Happy Belated Mother's Day

As luck would have it Sam and I got married the day before Mother's Day so this means our anniversary is right close to or right on Mother's Day every year. We've been gone for Mother's Day for the past 3 years to celebrate our wedding and our anniversaries. This year we were on a cruise so I just wanted to give a shout out to my mom and mother in law. My mom has taught me so much that has made the transition into marriage so easy. Cooking and sewing/quilting are some of my favorite things to do now. She's a really hard worker and is always there for all of us kids. I love how much our friendship has grown over the last few years. Just wanted to let her know I love her lots! Marle, my mother in law, is one of the sweetest people I know. She too is an amazing mother and it astounds me that she gave birth to and raised 9 kids. She's such an awesome, caring person. Wanted to let her know I love her too! Yay Mother's Day!

Looking Forward

I just wanted to jot down a few things that I'm looking forward to in the next few months:
- Graduation: Tomorrow and Saturday are my graduation ceremonies! I picked up my tassel and medallion today. I am graduating Magna Cum Laude. That means my GPA is between 3.6 and 3.8 if I remember right.
- Summer School: This may be confusing but I'm going walk at graduation this weekend then finish the last few credits I need this summer. I'm taking Nutrition, Principles of Effective Parenting and Human Nutrition. Each class is online so I'm really going to have to push myself to study every day. Another reason summer school makes me happy is that I got a grant for it so its free school and since I'm taking 9 credits we still get scholarship housing for the summer so no paying rent till August. :)
- Our Cruise!: We're going on a 7 day Caribbean cruise in 9 days!! Its our wedding anniversary trip and a celebration of my graduation. Neither of us have been on a cruise before so we can hardly wait! We're going to the Grand Cayman Islands, Honduras, Beliz and Cozumel, Mexico. Keep and eye on that countdown in the upper right corner of this page. :D
- Snowbird: We may only be able to stay for a day or two since Sam has a weird work schedule but we always enjoy our time with his family up there. :)
- Finding a Job within My Field: I'm not totally excited for the job search but I'm excited to look for a job where I can use the skills I learned while in college. Not sure where I'm going to apply but odds are we'll be out of Cedar relatively soon. :)
- Reading for Pleasure: I love to read but I feel I've been reading far too many textbooks as of late. Time to get some fun reads in. Hit me with your suggestions.

- Selling Textbooks: I don't know why this gives me such pleasure but it does. I make almost exactly what I paid for my textbooks online as opposed for getting $10 from the bookstore. I haven't been bringing in any money for a few months now so this will feel good to contribute a little something to our bank account. :)

- Being More Housewife-y: I love to cook and bake and do stuff for Sam and now that I'll be out of school pretty much permanently I can do more stuff for him. Lots of fun recipes to try out there. :)

- Cutting My Hair: I'm cutting my hair on Monday. I need suggestions asap! The only thing I'm thinking of doing is cutting to be like Oprah's hairstyle which has lots of big layers but I don't know if it will look good on me. Please send me suggestions! I'm pretty sure I'm taking 6 inches off though!

Any ways, just wanted to make a list of things to remind myself to be happy and to count my blessings. Happy days are ahead!

The Stupid Bowl written by Sam

My dad, is the smartest, strangest, most talented, simplest, yet most complicated man alive. I'm sure of it. Conflicted you say? well, yes. But many famous people shared such conflicting attributes: Einstein, Newton, Howard Hughes... And with such conflicting characteristics also came the occasional bursts of genius. I submit that the following idea that came from my father was that of the genius nature. But you can decide for yourself.

This idea has the potential to change, not only football, but ALL sports around the world FOREVER and likewise has the potential to drastically increase sports sales and fan base. The brilliant theory is this: "The Stupid Bowl". It's like the Super Bowl in which the two best teams of the year are competing for the title of "Best Team of the Year". However, in this case the two worst teams of the year would be fighting to avoid the prize of "Worst Team of the Year". Winners of the stupid bowl are actually the losers.

I believe that the the teams in the Stupid Bowl would fight with double the gusto of the teams in the Super Bowl. I really think that the desire to avoid being the biggest loser is greater than the desire to be the biggest winner. And what a game it would be!

