I Love The Discovery Channel . . .

Ok. I've wanted to blog about this for awhile now. And those of you that watch the Discovery channel MUST agree with me, they've got some pretty kick-a commercials. When this commercial came out I would (and sometimes still do) sing along--to the point that Rob started muting the TV when it came on because he got so sick of it . . . but oh! I still LOVE it!



What clinches me blogging about it today was that I found a couple of humorous parodies of it . . . the first for gamers:



And of course The Simpsons couldn't not take part of the action . . .



And finally, xkcd--a web comic Rob and I frequent did this awhile back. It's too funny!


Ohhh . . . the things you do when you've got all the time in the world on your hands . . . :)

Off to the River!

July 26, 2008 commemorates the first anniversary of us owning our car. We wanted to do something to celebrate, wanted to get outside, and wanted to get wet. The initial plan was to go tubing up in Island Park where I'd gone with my ward back in 2004. And then we found out how much it was to buy tubes, and decided we wanted to try out canoing. We could rent a canoe up in Island park for 6 clams an hour . . . but they didn't have any initially available . . . so my smartie-pants of a husband remembered we could rent outdoors stuff from the school--this is what transpired:

We rented a canoe, paddles, life jackets, and a "roof rack" kit for 15 bucks! We picked it up about 1 pm on Saturday and I just returned it moments ago. Our car was a champion hauling the canoe, and we would definitely buy a setup like this for ourselves when we get one!

Rob and I believe in sunscreen, here we are slathering ourselves up!

I'm lovin the haircut . . . I wore a headband in my hair all day and it kept everything outta my face.

Rob here is taking a little "salt" break. As you can see, the river was really calm . . .

So calm in fact that we got about a mile down the river, and rather than stopping off at the "shuttle spot" and one of us walking the mile and a half back to the car, we just decided to row back upstream. It was a great workout!

As funny as the canoe looked on the car, I think it looked ever funnier on the truck, which I used to take it back this morning, as Rob takes the car to work. It was a great experience, and we'll definitely be renting from the school again. Anyone up for an adventure? We'd love to have an excuse to get out again!

Brand New Haircut!

For those of you who talk with me often, I've been wanting to cut my hair now for a good long while. So I just decided to do it. Rob was at work and he figured he'd come home to find me like this:


Well he didn't, instead I was found like this:

And I TOTALLY love it! This is not the everyday "do" of course, just me playing with it before getting in the shower. I don't have a picture that I really like of it "done" yet, but I'll post a pict of that when I bathe my stinkie body and make myself up all cute. :)

WHAAAHOOO!!!!!

Need I say more? I GOT A 4.0! My FIRST one EVER!! I'm ECSTATIC!!

Happy Birthday to Me . . . 3 Weeks Ago . . .

Ok ok, I've already admitted it, I've been quite the blog-slacker as of late, but I'm determined to catch up a bit--I've had cool stuff going on, even if I didn't post about it . . . First off, I had a birthday! I've reached the glorious age of 26, and it's been going well so far! Here is a picture of a cake my sister-in-law LeMira made me and our MIL--her birthday is the day before mine.



Beautiful, isn't it! She's a very talented lady, and sneaky too . . . see, we had gone down to Utah for the weekend because Rob's family was starting the first of two family reunions on June 29th, which is our MIL, RuthAnn's birthday, and LeMira wanted us to be there for a cake and ice cream celebration in the morning. Little did I know she put my name on the cake too, and it was really a celebration for the both of us. She's awesomely thoughtful, it's true.



Here we are blowing out the candles, and I'm happy to report we got them all in one swift blowing. After our little party, Rob and I decided to kill a few hours by driving down to my old stomping ground, Ephraim, Utah. I went to school for a year and a half right out of high school, and hadn't been back since June 2003 when a friend got married.



This was always one of my favorite sites on the campus. I always loved how this silly crooked tree framed the name SNOW COLLEGE on this building. Campus has changed a LOT since I'd last been to town. They have torn down 5 buildings, and built one HUGE one! Thankfully it was unlocked and Rob and I got to give ourselves a little tour. It has two huge theaters/concert halls, and lots of classrooms. It's pretty safe to assume that the building is now used for the music (vocal and instrumental) and theater/drama classes--both of those buildings had been torn down. Also, the building where all the exercise science classes were taught and the school gyms and pool were at got a face lift as well. The stadium was added onto--I'm assuming the weight room was expanded since it was in that area--don't know, the doors were locked. And the school also got a new bell-tower, which Rob and I kissed under as the bells struck 3:00 PM. I was so delighted since I'd always wanted to kiss someone under the bell-tower as it was going off (and remained VL through my time at Snow). :)



This is something that completely delighted me. When I was going to school at Snow, we had a SMALL greenhouse. I mean, dinky. As I was showing the old greenhouse to Rob I noticed that on the other side of the science building they had built another bigger greenhouse, and named it after Professor Blauer. He was one of my favorite teachers on campus, I took plant taxonomy from him, and I'm sure he's absolutely delighted that the new greenhouse has been given his name. I'm proud just thinking about it. He was a GREAT teacher, and loved plants.



