My Favorite Princess Movie!

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED this movie!!! Ash and I have seen it twice, paying full price even. Just wait until the dollar theatre gets it.... One of my favorite lines was when Rapunzel has Flinn tied up in a chair with her hair after hitting him unconscious with a frying pan. She says, "You're not here for my hair?" and then he says, "What? No, the only thing I want to do is get OUT of your hair---quite literally!" Super funny...everyone needs to see it!

It's fixed!

Bronson, my computer genius friend, fixed my blog!

Myth Busted!

I heard on the street that you can cook just about anything in a rice cooker. Camilla and I decided to make a cake. It appeared to be a cake soup for a while until I started smelling a burnt smell, when I flipped it over the little plunk it made proved that we had successfully made something solid! Apart from it being torched on the outside and batter in the middle, it was quite edible and because we are all hungry college students it disappeared before we could take a picture.

Recent Adventures

First and foremost, I AM NO LONGER A TEENAGER!!!! (So if you notice a much more mature nature to my blog in future - this is the cause).

My birthday was FANTASTIC, my family and Matty (and his mother) are so great for making it a special day for me even from miles away. I loved answering the door to find packages of the BEST cake I have ever eaten from a box, an iTunes card, delicious smelling soaps, and my very favorite kind of underwear in the mail just for me! Don't worry, Elder McArthur sent me a pink arrangement of flowers  which is still looking beautiful a week and a half later. Kim got me My Fair Lady because she knows how much I love Audrey Hepburn, Ash made me some of her delicious hot cocoa, and Willy and Dallas got me a Dora the Explorer calendar and a change purse all making it super day for me. Facebook is so great for birthdays because your wall is just covered with posts and every time you sign on you have new updates to make you feel awesome. I also got a free Denny's Grand Slam with my roommates and Bronson which was pretty amazing!

Dixie had the famous hypnotist, Bruce McDonald, come for a Friday night show a couple weeks ago. It was hilarious! We watched some of the people we see everyday on campus do some pretty wild things. My favorite part was when this boy from our singles ward named Josh did a whole rendition of BadRomance by Lady Gaga. He had quite the moves.

These last two weeks have been the time of meeting new people and going out. Camilla and I went on a group date with one of our married friend's husband's friends (if that makes sense). We played with Nerf guns in a Stake Center, playing capture the flag. I absolutely loved sneaking around, being all evasive and plotting tactics on saving my teammates from prison. I am pretty sure I would be awesome in a military setting....just kidding.

Last Saturday, I was asked out by Jerold from our ward. We went to Cafe Rio (amazing pork salads!) and had a lot of fun joking and telling stories whilst finger painting with a Crayola paint set. I found that I have quite some talent in the area, while maybe Jerold needed a little more practice. It was really nice and a change of pace to be asked out on an official date.

On Sunday, we had a full apartment of visitors Camilla and Ash met at the bonfire the night before for Kim's famous pumpkin pie after the Fireside. It was really cool to make so many new friends all at once. I made a new friend named Shane who will be added to my tennis buddy collection. They then invited us to their ward "game night." On our making new friends high, we became adopted into their ward for activities. More to come on those activities, I'm sure!

On second thought...

We had a mystery in our apartment this morning. Ashleigh, Kim, and I went to the Dixie Football tailgate party for free lunch (yes, there IS such a thing as free lunch when you're a poor college student) and left Camilla alone in the apartment studying.

When we got back, Kim went in to her room and came out with a bouquet of flowers. They were not there before we had left, and Camilla - very believably perplexed - had no idea how they got there because she was sitting in the living room the whole time and clearly no one had come to visit the apartment. The only thing that made sense was that Kim left her bedroom window open and it has no screen. While this may seem like a very obvious answer, you must consider that we live on the 3rd floor and the only way someone would be able to get to her window is to crawl on the roof that is about 10 feet away from the actual window. Then jokingly, Kim suggested it may have been Luc because I had told them of the AIRHEAD story from a couple weeks ago.

