New Found Love

Jeeping. Yes that is my new found love. I feel like I've been so deprived all my life... never having gone Jeeping until now. My roommate Jenni owns a Jeep and has always talked about how much fun it is to go out and drive around in the mud. In honor of the warm weather and school being pretty much over last night we took it out for a spin. In the mud :). We went late last night and it was extremely muddy and slick but it was so much fun! Up more North there are a ton of trails in Hyde Park Canyon which is where we went last night. Then today we went back in the afternoon for a longer excursion. It was SO. MUCH. FUN!! Like seriously! Better than any roller coaster I've ever been on ha ha.

I really like this picture! It looks like some car advertisement ha ha.

We drove up to the top of this hill and looked out over the valley. It was such a Gorgeous view! And what a beautiful day it was today! I'm really loving this weather!

Jessica in deep thought as she gazes out across the world below :)

Jenni, a proud Jeep owner

And here's the Jeepin' Crew. Todd, Jessica, Jenni, Darrell... and then me of course. Someone had to take the picture. You may be thinking, "Wait a minute... Jeeps only have four seats and there are five people..." well don't be concerned. Us three girls were in the backseat together, but we were all quite safely strapped in.

This is what we have to show for our fun! Thanks to many glorious mud puddles you can no longer tell that this Jeep is supposed to be blue :)

Man what fun we had! I can't wait to go again... oh wait we're going on another trip tommorrow!! Ha ha :)

"Wanna See My Lump?!"

Man these past couple days have been quite eventful! Who would've thought that birthday cake, rubber bands, towels, a concert in Provo, and the Beatles could provide for such great times!!

Sometime last semester I think, my roommate Jessica was doing something that somehow resulted with her having a large disgusting bruise on her thigh (I think she might've fallen off of something). It was so huge, and she would go around asking people "Wanna see my lump?!" We always joke about us being basically the same person because we are very similar in many ways, have the same name, and quite often get asked out on dates together ha ha. We pretty much come as a package, but I never would've imagined us also having similar wounds too!

Well, it was one of my other roommates' birthday on Tuesday so her family came up and brought a huge costco cake. It was so yummy but between her family and all of us girls we barely dented the thing, so we invited many people over throughout the night to eat it for us. My friend David came over, as well as a few other guys from the complex. Somehow we got into a huge rubber band fight, which eventually transitioned into a towel whipping battle between me and David. Ha ha... Bad idea! I got trapped in a corner, and David, who soaked the corner of his towel, got me real good right on the thigh! It is quite the battle wound!

It wasn't letting me upload pictures before but now i got it to work!! So here's the Battle Wound:

This was the day after...

NOW... this is a week later!! HA HA!! I think it's so hilarious!! I love to show everyone my wound! I'm so proud of it ha ha! The pictures really don't do it justice though... however, you get the idea :)

Wednesday me, Jessica, and our friend Todd drove down to Provo to go to a concert. It was a long drive and we stopped at my house where my mom (who is so nice) had made dinner for us. Todd's friend's band was playing so we went to go see him and a few other bands that were pretty good. It was a lot of fun, but I was way tired. We didn't leave provo until 12:15. The last time we went with Todd down to Provo for a concert we just slept the whole way home and left poor Todd to try and stay awake. This time we sang along to Beatles songs the whole drive home! Ha ha it was so fun and made the drive go by much faster. The Beatles proved to be quite therapeutic and Todd was just high on life Ha ha! We got home at 2:30 then I just crashed into bed. We really had a great time!

It's A Great Day To Be Alive

Man this has been a great week!! Wednesday was a particularly good day. I went to almost all of my classes :), took a trip to the gym, got one step closer to figuring out my life, went to the temple, registered for next semester, and well, I was just in the best mood! I was so happy that not even the SNOW bothered me... which is quite surprising. I made some comment about the snow being pretty and my roommate just stared at me dumbfounded... ha ha yeah it was that Great of a day!

I was a little stressed out when I heard that registration was this week. I do not want to have to think about next semester yet! I only want to think about this one ending! It is especially frustrating for me because I can not figure what I want to major in. I'm pretty close to having all my generals done already and I just really have no clue about what classes I should take. I went and talked to an advisor who was SO extremely helpful! I feel much much better now and she suggested some classes for me to take next semester. I registered that night and now feel slightly excited/slightly unsure for next semester. It will definitely be a lot more difficult than this semester has been. I'm taking a photography class which I'm excited for, but it's twice a week from 4-7... which sounds pretty awful to me... but oh well it will be worth it, hopefully.

The temple was really good too. Going to the temple more often is one thing mentioned a lot in Conference that I felt guilty about and decided I need to do better on. Ha and the old people there are so cute! I was sitting there with my roommate waiting to go into the confirmation room and this old man walked up behind me and said "It looks like you have diamonds in your hair!" because my hair was wet from the snow outside. Ha ha they are so cute and friendly!

