Here's the Scoop

I keep saying I'll do better at blogging more frequently, but it just hasn't happened yet, so here is the latest, with pics to prove it. These are not in any kind of chronological order, just little snippets here and there of what I have been doing. (Other than working full time, finishing my internship hours/writing my final report, and getting ready for graduation later this week.)

My sister Melanie and I went to the George Straight and Reba McEntire concert. The king and queen of country music most definitely did not disappoint.

George sings my all time favorite song, "Check Yes or No". It has been my favorite probably since I was seven years old. Melanie and I used to jam to it late at night (meaning 10pm which was late in our little kids minds) and we always thought that mom and dad couldn't hear us. Silly. I took a video of that song when he sang it, but the file is too big to fit on my blog, sorry

Reba was stunning. Would you expect any less? I think not. I love her.

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For our February family activity, they all came to me! Ok, but really they came to see the Carl Bloch Exhibit at BYU's art museum, which was beautiful. So many incredible portraits of our Savior that were beautifully interpreted. My dad had told me to find a restaurant that we could make reservations at since there are so many of us now, I told him Tucanos would take reservations and that he should splurge, and he did. What a good dad to feed us all so much food. They all loved it.

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One night I was staying at my parent's house and Melanie and Rylee and Dallin were visiting, so while Dallin ate, Rylee and I played.

First Chutes and Ladders

This game kind of confuses her a little bit still, but she'll catch on soon

Then we played "Kerplunk" which turned into her putting the

sticks all throughout my hair to make me pretty. It was a masterpiece.

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Katherine got her mission call to The Washington DC North Mission, Visitor Center. Did I predict that that is where she was going? Yes I did. She reports on June 8th.

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Brandon and I got offered to watch a Jazz game from the box seats by one of his friends, so we did, this is the only picture we got, but it was pretty cool.

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Tegan, Katherine, Me and Brandon (he was taking the picture) went to the

Saturday morning session of General Conference. Sheesh I love conference.

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I am currently in charge of wellness at work and finished a big competition to encourage people to pack their lunches. I put a lot of work into and had a lot of fun practicing things I learned in my classes. Next, we are doing he SUGAR SMACKDOWN!!!!! I'm excited.

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I have recently put in a few good days of snowboarding. In January, I went with Brandon and his Texan friends, February I went to the Canyons with some boys in my ward, and then in the last week I went to Snowbird with Jon from my ward, and then Park City with Mckay for our annual spring snowboarding day. I love that sport so much.

It doesn't even look like I'm moving in this one, but I just think it looks cool because my board practically disappeared in this one

Action shot. Not doing anything cool, we were pretty tired at this point, but you can at least tell I'm moving in this one

McKay's action shot. I'm pretty proud of this picture actually.

McKay and I setting out for the annual spring snowboarding trip.

Brandon and I riding the first heated ski lift in North America just weeks after it opened

Me and Brandon kicking off snowboarding season at The Canyons

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Last Sunday, one of the girls in our ward hosted a tea party so we all dressed up and drank kool-aid and water and ate little sandwiches, muffins, and desserts for those eating sugar. (Which I was not at that point in time.) It was a lot of fun, our ward is super goofy and I love them. I am sad to see so many people go now that the semester is ending.

We got together for a group picture and it wound up looking like a wedding photo, so the hammed it up and this is what we got, it was actually really funny.

Amanda, Lexi, Jon, and then a pile of people that would be too confusing to list their names and match them to position in the picture. They were going for a world record on how many people could fit on the couch.

Ali W., Me, Erin, Ali B., K-dub in our tea party outifts

There you have it. My life as of late in a nut shell. It is entirely too much fun, I wouldn't trade it for anybody else's life in the world!!!

The Good and the Bad

The bad:

• Our internet is STRUGGLING with life. It is starting to make me crazy
• I don't get sugar for 2 weeks

The good:

• General Conference was this last weekend. Love.
• I got to spend the weekend with my fam in Murray
• I only have two more days at my internship
• My clients LOVE me and are exceptionally loyal to me
• I am going snowboarding on Friday
• I don't get sugar for 2 weeks.

Katie and I decided to go off of sugar for two weeks. Period. No exceptions. No sodas, no cookies, no chocolate, etc. This normally isn't a problem for me but lately I have been consuming mass amounts of sugar. Ok, not mass, but way more than usual and it needs to stop. I made it through day one and despite the fact that I had four meals, I still felt like I was fasting the majority of the day for some reason. But I'm happy about it, I like doing healthy things.

Re-Dedicating

Ok, so I have been meaning to write this post for some time now, but I am just now getting to it. When New Year's rolls around, everybody goes about setting "New Year's Resolutions" which tend to dissolve quickly, as we all know. So to avoid this dissolving, I make it a point to always have a few small goals that I am working on or one or two big goals. Well, towards the end of January, the speakers in our sacrament meeting gave talks on the topic of rededicating ourselves to Christ. I don't think a goal gets much more important than that. And isn't that really what goals are kind of all about? I mean we set a goal, we are trying to be better at something, attempting to perfect ourselves, if you will. Which is what we are doing here on this earth as we try to become Christ like and perfect ourselves through him.

