Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Independence Day! I hope everyone had a good one. Trevor and I spent ours up in Island Park Idaho with his family. (Let me tell you, it was a great way to start my digital minimalism fast up there, where there was no internet or cell phone signal).

We had a great time! On the first day, Trevor took me on my first ATV ride.

Totally posing. Trevor did all the driving. :)

In the afternoon, the family went jet skiing. (I had to sit out due to some health issues, but it was still fun to watch!)

On the second day, Trevor, Kathy (my mother-in-law) and I headed in to Yellowstone and visited our favorite places.

Top 2 favorites are definitely the Grand Prismatic Spring (in my opinion, one of the prettiest places on Earth!) and Artist's Point!

This time we hiked up past Fairy Falls to see the bird's eye view of the Spring. 10/10, would definitely recommend!

Artist's Point

On the last day, six of us went on a fishing trip with a guide. It was my very first time fishing, but I managed to catch 5 fish! (All thanks to Kerry, our awesome guide!) Trevor caught 8. It was catch and release, so after we hooked them, we let them go.

I caught the first fish on our boat! That's Kerry, our guide. He was so patient with all my newbie mistakes.

Trevor's biggest fish

I made so many newbie mistakes fishing, it was pretty hilarious. I got the fly line stuck in the rod a million times. I accidentally turned the reel backwards and tangled the line, more than once. I somehow crossed my line over Trevor's twice even though we were fishing on different sides of the boat. But the best moment was when Trevor and I both had fishes hooked, and in the middle of reeling mine in... my reel CAME OFF THE ROD. It fell to pieces. Apparently this is not a normal thing. We still aren't sure how I could have done that. The guide started trying to put it back together, but then he needed to help Trevor with his fish. Kerry handed me my rod.... and then Trevor's fish, fighting with all its might, swam to my side of the boat and got tangled in my line. 😮 Kerry had to take the rod back from me to try to solve that problem, and in the process, the reel innards fell to the floor and rolled away. It was an adventure. But Trevor did get his fish!

Maybe next time will go better. It was still fun.

We finished out the day with a trip to the Playmill theater to see the Foreigner. That play is hilarious, I definitely recommend it if you haven't seen it.

We had a great few days and I'm so glad we got to go.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

This may look like we didn't put together a couple costume and just pulled stuff out of our closets.

Which is mostly true... We wanted to be Mr. and Mrs. Incredible but it didn't pan out.

BUT! A true Trekkie such as myself looks at this and says, "Plato's Stepchildren or Who Mourns for Adonais?" (The answer is Who Mourns for Adonais, but with a happier ending and cuter/more realistic love story.)

One of the problems of loving a 1960s TV show is NO ONE gets references like this but me! :')

Word of the Year: Soar

My goal for 2017: Soar to new heights.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours!

Hope everyone had a wonderful day filled with good food and good company.

Word of the Year: Love

Last year Melissa gave me a challenge to pick a word of the year. A one word reminder of my goals and resolutions to help me keep on track.

This year, I've decided the word will be Love.

I picked love because I want to work on:

• Spending more time with my loved ones. They are the most important thing in my life, after all! 

• Returning to the things I love that I haven't had time for lately. The biggest one is creative writing. Let's get that novel written finally! I've been trying for forever.

• Loving myself more. Sometimes I can be too much of a perfectionist and too hard on myself.

• and of course, loving my fellow men.

Bring it on, 2016. I'm going to make this a good year.

Word of the Year: Light

Melissa gave me a challenge to pick a word of the year.

A word to define 2015, to remind me of my goals and resolutions and help keep me on track.

After a lot of thought... I've decided my word will be "light."

Light means:

• Striving to grow closer to Heavenly Father

• Being optimistic about my future

• Learning new things, reading good books, visiting new places, all kinds of good things. :)

I think this is gonna be a good year.

Happy New Year!

The last two weeks have been amazingly relaxing. I only turned on my laptop a  couple times. I've been back in CS, chilling with my family just like old times. The kids were out of school, and I had a couple weeks off, so we spent a lot of time hanging out and goofing off.

 I'm grateful that we've had so many Christmases together! As families grow up, I know Christmases change. Missions, marriage, and moves make it so not everyone can be there every year, and not for a full glorious two weeks without any other responsibilities to worry about. But we've had a long stretch of all of us together, just enjoying our family time.

Yeah... I've become the family midget! Everyone assumes I'm the youngest too... Sheesh!

