A Gay Adventure

Does anyone else remember in like, 5th grade, when people started only having one earring, but one side meant you were gay and the other side just meant you only wanted to be wearing one earring? Well, I never knew which side it was, and everyone I ever thought to ask didn't know either, until today! I was sitting in the physics office at ISU and a kid came in to give the secretary some receipts for equipment and I noticed he had one earring on the right side! He seemed like a nice enough kid, so I asked him if he knew which side it was that meant they were gay. He said it was the right side, so I asked him if he was gay, and he said yes, and then he said that he thought it was kind of an older culture thing and that he didn't think people thought it was that big of a deal which side it was on, but that the only people he had seen with an earring on the right side he knew to be gay.
It doesn't even matter, and it doesn't affect my life even in the slightest way, but I've been wondering that since I first heard about it at 11 years old, and I'm glad that 11 years later, I finally know the real answer!

Ice Cream

Ice cream is so good--especially in the summertime. I was on Gourmet.com and saw all these recipes for ice cream and decided to make one! My choice was Grandpa Roy's Caramel Ice Cream. It was super good. I actually got to make my own caramel by melting sugar and salt together! It was super good. There are so many different kinds of ice cream flavors. We just got a hold of Kaiter's ice cream maker, so I think we're going to start making it a lot.

Graduation

It was super awesome to have so much of the family here for Jordan's graduation. Tawna kept saying over and over that she didn't think he would pass high school much less college, but here he is!

He does this same thing to his hair with the same face everyday before he goes to work or church. I didn't catch it on video, but after he finished fixing his hair he made the movement you make when you yell "Expecto Patronum" and mumbled some non-words when he did it. Ahh, how I love him.

This is him with his whole graduating class. You can see Kaiter with her curly blonde hair facing us below Jordan. You can see Steve and Britt a row to the left and up like, 7 people.

I hope Merrill has a better picture of this because my flash was not hitting the people, but it seems like it was hitting everything else, so this is blurry and also has his tassel right in his face. Since the picture was so dark I had to lighten it up so that's why it's so grainy.

Our friends Steve and Britt. Steve got to give a talk at the convocation, and it was super good--exactly what a graduation speech should be. It was interesting, had funny stories, and emphasized he was a super nerd.

It was super good to see Merrill and Tawna. While they were here, Tawna and I went and had a massage at the spa nearby and it was absolutely wonderful. We did that while Merrill and Jordan went and hit some balls.

It was so nice that all the grandparents came up to see Jordan. It was great to spend so much time with them.

Here's the whole family group that came to see Jordan.

This is at Puerto Vallarta. It's our favorite Rexburg Mexican restaurant. It tastes like California---it's just so good.

Regina Spektor

I've been listening to this girl's music on repeat for like, a week now, 8 hours a day. I really like her style. There are other songs that I won't put on here (I'll probably put them on a playlist in a week or so), but there are other ones like "On the Radio" that I really like. The second one doesn't have a video, but the song is beautiful. You can download the sheet music for free online somewhere, and I've done it, but I just need to print it out and go to a place that has pianos to learn it. It's absolutely beautiful.

Breathless

Sometimes, unexpected things just take your breath away. This was one of them. I saw a shot of a hat on a chair on thesartorialist.blogspot.com that reminded me that I love Anthropologie so I went to their website. On it, I started looking at their housewares and saw this picture. I love everything about it. I love the style of the bed, I love the fabric coming down from the top, I love the color combinations, I love the other colors in the room, the gorgeous chair at the foot of the bed, the chandelier-esk decorations on the dresser next to the bed, and everything in between.

Fencing Outfit

Mending fence is tough work. This year I was prepared with anti-mosquito clothes (all Grandpa Buster's) and an anti-sunburn hat. Also, Jordan seems to think it's the funniest thing ever that if I have rust on my hand from holding the staples in place, that I also get all that rust on my face. Just wanted to share:

Flag Football

This last semester, Jordan was on a flag football team. They made it all the way to the championship and got t-shirts (which Jordan wore to the 4th and got ruined by those poppers you throw on the ground, or if you're a cousin, you throw them at each other/Jordan.

