ATVing yo!

Saturday morning rolled around this week, much like it does every week, only this week... it rolled around and was all sunny! So we woke up early, put on a bajillion layers of clothes, and headed out to the wonders of 5 mile pass. And let me tell you I'm still sore. 

Dave, Rachel, Maddie, and myself all got up at 7, left the house at 8, and were on the ATVs and our way to happiness by 9:30. We rode up and down the hills of Utah for a good 4 hours totaling 27ish miles. We even went up one large hillside that dave hadn't been up before!

I took some pictures of the scenery, but it was nothing you haven't seen before, a bunch of mountains around a valley... so I've thrown in some pictures of us messin around in the wilderness. 

This is the gravel pit. Maddie, Rachel, and I are all sitting at the top of it. It was so high up! You could throw a rock off the side and sing the abc's before it hit the bottom, it's true, we did it twice. It was intense. We rode up the backside, then Dave rode back down and took the picture of us.... yay for Dave who then rode back up and got my ATV turned around for me, because it was pretty rocky up there, and I didn't want to die.... woop.

This is the remains of a cabin. Look how buff we are! (from left to right: Rachel, me, and Maddie)

We stopped on the top of a huge hill and I took a ton of photos of the scenery, and then Maddie and I started messing around and taking a ton of random photos (you can see them all on my Facebook). This is Dave and Rachel planning where to go next. I love how Dave's pointing off in the distance, and Rachel's just scratching her head. Classic. I love my family.

This is me. I am posing. Can you tell?

Ok, ok fine. This is the best shot of the scenery. I love the mountains. They're really beautiful. Some people here can tell where they are based on where the mountains are. I can't since there are mountains all around in a circular fashion, so pretty much wherever you look, it looks the same. 

Well, I had a blast. I forgot how much I love riding an ATV at screaming speeds down a gravel path, and that I do enjoy riding an ATV up a steeply slanted hill side, just not as much as the gravel path part.

hey, you, guess what?! I turned 22 ...

Well, I turned 22 years old this past week. Yup, it's true. As my dad said, I'm there, it's done, I'm grown up. Great pep-talk by the way, thanks Dad! :) I decided that the best way to spend my birthday was to fly to Seattle for a brief vacation. My birthday, thankfully, falls on spring break 3/4ths of the time. So with out even missing a day of school, I loaded up a duffle and flew off to Seattle. I was so excited to see all my friends and family again. I have to admit I was a little nervous that I had been replaced amongst my group of friends, but I found quickly that none of my friends had forgotten me, and I remembered just how much I love all of my wonderful friends. 

So the first day was a family day. I didn't take any pictures, sorry guys! I had a lot of fun running amok with Annabelle and Lucas, my cute cousins. And I got to eat pho and sushi all in one day! Then, thanks to Beth, I eat a huge piece of wonderful carrot cake. MMMM. So good. So Ram and I (my uncle) celebrated our birthday's on Wednesday. And I spent the night there. Then Thursday morning --- MY BIRTHDAY! --- I hung out more with the family, got gussied up, and headed off to Ballard to reunite with my true love -- shoes.

I hung out with Melanie at the store for a few hours then met up with the girls at Velouria and was in heaven. I bought 3 new dresses!! Yay! Happy birthday to me! Thursday night all my friends got together and went to dinner at Thaiku. It was so much fun being together with all of them again. And due to a lot of changes at Market Street Shoes many of them hadn't seen each other in awhile, so it was a fun reunion. We took a ton of pictures, and I'll put a few up so you all can see how cute my friends are! 

Topher and I! TJ and JT! 

Justin! Aka Little Justin! Aka MB! Aka Matt Bauer! Aka BO$$

Autumn, Sarah, and myself. It's kind of like we've never used chopsticks before, never fear that's not actually the case. We're chopstick proficient. 

On the way back to the basement for a super fun party. Yay for basement parties!

Nick and Elise! They're the best. And Elise is my OH! So naturally I love her. And since Nick is her other other half, I also love him! It's one large group of love I tell ya.

We all hung out in the basement for many an hour. I knew I would need to stay up late, and I tried to prepare myself. But I figured I'd only make it until 1. This picture was taken around 2:30, so I did a lot better than expected. Justin and Austin left around 1, then Elise and Nick left around 2, and all us basement dwellers continued to hang out until the wee hours of the morning. 

Well, at around 4 we finally decided it was time to go to bed. Although it technically wasn't my birthday any longer, I still say that whole day counts as my birthday, and it was one of my best. I can't believe I have such a great group of friends out there. I had so much fun laughing and frolicking and being extremely loud. I forgot how loud I can really be, so I apologize for that one, but I loved spending time with each and everyone of them. I also got to see my old boss' from Shoes. And that was a lot of fun, chatting and catching up with them. :) Yay for having a Seattle family!

Speaking of family, I went back to hanging out with my family on Saturday. It was great getting to see all of them. I had a slumber party Saturday night with my Grandma and Mom and Carmel. Carm-ba-loo is 14 now! I took some cute pictures, but I'll just put one of him in. He's my bestest friendest. And I love him!