A cute self picture of Rob and me. We are cute.



And this is my fantastic present that Rob got me for my birthday. A bike! Huzzah! The last bike I got was for my 13th birthday, which I rode all over Sandy, Midvale, Draper and eventually Ogden for a good few years. Just this last Christmas I gave the old one to my sister Susie, since it had been sitting at my parents house ignored by me basically since I'd moved to Virginia. She uses it to haul her boys around in a bike carriage. :) Since springtime however I'd been wishing I had a bike again. So my loving husband took me down to the bike store and I rode home with this pretty purple (the last one was purple too LOL) bike. I've gotten the most use of it since school has ended, I rode to the gym and back yesterday, and I went for an hour ride this morning and it felt great. Thank you Rob!! So perhaps I'll get my next bike for my 39th birthday--it's been every 13 years so far?? It'll probably be a tricycle or something though. :) Maybe a tandem? Who knows. LOL!

So there is the first update. I have more stuff too, but I'll try and spread it out some more . . .

Can't Freakin Beleive It!

This is the final design for my landscaping class. I didn't start on it until about 9 am Tuesday morning because I'd been working on all my OTHER projects until then, and I had until the end of class on Thursday to turn it in. Remember, when I got the paper, all it had on it was the house outline, and the property lines. In those two days I spent about 25 hours working on the design, and this how it ended out:



My teacher gave us a few guidelines--first off, little or no grass, a lap pool, a 30 inch retaining wall along the back of the property, an outdoor kitchen, a small water feature, enough entertaining space for at least 15 people, and he provided the planting list. I felt like I accomplished these things well. I also personally wanted to make sure I incorporated the building materials together a bit better on this design than the last one, because that is what I got marked off on my last design--I still got a 97%, but I wanted to go full on . . .

Turns out things worked in my favor. The time I spent on the design was well worth it because I got a 100%! And this from a perfectionist of a teacher! YAY! He even wrote, "Terrific job" at the top of the grading sheet. YEAH!

Even though I'll be posting a few more things about school I've got to catch up a bit), I've now got a break until September 8th. Whew!

I'm DONE!

I feel like quite the slacker as of late. Posts have been few and far apart, and I haven't been crusing the blogosphere regularly either. Oh well, that is what many final projects, multiple family reunions, and a birthday does to a person I guess. :) It's been absolutely worth it though.

The landscaping project I posted about I got a 97% on--I'm so thankful because it was a LOT of work, and since I'm not exactly the most creative person artistically. I did have another project that I turned in yesterday, and did pretty well on also . . . so well that it's going to get it's own post. :)

Otherwise the last couple of weeks I've experienced a lot of late nights and not enough sleep. I've received 88% of the points in my floral class in the last ten days alone. It's CRAZY!!

One of my GREATEST delights of the week is that I ended up not having to take my soils final because I'd already earned a solid A! How nice is that! It was worth 37% of my total grade, and I got the full points just because I worked hard all semester. Totally the best news of the week FOR SURE! Well, it's actually been a great week . . . but it definitely ranks up there. :)

For My Mother . . .

For my floral design class I had my design final today. The purpose of this was to test my designing skills, and ensure that I knew the concepts of line, form, materials, yadda, yadda, yadda . . . For this I thought about doing some kind of arrangement for my apartment, but since where I'm living is NOT where I intend on settling in, or decorating for real I had a hard time figuring out what to do. Then I thought, "Well, my Mom might want something done . . . ". So I asked her if there was something I could make for her. This is what I made:

I took an old dusty wreath that had been hanging on her wall for YEARS, tore it apart, and remade it for her! She wanted it nice and full--so Mom, I hope you like it! I think it looks great and can't wait to see it on your wall, all bright and cheery!

The grade hasn't been posted yet--but I'm PRETTY sure I got full credit. (7/18 edit--I did get full credit :)

ps--ULTRA AWESOME NEWS of the day--I found out today that I don't have to take the final in my soils class! Because I've earned a solid A throughout the entire semester my reward is not having to worry about it! I'm estatic!

One Down . . . Too Many to GO!

I am ESTATIC to report that I've finished my landscaping project. When I received this peice of paper the only thing on it was an outline of the house and yard. I've created everything else you see--the walkways, arbor, planting, all the coloring . . . it's all taken about 15 hours.

So now that I've finished, I'm going to go to class in ten minutes and my teacher will probably rip it apart . . . color all over it with red marker telling me what I could have done better, etc. I'm NOT excited about THAT part . . . or the fact that he's going to assign another MORE IN DEPTH project to complete in the next two weeks. SIGH! At least this one is done!