REALLY?

This was the scene in Aunt Nancy's front yard this morning. Gotta love Utah and the spring weather we have every year. You can tell I was SUPER excited about the snow. However general Conference was awesome snow or no snow. And really I guess it is a good day to snow since I was inside all day anyways.

Dan, Sam, Amanda and I always go to Nancy's for conference weekend. I have been going to Nancy's for conference since I first came out to BYU. It is a tradition. Amanda has added to the tradition and now we have aebleskivers for breakfast.

They are Danish pancakes shaped like a sphere and they are delicious. We consumed quite a few of those while watching conference.

And conference was so much better with my new scripture journal. I decided to take notes it even though it is supposed to be used to study the gospel by topics. Whatever! Don't mind that I have not finished binding it yet.

In between conference yesterday and during Priesthood session Amanda and I did a little shopping. It was good times. Then last night we all went to Sam and Amanda's and used their apartments hot tub. So nice. But for some reason I felt the need to keep jumping in the pool and then getting back in the hot tub. I think I was trying to impress my brothers so I hope it worked. The hot tub just feel so much better after you are freezing cold.

I love that I have family out here in Utah. I wanted to post my favorite picute ever of me Dan and Sam but it is not scanned so this one will do.

These boys were my playmates all growing up and it is funny how they still are. I love that we are good friends. There is no denying that we had our moments but they are so fun and so good to me. Families are the best. That was definitely a take home point from general conference!

happenings

I know there are so many people concerned about me when I don't update my blog so here is what I have been up to:

• attending all ward activities, long story not for the blog, but I have committed to doing so. No more excuses as I tell my basketball players. Obviously getting to church was never an issue but since grad school I have not gotten back in the habit of going to everything else. Well the past three weeks I have gone. Even if I am EXHAUSTED, which is everyday, I still go.
• Track . . . I only ask myself why am I coaching about three times a day. Just kidding. It is time consuming and stressful at times but I do enjoy the interaction with the kids. It keeps me feeling young:)
• Basketball. I open my gym a couple times a week and play on a team so I am still playing plenty of ball. I love to get exercise that way as opposed to running. It does help me get through the extra long Utah winter.
• Friday night soccer. I just love to play sports. I wish it was not Friday nights but it is usually really fun and I get to see Jana so that is a bonus as well.
  
• I made a scripture journal as suggested here or here. It is so cute. I am pretty sure my scripture study will be AMAZING now. I wanted to post a picture but I don't have my camera cord with me here at work. Sometime maybe I will but just know it is very cute.
• Being the best PE teacher ever. Just kidding. But I really do love my job and I really do spend a lot of energy trying to be a good teacher.
  

What I am looking forward to:

• This week being over. We had teacher meetings until 4:30 Monday. Track meet until 7 yesterday. Parent teacher conferences until 7 today and Thursday. I am not cut out for 12 hour days. I am seriously tempted to take Friday off of work but I probably won't.
  
• Spring break in two weeks. Can't believe it is almost here and I can't wait to go somewhere warm. I think Vegas and San Diego are on the hit list for this year.
• Warm weather. We have had a couple nice days but I am ready for lots of nice days:)
  
• Taking my kayaks out. I didn't really get them out last year after the car denting incident, but now that my car is paid off I figure what the heck we will give it another go.
• SUMMER- is it ok to say that already. The school year has gone so fast. Can you believe there are only 9 weeks to go?
• General Conference. I seriously love general conference. I am pretty sure I love the messages the most but the food at Aunt Nancy's is a really close second.
• Riding my pink bike with the awesome zebra striped handle bar tape I recently had put on it. It is very cool.
  

Life is crazy!! I can't wait for spring break, really I can't wait for summer but spring break is the next holiday so we will go with that. Yesterday was the first track meet of the season. CRAZY TIMES! Of course people were turning in the required physicals and bus fees up until we left. I seriously did not have the heart to tell them they could not go to the meet even though they were a day late. So annoying. Turn your junk in on time. So I am pretty thankful I didn't kill anyone yesterday. We are talking probably 60 kids turned their stuff in yesterday. In case you were thinking about coaching track hold off if there are 200 junior high kids on your team. Overall the meet was great once we were there, minus the snow! I swear it snows every track meet. Six hours in the freezing cold. I still shiver just thinking about it.


