My life is so much fun.

These days, I can't stop having fun. And it's pretty great too, because I have zero money to spend, but somehow I still get to do all the awesome things I want!

This week included the following:
1. An overnight trip to Grandma Colleen's house in Ogden. It was her birthday. She made me go to her ceramics class with her. For 4 hours. And we had repeated lunches with old people. Who are very sweet... but eat very slowly. I couldn't handle it. Grandma couldn't either.
2. last minute trip to Salt Lake for a job interview. Score.
3. A visit with my parents-- they came up for the weekend, but I only got to see them for like an hour on Friday. We ate at the Santa Queen diner in Santaquin.
4. Lots and lots of laying out by the pool. Like, 4 days this week. I can't get enough.
5. Ward softball. I'm finally starting to stop making a fool of myself every week. Slowly but surely.
6. Sleeping in to about 10:30am every day (except when I was in Ogden. Grandma is a slave driver.)
7. The wedding reception of the one and only Jake Basilius. He was a good friend in my Liberty Square ward. And it was just precious to see him married off to a lovely girl (who is my friend Kate's cousin, btw. which is cool. Kate: I vouch for Jake. He's a good guy). AND, I can't believe that I've known Jake for almost 4 years. Time flies when you're having a blast. For real, though.
8. Strawberry Days Rodeo on Friday. I haven't been to a rodeo since probably age 7. And for good reason. Rodeos are terrifying. Meghan thought I was crazy for being scared of the rodeo and Lene just kept saying, "I LOVE AMERICA!",  but when I told my brother about the rodeo the next day he was like, "oh yeah, I hate rodeos. I went to one last year and the kids ride on sheep! It's awful!" And I was like, "I know! This is real modern-day gladiator stuff right here!" I think we were raised by the same parents.
9. I went to the gym 5 days last week. I rock. Next week it'll be six.
10. Lorina Lee's surprise birthday party. Meghan did a spectacular job with the preparations. She made these adorable lantern things out of mason jars (which broke because boys are children), a delicious cake, and a lovely table setting, and instructed me to make a giant polaroid frame that we could pose in for pictures. Photos to come. It was adorable. Double props. And bonus points.
11. Oh, and last Sunday was Picnic Awesome.Which was awesome.
12. On Wednesday we had ward ice blocking. I haven't been ice blocking since probably age 9. It's a lot more fun when you are 9. Me and Lene tried to do cool tricks on the ice blocks, none of which actually worked. The most hilarious was when we went (kind of) down the hill back to back.
13. After ice blocking we organized a game of fugitive. We played from 7 peaks to Banbridge. This led to lots of cutting through blocks, hiding behind trees, and collapsing to the ground when a car was coming. My favorite was when we ran through the Colony and everyone was out on their porches-- laughing and pointing at us. Yeah, we're cool. But we didn't get caught, so you do what you gotta do, right?
14. Movie Monday at the dollar theater. My girls and I went to see "Prom." yeah. It's a lot dumber than the trailer makes it look. This Monday we're going for "Water for Elephants."

Remember 2 months ago when I was crying about my life in Washington? I am such a whiner. Things are so much better now. I'm the happiest camper there ever was.

Speaking of camping. I need to plan a trip. Probably when I have money.

Weekly Review (3/22-3/28)

Monday through Thursday: nothing exciting except American Idol- Motown week. I am sincerely in love with Motown music. I actually purchased a Motown #1's album on iTunes. I love it.
Friday: Something exciting that I will tell about in a future post, and RACHELLE'S BIRTHDAY! Yay yay yay! She turned the big 21, and that means that I AM NEXT! I am not prepared to be that old! For her birthday, she decided that she wanted to cook everyone dinner, which was fine by me! She made some amazing spaghetti sauce. Yum. And we opened presents, then went Stephanie Abraham's. It was her birthday too, and Megan Knell threw her a surprise party! The night was complete with a movie- "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Love it. I bought Rachelle some books for her birthday. I love buying books, and I love going in book stores. It's totally a win-win.
Saturday: baptisms at the Provo temple, the gym, then THE COLOR FESTIVAL!!! See the next post for this one... I'm building anticipation, see? We had caramel apples for dinner, and then went bowling! I am like the worse bowler in the history of China. I totally lost. Like by far. Sad day.
Sunday: see another post for this one too.

The weekly review idea has grown a little old for me, but it's kind of nice still because I can lay everything out, and I won't forget what I wanted to write about. I can just look at the reviews and see what I am missing! It's really quite handy.

Also, make sure that you scroll down and read the next two posts. They are new, but I did so many right in a row that they might get lost a little. Don't let it happen! They are good ones. Especially the one about Kaitlin's bridal shower. :)
Loves!

