Cars n stuff

This weekend was strictly business.

For the past month, every time we push on the brakes when we're going slow, the car sounds like we're dragging half of the bottom of the car on the ground. (and when I say "we," I mean "Jason," because I basically never drive except twice a month when we pretty much pretend I have my drivers permit again and let me drive to refresh my memory so that someday when we have two cars, I don't kill myself or somebody else with my lack of driving practice. I like it.)

Anyhow, we took the car in and it was going to be a lotta money for them to replace the brake pads and the rotors. Yayyyy for broken cars!

And yayyyy for Jason, because he studied up on YouTube and googled a lot of stuff and decided he was going to buy some brake pads and rotors and do it himself!

And he did!!

My job was basically the tool girl/sit-on-the-soccer-ball-er/water-getter/cheerer-onner/chocolate-milkshake-drinker. So that was nice. I was so proud of him for figuring it out all on his own and saving us a bunch of money!! 

It kinda feels like this week is going to be really long. It feels that way because it's 11:00 and I've been at work for only two hours in real time, but I feel like I have been at work for about twelve hours. Hooray.

D.e.l.i.s.h.

After a loooooong week of work, this weekend started with a very grumpy Amy, which Jason dealt with like a champ (as always). I am seriously the luckiest, he is so good at being patient with me! He picked me up from work Friday afternoon bearing three gluten-free Sweet Tooth Fairy cupcakes. Under normal circumstances, cupcakes would win a husband major brownie points, but yummy gluten-free treats are a rarity and Sweet Tooth Fairy really knows what they're doing, so Jason's points tripled. In fact, they taste exactly like regular cupcakes. Needless to say, I was one happy camper.

This picture's old, from the last time Jas got me gf cupcakes, so it might appear that the focus of the picture is the granola we had just made. Just ignore that. There's cupcakes down there.

And those cupcakes turned the weekend right around and I wore a smile the rest of the time. It was such a fun weekend, between wandering the shops at Riverwoods, driving around fancy neighborhoods, yummy yummy dinners, an awesome workout (I still can't walk straight), boating/skiing/wakeboarding under the only storm cloud of the weekend, family dinner, and, of course, chillin' in our 9000 degree apartment.

Yay for no air conditioning!!!!!

come what may, and love it.

Jason and I went to St. George for MLK weekend, and it was the best three-day weekend ever.
(Except the part that involved waking up for work this morning.) We went down Friday afternoon to visit Megan and Egan, Jason's cousin and best friend who are getting married one week after we get married. They are the absolute cutest and it was so much fun.

I wish I had pictures of the weekend, cause we were actually pretty good about taking pictures.. but not on my camera, probably because I didn't bring it. The only pictures I have are from our drive home yesterday.

Clearly not the best drive home. It took approximately six hours. Soon after driving through Beaver (umm hello best cheese curds I've ever put in my mouth...sorry Wisconsin), we were talking about just having fun in life. Just relaxing even when things don't go right, like in this talk , because life isn't about just getting to the end as fast as possible. Not one hour later, we found ourselves rerouted from I-15 to some back road. Before long, we were going 20 mph.. then 10.. then 5.. and then.. nothing. It took us about an hour to drive two miles, while we watched cars drive down I-15 right next to us. Why we were rerouted when the freeway wasn't closed, we will never know.. but the roads were pretty bad for a few hours there. Luckily, I like Jas and he likes me and we had fun despite the rather frustratingly lengthy drive home.

And now I need to light a fire under my butt again to refocus on school. Can it be summer yet?

it has been quite the weekend.

and i'm only glad that it's over because that means i am going home in a mere four days. but anyhow.

my weekend really began on thursday afternoon, because that was the last day of classes. woohoo. or something like that. thursday afternoon, i found a solution to sell my contract. i had been praying so hard that it would sell that i forgot that two girls had already told aubrey that they really, really wanted the apartment..they just had to sell their contracts. thursday afternoon, a thought popped into my head. why don't i just buy one of their contracts? and boom, just like that, we had 36 hours to be moved out of the apartment.

so friday was spent moving out, until that got too boring, and then friday was spent christmas shopping. we decided jason does not exactly belong in forever21 skinny jeans (surprise?)...

saturday was equally productive. the act of moving out was completed, studying was accomplished, and christmas shopping was worked on.

