Nauvoo road trip: Part 1

Doug and I decided about 2 or 3 weeks to go to Nauvoo for spring break. Pretty spontaneous for a week long trip! My parents had already invited us to their house in Wyoming the first weekend of it because their stake was getting the Draper Utah temple dedication. So we started the fun road trip with a weekend in the beautiful Pinedale, Wyoming.

A dollar to the first person who sees what is "wrong" with this picture. J/k. See the deer in those people's backyard (right behind the porch)? Driving around town you see deer and moose running around everywhere! Crazy huh?

Fremont Lake. There were breathtaking views all over in the mountains.

Our next leg of the trip was supposed to be to Mt. Rushmore. The morning we were supposed to leave super early, my parents checked the weather for us and found out there was going to be a blizzard right over the roads we were supposed to travel. I am used to living in Idaho where when a blizzard is predicted, it never happens, so I didn't really buy into it. Doug and I were exhausted though and decided to sleep some more and check the weather again. What a blessing! A Wyoming DOT webcam that had earlier shown wet roads was now a complete white out! My dad being the awesome navigator he is, printed us off maps of how we could skip that leg of the trip and go directly to Omaha, our next stop for the Winter Quarters Temple.

This is my favorite temple now! Look how pretty the doors are. The inside is incredible.

In Omaha we also went to Carrabba's, a delicious Italian restaurant. If you ever see one, go!! We went to Cabela's (AMAZING!) and a huge mall where we saw this sweet food drive display:

Wall-E! Isn't that the sweetest thing ever?!

Continue on our trip with part 2 (the post above)!

I'm it!

Sorry it took me so long to see the tag Steph!

Here goes.

8 Favorite TV Shows:
MYTHBUSTERS!

American Idol

Bullrun (my brother in law got me addicted..)
Cold Case

I don't really watch much TV...

8 Things I Look Forward To:

Summer
Painting the house

Gym membership
Camping

Playing with nieces and nephews
Date night

Scrapbooking
Clean house :)

8 Things on My Wish List
Some new shirts for summer
A good grade in Anat and Phys
A santoku knife
To find out if I'm accepted into the Paramedic program
A fun summer job
That cookbook I really wanted and restrained myself from buying... :)
A hair cut (does anyone have any ideas? I can't figure out how I want it!)
My cousins to live closer (HINT HINT! haha)

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

Wrote a paper

Went to yoga
Volunteered at new freshman registration

Looked at the Ikea website

Wrote down recipes

Looked at the awesome sale Albertson's is having

Ate lunch with Doug
Bought donuts at almost 11 pm because they sounded good to us :)

8 Favorite Restaurants:

Maddox
Melina's
Texas Roadhouse
Olive Garden
Wendy's
Taco Bell
Perkin's
Red Robin

Just for laughs

I hope this makes you laugh too. I was looking through old pictures and came across this one, a picture of one of my more famous bad hair days. (I promise I fixed it before I left my house though!)

Enjoy...







Haha!

The Engagement

I know, I know...it's a month late but here is the complete story.

I knew the proposal was coming because we picked my ring together on a Saturday. The following Sunday or Monday I had a very strange dream. It went like this: Doug and I were together and out of nowhere he said, "We have to go to the Wendy's cookie room!" and I said "Okay..." So we went inside this back room and there were cookies strewn everywhere, on the floors, shelves, table, etc. There were also about 40 ring boxes spread throughout the room. He said, "You have to find your ring." So I started opening boxes and they were empty. After opening three I looked at him and said, "Knowing my luck, you would have had it in your pocket the whole time." He shrugged and had an expression on his face like yeah, you got me, and got down on his knee. He didn't say anything and pulled out the ring box and opened it and I saw some red on the ring and thought, that's not my ring!!!! I put it on and realized it was his stretchy silicone CTR ring he wears all the time in real life.

End dream..back to real life. I always tell him my crazy dreams and I told him this one of course since it was also realllly funny. Wednesday I went up to visit him and we ate dinner and sat around for awhile. He went to the bathroom and I heard him come out and then he didn't come back for a couple minutes. He came back with a jacket on and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. We started walking and it was a freezing, windy night. As we got closer to the temple my hands were getting close to numb til we figured out we could pull his sleeve over our hands. We walked on the temple grounds and up in front of the baptistry doors. He held me for a long time and his heart was beating sooo crazy fast and hard. Finally he grabbed my arms to push me back a little. He got on one knee and said really fast, "Will you marry me?" Then opened the ring box and inside was his stretchy red CTR ring. I said "Yes!" and started laughing and he said, "Just kidding, I have the real one in my pocket." and pulled out my ring.

I love him.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Let me just preface this by saying I am not a feminist. I LOVE when men hold doors open for me. I LOVE shaving my legs. Sometimes men just irritate me to death though with the things they come up with.

