A little bit of Summer

 One of the first things we did this summer was go for a hike. With Marc and Judy's help we were able to decide on desolation trail which has an overlook of the Salt Lake Valley at the end. After what seemed like the longest hike we finally made it. Poor Tyler had to stop every so often for me...or i would have died. I really need to do this more.  I refused to let Tyler take our picture at the top until my red face had died down a bit, but its still a bit pink after maybe 30 minutes or so. My darn my red face makes me look like i am even  more out of shape than i really am ;)

 Here was the view at the top. It was very pretty!

Going to the Anderson Cabin was another fun thing we did one weekend. I was determined to get Tyler up there to see it since I have been there almost every single summer of my entire life. Sadly this time the swing was taken down. It was sad to walk up to where I used to spend most my time whenever we would go to the cabin and see a cut down tree :(

 And no worries Mom, Tyler thought it was beautiful and did enjoy his stay!  this is proof for you lol :)

 Love this place :) and not to mention I came up here to help stain those benches on the deck with Judy, Grandma, Noreen, and Alyssa. Made me appreciate it even more!

 Next up was the Hogle Zoo. If i didnt get to Lagoon (which we didnt) I was at least determined to go to the zoo. I love the animals :) It was a pretty hot day, and thankfully we got some cloud cover and even some rain  to add to the fun.

 Cant go to the zoo without drinking from the lions head!

 I also decided to brave the bird show so Tyler could see it....for all of you who dont know, I HATE birds....I'm sure I looked ridiculous trying to dodge the flying birds. I swear if I didn't some of those doves would have smacked right into my head.  But overall, if they kept their distance like this eagle I am ok with them.

 The last major thing we did was go to the Kinsman family reunion up in near Twin falls. It was at a place called Nat Soo Pah. It was at a campground with a pool that uses the hot springs water. It was definitely a different kind of swimming pool, but we enjoyed ourselves. It was much nicer swimming at night rather in the heat of the day in a warm pool.

 Before we left Twin falls, we saw this beautiful river and quickly pulled over before entering the interstate and took some pictures. Below is a picture of some one who parachuted off the bridge. Some people are crazy! I dont think I could do it, but it was good entertainment.

 See, isnt it pretty?

Back in Idaho

Well we are back! For the past 4 months Tyler and I have been living in the SLC area with my Aunt Judy who so kindly let us stay in their basement. While there, Tyler completed his internship with the LDS church's  ICS headquarters in Riverton. Now he is down to about two more semester left of school! 

Before moving up, I had no idea what kind of apartment we were moving into. I knew it wasn't in a complex, and that it was old, but other than that Tyler couldn't really explain to me what it was like. So i moved in here with low expectations ;) but it really isn't a bad apartment. We are within a couple minutes walking distance to campus and close to our friends. We were really lucky to get this apartment and i am really grateful that Tyler has his connections in Rexburg or we would have ended up in some super expensive apartment complex somewhere much further from campus. 

Well here is the entrance to our apartment. Just through this door is a flight of stairs that leads up to our apartment and one other apartment.

This shows the empty office space below us. That is our living room window on the second floor. Also, we are right next to a Chinese restaurant. Tyler loves chinese, so we will have to try it out.

This is the other side, a barbers shop just below the other apartment. And you cant see it in the picture but the building extends for quite a ways and that is where a body shop and a rent-a-car have their businesses. The body shop can be a bit loud, but we really only hear their really loud air compressor. 

This is the entrance into our apartment. To the right is the kitchen and living space. Ahead is our bedroom. and to the left is a bathroom.

Here is the kitchen which I was happy with because of all the space it has. It is so much nicer to share with only one person as compared to last semester when it was 6 of us girls trying to cram everything in to the limited space.

 Here is our living room. No couch yet, but we are thinking of putting a futon in here. or something that can be assembled. Our front door is a tight squeeze and most the couches we have seen at the DI are a bit to wide for the space.