These pictures aren't that good, but they're good enough.

Ice Caves

On the same day that I ran the 10k, we also went to an air show (the pictures are super boring so I'm not putting them on here), and we also went to the ice caves.


The head lamp is my favorite piece of camping equipment and I wear it every chance I get. The snow suit is from Grandma Madlyn. The legs are a little short and the waist fits me when I'm not pregnant because here, even though you can't see it, the zips aren't all the way zipped up on the side.



Jordan in the ice caves.


This is Jordan was completely straddling Steve's arm/shoulder and Jordan's crotch was in Steve's face---it was fun for all of us to laugh about...probably except for Steve.


Court sliding on her back on the ice to get through the ice tunnel.



Britt and Court's backsides as they kick the top of the ice roof to slide on their backs on the ice floor. It was super fun.

At the end of the cave there was a huge area where we slide/surfed on the ice slide and I got some videos of it but they're all too dark to really be able to tell what we're doing.


Steve


and Britt

4th of July Pictures

You're going to have to click on it to make it larger, but this is a picture of the "shoot out" after the Malad parade, and I specifically took this picture because they chose a black man to be a cowboy. I don't know where they got him...we're in Idaho.



This is Tom riding Gina Halliday's mom's (she's like, 100) bicycle.



This is a picture of Tom and Trav together. I've never seen them in the same place so I wanted to capture it.



My super awesome dessert. It's pretty much fruit pizza which I didn't really realize until I saw a picture that was actually titled "Fruit Pizza" and saw it was practically the exact same thing I had made. It was really good though.



The grandkids.



The afternoon group.



Fireworks after the big fireworks.




Trav/Marge Simpson



This wasn't all the potatoes but Jordan couldn't get anymore in the bowl without it getting out of control.

Are You Flippin Kidding Me!?!!?!?!

At work, we’ve been doing less and less calculations and more and more messing with electronic stuff because we’re getting closer to doing our actual experiment soon. So, my boss and I were gathering the wires, connectors, scalars, discriminators, oscilloscopes, blah blah blah that we need and we couldn’t find some. So we decided to go to the accelerator center up on the hill to see if we could find some stuff. Both Dan (my boss) and I were driving to the accelerator center and he started talking about the part we were bringing to match with the stuff we were getting. Now, if this was a regular person telling me this story, there’s no way I would believe him. However, he is the department chair of the physics department at ISU. Therefore, he has the social ineptivity to make up a story (at all), and he doesn’t give a crap about impressing me because he doesn’t care about impressing anyone—he would never even think of it. Therefore, this is the true story of the electronic parts of the ISU physics department. “You know, I got this part during the fall of the Soviet Union (which he thinks was in 1995 but it was 1991). I had been in Russia ten or so years before doing research so I knew some people there. Well, when the Soviet Union was falling, they had no more government funding so they were trying to sell everything they could in order to get money. I dunno…as I think about it, I guess it was kinda shady. I had to pay them through a bank in Finland...hmmmm. Anyway, there were some complications on which bank the money was supposed to be sent to so I was delaying my payment a little because I didn’t want the money to get lost, until my friend called me and said ‘Listen—it costs $500 to kill someone in this country right now. Here’s the bank information and I need you to send me that money today because there are some people that I need to pay.’ ”

He didn’t even blink an eye.

Roofing

Jordan helped out our friend Steve with roofing his house (he's a townie, so his parents live in Rexburg). They'd been doing it a couple of evenings, but they decided Saturday was the day to get it done, and they did it! They met at Steve's house at like, 8 am and the pictures I'm showing are at 4 (they didn't get done until 7 or 8, but they got it done!). It was a really hot day that day, and it didn't help that they were standing on asphalt sheets (that's what they roof out of) so the roof got really hot pretty fast (I burnt my feet even through my shoes), so they got sick of being hot so decided to hose each other off. This is where the pictures came in...it was a funny / super interesting sight to see.