sunday the most wonderful gingerbread house was made, and ham and mashed potatoes and all sorts of deliciousness.

and then last night i slept in bri's twin-sized bed with her in her dorm, and slept in until 7:30 because i didn't have to (a) eat breakfast, or (b) walk 15 minutes across campus, and it was fantastic. absolutely wonderful.

this morning the bookstore filled our taffy jar up (SO YUMMY) and then i followed the example of my baby sistah and made a schedule for the rest of the week. nottttt too excited

so, that's that. four days and i'm home free.

the good, the bad, and the ugly

thanksgiving weekend, it would appear, is officially over. i almost had an anxiety attack yesterday when i was told the last day of classes is next week. say whaaaa?!!

anyhow, thanksgiving was fantastic. i wish i had pictures to show for it, but surprise! i don't. all i have is this picture i took at church of four old men who were best friends. so cute.

so not cute enough to be the only picture from the weekend.

bri and i spent the weekend at cristina's, watching some shows, playing with bentley, eating d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s. cristina-food (i swear she is the best), and sleeping in til ten. (TEN?! can't even remember the last time i've slept that late. it felt so good..) oh, and bringing bentley on walks which turn into carries when he sits his little bum down and absolutely refuses to move, oh, about three houses down.

we ended the weekend with a four hour game of phase 10. not an exaggeration. eight to midnight, one round, 700 rounds. i broke 1000 points. dan won with 450. the most ridiculous game of phase 10 in my life.

anyhow, i'm about done with thankfulness lists in the blog world.. so much so that i realized on thanksgiving that i was so thanksgiving-ed out from blogs and pinterest that i hadn't even thought about what i am grateful for. so here's a brief list:
- my parents - living close to my sisters - Heavenly Father - a job that i love - a sharp decrease in stomachaches - a boyfriend who treats me so well - good grades - general conference talks - christmas -

i spent the day in sweatpants.

i spent the day in sweatpants and it was magic. i woke up to homemade rice flour waffles from grandma and mom. i sat on the couch under a blanket for a while doing homework. i showered and got ready and sat on a dry pebble on top of a frozen cold rock so we could take family pictures without my butt getting icy cold and wet. i put my sweatpants and slipper socks back on the instant i got back inside. i ate grilled cheese made by mom and dan on gluten free bread. i took an hour and a half nap and woke up feeling groggy but not wanting to go back to sleep. i sat on the couch for a half an hour, having finished my homework and not having brought anything to slc to study, and realized it was the first time in months i've been bored. grandma was at the grocery store, bri was reading some arabic book, mom and dad were shopping, jas was in lehi and i was bored. so i taught myself to play a song on the piano until grandma and mom and dad got home, when we went to olive garden and i changed out of my sweatpants in the car and i ate gluten free pasta (can i be done with this gf crap yet?) and then immediately popped back into my sweatpants and played seven wonders for two hours at cristina's. and now i am in bed under three blankets and next to a fourth and wearing my sweatpants, and i'm not even one tiny bit tired because i took a nap for an hour and a half at five.

i love sweatpants and i love lazy saturdays but i hope i never have to be bored again.

bentley james

my parents are in utawwwh for the weekend which is absolutely fantastic. the highlights of my weekend so far include:

1. taking family pictures. uhhhh NOT.

2. bri and i suck at wearing the same clothes. absolutely. suck. oooooopppsss.

3. homemade cafe rio at cristina's. i'm absolutely certain my mother and cristina are two of the best cooks in the world. and when they make a meal together, it makes me die inside.

4. most importantly of all, cristina got a puppy. and his name is bentley and he's the love of my life and the most darling thing in all the world.

a whole lotta nothing

i don't have anything funny or witty or insightful to say. so i'm probably not going to say anything. but i had a good weekend. a great weekend, actually.

and i can confidently say that i will never, ever wear 90's jeans again. once is quite enough.

i would like to entitle this blogpost: shout-out to jason

not really.

but really.
happy, jas?

my weekend was spent babysitting my cousin, not sleeping in, eating sushi and sucking at bowling, playing soccer, basketball, and volleyball, teaching him how to rollerblade, bringing him to his very first byu football game, not doing homework, learning everything possible about cars and soccer players, not watching meet the parents, talking all through church, making ham and cheese grilled cheese, ham and cheese on toast, ham and cheese sandwiches, and ham and cheese spaghetti, and eating the most delicious mashed potatoes ever at the demke's. also, now that i'm home, all of my thoughts seem to be in a british accent. probably because nothing (and i mean nothing) is cuter than a seven year old named oliver with a british accent.

