Swinging in the SKY

I didn't get any pictures of Danielle going because I ran to get the camera... Sorry about that.

The pictures are a bit blurry. So if you want to see them one by one clearer click here!

Extreme Make-over "Room Edition"

For my birthday, my mom asked me what I wanted and the biggest thing on my mind was a new dresser. I've had the same dresser since I was 4 years old. Over the years, I have grown and so have my clothes. I was getting to the point that I could hardly fit socks and underwear in it anymore. We started looking on KSL and in the process decided that my whole room was ready for a make-over as well.As you can tell, the bright green and clutter really needed to take a hike. I didn't realize how bad it was until I was trying to fit all of my stuff from school back into my already small room. (I do feel that I should clarify a little bit. The mess shown in this picture was a result of moving stuff back in from my apartment and moving stuff into D.I bags.)We looked and looked, argued, made a decision, sat on the fence if that was really what I wanted, then looked some more, tried to figure out how to do it, and finally we just did it! I found a way cute dresser and after a long weekend of working on it, Shaylee and I began the big bedroom makeover.This is my new dresser! I LOVE IT!! I have so so so much room! All of my clothes fit so nicely, there is plenty of extra space! I can now fit all of my t-shirts into ONE drawer, WITH enough room for more shirts! It started out white, and after a lot of sanding, glazing, re-sanding, and glazing we ended up with my favorite part of my room! This picture does not do it justice! It really is way way cute!! When I graduated high school, my grandma made me a quilt. I've had the quilt on my bed since then and so when I was choosing a color scheme I knew I wanted to be able to still use the quilt. I needed to tone down A LOT after my bright green, but I still wanted something more than just white. Once again, the picture isn't the best representation of the color. It is a light pastel yellow. and it makes my closet-sized room look HUGE!! Which is such a huge bonus!!

Obviously I still have yet to hang my magnet board, but it will go up if my dad ever gets around to it. We also antiqued my old nightstand to match my new dresser. I love it, it doesn't even look like the old one. And I can't make up my mind on which design, but hopefully I will soon. I want to put a vinyl design above my bed, possibly coming from the corner. I have looked around and found so many cute ones and I just can't make a decision!

My Day With Nixon!

Last Thursday I got to watch this handsome boy. I will not lie, I was a little nervous. I've never been nervous about babysitting, but Nixon is a HUGE momma's boy. So he has never let me hold him or play with him at family events PLUS he was shipped place to place for a few days and mine was the last stop for him so I worried he'd be so sick of new faces. BUT, he was great! The day was so much fun! And he didn't even get too sad when my Aunt Connie dropped him off that morning.

He loved Shaylee's fish Pascal and spent a lot of the day sitting at the counter watching him swim around. (Kylee, have you ever thought about buying a fishy?) Sadly I didn't get a single picture of him with the fish.

It was still a little chilly outside so we weren't able to go to the park so I grabbed the crayons and a coloring book. Nixon colored for maybe one minute, but he wasn't bored yet. He decided that the crayons were a much more fun toy when they were "hiding". He would sit with on the crayons and whenever I could see one poking out I would try to steal it. This was very entertaining for the both of us. He was laughing so hard!

It finally warmed up and we went to the park. I wasn't expecting there to be too many kids. I was SO wrong. Both the local preschools were celebrating their last day of school and the first good day. So we were with about 30 other kids. Nixon kept up with all of them though.

He was so determined to climb this little slide. He would make it about one step farther than he is in the picture and would slide right back down.

Nixon braved this slide by himself the first time. He climbed all the way up and went down with out a problem. I think it might have scared him a little bit though because the second (and last time) he wanted to go I had to go up with him and help him get in and go.
On our way home, Nixon wouldn't sit in his stroller. He loved my neighbors fence and climbed on it all the way down their yard. (This was something I used to do everyday growing up, so I just sat back and went down memory lane for a sec while he played.)

ONE more thing happened though. One thing that I did not get a picture of and I am so sad, but it was a moment of panic so I wasn't able to.

I was starting some Mac-n-cheese for us to have some lunch and decided to cut us up an apple. He was sitting by the fish, I gave him his half and turned around to cut the core out of my half. The next thing I heard was a PLOP and Nixon's little voice yelling "wahoo". I instantly turned around AND I'm thinking you can guess what I found..

Fishy was now swimming around with four little apples. Shaylee LOVES this fish and if I were to let the thing die on my watch I would likely be removed from the family. So I probably looked like a crazy lady to Nixon as I ran around the house trying to find her fish stuff so that I could put him in his cleaning bowl.

I was able to finally get everything handled and we were all good. I felt so bad though because I think he knew that something bad was happening. He just sat at the counter and watched me with very sad eyes. We ate our lunch and he was back to being happy though.

A little background on why this probably happened...

We were eating fruit snacks next to Pascal's bowl early that day and Nixon would hold up a fruit snack to the bowl and we would make munching sounds.

And when we got back from the park he was doing the same thing with his sippy cup.

He was just wanting to share :)

Thanks for letting me watch your little boy! I loved it!

Another Chapter!

In the next two days I will finish up my first year as a Wolverine. This semester has been one of the hardest, most time-consuming, yet rewarding one that I have had so far in my college experience!

As I look back on the year, I decided to share a few things about SUU and UVU. Things I loved and things I don't care for too much at both of them.

I'll start off with SUU....

Things I Miss About SUU

• 
  
  The Fitness Center


• 
  
  Institute


• 
  
  My Roommates


• 
  
  The small, but close campus


• 
  
  My decent apartment


• 
  
  Getting into sporting events for free!