Think about it! Rather than watch two equally gifted teams we could watch two equally stupid teams doing all they can just scrambling to survive, just so that they don't have to be deemed the Stupid Bowl winner, which would actually be the loser. Who wants to watch the Colts and the Saints when we could watch the Lions and the Bills?Imagine all the excitement we have been missing out on with those professionally trained teams. At the Stupid Bowl we would have double the penalties, double the fumbles, interceptions, fights, and double the running the wrong way to the opponents end zone.

And this just begins with football. This would spread to soccer, basketball, table-tennis, figure skating. . . It gets better the more I think about it. Limitless potential!

Who's with me? If anything it would be an opportunity to see some of the strongest, biggest, and most over-paid men red in the face, embarrassed, humbled. Heck I bet we could make em cry! I don't know about you, but I love to see a good millionaire cry.

Dad, you are brilliant!

Mad Scientist

So, I have no idea why I'm doing this but I felt that it would be fun to compile a list of everything I've dissected over the years. Oh the "fun" that we biology majors have. Haha.

8th Grade:
Watched my science teacher dissect a fetal pig

9th Grade:
Dissected a fetal pig pretty much by myself. The girls in my group wouldn't touch it. We got the perfect pig though. Other groups got hairy, oozy piggies and that was ever so gross.

10th Grade:
Didn't dissect anything but my hand in chemistry lab. Shattered a glass tube right in to my palm. It was the first lab of the year. Great way to start things. Got me out of PE for a while. I do believe that was the only time my chemistry teacher was nice to me. Curse her.

11th Grade:
Dissected a cow eye and a sheep heart for AP Biology. Those were probably my favorite ones. Cow's eyes are gigantic.

12th Grade:
I don't think we did any dissections but I did have to job shadow 3 people in fields that I found interesting. I chose a podiatrist, an orthopedic surgeon and a maxiofacial surgeon. At the podiatrist's office I watched him remove ingrown toenail after ingrown toenail. One little 3 year old girl had to be held down by 2 nurses and her mother because she was so afraid of needles they couldn't numb her for the procedure. :( I had to leave for that one. I couldn't stand to hear her scream. At the orthopedic surgeon's office I got to see way more old people butts than I wanted because he was doing post-op check ups on their hip replacements. At the maxiofacial surgeon's office I watched him remove wisdom teeth and heard the teeth crunching out of the jaw bone. I had just gone to the dentist that morning and was still terribly numb from the worst cavity filling experience I've ever had. Not a happy day.

Freshman Year of College:
Made our own yogurt and spliced a glow gene from bacteria in to the DNA of bacteria and it made them glow. No dissections though.

Sophomore Year of College:
No dissections. Just trying to get all my credits done for my Associates.

Junior Year of College:
Dissected a black and white rat we named Oreo. Again, my lab partners wouldn't touch it so I did the whole thing. We dissected a starfish that I seriously couldn't handle. I didn't think it would be gross but oh my goodness I could barely bring myself to touch it. I'm not a fan of things that come from the sea unless they're marine mammals.

Senior Year of College:
So far just a lamprey which is another disgusting thing from the sea. I just dissected it yesterday and it cut like soft string cheese. I'm glad I could ruin that food for all of you. But in this same class the docket is full of dissections. Here's the list: salamander, rat, sheep heart, dogfish (a kind of shark), sheep kidney, and sheep brain. Oh and we have to examine cadavers that another class will be dissection. NOT excited for that. I thought I could get through my whole college experience without having to do cadavers but they got me my last semester. :(

For those of you that are not biology majors I hope you've enjoyed this extensive list of my schooling experiences. I decided not to bore you with the labs that we had to draw phylogenies or draw things in jars, or sticking things in tubes and put them in machines and such. Biology: Not for those that get grossed out easily. And I have to let you all know I cut myself on a microscope the first or second week of class. Leave it to me to find the one sharp corner on a microscope. I definitely deserve a Bachelor's in Biology. Ha

I'm out.

Whit

Happy Belated Holidays!

