. I love you bad and can’t imagine life without you.

Mammasita…honestly, who else would I take to Ireland with me? You rock my socks and it’s so fun that we end up liking a lot of the same things…Ireland, Eeyore, etc. etc. etc. You know, the important things in life :) I also love getting to be your personal shopper…it’s nice to shop for ppl who don’t have a severely large billboard shoulder line. Hahaha. You’ve taught me so much that I wouldn’t have been able to learn from other people and I really value those lessons! :) You know what I miss? All of the cute little notes you and dad used to sneak into my lunches in high school! Its way cool that I got to have your middle name too! We should start an exclusive club or something :) It also makes me feel like I belong in the house of Elle at Krypton…we could be tight with Kalelle and Jorelle or however you spell them. I have no idea, but they sound the same and that makes it a freakin sweet name. I remember all those times when I used to crawl in bed with you and want to snuggle while we watched TV…good times! Anyway, I love you bad and I can’t wait for our fun Ireland adventure next month. It’s gonna be our fun bonding time! We haven’t gotten to do that for a while and I’m excited to leave work and school behind and get a week of just me and you! It’s gonna be great!

Pappity doo dah…how else can I explain it? Yoda? Yeah…you have much knowledge! Hahaha. Thanks for always being the voice of reason for me and for showing me how to fill our lives with Christlike love for those who surround you. I also love all the crappy/awesome things that I inherited from you…bad teeth structure, big feet and toes, eyes that don’t need contacts (seriously…LOVE you for that) and the best one…the fact that we can’t sleep if the bed wasn’t made when we first got in. haha. Quirky, but awesome. Everyone knows that I’m daddy’s little girl and I love it! You always make me feel like someone worthwhile! I loved waking up and seeing flowers on the stove for me on Valentine’s Day and I definitely love our daddy daughter dates to give blood. Not to mention that getting to do the genealogy for your side of the family has been so fun! You’re seriously the best dad ever and I feel bad for everyone else cuz you aren’t their daddio!

Okay, okay…so short and sweet, that’s how I roll! :) I hope everyone has a great weekend and an even better week next week! Heart y’all bad! XOXO

Changing Times and Tough Decisions

2009-01-20T12:48:00.003-07:00

So, you know how I thought I had everything planned out? Remember how I also have said, on occasion, that my plans usually never work out? hahah yeah...we're back to square one again. After a LOT of thinking and fighting with myself about different issues (that's very hard to do you know...it takes a lot of talent. haha) I have decided that I have no idea where I'm going to go after this semester. Good conclusion right? :) I've realized that I need to stop putting of what I want to do because the options that present themselves are comfortable for me and "safe." I need to get out and as Mrs. Frizzle always says, "Get messy...make mistakes!" Honestly, I've never been more scared in my life! It was easier to take the easy way out a couple of days ago before all this thinking started. See...no good comes from thinking. We should all stop right now! A few weeks ago I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I just had options and ideas that really didn't excite me much for anything longer than a day or two. Maybe a week if I was lucky. Now, after much thought, I really feel strongly about getting involved with things like crisis centers/women's issues centers or other non-profit organizations that are trying to make the world a better place. I've been doing some job searching and I actually applied for a position at a branch office in Dallas for Cystic Fibrosis today. They asked for my availability date and seriously...it was so hard to put March 09. As much as I really dislike a few things about Provo, its home and if I end up leaving, its going to be really hard. Especially leaving before April like I had planned. And leaving so many of my close friends that I have made through the last 4 1/2 years to head back home where I was certain I wouldn't end up anytime soon. Don't get me wrong...I would love to be home, close to my family, but the culture here is so different and I absolutely love it here despite all the crap pressure to get married, the snow and stuff. Not to mention that it's a great place to be when you're single and LDS. The very idea of leaving really scares me. I've been looking for places in Utah as well and Arizona too but nothing has come up yet...although, I haven't really been searching that long, so who knows? Emily wants to end up in Arizona and I've heard wonderful things about it...not to mention that it's warm. So, that's the scoop. Growing up stinks sometimes. ;)

In brighter news...I got to go to the Draper Temple open house yesterday. It was completely wonderful! I love temples...they really are amazing! But, for now, I have to get back to work. I hope everyone had a wonderful MLK day and continues to have a great week! Love you all! XOXO

