Celebrating Adulthood...sort of

Yeah, yeah I know I'm only 4 months (to the day actually) late with this but oh well here it goes.

So for my 21st birthday (remember this is January, ha yeah it's been awhile) I woke up bright and early, I think about 5:00 am actually, to be a responsible student and finish my reading for my humanities class. After I finished that I got ready to go to class and trekked a mile to my first class at 8 am. I was in classes straight through until 1:00 at which time I spent the next couple of hours hurriedly trying to finish up the last of my grad school applications which were due Feb 1st. Well I had originally planned to get all of my applications done during Christmas break so I wouldn't have to worry about them after I came back from my cruise and had a ton of work to catch up on for school, ha oh well yeah that didn't quite happen the way I had hoped and planned. It didn't help that the night before when I was just putting the finishing touches on my letters of intent my sad little lap top died and I wasn't able to revive it. It was a good thing I had saved most of my grad school stuff on a flash drive, but before it died I didn't get a chance to save some of the changes I made on my letter of intent I was working on. So sadly I had to try my hardest to remember the changes I had made to my letter so that I could get it finished and in the mail so that it would reach the graduate department on time. Thankfully I got everything in the mail and was able to finish my assignment for my next class at 3:30.

My roommates had told me that once I got home that they were taking me somewhere for my birthday and to not make any plans WHATSOEVER for that evening. I'm not going to lie I was rather excited to do something that wasn't related to work, school, or grad school. So when I got home my amazing roommates had totally decked out the apartment in streamers, balloons, and a Happy Birthday sign. They refused to tell me where we were going or what we were doing for my birthday, so I had to just wait patiently as we drove to our destination. In my mind I had pictured the typical birthday out with the roommates dinner, maybe a movie and then possibly a cake which I was totally fine with. Well I have to admit I was rather surprised when we pulled up in front of Chuck E Cheese.

Ha only these two would have come up with an idea like this one.

They figured that most people celebrate adulthood on their 21st birthday, well instead they decided it would be fun to celebrate my youth and remind me that not matter how old I get it's ok to act like a kid.

We ordered this gigantic pizza (which we actually finished believe it or not!) and then of course had fun playing tons of games. After we had had our fair share of fun playing games, we went back to the apartment for cake and ice cream. They made the cutest little cake! It almost reminded me of a cake that would have come right out of Alice and Wonderland.

This was probably one of the most if not THE most memorable birthday I've ever had. It was definitely just what I needed after a very long and stressful day. Thanks Amy and Alisa, you guys are the best!

Cruisin Disney Style

Well this post is only about 4 months late, but hey here it is anyway... 

Last May when I drove down to visit some friends and family in Provo, my sis-in-law's family was also visiting that weekend. Her two little sisters were talking about this awesome cruise that they were going on in January and kept persistently trying to convince me to come. Their parents, Casey, and Savannah also tried to convince me to come. I was trying to be a responsible adult by saying that I had to save my money for school, especially as I was approaching my senior year at BYU and with grad school just around the corner. After they semi convinced me that I hadn't really ever done anything fun like a vacation while I was going to college and that I might as well have fun while I'm young. Well I finally caved and decided to join in on this awesome Disney Cruise that would be setting sail the first full week of classes my last semester at BYU. I figured that by this time all of my applications would be in to grad schools and if I maybe missed an assignment or two it wouldn't be that big of a deal. 

Well before I knew it, the 7-8 months had already passed and it was time for the cruise. It was actually a really nice because I had stayed in Provo and worked almost full time during Christmas break. Right when my roomies got back from break, I left for 10 days to go to California and Mexico. I felt like I hadn't seen them in forever! 

We left early Friday morning after the first few days of classes and drove all the way down to California, yeah it was a long drive so I figure I'd try to be a good student and do as much reading and homework as I could on the drive down. Well we stayed a couple of days at Savannah's house and then we left early Sunday morning to drive down to get on the boat. We had to wait until about 12 or 1 before they let us on, but when they did where did we go first.... THE FOOD of course. Let the weight gain begin! Not going to lie I was rather excited for all of the food I would be eating over the next week. To make myself a little bit better about all of the food I would be eating, I planned to get up every morning (or at least nearly every morning) to go run/work out in the gym with my brother and his father in law. So for about 4 or 5 days out of the 7 I woke up at 5:50 (yup I know you're probably thinking I was crazy for wanting to wake up that early during my vacation) and went and ran a few miles on the treadmill and then lifted a few weights. I have to say that the way they had the bikes and the treadmills set up though was so cool! It seriously felt like you were running on water because the treadmills were pushed up so close to this gigantic windows that looked over the ocean. 

Besides waking up at 5:50 all of those mornings being my favorite thing (haha not really, but it was pretty cool), I think my favorite part about the cruise would have to be the entertainment they had every night after dinner. It's Disney so of course they focused on the entertainment aspect of the cruise to the max. Probably my favorite show they did was this play/musical (again Disney) where they incorporated all of these classic Disney stories into one story. It was really really cool! 