Things I don't miss about SUU

• 
  
  The long drive home


• 
  
  The tearful drives back


• 
  
  Parking tickets


• 
  
  Spending Saturdays SOLO

Now onto UVU!

Things I have loved about UVU! (for the 2010-2011 year)

• 
  
  The closeness of HOME!!!


• 
  
  The Education Program


• 
  
  My Cohort


• 
  
  My job


• 
  
  Rooming with JAM!!!


• 
  
  Working out with Stacey


• 
  
  Attempting to become a BYU fan


• 
  
  (it didn't work, I still could care less about the "Holy War")


• 
  
  Free parking!

Things I haven't really cared for at UVU...

• 
  
  The HUGE-SPREADOUT campus


• 
  
  Having to pay to get into sporting events


• 
  
  There isn't a "school-spirit" feeling


• 
  
  NASTY apartment situation


• 
  
  Not having a good (but cheap) fitness center

It is crazy to me that I am finishing up my second year of college. Somedays it feels like it was forever ago that I was out on the gym floor dancing at the high school, other days it feels like it was just a few months ago.

These past two years have been full of ups and downs, but I have enjoyed the journey. I am excited to keep going with school and then hopefully start into a teaching job!

And most of all......

I AM EXCITED TO HAVE MOVED BACK HOME!!!

Whoops...

So I've been crazy busy with school and work the last month and I am a total slacker on finishing off the cruise blogs. So I'm just going to wrap it up with some pictures and call it good. I will try to get back on the roll here now with the semester wrapping up, but I'm not promising much.

These first few pictures are of our second day at Cabo,

the rest are from the last night.

Parte TRES!! (Yeah, I'm learning some Spanish!)

Our first Port of Call was in Puerta Vallarta. We went on the "Extreme Canopy Adventure", and it was muy fun! Puerta Vallart was beautiful! When we first got off the ship, we found our tour guide dude, then headed to find los banos. We took a few pictures then said goodbye to Donna, Ralph, Ralph, and dad.

We met back up with the rest of the tour group and they took us to a speed boat. We road the speed boat over to a small city off of Puerta Vallarta called Boca de Tomatlan. After a 25 minute speed boat ride, we loaded into bright yellow army trucks. When the guy was asking for group numbers, we told him we had 9 and he was stunned. He instantly started calling us the trouble makers, and the nickname stuck the rest of the day with everyone that helped us.

We were not able to take our cameras on the actual adventure because there is so many things that we are doing. It would be so hard to have to worry about personal belongings. After a quick training, we all got set in our harnessess, then headed off to find our mules. We were trained on how to ride these mules, and they reminded us that these mules are spanish mules... not American ones. They do not understand "Oh, Oh, Oh." or "Whoa!", but they must be kissed. That is how they will know to go. After our mule ride, we were officially introduced to our tour crew. We got very lucky with our group! They were awesome!! ... not to mention, all of the boys were very good-looking... But they were funny, and made us all feel safe and brave as we took each leap off the edge. After 10 zip-lines, 1 assisted repel, and 1 free-fall repel, we took a short hike back to the starting point.

We road the army truck back down into town we met back up with the starter of the "Trouble-Makers" nickname, Thomas Cruizo (directly translated, Tom Cruise.)

As we left Boca de Tomatlan, everyone was telling us to keep an eye out for whales because this would be when we would see them. I wasn't really thinking much about it. I was just trying to hold on. Next thing I know, there are 2 whales right by us! They were so extremely close. The boat driver told us it was a mom and child. They were huge humpback whales!! They shut off the boat and we floated out there with these two whales for what felt like forever. It was way neat, but I have never been that scared in my life! I was terrified! So I didn't get very good pictures because I had my head burried between my knees and was holding my camera in the air just shooting away. I told my mom multiple times to take the camera, but she was so fascinated she didn't even hear me.

The boys all loved Marta, she was one of our crew members. She road the army truck and speed boat back with us to Puerta Vallarta and these boys were in heaven the whole time! She is way out of their league though... She has two kids, both teenagers.

Mexican Riviera Part DOS!!

Sorry it has taken so long, I have been crazy busy!

But here is some more of our trip :)

We got on the ship on Sunday the 19th, and of course headed straight for ice cream and lunch! Everybody else had the same idea, so we decided to eat our first ice cream of the trip while waiting in line for food. :) This was a first of many!

The second night, dinner was Formal Night. We all got glitz up (well as much glitz as we can), and headed off for pictures and food. All thirteen of us got to sit at the same table for dinner. We had the best Head-Waitress and Waiter! Wee-Wee and Glenn, they were awesome!! We would all just joke around with each other the whole trip, even when we'd see eachother in the Lido.

Trust Jaylon to come up with a good song for the boys to sing. They sang this to us over and over and over and over again throughout the whole trip. This video is from the original debut of the song, so it is still funny and great entertainment!

Fun days at sea equalled out to Mini Golf, Food, Cards, Mini Golf, Trivia, The Marriage Show, Trivia, Listening to the Good-Lookin' Jamaican guy serenade us, Ping-Pong, Mini Golf, Food, and Karaoke Kim!!... I think that about covers it.

One of many games of Mini Golf... No one ever won, we would get bored of keeping score by like the third whole. At one point we tried to go Older Kids against Young'ns but that only lasted a few wholes too.
It was pretty cool that we got to see a lot while we were out in the ocean. One day while playing mini golf, we passed a barge, one day we say this "pirate ship", we saw a few other cruise ships, and one morning the parental units were able to see a bunch of whales and dolphins swimming along side of us.