Goodbye Sweet Summer

I was thinking that maybe I post too often, but regardless, it’s rounding 5:00am and I haven’t slept a wink. I just finished getting packed up for Calgary so now I’ll be ready to hop right into the car when Carol gets here around 8:00am. This last week has been hectic with finals, white glove inspections and farewell dinners. Kaitlan (one of my roomies) is on winter/summer track so she’ll be leaving Friday. We went out to WINGERS, one of the three sit-down restaurants in Rexburg. It was really nice to have some good food. We had a little photo-shoot afterwards. Our white glove inspection went well. We passed. I was thinking I should take some pictures of our apartment before it got messy again, but too late. Summer flew by, just as everyone said it would. I am going to start collecting hats, scarves and gloves for the brutal winter. Well I’m going to be heading out in about 3 hours or so, and by the time I get back we will have two new roommates living in here too, craziness. Well I will be eating some Chinese Food and Peter’s for all of you Calgaryians now living in the States… I guess that means I’m entitled to drink about 30 milkshakes or more, mmmm lucky me…

As We Like to Say in College: TOGA!!!

Thursday night my roommates and I went to the local club STRATA for a little bit of dancing. It’s an LDS club, so it really can’t be that risqué. There are bouncers that walk around and act more as chaperones then anything else. It was fun though. So Saturday night despite the dress code, curfew, no sandal policy, and every other absurd rule here at BYU-Idaho, we did in fact, have a TOGA PARTY. For the first time I felt as if I had gone to a real college! They gave out raffle tickets for an old school Audi, and also to see how many people showed up. Over 2000 people were there crammed up and down the stairs of a single tower with 4 small apartments. Kegs with cream soda and root beer graced the entrance of the party. With such a small area for mingling and dancing I was unfortunately drenched in root beer a few times. The cops showed up at midnight to shut the party down and told us that we needed to recognize that the Lord’s Day had begun. AT NO OTHER SCHOOL WOULD THAT HAVE HAPPENED. Today was the last sacrament with our ward before the semester is over. We will be losing well over half of the ward and gaining about 75% new members for the fall. Our fridge is over flowing with meat so much so that when I look in there for a popsicle or anything else I get this strange feeling as if I’ve stepped inside a butchers shop. (For those of you that don’t know, my major is Beef Management Production. It was a complete joke but that’s what it will show up as until I get into the nursing program.) Anyway, so before our new roommates move in for the fall I’ve been tying to get rid of a lot of the meat so they will have some room for their frozen goods. Today I made over 4 lbs of ground beef in a casserole that made over 3 pans and fed over 12 people. It was like a mini-ward party in our kitchen this afternoon. Anyway, this next week is full of finals and papers, so I should be getting to bed here shortly. Thursday morning aunt Carol is picking me up and we are ROAD TRIPPING to Calgary!!! Hope you enjoy the pictures…

Dead Batteries, Wind Storms, and Fabulous Food!

Well if you don’t have much time you can just read the title, glance at the pictures, and be on your way. But for those of you that do have a minute or two there were a lot more things that happened this weekend than just those three things. Well it was Tara and Gary’s wedding weekend. It was amazing, so much fun, so much food, and so many laughs. I would have liked to have said and “so many great pictures”, but of course my battery died for my camera. Instead I took a lot of other pictures using Shannon and Jason’s camera. The wedding dinner the night before was awesome. I arrived in Provo at about 7:20, just enough time for Aaron, Stacey, Dahl and I to make it to Spanish Fork. It was great to see family that I hadn’t seen in a while as well as feast upon some REAL food. College food is all about quickness, convenience, and definitely NOT nutritional value. So I really did take advantage of all the fabulous food that was offered this weekend. The pre-wedding dinner (Thursday night) had some great Southern BBQ. There were some funny and heartfelt speeches offered as well, the only problem was the mosquitoes, which were completely out of anyone’s hands. Friday morning (day of the wedding) Stacey and I had some Beto’s Breakfast Burritos, SO GOOD. That is one of my favorite things about Provo! I’m lucky we don’t have one here in Rexburg or else I would have a problem with my wallet and waistline. There were plenty of cousins waiting outside the temple with there nieces and nephews too, so it was fun. Following pictures at the temple, and a quick stop at Sonic, Carol and I made it over to the Archibald’s were the reception would be held. We got to work decorating with paper lanterns, lights, and adorable little flowers. The last decorations were going up in time for the first of the guests to arrive. One of the highlights of night was the delectable Chocolate Fountain. Let’s just say I highly recommend it for ANY occasion, don’t limit the abilities of The Fountain to solely weddings; it also can be used at birthdays, high school graduations, Eagle Scout celebration, YW recognition, etc. If I was on a very tight budget and had to choose between an expensive dress and a chocolate fountain, I would go with the fountain and find a cheaper and slightly less attractive dress and D.I.* Friday was a rather windy night so each time a large gust of wind would hit the reception chocolate would fly from the fountain and cover the fruit and candy in a way that some high class chef would have done. Jason, Mike and I happened to be at the fountain when a gust of wind had come along. I’ll just say that both of them will definitely need a dry-cleaners expertise. Aaron and Stacey were kind enough to let me stay at their house even though they weren’t there, so I spent Saturday morning doing some laundry before Carol picked me up for the Weinheimer family reunion! We ultimately ended up teaching some Weinheimer’s the Salmon game of STEAL STICKS. After the reunion Ross and Karen’s ward had a ward party at the Roller Skating Rink. It was so much fun, even though my legs and knees are completely black and blue. Sunday was once again filled with mingling and even MORE food! At the time I felt as if I had eaten enough of Grandma Palmers famous TARTS, to last me till another wedding, but as I write this my mouth is watering for some more and it hasn’t even been a WEEK! Aunt Karen made the best croissants along with chicken salad and some amazing artichoke dip. I wish I could have stayed in Provo a few more days to take advantage of all the leftovers. Thanks for a fabulous weekend everyone! Can’t wait to see everyone soon! Until then I’ll be in Rexburg, so feel free to stop by.