On a happier note . . . the cougars. Seriously they played so great on Saturday. I am kicking myself for not buying tickets and going to Denver. What was I thinking??? I just hope they can keep playing well. I have definitely caught the craze. It is so fun to have BYU doing so well.

Other then that I stay busy playing basketball and soccer. I will be happy when the weather changes and I can get some sun. I feel so pale in the winter. So pale that I am embarrassed to wear white shorts (I don't want to scare anyone).

While I Have Been Living It Up . . . .

I didn't really have time to blog. Ok, I have been busy but I have not really been living it up, but wouldn't it be awesome if I had been. Although I have done some blog worthy things the past couple of weeks.

Basketball is officially over. The banquet is done! And I have jumped into track with both feet. Oh boy, what have I gotten myself into. I don't even know. My bball banquet turned out really nice and it was fun to talk about each of my players because they were all so great.

One of the things the school did for our team was purchased championship t-shirts because they were 14-0 in league. A group of them asked if they could come watch one of my basketball games and I told them only if we made it to the championship. Well we made it and we won. I made their day because I airballed a shot and missed a lay-up. HILARIOUS! That made their night. Here we all are sporting our champion gear.

Jana was on the team this year which was way fun. It was great for me because after work I would just come chill at her house and she would cook me dinner and then we would go play ball. That was SWEET! Thanks Jana and Ben. You can still have me over for dinner once a week if you want:)

On Friday I took the day off work and headed to Vegas to cheer on the Cougars. We tried to scalp tickets for Friday night but no such luck. The tickets were going for $125-400. As much as I wanted to cheer on BYU I could not afford that price. We ended up going to Red Robin and chilling there for the entire game. Which was also really fun and much more affordable. BYU played awesome that night and got into the championship which was really important because we had tickets for that.

We got there early, here we all are ready for the game. I loved the seats at the Thomas and Mack Center. Every seat has a back and every seat is padded. That was good planning.

The place was packed. No empty seats. It was crazy. It was also fun, but unfortunately the fun ended soon after the game started because BYU had a rough go that night. Let's just say us cougas fans did not have much to cheer about.

Vegas was awesome it was 80 degrees. I bought a swimsuit down there because I was like I am hot I want to swim. It felt so great to be in the sun and just enjoy some nice weather.

An added bonus was that I did not have to work today. I was able to sleep in, go to the temple, run errands, clean my house, work out, and . . . . .

pay my car off! That is right no more payments for me. Seriously the lady at the bank was very unenthusiastic about me paying off my car. Obviously she did not realize how much money I have put into that thing. It was not as exciting as I anticipated but I am seriously pumped. I hate having a car payment. Hopefully this car will continue to be awesome and I won't have a payment for a long long time.

Expired

I woke up this morning with the prompting that my drivers license had expired. I laid in bed and thought oh it probably does expire at the end of the month. WRONG! It expired on my birthday. Are you kidding me? Who looks at when their license expires. Obviously not me. I am sure they sent something to an address where I lived at one time, but I didn't get anything at my house. Now I am nervous to drive. But obviously I am not biking to work in the snow. Oh man, hopefully I have time to deal with that tomorrow.

President's Day

Gotta Love dead presidents! I do when their birthdays give me holidays. This weekend I headed up to Island Park with Katie, Cyndee, and Todd. Cyndee and Todd have a family cabin there. It was a really relaxing weekend filled with lots of good food (and junk food, but that is good in my book as well.)

In order to balance all the food I ate we did cross country ski and snowshoe. Both activities were tons of fun. There was about 4 and 1/2 feet of snow so plenty of snow for our needs. This is a random picture of some random cabin I took while snowshoeing just so you can see all the snow.

Hopefully I will post some pictures of our activities soon, but I didn't take any so we will see.

