Hello Christmas Break

My christmas break has now officially began, and I am welcoming it with open arms!

This year I'll be celebrating my Christmas in St. Louis, Missouri with Jeff and his family. I'm pretty excited for this little vacation and for the opportunity to really get to know his family better. I do feel bad that I'm ditching my family for Christmas though... Sorry Mom! But we've got lots of fun things planned and I can't wait!

We are actually hanging out in the airport right now waiting for our flight in a couple hours. We both fly out today and then i'm coming back on the 28th. Yes that is almost 2 weeks! I'm a little bit nervous... but mostly excited! :)

Graduation Photo Shoot

We had a lot of fun doing this graduation photo shoot for my friend. Thanks Steph for the practice and Congrats on Graduating!

Family, Fun, and.... FOOD!

Happy Snowy Thanksgiving!

I had a wonderfully busy break hanging out with my family and stuffing myself with food. We had a full house and, as always, were very entertained by the little ones.

Lexie helped me make these cute little turkeys. Her "help" consisted of sucking all the color off the jelly beans and hiding them under her plate, and licking all the filling of the oreo's. Ha ha she was a great help!

Black Friday shopping consisted of Walmart at Midnight, which was total madness! I loved it! I get a kick out of black friday shopping. It's so fun and crazy. Katie and I waited up until 2:30 to go to Kohl's but once we got there and saw the line we bagged that idea and just went to bed.

P.S. I came back to Logan to find at least a foot of snow! When I walked out the door this morning everything looked so beautiful covered in snow!

P.S.S Only 2 more weeks until Finals!!!!! Oh YEAH!

Baby, It's Cold Outside...

And it's a Winter Wonderland!!

This is a picture of the "worst Blizzard of the century" that hit us on Tuesday. Really not as bad as I was expecting. This is a view from Jeff's apartment in Logan.

And of course we had to play in the freshly fallen 8 or so inches of snow!!

Ha ha :)

Practicing My Domesticality

First time making homemade wheat bread... And it was a success!

It was kind of time consuming, but the amazingly yummy result is definitely worth it! Yum!

Most of you are probably thinking that I've fallen off the face of the Planet....

....Well I have.

I just realized that it's been over two months since I've updated my blog... Sorry to those who actually read it and care about what's going on in my life. I will try to do better, but now that I'm back in school and working i've just been a busy busy girl. Life has been really good though! I am enjoying my classes this semester, I love where I'm living, and I think that I have the best job ever. But best of all I'm in love with my best friend :). (I apologize for the cheesiness)

Here are some of the highlights of my life the past couple months:

I finally got to go to the Oregon coast and loved it!

Witnessed first hand the domination of the Aggies over BYU for the first time in 17 years :)

Experienced my very first car accident, which sadly resulted in the death of the deeply loved Geo which I was so attached too.... :(

Bought my first very own fishing pole! It's orange.

Finally after 2 1/2 years of living in Logan, "Cleaned the Sink" at Angie's

Lots of hiking and enjoying the beautiful fall colors

But mostly what my life has consisted of is school, work, school, homework, and playing with my man.

Life is Good :)

Boating and Camping

Last week ended up being pretty busy and eventful for me! Here's what I did:

Wednesday I went boating with a big group of friends at Willard Bay

Thursday morning I went camping with the Young Single Adults from my home stake up in a tiny town north of Preston, Idaho.

Someone knew this guy who owns a ton of land and he let us come up and camp on his property for a few days. He had horses so we got to do a lot of horseback riding!! I LOVED it so so much! I felt like I was on a farm. We got to round them up, and saddle and bridle them. We also learned/observed one of the horses get horse-shoed. That was pretty cool! And... I finally galloped on a horse for the first time! I've always been a little nervous but I did it and it was awesome!

Friday we drove out to this private lake and played on the beach/boated. We had a tiny boat so only a few people could go out at a time. We did a lot of tubing which was way fun, and I also got to do some wake-boarding again! It was fun with this little boat because it had a lot of power.

Friday night brought lots of excitement. We got hit by a big storm! It was extremely windy, and rainy. There we were in this wide open field surrounded by lightening while clinging to metal poles trying to hold down our two big canopies! It was so windy that my tent blew away.... ha ha yes it BLEW away!

I had been up riding horses when the storm hit and someone pointed out to me that my tent was gone... ha ha. I thought he was just teasing me but when I realized it really was gone I ran down to camp. It blew at least 300 yards away and ripped a huge hole in the top (keep in mind this was one our wards 6-man big spring bar tents)! Miraculously every single item of ours stayed inside the tent. Which really is a miracle because all of our bags were wide open and things were strewn everywhere! They just had to shove it all together and throw it in the truck before it started pouring.

I thought it was pretty hilarious that our tent blew away ha ha. That night we slept in the back of our leaders car, which was super uncomfortable. The good news was, was that we didn't have to take down our tent in the morning, or even clean it out for the next people to use it ha! That's all we heard about at church that Sunday. The young men teased us a lot because we "ruined" their tent that they were going to be using that next Monday. Ha ha oops! It was some pretty intense wind I'll tell ya what. Wasn't our fault! :) It sure was a pretty big adventure.

San Francisco Baby!

