Thanksgiving

So I should be asleep since I have to be at work at 6:30 tomorrow morning, but I am doing this instead....

Last week, Kelsey, Nate, and I were able to drive home to California to spend Thanksgiving with our families. The trip went really well. We wanted to leave at 3 AM, but as it was, Kelsey and I didn't go to sleep until 1:30. So we slept until 3, woke up and threw a few last minute things together, got gas, picked up Nate, drugged up on some caffine pills and hit the road. I will NEVER take caffine pills again. They were lifesavers on our trip, but I have never felt so jittery and hyper in my whole life. It did make the trip more interesting, however :) It really is amazing to me that in less than 12 hours we can drive through 4 states and be somewhere totally different. And it's crazy that in 18 days we will get back in the car and do this again... Anyways.

Kelsey and I at 4 AM... don't look too close

Thanksgiving morning my dad and brother went and played in a Turkey Bowl over at Country Hills. Megan and I went to watch. It was pretty fun to see everyone play. They even had a little kids game goin off to the side. It started raining pretty hard for a few minutes and some of the guys got pretty muddy. I was bummed we didn't have a soccer ball. That is one of my favorite things to do - soccer in the mud/rain.

Turkey Bowl

That night, we drove up to my aunt and uncle's house for turkey dinner. I unfortunately don't have any pictures of that, other than this one of me and Paige, my cousin's daughter. She is a riot.

Paige and I

Friday was just a day to relax and hang out. Kelsey and I babysat for a couple hours that night, which again, I don't have pictures of right now. Saturday, Kelsey and I were able to go to lunch with the cute Bailey family - thanks guys, we had a blast!!

Brynn and Kelsey

Brynn, Braden, Christopher

Brynn and I

And Sunday we were able to go to Sacrament Meeting before hittin' the road again for the drive back to good 'ol Provo.

If any of you went to college, you probably either had, or a least heard of a "quote wall", or in our case, a "quote dash". Notice the BAND-AID sticking the NAPKIN to the dash... probably the most white trash thing ever. But it served its purpose.

Yes... I Am A Professional

I finally got around to getting a job. You'd think that I would have been more on top of that, considering I am in my second year of college and have never had a real job. But anyways... I am officially employed. I work at Mountain Star Blood Services as a phlebotomist. It's a blood donation center and as my job, I take the blood pressure, the temperature, do the blood sample where they stick you in the finger (I think that's worse than the donation) and ask all the questions about medications and travel and all that jazz. Then I do all the prep work and take blood also. Right now I am just in training, so it's A LOT of bookwork and paperwork before I can do the hands on. But I will get to start going on blood drives next Thursday, so I am way excited about it! We rotate being "in-house", which means we stay at the office, but for the most part, we load up the van and go do blood drives. So most days I will be out, and they said I'll probably be working about 20-30 hours a week, but only 2 days a week, so it makes for long days. But I am really looking forward to starting the REAL stuff soon!

The scrubs and the badge MIGHT be the coolest part!! :)

We Like to Party!

I'm a little behind, but last weekend 2 girls in our ward had their "golden birthdays". So they had a big party, which we had to dress up in black and white for. It was pretty fun. They rented out the clubhouse and had food, "mocktails", lots of balloons, dancing, and fun stuff. One of the girls' hair caught on fire when she was blowing out her candles... luckily it was put out quick. We didn't stay the whole time, but it was fun dressing up and getting out for a little bit!


Me, Kelsey and Tanna before the party

Girl's Night

It's been a while since the girl's have been able to get together, so we decided to have a little Halloween party. We decorated haunted houses, carved pumpkins, ate food, and just had girl talk. It was so fun and relaxing to just hang out and have fun.


The food table :)

Decorating haunted houses (L to R: me, Jessica, Becca, Amanda)

Carving pumpkins (L to R: Kelsey, Amanda)

Kelsey and her pumpkin

Kelsey and I had a little too much fun shopping for the party - we even bought Halloween pants...

Football, Firetrucks, and More Football...

