Martin's Cove

The Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving weekend, my coworker and I had to drive to Cody, WY to do some work.  Come to find out that Martin's Cove was only about 15 miles out of the way, so we stopped by for a quick tour.  When will I ever be in the middle of nowhere Wyoming again?

Devil's Gate where the hand cart companies entered the Martin's Cove area along the Sweetwater River.

Martin's Cove

We were only there for about an hour, but I learned so much from the sweet senior missionary who took us on the tour.  I am forever grateful for all those people who went before us to establish and strengthen the Church here in the west.  I can hardly comprehend the sacrifice and suffering they endured to follow the words of the living prophet.  Here is more info on Martin's Cove and the handcart pioneers: http://lds.org/gospellibrary/pioneer/28_Martins_Cove.html.  It was sunny and still the most freezing and windy place ever.  I can't imagine it in the snow!

My Room

When I got back from staying at Amy's for Thanksgiving, Olivia had washed all my sheets and made my bed.  Bless her!  I never make my bed, so I thought I better take pictures of my room for people to see immediately.  My bed has never looked so professionally made!  So mostly for my mom...this is what my bedroom looks like in my new abode in Tricia's townhome.  It is cozy, but I love it.  Wall-to-wall king size bed!  Yes, I do have my whole entertainment system in my bed room and surround sound around my bed.

I should have taken one more picture so you should see my closet.  It is like Tetris in there.  Why do I have so much stuff?!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was interesting to say the least.  We started off the week with a cousin party at Dedo's on Sunday.  Sophie had barfed all over the place the day before at Kimberly's bridal shower.  I didn't think too much about it.  I started feeling a little weird at the cousin party.  I barfed that night and made several trips to the toilet throughout the next day at work.  Amy barfed that night as well.  Jack started barfing that same Sunday.  Thus started the week of the flu for every single person in the family (minus Dan, he got lucky!).  Here's all the cousins with Dedo at the cousin party.  Sure do love all these folks!

I was back to full strength on Tuesday.  Wednesday was Olivia's birthday.  Her brother and sister were both in town for Thanksgiving, so we had a party.  Here is a picture of me with two of her nieces (Emee and Lilly).  They loved the bike.  Kids always love the bike.  I don't get it.  Haha!  They are about the cutest little girls on earth, and we had a blast celebrating O's birthday!

On Thursday morning, me and my running crew (Brett, Tricia, Olivia, and Heather) headed down to Draper for the Utah Human Race 5k.  We have decided to make this a Thanksgiving morning tradition.  We sort of love it!  I ran my fastest 5k yet...28:38 minutes!!  I knew if I kept Tricia in my sights, I would be good to go.  I finished 4 seconds behind her...yippee!!

Amy and Kara even joined us!  Hurray for a good turkey trot and running with these two hot ladies!

We met up with a couple of other friends afterward...Haley (check out that stellar turkey hat!) and Nathan.  How Heather's hair looks so stunning after running 3 miles, I will never know.  I am always a hot mess after running!

Here's me and my girls after the race.  So proud of us!  Time to start cooking.  At this point, everyone is feeling fairly healthy.  Sophie was still not totally normal.

Jack still talks to me about the apple spinner.

Sitting down to enjoy our feast...Deeds was starting to feel sick at this point.  He barfed later that night.  All three kids barfed within 30 minutes of each other while preparing said feast.

And here are a few shots from the day...

On Friday, Kara and Isaac were ill, so we didn't get to play as much as we wanted.  They came over later that evening and we got to play one game.  Poor little Iz (and Kara)...

I had purchase a United States and dinosaur cookie cutters, so Jack and I made sugar cookies on Saturday.  Ryan was sick this day.  They headed back to Boise this day, even though Ryan was ill.  All our efforts to not spread our flu disease failed.  Deeds still wasn't on top of his game on Saturday.  It was kind of a miserable Thanksgiving, but at least we were all sick together.  We got to watch a lot of football, so that was fun!  I hate when things don't turn out the way I envision them happening.  Oh well...what can you do?!  I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was more awesome with less barf than mine!

Rise and Shout

Well, the regular football season is officially over.  This was my first year having season tickets.  Olivia and I bought tickets with Olivia's friend Kara.  It was pretty good season this year.  Well, I guess it was good.  It was a weird one, that's for sure.  Here is me at the first home football game where we got totally destroyed by Utah.  That's gotta be up in the top 10 worst sporting events of my life.  At least we got to meet Cosmo afterward.  Sept. 17 vs Utah 10-54

Kara couldn't make it to the second home game, so our friend, Maurianne, joined us.  Sept. 23 vs UCF 24-17

I just love this place!