All of a sudden the details of how that may be a very plausible explanation came racing into my mind. Earlier that morning, I had been walking back to the apartment, and Ashleigh saw me out of Kim's window and yelled down to me and we had a conversation. Luc went walking by through those couple of minutes. Luc had asked Ashleigh to the Homecoming dance which was a couple of weeks ago, which totally came out of the blue so we assumed he kinda had a thing for her. It HAS to have been Luc that crawled up on to the roof with a bouquet of flowers and threw them into Kim's window, thinking it was Ashleigh's room!!

... I'm not so sure the world would be a better place if more people crawled up on roof's to throw surprises into other people's windows....

The world would be a better place...

IF everyone did nice/slightly weird things such as my neighbor named Luc. The best word to describe him is eccentric. He went on a run with Camilla and me once and ran barefoot all along the streets of St. George to the temple. He has seen every movie made since the dawn of time and knows plenty of behind-the-scene facts about everyone one of them. He bicycled across the United States in a summer. He has something to say about ANYTHING - you name it, he'll carry a 5 minute conversation all on his own.

Today I was walking to class when I noticed him come up behind me, a little bit in my bubble space. He passed me up walking really quickly until he would slow down and hover behind someone else. I thought it was very odd, but typical Luc behavior, until I noticed he was randomly putting something IN people's bags they were carrying. VERY intrigued, I walked faster to keep up and observed his pick-pocket in reverse. When I couldn't follow him any longer without surpassing the building of my class, I gave up my pursuit, deciding attending class was more important than solving the Luc mystery. As I was getting my books and pencil out of my bag, I happened to find an AIRHEAD....what a slightly odd but very nice surprise!

Moon Festival!

Moon Festival - About.com

The Chinese Moon Festival is on the 15th of the 8th lunar month. It's also known as the Mid-autumn Festival. Chinese culture is deeply imbedded in traditional festivals. Just like Christmas and Thanksgiving in the West, the Moon Festival is one of the most important traditional events for the Chinese.


The Moon Festival is full of legendary stories. Legend says that Chang Er flew to the moon, where she has lived ever since. You might see her dancing on the moon during the Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is also an occasion for family reunions. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes, and sing moon poems. With the full moon, the legend, the family and the poems, you can't help thinking that this is really a perfect world. That is why the Chinese are so fond of the Moon Festival.

The Moon Festival is also a romantic one. A perfect night for the festival is if it is a quiet night without a silk of cloud and with a little mild breeze from the sea. Lovers spend such a romatic night together tasting the delicious moon cake with some wine while watching the full moon. Even for a couple who can't be together, they can still enjoy the night by watching the moon at the same time so it seems that they are together at that hour. A great number of poetry has been devoted to this romantic festival. The moon cake is the food for the Moon Festival. The Chinese eat the moon cake at night with the full moon in the sky. Hope the Moon Festival will bring you happiness.

I love my roommate!

SkimBoarding

So our new friend Willy invited me to go skimboarding today, and I had no clue what it was, but it sounded like an adventure and this is my year of adventures. This is Ashleigh's year of "yes" so naturally she said, "yes" when I invited her along. It turns out that it's this flat, wooden board that you run and hop on in 2 inches of water. After falling quite ridiculously a time or two, we started to get the hang of it. Ashleigh and I decided that if you had a hobby that included anything with "boarding" on the end of it, you get 10 cool points, so we are making skimboarding our new hobby. Stay tuned for pictures of us actually doing it!

New Calling!

Last semester of school I was Family Home Evening Coordinator, this summer I was Friday Night Activities Coordinator, any guesses on what I am THIS semester?! ...... Well if you guessed Relief Society Activities Coordinator - you are CORRECT!

Learning something that changes the world as you once knew it

In my freshman year of high school in my Algebra 2 class, the information that the formulas we had always known for finding the diameter and circumference of a circle (π x diameter and π x radius squared) was not in fact completely accurate and that there was actually a (x° / 360) in front of the formula brought us to shock and awe that the world as we had once known it would be changed forever. Teachers had been not giving us the whole truth since the 5th grade!! 