Last weekend, my friend Ian, my aunt Kristine, and I all drove up to Boise, Idaho to visit my grandpa. We left Friday morning and got there in time for lunch. We then went and visited the cemetery to see my grandma's grave. I haven't been there since the headstone was put it, so it was nice to see it. It is up on a hill and has the most beautiful view of all of Boise. After that, we just hung out and visited for the rest of the day. Saturday was pretty much the same thing. We had a football game on from 10:30 in the morning til about 9:30 that night... Ian and I were able to get some studying in during halftimes, and that night we had our first attempt at making a cheesecake... it's not the easiest thing in the world, but it was still fun and super good!! My other aunt Carol, and my cousin and his wife and kids stopped by, and it was way fun to see them. Sunday was Grandpa's stake conference, so we went to that. Then we came home and got changed and Ian and I went to the Boise Fire Department to hang out. My cousin Jeff is a fireman and offered to let us go on a ride-along on Sunday. Nothing too exciting happened. They only got one call the whole time we were there, and someone had just accidentally pulled a fire alarm. It was cool to see them in action at the station, though.

Grandpa and I Sunday after church

In the fire truck in response to the call

The front of the fire truck

Today's activity for mentoring was a tour of the BYU football stadium. It was pretty cool. I've been there for games, but I've never seen the stuff we got to see today. We were able to go into the locker room and see how things work in there. Then we got to go onto the actual field, which they were painting for the game tomorrow. And last, we got to go up into the press box and see the view from up there. It was pretty neat. The kids seemed to have a blast - especially the boys who dream of playing football for BYU one day. It was pretty cute.


The view from field level

PYM Mentoring

Every Friday for an hour, Kelsey and I do something called PYM Mentoring. They bus in a bunch of sixth graders from Timpanogos Elementary School and we get to spend an hour with them. These kids are considered "at-risk" kids and some of them have behavior issues. We are each assigned to a kid that we are with each week for the rest of the school year. The girl I was paired up with is Charlie. She is the sweetest girl! It's been so fun talking to her and getting to know her. We actually have a lot in common and it has been so easy to get along with her. This week we did a scavenger hunt on the BYU campus. We went into different buildings and saw fun stuff and had to write a few sentences about what we saw. Each week something fun and new is planned. So far, it's been such a fun experience and I am so excited to spend an hour a week with her! :)

Music and the Spoken Word

This morning I went on kind of a double date (does it count if it's on Sunday??) up to Salt Lake to see Music and the Spoken Word. It was in the old Tabernacle, which I had never been in - we took a little tour through there when I was younger but I barely remember it. It was so pretty and it was amazing to think that it was built so long ago! I guess this program is the longest lasting program on the radio - it's been going on for almost 80 years and today was their 4,124th performance. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang and the Temple Square Bell Choir played with them. I think the bells were my favorite. I love the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, don't get me wrong, but watching them play the bells was incredible. They sang a few songs, including Somewhere Out There from the movie An American Tale. Then they read a little something about the importance of handmade gifts. I thought it was pretty cool. They had all been before, but it was my first time and I really enjoyed it. That might have to be something we do again!

Body World Exhibit

Some of you may have heard about the Body World Exhibit. It's been in Vegas for a while, but it just came to Salt Lake and it's in The Leonardo. One of my teachers was talking about it and said it was way neat, so I decided to give it a go. Kelsey and I got up this morning and drove up to Salt Lake. We had tickets for 11 AM, and it took us about an hour and a half to get through the whole exhibit. It was incredible. What they have done is they have taken cadavers and plasticized them. They have some of them positioned doing way cool things. There was a dancer, a guy jumping hurtles, and some other fun stuff. We weren't allowed to take anything in - no phones, cameras, not even purses. So I just found this picture online, but this gives a good idea of what the displays looked like. They had other things there too. They had hearts, brains, spleens, lungs, and all kinds of cool stuff. They even had a grown and baby camel there too. They had a baby section, which was kind of weird, but also really neat. They had fetuses from different stages of the pregnancies. The whole thing was such a cool experience. If any of you have the chance to see it, I highly recommend it. It gave me such a greater appreciation for the body and how intricate and perfect it is!

An example of a display

FRUSTRATION!!

So I just changed my background and now I can't seem to figure out how to change the color of the boxes where the posts are and all that... Does anyone know how to do that?? I'm getting really frustrated...

Spontaneity...

Last night, my roommate and I were bored and were trying to think of something to do that didn't cost money. Randomly, she suggested we drive up Provo Canyon and look at the lights. So we jumped in the car and drove up. It took us a good 20 minutes to get to a place where we could park and look out, but it was so worth it. The pictures don't do it justice, but it was gorgeous. We could see SO far. We even saw the Mt. Timpanogos temple from up there. The pictures aren't as good as the actual view, so just use your imagination :)

The view to our left

The view to our right

Tanna and I (we tried to get the lights in the background but it didn't work out so well)

Recovery Night

So Kelsey and I both had long weeks and decided to give ourselves a night to recover. And to just be girls. So we went to TGIFriday's for dessert and drinks (strawberry daqueri's...virgin). Then we came home and painted our nails.

