Sad, sad day...

I think one of the worst feelings in the world is that moment you realize that your favorite pair of jeans has a hole in them. Not just because they were your favorite pair but also because this means you have to start out on a hunt to find a new favorite pair and as much as i love jeans, i hate shopping for jeans. They may fit perfectly when you try them on in the dressing room but you can never be quite sure until you've really worn them and washed them. Also, buying jeans costs money and i'm poor. Point is, one of my favorite pairs of jeans is coming to this awful fate, they have a little rip which will soon turn into a gaping hole under just the right circumstances. Luckily, i have an extra patch at home which will hopefully keep them wearable for a bit longer...maybe until summer time when i can switch out jeans for capris or skirts, but i'm not holding out hope.

Snowmobiling

This weekend i got invited to go snowmobiling with a couple kids from the ward. Five of us had never been and then there was the kid that invited us and his dad. They had 5 snowmobiles. It was a lot of fun, rather scary at times. I think i hold the record for the number of times i either tipped over or got stuck but that's okay! The snow was really wet so it got really hard to turn sometimes. After playing around in a field for a bit and getting use to driving them, we headed up a trail. Going up was fun but the farther up the mountain we got the more and more it started to snow. So we finally headed back because there was so much snow. Going back was viscious. The visor on my helmet kept getting all fogged up on the inside and snow would build up on the outside, so i couldn't see, but if i opened up my visor i'd get pelted in the eyes with snow and that didn't feel so great either. So what i ended up doing was switching between the two and praying that i wouldn't go off the trail. As long as i could see the person in front of me i'd just follow them best i could. Despite the fact that i should've stayed home and did huge load of homework that i had to do, i don't regret going one bit. It was definitely worth it.

Oh P.S......

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR....(yesterday)!!!!

The decisions of a college student

Here I am and it's 3:45 A.M. and I'm still awake. Do you know why I'm still awake? Because I'm indecisive. I'm trying to decide whether to go snowmobiling with some friends tomorrow or stay home and relax and catch up on my work. The fun and adventurous side of me says ditch homework and go tear it up on the snowmobile. My other side (the side my parents are more proud of) says stay home and get caught up on everything and use it as a relaxing weekend. And i can't go to bed until i make a decision or else i'll be up all night tossing and turning. So here I am blogging about it instead. What's a girl to do?

Death Mattress, among other things

I don't know you remember a month back or so (or if you tried to block it out as I do) my blog post about the death sheets i always encounter when i go home to visit, well, i've found something worse than death sheets....a death mattress! So we have bunk beds in our room, great right? eh not so great. Not only are they hard to climb up on when i'm tired, but i sound like an elephant when i jump off the top bunk...but that can be saved for a different post. Point is, when I climb up onto my bed, i grab a hold of the far side of my mattress and pull myself up. Easy peazy right?? Well tonight when i went to pull myself up, something bit me. Oh wait, no something scratched me, Up my entire finger. (I had already cleaned up the blood by the time i thought ot take a picture, so this blog will continue to be rated G for no violence and gore.) Anyways, a spring on my mattress poked itself out and made a hole, right in the spot my hand goes to pull myself up. grand. I covered it with a pillow, so lets hope the stray spring doesn't strike again.
On another note, i'm a genius. I get tired of running when i get home from my day at school and work. Mostly because i have to dodge all the kids that are walking home and i feel like a goofball. And i like working out in the morning more anyways. But i find it hard to do so in my new place because it's hard to find all my stuff in the dark and get dressed and yadda yadda yadda, you get the point. So here is my fantastical solution. I wear my workout clothes to bed (because they are just as comfy to sleep in as pj's, and i stick everything else i need in my shoes so that in the morning all i have to do is hope out of bed (quietly), grab my shoes and go! You don't have to tell me twice, i know i'm a thinker.

Antelope Island

Charlotte invited me to go to Antelope Island with some kids in her ward. From the what they told her and what she conveyed to me we thought we'd just sort of walk around and maybe hike a tiny bit, nothing big...boy were we wrong. We ended up hiking 4 miles uphill (pretty much straight up the mountain) probably over half the time we were hiking through snow, which made our feet soaking wet and freezing cold. I've never been sooo excited to get back to the car. All in all though, i really enjoyed it. I met some way nice people, view was awesome and i can say i climbed to the very top of a mountain!

This is us walking up the road to the trailhead. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.

This is just at one of the peaks we stopped at. The view was amazing from where we were. It was a pretty smoggy day and we eventually got up above the smog and it was cool to look over and see the tops of the other mountains peaking over.

This is only about halfway up on our hike and if you can see the very top peak in the waaaaay back, that's what we ended up hiking to.

Charlotte was really excited at this point, can't you tell. She is actually a real trooper, i give her HUGE props because this sort of hike is not something she normally does.

This is where a lot of the people ended up stopping. A few of us climbed along the ridge and tried to make it to the very top. It was rough, we just had to make our own path and climb up all these rocks. I didn't take my camera on that part because i was afraid i'd drop it.

More Sledding....

Here's just a few more pictures i picked up from Saturday's sledding adventure. I know i've already said this before, but despite hte rock hard snow and multiple injuries recieved, it was a lot of fun!