Well, Sunday evening came quickly, and it was time to head home and back to real life. It was so much fun seeing everyone in Seattle, and spending a ton of money, and getting no sleep. So thanks everyone who welcomed me back. And for those of you whom live in Utah, never fear, I was happy to come home to all of you. Because I love you! 

Happy birthday Jen! Let's do it all over again next year! Ok? OK! 

Oh and for the record, I spent a lot of money and bought a lot of new things, and it made me happy. Happy happy happy! So thanks Shoes and Velouria for filling up my closet with joy.

Essays and Cookies

Well, this week really all that happened was a bunch of procrastination (which is hard to document) and then some good old essay writing and cookie making. So, let me break it down for you. We will start at the beginning. 

Let's go back, back to a time of guaranteed snow on the ground, at least two layers of pants, and 6 hours of sunlight during the day... we go back to January.

--blurry lines here to signifying a time travel back back back--

I started a little ol' class called geography, which at first was probably the hardest part:

remembering it was geography instead of geology. Class was fun, none too challenging, maybe a little dry at times, but what class isn't. Let's fast forward, shall we? I really don't like being back in the snow.... eek!

MARCH! It's essay time folks. And now that I've made a friend or two in the class things got a little more interesting. And to step up the excitement factor a bet

 was made. On the essay that was due this Wednesday, me and my friend decided 

that whom ever got a lower grade owed the other a candy bar. So, I sat down the night before the due date, and began to write up one good essay. It was about religion in early North

 America, no easy task let me tell you! Here are a few necessities I pulled out for the

 writing extravaganza. 

1. My water bottle, meeting all my parched needs

2. My notebook of glory. Ever asked yourself, "what would a unicorn do?" Well, I know the answer to that one!

3. POPCORN! I don't think I would be able to live my life if it weren't for this glorious bag of popped corn. 

4. A laptop... write on good soul.

Well, there you have it, the necessities of essay writing. Then throw in one half sleep afro sporting i-pod loving me, and you get a rock'n hard to beat essay of your dreams! (This is taken only a half hour into the writing process, you don't want to see the after pictures)

NOW! As coincidence would have it, it was my teacher's birthday on Wednesday, the exact same day as the due date of our little paper. How do I know this? Never think I'm above finding teachers and adding them to my Facebook account. This comes in handy, quite often, 

and I would suggest it to all of you with teachers of your own out there. Hmm, my opponant is quite the essay writer, and is known for receiving higher scores than me on every single assignment thus far in the class. I knew I was in trouble, and I didn't want to shell out the dollar to get him a candy bar for hecks sake! So, I got serious, and at 10:00 on Tuesday night decided it would be a good plan to bake the ol' teach some chocolate chip cookies. For those of you who don't know me, that doesn't seem like too big a task, but for those of you who do know me... well you are now suffering what is most commonly known as a heart attack, chew a bayer, and dial 911 immediately. I don't bake, cook, brew, stew, broil, fillet, or grill ... not ever ... not never ... my future children may in fact starve. This is all true. So, I made up some cookies! The first batch went horribly wrong, now as I told Meagan this, she asked me what could possibly go wrong while making cookies? But as I explained all the things I did wrong (not enough flour, mixed them all in the wrong bowls, baking powder catastrophe, etc) she'll attest to my having royally messed up the cookies. Well folks, there I was: 10:30 PM, ruined cookies, hair out to the moon, and near tears. But did I quit! NEVER! I'd done so much trash talking at this point, I had to get a better grade on that essay, or die trying. So Rachel and I loaded into the Denali and headed down to Kohler's. We got more chocolate chips, brown sugar, and some milk too just for kicks. And by golly, it took the whole family, but I got those cookies made! 

Me trying to preheat the oven, it's a super compex thing, I swear it's a lot harder than you would think. 

Me showing off the competed cookie sheet ready to go in (note these are the cookies that turned out, well, subpar).

And those are my hands covered in cookie dough, and for those of you who ate the cookies, don't worry I washed em like crazy, and made sure there wasn't too much dog hair involved.

 

Well, Wednesday rolled around. I was exhausted and near defeat... but I put on my best dress (not really more like a cute skirt, argyle sweater, and my grey Malibrans) and headed out to school carrying a plate of fresh cookies. More people said, "ooh cookies!" to me as I walked past them in the hall than you would think.... and more than once kids I sat by in class tried, jokingly of course, to sneak the plate off my desk, oh yeah, hahaha, very funny. And then I got to geography. My component tried to thwart my evil plans by giving my teacher candy (maybe I shouldn't have told him of my plan to bring in cookies), but my teacher was still super appreciative when I gave him the cookies. I also shared some with my opponent since I'm really a kind person, so what are ya gonna do? All in all, I'd say it wasn't a bribe.... more like what I said, I'm a kind person, and I couldn't go to class knowing full well it was a teacher's birthday and not doing anything about it. So, there ya go. Hopefully my karma has been boosted.... and we've all learned a lesson about procrastinating, which will stick until I have more homework... like now, I'm writing a blog instead of reading for a test I have tomorrow! But heck, what fun is getting your homework done? Exactly! 

I'm coming to Seattle in 6 days! And I turn 22 in 7! And those are my biggest excitements this week. :) Thanks for reading ya'll.