Fun with family

I went home to Wenatchee for Christmas. One of the first things I did was go skiing with my family. I forgot to bring my contacts to Wenatchee, so I had to ski with my glasses on under my googles. The first two days I went, I just used my regular goggles, and I ended up with a large dent in the middle of my face. Also, the top two pictures below were my attempt at getting a self-portrait of the group I was skiing with (Tory, Nat, and Brian). I was too zoomed in, then I cut off most of my face... you know how it goes.

Also, it should be noted that my brother, sister, and cousin are AWESOME. Look at them posing for the picture I was taking. I can still hear Brian pretending to fall.

I also read several books over break. About ten I think. I love breaks.

Institute Closing Social

We held our closing social during finals week. We wanted something fun, but low-key, so we made gram cracker houses and covered them in Candy. My house had a lot of candy on it, and ironically a lot of it was chocolate. (For those of you who don't know/remember, I don't like chocolate, so it's kind of weird that I was decorating with it.)

There was also a movie playing (A Christmas Story). Carl was sitting on a couch all by himself, so Hollis decided we should go and snuggle with Carl, so we did.

(L to R: Me, Carl, Carrie, Hollis)

I look pretty smug about it. My face cracks me up.

When we were cleaning up, we arranged all the houses on a table in front of this pseudo-stained glass mural that the senior couple missionaries made for the institute. If you look carefully, you can see that the house in the middle is two stories tall. It was the most epic gram cracker mansion that I have ever seen! This picture really doesn't do it justice, but I didn't bring my camera, so I'm stuck with the pictures I stole off facebook.

Also, during clean up, Hollis and I were putting candies back in their bags so we could use them again sometime. Hollis decided to help me with the M&M's, but in as awkward a way as possible. We were laughing about it all by ourselves, when Jon, the institute president, yells from across the gym, "STOP!" and runs over with his camera. Naturally, everyone else looked over and witnessed our cozy kitchen display. It was really funny.

After we cleaned up the inside, we all went outside and Jon, Hollis, Carrie, and I smashed our houses into the ground! It was strangely satisfying. And then there were two houses left, and Hollis and I decided to attempt a high-five with the houses. As you can see, we were successful.

The four of us house-smashers are proud of our work.

(L to R: Carrie, Hollis, Jon, Me)

Yeah, the sidewalk was plastered in frosting and crumbs and candies. But we swept it up and threw a lot of it in the dumpster. The clean-up wasn't all that annoying, and it was totally worth it. :) I love institute.

Hangin' around the 'tute

I spend a lot of time in the institute building at UW. I help my friend Maren with her Chemistry, and I love it. Sometimes, just for fun, we both sit in the same chair. And Hollis caught it on camera. I was helping her prep for her final.

Decorating for Christmas

The last week of classes at UW I had a band concert. Only Maren was able to come and watch me play percussion. I had a lot of fun, and Maren stayed after to help us clean up. However, I got home to find that Carrie had a Christmas tree!! Hollis was over helping decorate it. Check out the crazy amount of ornaments we have on it!

Naturally, the ornament packing became robot arms for me. And the arms later evolved into a sword fight.

Slow Dancing on a Sunday Evening

Some girls in my ward hosted a "Hot Chocolate and Slow Dancing" party after the First Presidency devotional. A lot of people showed up. They were playing Christmas music, I think. We were all talking so loud we couldn't hear the music. And so many of us were dancing! It was awesome.

Hollis tried to dance with every girl there. I don't know if he succeeded, but I do know that he (and his mustache Raul) made most every girl smile huge smiles. I loved watching their faces when he danced with them. He really cares about people, and this makes them happy.

When we weren't busy dancing, we girls were sitting on the couch just waiting to be asked.

(L to R: Carrie, Laura, Maren, Me)

My friendly fake fiancé

Nothing like starting a friendship out by going and taking engagement photos! I discovered this wonderful fellow by the name of Hollis, and he loves doing completely random things, just for fun. We are sending announcements to our friend Kathy who is serving a mission for our church in Denmark. She is a really good friend to both of us, and we think it would be hilarious to send her an announcement, just to see if she believes us.

For your enjoyment, I've included some of our best shots. We're pretty amazing.

One funny thing is that my mom and grandma still get asked at church if I'm getting married. Or they get congratulated. Oh well. It was completely fun and 112% worth it because now I have an awesome new friend!

No pigs allowed

My roommate Hannah and I were walking to the blood donation center. We walked past an elementary school. In front of the school there was this sign. Not allowing pigs is a reasonable request. But why such a request needs to be made is a mystery. And why pot-bellied pigs are the only pigs forbidden is also a mystery to me.

Thanksgiving with the family

I got up really early on Wednesday morning to go and try to catch an earlier flight than the one that I was booked on. I made the flight, so I arrived in Las Vegas several hours before my siblings did. When my dad met me at the airport, he said, "Do you want to shoot some guns?" And naturally, I said yes. So we drove to this gun store, paid too much money, and got to shoot the standard issue military weapons. Our targets were terrorists. We also go "free" t-shirts included in our package. So we posed with our targets - we are awesome marksmen! (well, sort of.)

I discovered that I share a talent with my dad - I can sleep just about anywhere. I was tired, so I lay down in my grandma's rocking chair. I was completely comfortable and was able to completely relax... despite the fact that it looked like I was just about to fall off the chair. It was so impressive that my cousin Sara had to take a picture of me.

I slept for about 20 minutes.

Baby Orden is walking! And still ridiculously cute. Zoom in and look at his face. He's smiling a cute little smile.

The day after Thanksgiving we took a family trip to the temple. It was the first time our entire family has been in the temple together.