Bet On It

2009-01-12T11:09:00.003-07:00

Howdy y'all! This weekend brought about some funny/interesting stories...all around, it was a good time :) Lets go back to Monday though, where the story begins. Monday night after FHE I went with my brothas, Jon, Klark and Verdon and a couple of other ppl in the ward to play volleyball with their friends from Pleasant Grove and as we were in the middle of doing a donut in the church parking lot, Klark stopped and was like hey...have you seen the rugby movie that's in the dollar theater? I said no and they were shocked. So, we decided that we were going to see it that weekend. Long story short, there ended up being about a good 20 ppl from our ward there that night, so it was fun. Not to mention that the movie was actually really good, not including all the cheesy Mormon-ish stuff about it. Sometimes the cheesy Mormon stuff is actually quite hilarious, so yes...I loved the movie and I'm glad I saw it. :)

Saturday was quite the busy day. I went shooting (yes, real guns...weird huh?) with Verdon, Klark and Katie. I felt pretty hardcore, I'm not gonna lie. I'd only been shooting once before and it didn't even technically count. It was in Allison Moon's backyard and we were shooting at a milk carton filled with water. Not quite the best. So yes...it was fun. I sucked pretty bad but I did, at least, hit the targets. I hit the center a couple of times but I'm blaming that on sheer luck. My gun choice: 22 Caliber. All the other ones made me feel like a lameo that cant aim. haha. Which, in fact, is very true, but I'd rather ppl not find that out while I'm shooting a loaded gun :) My funny story from that experience though, is that whenever I was shooting this particular gun, the shells would fly back at me, which didn't hurt or anything, but sometimes they would fly down my shirt. Usually I could just shake it out, but not one time...oh no. It found its way through many layers of shirts and got stuck. Yes, that's right. Stuck. Naturally, it was hot so it burned a little, resulting in me doing a rather strange jiggy dance to try to get it out. Even that didn't work. I finally had to reach down there and grab it out. Good times. Its a good thing that Klark, Verdon and I are so close. haha.

Later that night, I got to go to the Jazz/Pistons game with Pete, Verdon and Ariel. It was some way good times, other than the fact that the Pistons lost by like 26 points. BLAH. That's always the luck. There was this little boy that was sitting behind us that had no idea what the phrase 'trash talk' really means. He kept saying things like, "you trashy car parts!" hahahaha. Oh man...or he'd just yell BOO BOO over and over again. Mind you, he sounded like a little 5 year old girl. We actually thought he was until we turned around and noticed otherwise. Good times. We went and got hot chocolate afterwards to warm up a little and then went trax surfing...and by we, I mean Pete. The rest of us just kinda stood there and watched as he tried to stand on the trax train without holding onto anything when it stopped and started. It was quite funny to watch, but you probably had to be there. He was all over the place at some points.

When I got home, I found my roommates sitting around the TV watching the second high school musical. I've only seen the end part of that one which has some absolutely HILARIOUS parts just because its so incredibly corny. You can't help but laugh when you watch it. I would like to know if this was choreographed or if this is just Zac Efron's brilliance. Now I know why all the girls love him so! After the movie was finished, we decided to dance and sing along with all of the songs. They decided to give me all of the "locker" scenes. There are a couple where the lead girl is singing these sad, lonely songs (evidently, the lack of Zac depresses her...but seriously, wouldn't it depress you if those stellar dance moves were taken away?) Anyway, during times of these songs, she's singing up against the lockers and beating them. I'm here to tell you today, that I reenacted those moments using our fridget. It was great...and now all locker scenes belong to me. Its just sad we didn't get any of this on tape. Aubrey's rendition of 'bet on it' was absolutely classic and I'll forever have it in my memories to pull from when I need a little pick me up. It was definitely the BEST part of the movie, hands down.

Last night, after Disney night, Ashley asked if she could give me a good body massage. She's been thinking about going to massage school because she loves it so much and wants to make it a weekly thing. Shyeah...who would say no to that? Afterwards, her roommate, Aubrey (not the aubrey from before) who is a hair dresser, wanted to give me a scalp massage with all of her good smelly stuff. Oh it was so nice! Loved it!