This is it

Several memorable things have happened this week, and several things that were supposed to be memorable didn't happen this week. I will list them and be brief:
1. Monday: my massive British Lit test, 12 hours spent on campus, Meghan's birthday party (that was super fun, by the way), and the HOT SPRINGS in Midway. Elaboration later, and perhaps never. How I had time for all of that in one day I will never know.
2. Tuesday: School, American Idol, and Kyle's surprise party! Yay! I swear, it was like birthday week!
3. Wednesday: School, Pebbles, back to campus for a group project.
4. Thursday: presentation of said group project, Pebbles, and scrapbooking with Audrey P.! I am happy to say that my ugly stage from last week disappeared, and I was able to create 2 fabulous pages! Yay! The thing that went wrong: my ward was supposed to go tubing at Soldier's Hollow that day. First, I couldn't go because I had to work. Second, the Soldier's Hollow people wouldn't let them come anyway because it was too windy.
5. Friday: one class from 8 to 9, and then Audrey relaxation day began. I came home, put my pj's back on, fixed a bed on the couch, set up my laptop on the coffee table, and put in my newest arrival from those nice people at netflix. I love those guys. After the movie, I got ready in what was supposed to be warp speed but ended up taking a lot longer, and Rachelle and I drove to Draper for the temple open house! It took a couple hours, but it was SO beautiful and SO worth it. We loved it. After the temple, we drove to the Fashion Place Mall in SLC. The point of going was to see Stephanie, who was working an event for Lancome, and of course, to shop. The event was the grand opening of the new Nordstrom's at that mall. It was just like Stephanie said: shiny, sparkly, and you kind of want to buy everything. After braving the masses in Nordstrom, we were super tired, and decided to settle down for some cheesecake. At Cheesecake Factory. Lemon Raspberry all the way. Yum. After eating more sugar in one piece of shared cheesecake than either of us had eaten in a week, we attempted to drive home. I really don't know what the problem was. I think I suddenly came down with a disease called, "I no longer know how to follow freeway signs." Actually, I'm just going to blame it all on the cheesecake. In a matter of minutes, we found ourselves at the airport, not on the way to Provo. After a while of examining distant roads and thinking really hard, we found our way to downtown Salt Lake where we KNEW that we could find our way to I-15. Piece of cake. Piece of cheesecake, rather. However, it took us like twice as long to get home as it did to get to Draper in the first place. So dumb. Below is Rachelle and her happy face while eating our cheesecake!

Also, my plan for yesterday depended wholly on sunny, very warm weather. There was a double header yesterday at BYU, and ALL week I was determined to go to one of the games. I wanted to SO BAD. But who wants to sit as a baseball game when it is like snowing outside?! No one. So we stayed home. I ended up going to "Bedtime Stories" with Meg and Lorina, which was great, but still. I was muy disappointed.

6. Saturday: Pebbles all morning and afternoon. We counted inventory. Fun! I worked on Pebbles, Inc., which is a massive job. Ashlee laughed at me when I said I wanted to do that company today. haha. I had a plan for today too, that DID NOT work out. I wanted to go to the basketball game REALLY BAD. I wanted to all week. But when it came down to it this evening, no one wanted to go. Sad day. Instead, we went to Kneader's for dinner (instead of Zupas, which was my one heart's desire since I couldn't go to the basketball game), Baskin Robbins for some delicious pistaschio almond ice cream (yay Audrey Squared!), and then came home and watched Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The exciting thing of the day came after the movie, and Rachelle, Paul, and I were just sitting around listening to our favorite songs. Paul mentioned something about Michael Jackson and his upcoming tour. This is when my jaw dropped and an explosive "WHAT?!!!?!??!" came out of my mouth. I immediately did the research. It is not actually a tour :(, but, he is performing 10 concerts in July, in London. LONDON??!! Why not New York, or WASHINGTON D.C.??? What is wrong with you, Michael?? Do you not care about your American fans?? Also, the concerts were announced as his final bows- the last curtain call- a retirement from the entertainment business for good. The tour is actually called, "This is it." And it is. Anyway, I looked up flights to London in July, and they are like 900 bucks. So it's a no go. But for a small, glimmering instant, I thought I was there. I will never ever see MJ live. No longer possible. (Unless I can win some sort of sweepstakes and fly to London for free. Keep your eyes out, everyone.) I know I'm a weirdo, but wouldn't you go if you could? I mean, who wouldn't? No matter how creepy he is, remember what he was. If you want to see the announcement, here is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKaySqh1XPU

That's the end of this week. Hopefully next week will be more eventful. This weekend was definitely a dry spell. Too bad. I'm running out of weekends to spend in Provo, so next week has to be super double amazing to make up for it. You hear that peeps? Make it up to me.

