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

Ode to Being a Salmon

Well I could create quite a list of pros and cons on “Being a Salmon”, but I recently added two cons… 1. Everyone expects you to be incredible at all water sports and 2. You get gray hair by the time you are 16. We went to the lake as a ward this past weekend and people were surprised when they found that out I didn’t wake board. They insisted that I tried but I finally convinced them to just let me stick to tubing and jet skiing. Apparently our bishop is loaded, which means we have the BEST ward activities. We went through 80 gallons of gasoline on the jet skis alone, that’s over $240! We had 3 jet skis and 3 boats for about 6 hours. While we waited to get on either a boat or a jet ski we sat on the dock and fished. There are so many country boys (Rexburg Locals) in my ward that a good fisher is a quality I’m sure most of them want in their future wives. I caught 3 fish in a little over 20 minutes… so hopefully my phone will be ringing off the hook any day now. I was deemed as the crazy-daredevil-jetski-driving-girl in the ward, which is completely fine by me, because no one ever wanted to ride with me. When I finally got my turn on the boat I was able to go tubing for a good hour or so. The Bishops son is one crazy driver, I once fell off the tube by doing a back flip. Who knew I could do a back flip? We’re planning another trip to Ririe Reservoir in about two weeks, it’s a nice lake. It’s clean and there aren’t many people on it. Well now to get to my second con, the gray hair issue. I’ve probably had gray since I was 13 or so, it’s never really been a problem though just because I get it dyed by this fabulous lady that does it for real cheap (My Mom) about every 2 months, or as needed. This past week I had to have my roommates do it for me instead. They did an okay job actually, it’s a little darker than anticipated, but I think it makes me come off as more mysterious... I attended my first Enrichment night on Wednesday. One word: THE-FREAKIN-WEIRDEST-THING-IVE-EVER-BEEN-TO. The theme was “Just Married” Need I say more? We even had a wedding cake for our little refreshment that said “Congratulations!” on it. No wonder there are 18 year olds getting married left and right, they’re practically FORCED to. It was alright though; we made these kind of weird tiaras. We were also given a framed picture of the temple, and a spool of white thread, for us to start working on our wedding dresses. I like my ward though, so even though the lesson was a little awkward it was still fun to be there. I was recently called as the ward photographer. I know what you’re thinking, “Is that a real calling?” The answer is probably NO but I asked my Bishop the same thing and he said that most of the college wards have one. I’m supposed to be taking pictures of each of the apartments in my ward and putting together a ward Photo-Directory, I’ll let you all know how that goes. In other news I was planning on making $50.00 a week, but later got denied. If anyone else wants to make a quick $20 or so just find a Plasma Center in a town near you! I had my appointment set up and everything, had my blood drawn, urine tested and was just about to get hooked up to the pump after 3 hours of waiting, but at the last minute was told I couldn’t because I had once had cancer in my life. It was probably for the best though, the place kind of looks like a dump; a place where they’ve probably reused a needle or two…

P.S. There ARE a lot of good things about being a Salmon: Steal Sticks, Grandma’s Buns, Family Reunions etc.

P.P.S. I FINALLY got a few pictures of Kaitlain... (She's seen above)
P.P.P.S. For those of you wondering, my crown reads: YOUR FUTURE WIFE

Discovery of The Dunes

I can’t believe that two weeks have already flown by. Sometime over the last few weeks a group of my friends (a mix of Georgians and others) discovered the dunes. In fact we liked them so much we went there three times in two days. The first two times was a bust. The first time we went we had nothing, including a camera. It was mid-afternoon on a hot afternoon and the sand was hotter then Haiti. We were only there for about 45 minutes before we decided to turn around and take the 20 minute ride home. Later that same day we returned to discover what the dunes looked like at night. The sand was definitely a lot cooler and luckily we had brought blankets. We laid out under the stars for a good while just talking. Stephanie and Zack are both from Georgia and are both converts. Zack was baptized when he was 14 and Stephanie just got baptized in November. And lucky for us they both decided to come out to BYU-I. The 8 of us had a great discussion with the two of them, they’re SO awesome! Steph is actually planning on moving into our apartment for the fall semester. Even though we came slightly more prepared the second time we were at the dunes, the blankets were still too few. On the drive home we decided that while the weather was still warm we would all try to get up there every Saturday night, for at least the summer semester. Saturday, being the day after Friday was our first official bon fire at the dunes. I guess third time really is a charm. We finally had everything we needed; cameras, (enough) blankets, wood, marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate, and drinks. Oh not to mention a portable DVD player. It was awesome, and unless I get a date by Saturday I’ll be up there again. It’s so peaceful up there, it kind of feels like you’re in Egypt. There are only two problems about going to the dunes now that we have finally cleaned out all the sand from our apartment, it’s almost time to go again. And secondly, Ben and I rode in the back of the Bronco everytime there and back!

Me and Jake

The Group

Zack and Steph

So This is College?

I thought I would have oodles of time to be writing boring blogs everyday but it just hasn’t seemed that way yet. It’s Friday, and luckily I don’t have classes on Fridays. Rexburg is alright. It’s not as big as Atlanta, or even Provo but it has come a far way since I was last here. Anyway, I didn’t take any pictures while I was in Provo but that’s where I was last weekend. It was a short trip but there should be a few more on the way. I was hoping to stay till the 4th but ended up coming back late Sunday night. It’s hard to describe the first night you spend in your new bedroom. I didn’t get to bed till rather late but still managed to make it to all my classes on Monday. My teachers are awesome. My ward is rather small but I’ve been told that that will change in the fall when more people come out to school. Monday night was our first FHE. We played some water balloon volleyball which eventually turned into a water fight and ultimately our whole FHE group jumping into a pool with our clothes on. July 4th was nothing exciting, mostly shopping for school supplies and getting some groceries for our empty apartment. I guess Wednesday and Thursday were spent at school and doing homework. I haven’t been on a single date yet, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? 5 days in REXBURG AND I’M NOT ENGAGED? I’m thinking there is still some hope. Even though I didn’t have classes today I still ended up going to school just to go to the testing center. I had to take a preliminary math test to stay in my Math 110 class. I passed, so now I just have to worry about getting an A in the class. I think we are headed out to the Sand Dunes today, after that we only have Rigby Lake, and The Ice Caves left on our list of things to do… hahaha just kidding. Anyway, enjoy the pictures, I’ll have to post some of our apartment later.

The BEST Nephew EVER.

First Night of College. (Jill, me, Emily)

First Day of College.

Soaking wet after our FIRST FHE.

Our SECOND day of School.

Our THIRD Night of College

P.S. Lucky for everyone there's 6 months left of school. Imagine how many pictures I'll post If I do two EVERY DAY?! Don't worry, I won't.

P.P.S. We have another roommate, Kaitlain, but she is always at her sisters house, here in Rexburg. Someday I'll snap a picture of her, even if she's sleeping.