I also was looking at the calendar this week and was in shock to realize that next week is the last week of school!! And then one week of finals, then my Freshman year is OVER! WOW! I couldn't believe how fast this year has come and gone! I have been getting really excited for summer to come because I will be done with school, working, going on fun vacations and eating my mom's REAL food, but now that it's basically here I'm feeling a little sad. I'm going to miss seeing my roommates everyday and laughing with them. The summer will be fun however. I'm excited to go back to work and actually have an income again, and I have many fun adventures planned that I'm quite excited about! And before I know it... I will be back in Logan starting my sophomore year. Can't Wait!!

Jewelry Date

Wow, what a night! Back in November our ward had an activity called a "tie date" where we randomly chose a guy's tie and did three secret things for them that week. Then we showed up at their door with the tie for a date that they had planned. This week, they switched it up and did a "jewelry date" where we put in a piece of jewelry and the guys picked it. My mystery date gave me some candy, an easter basket with a decorated egg inside, and my favorite... breakfast in bed!!! I was pretty much way excited! It was yummy yummy. So anyway, tonight was our date and I feel like it was pretty successful. I had a ton of fun and it seemed like everyone else did too!

This is my date... Steve-o! Note: Persons (or person) in picture may appear taller than actual size... p.s. I'm standing on a chair :)

We started the night out by feeding them dinner. Spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread. Nothing too extreme, but still yummy. Then we had dessert... football ice cream to be exact. You mix everything up in a bag, then put that inside a larger bag with ice and salt. You then wrap it up in tons of newspaper (which we are quite abundant in) and throw it around to shake it up! It was a ton of fun, but during this activity we did encounter a few problems... first of all, we (as in me and jenni) forgot to put the sugar in the ice cream... ha ha it's not that important right?! Problem #2... We had a blast throwing them around the apartment but it got quite wild. There were newspaper balls flying everywhere and we had a close call with one of the light fixtures, which almost came crashing down ha ha! I recall multiple times when i was hit in the face by two newspaper balls being viciously thrown at me simultaneously! And everyone noticed the black newspaper remnants smeared on my face... but they failed to mention that to me. I didn't notice until much later ha ha. The final problem we had was... well it just didn't work out the way I had imagined. We basically ended up drinking a mixture of cream, milk and sugar, with the exception of Marral and her date who were actually drinking cream, milk, sugar, and salt. But other than all that I'd say it turned out quite well! Ha ha.

Melanie and Steve-0 throwing our "footballs"

Finally, to finish out the night we painted pictures with our feet! Yes, with our feet. It was great fun! Ha ha when we first told the guys to take off their shoes and socks the looks of confusion on their faces were priceless... you can only imagine what their expressions were once we told them that we were painting with our feet! We were a little worried at first for their reaction, but they were all really good sports about it and I think they had fun.

Steve-o and Omar in the tub washing off their feet. Look at how nasty that water looks... yuck!

NOW look at how nasty the tub was once we were all done.....

Sick huh?! It was SO gross, but Jenni is so wonderful and scrubbed it clean. So don't worry, it's nice and spotless now.

The final Masterpieces:

Jess and Richard

Marral and Omar

Jenni and Treygen

James and Melanie

And finally, me and Steve-o!

Well what a fun date! It was so much better than sitting and watching a movie or something... well at least I thought so! I love dates that are active, cheap, and creative. There's no need to spend a lot of money and there are so many fun things you can do without spending a whole lot. It was a blast!

I Love Exercise!

"I love exercise"... these are words I never thought I would hear myself say, but it's true I love it! I truly used to despise working out, gym classes in particular. I don't necessarily enjoy it while I'm in the process of working out, but the way it makes you feel afterwards is so worth it! Oh and I love feeling sore the next day! Ha ha sounds strange but I think it feels great!

Last semester my roommate convinced me to go running with her on occasion. We never went very regularly and then we had to stop because it started to snow... but it helps to have a buddy to go with! I would never be motivated enough to go on my own ha ha. And the whole endorphins releasing thing... Man that is Great! Working out really helps me ease my stress and just feel so much happier! I came home tonight from a long productive visit to the free on-campus student gym and was just in such a great mood. It seriously is such a self-esteem booster! And once I got home I even felt motivated to finish my big finance assignment that is due tomorrow ha! That's a good thing right?! Anyway, I felt so happy that I thought I would share my excitement with everyone. That is all.

Highlights of My Weekend

Ok so here are the highlights from this last weekend...