My next favorite thing about the cruise was when we got off in Cabo and got to to snorkeling our first day off the ship. My sis-in-law and her sister's refused to come because they are all deathly afraid of fish, haha it was kind of funny. Even though the water was still a little cool with it being January and all, it was still so much fun! Our next day off of the ship in Cabo we decided that we were going to to parasailing! I was so excited, this was definitely one thing that I wanted to do while in Mexico. I was lucky and got to go up with my little cruise buddy, Savannah's little sister Abby. She was definitely a lot of fun to hang out with while on the ship. 

My cruise to Mexico was SO much fun and it was definitely worth the money to not only go on my very first cruise, but travel outside of the country for my first time, go to Mexico for the first time, go snorkeling and parasailing for the first time, and to take a break from school. It was definitely a nice little break before what was probably going to be the most stressful semester yet laying ahead of me. But all in all I had a ton of fun and plan on hopefully going on a cruise again someday. 

Here are a few pictures: 

Our lovely stateroom

This is where I spent my time during the wee hours of the morning

 Did I mention I ate escargot :D 

This was so cool! one of the rooms we ate in  was all black and white and gradually colors were added to the walls until at the end of out meal, it look like this .......

Me and my Madre :D 

My roommates for the cruise, Abby and Jamie

parasailing with my cruising buddy Abby

Me and my little cruise buddy Abby, she's such a cutie :D 

Friends from the OG

So sadly, in December I had to say goodbye to some pretty awesome people I work with. They all decided they were too good for the OG in Provo and left for better things. Well I guess I probably would have too if I had the option of going home to California, going to Romania for a semester, or going to Washington DC for a semester. Anyway in celebration of these wonderful girls going away we had a night full of fun. We started out with dinner at CPK aka California Pizza Kitchen, we actually had quite a few people from work show up too.

Dinner was pretty much amazing. After dinner though a few of us wanted to go to this place called Spark... k well in case you already scrolled down and saw the pictures below, I must explain myself... yes this place is a "lounge" as you might want to call it, but of course being in Provo, Utah aka Mormonville USA of course this "lounge" is most definitely a NON-ALCOHOLIC lounge! Not to mention that at least three of us in those pictures are underage anyway. I'm not going to lie, it was a little weird chilling on these very trendy couches sipping drinks that were supposed to be imitations of cocktails. My drink was pretty yummy though.

It was definitely a very fun night, full of lots of laughs and a lot of great memories. I will definitely miss these guys at work! They were pretty much some of the most amazing people I've ever worked with :D 

Ward Christmas Party

Yeah so I know this is a really really really late post, but here it is anyway. So for our ward Christmas party we had dinner up the canyon at Aspen Grove. It was so pretty! It was in this big lodge and we were surrounded by snow (which was an amazing feat in itself seeing how we haven't had any snow at all it seems like this year). The dinner was super yummy and we had a short Christmas program afterward. Alisa and Matt sang Believe from Polar Express and it was beautiful! After the party a few of us went back to Brian's apartment and watched the Grinch... probably only my favorite Christmas movie of all time! :D

Tressa Come's to Visit = AWESOMENESS!

So I know I am only almost a month late, but Tress came to visit me a few weeks back and it was a BLAST! It was exactly what I needed! It was so much fun to see her, seeing as how I hadn't seen her since I had moved back down to school in August! We went to Sammy's for lunch and then went to Breaking Dawn later that afternoon... yeah and surprisingly it was lot better than I thought it was going to be, by far the best Twilight movie thus far. After we got done watching the movie, we went window shopping for a couple hours at the Provo Mall where of all places we ran into another friend from little Burley, Idaho. Lo and behold we saw Kirsten and her cute little baby boy Greyson. We got to chat with her a bit, continued our window shopping and then as random and maybe even pathetic as this may be, we went to Olive Garden for dinner (yeah I know you're probably thinking "don't you get enough of that place during the week when you're working?" but hey it was actually really good). After dinner we ended up getting tickets for the BYU football game and went for only the first half, simply because it was freezing and we were kicking the other team's trash. I was so happy that Tress was able to come visit me, she was such a trooper, putting up with sleeping on an extra hard bed and driving all the way home with her niece.  Tress you're awesome! Love ya buddy can't wait for you to come back down so we can hang out again soon!

(yeah if you couldn't tell, totally laughing in this picture) 

Halloween Fun

So I have always loved corn mazes, but I've always been way too cheap to pay to go to the ones down here in Utah simply because they charge and arm and a leg for admission.  But luckily Cornbelly's was offering a discount for BYU students for one night so I bunch of people from my ward decided it would be way fun to get a bunch of people together and go. Before we went though I was lucky and got to take a Humanities test and then went to go pick our a Halloween costume with Alisa so of course we headed to DI! :D I had no idea what to be, but Alisa had this fabulous idea... 

