Conference Weekend

This weekend was great! Yesterday, my roommates, Allie, Andrea and I all listened to conference in our apartment. After conference, Andrea and I went to go grocery shopping and took a little detour to get some fish!

I couldn't get a good enough picture of all of the fish- there were 4 but one of them died (as we were driving them home) and all of my pictures came out blurry- these are fast fish!

Also, our stake, along with another YSA stake organized a group to go sing at the free speech zone this morning and had tickets to the afternoon session for people that went. When we got there, we ended up being able to go to the morning session- which was awesome in the conference center!

This is my roommate Andrea- she and I lived together last year and we're the only 2 out of the 4 of us still in Provo this semester- Paige is in France and Shelby is on a mission.

Another highlight of the weekend was that I got to ring the victory bell!

It's official!

It took me over 2 years but I finally declared Public Health as my major last week! I tried to take a picture of it on my BYU profile but it didn't work. Anyways, the important fact is that I committed to a major. Hallelujah!

I have no pictures of this event. which is a bummer, but in other news, BYU won last night!

That's something worth celebrating! Go Cougars!

Pioneers and Mansions and Teeth! Oh my!

How are pioneers and fancy mansions and teeth connected you ask? Well, in many ways I'm sure (if you think hard enough...). But for the purposes of this blog post, they are all things that I have experienced in the last few weeks.

Being home has been fun. I'm only here for a few weeks and so I haven't really hit the "i'm so bored I'm dying to go back to school" part of being home for the summer. Plus, with the reunion coming up, I don't think I ever will get to that point. Even with work, it feels like I'm on a vacation from my normal life where I have to go to school, work, and pretend to be social.

First of all, Pioneers.

I'm sure you've heard all about trek from mom and dad, but I went up Saturday to where they ended the trek. They had a stake activity up there after with food and swimming, etc. It was fun. Jamie and Michelle were leaders for a group of 12 and 13 year olds and were showing me their pioneer accessories. Tyson was a cute little pioneer....aka cowboy.

Mansions.

Jamie and Michelle took me to see the mansions in Newport, RI. They are beautiful!! I loved it! And so with no further ado, I would like to introduce you to my new homes:

This one is called Breakers. The best part was the backyard!

And now, welcome to my second home, the Elms. It had a little different style to it, but still really pretty.

Again, the backyard is amazing, how can you not love this place!?

I couldn't take pictures inside but a few of my favorite things about these places were firstly, their "porches" to the outside of the house, and the kitchens! I was a little jealous. They were going to tear down the Elms, but the preservation society saved it. I thought that was crazy- it's full of marble etc.

After that, we went to the beach in Newport which was amazing!! I didn't know water that close to MA could be so warm! It was the warmest ocean water I've ever been in.

And lastly, Teeth.

I will spare you the details, but it wouldn't be fair to not mention it as it was a big deal a couple of weeks ago. I got my wisdom teeth out! Now, I am only a 1/4 wise than I was before. They left in one of them because it was too far up and close to an artery (tooth #1 for those that know teeth numbers). The day of surgery I felt pretty good and was thinking it was going to be a piece of cake. Then, I woke up the next day and it was a totally different story! I was swollen for a while and soar for even longer- it took me about two weeks to feel normal again. Besides the fact that my jaw gets soar a little faster now, the only remnants of the surgery is a chronic feeling that I have something (aka food) stuck in the back of my mouth. I think it's just from how my gums healed though.

Egg Dying

So like everything else I blog, this is really late, but sometime in March/April, my stake had a Sadie Hawkins Dance (don't know what that is? it's ok, neither did I until about 2 weeks before- it's a casual preference (ie. girls ask the guys) dance). Our relief society president really wanted all the girls in the ward to go and as such promised that everyone in the presidency would be there (we had all agreed on that before). Generally, this is something I kind of don't ever bother with and just don't ask, but this time, I had to. I decided to ask one of my good friends in my ward. Since I never did the fun ask-the-guy-out-in-a-cute-creative-way-thing, I took the chance to make up for lost experiences and did it then! I wrote out an invite to him on a card and then cut it out into a puzzle. I was going to just put it in an envelope and then deliver it to his door, but decided it needed a little extra pizzaz. So! My roommate and I found an awesome alien cereal that I opened from the bottom and put the puzzle inside (in the cereal bag). I closed it up so it looked like it was unopened and delivered it to his apartment ding-dong-ditch style.

A couple days later, I was talking to mom on the phone and was telling her about the invite I had done and how I hadn't heard anything back from him yet. Literally as I was finishing up the story, I heard a knock on the door, as I was opening the door, mom said "hey, maybe it's his response!". [Door opened] And viola! on our door mat there was a cute little easter basket with an egg and a dye set. The pictures can explain the rest:

making the first dye

no idea what the yarn is doing there...

He had written on the egg with invisible crayon and it said YES when I dyed it! And then, we happily went to the dance a week later and had so much fun. The End.

Too Long Overdue

Like most things I do in life, I am posting this waaay later than i should. So much later that all of the excitement this may have caused if it had been posted when it should have been is probably all gone. BUT, also like most things I do, I am still posting this, even despite the lack of excitement. Enjoy.

When I first came home, mom and I took a trip into Boston to visit CRDA. It started snowing soon after our escapade began and it was coooold, but very pretty!
we've downsized alot from when all 10 of us were home for christmas!
don't be deceived, there actually was no cereal in those boxes, santa was slacking in the cereal department this christmas!
cris was very excited about his ornament!

mom and dad got scrabble for Christmas. You can see dad's enthusiasm initially above. Then, they found out it was a chocolate board, and both parties (mom and dad) were happy with that, so happy in fact that they couldn't keep themselves from just eating the whole box! (see above) [blogger isn't uploading them in the order- or else these pictures would be switched]

jamie decided to take tyson out for a run of sledding. this was the "bunny hill"


then we went to the White for a real sled hill!