*Totally joking, but the chocolate fountain really was AWESOME, P.S. I hope my dad doesn’t read this and get any ideas about a cheap wedding.

Poor Man's Air Conditioning

It’s Wednesday night and I should be studying for American Heritage but, I decided to take a break and write a quick post (a short post, ya right I’ve never had one of those). Not much has happened over the last week, just a lot of studying and school work. We had a *NEW* roommate move in, Nicole Clever. She was having some problems with her other apartment so we gladly invited her into our drama invested abode. Nicole is awesome, I love her. She's a sports exercise major, or something like that, so now I have my own PERSONAL TRAINER. Now all five bedrooms are occupied. Nicole was just lucky enough to be living in our double room for the remainder of the semester. Well, last weekend we had a birthday party for a girl two floors above me. It was really fun; I learned how to do some REAL country dancing, with a REAL cowboy (a Rexburg Local). Luckily I wore my overalls so I really could get in to character. I'm in one picture dancing with the cowboy, Ryker, and in the other one with my friend Aubrey. This week my roommate, Jill, had her Pirates of Penzance performance. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend any of the shows! I have been lucky though to practice my esthetician skills each afternoon while Jill gets dolled up. We had FHE again on Monday, of course, it was fun we played ultimate Frisbee in the park for a good while, until it started raining. Anyway, tomorrow Emily and I will be heading out on our 4 hour trip with NO AIR CONDITIONING. It broke just this past week so we will be changing to the 2-75 AC… as in the two windows down driving 75 miles per hour. Emily and I just returned from Wal-Mart where she purchased an electrical fan that is plugged in to the cigarette lighter. I guess we can sacrifice a smoke or two for a few hours so that we can have some AC. Well I won’t have to blog for the next while because I’m sure everyone’s will most likely be the same for this next weekend with the wedding and all. I’m excited!!! I can’t wait to see everyone!

If we had enough time and money we would have attempted to build something like this.

The Last Little While...

I went camping a few weekends ago (Pioneer Day Weekend) right outside Teton National Park, it’s about 45 minutes from here. I went with some friends of mine from Ogden, they failed to tell me we were going to THEIR family reunion till I got there. It was fun though, the best part is, no one knew that I didn’t belong to the family. They had a family raffle and I actually ended up winning stuff. We went boating, played in the pine creek river, and ended up going to Jackson Hole before heading back to Rexburg. If you’ve been to Banff or Park City you can pretty much check Jackson Hole, WY off your list too. School has been consuming a lot of my time so I haven’t really had a chance to update anything on my blog really. Last week when I was leaving the library students on the BYU-I Activities committee stopped me and asked me to compete in a jump rope contest. They ended up gathering 4 other people and I ended up holding out the longest* and walking away with a FREE Jamba Juice coupon. The rest of the week was consumed with homework, studying and tests. Friday night the whole gang went Guitars Unplugged, one of the biggest events of the semester. It’s just a lot of acoustic guitar performances, and then a dance afterwards, it was really fun. Saturday my roommates and I went to Idaho Falls. It was nice to finally see some civilization and stores. We shopped for a while but ended up splitting up before heading home. Kaitlan and Emily were done with shopping which left Jill and I in Idaho Falls. Jill ended up buying an orginal NES nintendo, I can already tell our grades will soon be slipping. When we were finally through shopping I ended up calling Charlie Brown** who promptly picked us up and took us back to Rexburg. Saturday night we played some FUGITIVE. Everyone dresses up in black head to toe and attempts to get from point A to point B without getting caught by people driving around in cars with flashlights, if you do get caught you have to get in the car. Since Rexburg is so small we practically could play the whole distance across town it was fun. Satuday night/Sunday morning Jill and I spent rearranging our family room for a new feng shui. Around 5:00am We finally got to sleep only to wake up around 8 to start writing my talk for that same day. The talk was great (or so I was told), so I think I’m in the clear for the rest of the semester. For FHE on Monday my “family” attended the Rexburg National Dance Festival. Different nationalities show their style of music and dance down Main Street. After FHE I went to the field house to play some volleyball, they do it every Monday and Wednesday. It depressing to realize that you really can lose talent if you don’t work at it, I feel like I have a long ways to go just to get back to how I use to be…

*I jumped and won without a bra on.
**Names have been changed for privacy reasons; Charlie Brown would do ANYTHING for me muhahaha. P.S. he is on the far right in the picture