Anyways, this has been my latest goal, re-dedicating myself to Christ. Not that I wasn't dedicated, but there is always room for improvement, and we all slip up occasionally and need to re-focus ourselves. This is a big goal, that has to be broken into micro-goals to really make it work such as spending real time reading scriptures each day, not just absent-mindedly reading them before falling asleep each night. Making a real effort to attend the temple more often, doing my visiting teaching before the end of the month, etc. Lots of little things. But by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. Each time I make a right choice, I am adding oil to my lamp and one step closer to being like my Savior. I love living the standards of the gospel and the dedication that comes with it. People outside of this religion think them to be such a burden, but my life is so incredible when I am doing what I know to be right. So I chose to re-dedicate myself to the Lord always so as to never lose sight of him.

Also, this is talk that I love that has been on my mind a lot lately as I try to be more dedicated and pick the best options for life. The principles taught in this talk are so true and are a blessing.

Click Here

I'm A Girl!!

Ok, so funny story. Two years ago when I applied at RC Willey, they ran a background check. Well I passed the background check, no biggie. However, they called me and needed to double check something. My gender. Apparently the social security administration has thought I was a boy since I was born. Well guess what? I'm a girl.

So that summer when I got some legal documents (I don't keep them in my apartment at Provo so I had to collect them from their safe location), I headed to the social security office to get this little hiccup fixed. I had my passport, my social security card, and my driver's license. And guess what? They still wouldn't change my gender. Because they needed my birth certificate. HELLLLLLLOOO!!!! Look at me!!! Really??!?!?!! I'm a girl, clearly. Plus you send in your birth certificate to get your passport, I didn't understand. I still don't understand.

Anyways, so here it is two years down the road since I found out that the government thinks I'm a man. This week I finally had some free time to take the correct documents in to change my gender, so congrats mom and dad, you have a girl.

Side note: It turns out they had some crazy Swedish name for my mom's maiden name as well, it was weird. Pretty sure somebody was falling asleep when they entered me into the government data base. No biggie.

RiteAid

As mentioned in the previous post I have been sick. It got a lot worse than I expected this week. So on Thursday night, my roommate Emilie needed to go to RiteAid to pick up a prescription for her sister. I immediately volunteered to take her because 1. I knew her sister needed it ASAP and 2. I needed puffs plus with lotion. Desperately. So off to RiteAid we went. I never shop there, and this is why.

I forgot to take my roll of t.p. and my nose was running like CRAZY so by the time we got to the store I was literally just trying to keep it from dripping everywhere. Gross? Yes, I am sorry, but true nonetheless. So I power walked through the store looking for the tissues. Found them and searched frantically for puffs plus with lotion but alas, they only had puffs plus, it would have to do. So I went and stood in line to pay for them, trying so hard to refrain from tearing the box open right there. To my pleasant surprise, who was in front of me? A coupon shopper. Now don't get me wrong, my mom was a great coupon shopper (but doesn't do it much anymore), my sister is a PRO (literally walks out of the store with them owing her money) and I aspire to be a coupon shopper one day, but the best coupon shoppers also take consideration into account. If there are people behind you, don't take all day. This lady had six items and a whole freaking binder of coupons that she was sifting through. She was at the checkstand for ten minutes. I kid you not. She was there when I walked in, there while I looked for my tissues and then there while I tried waiting oh so patiently. Once there were four more people behind me in line, the cashier finally called for back up, and I got my tissues.

Reason #2 why I don't love RiteAid. The people there tend to be weird. As I sat contently with my box of tissues at the pharmacy waiting for them to call Emilie's name, there were about eight people that came to place their prescriptions. One of them talked to himself. One of them looked like she had just walked out of a nasty trailer (is that judgemental? Yes, but I just said it so that you could get the imagery), one of them felt the need to jump in to mine and Emilie's conversation, etc etc. I just feel like those types of stores have gross people and I don't know why. Probably because they are super cheap. So I should shop there more often, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

Then, as I was walking out of the store, I realized something. My hair hadn't been done all day, my eyes were red and puffy from the cold, I was wearing sweats, t-shirt and flip-flops that did not match and I was literally clutching an open box of tissues blowing my nose as I walked. I looked ghetto. And I looked like I fit right in at RiteAid. Dang it.

This Is War

Story one. I have failed epically at blogging as of late, not even kidding.

Story two. My body has decided to wage war on my life. Well guess what body? I'm not having it. We are done being sick, I've had enough.

I am a pretty healthy person. I get maybe one cold a year. Maybe. But this year, that is not the case. I have now been sick three times since the middle of January. What a joke. It started with this horrible flu-ish thing that resulted in throwing up, which I really hate. It also resulted in not being able to eat comfortably for about 2 weeks, and then the following weeks it still wasn't pleasant, resulting in 10 pounds being shed from my body. Not ok with me, at all. That has mostly been taken care of now, but is still a work in progress. Meanwhile, sometime in February, I came down with a cold. Which I hate colds. I'd rather be super super sick for a day or two than have an obnoxious cold that just lingers for two weeks. Thanks to airborne and lots of rest I limited it to a week and a half. But apparently my body wasn't satisfied yet. Sunday night I started developing a semi-nasty cough. Well by the time I woke up for my internship on Monday morning it was full-fledged nasty cough. Like I couldn't breath without hacking. So I called out sick. And then woke up again a few hours later with a fever.

Moral of the story, I hate being sick so bad. So please dear little body, let's stop this war going on inside of me and just be really healthy again, ok?

Love-Hate

I have a love-hate relationship with snow. Most of the time I love it. I think it is so pretty, it is fun to play in, and it let's me going snowboarding. However, I HATE driving in it. Today, I had plans to love the newly fallen snow by going boarding on it, however, wound up hating it, because the canyons were too snowy for me to feel comfortable driving my car in. Two thumbs down to now riding it out on the slopes. Hopefully next week. I like that sport.