Then we made face masks and did facials. It felt so weird! It was just banana and oatmeal but it made our faces feel so good! If anyone wants to try it, it's just 1 banana and 1/3 - 1/2 cup of oatmeal. So fun! Cute, huh?

Then we did a workout video... lame, I know. But fun! We will not be posting pictures of that, however.

That's about it for the night. We have 11:30 church in the morning, and now that it's already 1 AM, it's time for bed!

College Life

I forgot how much I love college life until I came back. I miss being home too, but it's so fun up here! There is always something going on and never enough sleep! But it really is such a fun time of life.

My roommate Tanna and I had some of our guy friends from our ward over for dinner last week. We made lasagna, rolls, salad, and Italian soda for drinks. It was so fun! They are really sweet and super funny! The next night, they brought us each a bouquet of flowers and a thank you card! It was so sweet. We have had the flowers on our table ever since.



Thursday night, my cousin Glenn sang at this place called Muse Music. It's like this little cafe/performance place. Tanna, Kelsey and I went to watch. He was the first one and got about a half hour to sing. There were 3 people after him, but we didn't stay for any of them. I was able to see some of my other cousins there that I haven't seen in a while - it was fun to see them. After the performance, we went back to my apartment and made cookies (for no reason other than just to make them), and watched Enchanted... I know - totally a kid's movie, but we love it!

Glenn singing

Kelsey and I

Tanna and I
Friday night, the 3 of us again went to the annual Rock the Block party that they have in the Cafe Rio parking lot. There are usually tons of people there and they have a live band and stuff. It's pretty fun. But it was getting cold and there were too many people there, so we only stayed for about an hour. But I did run into a bunch of people who I haven't seen yet since I've been back, so it was good!

Kelsey, Tanna, and I on the way to Rock the Block

Catch Up!!

Sorry it has been so long since I've updated... Summer got crazy. I know you all know how that goes. So here is my attempt to update on things since the last post. Sorry for the picture overload.


In August, we went out to the river and stayed at the Avi hotel for a few days. It was such a fun, relaxing, and hot week. We got a new raft to take since our old one popped and the new one is so much fun. It has spots for 4 people - 3 of them are like bucket seats and the one on the back is just a place for someone to kneel on the back and hold on to the handles. It's hard to stay on back there since there is no seat, and we lost a kid more than once. It was so fun tho.


One time we figured out how to make it stand vertical, and that became our new favorite thing. My dad would drive the boat into the wind, slam on the gas for a few seconds, and then just let go and it would make the wind push the raft totally vertical. It was an accident at first, but then it just became one more thing we could do. The video is of Brandon and Joey. Megan and I did it too but we didn't video tape it. The video is a little bumpy - riding in our boat is not a smooth trip. So sorry about the lack of focus.

Laying out on the raft by the beach


2 weeks ago we all drove up to help me move into my new apartment. I still can't believe the summer is over and I am in my 2nd week of school! Where did the time go?! I am living in Belmont this year, which was actually the last place I wanted to live. For those of you who know anything about the kind of people who live here, you know why. Not everyone is like that, but pretty much. But so far I like it. My ward is fun, although much older. The bishopric is awesome and tries to make everything so fun. My roommates are way fun and we have gotten along really well. And the apartment I live in is super nice. I actually have the master bedroom, so I have a huge room and my own bathroom. I feel pretty spoiled and definitely blessed.


My bathroom


View #1 of my bedroom

View #2 of my bedroom


View #3 of my bedroom


Family room


The kitchen



So just like in every other place, living in Provo has its ups and downs. But one of the ups that I absolutely love is the opportunity to hear General Authorities so often. Last Sunday was our Regional Conference. 135 stakes were invited, and within those boundaries, there were 400,000 members. Obviously not everyone could fit into the Marriott Center on campus, so it was broadcast to a lot of people, but we were fortunate enough to go to the Marriott Center and be there for the conference. It really is such an amazing thing to be sitting there and realize that an apostle is standing there, in the same room as you, speaking to you. There were a few other speakers, Elder Jensen and President Monson's daughter, but the last 2 were really the ones that impacted me.

