BYU Football

Yesterday was the first BYU Football game this semester. I forgot how much I love those games!

 

Reasons why I love BYU Football Games:

1. The overall excitement in all the fans before the game.
2. Everyone wearing BYU shirts and colors (and that BYU has super good colors, navy and white is so much better than green and gold or purple and gold…)
3. We say a prayer before the game.
4. Everyone sings the National Anthem.
5. Our cannon has a name, and everyone knows what it is.
6. Our mascot is always clearly one of the few black guys on campus, because he is always doing stunts and break dances that few white guys could keep up with.
7. The commercials and ads on the big screen are so clearly directed to the Mormon audience.
8. The Darth Vader cheer.
9. The Lord of the Rings cheer.
10. That song they always play right before the game or after halftime or if they think we don’t have enough enthusiasm. The “Go Cougars” one.
11. The specific bleacher “B! Y! U!” Cougars! cheer.
12. There’s always one guy in the seating group who always knows exactly what’s going on so gets asked a million questions during the game.
13. The army people who do push-ups every time we score.
14. The fact that the Cougarette’s do it too, but no one really cares.
15. The scenery! You can’t get much better than the mountains right next to the stadium and a great sunset during the game!

And lots more reasons. Two things I wish were better? 1. That you could actually hear the band during halftime. 2. That the key of the fight song was slightly more singable. 

Anyway, it was a really fun game, and I’m even happier that we won! And I'm even happier that we beat UW! Again!

A Masterpiece Summer

The last few years, I’ve really developed a love for BBC’s Masterpiece Theater collection. This summer, I was able to rewatch some of my old favorites, and check out some new ones from the library. The ones I checked out were largely due to this trailer I found on YouTube as I was searching for a trailer to Bleak House.

I loved the music too, and ordered it off of iTunes. It continues to make me smile.

My family watched Bleak House (2005) together. We did this a couple of years ago when it first came out and was on TV. I remember complaining about watching it, because it was so long, but before long I was hooked. I just love how Charles Dickens was able to introduce tons of different characters that have personality and motives, even if only a few lines. I think this movie is amazing, but it takes awhile, being about 7 hours long.

North and South (2004) I watched a total of 2 times, and I watched specific parts about 30 times in the length of my ownership as a library customer. It was really good. It was a little bit slow at times, but I found myself completely into the characters. Richard Armitage was amazing as the lead character. His face was so good.

Little Dorrit (2008) took me a really long time to watch. It is not as good as Bleak House, but is far less dark than Bleak House. This one is far lighter. There’s not as much mystery or sadness, but it is very endearing. The lead character Claire Foy, was extremely good, and for all those Pride and Prejudice (2005) lovers, Matthew MacFadyen is the lead male, but far more likeable than his role as Mr. Darcy.

I tried to get Wives and Daughters (1999) and Cranford (2009), but I was not able to get them at the library. I hear they are amazing though.

My birthday list contained almost solely Masterpiece Theater movies. Here was my list:
1. Emma (2009)
2. Bleak House (2005)
3. The Elizabeth Gaskell Collection
(Cranford/ Wives and Daughters/ North and South)
4. Anne of Green Gables

I was spoiled and got them all!

 

Callie also got me The Inheritance, which I’ve never seen, but looks really good!

Thank you Mom, Dad, Kara, Clark, Andrew, Callie and Jamie for some awesome movies! I cannot wait to watch them!

Now my Jane Austen collection is almost complete.  :)

Dad Found at Mosque Meeting

Dad tried to hide the fact that he was in New York at a meeting about whether to build a mosque near the 911 memorial.

But I found him. Thank you dell.msn.com!

Can you find him?? :)

Constant Weather is Overrated Anyway, Utah

Cloudy with large thunderstorms and heat waves in between.

Yes, Utah, what is going on with you? So hot one day, and then the next, thunderstorms and hard rain?

It’s like Seattle weather on illegal drugs.

Anyway, it’s actually pretty interesting! It was thundering a lot last week, and there was one huge lightening storm up north one night. TWICE I went bike riding when it was perfectly good weather and then it poured on me.
We were all nervous because Geoff’s marathon was on Saturday, and the forecast showed that it was going to rain. We really hoped the weather was going to be good for his marathon, since he really wanted to qualify for Boston, but rain it did!

This is us helping him. Jeff wanted to run with the chocolate milk.

Geoff and Dan after he qualified.

After we went to the Pizza Pie Cafe and then Jeff and I decided to go biking in the pouring rain. Jeff didn’t want to get wet (he’s from California folks) so he created a dress out of trash bags.

