so . . .

a lot has happened since the last time I wrote a real post and I just need to catch up so I feel like I can blog again :)

• Cody dominated the GMAT -- hooray!
• I still haven't found out my score on the Praxis -- boo! It has the potential to be a Christmas-ruiner.
  
• We went to Idaho for Thanksgiving. The downer was that everybody except Cody got sick. But that just meant that all the cousins came over to hang out at our house. Party!
• We survived another GSS heavy week -- a Christmas party, meetings galore & service project. Crazy! I went shopping for the Christmas party all alone at Costco. I made two trips : one for paper products and veggies & the other for meat, pies and rolls. During the second trip, I ended up pushing a pallet card overflowing with rolls through the store. I only got a handful of strange looks -- thankfully, I didn't have to take any sharp corners or go over any major bumps (both of which would have been tragic).
  
• I got a ton of my literature review for my thesis done. I am just waiting to hear back from my chair to see if I am missing anything major :)
  
• I visited my mom & aunt while they were in SLC for a day last week. Yay brave Mom!!
• We found approximately 10 pairs of my socks at the bottom of our bed when we put orur flannel sheets on. They are all in the laundry now.
  
• Cody & I decided to go to Peru when the Trujillo temple is being dedicated. Any donations would be welcome :) Just kidding, hopefully it works out!
• I was making an amazing comeback playing Backgammon with Cody's dad -- and he rolled double 4s to beat me. Someday I will be the backgammon master . . .
  

The end!

what's in a name

Okay, I know I haven't posted for a while and I promise I will monster blog about what's been going on . . . eventually.

I have been reading a lot of articles for my thesis and some people have really unfortunate names. Two of my favs are Assman and Moonwomon. Seriously!

Weird names bring a smile to my face for some reason, probably because I like mine :)

knight time

So, last night Hillcrest (my high school) played in the Idaho State Championship football game. It may not sound remarkable to very many people, but . . . the team was riding a 22 game LOSING streak!! Cody found a site where we could watch the live webcast of the game, which was wonderful. The announcers kept begging people to email their shoutouts -- we decided to since we wanted the announcers to tell us about the game instead of begging. This is what we said :

"I am a former Hillcrest Knight watching the game with my husband in Utah -- it is great to see them with a winning season (something I never witnessed when I was a student there!)

I'm even trying to teach my husband the fight song :) Hillcrest Knights! Show your might!"

Then, not even five minutes after I had sent the email, they read it -- right when Jerome scored a touchdown. Oh the irony!! Anyway, I pooped out at halftime, but Cody woke me up when the game was over to tell me Hillcrest won. Then I turned back over and fell asleep . . . with a smile on my face :)

it's hard to believe

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a walk down memory lane

I am an OCD organizer . . . so when I was putting away my suitcase from Minnesota and saw my craft bag in serious disrepair, I just had to take ten minutes to get things up to par. Much to my surprise, I found a remnant of 157th Ward goodness :

It was leftover from a Valentine's Day FHE I had planned a couple years ago -- everybody got a sheet of cardstock, wrote their name on it, and passed it around for everybody else to sign. Simple enough, but it was SO fun to read and remember some of my old friends -- what a trip!

sports weekend

Cody & I have had a sports-filled weekend . . .

On Friday night, we went to the Jazz game and witnessed Jerry Sloan's 1000th win. It was a little anticlimatic -- there was only a little confetti at the end of the game. At least we have the satisfaction of knowing we were present for a historic moment in history. The Trax ride back to Sandy was even more exciting because I stood up the whole way. Cody thought I would wimp out, but I DIDN'T!!!

This morning we hit up the last home BYU football game. It was great! Our defense showed up to play AND we got to see my cousin Rob & his fiancee Stacie, which was especially cool since they don't live anywhere near Provo. The weather was perfect and our Cougars won. And one of my friends from high school got to start because it was senior day. I use the term friend loosely because we only 'officially' met once, but I was pretty smitten with him for the rest of my senior year :) The things people can learn from blogs . . .

minnesota

I went to Minnesota this weekend for a national graduate student conference at the University of Minnesota -- I was pretty excited because one of our good family friends & the Mall of America BOTH live there. Sweet!

The mascot of the U of M is the Golden Gophers. Seriously. It was really tough to keep a straight face when we saw all these people running around with gophers on their clothes. Eventually, I succumbed to peer pressure & bought a pair of sweats that say 'GOPHERS' on them. I haven't had any buyer's remorse yet, but I'm pretty sure its only a matter of time.

The only downer was that I was really sick the whole time. I was up for two or three hours every night :(

Marcus and Brittanie have the two most adorable girls in the world! They were pretty dang hilarious & so cute in their Halloween costumes.

I have never had any trouble with my sense of direction in a mall before -- until we visited THE MALL OF AMERICA!!!!!! I am still so excited that we went -- it totally was better than my wildest dreams :)