L to R: Dad, Brian, me, Nat, Mom, Heather, and Simon (Heather's boyfriend)

Weddings and such things

My friend Kari got married this past Novemeber. We've been friends since the 7th grade. When I went away to college as a wee freshman, I was so nervous to move that far away from home that I begged Kari to come with me. She also wanted to go to BYU, but she didn't know why exactly. Kari was not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when we moved to Provo. We were roommates freshman year, but then lived with different people over the following years. Kari decided to join the LDS church during our sophomore year. Now, three years later, she married Mike in the Draper, UT temple.

Kari is the eleventh roommate of mine to get married. I've had 32 roommates so far, so only 34% of my roommates are married at this point. :)

While I was in town for Kari's wedding, I made sure that I took the time to play around with my old cover band. This summer we played a couple of songs for our ward open mic night, and we were pretty good. We were actually pretty bad when we were playing together this time around, but it was still really very fun.

Flag football in Husky Stadium!

Every Novemeber, the Young Single Adults (YSA) for our church have a big flag football tournament. And we play football in the HUSKY STADIUM. Yes, a real football stadium. It was so exciting for me.

Our football team was called H1N1 and our motto was "Get Infected!" It made us happy. For warm-ups Jon led us in jazz-er-cise. Also, my roommate Emily and her boyfriend Taylor made all the girls in our house a sign with our names on it. After my team was eliminated from the tournament, I recruited people to run around with me with the sign to cheer on our other roommates. It was so much fun! And not that cold. It didn't even rain! :)

Sweet chairs

I'm pretty sure that this was in the Salt Lake airport. There were these awesome chairs that had plugs for your laptop or cell phone. Best waiting area ever.

Folk Dancing

For one of my classes, I had to go to an event as part of the Seattle Fandango Project. This even was basically a dance. And everyone was invited to participate! I found myself up on stage before I knew it. (I'm the one in the blue shirt.)

My beautiful room!

It was sunny today and my room was wonderfully happy! I love the colors!

Homecoming in Wenatchee

I went home for my birthday because my little sister was marching in my high school's homecoming football game. Our team came out on the field - they looked good. You can see the band in the background in their red rain ponchos.

Before the game the band did a little pre-game show.

My sister is so cool!

After the game, I tried to get a picture with the scoreboard in the background. WE WON! And that doesn't happen very often. Also, I wanted a side-by-side comparison of my sister and me. Before the game one of Nat's friends came up to me and thought that I was Natalie. It was really funny.

"Real Fact" #10

A new tidbit of information, supplied couresy of Snapple:

Who would've thunk?

Menace to Society...

So our new friend Tyler turned 25 this last week. His roommate Steve thought it would be a blast to throw a "menace to society" party for him. This phrase comes from something Brigham Young reportedly said about how any man who is twenty-five years old and single is a menace to society.

However, we wanted this party to be a surprise. I had asked Tyler what kind of cake he would want, if he were to have one in a hypothetical situation. However, I was pretty sure he knew we were making a cake for him. So Carrie and I made him one for his birthday on Wednesday.

I'm pretty proud of it, especially since this is the first time I've ever been able to fit the entire word "birthday" on a cake. We gave the cake to Steve and it was just at his apartment when he got home. Heh. After he invited us over Thursday to eat the cake with him, I was pretty sure we'd thrown him off the scent of his real party that was in the works.

I made a "secret" facebook event, and we invited several people. The official story was that Tyler was going to come over and watch "Rudy" with a few of us.

Carrie and I went CRAZY on his "real" cake. We thought this "over-the-hill" candle was hilarious.

We used three funfetti cake mixes and 5 1/2 jars of frosting to get this amazing creation!

The day of his party arrived. Even though Carrie and I acted a little strange on Friday night, he didn't suspect. I was waiting outside to text Carrie when he got there so everyone could get quiet and turn the lights off. He walked in and was totally surprised!

This is Carrie and I showing off our amazingly sparkly and happy creation of a cake!

Oh, and we all dressed up as "menaces" aka gangsters. Steve and Carrie even bought Tyler a bandanna and a sweater so he could be gangster with the rest of us. :)

Conference Weekend!

For Saturday's conference, we went to the University Second (U2) Ward's bishop's house. They had three TV's set up for watching conference, and it was awesome. After the morning session, we went and played in the backyard. They had this awesome climber. Carrie and I enjoyed it.

For Sunday, Carrie had invited several people to watch on the projector screen at her uncles' house. I spent the night over there and helped her clean it all up. These pictures were taken at the lunch we had (we barbequed chicken!).

Tyler and Me.

Heather (in white), Amit, Tyler, me (I love food!) and Coralee.

The afternoon session was good - but I was so tired that I actually missed half of it. It looks like several other people slept through it too. If you were like me and fell asleep, you can watch the recordings of conference here!

We went to a park after the afternoon session. There was this tower thingy there. Tyler walked over and climbed it, which made me wonder if I could climb it. I got up really high and then I got really scared. I made myself touch the metal thingy before I slid (slowly) down).

See how high off the ground I was?

My new room!

So my room originally had one red wall and three white walls. But I got to paint it! So I panted the walls yellow, blue, green, and ORANGE! I've been waiting a LONG time to get to paint my walls. And now I finally could.

This is me painting my walls and enjoying the freshly painted walls. :)

Next time that it's sunny, I'll take pictures of my room now that it's full of my stuff and decorations. :)

First days in Seattle

I got a tour with the institute. It turns out that there is this awesome troll under a bridge somewhere. He's eating a VW bug.

And the library at UW is so big that they have these signs posted. Just in case you get lost.

And the crazy diversity here - our LDS institute booth set up right next to the Secular Student Union. On the other side of us was the Jewish Experience, and on the other side of them was the Muslim Student Union. :) It was pretty awesome.