This is the last Christmas like that, though. 2014 will bring a lot of transitions. Kristie will graduate from high school and head off to college. Mom and Dad will become Empty Nesters. Jason will leave on his mission. Shauna will graduate from BYU and head out to wherever her first job takes her.

I'm about the only one who isn't facing a major transition for sure... Although I am toying with the idea of finally leaving Provo when my housing contract runs out in August (!!!!). I've lived in the same place for four years, and I've LOVED it there. I'm glad I stayed as long as I did. But... it's time for a change. That change might just be moving to south Provo, a little bit out of the BYU student scene. Or, it might be more drastic. I'm considering fulfilling a childhood dream and moving out to Arizona. Yay for no more snow! :)

There's also a slight chance I'll be changing jobs... Our company is funded by a government grant that runs out in September. The grant will probably be renewed and we'll probably be fine... but we don't know that for sure yet. Even if the grant is renewed, we will need to reapply, and there's a chance we won't be accepted this time. My coworkers all seem optimistic rather than worried, so I try to be the same. But, the end of the summer could potentially bring a lot of changes for me.

All this to say... Christmas next year will probably be a lot different. Jason won't be there (although we'll get to Skype him--missionaries get to Skype their families on Mother's Day and Christmas!). Depending on Shauna's job, she may or may not be there, and probably for not as long.

But no matter what happens and how spread out we all get, we'll always love each other and we'll be together in spirit on Christmas day. :)

It will be interesting to see what this next year will bring!

Peace on Earth

Well, so far this holiday season hasn't shaped up to be quite what I expected, but it's been a good one! :) I think, when I came back from Thanksgiving, I had dreams of lazy evenings watching ABC Family Christmas movies, like when I was a kid. That hasn't quite happened. Most nights I'm busy with my calling or with my PREP instructor training or catching up on housekeeping tasks.

But life has been good. This last weekend especially! Melissa and I went to see BYU's annual Christmas Around the World. It's the Folk Dance team's annual show. It was beautiful! I'm so impressed by all the talented dancers at BYU... wish I could move like that! Seeing all the different cultures represented really makes me want to travel the world... although I suspect folk dance is a dying art in most places. Guys, our ancestors really knew how to groove! Why have we let that slip away??

Then, on Sunday night, Shauna and I headed up to Salt Lake for the Church's First Presidency Christmas Devotional... along with half our ward. :) My Relief Society president found out you can get tickets for free, without having to participate in a lottery or anything (like for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert). So she let us know, and everyone scrambled to get tickets. We must have gotten them around the same time, because most of us sat together in the same section. I will admit to being a bit hyper and excited to be there... I had a lot of fun goofing around with my friends beforehand.

And then of course the Devotional itself was amazing! The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang like angels. My favorite talk was by Elder Nelson. His message was about finding peace through the Prince of Peace, the Savior.

So... things have been a little more hectic than I anticipated, but it's still been a great month so far! Here's to keeping that up! :)

Best December Ever

I am determined to make this the best December ever.

It's a tall order, I know. And I have to be careful. Sometimes when you set up such a grand expectation... whatever happens seems like a disappointment.

Here is my line of thinking: this may be one of the least stressful Decembers of my life. I don't have to worry about finals anymore! I'm watching my poor friends scramble to prepare for those and I have to say, I don't miss that.

It's interesting. I haven't had finals in a year and a half, but I've had major work projects going on for the last two finals weeks... so I was just as stressed as my roommates. So far, it's not looking like that will happen. Fingers crossed.

So, no finals. Just working, with my evenings off. I've been busy the last couple months with things like becoming trained as a PREP Inc. Instructor, but that's over now, which means I will have some free time.

I need to use that free time wisely. This is the time of year when we should be serving others, right? I need to make that happen.

I also need to keep up my streak of being social all the time and going out to do fun things.

And... I should probably work on writing my novel a bit... that was a New Year's Resolution I've been neglecting. Good thing there's still a little time!

I am going to work on all of these things, and I am going to have the best December ever. :) Here goes!

Family

My family and I have always been super tight. Growing up, we kids liked nothing better than to stay home on the weekends and play with each other. Since I moved off to college, we've been a bit more spread out, but we've stayed close through phone calls, IMs, and video chats (not on Skype... good old MSN! :) Now my brother and sister are here with me going to school. Shauna lives with me. Jason's over in the freshie dorms, but we have lunch with him every Friday. We've all agreed that that's our favorite part of the week.