Yeah I know what you're thinking, yeah we dressed up as toddlers. Ha this was totally Alisa's idea and it was awesome! So I felt kinda retarded but I ended up dressing up and going to Cornbelly's with my very pink pjs and teddy bear with a bunch of people from my Ward...

Cornbelly's was so much fun! There was so much stuff to do like a hay ride and a bunch of different mazes, one of which was a straw maze where the entire thing was pitch black, it was kinda creepy but really cool! 

On Halloween we had a ward party for FHE where everyone dressed up in costumes and we ate food and played games, it was actually really fun. There were some very awesome costumes, but particularly I think this guy's was my favorite...

If you couldn't guess, yes this guy indeed dressed up like Joseph Smith and the scary part is that he actually looks a lot like him! Ha his costume was kinda an accident which made it that much funnier, then again only Ryan would think to dress up as Joseph Smith...

Here is our lovely FHE family Halloween party picture 

Honestly I think this has been by far my favorite FHE family! :D These guys are so much fun! 

Oh the Humanities!

So this year I am taking a humanities class and so far it has gone a lot better than I originally expected. The class only required 2 midterms, final, take home assignments, and 2 papers. Doesn't sound too horrible and surprisingly it hasn't been, that is until I got slammed with studying for midterms for other classes and the due date for my first paper snuck up on me. The nice thing about the two papers, is that my teacher said we could hand in whichever one we wanted first as long as we completed both papers. I thought this was a good thing, until I had the most difficult time trying to decide which one I was going to do. After what seemed like hours of contemplating, I finally decided to do my creative works paper and just  get it over with so that I wouldn't have to deal with it later in the semester. So the only option that was listed that even seemed doable for me, was to miraculously find a vase that was shaped similar to ancient Greek style vase and paint it in some style of ancient Greek pottery. So of course I start hunting for my vase Saturday morning when my paper/project was due the next coming Thursday. I knew that finding a pot might take some time and some serious hunting at DI or Savers, not to mention how long it would take me to actually paint it once I found it.  Miraculously after walking into DI I found my vase within two minutes of being in the store. I couldn't believe no one else hadn't already found it and used it for their project (seeing as how my teacher gave our whole class the hint of looking at DI and savers). Let me just say I was thrilled I had found this vase, but I was even more sad because this vase was already painted in the style and era that I was planning on painting it for. Clearly someone had used this vase for the same project a semester or two before.

I was so sad that I had to paint over what was already on it and as badly as this may sound it did cross my mind just to keep most of it and change only a few details here and there, but of course that wouldn't be very honest so as hard as it was for me, I went to Michael's bought some terracotta colored acrylic paint and began repainting my vase. Yes, pictured to the left is the lovely vase I had to paint over and yes I took a picture of it because I felt it was very worthy of being remembered (I mean it's rather detailed if you ask me).  It took quite a few coats of paint to cover all of the figures in black, especially all of the little llamaish looking figures. At first I thought that this vase would take, at the longest, only a few hours to paint over it and paint all of my figures onto it... OH BOY WAS I WRONG!! So after the first 6 hours painting my vase, I came out with I thought was decent, considering my lack of artistic abilities (especially when it comes to painting)... this is finished product...

I know this may not look like I spent 5 or 6 hours painting this vase, but I seriously did and you best believe it was all freehand! Let me tell ya, this was the most artistic I have ever been required to be in my life and it was very difficult trying to make my vase look like it belonged somewhat to the Geometric Era of ancient Greek pottery.  After I sat back and looked at my vase, I knew that it was still very plain, but I was seriously ready to just be done with it and write my paper. Well here was my mistake, I probably should have written my paper and painted my vase in response to the research that was required for my paper. I ended up including a few artistic characteristics that weren't exactly related to this period of pottery. Over the next few days I spent hours looking for sources to write my paper I realized that after my paper was written I was going to have to change a few of the shapes on my vase and add more detail.  So after what was a total of probably 12 or more hours just strictly dedicated to painting this vase this was the finished product!

I know you're probably saying "that seriously took you another 5 or 6 hours to make the changes you made?" and to that I answer "YOU BEST BELIEVE IT!" Believe me I wasn't expecting it to take that long either, but it seriously did, painting freehand with a small brush is very difficult and can get rather tedious when you are repeating the same figure over and over again. I knew that my vase before I made the changes to it was too plain and probably wouldn't impress my teacher as much as if I added more color and intricate patterns than I had originally.  I can honestly say that I spend more time painting that vase than I did the writing actual paper and doing the research for it.  In the end my diligence in pottery painting paid off when I got my paper back and my teacher gave me positive remarks regarding my vase.  I may not be an artist but this is definitely the best work I have every put forth in my artistic endeavors.