Anyway, I started back at my job today (which is why I'm blogging by the way)...I love getting paid to do nothing. Its sure better than NOT getting paid to do nothing. :) Although, when I got here, Natania was like...I'm so glad you're here! I have questions for you! hahaha. Good times. It'll be back to normal tomorrow when I get to go out and observe again. I'm excited for that. I hope everyone has a great day and remembers to 'bet on it' whenever they are gonna make a change in their lives. hahaha so tender...

In A Good Place

2009-01-08T13:30:00.003-07:00

Okay...this is gonna be shortish, but I just wanted to give a quick update. I got a call from BYU finally today (a little later than they had said, but better late than never, for sure). Anyway, they said they actually worked everything out so I'll be starting up at PBSI again on Monday. It's only part-time, but definitely a great thing for me. I have already applied to around 6 or 7 places so if I get calls from any of them, I'll go ahead and interview, and if not, then I'll keep going with my job hunting after I get back from Ireland. I really wasn't sure how well that woulda worked with finding a new job right now. So, I'm definitely very blessed! :) I'm glad it all worked out this way. I can have some kind of income while still searching for a job and it'll make my leaving a lot easier on me and the rest of the office at PBSI. I pretty much ran that place and not training anyone in the stuff I do was gonna make it pretty hard, so I hear. Anyway...I'm definitely excited to have something to do now. I also am going to start volunteering at the crisis center hot-lines and battered women's shelter in Provo with my spare time since I'll only be doing the part time thing for at least another 2 months or so and I"m pretty excited about that. I realized while I was at home that I would LOVE to work in some kind of crisis center or battered women's shelter. So, I figure volunteering there would be a good place to start. Anyway, I hope everyone has had a great week and I'll catch y'all lata! XOXO

A Good Start

2009-01-07T18:36:00.003-07:00

So, I'm back in Provo now and trying to get back on my feet. I've applied to a few places for jobs so I'm just waiting to see if I'll get any interviews in the near future. I'm actually really excited about things now and actually kind of glad that things happened this way. In all reality, I would've been much happier if I had maybe 2 weeks at PBSI still where I could pass off my knowledge to the other girls to make sure everything gets taken care of n such. It would've made leaving a little easier on everyone else, but we do what we have to right?

My first night back was HILARIOUS. I was completely out of it...I'm blaming it on the flight. For starters, the flight seemed so much longer than normal. I don't know if it was because I didn't really sleep like I usually do on flights or what, but it took forever and I think it threw off my...everything. :) Once I got home, I went over to Joyce's to say hello and she came back with me to chat it up while I unpacked. While we were over there, Ashley came over to give me something and we all stood around talking for a bit. During the said talking, my neck had this random spaz attack and it made me bang my head against the wall. haha. It hurt. They both kinda looked at me like, why the heck are you banging your head against the wall? hahah it was so funny. Later, I decided that I wanted to make some muffins cuz I was hungry and as I'm trying to put them into the oven, I just randomly dropped the pan. There was batter EVERYWHERE. All I could do was sit there and stare in amazement at what I'd done. haha. Take a gander at this would ya? Yeah, awesome, right? :)
But it doesn't stop there. Oh no...Joyce had Emily's fish over the holidays, so I went over to retrieve him, right? Her and Irene were like seriously...we know what kind of night you've had. Do you want us to take the fish and walk back with you? We don't want you to drop him. lol (ew...can you imagine? That would suck). I continually assured them that I would be fine and didn't need their assistance. About two steps later, they hear me start laughing and come out to find out what happened. For some reason, I was walking funny and it made the water splash everywhere. And this wasn't just any water...it was Denzel's poop infested water...all down my front. It was really nice. Quite funny for sure, but still kinda sick. haha. So, naturally, we laughed for a good 10 minutes and it was at that point that I decided putting sheets on my bed was not a good idea and I would wait for tomorrow. Making your bed on the top bunk is hard enough on a good day...I didn't know what kind of tragedy would happen if I tried. Good times for sure though. It was definitely good to see everyone again. I've had so much fun the last couple of days, getting to hang with my FHE brothers and my other Provo friends! I got to see Isaac yesterday too before he heads back to VA to go to school, so that was fun. Although, the snow here is crazy...brrrrr!!!! I miss the 80 degree weather that I left in Texas. *sighs*

