BYU Tribute

Since Justin and I recently (4 months ago... relatively recent) graduated from BYU I thought I would take a few minutes to write about some of my most memorable classes and college experiences.

Entomology

In entomology i learned how to catch/identify/preserve bugs. Before this class I did not care for bugs at all! However, entomology gave me a greater understanding and knowledge of bugs and I now consider them to be pretty amazing/fascinating organisms!

Here is my prized Jerusalem Cricket

Here is my bug collection!

I got all these bugs with a lot of help from family and friends!

(300 bugs total, 18 Orders, and 100 Species! I think... )

Plant Identification

In this class I had to learn and identify 200 different species of plants in the provo area. Although I can't remember most of the plants and names now, it was a cool feeling to be able to identify any plant I saw for a good couple months!

I don't have a picture of anything from this class... but one day when I was out looking at plants in order to study for a test I took this little beauty below! Y-mountain after a summer shower!

Canyoneering

Canyoneering was not a required class, just one of those crazy classes you take for fun! For this class we took a trip to the San Rafael Swell and canyoneered down Eardlly Canyon. 3 repels, and ice cold pools to swim through!

The water was so cold we had to wear 5mm wetsuits and dive gloves. At one point when I was doing the last and tallest rappel I lost my footing on some slick rocks and I flipped upside down! I thought this experience was awesome, but I think I almost gave my professor a heart attack haha!

Evolution

This was probably my favorite class at BYU for many different reasons. First of all, my professor Byron Adams was HILARIOUS! My favorite of his quotes "I want to teach this class like Jesus would teach the class. He wouldn't be all up tight about stuff, it would all be like Love and Hot-tubs" haha maybe you had to be there.. but he was pretty hilarious! My second reason for loving this class is because Evolution was taught at BYU and I was able to see how Evolution and the gospel work with each other and not against each other! If you are ever interested in discussing this topic just give me a call!

There are so many other classes that I took... these were just the most interesting and best that I can remember! I figure I should write about them now before I forget about them completely!

If at first you don't succeed, try try again!

Anyone who knows Justin knows that he has some mad wakeboarding skills! He is pretty impressive, and that might be the reason why I married him... just kidding... but it was definitely a perk!

He can do all sorts of tricks and is far more impressive than me... One of his most impressive tricks is his backflip which he lands pretty consistently!

A month or so back we got to go with some family to Lake Powell and Justin was again very impressive! This year Justin's goal was to land a 360 which he has not done since before his mission. This trick is not the hardest to do, however when you crash you pretty much die! So I was way impressed with his determination and perseverance throughout the week! He did end up landing the 360, which was awesome to see and he was WAY stoked!

Now as far as I am concerned Justin has just always been a great wakeboarder! However as some of the following pictures show, hundreds of crashes and pain go into perfecting every trick on the wakeboard!

This summer my Uncle Terry came out the lake with us and taught Justin how to Barefoot, which is basically where you crawl out on a bar hanging over the water while the boat is going 34+ mph and then you ski on your bare feet... CRAZY! But it is awesome to watch Terry do it, he is way good! So here for you enjoyment are some picture of Justin learning to Barefoot!

Justin excited for his first try!

After he crawled out onto the pole...

And he's down! First try is a no go...

After only a few more tries and Uncle Terry getting out to show us how it was done Justin was able to successfully barefoot!

Justin had just enough time to yell out, and I quote, "I'M DOING IT!! IT'S WORKING!!" before he caught a toe and crashed big time!

Haha this crash was the best... the funniest... and I think it's the one that hurt the most! Needless to say, he was done after this one!

Justin celebrating his success!

So after seeing these pics you might ask yourself "Why put yourself through all that pain?!" In the end I think he would agree that all your crashes and hard falls are worth it once you land the trick! All in all, it was a successful week for Justin at Lake Powell, and I am still always so impressed when I watch him do his thing out on the water!

Living on the Edge of Glory!

This summer at our Lake Powell trip my wonderful and talented Stone cousins decided to make a music video documenting our week! They worked really hard and I think they did an amazing job!

My favorite part is when Justin falls off of the boat when all the cousins are jumping off the back! haha if you havn't seen it, look for it! It's good stuff!

We're having a BOY!!!