And then there was the Utah State game.  It was pretty much a huge disappointment until the last quarter of the game.  We won in the last seconds thanks to Mr. Reilly Nelson.  Sept. 30 vs Utah State 27-24.  You would have thought we won the Super Bowl...nope, just Utah state.

Oct. 8 vs San Jose State 29-16 - Nothing to exciting to report here.  Yes, that's four straight weekends in a row of going down to Provo.  I was ready for an away game!  Love going to the games, but it's like an 8 hour commitment every time with traffic and construction.  Exhausting but worth it!

 

 Oct. 22 vs Idaho State 56-3 - This was the game that I went to with the Grossen's because Olivia was in Ashton planning her dad's funeral.  I sure did miss her during this game!  I already blogged about the game in an earlier post, so no pictures here.
Nov. 12 vs Idaho 42-7 By this time, we were playing really crappy teams and rolling.  It's a lot more fun when there are a lot of points being scored, but it also kind of makes things boring.  O and I stopped by this little piece of heaven before the game...

We also had a special guest come sit by us.  I met this guy Ben on an LDS singles website, so he met us at the game.  It was a pretty special time.  He's not a Coug fan.  I did enough cheering for both of us and he cheered at the ASU score on his smart phone.

The last home game was freezing and late.  I wasn't very thrilled about that, but we had to be there to support our Cougs!  I had about 5 layers on as you can tell.  After the game, we took some pics with the classic Y.  Nov. 19 vs New Mexico State 42-7

And that's the 2011 BYU Football season in a nutshell.  It was so fun to have season tickets with O!  Until next season LaVell Edwards Stadium...I love you!

Wingardium Leviosa

We have been in a Harry Potter state of mind over here in my neck of the woods.  This week has been Harry Potter week in Olivia's classroom, so for roommate night last night, we went to check it out.  Here are some of the highlights...

Lord Voldy doesn't have anything on me! Yes, my new BYU pj bottoms are tucked into my slippers so I don't walk all over them!

Me and HP

Sporting the HP glasses

 Olivia's classroom was so fun!  It makes me wish I was in 6th grade again!  There were oragami snitches hanging from the ceiling, pictures of all the characters all over the place, and the kids had all made their wands with hippogriff fur, phoenix feathers, unicorn hair, etc.  She took pics of the kids playing Quidditch yesterday.  So funny!  She's the best 6th grade teacher in town!  I also purchased the HP 7.2 DVD yesterday at Costco and watched it today.  I love me some Harry Potter!
Last week, our tickets for Wicked came in the mail.  I'm so excited for our little trip to CA that I could die!

One fact about living with roommates is that I go to bed late way too often.  What can I say?  We just have way too much fun together!  It's like a sleepover every single night!

My dear friend Brett took me out last weekend for my birthday.  We went to the Red Iguana for dinner.  I can safely say this is the best Mexican restaurant I've been to in Salt Lake.  Loved it!  Then we went and shopped around the Gateway and caught a late movie.  What a great birthday present to hang out with this guy for an evening!

Here is the "finished" product for the project I've been working on for my calling at church.  It will always be changing, but I think it turned out pretty great.  The pictures are attached with velcro, so they'll be easy to move around.  I think I only have pictures of about half of my Relief Society.
Oh look, you can see my "friends are like wedgies" card on the fridge in the background.  Haha!  Love that!

32...Awesome!

 I first became fond of the number 32 when I was around 8 or 9 when I became a die hard fan of the Lakers and this legend...

Side note...Ryan reminded me that today is the 20 year anniversary of when Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV.  I was in 6th grade and at Camp K.E.E.P.  I cried.  I didn't understand what HIV was then, but I knew it meant he was going to die, and I was the saddest.  Good news is, he's still alive and my first reason for loving the number 32!
Another reason I love the number 32 is because of this hero...
The JIMMER!!  

Another reason I love the number 32 is because of this hero...
The JIMMER!!  







 And don't forget about this epic #32!  Dennis Pitta...miss that guy!