I picked up Emily from the airport last night! I'm so glad she's back. I missed her so bad over the break. Its been like we never left though! So wonderful! Well my friends...I'm really tired for some reason so I'm not feeling very bloggy at the moment :) I'll catch y'all lata! XOXO

2009 Will Be Sublime!

2009-01-02T09:37:00.002-07:00

Hey hey! So, sorry about being sucha bum on that last post. I'm glad I've pushed past the sulky phase, as I'm sure everyone else in my family is too. haha. I've decided that instead of making New Years resolutions like I usually do (and then never follow through with them), I will just make a list of stuff that I am either excited for or hope to accomplish. I've already started out the New Year unemployed and sicky so I'm hoping to get the worst out of the way from the very beginning! hahaha.

Looking forward to:

1. IRELAND...its so close! :)

2. Living with Jen and Emily during Summer time and beyond.

3. Really letting it sink in that I'm graduated...no more studying and lots of time for reading!

4. Finding new hobbies and learning to do stuff that I've wanted to learn...like crocheting and uhhhh glass blowing? hahaha

5. All the new experiences and lessons that will come my way!

What I'm hoping for:

1. Finding a good job...hopefully one with benefits. :)

2. Making tons of fun new friends and still lovin the old ones

3. Uhhh...since I ate the traditional black eyed pea soup yesterday, I guess I should say that I hope for luck? Oh, and the Corn beef and Cabbage we had is supposed to bring prosperity, so I hope for that too. And while I'm at it...I'm gonna be kissing the Blarney stone in about a month and a half, so I'll hope for charisma as well. :) It just seems fitting, don't you think? ...Maybe they'll actually work... Can you imagine me being lucky, prosperous AND charismatic at the same time? WOOO That might be a fearsome thing to behold! hahaha I'll take it! :)

4. To find an awesome apartment (for me, Em and Jen) that we all love.

5. That I'll actually USE my pass to the gym more than twice a month. haha. Thats kind of a resolution, but not really...I did so good for a while and then, out of no where, I stopped. haha. I blame the cold weather and laziness. :)

So, there you have it...my top 5's. I hope everyone has a GREAT year this year! I know 2008 was awesome and I cant wait to see what 2009 brings! Heartcha! XOXO

A Bad Case of the Blues

2008-12-30T08:58:00.002-07:00

Yesterday came with quite a frustrating surprise...I remembered that I hadn't heard back from one of the other girls who splits my shift with me at work, and I'm thinkin okay...I have to go into work on Monday. It would be nice to know when I was supposed to go in, right? So, I call up there and my boss said those tragic words..."here's the situation..." I could tell from her voice that it wasn't a "good" situation. So, for safety reasons, I buckled up and prepared for the worst. She then told me that they just found out from the Dean that it was looking like they couldn't keep me next semester like we'd been planning on since, when was it? Summer time? Yup...so around August. Anyway, she explained to me that they have put new freezes on the hiring system that said if their part or full time employees weren't hired by December 15th, they couldn't be hired for this semester. Because I'm still 'considered' a student until December 31st, they couldn't hire me as a BYU Faculty member, so I have recently found myself jobless. Deano called me a bunch yesterday and said that he's going to try to fight it because they don't want to lose me, but for me to not get my hopes up because it doesn't look good. I spent most of yesterday grouching around and severely freaking out. Okay, maybe not severely, but still quite worried and not entertaining the best of moods.