WOW I am waaaaay behind on my blogging but just in case anyone had not heard our great news we are having a baby, and on Friday we had our first ultrasound! I was at 17 weeks so we were not sure if they'd be able to tell the gender of the baby yet but we had a great ultrasound tech named Marlo who was able to poke around and find just the right spot to tell!

Justin thought we would be having a girl, and I thought we'd be having a boy (because I'd had a couple dreams with a baby boy in them... not that that means a whole lot or anything... but I just had a hunch). But we were both just so excited to find out what we would be having and that our baby was healthy so what ever the gender ended up being we would have been thrilled! I just don't understand how some people can wait the whole 9 months and be surprised at the end... I am just not that patient I guess because that wait would kill me!

This was the first shot of the baby that we saw! Isn't the little alien cute! He looks like Justin already! haha just kidding Justin! But seriously... at this stage babies look a lot like the aliens from the last Indiana Jones movie! But don't get me wrong, I love him so much already and I started tearing up when I saw his cute little face!

The next thing we found out is that he is very healthy as of right now... no abnormal issues or anything, so that was such a relief! I think that I stared tearing up again when I found that out!

Next thing we know we hear Marlo the Ultrasound Tech say "Well that is a hundred percent Boy!" And at that point Justin got a huge smile on his face! Haha I am pretty sure that this is Justin's favorite of all the pictures we got. Haha so funny! I think that it is a Male thing to want at least one Boy so that your last name gets passed onto future generations or something like that... Suffice it to say this little guy already has a proud father! I was just so happy to find out that he was healthy, but I must say it all seems more real now that the thing inside of me is a HE and not an IT!

There are a couple other things we found out. First, he has long legs for his body size (probably the second thing that Justin is most excited about... he is convinced that all our children are doomed to shortness). And second, that the due date is now December 22nd instead of the 23rd (Sorry Jenae!)! Which is awesome because it brings it one day farther away from Christmas! In case you don't know I have a fear that he will come on Christmas which I think would stink for him growning up... but I'll have to discuss that one on a different post!

Here are a couple more pictures we got! This one is of his feet My dad thinks he has 9 toes... 6 on one foot and 3 on the other haha... so we'll have to keep an eye on that! And the next picture is of our little boy waving hello to the world!

Justin and I are both so excited and happy about our little boy and we can't wait to get to meet him in 4 months and 3 weeks!

BANG!!!!

BANG!

For those of you who have not had the experience, nay

the privilege, of playing BANG, shame on you! You need to go out and buy it! Or find some friends who already own it! Or if you can't justify spending the money on a game for yourself, just be like Justin and I and buy it for someone as a christmas present and then invite yourselves over to play it all the time! We have been playing BANG since last Christmas when we got it for Brett and Jenae (It was kind of a selfish present because we knew we'd get to play it with them... but I think they have enjoyed it a

s well, so I don't feel so bad!).

I'll give a short summary of how to play BANG. Each playerpics a character to play as, and a role. Each character has a special "super power" you might say, so some characters are WAY better than others! Some of my favorite include Willy the Kid,Slab the Killer, and anew favorite is Big Spencer (he gets 10 life points for the whole game, so he's way hard to kill!) Anyways each player also gets a role that he or she has to play by the whole game. For example if you are the Sheriff you have to try and kill all the outlaws (this is the worst position in my opinion). If you are one of the outlaws you have to try and kill the sheriff (This is the best position in my opinion!)!

Also just a side note, when you play they have the instructions written in both english and another language. This language is Italian, NOT SPANISH! Italian... it took us like 4 months of playing before anyone realized that...

that is all.

Well, anyways, A couple weeks ago we got together with some friends to have an ultimate BANG night! We all got dressed up in our best cowboy getups, had wonderful vittls (mexican food), and drank some good ole' IBC beer, ROOT BEER, that is!

And then of course once pictures were taken and dinner served we pulled out the cards and played BANG!

Here are Dan and Marie shooting each other.

Check out the belt Buckles!

Justin and I found most of this at DI! I wish I got a good picture of my 7 dollar boots (I'm pretty sure they were meant for 8 year old boys because they are 2 sizes too small! But... they were 7 dollars... so... nuff said!).

It was great night and even though I did not win any of the games there was great food and great company so what more can you ask for?!

ps. If anyone wants to have another western/BANG night justin and I have the costumes! Our inspiration was John Wayne, and I think we trully embodied the awesomeness of his western aura.