So on a side note I have been counting my calories. Totally sucky. I now see why I exercise everyday. I have an app on my ipod touch and I scheduled myself to lose a pound a week. Not bad and it is working but seriously I think I am starving myself. It has been very interesting to see how many calories I eat. I will be honest I did not track over the long weekend, too many snacks, but on normal days I count everything I eat. So yea we will see if there are any long term results because of this (results besides me feeling hungry:).

3:35

I get to go home at 3:35 today. Can you believe it? I can't. It has been so long. Basketball is over. The season was great. I had a great team that was super fun. Our record was 24 wins and 3 losses. We lost last night in the championship game. Bummer! The other team just played better, but my girls are so great. They shed lots of tears but by the time we got to Wend's they were all smiles the rest of the evening. I have never had so much fun with junior high students. They seriously crack me up.

The sun is out if I am super motivated I may just go ride my bike after work. It just got out of the shop and it now has zebra handle bars. My team said it looks hot! I couldn't agree more.

And here is a couple of the family pictures we had taken. We had not had professional pictures done since before Caleb was born. (He must have been weird looking or something). So it was way overdue. Enjoy!


Apparently I need to drop some pounds because these boys had a hard time holding me up.

And the last one just melts my heart. My parents adore Olivia, well we all do. But I seriously just love love love this picture.

Katie had a lady from her old ward in Paradise do the pictures, Wendy Mayo. It was so nice because she has a traveling studio and totally came to us. It was really fast and efficient and we like the results.

Birthday Weekend

My birthday dragged out all weekend which was kind of fun. It started off Friday night when Samanda came to stay the night. We were all tired so we just ate left over donuts and watched a movie that night.

Saturday they bought me lunch and hung out all day. We met up with Dan in the afternoon and went bowling. Not WII bowling but actual bowling. It has been a long time but we all had fun. And they "let me win both games since it was my birthday." Yeah right no one in our family just let's someone win. But it was lots of fun and none of us really had very respectable scores. My fingers were a little sore afterwards, not use to all that work.

Saturday night Dan made grilled chicken tacos which are always very tasty. We ate too much and then had ice cream to top it all off. But no calorie counting on your birthday so I didn't even think twice about what I ate.

Then yesterday Nancy made a yummy dinner at her house. The table was beautifully set and the food was delicious.

We ate and watched Secretariat. A good movie where the horse actually lives at the end. YEAH!! All in all it was a fun weekend. Now back to the real world. But only three days left of basketball I can hardly believe it.

Top 10 (How things went down)

This top 10 list is in no special order (that requires to much calculating). There are some pictures attached but not 10 pictures. The pictures will somewhat determine the order because I don't have the patience to reorder them. So enjoy!

10. Driving all night. I have not done that since college and I am always so hesitant to do so. We planned on stopping but we felt good and drove the whole way. I think we were really excited to see Anthony and I will be honest I had a huge adrenalin rush from coaching that day because my team played AWESOME!

9. The Peppermint Patties: Friday morning these three ladies were all putting on some oils at my parents and the entire house smelt like peppermint. Peppermint helps with headaches. How do you not have a headache after driving all night? And so Dan coined the term the peppermint patties. I love this nickname. They tried to tell us that they nicknamed themselves the sister uglies a long time ago, but peppermint patties may be a keeper.

8. Scales. You know when you do a survey and they ask you on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate this. Dan is the scale man but he does not just use easy scales he makes you think. An example: Someone says I love chocolate Dan then says, "On a scale from 1 to 346.78 how much would you say you love chocolate right now." They were catchy and funny and there were lots of them this trip. Eventually I taught everyone the secret of dealing with Dan when he is being ridiculous you must also be ridiculous so to the above scale an appropriate response would be 378 (Anything off of his scale would be appropriate).

7. Excitement and pure joy. There is nothing better then having a missionary return home and this was no exception. Caleb was so excited. I mean we were all excited but according to Caleb it is so hard to be the only child at home and he thinks Anthony will stick around for a little while to alleviate his pain.

6. Playing games and hanging out. Like most people I love my family and I love hanging out with everyone. It can be crazy and sometimes a little out of control but overall a very enjoyable time.