So much for trying to be brief.

Basketball games are inTENTSe!

Once again, I had a very eventful weekend. One, I'm sure, everyone wants to hear about. So, pretty much, I have the coolest friends ever. A bunch of boys in my ward are HUGE BYU fans, and because the BYU-Utah game was this weekend, they decided to camp-out for tickets. The game was on Saturday, but the tent went up outside the Marriott Center on Wednesday. They brought their mattresses to sleep on, their TV, a space heater, and three different gaming systems for entertainment. Coolest ever, right? So, the deal was that if my roommates and I wanted to be able to get in line with them on Saturday when the actual tickets were disbursed, we had to do tent duty. Jeff made out the schedule, and Meghan and I were assigned Friday afternoon. Big problem. I really wanted to hang out in that awesome tent, but I had LOADS of homework to do. So I did something that a year ago I never would have done. I blew off my homework and opted for a day in the tent. I spent 5 and a half hours on tent duty, but don't worry, it totally paid off when it came to game time. One might have suggested that I do my homework while I sat in the tent for that long while. Doing homework in a tent, though, is not realistic. Especially not when you are sitting with Paul and he makes you play Mario Cart and Blackjack. Yes, I lost my car, phone, wallet, camera, highlighters, lotion, and lip gloss. Being the gentleman that Paul is, however, I got it all back. :) I do have to say that I owned his Audi and iPhone for a significant portion of the game, though. And those two things are worth WAY more than all of my stuff plus the tent and everything in it. So all in all, I think I won. Anyway, it was a day of tent adventures and no homework. I just wish I wasn't so wired to do homework, because I had a knot in my stomach about it all day. I swear, I'm not going to do well on my British Lit midterm tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a day for some hardcore studying. :(
Once 4:30 hit, we managed to pull ourselves out of the tent, and Meghan, Paul, and I went to Costco to buy candy. The idea was that we were goint to play candy poker in the tent. I know that is kind of technically against the rules, but Paul is kind of the devil, and he convinces us to do all sorts of sketchy things like play poker and break the midnight curfew by 5 minutes. We got LOADS of candy, but when we brought it back to play poker, Drew was entirely against the idea, and the game never happened. Now we are stuck with $17 worth of bite-sized candy bars and laffy-taffy. Oh dear.

Anyway, there was a barbeque back at the tent at 6, so we bought some hotdogs and pringles and enjoyed a little feast of unhealthy, questionable food. There was also a slight hitch in the plan for the evening. THE FUSE BLEW. That meant that our tent no longer had power, which also meant that we no longer had a space heater. Earlier in the day Meg and I decided that we would sleep in the tent too, and just have a huge slumber party. It would be perfectly appropriate and okay because there would be lots of people, we could sleep on one of the matresses in one of the side rooms of the tent, and we probably wouldn't get any sleep anyway (that was the boys' reasoning anyway. I told them that we should just name the tent "den of iniquity" since we were going to play poker AND have a co-ed sleepover. Luckily, neither of our scandalous activities ever occurred). But, without the heater, it was definitely a no-go. I did not want to sleep in the cold, and BOY WAS IT COLD! We hung out in the tent until about midnight, and froze the whole time.

One last thing- throughout all of our tent experience there were two things that were pervasive and consistent. First, the tent next door BLASTED music, some of which was not entirely wholesome and appropriate. But, they did play some good music, and we educated Paul on the world of hip-hop and rap. Good times. Also, there was a constant joke about things that are intense (camping, circuses, weddings, etc). It was muy hilarioso.
So that is the tent story. The actual basketball game story begins at 12:30pm on Saturday. We had to line up by then beacuse they opened the doors at 1, and the game started at 3. The tents were all cleaned up by this point, and the line stretched VERY FAR. I don't really know where it ended because I was at the front... All I can say is that when they finally let us in, the entire all-sports pass section filled up within like 30 minutes. We were about mid-court, 6th row. It was nice. The game was very INTENSE, very loud, very exciting, and very crowded. Rather than summarize the whole game, lets just say that we were down by 6 at one point, got fouled alot, I ate a Cougar dog at halftime because I was starving to death, we said, "whoosh, Cecil!" everytime we made a foul shot (to honor the Pres.), Cosmo came and cheered with us for a couple of minutes, and we WON BY THIRTEEN!!!! It was quite incredible, and very exciting. I love basketball games. I feel like I haven't talked about them at all, but I promise, I do love basketball.

