Afghanistan Gift

So my brother in law, Jess, is in the National guard and is serving in Afghanistan right now. He will be there for a year... which will be up in February. He did get to come home for two weeks though to see his new baby Grant, which was awesome. It was so good to see him and my sister and the kids were so happy to have him home for a little bit. He was so sweet though and brought Blythe and I a gift from Afghanistan! I totally was not expecting it at all, and I just thought it was so thoughtful of him to think of his sister (Blythe, my roommate) and sister in law, me... while he was overseas. Anyway... we took this picture to show him how much we loved our gift. We probably look really silly because most likely we are wearing them wrong... but we tried. It is the thought that counts right? Ha ha... So here we are. I really love mine, the green one.

I think about you in the summertime...

In case you are wondering, the title of this blog entree is the newest New Kids in the block "hit"... I know right? Who would have ever thought they would come back. I actually kinda like the song, but when I think about how old they all are singing about young girls in bikini's on the beach... I get kinda grossed out. But it is a very appropriate title for this entree. Now that it is officially fall, I thought I would blog about some of my favorite summertime activities and moments. So here are some highlights from my summer!

There was a couple of times during the summer that my friend Bart (in the ward) and I set up the slip n slide at the park next to our house. Truly a favorite summer activity and many hours of fun. We tried to invite a bunch of people in the ward... but mostly just my friends from work came... cause they are awesome, hands down. So this picture is of me and my work friends all going down together.





Another fun activity that my work friends and I did was go to the tumbling gym in Provo. I didn't even know this place existed, but it is pretty sweet. It is just a big room filled with trampolines and bouncy floors and ropes and best of all a big pit of foam pads so you can flip and do tricks off of the trampolines and have a nice little landing. This picture is of Lindsay and I jumping into the pit of foam.

Another fun tradition that I joined in on was Culture Night! This is a tradition that my friend (from work) Jordon and his friends started and he invited me in the group. It is where they pick a different culture restaurant to eat at every week (we did not go every week) and you get to eat new food, or food you don't have often. Before we head to the restaurant, we learn facts about that country and listen to their national anthem. This picture was taken on Japanese night. That was a good night, I love Japanese food. :o)

This summer, if you could not tell already, I hung out with people from work... a lot. So here we are again. We tried to have little department parties after work from time to time, cause our department (Record Management) rocks. Here we are (plus significant others) after our BBQ and games and then having some fun in the hot tub. I guess we all hung out a lot this summer because it is so busy at Apx during the summer, it is like you live there. So you might as well hang out after work too right? It does make it easy to arrange since you are together all day every day. It is just nice that we enjoy each others company so much.

A big summer activity in Utah? The Rodeo. It was pretty fun because I had not been since I was a kid. So I first went to the Strawberry days festival Rodeo with Jordy and Trev. We had a blast, especially since it was Trever's first Rodeo. He was pretty excited, even though you can't tell in this picture. Jordon even got all dressed up for the event. :o) My second Rodeo of the summer was with cousin Lauren! I went with Lauren and Uncle Dale and Aunt Teresa to the Rodeo in Spanish Fork on Pioneer Day... which followed by fireworks. It was a blast, and we had better seats from the last Rodeo I went to.


Ever been to Mona Utah? I had never even heard of Mona, but it is about a half hour south or so from Provo and it has a nice pond and a fun rope swing. So we got a group together from the ward and went to check it out. Turns out I saw some people there that I knew. And it was a good time.














Last, I thought I would post a picture of me with Brian and Brent Christensen. Why? Because this summer, we started a dinner club. So maybe we were the only three in the club, but every week, so would invite someone different to our dinner that one of us would make (we switched off every week). Although Brian moved to Vegas, Brent and I have kept the tradition alive. Before dinner group, I really did not know these boys that well, but i am so glad we randomly decided to start it, because now they have become some of my very close friends. They are amazing.

All together, even though the summer was way busy with work, and I did not really get to go many places like many others, my summer was still very eventful and fun. Thanks to everyone that made it that way for me.

