i don’t eat bugs unless i am wakeboarding

So this week has been one for the books!  Last weekend I was thinking how busy my week was coming up with assignments and such.  I had no idea that I would be able to see Eric in Utah!  I was so glad when I had a lot of my assignments mostly completed when I decided to spend lots of time with him!  He was here to recruit for the company he works for.  The Bain kids (including Jake and Melissa who are Spurlocks) met up for dinner at Melissa’s for dinner and it was scrumptious.  I tried to visit Eric at the career fair but that proved difficult to the crowds around all the booths.  Instead I attended part of their information meeting where they talked about the logistics of the job.  Cecilie and I went with him and his fellow worker to Tucanos for dinner after their hard day of questions and answers.  Tucanos is so good and I always overeat when I go there!  It’s worth every extra calorie (coming from a dietetics major…)  Yesterday I was able to come up to Lehi for a nice dinner at Cafe Rio with Eric and the Spurlocks.  I am in a different league with them as they are married and either have or expecting kids, but its interesting to listen in on their conversations.

Today I thought I would start on the work for next week when I ran into my friend who just happened to be going boating and wanted to invite me.  Who says no to that?  Definitely not me!!  (again, I’m serious about fitting in all the fun I can into life!)  Within an hour we were unloading at the Provo dock of Utah Lake.  I’ve been water skiing 2 times before, and neither days were very successful.  I was a little nervous because the closest I have come to a successful run was getting my legs at a 90 degree angle above the water and deciding the lake enema is not worth it only to fall.  Not exactly the most exciting days, but loved them nonetheless!  I warned Braden of my shortcomings and it didn’t seem to matter to him, so come I did!  It proved to be a much better day than any other on the water!  I wakeboarded for the first time in my life and it was SO fun!  I had 2 runs and got up each time I tried with ease!  They complemented me on my abilty to learn so easily, but I attribute it to my many failed attempts at waterskiing.  I got so I could go over the wake, but I wasn’t daring enough to catch any good air.  There were so many bugs around when we were stopped, and they were huge bugs!  I think they’re called something like mulch, but I know that’s not right.  So when I was talking to someone one flew right into my mouth as I was breathing and I swallowed it!!  I hope I don’t get West Nile Virus from it…  Here are some of the fun pictures.  Some of them are from the other people that went, but are very noteworthy from my point of view!

around the world in 2 days

The weekend after school started I went with a few good friends to Bryce Canyon!  (I told you I was trying to fit in as much fun as I could and I was pretty serious!)  We were all so excited to go that directions were a little of a sidetracking detail, so I wrote down what I could from the website before we left.  I had never been there, but I was the designated driver so I knew I couldn’t let down.  After we went through Penguitch we started this game where you say that the next song will be a certain sort of fortune (it’s a fun game if you’re ever looking for fun car games and you have an iPod with shuffle).  The game was so fun that we ended up missing our turn and made it to about 15 miles of the mouth of Zion National Park!!  That’s great, except that it’s about 50 miles too far!!  So we had to turn around the 50 miles and go back to Bryce and we eventually made it around midnight.

A few of us woke up very early the next morning to see the sunrise over Sunset Point (haha, a little counter intuitive).  It was spectacular!  We drove in at night so I had NO idea what to expect, and the shadows that the sun made when it came up were undescribable.  I hope the pictures do it justice.

What a beautiful world we live in!  So much that almost every person we met was from another country touring around the US to see the sites that you can’t see in Europe.  Wow!

The rock formations left behind from erosion look like people and are named Hoodoos. 

Here’s the group I went with (Nick, Christina, Sarah, Rachel, Sabra, and me):

By the way, I’m having a really hard time narrowing down the million pictures I have to make it not boring… so bear with me!

This is Rock Towers, or something like that.  We climbed right up in the hole in the rock.  It was a pretty steep climb with slick rock but it was very worth it!

Here is one of me on the top of one of the steep climbs out of the slot canyons.  Please notice the absolutely BLUE sky!

We saw so many different kinds of landscape!  In the midst of all this dessert and flash floods we also saw a river and a waterfall!

What an opportunity to live in the middle of all these landscapes for a short time while I am in UT!  I can’t believe how I see beautiful Rocky Mountains in my background and live just a short drive from red rock and slot canyons!

celebrate good times, come on!

School has been sooo busy that I haven’t had time to do anything! Here’s a little update on what I’ve been up to:

Before Labor day my family got together to celebrate still loving each other!  Eric and Jen and Co took a grand tour around Idaho and Wyoming to visit the Hoffman family (Jen’s fam) and came to UT for a few days after.  During their UT stay, mom and dad thought it was only right to fly out to see all the kids.  Another incentive was the annual Eric-and-fam-are-in-town Hanks family reunion.  It is so nice to know that I will always have this amazing family!  You’re not getting rid of me even if you ever wanted to   The day after the formal reunions Eric came to Melissa and Jake’s house to work on their basement.  It was fun to see dad and Eric completely in their element at Jake’s becon call (although I don’t know who was the cheif and who the Indians were).  I know I have a good picture of them hammering the wall up, but I don’t know where it is…  This is a good one of dad though.

After the festivities were over, school started and it was time to get very busy.  This semester I am taking a lot of dietetics classes as well as a tennis class, so it’s really a fun semester!  Fun=so many major group projects so that it’s difficult to keep them all straight, and finding as much time as I can find to fit fun in!  Football games are included in this “find time for fun” time and thanks to a friend I have been able to get into 2 of the 3 football games!  BYU really has a good football team, and has since I have been going to school here.  It makes the games so much more fun to watch when they win! Here’s a picture of Cecilie and I at the game with our friend Torey.

I also got to go to the Utah County State Fair with my best friend Erin and her husband Jeremy.  She is due in January, so it was fun to see her coming along!  We saw an interesting reptile show and I was glad he didn’t let any of them run wild!  We also saw this HUGE cow!  almost 7 feet tall and 7 years old.  They let it eat whatever he wants because it’s just huge.  Jeremy took a picture next to it to show it’s enormity.