Back in the Saddle Again

Alas! It's here...the beginning of another school year. I've been away from blogging for far too long and after almost a month (my busiest of the summer) I have ALOT to blog! The summer started out dull in every sense of the word. I had decided that for the first one or two weeks of my summer I was going to relax: not worry about getting anything done, try to get a job with the minimum amount of effort put into the finding one part, sleep in, etc. etc. you get the idea. Anyways...this one or two week plan transfered to a five or six week plan! By the end of July I was still sleeping in, lazying around the house, feeling virtually useless and unproductive at all! *I say virtually because I actually had a few babysitting jobs thanks to a couple families in our ward...so I wasn't entirely a bored wreck. But nonetheless, you can feel my pain, can't you? We've all felt like this at least once in our lives. Well, August came and I only had one out of the four of my summer reading books read, none of my biology summer work done, none of my spanish summer work done, and my essay for an application for a program at school was not written either! Not to mention the fact that I would be away for pretty much 3 weeks due to our trip out to CO, UT, and ID and also girls' camp that following week!
Needless to say turning the calendar page over from July to August was a very rude awakening! I managed to get all of my bio work done before we left...all in 4 days (it was a rough 4 days), and as I said before I had finished one of my summer reading books earlier. So I brought Fast Food Nation along with us (that was my book for Human Geography) on our Western tour, finished one other book after girls' camp along with FFN and now I have just one more book to read, and essay to write, and 2 spanish articles to read coupled with an oral presentation(for the first day of school) to do all before this Thursday! I've come along way, but I still have lots to do! It's been fun...kind of. I just wish I hadn't listened to my teachers when they told me to wait to do all my work until the last month, I guess that advice isn't relevant for students who were gone for 3/4 of the month-a disclaimer that should come with the package next time.
Anyways, now to the more exciting things to talk about. Our trip! It was so so much fun and I loved seeing such adorable little babes while we were gone. It was nice to see family too. Just kidding...it was equally fun to see everyone! The kids are getting so old! I just wish I didn't get so overwhelmed by being around so much family, I feel like a wimp! It was an amazing trip though! Utah was fun and something I am used to seeing, it was Colorado and Idaho that were the shockers. Colorado was super pretty and Bryce and Lisa were lots of fun to be around, as well as their 2 very cute children, I wish I had pictures to show! (ours got deleted off of the camera) One night we went out to ice cream and there was a local band playing in front of the shop. Sophie really wanted to go dancing with Bryce by the music so they went down, and I followed to take pictures of course. (I did have some very cute ones!) It was so cute and fun! This place was almost like a westernized version of Harvard Square basically. The parks there were so beautiful too! Idaho was slightly more shocking...that place is desolate! I'm amazed we've met so many people from there because I have now idea where they hide them all! I wouldn't be surprised if maybe they put some people in underground cities or something, or maybe we've just met 70% of its population throughout our lives. It was a very different kind of beautiful, and I don't mean that sarcastically or meanly. It really was a very pretty place, I almost felt like lying down in a field somewhere and reading O! Pioneers. I'm not sure why though, I didn't even finish it when we read it in school. Idaho just painted that picture in my head so much better than Willa Cather ever did. Maybe now I'll understand what she wrote. It was so pretty, in fact, I'll see if I can post pictures up here. Utah was of course beautiful and interesting all in its own "special" way. While we were in Logan with the Andersons, Nicole et al took us on a hike that was amazing! It was such a beautiful hike, I could not stop taking pictures! Nicole gave me free reign of her camera so I literally just kept snapping, the place was GORGEOUS! Definitely a must see every summer visit I make (be warned Nicole). That was a small temptation to go to USU -unfortunately the tuition doesn't match that temptation I don't think. So the trip was a good one on my account!

I would be posting pictures of the trip here, but I can't find them yet, so I'll post those later. I promise! So just use your imagination for a while.

