Powered Pizza

I am failing miserably at keeping up with my blog this semester. Apparently 17 credits and a new Relief Society secretary calling are managing to keep me pretty busy. But I have also been enjoying myself!

My new roommate Grace brought with her her hammock...which is hanging from our balcony now that the apartment below us is empty. Classy? Yes, I think so. = )

We also lost power during the General Relief Society Broadcast...we went to Wal-Mart to buy candles half expecting for it to be back on by the time we got back. But it wasn't so we spent a candle lit night...watching movies on lap-tops til the batteries died...listening to music and talking...and pulling our mattresses out into the living room for a classic mattress party. We all woke up early when the power came back on 7:30 the next morning.

Freak power outages, amazingly warm weather, Craigo's with friends, ridiculous reading assignments, an overwhelming number of things to do...life.

My Willoughbian Hero

I'm pretty sure that I met my new hero on Friday night. She took us on an trip through her life...she told stories about her family and friends. She was clever and quick witted..and I could tell just by the way she talked that she was passionate about her writing. Her name is Lois Lowry and I got to sit in a room with her and shake her had after her presentation.


For those of you who had to google her name to see who she is...shame on you. She wrote one of my very favorite books, The Giver. As an interesting fact Lois Lowry actually took the picture that adorns the classic cover of The Giver...her favorite shot of him that she wanted to use was one in which he didn't look so sinister, but he had a band-aid on his finger. And in those days they couldn't just photo shop it out.

She closed her presentation by talking about her book The Willoughby's. As the book has many large words and is geared towards a younger audience, she chose to include definitions of the larger words. She ended, appropriately given her audience, by reading her definition of the word affable from the book, "Affable means good-natured and friendly. There are whole groups of people known for being affable. Cheer leaders, for example. Or Mormon missionaries."

She received thunderous applause.

LOL

Yes, I wore this as my name tag for our ward opening social. I'd like to say that this resulted in a date for Friday night...but it didn't. A lot of laughs...but no date. That's okay...laughs are good too.

Bah Humbug

Yes, it's that time again. Another semester is here already and this one is going to kick my butt in ways it hasn't been kicked before. To begin I spent waaaaay too much money buying everything on my rediculously long book list.

And even though its the second day of classes I still haven't unpacked everything.

But I'm glad to be back in Idaho and really glad that I got to spend a few days with Bri. I'm glad that this is my third to last semester and hope that will be motivation enough to help me make it through!

These pictures are just for kicks...my Dad had his birthday dinner (finally!) right before I left home, and when I got served my piece of cheesecake it pretty much had a face. Then I added raspberry juice to the mouth...

and then graham cracker crumbs for the hair.

Mom probably thinks I'm old enought to not need her telling me not to play with my food. But thats one thing I'll never grow out of!

KFC 2009

The long awaited post has finally been posted...it is hard to show, in just a few pictures, all of the things we did or fun we had. But here is a summary of our vacation...

This is the home we stayed at near Hancock, Maryland. It was a fun house with plenty of space and was only mildly infested with yellow jackets.

We took our family picture though we were missing our soon to be newest addition, Larin. Most of them turned out okay.

But then things just got goofy!

Some of the best times were had piling into the party van and venturing the wild and crazy wilderness known as Maryland.

We played a fabulous game of Speed Scrabble...and needed two sets of tiles to have enough to play.

One of our meals we did a cook out...Dan and I single handily burned the majority of the burgers...but hey..isn't that why we decided to grill them ; )

We went to the Washington DC Temple, and those who could went in to do a session with Sarah who was going through for the first time!


The rest of us went to the visitor's center and watched the Joseph Smith movie.

We also walked around in the C & O Canal...this is us standing on a bridge over one of the locks along the canal.

We did a service project at a food bank distribution center in Hancock. We brought with us a large donation of canned vegetables, and then helped them spiff up their building and package some things up. I was on Team Window Painting....yes, we actually painted the windows. Yes, we were supposed to.

After the service project we went out to Wendy's for lunch. We were quite the crowd, they managed to mostly get our order right too!

On our way home from Hancock we stopped to go swimming in a lake...which was cold but refreshing!

From the house we stayed at we could walk not even 1/2 a mile down the road to the Pennsylvania/Maryland border.

So we all stood in two places at once!

On our way home we stopped for some all you can eat goodness at Country Buffet. We tried to eat all of the food, but they just kept putting out more!!

All in all it was a fantastic weekend. We had so much fun spending time together and getting to see those in our family we don't normally get to. We partied hard and got almost no sleep, but it was all so worth it!!