So I flew out to Sacramento, CA a couple weekends ago to visit two of my good friends, Jake and Matt, who have been living there for the summer selling pest control. It was a bit of a hassle to actually get out there and once I had gotten there I wasn't sure if I was going to make it back ha ha. I have free flying benefits thanks to my Dad, but you have to fly stand by, which does make it more difficult to actually get on a plane.

Long story short, basically on the way there my plane was supposed to leave at 10:00 pm Friday night, but instead left around 2:15 am... So after a 4 hour delay... I finally arrived in Sacramento at 3 in the morning California time!

We got a few hours of sleep then headed out to San Francisco to hang out for the day! I think San Fran is the coolest city ever! I LOVED it! The beautiful victorian style houses lined up along the streets! It is just a beautiful city! I wouldn't want to live there though... driving around was a bit crazy. And it's extremely expensive ha.

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge!!!

Jake with the crazy geese

At the beach! It's too bad it was so cold, windy and cloudy that day.

Lombard Street! The most crooked street in the world I guess.

Driving down Lombard street

Such a COOL city! I wish I would've gotten a better picture of the streets but I hate taking pictures from the car and I'm not very good at it either.

Telegraph Hill

A view of Lombard Street

The Bay Bridge (we never drove across this one)

Jake, myself, and Matt at Fisherman's Warf

It ended up being a really fun trip and a good little adventure for myself! Short... but still good!

Redd Family Reunion 2010

We had our Redd Family Reunion the weekend of July 9th to the 11th. Yes I know I'm kind of behind... This year we had it up in the Sandy area, which was different but still lots of fun as usual. Friday we got together at a park where there was a pool. We had dinner with homemade root beer and chatted with family members.

Saturday morning a group of us did an early hike in the mountains behind the University of Utah. We hiked up to the "Rock Furniture." It was a nice hike and the view of Salt Lake was beautiful! We also got to relax in some surprisingly pretty comfy rock furniture which made the hike all worth it.

Saturday afternoon was spent at Liberty park where numerous activities were enjoyed such as slack lining, koob game...? (not sure if that is the right name or not, but I definitely know it was not "cube" ha ha), playing in the water, eating food of course, more chatting, feeding the seagulls, etc.

Next we migrated to Aunt Becky's church Bowery where we ate dinner, played in the bouncy house, candy cannon, and were entertained by a hilarious game of "Minute to Win It" put together by Katie and Maridee. They did a great job and it was so entertaining to watch! However, sadly my camera died about half way through it so I unfortunately wasn't able to capture the best events.

Sunday we all met at the Lee's house for dinner and dessert (Grandpa's chocolate) and then those who needed to travel headed home.

"Rock Furniture"

Grandpa's Ties

Candy Cannon!

Empty Nesters

Well we released little Juniper back into the wild Sunday morning. She was definitely ready to go, and had been acting more like a wild bird that last couple days we had her.

It was a good little adventure we had raising that bird, and I even got quite attached those last few days that I was taking care of her at my house, but it is nice to have her gone. We took her outside Sunday morning and she sat on Jeff's finger for a few minutes, then just flew away. It was a melancholy moment... Our little girl left the nest and was venturing out on her own :( Ha ha!

Sorry I don't have the pictures to share...

Not So Little Anymore

Our little Juniper is not so much of a baby anymore! We've had her for about 2 1/2 weeks now and she has grown so much! She's flying now too!! Oh and we found out that it's most likely a girl due to her duller coolers and different tail feathers.

She takes a lot of time and commitment... she wakes up at 6 every morning and then has to be fed every hour... This little experience has showed me that I'm definitely not ready to be a mother yet ha ha!

Usually Jeff has her most of the time and I mostly just bird sit while he's at work, but he's been busy flying and this weekend he went up to an air show in Idaho so I've been taking care of her since Thursday morning. Phew... she is a lot of work!

I brought her home with me for a few days and she was miserable the entire car ride. I hate to make her go through that again...

She is such a funny little bird. She is extremely social and hates to be left alone. She loves to sit on top of your head or shoulder, and she hates to be in her cage. You can see in the pictures how much longer her wings have gotten! We've also added millworms to her diet... yuck! Why does she have to eat gross disgusting bugs?! But she just loves them.

He he :) I feel bad because the bird bombarded my dad, and of course my first concern was to capture the moment, so I made him wait while I grabbed my camera. Ha ha Sorry Dad! I love this picture because the bird is peaking up behind his head looking a bit guilty.

My dad rigged up this little golf club perch for her in my room, which she loves. She has successfully left her pleasant little surprises on almost everything in my room... my bed, my carpet, my bookshelf, the wall a few times, my shirt, my dad's forehead ha, and the footnotes of Alma chapter 37. She's only partially potty trained.

The good news is, is that she is really close to being released back into the wild! She is the cutest little thing and I've gotten pretty attached, but it will be nice to have her go. She's flying pretty good for small confined spaces and she will eat the worms on her own. Also, the progress made today is that instead of sitting and waiting to get fed she now flys to the food. That is a good sign! She's kind of crazy actually... she pretty much attacks you when she's hungry ha ha.

The real test will be if she will catch and eat live crickets... but after that she should be ready to be set free, which I'm guessing will be sometime early next week if not this weekend! I'll keep you all posted :)