Girls' camp was equally amazing. If it is my last it will have been a good end. My councellors were amazing and I had so much fun with my friends, meeting new friends as well. Our testimony meeting at the end was so amazing as well. In fact, I think it was one of my most powerful testimony meeting experiences ever(right up there with it was our testimony meeting at youth conference this year)! I cried for the longest time during it, not only because it was a very spiritual experience but because I didn't want to leave. Who does that?!?!? I always thought you had fun at girls' camp but you were always glad to leave when it was over-too much estrogen in a condensed area+ not showering... But it was so hard to leave, I had met so many amazing people up there, I seriously could not get myself over the fact that I had to leave it all. Clearly, I've moved on, but it took a while. I was JC over some cute gals and had lots of fun with them all!
And of course there is just so much more I could talk about, but seeing as I've already written an essay on here, I might as well just show you the pictures and leave. I'd be surprised if a lot of you acutally made it to this point of the blog anyways. And to those of you who have, sorry for the length, but bare with me, it's almost over!
And now...the pictures!! of girls' camp anyways (mom let me take the digital with me):

This frog we found in the bathroom, it was HUGE!! It could climb on the walls and everything!
These are the girls I was technically over, they're first years. but really, we worked with all of the first years, especially since they all slept in the same cabin, we combined forces with the other JCs and their group.

All of us! Including First years, our CIT, and us JCs! Aren't we a cute bunch?!

The waterfront by the amphitheater where we had testimony meeting. It was so pretty!
Some of us JCs. There were actually kind of alot of us. The theme was Treasure Hunt: what's your treasure? So the JCs dressed up like pirates. aka treasure hunters! It was SO MUCH FUN!

Change of heart...or mind.

Okay, okay, okay...I was wrong. Turns out Keith Urban is from Australia. Got ya! Thanks Kristy, for setting me straight. (At least someone knows what they're talking about!) No, as it turns out, Keith is only having a concert in Fort Collins shortly. This was the 'lil bit of info I woke up to. Oh what a tired mind makes you think! So never mind on that one. Sorry for the mistake... my bad.

Random Bit of Good Ol' Info...

Did you know that Keith Urban (country singer) is from Fort Collins (current location of the Bryce and Lisa M LaPierres)??? This is the little known fact I woke up to from my alarm, and of course once I heard this I just had to get up, even though it was 5:30!

^This is the famed man himself.^

And this is the town to which we owe so much interest. (aka Fort Collins!)

Instead of doing a bulk e-mail...

I figured more people would actually read these or consider reading these if I posted them up here. They're just cute/funny little stories I got from a friend. She got it via e-mail, but had printed them out, when she finished with them, she gave them to me.
Stories begin now:
I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, "Mom, that lady isn't wearing a seat belt!"
On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother. The note read, "The opinions expressed by this child are not those of his parents."
A woman was trying to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle."
A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, "What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?"
While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was unterrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, "Are you a cop?" "Yes," I answered and continued writing the report. "My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that right?" "Yes, that's right," I told her. "Well, then," she said as she extended her foot toward me, "would you please tie my shoe?"
It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy staring at me. "Is that a dog you got back there?" he asked. "It sure is," I replied. Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, "What'd he do?"
While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass..As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned as whispered, "The tooth fairy will never believe this!"
A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, "Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit." "And why not, darling?" "You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning."
While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton bating, then dug a hole and make ready for the disposal of the deceased. The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always said: "Glory be unto the Faaaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he goooes." (dad couldn't stop laughing on this one!)
A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm just wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't write, and they won't let me talk!"
A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. "Mama, look what I found," the boy called out. "What have you got there, dear?" With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, "I think it's Adam's underwear!!"

hope you enjoyed! I have lots of pictures to blog still, but I have to wait until I can get my film developed.

This is a picture I took of our loot when mom and I went strawberry picking earlier this month (july). When we got back, we washed them, cut out bad parts and then froze them. I have been eating these frozen strawberries like candy!!! They are sooo good! I just made a smoothie out of them yesterday, it was pretty good too! In fact, I just had a good idea of what to do with them: defrost them, puree them, put that in popsicle maker containers, freeze again, and voila! delish strawberry popsicles that are HEALTHY!!! I'll let you know how they go.