Provo River Adventure

My ward (BYU 233rd) had an activity tubing down Provo River, which I have done a few times before in my years of living in Provo. I had never done it as a ward activity though, and never through this rafting company (which we had to because we were a ward group). I was expecting the same experience, which is fun, but nothing new... just floating down in the tubes. Because I had been camping the night before with the group that I just blogged about (Mirror Lake) we had to pack up camp, hike back out and drive back to Provo. This made us a little late, we had just barely missed the bus to go with our group. Probably 15 minutes later we got a ride up and all that was left were a couple of tubes and a couple of kayaks. I went straight for the kayak and Brent decided he wanted to join me. I was so glad he did because we had a BLAST. In the beginning, we made some goals. One of them was to hit every rapid that we saw no matter how small (for the most part they are small, and sometimes we barely made it to that side of the river in time). Our next goal, was to splash everyone that we knew... at first these were just the late comers that were with us, we didn't find anyone else we knew for quite a while because our ward was very ahead of us. Which brings me to our last goal... to catch up with the ward, so we paddled our little hearts out. We did accomplish all of our goals (the last goal is how we got these pictures taken, a girl in my ward had a water proof camera). Another little adventure that happened on this trip was on the drive up, the guy from the company was explaining all the rules and trying to be funny and the most part we kind of just tuned him out because I had done this before, one of the things he told us was when we hit the second bridge, to get out of the water and walk around. Once Brent and I got to that bridge, we thought about what he said, and told ourselves it must just be if you are in a raft, cause it didn't look like a big deal to us... so we went through. What do you think happened? Ya, we happened to get tipped over by the current and we lost each other in the water. 
Luckily we both had a good grip on our oars, and Brent took hold of the kayak, and it for sure took me a while before I got in again, I was swept away with the current and got pretty scraped up and bruised. First thing I thought of though were my flip flops... they floated away and I tried to get them. Thankfully there were enough people on the river that they caught them for me. So once Brent and I were back together and safely in our kayak with everything that we started with, we were laughing about it. Of course Brent felt bad and said he was sorry to me over and over for having gone through the bridge... but looking back on it, we both don't regret it, it just made the trip that much more adventurous. And even with that set back, we still managed to catch up with the ward. So fun! We still laugh about it. :o)

Tagged!

I was tagged by Cheryl... so here we go!
How to play this game of tag.Post these rules on your blog:
List 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, 3 random surprising facts about yourself.
Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


3 Joys:- Family, doing activities out in nature, Traveling
3 Fears:- Never getting married, Looking back on my life in regret, Dangerous situations (sometimes I am a wimp ok?)
3 Goals:- Travel all around the world, Getting married in the temple & start a family, continue to try and learn new things
3 Obsessions/Collections:- Pictures, DVD's, Music!
3 Random or surprising facts:- I have spent the night in a cell on Alcatraz, I have a scar on my tongue, I have been gold panning.

Now its your turn.. I tag: Kristy, Jamie, Cody, Abby, Jen

Mirror Lake Camp Out

I had gone all summer just about without going camping. I could not have that. I feel like my summer is not complete unless I have gone camping at least once. This particular weekend, camping was really needed because drama had been going on at work, I just needed to get away from the house, turn off my phone and be with some friends out in nature. Thankfully my friends Brent and Brian (guys in my ward that I have been having dinner group with every Sunday with all summer) and I had planned a trip that weekend and had been talking about it for a while, and we finally were making it happen, which was perfect timing for me. :o) We were just going to go by ourselves, but then we discovered some other people in the ward and a few other random people were going to Mirror Lake up in Heber Valley camping. So we decided to just join with them. It was fun to have a big group, but
there are some major set backs to having that many people as well. The night did NOT go as I thought it would. First of all, we were supposed to leave at 5:30 pm and it takes an hour and a half drive to get there. We did not end up leaving until almost 7 pm. Just a side note, I did not know that we would leave so late, so I did not eat dinner, I only packed a tin foil dinner to eat once we got to our camp site and set up a fire. So after being on the road for a while, we stoped in Heber to get some food. This would have been fine had I brought money to eat and had we not stopped for an HOUR! This put us back even more and I was starting to get really hungry. Then, the girl that put together the camping trip failed to mention that she didn't know how to get where we were going, so we got lost and turned around several times. When we finally reached our destination, it was dark. The girl that put together the trip had told us it would be a 2 mile hike until we got to the lake, when we got there the sign at the head of the trail told us it would be 5 miles! This wouldn't bother me so much if I were not so hungry. I mean, it was late, and I was tired and hungry and they are telling me I have to hike 5 miles before I get to eat and sit down. I wasn't sure if I was capable of hiking that far with a 40 lbs backpack on with no food in me. But away we went. I was probably the slowest in the group because of that, but Brent was a sweetheart and stayed behind with me to keep me company and to try and cheer me up and make me laugh. He was great. People saw that I wasn't doing too well and when we would stop to rest people would give me some of the food they had. One guy gave me banana chips and I told them they were the best tasting thing in the world. He knew I must have nothing in me and gave me more and started calling me banana chip girl because he didn't remember my name. By the time we finally got to where we were going to camp and set up and got a fire going it was 2 am. I had been talking about my tin foil dinner for hours and was SO excited that I finally got to eat it. It was such a great meal. We all had fun chatting and eating around the fire and around 4 am decided to head to bed after hanging our food from a high branch (so the bears would not get it). The branch ended up braking anyway. which scared the crap out of me, so that was pretty much pointless, luckily we didn't have any bear visitors that night. I slept in a little two man tent with a girl that I had just met and we basically had to sleep cuddling because it was so small, but it was fine, I didn't sleep much anyway, it was not comfortable. Next day we got up, had the fire going, Brent hiked in with a dutch oven, eggs, bacon, buiscuts, and who knows what else. Needless to say we had a pretty decent breakfast, packed up our stuff and then hiked back out. I was ahead for most of the hike back, go figure. It is amazing was some food and rest can do for you. It was a beautiful area, which I had no idea on the way in because it was pitch black. Anyway, although it was a little rocky, overall it was an awesome weekend, I had a blast. :o) A little camping is good for the soul.