After the game I went to Pebbles. No, I didn't have to work. I voluntarily went to scrapbook on a Saturday night! Yay! Audrey P. and I had a scrapbook party! We signed up and went to the Moonlighter! It was super fun until I got super burnt-out, and I made the UGLIEST scrapbook page ever. Audrey can attest to the ugliness of my page. But it was fun anyway. I love scrapbooking. And Heather saw a picture in my scrapbook and asked if it was of one of the engaged couples. Um no, Heather, it is a picture of me and my roommate. I said, "Are you saying that I look like a MAN??!!!" True, I was wearing an ESPN hat with a ponytail and a black T-shirt, but still. It was like the funniest thing ever. The whole class of like 18 people heard our whole conversation, and it was SO FUNNY. Me and Audrey were practically peeing our pants laughing. Also, Audrey and I have decided that before I leave for D.C., we are going to make twinner mini albums all about "Audrey Squared." We will include all of the strange things that we have in common, including our awesome name. I'll keep you posted on that, because it's going to be AWESOME.

Now, I'm sorry this post in FOREVER long. I'll try not to do that in the future. But props to you if you read the whole thing. You get bonus points. When you leave a comment, tell me if you get the bonus points, and I'll keep a talley. :) Until next week, have a lovely day!

Oh wait, I also want to ask for advice. I need help with motivation. For some reason, I have been having a really hard time being a good student. I officially NEED HELP!

Paper Faces On Parade

My roommates and I have decided that because we only have TWO months until winter semester is over, we really need to step up our game and actually do the fun stuff that we talk about all the time. We realize that we only have those two months before we are all split up and are divided across the country forever!

So, this weekend, we totally did fun stuff! On Friday night Meghan, Rachelle, and I went to the BYU gymnastics meet at the Marriott Center. We love gymnastics. Yay. We had to leave early because Spencer proposed to Kaitlin, and now she is ENGAGED!!! So exciting, but so crazy. I got used to having all my St.G friends get engaged, but with my roommates it's a whole new experience. We are losing Kaitlin and Ashley to husbands this summer. I'm so happy for them, though. We all approve of their boys, so it's all good. :) After our mini engagement party, Rachelle and I went to Katie Barber's house for her going away party. Another friend of mine is going on mission! She leaves in three weeks and is going to Dallas, Texas, Spanish speaking.

On Saturday, I worked until 5, and then the REAL fun began. You know that post from a couple of weeks ago about my spontaneous weekend in St. George? Well, my friends from high school, Keith and Andrew, who just got home from their missions, came up to visit! They stayed with some girls that we all know, so we all hung out on Saturday. Me and Rachelle are working on convincing Keith to come to BYU- he wants to, but we'll see what happens. So, Rachelle and I took Keith on a tour of the BYU campus! SO MUCH FUN, right? I love BYU. We showed him all around the coolest buildings- like the library. I LOVE the library. And I told him about how it is the best thing in the world to sit in the Terrace and eat hot bread and honey butter from the Sugar 'N Spice at the Cougareat while you do sudoku from the Daily Universe newspaper and watch CNN! I don't know if he bought the whole idea, but I say don't knock it until you've tried it.




After the tour, we all had some getting ready to do. Me and Meg still needed to find masks for the MASQUERADE!!! And we only had a short period of time in which to find outfits and make ourselves gorgeous! We finally decided to make our own masks, and I found clothes at Stephanie's apartment. She practically has a clothing store in her closet. I love sisters who have clothes for me to steal. She even let me borrow these super hot green high heels! I left her house with three dress options and a couple pairs of shoes. I ended up in black with the green heels, and I decorated my mask with lots of lime green, teal, and blue glitter. The mask looks really amazing until you put it on, then it just looks silly. The top picture shows my first mask...

The masquerade was at a non-alcoholic club in Provo. When we got there, we got in line for the door. There were two lines: one line was for people who were on the guest list, and the other line was for stand-by. I was special enough to be on the guest list. When we got to the front of the line the bouncers checked my name, and I got to go in! Just inside the door they were selling WAY COOLER masks, so I bought one of those. It was only $4! And it is AWESOME! There were waiters carrying around trays of hors d'oeuvres and there was an open bar of yummy raspberry flavored drinks that I promise were 100% non-alcoholic. It was so fancy and cool! Everyone was all dressed up and had cool masks, and it was so crowded! There were a ton of people there. They had a DJ and we danced a lot, but the music wasn't that great. We went home around midnight, so we were only there for like an hour and a half, but it was so fun!

See, it was really awesome, because we had a blast, but we also have tons of pictures to scrapbook! And when you scrapbook something, you enjoy the actual act of scrapbooking, plus it's bundles of fun to look at later! It's a plus all around! (P.S. this is a plug for Pebbles. Everyone should scrapbook, and everyone should go to Pebbles.)

These last pictures are me and Kaitlin. She didn't go to the masquerade, so we took pictures on my computer with the masks on. They are like my faves. :)