and now i'm back home and honestly i didn't realize how much i don't like being at my apartment until i wasn't here for a weekend. so that's a lovely realization.

and now i get to do an entire weekend of homework in the next, oh, two hours before i hopefully can go to bed early.

over and out.

is it monday again already?

i love hiking. i love being outside in the sun, i love walking in my nikes, i love when it is greengreengreen and surrounded by trees, and i especially love when a waterfall or lake or river is the final destination. i love sitting on a rock and just thinking, i love the feeling of satisfaction when i get home. (and maybe i also love not having to drag my butt to the gym later that day..)

favorite picture.




one other thing i really love is when chelsea and kylie surprise come over at one in the morning. particularly when they sneak up the stairs and it scares me more than they even planned. and particularly when chels brings the most glorious, perfect, wonderful birthday present in the entire world--an african safari journal (made out of elephant dung by african children..classy) and a baby nala.



soooo happy that chelsea's back in rexburg a mere three hours away and that kylie is in heber.

september.

the blog-world is absolutely overflowing with posts about fall, and crisp air, and new beginnings.

i wish i knew what everybody was talking about. maybe it's because i've been in classes all summer, so fall isn't so much the start of something new (no homo, hsm) as the continuation of something i've already been waist-deep in. maybe it's because it's still 85 degrees outside in provo, and in st. george this weekend it was 102, and neither 85 and 102 scream "crisp autumn air" to me. maybe it's because i didn't go to a barbeque or picnic or parade on labor day (do people have labor day parades? not sure.) but instead ate grilled cheese sandwiches and then drove three hours home and did my homework and went grocery shopping and sat in the hot tub.

the weekend was fun. especially cliff-jumping and swimming at sand hollow. and three cheese and making sunday dinner like an adult and playing in the river. loved it. didn't take any pictures, naturally, but that's life.

i wish it was fall.

fridaysaturdaysunday

nothing is perfect and everything is perfect all at the same time.

friday was taylor, life as we know it (heaaaart that movie), and noodles. plus some girl walking around with a raccoon tail.. we don't ask questions.

friday was also mean girls and melted ice cream with chocolate syrup, which resulted in the grossest looking concoction that i swear i will never again eat ice cream in my life.

saturday was crafts, shopping for art supplies, pulled pork sandwiches, harry potter, pita pit, and sweet toothfairy.

(i've made a goal not to buy even one meal this week. considering i only made two meals in the entire last week, that's a pretty tall order. something's messed up with my appetite though and it's not my faaaault!)

saturday was also dear john (perfect) and the weirdest mood of aubrey's and my entire life, which resutled in us laying on the grass outside talking about everything under the sun (moon) until four in the morning. best.night.ever.

sunday began with me answering the phone in my sleep. i woke up confused to see the phone in my hand. i hung up. i put it back down. and then paige called back and left me a voicemail and i went back to sleep.

sunday was yet another awesome sunday school lesson, crafts, starting to clean every inch in my room, mac and cheese, bbq chicken, drives in the rain, and white trash people outside 7 eleven that i didn't even know exist in provo. (the people, not the 7 eleven)

sunday was also a walk in rock canyon, lots and lots of story time with darren and aubrey, and a sunday drive.

and in only two weeks my family will be here and i cannot wait.

this week has been weird.

vegas was the greatest, ever. literally. every second of it was just perfect. but then sunday came and will went one way (to arizona) and we all went the other way (to provo) and the family has been broken up and things are just plain weird now.

(meet our adorable little family. the fact that darren is brown and older than both his mother and his father is completely irrelevant. as is the fact that tommy's convinced it's a cult. it's not. it's a family.)

it's been kind of strange, actually. drew's home, will's home, tommy moved to lanai, cory doesn't come over anymore, and aubrey has been working. yesterday i re-remembered why i like to be alone. i'm not a very social person in general. i like being with my friends, but i don't like making new friends. as i have made perfectly clear (here and here, for example) i don't like when things change, and making new friends, by definition, is change.

yesterday i spent a few blissful hours all by myself, which is something i haven't done in probably a month. i like just being alone with my thoughts. i like writing in my journal and reading my scriptures and just thinking.

it was nice.