First we got to hear from Boyd K. Packer. I love hearing him talk. He has such a fun sense of humor and had us laughing quite frequently throughout his talk. He talked to us about a lot of things - I didn't feel like his talk had a specific point - but he did mention a few times that Satan only has power over us if we let him. And he also talked about faith a few times. It was a good message that kept us entertained and was also obviously very uplifting and insightful.


President Dieter F. Uchtdorf was the last speaker of the conference. He was amazing to listen to. The first thing he did was get up and bear his testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and gave his witness that President Monson is truly the prophet of the church. It was so powerful. He have us 2 questions to ask ourselves: 1) What am i doing personally to increase my testimony of Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father? and 2) What am I doing personally to strengthen then institution of marriage and family? Another thing he talked about a lot is being converted and how conversion is a lifelong process. He gave us 3 things that we should do to help in the conversion process: 1) Have a current temple recommend, 2) Study the word of God daily, and 3) Speak with Heavenly Father daily. It was a great talk and really got me thinking about a lot of things, and gave me a new resolve to be a better person.


As if it weren't enough for us to hear from President Packer and President Uchtdorf, we were also blessed to hear from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland that evening at a CES Fireside, which we also had the chance to go to. It was also in the Marriott Center, and while there weren't as many people there, it was still packed. Elder Holland is probably one of my favorite General Authorities. His talk was amazing. I don't know how he did it, but he had my attention every second of the talk. His whole focus was on Joseph Smith and his time in Liberty Jail and drew a few parallels with those experiences and our own experiences in our own "Liberty Jails". Here are some of the Lessons from Liberty: 1) Everyone will be called upon to face trying times, 2) Just because difficult things happen does not mean we are unrighteous, 3) In the midst of difficulties, the powers of heaven can only help us if used in righteousness. He said some things that hit me and really affected me. I think my favorite thing that he said came at the very end of his talk. He said: "Bad days come to an end, faith always triumphs, and heavenly promises are kept." The whole day was a testimony builder to me and I am so grateful for the opportunities I have to be here and to listen to these wonderful men of God.



As for school, I am going to the BYU Salt Lake Center right now until I have enough credits to transfer to BYU to do their Nutrition program. I have class on Monday and Wednesday. Mondays I have Book of Mormon with John Bytheway (how cool is that?!?), and Nutrition, and on Wednesdays I have Microbiology and Chemistry. I also have an independent study psychology course. So school keeps me pretty busy, but I am loving it. As awful as the drive is, I love the Salt Lake campus and the classes are great. The teacher seem to know what they are talking about and the classes are small. I think there are only 9 people in my microbiology class. So it is a good opportunity to learn and ask questions. Much better than a class with 200 kids.

All in all, life is good! I love my apartment, my ward, my school, and just being here. I will try to be better about blogging now that I am back in a routine. Sorry for the overload. If you made it to the bottom of this, you are awesome!!

Boom, Boom... Baby! (as said by Megan)

My dad and brother and I went to the shooting range this morning over in Brea. It was way fun. I have shot a gun before but I had never done it in a shooting range. It's a pretty cool set up. You attach your target to these clip things and then move the clips back as far as you want them and then you shoot. We started with an actual target-shaped thing and then changed them to a diagram of a man. Different areas on the body are worth different points. We shot 2 different guns that my dad brought - one was a revolver and I'm not sure what the other one was... it was the kind that the police use. The revolver is so much heavier!! It was pretty cool to finally get the hang of it!

Shootin the revolver

My target when I was done... not bad for the first time using a target!

Brandon shooting his revolver

My dad shooting the police gun

Nanny Diaries

I finally downloaded my pictures to my computer from this summer so far. At the end of May, I moved in with my cousin, Kendi, her husband, Scott, and their 3 kids, Lindsey, 7, Kalli, 5, and Sydney, 2, to nanny for them for a few months. It really was so much fun! We watched movies, played games, went to lunch, had cooking class, went to the aquarium, had a lemonade stand, and did a lot of fun things. We had lots of fun and funny moments and a bunch of cute pictures. Here are a few...



Kalli, Sydney, and Lindsey


Craft Day




Kalli painting the lemonade stand sign




Lindsey painting the lemonade stand sign





At Temple Square in Salt Lake

Touching the sting rays at The Living Planet Aquarium

At the aquarium