Steve getting Jordan


Steve getting himself


Jordan getting/pretending to pee on Steve


All the roofing boys trying to figure out how to put the ridge shingles on


My handsome husband using a nail gun (and not shooting himself in the knee)

I helped for a couple of hours Friday and Saturday, and my favorite part was using the nail gun (although it is moderately scary to use something that could hurt me so easily). I am however, glad they finished it.

Dinner in the Park

So, my neighborhood isn't really safe to be outside in, but I looove summer, so I've been trying to find a way to be outside and be safe all at the same time. So, I've started eating dinner at the ISU "quad" which is just a big park in the middle of the ISU campus where they have the Concert in the Park every Wed and Thurs. Now, even though all I want to eat is Chinese, I've been cooking things that are good for me (and most importantly the baby), so I made spinach stracciatella soup which is Italian egg drop soup with spinach in it. It was really enjoyable to eat and I've eaten it everyday for lunch since I made it on Tuesday afternoon and will eat it again today and probably again tomorrow.

Here's a fancy picture of it from the epicurious.com website:


I also kind of made this:


By kind of, I mean that I was planning on making that, and then it didn't really happen. Being prego I have an aversion to cilantro and uncooked onions, and then I couldn't find any papaya. So, instead I substituted grapefruit to go along with the mango. After I finished cutting up the grapefruit and mango I decided I didn't want to put the jalapeño in it and didn't want to eat it with chips, so I just had a mango and grapefruit salad. It was very enjoyable.

I ate all of this at the park, along with my "limeade" that I've been making myself with water, lime juice, and sugar. It was very enjoyable.

Yesterday

Yesterday was an uneventful day, but with those uneventful days, dumb things seem awesome-er. So, I took pictures of some moderately interesting parts of yesterday.

First, I found my lost wallet (which I lose like, once a month), so I could go get the oil changed in my car. Yay! I was at Walmart, and saw this interesting thing in the media section. Can you see what doesn't fit? (I know it isn't a great picture):


What doesn't fit is second from the left and second from the top. Among "Singles Ward," "The RM," "Sons of Provo," "The Book of Mormon Movie" and many others, "Rambo" has been added to the collection of LDS movies. I love Idaho.

When that was done with, I wanted a treat, but didn't want to spend any money on it, and I remembered I had a coupon for a free beverage at Starbucks, and there was one right across the street from Walmart! So, in I went and read their non-coffee menu and decided on the chocolate-y-est thing I could possibly get, and it looked like this:


Yummmmmmm!

Next I went to the DI to see if they had any bikes. You can't just only look at their bike section, so I looked around at other things and saw a skirt I thought I might like for 4 dollars. However, when I put it on, I found that it was a bit questionable---it looked like a skirt from the outside, but the lining was pants!



I didn't buy them because they didn't fit around the waist, but they were interesting enough to me to take a picture of.

After the DI I went and saw The Emma Smith Story at the dollar theater. I guess it just hasn't sunk in that I'm prego and super emotional, because I cried through the whole 98 minute of the film. It was also surprising to me (and maybe a little not surprising) that all the other movies I've been to at the dollar theater, I've been in the theater with a max of 6 other people, and sometimes I'm the only one. I don't know if it was "movie night" at the senior citizen center or what, but every single seat of every row (except the first 3 rows) was filled with a geriatric. I couldn't believe how many people were there---the dollar theater definitely made money that night.

Last but not least, the belly showed up yesterday. It didn't seem like a huge deal until I tried sleeping on my stomach when I was trying to sleep---my uterus was not standing for that.


It isn't super big, but it certainly is hard, and cannot be compressed or sucked in!

The 4th with No Pictures

The 4th was good. It was fun to be with both Tom and Trav's family. The parade was much better than I've ever seen it (it was like, 45 minutes!) and they threw out lots of candy.