..back to real life..

..but i don't even really mind. this last weekend was picture perfect. this is what went down:

thursday chelsea and i reunited and rekindled our love for each other. we climbed some rocks (just kidding. we only attempted to. we sucked at it.),

ran through a bat cave,

went to her sister's continuation and made eyes at some quarterback,

had a barbeque, ate some of the best frozen yogurt i've ever had, and creeped on some sunburnt man on the other side of the window. clearly the day was perfection.

friday i went to will's house in superior. and it was the greatest. we played some baseball, jumped on the tramp,went hiking with his sisters and brother,

ate some of the best frozen yogurt i've ever had, had some yummy broccoli (and) beef, won at mini-golfing, watched the only good part of disturbia (aka the first ten minutes), had a lesson in (nebraska) football, and, of course, went on my first go-karting adventure of my whole life.

saturday i finally started reading a book for a civ paper that's due in, oh, six days. and then we went to denverrrr. it was fantastic. my gosh. it was in my top ten nights of my entire life. outdoor concert,

pizza,

cheesecake, chelsea, jordan, crazy coloradans.. what more could i ask for?!?! nothing, i tell you. nothing at all.

and then sunday was chill and perfect and involved teaching the youth about going to college, reading by the pool, and playing games.

well guess what? now it's tuesday and it's real life and i'm not even mad. it was the bomb-est weekend but already this week rocks, too. i skyped paige and ethan this morning while eating my frosted mini wheats, i don't even have a tummy ache today like i did, oh, all day yesterday, i found out i got an A- on my programming midterm, and there were yogurt granola bars electrical taped on my car when i woke up. plus, it's not even monday, so there's only four days til the weekend.

life's good.

i am having the absolute best weekend.

why hello. paige has been prettyyy mad at me lately for being a terrible blogger. sorry paigalicious. here's the thing though. life is good. super good. and here are three reasons why.

1. im in colorado right now with chels. i like this girl. a lot. also her little brother blake who says we are besties. but really mostly i love chelsea and every second i am here i am just so happy i could scream.

2. i played some mini golf yesterday. and rather than being labeled as a liability, i was called "slightly above average." hey, i'll take it.

3. chels brought me to the pet store where they had a (wait for it...) PUGGLE. this morning my mother said to me "you sound a little obsessed." well guess what? i am. and playing with that puggle was the most perfect 20 minutes of my life. i don't even like animals. but i want my baby benjamin so bad :-/

go-fish, pirates, and the weekend.

so last night we went to the midnight premiere of pirates.

the most important thing that happened is that we found out brooklyn has never played go-fish before. in fact, brooklyn did not even know the rules to go-fish. so cory and i took it upon ourselves to teach her. three-year-olds across the globe play go-fish every day, but brooklyn, bless her heart, struggled. "this is a really confusing game." - brooklyn.

but the movie was good. i liked it. almost fell asleep about eight times, but i liked it.

and then my friday got off to a not-so-wonderful start at 9:17 when i woke up and realized my alarm had not rang at 7:00 when it was supposed to and i was an hour and a half late to work, since i was supposed to go early to let someone in. so that was really neat.

still, i'm glad it's friday because it's felt like friday for the last two days but it just wasn't. midterms are over and i think i rocked them, i got a 99% on my programming project, and tonight means tucano's with will. so, ya know, life's not so bad. :)

no time for cameras, we'll use our eyes instead

best. weekend. ever.

it all started with civ on friday, in which i forgot to study for a map quiz and still aced it, and forgot to print my paper but received full credit after emailing it to the TA, because my paper was so "well thought out" and "thought provoking." thank you. i wrote that in ten minutes after about ten hours of nonstop programming frustration.

then i made some incredible progress in my programming project that's due on monday. and then i went to malawi's pizza with david harrison smith. guess what? best pizza ever. and dave is legit cool. so it was fun.

after thaaat, i went to some friends's soccer game.. they lost.. but it was still cool. and then it was bonfire time!

love summer.

saturday i went to my uncle's wedding which meant lots of family which was the greatest. my grandma gave me an hour's worth of boy/life advice and made me show her facebook pictures of just about every person who i have ever known.