 The bathroom

 The shower

 Our bedroom is pretty large, which is nice. No more cramming things under the bed!

 The other side of the bedroom with a very large closet with lots of storage space.

 Here is another part of the living room. We decided to put Tyler's computer there and the bookshelf. It's not very organized right now....but we are working on that ;)

 This is our view out the window. We can see the temple, which I love!

Once we get things decorated and find a place for everything it will look a lot better, but I am very happy with our first place!

Some Engagement Pictures :)

Collge....so far

After my mom dropped me off and left with my sister, college really began. It was kinda weird knowing I wouldn't be seeing them for about 3 months. But once all my roommates arrived I began to settle in. We all had our hundreds of bags of groceries that we attempted to fit in our cupboard space which was pretty interesting. We all got our rooms set up, and then we had a thing called "Get Connected" where we are put into groups. Our group was pretty lame! hardly anyone showed up, and we also had a hard time finding them, so we as an apartment went to most of the activities alone.

(Virginia, Rebecca, Me, Saisha, Rachel, and Emily)

The first couple of nights we all stayed up super late talking and getting to know everyone. Something I learned here is that if you leave you apartment door open, you will meet lots of people. We had many people just drop in and introduce themselves and many of those people we have kept as apartment friends :)

Church was an interesting experience. Its weird going to a building where I have classes and having sacrament meeting in those strange desks. This is also my first time going to a singles ward, so that in itself was very different. My ward has 3 relief societies and 2 elders quorums.

Monday was the first day of school. I had three classes that day, all of which I have to hike up to the top of campus. I usually give myself 15 minutes to get there so I am not late. So far i think my classes will be very fun with not too much stress. The workload is the only thing that I worry about. Another interesting thing is that we open each class with a prayer, and most of the time we talk about something churchy in class. I have read many articles written by general authorities for homework already. That night we were assigned our FHE brothers, and it just so happened that it was the apartment that we had introduced ourselves to one night when we were bored. Kinda ironic lol.

The rest of the week went well.I tried to manage my time and get everything done before 12 AM but that has been kinda difficult. With all these people I keep meeting, and things to do its hard to just sit in the apartment or Library doing work. I have gone on many late night walks with people just to get out of the apartment. Tillamook ice cream runs have also been pretty popular with my aprartment:). I have also stayed up late with roommies but it wasn't so bad because my classes don't start till 11:30 most days except for Wednesdays when I have an 8:00 Book of Mormon. We have also set up a ping pong court on our dinner table and have had some crazy competitions with roommies, random boys, and our apartment brothers (my roommate's Fiance and his brother who have been over every day since I have been here).

With only being gone a week, I haven't been too homesick because I haven't had time to sit down and think about it until last night and I can honestly say I miss having parents around! For the past couple days I have been complaining that my tailbone has been hurting. Sitting in classes has been difficult and hard to concentrate because I was too busy trying to not hurt myself. I couldnt even sleep on my back without my tailbone killing me. So after a while I texted my mom and she said it was probably just a muscle spasm or something and that I should stretch and just be careful. Stretching was THE worst idea! Only warm showers seemed to help. My mom told me to look on Web MD to figure out what could possibly be wrong with me. The first time I looked I found nothing that sounded like my symptoms. Then the next day I was just sitting there doing my homework when I just randomly decided to look again. I found this thing called a pilonidal cyst which match my symptoms perfectly. As sad as it sounds, I cried a little because I knew it meant going to the doctor without a parent. Saisha, my best friend of 8 years, walked with me to a clinic that I found online. Worst idea ever lol. Walking just irritated it more. But once I was there, they got me in quickly and I told the nurse what I thought I had and she moved me to a room with "better lighting". She had me change into these shorts and had me lay on this table. The doctor finally came in and I think he knew how uncomfortable I was with the whole thing and he tried to keep me as "modest as possible" lol. Four painful shots later I was numb and couldnt feel a thing while he drained the cyst. He said that it was about to pop, which kinda made me glad I was there when I was. Now i am all bandaged up and in pain. I have to go back in for the next week to keep getting it packed with gauze. I got a blessing from some elders in the ward and the relief society president brought me cookies that night. I had a good friend stay with me and bring me pizza while my roommates went off and had their friday night fun. Word definitely spread like wildfire and I am so glad I have such great neighbors and ward members!