We had a really good time with the lunch at Grandma June's and the great food and great company just made the day. We had the usual sloppy joes, Carol's beans, fruit salad, chips, and lots of soda. Desserts were also the usual, there was Texas sheet cake that Madlyn brought, of course the marshmallows with caramel and rice cereal, and then some brownies, and cookies, etc. Theresa didn't get in a political or eco fight with Ray or anyone else this time so that was different than usual.

We went to a softball game that Wasey (sp)'s sister played in. I couldn't tell if they won or lost, but it was fun to watch them.

All of the Hallidays were there. Macy came for the first time in the 4 years since I've been going and she's a pretty cool girl. She's leaving for her mission to the Palmyra church history sites on July 30th, which she's really excited for. She says that after Hawaii she thinks California's cold, so I gave her some tips on how to keep warm. I guess all the people in my (Utica) mission complain about how cold it is, but say "At least we aren't in Rochester" which is the mission she'll be in, so I hope she doesn't die. She's also a vegetarian, so she's trying to decide whether to tell everyone about it or to just eat meat when she goes to the member's homes for dinner...we'll see what happens.

Malad Idol was different than any other year. Usually it's a bunch of 12 year old girls singing Shania Twain or Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats," but this year it was a bunch of older girls singing in prom dresses songs like Mariah Carey's "Hero" and "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid---not the best. There was a 5 year old kid who wore a wig and sang Michael Jackson's "Beat It." But, he didn't know the words so they had to take out the karaoke television and have him read the words from that...it was interesting.

After that we all went to the fireworks. They've stopped doing it at the high school and now do it in the fair grounds, so we all go there and lay on blankets or sit on Grandpa's white chairs. They were really good (they're always really good), and it seemed like they went on for a long time.

We all then went back to Grandma June's and lit some fireworks. Of course, Jordan was in charge of the whole thing, so they did things like jump over the fireworks while they were going or the ones that had flashing lights (like a strobe light), they danced around them. It was pretty cool.

It was then time to drive to the Ranch to call it a day.

The next day was super fun. Trav brought 5 dirtbikes (which I had never driven before, only rode on, one time before), and he let me drive Dillon's little 90 (super fun, especially because I'm awesome at it), so we had pancakes for breakfast, went on a drive, ate lunch, watched The Office (we brought Season 3), went on a drive, ate dinner, went and looked at the house/went for a drive, watched The Office, and went to bed. The next day, it was pretty much the same thing, only there was an hour of church in there for Sacrament Meeting. It was a good weekend. Trav's the most fun to watch The Office with because he laughs at every little thing that's funny. It's awesome.

Chinese Food

I love Chinese Food. It is my favorite kind of food and I get to eat it the least out of all of them. We don't have Chinese food in Rexburg ( don't argue with me about Fongs---Fongs is NOT Chinese food ), so I went online and found the best reviewed Chinese restaurant in Pocatello and they also said it was pretty inexpensive (which it was!) so I went to Ming's Cafe during lunch! The lunch specials were very inexpensive and VERY TASTY!!!! I had the sesame chicken with pork lo mein for a grand total of 5.29! IT WAS SO GOOD! I also couldn't eat the whole thing, so it lasted two meals! I was so excited about it that I took a picture of it.



Yay for the asians!

Shoes

I bought these shoes last week. I spent 45 minutes in front of the mirror convincing myself I would wear them everyday, and then I finally called Jordan and asked him if I could spend $9.99 on a pair of shoes and he said yes. Yay!

Boy or Girl?

So, we don't know if the baby's a boy or a girl yet, but I've been thinking about either one.

Fun stuff if the baby's a boy:

Nautical themed room:


Super cute clothes

Awesome birthday cakes


Fun stuff if the baby's a girl:

These super awesome beanies

Super awesome Princess Room



Super cute clothes

Awesome birthday cakes