Holiday's are da best!

Justin and I LOVE finding reasons to celebrate... we go out to Tucanos (lunch special 12 bucks a person! Thats a deal!) after every semester to celebrate being done with the semester. We like to party after hard tests, by getting ice cream or going to see a movie. And if we don't have a legit reason to celebrate, we'll just make up a random reason! Why you ask? Because celebrating is ALWAYS fun, so why not celebrate things more often?!

Anyways... That is why I LOVE the later part of the year, there are so many legit reasons to celebrate that you don't even have to make up fake holidays! So this post is all about our 3 main holidays that we celebrated in the later part of 2010! Kwanzaa, Hanukah, and Ramadan!

just kidding! we actually celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas! (I was going to write that we celebrate these holidays because we are Christian... but that really only applies to Christmas. I don't know why we celebrate Halloween... I've heard it is a pagan tradition... but I like the idea of people giving away free candy and giving children across the country a sugar high that lasts at least a week. And we celebrate Thanksgiving because we are American and we are grateful that the pilgrims survived that first winter in America!)

Halloween

Anyhoo... sorry I got off on that Tangent! But here is a picture of mine and Justin's pumpkins that we carved this year for Halloween! If anyone knows Justin they will know that he carved the Darth Vader! I think his looks awesome! It totally looks like Vader and it looked amazing when it was all lit up!

Mine on the other hand is kinda struggling and lame! Haha I tried to carve a pirate... and I thought I did a good job till I took off the pattern I used to carve it and noticed it was lop sided and looked more like a dead cow skull... seriously though! Oh well! Note to self... let justin carve next year! haha

Thanksgiving!!

The next holiday was Thanksgiving which we celebrated in Vegas! On thanksgiving day we celebrated by playing Football and Ultimate Frisbee with my Uncle Dave's family. Funny story, Justin and Nate really wanted to play football and Dave's family really wanted to play ultimate frisbee and we got dominated in Football, but did real good in ultimate! Anyways, the Doug Robison family needs to work on their football skills and maybe we'll do better in a couple years! haha

Here is Justin and Nate looking all manly and intimidating before the games

Christmas!

This year we celebrated with Justin's family in California! We had an amazing time! It was so fun to visit and play games with Justin's family and I have to brag because Adam and I beat Justin and Jerry in Rook, which both Justin and Jerry said was "Impossible"! Yes that victory was definitely a highlight of the week and brought Adam and I much closer together he now says I'm his favorite sister in law (which is not hard because I'm his only sister in law... but I'll take it while I can!)!

So one of my favorite christmas traditions is to make a gingerbread house! My mom always makes them and I would always help her but since this was my first Christmas away from my family It was also my first solo gingerbread house without my momma! It was way fun and I had a lot of help from Justin, Adam and Momma Martin! Anyways it looks a lot like my families house that they made in Vegas... but I have great plans for my next solo gingerbread house! And I think it will become a fun competition with my mom and sisters in the future!

This is a pic of Justin and i with our Christmas PJ's! They are very comfy!

Anyways! All-in-all we had an amazing time in California during Christmas, in Vegas for Thanksgiving, and in Provo where friends and family help us celebrate all those other random holidays!

I LOVE FENG SHOOOO (in the words of Justin mimicking Kung Fu Panda)

This semester i took a History and Philosophy of Biology class at BYU... it was an interesting class to say the least, but looking back now, I think I enjoyed it... I'm sure I'll have fonder memories the farther in the past it gets! anyways! A big topic we covered was the differences between Science, and Pseudoscience. And to learn/proove our knowledge in this area our professors had us pick an iffy idea that people swear is science and then check it out to see if its a bunch of hooey or not. So my group chose feng shui! It was such a fun topic to study and I learned alot about it, but you guys probably don't care and/or want to be bored to death by me telling you ALL about an old Chinese custom... so instead I'll just say this... for the project I feng shui'd (feng shooeyed?) our bedroom and I think it looks a TON better!

BEFORE

AFTER

(Thanks to Kayla for Lending me the wall art!)

I wish I could show a virtual tour or something cause there are other things too that make it look good... and the light in that last picture isn't great but you get the idea!!

Oh, and if you are wondering my group decided that feng shui is definitely a pseudo science... for real!