Moving out...

Ever since senior year began, I could not stop thinking about starting college and going out of state. I wasn't nervous or scared at the time, but now I can honestly say the idea of it is beginning to scare me! I know that I will be home in about 3 months, but still...it is a long time to not come home! And after working a job for this summer, I can say I'm not a fan of growing up, I kinda want to just stay home and still go to high school lol the normal routine and all! But hey, I gotta do it sometime. and it all starts this Thursday when I arrive on campus of BYU-Idaho.

I should probably start packing now..... :)

Senior Year

I am really bad at keeping on top of this....if you couldn't tell all ready ;) But I figured I should post a little more about what is going on with life. So here it goes!

This year at school I am a senior! I only have about one month left until I graduate, and I can't wait! Senioritis has kicked in full throttle which makes it hard for me to even open up the books and study. Second semester has been much easier though, with two early releases. I don't know if I could handle a full day of school again!

Senior projects are over, well almost over. All that's left is my 8 minute speech which I will give at the end of May. This is the one part of the project that I don't want to do. Speeches and I do not mix at all! But after spending about 30 hours on my project I know I will be able to talk about it for 8 minutes lol.

I also went to Prom for the first time. It was an interesting experience lol. A boy from my seminary class asked me to prom and I couldn't say no. He had this whole plan to ask me at seminary.....and I didn't show up that day because I wasn't feeling well. So he came to my house all dressed up with a dozen roses while I was just getting out of bed in my pj's. We went in a group with about 16 people which made it much much more bearable.

My graduation will also be an interesting thing. My school usually has the ceremony at night, and then the seniors all to to Grad Night immediately afterwards. But this year the ceremony is at 10 in the morning at another high school about 30 minutes away! And since every other school around has their graduation at the same school on the same day, the ceremony has to be crammed into and hour and half. In a way that is a good thing, but it also means they will have to rush about 450 people across the stage. Theeennn the seniors will go to grad night at 10 that night till 5 on Sunday morning. Haha so I will be VERY tired for Stake conference and Seminary graduation....

I was accepted into BYU-Idaho and will be attending in the fall and in the spring. Biology is what I hope to study, but who knows what I will actually end up studying. My friend Saisha will be going to school with me the first semester and we got an apartment together with 4 other girls. I don't know who the others will be, but I hope that we will all get along well! Now all I need is a job... Wish me luck!!

Random updates

Wow, I haven't blogged in over a year! So i guess it would be a good time to update how things are going right now.

For starters, we can talk about school. My schedule goes like this: Statistics, AP US history, Anatomy and physiology, AP Psychology, Chemistry, Teachers aide, English, and Early Release. Even though it isn't a full schedule, it is keeping me on my toes with test galore! I didn't know my Junior year could be this difficult... Next semester i am going to try and take AP Governments if my counselor will let me. She hasn't been allowing juniors to take it since it is a senior class, but i seem to be the only junior who can't get in :)

I have my license now and have had it since the start of school. My only problem is that our Pontiac is beginning to show signs of old age, and it has put me in a couple situations that i didn't want to be in! It overheats at random moments, causing me to have to pull over at the first place possible. Places like the liquor store.......which by the way is an awful place to pull over!

Next up.....Hope is gone :( It is definitely weird being the oldest one home, and the only one in the family at the high school! It makes me feel old! But I did get my own room now that she is gone :) The chore chart has also changed, and i have to do more than i want to. It is amazing how different life is when someone from the family moves out...... Hope you should come back to visit soon.... we miss you!

Now that have finally updated (even if it is late.....and random) I will try to post more often.....but i don't make any promises :)