• Friday was all around a Wonderful day! The weather was perfect and I wore a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops for the first time in many months. It was so great! I spent as much time as I possibly could outside and got my first "good" sunburn of the year. I feel pretty proud of the tan lines I now have :) Me and my roommate went to a park and played around in the sun, then we walked up on campus and hung out on the Quad for a little bit. Then to finish out the last little bit of sunshine me and my two roommates went and had a picnic at the top of Old Main. It was SO beautiful! We were sitting on the hill with a view of the temple, mountains, and the valley! It was gorgeous!!

• Later that night I went out on a casual date with a friend of mine in my ward. He had to drop off some things to people all around the area for work so I just rode along to keep him company. We were out in the middle of nowhere... AKA "Benson" (a city west of Logan) and we decided to go stargazing since it was such a beautiful night. We could see so many stars in the sky! There was a slight country aroma and a cool breeze. Only fields surrounded us for miles and far off in the distance you could see the glow of the temple as well as the rest of Logan. Sounds of croaking frogs and an occasional goose filled the air. It was so beautiful and peaceful! I really enjoyed it. I just love being in the outdoors! It really made my desire to go camping lately grow so much stronger.

Camping with my family many years ago in the Uintas, which is where we usually go.

• Saturday was the reinstatement of the Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch Tradition! Sometime last semester, me and my roommate Jessica discovered that we both really loved peanut butter cap'n crunch, so we began a tradition of eating it together at night outside on our porch/patio/balcony thing. Once the weather turned cold we would sometimes have a bowl late at night inside of our warm apartment, but eventually it just died. In honor of the warm spring air we reinstated this tradition on Saturday night!! Ha ha and that's about the extent of our excitement for that entire day.

• Sunday was a great day too! I had to teach the relief society lesson which went really well. I felt really good about it, which is opposite of how I usually feel so that was good! Church was only two hours long and we started a lot earlier because of the Draper temple dedication so that was a nice change. Then we went to the dedication which was really long since we had to sit and wait for an hour an a half, but it was a cool experience and I really enjoyed it.

• My final highlight of the weekend was Sunday night. All of us roommates sat down and played catch phrase together for an hour or so. Now this may not sound that significant but it truly is. We are all good friends and have a lot of fun together and get along really well but we don't ever spend that much time just as us girls. Most of the time spent of us all together is watching movies or eating food ha ha. It was so much fun to just play together and we were laughing SO hard! P.S. I was the champion of Catch Phrase :)

Here we all are: The Jenni's, the Jessica's, and M & M - Marral and Melanie :)

Not Quite California...

A couple of my roommates and I were so stoked for Spring Break to arrive, especially since we had been forming wild dreams of a fun-filled trip to California. We'd even begun making the plans for it all, but we soon realized that it was not going to happen for many reasons. So instead of Sea World and sunshine we decided to have an extended sleepover. Our adventures began in Honeyville, which is where my roommate Jessica is from. We actually first went to our really good friend Shawn's farewell Sunday morning, which was followed by so much delicious food at his house. Shawn is going to the Stockholm, Sweden mission which is also where our friend Todd (in our ward) served a year or so ago. We brought Todd along with us to Shawn's house afterward and we were worried that he would feel awkward since he was probably the oldest friend there by at least three years, but to our surprise he was actually the life of the party! He entertained us with all of his crazy stories for quite some time. I haven't laughed that hard in awhile. Ha ha oh man it was funny!

That night at Jessica's house we entertained ourselves with activities such as feeding her horses, makeovers, and playing with our new little friend Timmy (her dog). He was such a silly dog! He would climb up on our lap and just stare at us and then once we looked away he would attack us and lick our faces.

This is a little trick of his that they call "sitting pretty." It was so cute!

Caught in the act... ha ha

Jess on the phone...

The next day we drove down to Jenni's house in Brigham City. We spent most of that night playing at Shawn's house for the last time for two years! We watched Madagascar 2 which is pretty funny! I thought it was going to be dumb because that's usually how sequels of movies are but I actually really liked this one! We entertained ourselves by playing Guitar Hero World Tour for many hours... his poor parents were so nice to put up with our noise while trying to sleep.

Jess, David, Shawn, and Cooper

Jenni and Coop rockin' out

Tuesday morning, after eating at the famous Maddox in Perry that I've been hearing so much about (yummy), we drove down to my house in good old Woods Cross. We played more guitar hero and laughed all night just enjoying being silly girls. The rest of my spring break was mostly just relaxing. I worked a couple days which was actually really fun and played with my cute little family. They are so funny! We always have many good laughs together and my niece Lexie is such a crack up! She loves to show off and make us laugh.

Well now it's back to school... but hey at least the weather is being friendly. I have seriously been LOVING this warmth and sunshine (even though its only in the 50's ha ha)! Yesterday we sat out on the Quad for hours studying... well at least attempting too. I even got a little little bit of a sunburn ha ha. It was just glorious!