Yesterday, I had one such experience. Since our mail box is conveniently placed beside the sidewalk headed toward campus and since I have come to have a greater increase in mail in the last couple months, I have developed the habit of opening our #6 mailbox every time I walk by. As I was walking back to the apartment for my lunch break, I opened the mailbox and found a letter. Regardless of being completely bummed out, seeing that the receiver's name was not my own, I decide to be a good, thoughtful person and bring the mail up to the apartment. I lay it on the table and proceed to put my delicious lunch (a tuna fish sandwich and a yogurt). 

Kim, my roommate comes to the table and looks at the letter puzzled and says, "I could have sworn I put this in the mailbox this morning." I absentmindedly tell her that it was in the mailbox, and I did not mention the fact that I was so nice as to have brought it up for her. She then informs me that it was out-going mail. What?! 

Apparently, you can MAIL THINGS FROM YOUR OWN MAIL BOX! Who knew?! I do not know why I never wondered about the red flag that you put up when you have something for the postman. I do not know why I never thought that there was any way but the post office to send your mail. This little priceless gem is going to save me A LOT of walking to the drop off box in the mini post office in the Red Rock Cafe for my many future out-going letters.

Saturday Mornings

I have a new love for Saturday mornings. Not only do I love sleep in past 6:30 which is the time I get up for my Espanol class throughout the week, but I've realized how much can be accomplished when you don't spend half the day sleeping. My roommates and I were all awake by 8:30 this morning and got right down to cleaning, making our already clean apartment spotless. By noon I had done all my laundry, cleaned our bathroom, cleaned our room, had breakfast and read a chapter in Microbiology. The start of a new school year has brought back all the determination and new goals of studying harder, being more organized and getting more things accomplished (hence an updated blog). This is the first of many Saturdays I would like to hope for through the year. It's amazing how much more productive you feel when you start the day off at a decent time!

Sunday Afternoons

I have come to absolutely LOVE Sundays not only because it's my one day off in the week, but because I get to go to church (which I have grown very attached to the college ward) and in the afternoons I get to take nice, long naps, eat a marvelous home-cooked meal followed by an even better dessert, and if that's not enough I get to play my very favorite board game with my parents (Settlers of Catan) AND a game a shanghai. I'm sure going to miss these Sundays at home...

This requires you to read with the most hickish, twangy accent you can imagine

"Rain makes corn. Corn makes whiskey. Whiskey makes my baby....feel a little frisky."


 "Love, love you let me down, Let me down, No you wont string me along, You better be moving on, Giddy on up, Giddy on out."


"Woh-oh lover lover lover, you don't treat me no good no more, Woh-oh, woh-oh lover, lover lover, you don't treat me no good no more."


"We let it rip when we got the money, Let it roll if we got the gas, It gets wild yeah but that’s the way we get down, In a Hicktown."


"She said I’m going out with my girlfriends, Margaritas at the Holiday Inn, Have mercy my only thought, Was Tequila makes her clothes fall off."


"It's a crazy town - full of neon dreams. Everybody plays - everybody sings. Hollywood witha touch of twang - to be a star you gotta bang-bang-bang."

These are the songs that play nearly ten times a day over the speakers on the REQUIRED radio station at work. That's not even counting the times that they play over and over again in my head because they've been ingrained into my brain. I sing along as a conditioned response (for those of you who took psych). Feel sorry for me. 

Work, work, and more work

This is what my summer life has consisted of - working 48 hours a week. When I'm not driving to and from work (it's in Cody), you will find me sleeping. I've becoming a stranger in my home, leaving before I see anyone because they are off working and what not and then coming home after they have gone to bed. Sundays now truly are my day of rest. I really do love this job though, it's bringing in the much needed income. For those of you that don't know, I'm a super saver and it was driving me CRAZY spending money when there was no money coming in. Who knew that selling fireworks could be so dull sometimes. I have had time to do my daily scripture studying, read the two books in the Hunger Games series, had conversations with Jess of the meaning of Life, watched a plethora of movies (great deals at Wal-Mart...fyi), and I've slowly increased my knowledge in fireworks. People are actually starting to believe me when I tell them what is good and what they do and what to buy! I especially love when people who have absolutely no clue come in and they just hang on my every word and buy all of my recommendations. It gives me a small sense of authority right up until a man will come in and not believe me about the most powerful firecrackers. There have been two occasions once with Matt and once with my dad keeping me company at the store, where the customers will completely ignore my correct answers and look to either of them for information. Apparently being of the male gender means you know about fireworks. For now that is a complete update on my life!