This past week my parents and baby sister were in town to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. It was SO FUN seeing them all! We also got to see our grandparents and all of our mom's side of the family.

Me and some of my cousins

I'm really grateful for a loving supportive family in my life. I honestly don't know what I would do without them.

Halloween Brainstorming

It's that time of year again! Time to decide what I'm going to be for Halloween. I've decided I want to incorporate my new red dress, but what to do to accessorize it into a costume?

Possibilities:
1. Cupid-Wear angel wings from my old costume, carry around cheap Cupid's bow and arrow from Halloween store.
2. Little red riding hood-add a hood and carry a basket. (It may be tricky to find a hood in the right shade of red, though... and it would have to be kinda short cuz the dress is knee length.)
3. Queen of Hearts-add tiara (preferably with hearts involved) and carry a heart sceptre. Say "off with her head!" a lot.
4. Carmen Sandiego-Red trenchcoat (which I have), add a hat. I like this idea (from one of my friends) a lot, but I've since looked at pictures of Carmen and she's not wearing a red dress...
5. Miss Scarlet from Clue-pretty good to go, gotta  carry another a candlestick or something to help clue people in to who I am... (pun intended :)
6. Ironman (or Iron woman, I guess)-another great suggestion from a friend. Add golden bracelets, maybe a golden belt, and a huge blue circle pendant, and I become Ironwoman.
7. Minnie Mouse-Add the ears and gloves and maybe a pair of yellow heels.
8. Pirate-Add hoop earrings, pirate hat, and maybe a belt and sword scabbard combo.
9. Mad Hatter-add one of those cute mini top hats and call it good!

Let me know if you have other ideas for me!

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

My amazing roommate Natalia has an uncle in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and he sent her a bunch of tickets to their Christmas Concert. :) We got to go last night! Getting there was an adventure. Parking was TERRIBLE. I think we drove down every single street in Salt Lake City trying to find a place to park. We were supposed to be in our seats by 7:30 (at that point they give seats away to the standbys) but 7:30 came and went and we still couldn't find a place to go. I think we were all praying like crazy that we'd still be able to make it somehow. In the end, we did. :) We found a random place to park a few blocks away, ran like crazy women in our high heels, and made it to our seats at 7:59, exactly one minute before the performance began. They were dimming the lights as we sat down. Haha, when we first arrived at the conference center, we were afraid they would turn us away, but the volunteers manning the door were incredibly sweet. "We're so glad you made it! We've been waiting for you! Come on in!"

The show was STUNNING. It was not a typical Mormon Tabernacle Choir show, it was complete with ballet dancers and special effects. Nathan Gunn and Jane Seymour were the special guests. The music was beautiful. If you have not heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing, you should go look them up on youtube. Right now. :)

One of my favorite special effects was snow that poured down from the ceiling. It looked very realistic, but it didn't stay on the floor. What was it? Well, stop now if you don't want the secret to be spoiled... but on our way back to our car, we met a trumpet player and a bassoon player from the Orchestra on Temple Square. They told us that it was thick, foam bubbles. Perfect for faux snow.

All in all, it was an amazing experience! I hope someday I get to go back again.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

This week we had our amazing ward party. :) It was a bit of an adventure getting there. For some reason Google Maps and my GPS failed me in my attempt to find it. I ended up driving around in circles for about 40 minutes, but a quick phone call to a friend finally got us there. Fortunately there had been some issue with the catering, and they didn't serve dinner until shortly after I arrived. :)

Santa was there!

Being at the party took me back to the ward party a year ago. It is interesting to think about how much has changed since then. Many of my friends have graduated and moved away, and I miss them. But this year I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing people and make a lot of awesome new friends.

I wonder where I will be in a year from now? I am not quite sure where life will take me after graduation, but it will be fun to find out.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you got out there and partied! :) We did. Shauna and I were both brave and wore our costumes up to campus for the first time. It might have been my imagination, but I swear there weren't as many people dressed up this year as there are usually. I felt like wearing a costume made me act a little differently... I felt like I had to be super extra cheerful to match my costume. :)

 Here is Shauna as a mad scientist.

 I was a rainbow unicorn. :)

For FHE, our group watched Monster House (great movie!). Then we went reverse trick or treating with a big group of people. It's a great alternative to regular trick or treating if you're in an area (like university housing) where people won't have candy on hand. You knock on the door, yell "Treat or trick!" and then throw candy into their apartment and run away! :D Lots of fun! I definitely recommend it.