So, I did a little job searching yesterday and submitted my resume to two places, but from Fort Worth, there is only so much I can do until I get back. I'm not so much worried about making rent or eating for a bit...I have been saving money since I got my first job when I was like 14 or something, and money hasn't really ever been an 'issue'...I've always been a stickler for how much I have in savings...not that it's a substantial amount, but I was kinda hoping that I wouldn't have to dip into it for a while...especially right as I've been released from financial help from the parental unit and no longer have insurance and stuff like that. I know they'll help me out still if I need it, but I hate depending on them for that sort of thing. I may just need to suck up my pride though even though I don't want to. I know this happened for a reason and I'm really trying to find the silver lining...I've found a few but I'm having a hard time being convinced by them at this point. For example...this way, I can look for a full time job that pays more and I'll be better off and can start out fresh now instead of later...there's somewhere else that I'm supposed to be and new experiences to experience and lessons to learn...I was just hoping to do this whole job searching thing a couple months later than right now. Like, maybe, when I had a plan of where I was going to move to and not having to worry about finding a job that will give me two weeks off right at the start so I can go to Ireland. Unless I find something really soon, y'all cant expect cool souvenirs anymore :)...you might just get one of those pencils that says, "My friend went to Ireland and all I got was this stupid pencil" hahahaha. Suckers. lol jk. If you can't tell, I don't handle change very well :) Anyway, I'm done whining...but I still think it completely stinks. haha. A small part of me is excited though...who knows what this will bring? And the Lord will take care of me...I just hope it doesn't take very long for me to find a job. Anyway, I hope everyone has a sweet New Year. We're all going to Babes tonight for dinner and I couldn't be more excited than I am right now! A perfect pick me up! :) I heart y'all bad and sorry to be sucha downer today~ xoxo

Home, Home on the Range!

2008-12-21T20:49:00.002-07:00

Oh, how I love being home! I know I said that last time, but its still true :) Good thing huh? My mom and I finished my skirt last night. It took a long longer than we thought because, genius me, picked an extremely complicating pattern, apparently. Way to go, right? haha...its okay though...my mom is like a sewing fiend, so with the two of us workin together, we finished it in time for church today. YAHOO. It was kinda fun to get compliments on it since I actually halfway made it! :) I was quite proud with how it turned out.

Yesterday we went to Casa Manana to see the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer production they put on. For those who don't know what Casa is, its a children's theater where kids come to learn theater, dancing, singing...yada yada. Mostly just theater tho and then they cast the kids in their productions. There are quite a few adults too tho so its still fun and cute for kids to go see. It was fun to go back. I hadn't been there since I was around 10 years old when I used to go with McKenzie and her mom...McKenzie and I would be volunteer ushers to get free tickets. It was great. We had front row tickets this time so it was fun to see how excited Malla and Syd got when they were so close to the actors. I really think Malla enjoyed it more than Syd! haha. I know Puden and I enjoyed it thoroughly...mostly because we took turns scratching each others back the whole two hours! haha. Love that!

Afterwards, we went to Mercado Juarez...one of the BEST Mexican restaurants around here. We used to go once a year for drill team and that was the last time I'd been. I'd forgot how much better Mexican food is here than it is in Utah. *sighs* The tortillas....they melt my butter. My brother, sister and I have this weird tradition with tortillas at Mexican restaurants. I'm not sure how it started, but we all start with one, and we rip pieces off and hand them to one another. If the pieces are big, we rip parts off of those and trade with each other. It sounds dumb, but its a fun little weird tradition that usually confuses everyone else that is there with us. I just love it.

We also decorated Grammy's traditional Christmas sugar cookies last night (or cuger shookies,r right Em?). Its one of my favorite parts about Christmas. It's usually just me, Meredith, Syd and Grammy...and we bust out the frosting and go at it...plus we get to eat a few during the whole process which is an added bonus. We usually sneak in a good 4 or 5 "Mavs" themed cookies too. Anything from green and blue candy canes, to stockings with Dirk's name painted with frosting on the top. :) Three years ago, my parents bought Grammy this HUGE barrel (seriously...like 50 Christmas cookie cutters) and we were going thru them and there was this one that we couldn't quite figure out what it was. It looked like an eyeball. Not even joking. So, we decided to make a few and ask around. No one could tell, so I decorated it as an eye...we then realized that it was an ornament. haha. But, now its happened, and each year, Grammy makes two and I decorate them as eyeballs even though we know the truth. I love random Christmas traditions and inside jokes. :)

Today was Sunday, obviously, and it was fun to be back in a family ward. Definitely strange for sure, but still fun. It made me appreciate the 3 minute drive to campus for church. During our 30 minute trek, my sister, Syd, Malla and I jammed out to Primary Songs and laughed that Meredith and I seriously dont know the same parts to the same songs. It was pretty classic. We'd be singing and then we'd suddenly both get really quiet cuz we didn't know the words. Did you know that they added another value to the Young Women's theme? What the heck? As if adding "strengthening home and family" to the end wasn't bad enough...now there are 8 values...VIRTUE is now lucky number 8. My ring of all the value colors is now out of date. It makes me feel old. haha but not too old, so its okay. And really...its kinda cool. :) After church we decorated/made our traditional gingerbread house, complete with ghetto windows and roof. Last year was the ghetto snowman and the year before that was the ghetto lump of car we made. This year's definitely turned out special for sure. :) I think I'm gonna take Syd cardboarding one of these days. We cant go sledding here cuz there's no snow, so we always used to get cardboard boxes and slide down the dead grass. Good times...someone has to introduce her to that, you know? anyway, this is a HUGE post, so I apologize...but I hope everyone has a great Christmas week! XOXO

Hello Texas, Goodbye Static Cling!