5 of the many reasons why i love being home

5. I can shower basically ANY time of the day in a shower that doesn't always look dirty as much as you scrub and scrub and scrub it (my home shower is ALWAYS spotless though due to my mother's regimen cleaning schedule) and not have three other girls needing to get into the bathroom at any time. There is also a lock so I will never feel like I could be barged in on by ANYONE at any second.  

4. My bed is probably the 5th comfiest bed in the world...with high thread count sheets that are cool to your skin to get into and 6 pillows to smother around you and enough room to roll over and not fall off (never happened but still it's a likely possibility with such tiny dorm beds)

3. I don't have to eat cafeteria food. Sure the parfaits, the muffins, the chocolate milk and the omelets were pretty delicious...but they are not exactly the best choices to live off the entire year if health is taken into consideration. I get complete healthy meals with vegetables that I never exactly craved in my life until I didn't have them. I now consider any meat that is not chicken or hamburger a delicacy.
2. I don't have to do laundry. I realize that this is a rare occurrence in the American Family these days so I do not take for granted a mother who washes my dirty clothes with love. At school, every two weeks...that was as long as I could push it until I ran out of socks and underwear...I would have to haul my gargantuan laundry bag down six flights of stairs then make a trip  back up to grab my basket and laundry supplies. Once my laundry was complete, I would have made around a total of 6 trips up and down those stairs to get all of my laundry done. Needless to say, that was about my whole Saturday.
1. My family is usually less than a room away to talk to. Even with today's communication advantages of cellphones, texting, and skype, it's still just not the same as living with the people you love and having them always there to chat with. I love that I can step out of my room and most of the time find my mom in the kitchen - baking something delicious - or go upstairs and watch tv with my dad while having conversation, or even going downstairs to watch Zach play video games and try to pry into his life.

A Second Reason to Love St. George

In the last week here, Richard wanted to make sure I saw at least a little bit of the cooler parts of the outdoors, hence the Red Mountain hike. On a hiking craze, he took me to Zion's National Park which is about an hour and a half away from St. George and is like nothing I've ever seen, it's so beautiful and huge! The pictures we took won't do it justice, but we went hiking up Angel's Landing and it was such a gorgeous view that I enjoyed between more huffs and puffs up the hiking trail. Most people we past along the trail were quite friendly smiling and saying "hi," which also made it a fun experience. We even saw a boy that looked about two years old walking up the trail on his own, hand-in-hand with his dad and we were quite impressed. 

One of the Reasons to Love St. George

There are so many active outdoor activities to do in St. George, as you can see from my past posts, and I haven't experienced the half of them in my first year of college down here. Richard and I went this afternoon to Red Mountain and spent about five hours of hiking. Needless to say - it was QUITE the workout. The view was gorgeous, making up for the sliding, falling, tumbling down the mountain afterwards. Richard was much more graceful about getting down. 

 First steps of the journey

 Taking a break, catching my breath

You can see the temple from everywhere, even at the tallest point in the St. George Valley. I love it!

Makin' History in a 3 Minute Massage

In the spirit of "D" week, Dixie had a night where they set a world record of the LARGEST MASSAGE TRAIN IN THE WORLD!!! You're looking at numbers 195, 196, 197, and 198 - a very vital section to the 659 person train!

wednesday: the best part of the week

I have a new show obsession that I look forward to every week. Modern Family on abc is the funniest show ever! The character of the dad in the more traditional family is so hilarious...I don't usually laugh out loud during TV shows, but I'm basically in tears of laughing fits in almost every episode of this new show. If you haven't seen it you need to check it out.

Spontaneity

This post is long overdue, but it seems like the longer you go without posting, the harder it is to post about anything - even if it's tiny. Which is a truth for many things in life I suppose. I also owe a special thank you to my amazing, genius friend Bronson who helped me fix my blog to my exact standards.

Within the last month, my roommates and other friends have been trying to create more adventure in our lives. This includes: camping (sounds sane enough but there's more to the story), road tripping, rearranging our dorm room, caving, cutting/dying/fixing/re-dying  hair, singing at concerts with COLBIE CAILLET!!, plasma donating, and everything in between.