2008 Summer Olympics

I have to say that I just love the Olympics and I am very sad that they are over. I wish they lasted longer, and wish they came more often than ever four years. But then again... maybe it would not be as exciting if it were not so rare. I watched the Beijing Olympics every chance I got and loved every minute of it. Sadly, I had to work through a lot of events so I only got to see the main ones. But I wanted to share some of the highlights for me during those two weeks. :o) 1- The opening ceremonies. I watched them later online because I was busy the night they showed, but wow... it was quite a show. It is amazing how many people were involved and how much preparation they put into the ceremonies! I heard that they were practicing and getting ready for that night 9 months before hand! Just shows how important appearance is to them. Also heard that some of the fireworks were added by the computer for all the viewers watching at home. I thought this was not necessary. I also heard that the little girl that sang was lip sinking because the real singer had a snagle tooth and they didn't want her to be seen to the world. Sad!

2- Michael Phelps! Yes... he got a lot of hype, but I felt it was well deserved. He made history! Plus that he got our country half of our medals! ha ha.. ok, that is an exaggeration, but still, he got a lot of golds for us and he was always so fun to watch. I loved cheering him on, especially the race that he won by like a tenth of a second or something like that. That was ridiculously awesome. Basically, he rocks my world.

3- Next to one of my favorite events to watch, Gymnastics. Our girls rocked! I was so proud of Nastia and Shawn! They were amazing to watch, I would get so nervous for them to mess up and then they never would. They showed that 13 year old Chinese girl what was up, in a graceful way. The one thing that got me a little worked up was when Nastia and Chinese girl were tied on the uneven bars (even though Nastia had the more flawless ruteen) and Chinese girl won anyway. ewww! Nastia was a champ though and handled herself well even though it was TOTALLY unfair.

4- Next we have boys gymnastics. They were also very fun to watch. My favorite was Jonathan Horton. Not only did he rock and get us a medal for the guys... but he helped his whole team I think. I mean, they were not even expected to medal and they walked away with bronze. That was awesome to watch. Another reason I loved Horton is because he was always so excited and happy to be competing. Very fun to watch. And I think he is kind of cute. That is just a side note.


5- Next event I really enjoyed watching was volleyball, both men and women beach and court. We did pretty darn well all around. I mean both men and women won gold for beach volleyball and then men took it for indoor. The women's beach volleyball were unbeatable though. It is so amazing. I believe they won over one hundred matches in a row! I can see why they are so excited in this picture. So awesome!

6- Besides Diving, Track and Field was the other event that I mainly watched. It is amazing how many world records were broken and how fast people can actually go. Both men and women for USA did awesome, but one of my favorite moments was the men's 400 meter hurdles when USA took top three! Domination! I guess that had not happened in many years. So that was pretty sweet. There were also some sad moments to watch, but I just try to remember the great moments such as this one. We had so many amazing athletes!

7- Last but not least another one of my favorite parts of the Olympics was our final medal count. 110 medals! All I care is that we beat China. ha ha. They may have received more gold, but we had more medals over all, and that makes me happy. The whole Olympic experience (from the little I get on tv) is so awesome. I have pride for my country, I love to cheer on our athletes, I experience a little bit of the joy and sorrow with the rest of the world watching. It is quite an amazing thing that it can bring the world together, even just for two weeks. I love it. :o)

Twlight Addiction

So... I am not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you that I didn't like these books just because everyone else and their mom (literally) loves these books. I found out about them last summer and read the first 3 then. Stephanie Meyer is a great writer. I mean, when you hear that the book is about a high school romance with vampires and werewolves, it sounds really dumb. Really though, I have not been as addicted to a series since Harry Potter. So I was one of the hundreds of girls in Utah that lined up at Barns and Nobles Book store at midnight when they first released the last book of the series. The one that we have all been waiting for what seems like forever. Most of those people finished the book the next day. It took me about 3 weeks because I decided to still have a social life rather than making the book my life. By the time I FINALLY finished it, I was really glad it was over. As much as I liked the series, I felt like the last book dragged a little bit and to be quite honest... it also weirded me out a bit. I won't spoil anything for any of those who have not read it and want to. Don't get me wrong, I still liked the story, I just would get annoying with Bella being so dramatic, and Jacob being so manipulative and I just got to the point where I just wanted it to end. So I am glad that it did. Now we are all looking forward to the movie which supposedly got pushed up to November, when Harry Potter was supposed to be realised but they were retarded and are making us wait another year because they think it will do better in theaters if it is realised in the summer rather than fall. I was not happy about that. But I am excited to see what they do with the Twilight movie. :o)