So I really couldn't be happier about turning 32.  What a great number!  Here is a review of my birthday week...
On Sunday, I spoke in Sacrament meeting.  Most of my talk came from this most incredible BYU Devotional given by Elder Bednar in October 2001.  If you haven't read or heard it in a while or ever, I HIGHLY recommend it.  Just incredible!  I threw in a little dash of this story, and that was my talk in a nutshell.  I felt like it went pretty well.  I sort of love speaking in sacrament meeting even though it makes me so dang nervous!
On Monday, my roommates and I went to Costco.  Always love that place!  And if you want to go to Costco when it is at its deadest, go when everyone else is out trick-o-treating...pure miracle!
On Tuesday, Tricia and I went to Olivia's school to see a performance by her students.  They each got to pick a historical figure to research, write a poem about, dress up as, and then recite said poem in costume.  It was fun to see where O works and put faces with the names of some of the students she talks about.  Except now I only know them as Ghandi, Columbus, Anne Frank, etc.  Haha!  That night, we sort of spontaneously bought tickets to fly to California in a few weeks to see Wicked and go to Disneyland.  We have been tossing around this idea for weeks now to celebrate all of our birthdays, but there was a deal on flights that night, and we made the purchase.  I'm SOOO excited I could wet myself!  It can't come soon enough!
On Wednesday, my coworkers took me to lunch for my birthday.  We went to Cafe Trang, and I got Thai food.  My favorite!  Love that spicy goodness so much!  When I got home, I went for a little run and then (buckle up for this one folks) I went on a date.  Yes, a real live date.  It was with a guy I went on a blind date with about a year and half ago.  It just took him that long to ask me out again...haha!  Just kidding...it is sort of a long story, but the date went well.  He is a stellar guy, and we both love BYU football.  We'll see what happens.
On Thursday, I woke up to ride my bike and found a present from my roommates and Preston sitting on the counter.  I only opened the card because I wanted to save the present for later, but the card was awesome.  It read, "Friends are like wedgies...it feels really good when you pick out a good one."  This is a fact, and Tricia, Olivia, and Preston are some of the greatest wedgies I've ever had!  After a day at work, Amy brought the kiddos down and Olivia made us a delicious dinner (such a super friend and roommate)!  Amy made a cake and brought ice cream (such a stunning friend and sister) and we just had a little party with the five of us.  Here are the pics...

 

 

 

 I opened my presents from everyone, which were all awesome...thank you, thank you, thank you!  I also got tons of love in texts, wall posts, and phone calls from my parentals, Kara and Ryan (and Iz), and Dedo.  An Edible Arrangement showed up on my doorstep from Adam the next day.  So thoughtful and delicious!  Thank you to everyone who made my 32nd birthday so specatular.  I went a played a little stake volleyball that night too.  Couldn't miss that!
On Friday, a few my dearest friends and my fam all met for dinner a Johanna's Kitchen.  Then we went over to our house and had cookies and ice cream and watched Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth version).

Preston, Brett, Me and Heather

Me and my girlies!

Me and the fam

Thanks for coming everyone!
On Saturday, I slept in as long as I possibly could (8:45am-ish), and then pretty much just chilled the whole day.  We ran some errands.  I worked on a project for my church calling.  O and I did a workout, which I am feeling the effects of today.  Then O and I went to Chili's for dinner and watched football.
Yesterday, I went to church, went to choir practice, got visit taught, worked more on my little project, and finished the day off with dinner at the Ellison's.  Tricia's family has literally taken Olivia and I in as their own daughters.  We have Sunday dinner there pretty much every week.  I love them and am SO grateful for their love and hospitality!  I will take a picture soon...most of the fam was M.I.A. last night.  I'm not sure if this is the sort of thing one should blog about, but I'm going to anyway for my own journaling purposes.  T, O, and I and all our families fasted for increased opportunities for dating and meeting worthy gentlemen.  Let's be honest, the dating pool is thin, if existent at all, around here, and we are in desperate need of help.  We each want that more than anything, but it sho ain't happenin'!  I am not the greatest faster, but yesterday was different.  There is something really special about fasting with a real purpose and in combination with loved ones.  Thank you to everyone who added us to their faith, prayers, and fast yesterday.  We felt your love and support, and we are feeling optimistic!  We also watched the CES Fireside by President Packer.  I was in bed by 10pm...love it!
So that was my birthday week.  It was the greatest!  32 is a great number and I'm looking forward to it!  Hopefully it will be "Magic"al and Jimmer-ific!!