We had a very eventful and fun holiday season. We spent Christmas Eve with our friends Spencer and Kelli and we went and looked at Christmas lights around town even though the car windows wouldn't de-fog for anything. Haha. We went back to our place and played Rock Band on our Wii for a while. Christmas morning Sam got home from work at 6 a.m. and we jumped right in the car and drove down to my family's house in St. George. We joined everyone in seeing what Santa had brought then we all sat down to my family's traditional Christmas breakfast of green pancakes with strawberry syrup and whipped cream and green eggs and ham. SO yummy. :) After that we all sat around and opened all the gifts under the tree. The gift I received that was my favorite was a telephoto lens for my camera from Sam. He totally surprised me! I really really love it. I think Sam's favorite present was the new albums of Blue October and Pearl Jam that I got him. We both really love the game Wii Sports Resort that we got too. After all the present were opened Sam went upstairs to get some shut eye and I hung out with my family. We played a lot of Wii Sports Resort and I took my sister and her dog to the dog park. When Sam got up we just kept the fun going and spent time with my grandma, step grandpa and my uncle who came over for lunch. We drove home that evening so Sam could go to work.

The next day when Sam woke up we got in the car and drove up to SLC to spend the weekend with Sam's family. We hung out with our friends that night and stayed up way late but we loved every second. I got to drive my father in law's brand new black '99 Corvette over to our friend's house. FUN! The next morning we had breakfast with our friends and watched a bunch of episodes of Modern Family which is hilarious! We went back to Sam's parents house and got ready for family pictures. I'm so excited to get them back. :) We all went back and had Christmas dinner and all the couples did gift exchanges. It was really fun to have all of Sam's family together. They're awesome. The next day we spent the day shopping and found Sam some jeans and me some new tops. We enjoyed dinner at Applebee's together and then headed home.

For New Year's Sam had to work so I went down to my family's house and spent a few days with my family partying as much as married people do. I played Mexican Train with my parents and sisters and got to see a lot of people from the neighborhood I grew up in. One of the best things is I got to go to Costco with my mom. Its the greatest place on earth. :)

We had a great holiday and are very blessed to spend with both our families and can't wait to do it again. Happy Holidays to all!!

Whit

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

SCHOOL IS OUT!!!!! I'm doing a little happy dance in my head seeing I'm at the school library and there are other humans present in front of which I could embarrass myself. I'm so happy the semester is over! I checked out two new books from the library on Sat for a nice leisurely read over the break and I'm less than 100 pages to the end of the first book. Its been lovely. Another reason I am elated is that I will be graduating in May with my Bachelors Degree!I didn't think I'd be able to do it but my advisor figured everything out and so I'll be taking 15 credits next semester and finishing my last 4 credits in the summer. Everyone is invited to graduation if you want to come. I know they're terribly exciting affairs . . . wait, no they're not. You're all still invited though. :) Now the problem is knowing what I want to do as far as a career . . . . haven't figured that part out yet. Hopefully I will have it figured out by August 2010. Wish me luck!! :D

P.S. Couches will be getting to my house this Saturday thanks to my awesome brother. We've been sitting on a pile of quilts in place of a couch for almost a week. Not the most comfortable thing ever but I am burning more calories having to expend more energy getting up and down from the pile. :)

Whit

Happy Birthday To Us!

Another year has come and gone. Sam is now 25 and I am 22. My birthday was on Friday and his was on Monday. This year we agreed to get each other new couches as gifts instead of little gifts. We bought the couches off the KSL Classifieds over a month ago from a guy in Orem. They are brown microfiber. We got a couch and a loveseat. They are sitting out in my in-law's carport waiting to be picked up and brought down to us. The White's offered to get them for us this weekend so I'm pretty excited. :) Most of my family stopped by on Sunday and had birthday dinner and cake with us. I made my mom's awesome Cheesy Potato Soup (which I will be posting on my food blog later) and I made Sam's mom's lemon poppyseed cake for dessert. Both were divine! My family got me a curling iron and Sam a new pair of Levi's jeans. Practical, but its what we asked for. Haha. We went to Milford for a friend's wedding on Saturday and had a great time with our friends. All in all our birthdays were a success. :)

In other news, it is finals week and that means I'm so close to being done for the semester I can taste it! I have a psychology and a mammalogy final tomorrow and an evolution final on Friday then it will be over. I'm getting my classes figured out for next semester and it looks like I won't be graduating till this time next year. Oh well, free rent is always nice.

Whit