Then we went swimming. It was suprisingly warm water! I guess it’s the contrast principle at work.  :)

The next Friday Jeff came up with us to Aunt Marcia’s before we left the next morning. Jeff got along great with Einstein.

We played hide and seek. Jeff fell out of the tree and scraped up his arms pretty bad. He probably fell from about 10-15 feet up. It was pretty scary, and funny.

We left the next day. I like the drive back to Washington because it’s so pretty in Oregon and Washington. It was long, but nice to cut off those two hours by going up to Marcia’s the night before.

See if you can find the moose in the last picture.  :)

Jonathan was so excited to see us, it was nice.  :)

Kara: 24!

It’s my sister’s birthday today!

I absolutely love my oldest sister. She is so much fun. Kara is super witty. She makes the funniest comments. And the weirdest ones. Yesterday I asked her what I should do for a date with Jeff, and she told me that we should dress up as Michelle and Barack Obama and drive around Provo in a limousine and see who we can fool. Haha.

Kara is always up for doing just about anything. Whenever we hang out as a family, someone will say “hey, I want to _______” and Kara will automatically reply “Oh! I want to do that too!”. She loves being around her family, and would much rather do something with them than by herself or something. Even when we were in Moab, and a lot of us were in the hot tub, and Kara couldn’t go in it because of baby sister, she still sat outside near the hot tub so that she could be around the family.

  

Kara is the oldest sister, and because of that, she always has to be the guinea pig. She was the first to start dating, the first to go to college, to get married, to have a baby, to move away from the family etc… Out of the four of us, she was definitely placed first for a reason. Kara is the most patient, the most calm and rational, and a great decision maker. She has always been obedient to our parents when we were growing up, and she has always strictly followed the commandments. She has been the greatest example to us, and we have all followed in her footsteps (Terrace 4 until we die!).

Besides my own mother, Kara is the best mom I know of, which is really reassuring considering I will look from her example to raise my own children. I don’t know how much she expected before she had Jonathan, but it seemed that she just knew right away what to do to be an excellent mother to him. She was humble and followed the doctor’s orders and recommendations exactly. She was super regular about Jonathan’s shoes and bar, which I’m not sure I could do. She teaches Jonathan to absolutely love learning. As someone who has studied child development a lot, I really appreciate what Kara does to help Jonathan grow into a socially competent individual. I can’t believe how much he knows and can speak and sign. He’s such a smart kid. I’ll always remember when we were driving through Arches National Park and you started explaining to Jonathan how canyons are formed. I thought that was crazy! Of course he’s not going to understand that! But then I realized that was why Jonathan was so intelligent- because you don’t treat him like some baby who doesn’t know anything, but as a child who is actively learning.

Kara, you are so much fun on your birthdays, and leading up to them. I always look forward to your birthdays. Much more than my own. I wish I could be there to celebrate this day with you and I am so excited to see you next week.

 

 

I love you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Almost Victorious

Our ward does intramural teams every semester, and our ward is Not known for our skills in those sports. Somehow we always lose. It is quite sad. This spring, however, our kickball team was awesome. Here’s why:

1. You can have almost 18 people on a roster, in hopes that 8 or 10 will actually come. We had between 12 and 15 people coming every single game!  Although that made it so we sat out a lot of the time, I just think it was awesome that everyone would come. SO much better than trying desperately to scrape a team together when it’s five minutes to the game and only 3 people are there…

2. Our ward is super awesome, and we always had between 10 and 15 fans, and with the people sitting out during different innings, it looked like we would have 30 fans! Our ward is funny because we always have a big line of lawn chairs at the game.

3. We actually turned out to be good! We made it all the way through the tournament, and unfortunately lost the championship game, but ah well. We got Second Place! Not that anyone cares about second place, but it’s the farthest our ward has gotten in a really long time.
We lost, as Callie calls it, “the elusive shirt” again. Maybe next year!

The Team.

Jeff vs. Train

On Friday I took Jeff to the airport. When we got there, we learned that his flight had been delayed, so we went to get ice cream. As we were trying to find our way back to the freeway, we got stopped by a train. Jeff and I disagreed about how fast the train was going, and whether or not someone could run faster than it.

So of course, I goaded him into getting out of the car and racing it.

Did you notice how many times I say “go”? Ay ay.

Anyway, soon after this, the last train just stopped in the middle of the road. So Jeff got off the street and drove around trying to find a way to get to the other side. After about 5 minutes of that, we came back to this street and waited for another couple minutes until it left.

It was very funny. To me.  :)

 

.