2008-12-17T14:42:00.003-07:00

Howdy y'all! :) It's soooo great to be home. And what's even better is that this time, I know that when I go back to Provo, I'll just be working and not doing all that homework n junk. Not that I really did it at all during this last semester that much, but at least this time I wont feel slightly guilty about not doing anything. haha. I haven't even been home for 24 hours and yet, I already have tons of stories to tell. Little bits of Texas heaven, if you will. So, the standing joke in my family is that every time I come home, the weather gets really cold and rainy in Texas. No joke...it never fails to happen. I still got here okay, despite the almost 2 hour delay in my flight. It's better late than never you know? I was sitting next to this guy on the plane and he's telling me about his friend's rock band that is playing in Dallas after Christmas and boy did he have a little mouth on him. It was kind of funny because I was completely shocked the first time a little somethin' somethin' slipped out of his mouth and when I saw girls in spaghetti strap and low cut shirts...I was like wow...Provo really IS a bubble and I had completely forgotten about that small detail. Good times for sure. Despite it being really cold here though, the static problem that always persists in Utah is GONE. I can rub my head all over the couch and not shock anything when I stand up...especially the fridget...that thing HURTS :) Not that I every really rub my head all over the couch, but its nice to know I have the option.

Once we got to my sister's house, Syd came running to the door, jumped and grabbed on around my neck and stayed there until I switched her for Malla eventually. I just love my girls. Malla has the CUTEST smile ever...you just cant help but smile when she shows off her toothless grin and dimples. Love, love, love it! We went into Syd's room to play dress up, among other things and then we had to go home. I stayed up all night doing laundry, reorganizing my room (duh...haha so sad) and watching Oklahoma whilst wrapping Christmas presents and chatting to my friends online. So, yes...I was being very productive :)

Today I went in for my dentist appointment and I was talking to the guy that was in the waiting room with me and after we'd been talking for a while, he stops and goes...where are you from? You have a Texan accent, but its weird. hahaha. So apparently, its now a mix between Utah and Texas. I'm sitting there thinking, you're one to talk...(his was VERY thick and twangy...love that by the way). And you'll all be proud to know: NO CAVITIES! *teethy grin* I'm squeaky clean. Although she did a number on my gums. It did not feel good. :) I had an eye doctor appointment today too and during one of the eye tests, the nurse threw her clicker at my head. Not on purpose, but it was still funny. She wasn't getting the picture she wanted and she was trying to reposition me and it just flew from her hand to my head. It was classic. Probably a lot more funny if you were actually there. We were seriously cracking up and she kept "threatening" me that if I didn't get it right, she would throw it harder next time. :) I love the people here...they're seriously so great!

I also decided to try my luck at sewing a skirt. I've wanted to make "holiday" skirts since October but not havin a sewing machine puts a damper on the situation. So, I went and bought a pattern today. I really have no idea what I'm doing but I'm darn excited about it. We'll just see if it actually turns out how I'm envisioning it. I want it to be a green one actually so I can wear it for Christmas and St. Patty's day...I'm all about cheating like that :) The problem is, is that I always envision what kind of patterns of fabric I'm looking for and no one ever makes them, so it's never what I specifically want...but I'm sure I'll find something good when I go pick stuff out on Friday (gotta love 50% off coupons). WOO HOO.

Grammy comes tomorrow and I can't wait. And Meredith and the girls are comin over for a breakfast dinner in about an hour or so, so until then, I'm gonna wrap more presents and finish watching the Sound of Music. Can you tell I LOVE musicals? hahaha...who knew? Anyway, I hope everyone is having a GREAT Christmas vacation...when it starts :) Heart y'all! xoxo