5. Ben and Katie allowing us to stay in their show apartment. It was so nice that everyone was able to have a bed.

Dear Ben and Katie, we are sorry that some things got broken (we won't mention what) but we are grateful we had a place to lay are weary heads. Please forgive us and let us stay again.
Brown Siblings

It was way fun to have all the kids staying in Chico together. late nights and laughs.

4. Seeing Alicia's ring in real life. Aaron is engaged and we (the Utah people) had not seen the bling yet.

3. Family Pictures. This experience was so fun. Who knew you could laugh so hard and have so much fun taking family pictures. I will post some when we get them back. Hopefully they turn out well.

2. Eating good food. You have to eat good when the family is together. Now I need to fast for a week but it tasted great. Hula's, Woodhouse Pizza, and Dan's chicken tacos. YUM, YUM, and YUM!

1. Attending Anthony's report to the high council. It was so great to actually hear about his mission and to hear him bear testimony. I am so glad we stayed in town a little longer for this.

ShORt BuT sWeEt

Anthony is home! The trip was way too short but seriously so fun. The trip started off right because my team played an awesome game on Thursday. I was seriously so pumped I don't think I slept the whole way home. That is good and bad. Good because I kept the driver awake, bad because we drove all night and I was way tired the rest of the weekend.

On our way to the airport we saw Anthony's plane fly in and we knew we were going to miss him because, let's be honest, not many planes fly in to the Chico airport. That was LAME. We were 12 minutes early but that ended up being 10 minutes late. But here is Anthony looking good.

Caleb wins the award for most excited that Anthony is home. That guy has been counting down for a while now. Here he is wearing Anthony's sunglasses. The funny thing about Caleb is that every time a missionary has come home in our family there is a picture of him wearing something they brought home at the airport. With Aaron it was a cowboy hat with me it was a hat as well.

Do you notice anything different about the two family pictures? I only got two photos and Olivia is not looking in one but some other people were having a little too much fun in the one she is actually looking in.


The peppermint patties. More on that later, but these three ladies are always a hoot when they are together. And I must apologize openly for saying two of them were worthless, it was a joke!

Me and my cute niece. I love that Olivia will just chill with anyone. It is so nice that she will hang out with those of us who live far away and don't see her very often.

And some more cute pictures.

I got to give her a bath, I must be funny because that is a good little smile.

All ready for family pictures.

I will post more pictures later and possibly a top 10 list (in honor of Michelle) from the trip. Although it will be hard to narrow the list to ten things. I am so grateful we were able to be together as a family, hang out, and have fun.

Finally Feeling Better

Wow I feel like my life is boring but the truth is I have not done anything too exciting the past three weeks because I have been sick. It has been crazy. I would sleep 12 hours a night on the weekends and start to feel better but then Monday would come and I would just wear myself out and by Friday I felt awful. We are talking terrible. Last Friday I was almost convinced I had a real sickness I felt so terrible. When Monday rolled around I felt better but only getting 8 hours of sleep just started the day bad and I was feeling sick again. I finally broke down, took the day off work and went to the doctor. That was a waste of $25, I suspected it would be, turns out it is just a virus and I need sleep and rest. So I slept most the day Monday and I do feel much better.

I finally feel like I am getting over it. So much that I actually jogged on my treadmill last night and it felt good. Well until I was done and I learned the hard way that qeuso and chips are not the best pre-workout meal. Who knew? I mean it has tons of calories.

Oh wait there is one new thing an addiction to this:

Made the mistake of downloading it while I was at the doctor's. If they had any good magazines that would not have happened. So stupid!! I just play it every night and I tell myself when you beat this level you can go to bed and then I don't. So hopefully I can get it out of my system while traveling this weekend and be done with it.

I am headed home tonight. Can you believe this guy is coming home tomorrow?

I can't but I am totally excited. I have only been home when one brother got off the plane (Aaron) and seriously it was one of the most fun days of my life. Way more fun then when I got off my mission, that was weird. But it was like one big party. And everyone will be there. I can't wait.