and then today, church was pretty good except i had the wiggles really bad and megan was incredibly distracting (ha just kidding. lav you.) and the bishop asked me to speak next sunday so that's going to be great. but then the boys came over for dinner and aubrey made carne asada and it was delishhhhh.

and my program is done (i thinkk. i hope. please don't let there be any more secret glitches..) and aubrey and i went for a walk and it was so, so beautiful, and now it's time for ward prayer and then a sunday drive and i'm sad the weekend is over (especially cause it's midterms this week.. already?!?!!) but guess what? only two more weeks until memorial day weekend which means a sweet roadtrip and then CHELSEA!!!!

i'm happy.

i learned.

this weekend has been good. and i've learned a lot.

1. on friday my father bought me new running shoes. they're beautiful and i love them. but i learned never to show dad the scheel's ad on sunday if the scheel's ad says that running shoes are $15 off this week. doing so will only result in being told to bring the shoes back to scheel's tomorrow and get $15 off. so that's going to be fun.

2. dad's taking a photography class. (i think my parents are cool because they are always doing things, even though they're old. (just kidding. they aren't.) like biking hundreds and hundreds of miles (dad), taking chinese classes (mom), taking a photography class (dad), making family cookbooks (mom). thirty years from now, i hope i haven't just settled into a routine. i hope i'm like my parents.)

anyhow, dad's been wanting to take a picture of a strawberry for a while. so after scheel's on friday, we set out to see if we could do it without a timer, which would have made it infinitely simpler. somehow we figured it out.. even if we did make a bit of a mess in the process. so i learned a whole bunch about photography and also about timing when i press the button on the camera. (it's not as easy as you might think..)

3. on saturday, bri went to the state speech tournament. (am i a tiny bit concerned that my baby sister has been involved in speech, debate, math league, science bowl, scarlet ambassadors, student council, national honor society, golf, cross country and peer tutoring, plus many more equally [insert adjective here] things i am forgetting to mention? yes. yes i am.)

mom and dad and i drove up to the cities to watch. brianna is in discussion, which basically means a group of teenagers get together to pretend like they're grownups and try to solve the world's problems. here is a brief list of what i learned.

a) i loathe pompous, arrogant teenagers who think they know everything.

b) however, many of those pompous, arrogant teenagers have bigger vocabularies than i do.

c) if i hear the sickly sweet phrase "actually, i wasn't done. you can make your point in just one minute." one more time in my entire life, i will probably kill somebody.

d) i am more grateful than ever before that i did not sign up for speech just to impress the boy i liked freshman year, because one saturday spent at a speech tournament was more than enough.

4. church today was really fantastic. some weeks i just struggle in church and i have such an awful case of the wiggles that getting anything from it proves to be almost impossible. today was the opposite. it was one of those powerhouse trios of sacrament meeting, sunday school, and relief society that just make it all worth it. and i learned that sometimes, no matter how little you think you're going to get from church, heavenly father has a way of giving you just what you need.

5. i learned last night that the blueberry white chocolate cheesecake from the cheesecake factory is quite possibly the richest dessert in the world. except, maybe, the s'more concoction brianna and i made for dinner with the missionaries tonight.. (ps, love missionaries. so much.)

6. due to the veryyy long day that brianna's speech tournament was, my parents went on a long hunt to find me a time magazine, which i read and it was glorious. however, until then, i was forced to download app after app to keep myself entertained. and i learned that my new favorite is scoops. so if you don't have it yet, you can thank me later, after you play it and fall in love. (you're welcome for the weekly app update.)

i skiied.

it has been such a perfect weekend, no joke.

i went to snowbird with my family to go skiing. i absolutely love my family and i didn't even mind skiing this time :) we went to alta and i put on my new white snowpants and it wasn't half bad. i went down some black diamonds (which i usually steer very clear of.. i don't like going fast. don't laugh.) which was impressive for me! but then bri made me go down this one that i wasn't very happy about and i just was positive i couldn't do it.. but i was already part of the way down. so some nice old austrian man came up behind me and gave me a ski lesson the whole way down. it was so cute of him. and i made it. even through the moguls, thank you very much. i even stopped snowplowing that much. :)

so i was proud.

you might think i look extremely awkward in this picture. that's cause i do. don't worry about it.

also, happy birthday to my mom on friday. she is the best mom i could have ever asked her and i love her so much. she's incredible.