In Institute one night we were talking about how mothers should stay home to care for the children, etc. A guy raised his hand and said, "Yeah, and having women in the workplace increases the chance of infidelity." EXCUSE ME?!?! If a man is going to be unloyal he is going to be unloyal whether there are pretty women in his workplace or not. If he is not a loyal person he will find an opportunity to satisfy his desires whether he is in an all male work environment or not. Using his same reasoning, having men in the workplace increases their chance of becoming gay! Honestly people?? I was fuuuming.

Another time I was talking to a couple guys I know. One of them is extremely bitter about women/dating/marriage. He talked about how no girls are willing to commit. I mentioned in the conversation how it's sad that some girls in college now think they don't need a man in their life and just want their career. Later in the conversation he said, "Oh, and I have figured out I can't date college girls." Someone asked why and he said, "Because all they want is THEIR career and they think they don't need a man." (Okay so I know I had said that earlier, but the difference is he said he couldn't date college girls..) EXCUSE ME?!?! I immediately fired back, "I want a family, and I'm in college and I want a career! I don't want to be an uneducated mom!" He looked super shocked and just said, "Oh..." Good luck marrying a girl who hasn't gone to college, buddy. What happens when you have a kid come home with math homework and she can't help them with it and you're at work? What happens if you ever get really sick or become disabled and she doesn't have a single viable job skill? I mean honestly what does he want? Perhaps a fresh out of high school, naive 18 year old to be a baby factory. Or maybe even an older girl who never had the motivation to attend any college or obtain any kind of certificate, who has been working random jobs since she graduated. I mean really, good luck with that.

I was pretty outraged with both of these situations. I know plenty, PLENTY of girls in college, and also plenty out of college with careers, that want a family. That would give anything to find Mr. Right so they could FINALLY start the family they've been wanting for years. So please men, don't attribute a woman's career to not wanting a family. You would be disrespecting these girls that are doing what the prophet said by getting an education. And the women out of college that already have their respectable careers are being patient and waiting for the right man to come along, so please respect that.

12 hours of adventures

I surprised Doug with tickets to see Allred, Jason Reeves, and Yellowcard. The day of the concert he drove down and picked me up on campus and we started our day of adventures.

Adventure #1: Dried Squid.
We stopped at a rest stop and on the way to the bathrooms Doug spotted a Korean family. He started talking to them in Korean and they stood there and chatted away. I was in awe that they were cooking a full blown meal on a picnic table... Literally, with mini stove things, cutting boards, knives, you name it. Doug told me they invited us to stay for lunch but it would be an hour and we didn't have that much time. They opened a bag of dried squid and offered us each a piece. I thought sure why not and tried it. It was like a little piece of jerky that looked like it had scales and was clearish. The first bite was good! So I ripped off another piece and started chewing it up. Then it hit. It was seriously one of the WORST things I have ever tasted! I gag and wretch really easily anyway but with this...wow! You don't even know how hard it was to keep it in my mouth and keep chewing it so I wouldn't insult them! I had to keep it in my mouth and keep chewing it til they said goodbye and we were out of sight for me to spit it all out. Icky!

Adventure #2: Fall colors!
I hadn't even thought about it, but the colors in this canyon were GORGEOUS! All the hillsides were covered in orange and red trees.


Adventure #3: Slightly shady Korean restaurant.
Before our trip I looked up and found a Korean restaurant there. Doug hasn't eaten it in a long time and he's been wanting me to try it too. We went and only a couple things sounded even slightly appetizing so he helped me narrow it down to curry. It came out smelling amazing and bearing a shocking resemblance to vomit.
It was absolutely delicious! It was very spicy but I loved it too much to mind the fire in my mouth. It got worse after I tried the kim chi though, that almost made my eyes water over. Doug and his friend that met us there were really entertained.

Adventure #4: Concert.
The concert was one of my favorites that I've ever been to! It was by far the loudest and the ear that faced away from the speakers that I didn't plug, rang for 3 days and scared me to death.

Yay for Yellowcard Unplugged! Allred and Jason Reeves were amazing too but my camera was being ridiculous so we don't have any pictures of them.

We had other adventures on the way home like almost getting in a wreck (literally we missed it by inches, maybe less) and others. What a fun day it was!

Dear college textbook publishers,

To quote the movie Little Rascals, "I hate your guts...you are the scuuuum between my toes!"

There is something wrong with this picture.

Anatomy and Physiology package: $273
Spanish textbook (paper back, slightly larger than a normal novel): $92
Spanish novel (I saved ten dollars because I thought to order it through Barnes and Noble): $9
Statistics textbook: $137
Medical Terminology textbook: $73
Literature textbook: $65
Anthropology book 1: $22
Anthropology book 2: $18
Anthropology book 3: $20
Anthropology book 4 (the only textbook I could get used this semester): $18
(Yes, there were FOUR required books for anthropology, for crying out loud!)

Going to college: totally not priceless!

Before taxes: $727.
After taxes: $771 for required textbooks alone, that's not including some of the optional things I bought.

I bought my spanish textbook by itself one day and it made me feel slightly better and slightly worse that the cashier gasped when she told me my 92 dollar total for the stupid novel sized paperback textbook.

I hate textbook publishers almost as much as oil companies.