Camping

Camp grounds are extremely hard to find in the dead of night, twenty minutes out of civilization. If you can't find them, the side of a hill will do just fine. And apparently, there are no forests in St. George, so if you plan on having a fire, weeds just won't cut it. Thank goodness for Wal-mart. Also, a legitimate sleeping bag is highly recommended, allowing you to stay warm enough to get more than a cumulative amount of 45 minutes of sleep. This will also prevent you to finally insist on leaving at 5 a.m., much to the discomfort of your camping buddies. A quick, yet effective way to clean up in the wee hours of a frigidly cold morning (it was January and yes it's even cold in St. George on a January morning) is to throw everything in  the tent, collapsing the supports and use it as an untraditional bag. You may need two or three people to drag it to the car and squash it into the trunk. Follow this and you will getting a camping experience you will never forget!

Road tripping

Natalie and I spent fourteen hours in a car together on a quick get away to Phoenix to stay with Eric, Cori, Erin, Quintin, and Audrey over Valentine's weekend. The views of hoover dam were phenomenal and there were some other quite interesting stops along the way. We stopped in a pow-dunk town called Wikieup that had World Famous hot dogs that were uncooked unless you got them deep fat fried and had some crazy, bright green relish on them - they weren't famous for nothing. Every single person who had ever entered that restaurant left their mark, with signatures covering everything from the ceilings to the floors (yes, even the toilets). We had a good time being entertained by the almost three-year-old Mr. Q who finally got Natalie's name right by the end of the trip calling her Lady and Camilla since he thought she was my roommate. 

Rearranging

Trying to go against the norm, Camilla and I decide to switch things up and rearrange our room, making bunk beds to have more space. With the doubts of many in our minds, we were able to set our room up exactly the way we wanted - without any help from the opposite sex. We even got the steel pegs nailed in tight enough so my bed won't slip off Camilla's and squash her in the middle of the night. Needless to say, our room is very feng shui now.

Caving
Ever since reading the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, I have always wanted to go into a cave and find a secret passageway to another land. Sadly, when we went to the lava caves in the Snow Canyon Park, there were no such entrances, but it looked pretty magical to reach the end cavern that glowed with the remnants of glow sticks on the walls. It only took 3 gigantic bruises, 6 painfully hard times of banging my head, and Camilla's warnings of "Watch your cabeza! That's your head." echoing throughout the cave to get out successfully in one piece.

Hair Experimenting
On a random, hyper night Camilla entrusted me to dye and cut about 5 inches off her hair. I was a little leery, having never cut hair before, but I didn't tell her this until after I was done and everyone was raving about her hair. They were very shocked. And can you believe that a dollar store bleaching kit didn't produce the flowing, golden locks shown on the cover on Ashleigh's hair? She didn't seem to think so beforehand, ignoring my blatant recommendations that she should not do that to her long, silky, vibrant auburn hair. Yet again, thank goodness for Wal-mart. Her hair is now the color of Medium Golden Cappuccino #37.

COLBIE CAILLET!!!!
Yes, I got to watch Colbie Caillet in person sing some of my very favorite songs - Bubbly, Lucky, and Fallin' For You! Apart from the only other concert I've been to, the Spice Girls, I actually got to sing along because I knew the words! I only knew the words to one song of the Spice Girls because I wasn't allowed to listen to them when I was younger. Apparently, their lifestyle choices and their clothing didn't set very good examples for 8 year old girls. Even if hearing my favorite songs live weren't enough, I got to shake her hand and get the top left quarter of my face in a picture with her!

YES, that IS a picture of my eye in the same frame as COLBIE CAILLET!!!!!

Plasma Donating
Who knew that selling your body could make so much money? All I have to do is keep my iron levels up and show up twice a week to get poked with a needle and watch the yellow part of my blood get separated and collected in a bag, and I get paid for it! Moving aside the fact that I kind of feel like a cow being milked amongst the other fifty people in their doing the same thing and the scars in the crook of my elbow that make me look like a drug addict, it's one of the easiest ways I've made some extra cash.

More to come on our college adventures!