Sled or DIE!!!!

Yesterday, some kids in my ward got together and went sledding at some random hill up Spanish Fork canyon. Despite the snow being like cement, it was actually pretty fun. The hill was pretty steep and like i mentioned before, the snow wasn't soft so crashing wasn't fun, yet it still happened a lot. in fact i never made it down once without crashing at the bottom. Multiple people suffered head injuries and bruising but no one had to go to the hospital so i would call it an all around good time. Here are some pictures that i stole off of facebook from some other people that were there. ( I brought my camera but left it in the car because i'm an extreme sledder and I knew the chance of me breaking my camera if i left it in my pocket was very VERY likely)







And then afterwards we went over to some guys house and they made us all pancakes and we hung out for a bit. Who could ask for a better saturday morning??


The plan originally was that one of the kids had a bunch of snowmobiles we were going to take and ride up Heber Canyon and go sledding up there but the snowmobile trailer was jacked so we couldn't do that. BUt next time it snows, we're all going to attempt the snowmobiling plan again. Which i'm definitely excited about because i've always wanted to ride a snowmobile. So much so that sometimes when i go snowboarding i think about faking an injury so that the EMT guys would have to come up and take me down on their cool red snowmobile. But i'm not that desperate.

When Helmets Make no sense?

So, my question is.....why even wear a helmet? Is it really going to save you if you fall? I think not. Maybe a parachute would bea better idea. Despite the danger factor, that'd be a pretty freaking beautiful ride to take.

New Year. New Start.

Charlotte last year got me started on picking a "word of the year" I think it's a really great way to keep yourself focused on important things throughout the year. Last year my word was OVERCOME. I could tell you how it went but i'd rather focus on what my word is going to be for this year. It was a tough decision to pick a new word, there were quite a few that i thought would be good ones. But i finally decided on the word.....SIMPLIFY! I'm really excited about it and i'll tell you why. The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. I feel like when you eliminate all the superfluous things in life and really focus on the very basic, life just runs so much more smoother. It's easy to get caught up in the world and all the things that go on around us. We always want to be doing everything and never take a break.

I chose my word after hearing, reading, and then re-reading again the talk by L. Tom Perry "Let Him Do it with Simplicity". He talks about our 4 basic needs and the spiritual benefits gained from each of them. I won't go through what his whole talk said but everyone should read it, it's a great one! This year i'm going to focus on gaining and strengthing my testimony of the basic principles of the gospel, on the principles that make up the foundation of it. Simplify it and build up from there. As far as life on a daily basis, i'm going to work on saving more money and not spending it on things i don't need. Also, i'm cutting back on TV this year. THe less TV i watch the more time i have to spend on more practical things. There's quite a few more aspects of the word SIMPLIFY that i want to incorporate into my life, but i'll leave you with that and a quote from Elder William R. Bradford, “In righteousness there is great simplicity. In every case that confronts us in life there is either a right way or a wrong way to proceed. If we choose the right way, we are sustained in our actions by the principles of righteousness, in the which there is power from the heavens. If we choose the wrong way and act on that choice, there is no such heavenly promise or power, and we are alone and are destined to fail”.

Christmas Break

Basically, in a nutshell, i love going home. Not always for extended periods of time but 2 weeks at a time is just about perfect. By the time finals had let up and i had finished moving into my new apartment, the only place i wanted to be was home. I figured, one short airplane trip and voila! i would be home. Nope, not so much. We arrived at the airport at 4a.m. (because we had to take someone else who had an earlier flight) and my flight, which was suppose to leave around 8a.m., got delayed and didn't leave until 1p.m., which means i missed my connecting flight in Dallas and didn't leave there until like 8 and i finally arrived home around 10p.m. LOOOOOOOONG day!

Home was great though. B and Ash came to visit for a week and so everyone except Lance and Jess were there for christmas! It was great just to chill at home and enjoy being with family. For christmas i got Heather's old george foreman grill, a hand mixer, a thumb drawing kit, and a camera!! And i got some other good stuff but i dont' really remember. Anyways, needless to say now i can add pictures to my blog! yay!! Here are some that i took over break. (Warning: most are of Ethan and Kailey)
Ethan LOVES vacuums. He would go down with Papa (my dad) and vacuum up after him as he did his wood carving. Everytime my mom would vacuum the house, no matter where he was, he'd yello VACUUM and run and want to help. He loves to clean.
Dad won our family fantasy football league this year. After a long struggle, Aaron finally handed the trophy over to Dad. Next year, i'm winning it. Dad, also over break, found out that he broke his foot....back in October, but only barely went to the doctor now. crazy huh? how can someone walk on a broken foot for that long?
I miss this girl. My favorite thing while home was going and getting Kailey out of her crib when she woke up in the morning or from her nap. You would peer over the side of the crib and she'd look up at you and smile this huge smile. If that doesn't make you feel loved, i'm not sure what does.
And of course I miss this boy. He's the only man i need in my life. I miss his goodnight hugs and kisses and he was in charge of picking who said prayer. He's just so funny. I wish i could see my nieces and nephew everyday.

Home was great, but i'm glad to be back in Provo.