Vegtables for Dessert

I have decided that I need more vegtables in my life and I really struggle to get my 5-7 servings a day. So now I have turned over a new leaf and have begun to eat vegtables for dessert. In the form of pumpkin cookies and choclate almond zuccini bread. MMMMM delicious. What a great and delicious way to get my veggies in. Today I would estimate I reached my entire serving for vegtables all through pumpkin cookies.




And just for fun a little conversation we had while driving in the car with Dan, Mikila, and Myself.

Me: Dan you have not gone to that class in two weeks do they take attendance.

Dan: No, but I am going next time because an assignment is due.

Mikila: Dan I am proud of you for not going to class. I never went to class and look how smart I am.

Dan: I will start going to class.

I would like to personally thank Mikila for inspiring Dan to go to class I have not been able to do that the last three years.

Apparently I am unpatriotic??

This year as football season neared I had an intense mental and emotional battle as to whether or not I should buy season tickets. Here are some of the pros: BYU football games are amazing and there is no feeling equal to walking into Lavell Edwards stadium with 65,000 other die hards, something to look forward to every other Saturday, no more Thursday night games, lets be honest we all knew the COUGARS had great potential for this year, and lastly I better be done with my thesis by next fall so it was my last opportunity to buy student tickets.

The cons: you get nothing done on Saturday because you are at the game for a really long time, I knew I would be overwhelmed with my stats class, I now have a home that requires cleaning (I don't clean during the week I am way to tired after work), and the past few years I have sat through to a number of freezing football games.

Well after weighing the pros and cons I decided not to purchase tickets. I can watch the game at home and clean and do homework while the game is on. Well this Saturday I went to Wal-mart during the first quarter and I have now been accused of being unpatriotic. I am not quite sure what BYU and patriotism have to do with one another. I still love the cougars. They take all my tuition money, but I am loyal. So below is a picture of me and Erica at a BYU game 2 years ago. I still love the cougs but now I can get ready for Sunday and watch the game at the same time!

Just a little ridiculous!!

You know you over did it when you have to use five ice packs to relieve pain after playing an hour of basketball. Lets just say Mt Nebo was a KILLER! I have been so sore. I can't really walk down stairs. I had my stats class on upper campus and had to walk down all the stairs because I parked by the smith field house. It was slow going and extremeley painful. (That is 100 stairs folks and I even have some friends, won't mention names, that ditched classes on lower campus just so they would not have to walk up all those stairs.) You might ask why did you go play basketball? Well honestly once I was moving my muscles felt the best that they had since hiking but whenever I stopped for longer than a minute they tightened right back up. It has been interesting. My calves are so sore, I would venture to say that they are the most sore they have ever been. I biked today and learned something I did not know before, biking uses a lot of calf muscle. Yep they are still sore but a few miles in they began to function like champions. Anyways I thought you would all enjoy a picture of me icing all my sore muscles. My hand is doing much better but still in a brace. The good news is that you never get stronger if you are never sore, refer to the overload principle, so yea I should be really strong and yes that is sweat you see on my t-shirt.

Mt Nebo

On Saturday Amber, Julieanne, and myself all hiked Mt. Nebo. It is a mountain I have been wanting to hike for sometime and we finally got around to it. I am glad we did it but it is not one I would recommend to others. The main reason are 1. It is really steep and on the way down we had to be really careful and we almost fell a number of times, that gets annoying. 2. The scenery is not nearly as pretty as Timpanogos, 3. you have to drive a long ways the hike takes longer and so overall your entire day is shot.

It was fun to do though. It turned out that our group and a group of 200 students from a boarding school were really the only ones on the mountain. This was actually a plus because when we hiked timp there were thousands of others that particular Saturday. Below is the usual picture on top of the summit. Anna, from Romania, joined us in the picture. I asked her to take the picture and she handed the camera to her high school friend and told him to take the picture so she could be in it. His response was hey I want to be in the picture too. Sorry we did not really want either of you in our picture but it makes for a good blog post so we allowed it.

Below is my kitchen table. It is a counter-height table and I love it. I really wanted a counter height table and I had to to shop around for a long time to find a nice one that was under my 250 dollar budget. You can see the leaf standing in the backround which I will never use in this house because it makes the table as big as my dinning room.

I also wanted to vent about the cost of textbooks. This stats book pictured below cost $180 and I also had to purchase a software program for $150 in order to do my homework. That is on top of $1000 for tuition, for one class. I know it is way cheap for graduate school tuition but when you are paying cash it is so sad to just watch your savings be depleated.

De Quervain's Tenosynovitis

Drilling on a redwood deck for multiple hours in one day plus

biking 65 miles and then continuing to drill after the bike ride until 9:30 = De Quervain's Tenosynovitis. Some inflamed tendon sheath problem the hurts like a mother. It feels like I fractured my forearm, but I was pretty sure I did not because I did not hurt myself in any way. The swelling has been really bad so I finally went to the doctor yesterday and the verdict is no fractures just this crazy tendonitis. So it has been a crazy week.

On top of the injury I am in a doctorate level stats class. Yea, that will be interesting. I will need lots of prayers. It it the only evening stats class at BYU this semester. I talked to the professor and it turns out I teach his daughters. He was like you can do it will get you through. He has more faith in me then I do. It will be interesting but at least it is my last class at BYU. My motto for the semester was inspired by my principal: C's get degrees!!

For The Old Man

Sam and Amanda came to visit for the past few days!! These pictures are for my Dad who is very interested in Sams current interest. He called on Monday evening to get some details about Amanda and we had not even met her yet. Did he call for anything else? NO! Well Dan and I hung out with Amanda and Sam all week and it was really fun and we think that she is great. I stole some of Sams pictures to post them for my parents.

My Aunt Janice and Uncle Lou also came to visit for a night as well this week. It has been crazy all week with all of the visitors. I wish I had taken some pictures but I did not. We barbequed and visited the night they were in town.

Sam and Amanda were given the job of putting together the stools for the kitchen. It took Sam an hour to do the first one, but we are happy to report that he learned quickly and he put together the second one in 13 minutes. He timed himself. Poor guy everyone was teasing him because he was so slow.

Mikila Adventures

Last Friday night I conned Mikila into going shopping with me for a few things for the house. It turns out she is no champion shopper just a champion complainer. First we went to the quilted bear and when I told her the name of the store she informed me she was not going into a teddy bear store. For those of you that don't know it is a really cute home decor store, they did sell a few bears. The kicker at that store was when she took the taffy and ate it and said was that for free? Um, no that was for decoration. It was like shopping with a child. She also wanted me to wear a pink bow that goes on a childs head and I was a party pooper because I would not. After we had looked through the store and I was deciding what to purchase she reported that it was time to leave because she could not spend one more second in the store. Alright, we left and I made no purchases at the quilted bear but saw many things I liked.

We then continued on to two seperate Walmarts before the night ended. Don't worry anytime there was anything pink or with the word princess on it she informed me I needed it for my bedroom. Because my room is pink and I am a princess? I am not sure why. Apparently she used to do the same thing when she shopped with Angelee. It was pretty funny.

We shopped for about four hours and I think she complained for three of it. It was unfortunate that I drove becasause she was stuck with me the entire night. Mikila was most frustrated by me because I did not buy much that night. I had to feel things out and then I bought what I wanted on Saturday. All in all it was a funny night and it was fun to hang out with Mikila. Mikila probably has a different side to the stiry but she can start a blog if she would like that side to be heard:)