Love (awww)

Another reason why I love our vacuum. (and living in a small apartment) I can vacuum the entire apartment without unplugging the vacuum. Sweet.

Lake Powell (3 weeks later)

So, we went to Powell and swam around for a couple days. It was fun. The end.


No, not really the end. A few weeks ago we were able to go spend the last half of a week at Powell with my parents and sister, as well as some cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. My parents took a camper and a boat, so my dad had an ordeal on his hands trying to maneuver a boat with a camper on it. David and I stayed in our tent, which I think was much cooler at night than the camper would be. Although the AC in the camper was glorious. I know, we rough it.

Our first day we got a late start and after the 5-6 hour drive, didn't want to try to find a campsite in the dark that would be out of the water for three days ( the water was coming up a foot a day. So we basically had to take a 3 foot stick, tie a string to the top and drag it straight out to where it hit the ground to see where the water would be in three days.) So we parked in a small gravel pit about a half hour away from the lake and slept there. Me, my sister and David all slept in the boat, on it's trailer. It was still hooked to the truck so whenever my parents moved in the camper, the boat would shake. It was a beautiful night, totally clear with incredible stars.

David fishing like a man

My dad's 4.5lb striper

When we woke up, the slight breeze that had been keeping the gnats/bugs away had gone, so we were totally overrun with gnats. It was horrible. Even if they weren't landing on you, you formicated, so we were all constantly swatting. We quickly packed up and headed to the lake. A long time later, we were all set up and the boats had been brought from the dock over to the campsite. We headed out to explore for the day. We drove around in the boats a lot, and fished some. David and my dad each caught a couple good fish.
The last day was a lot like the first, with more fishing and ice cream at the marina. My cousin caught a catfish and while he was taking the hook out to release it, somehow he got one of the barbs stuck into the web of his hand, about 3/4 of an inch deep. He yelled for my dad to come help get it out because my dad had a good first aid kit and knows how to do stuff like that. Eventually my dad got over to his boat and distracted him and yanked it out. The fish just swam away like it wasn't even a problem. He bled a lot, but insisted that his sister take lots of pictures for Facebook.
David got to learn how to drive the boat and did wonderfully, especially because it was really windy.
We had to leave Saturday, but my dad took my sister and David out on the tube for a while. I took about 900 pictures of tubing. (I had my camera on repeat shutter, so I was just holding down the button and letting it take as many as it wanted) When I figure out how to put them together in a stop-motion type video, I will post it. It is being weird right now so I can't.
The day we left, the area we were in was being cleared out because water was about to rise over the road, probably covering it by that evening. We were able to leave before we got stuck.
Overall, it was a great trip and I look forward to doing it again next year.

Saddest thing

One of the saddest things ever...

Followed by one of the best things:

David's famous (ok, they should be) cookies in their dough form.

Stupid raindrops

Things that are difficult to do on days when the sun forgets to make the sky not be gray:

1. get up
2. get ready for a day you don't even want to have happen
3. sit through class
4. walk in general
5. make decisions (especially regarding food. It all sounds good but not quite good enough to have to go through the effort of making it) Example: Lunch today (so far) is a giant bowl of popcorn. Thankfully dinner is in the slowcooker contemplating life (okay, I hope it isn't contemplating ANYTHING at this point, but whatever.) 
6. resist the urge to stand in the middle of campus screaming at the sky "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!?!!?!?

Hope your day is full of more sunshine than ours is.

The baffle clouds the agony.

I seriously think that the high point of my day was walking into my 4:30 class and seeing that the teacher had made name tags for us all. A little yellow piece of cardstock with my name on it was the best thing that happened today. Either I have low standards for a good thing or it was just a lousy day. Both I guess.

P.S. one of the reasons I never post on here is because I hate having to think of a title. So maybe I won't make them make sense at all. For today's title, I went here and hit 'new sentence'. Wow, I can be lazy sometimes.

Mashtini/Mocktail Party

Jamie turned 21 last week so we decided that we needed to let loose and have a mashtini party. However, after running errands all day long we realized that we had one hour to prepare all of this stuff. That meant chopping peppers, green onions, chives; cooking chicken; and cooking, mashing, and warming nearly 10 pounds of potatoes. It was a feat to say the least.

It would not have been possible without Delilah, our apple peeler, corer, slicer. She was wonderful in so many ways. I'll even forgive her for the small cuts that she gave me all over the back of my hand. Added bonus, we got to discover what Potato Slinkies look like. :) After boiling the taters (they cook quickly when sliced that thin) we threw them in the Kitchen-Aid, mashed them, and threw in our Darth Vader-esque Crock-Pot. (Our rice cooker also looks like a Storm Trooper, in case you were wondering). 

We did it! About the time that everyone started to show up we filled the last bowl with bacon and the party began. However, then we realized that we used all of our spoons in the serving dishes and didn't have any left for the mashtinis. (After shuffling the utensils around we were able to scrounge up enough spoons for everyone.) 

Now the moment you've been waiting for. The answer to the age old question, what the heck is a mashtini?

Tada! Look at how beautiful that is. It's a perfect mix of mashed potatoes, cheese, bacon, ham, chives, green onions, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't quite remember what it was, but it was good. Really good. I mean, really really good. Trust me. So good that even though I had three mashtinis I'm craving another one right now. Yum. Too bad we didn't have any leftovers. 

Magic.

Problem: General blah-ness from headache, etc.
Solution: Coke, ibuprofen, and a 15 minute nap.
Gloriously able to function again. Yay!