My 50 Random Things

I got tagged this on my Facebook account (except it was only 25, but I wanted to do 50), so I thought I would put it on my blog as well:

My 50 Random Things
1. I hate the sound of most Styrofoam (like nails on a chalkboard)
2. I can’t stand having holes in my socks
3. I’m terrified to have kids
4. However, I have a goal to have at least one of my children without the epidural (call me crazy, but I call it BRAVE). :-)
5. I can’t look into a mirror in the dark
6. I never have pleasant dreams
8. I think the funniest animated movie is “Emperor’s New Groove”—I laugh so hard every time!
9. Chandler is my favorite character on Friends
10. I want to own a canoe someday (and maybe a lake to go with it)
11. I would get nothing done if I owned a bookstore (cause I would just sit and read all the books)
12. I’m counting down the days til graduation
13. I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself once I’m graduated (probably buy a bookstore and read)
14. I think “A Year Down Yonder” by Richard Peck is the funniest book in the world!
15. I’m very impatient (especially when it comes to a slow internet connection)
16. I have a fetish for soft, warm blankets
17. I love my house to smell like something yummy (so I invested in some Scentsy candle warmers)!
18. I have been bitten in the arm by a horse (and it DIDN’T feel good!)
19. I have lived in sixteen different houses
20. I had 22 different roommates in two years (but I did live in an apartment that housed 12 girls at a time—it was a blast!).
21. Listening to Enya is my personal Valiam
22. I can’t stand watching sports on TV
23. I think Ritter Sport (German) candybars are AMAZING
24. I have been trying so hard to mimic Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle but just can’t do it (I’ll have to call her to see how she does it :-D)
25. I just finished my first scarf on a loom (I even added fringe to the ends)
26. I hate to hear water just running down the drain being wasted
27. Did anyone notice I don’t have a #7….you had to go look didn’t you?
28. I have to have a certain type of pillowcase on my pillow (and only *I* can decide if it’s a good one or not)
29. I have an outrageous habit of biting my fingernails
30. I think microorganisms are fascinating
31. I love Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy (“I hope life isn’t one big joke because I don’t get it.”)
32. I would like to own an exotic animal one day (but not a bird)
33. I think the ocean is both fascinating and frightening at the same time
34. I think it would be cool to meet Will Smith in person (hey, he seems cool to me)
35. I have to color-code my class notes (and I am very particular to whom I will lend my colored pens to)
36. I have a love/hate relationship with Spinning (the exercise)
37. I usually eat one food type at a time on my plate
38. I don’t like sweet and salty mixed together
39. I have not been outside the U.S. (but I have big plans!)
40. I have killed a bear (so now that’s crossed off my bucket list)
41. Open drawers and cupboards drive me crazy
42. I had an E. coli infection when I was 8 or 9 (I don’t recommend it!)
43. Volleyball is my absolute *favorite* sport (cause I suck at everything else)
44. I’ve never broken a bone (unless teeth count), but I have had stitches in my cheek
45. I wrestle better with my left arm than my right (even though I’m right-handed)
46. I get sick to my stomach the morning of a test, presentation, or interview
47. I have to have my milk ICE cold (sometimes I add ice to make it colder)
48. If I could wish for anything, it would be to have my feet the perfect temperature all the time (WHAT? They are always cold! World peace will come eventually!)
49. I can tell when a TV is on, even when I can’t actually hear what’s on—I can hear the high-pitched noise it makes
50. I don’t really feel like thinking of a 50th random thing—you’ve read enough already

Now that you know me a little better, I would like to get to know *you* better, so I tag Julie, Morgan, and Aunt Shelley now (you only have to do 25 if you want).

Adventures of Kenny and Jamie

As always, we stay pretty busy, but try to have a little fun in between. A few weekends ago we rented some cross-country skiis from the ISU Outdoor Center (they are so cheap, only $6 for a set of skiis, boots, and poles per day) and we went skiing. It had been many years since I had been on skiis, and it was Kenny's first time cross-country skiing. We went with some friends and took our dogs and made a day of it!

Left to right: Hunter (in backpack), Grant, Cody (the dog), Cade, Maggie and Joey (our dogs), and Kenny.

The dogs were thirsty and we forgot to bring them some bowls for them to drink out of, but as you can see they were fine just drinking straight from the bottle! :)

Our next adventure--well....to blow stuff up.

Now, it's not as it sounds.....okay, it's exactly as it sounds.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the afternoon though (before we made our first "explosion"):

Jamie: "Soooo...about how big is the explosion supposed to be?"

Willy: "You know, Jamie, we don't really know...."

Our culprits: Kenny, Cade, Mike (I was just the photographer, I had nothing to do with it! :D )

An empty propane bottle (don't worry, this doesn't cause the explosion) and a film canister filled with Tanerite (this causes the explosion) wrapped with duct tape.

And after the *poof*, you get an extremely dented propane tank. Not really exciting to me but apparently really exciting for the guys!

Next, we set up a canister of Tanerite under a log to see how far the log would fly. This is Cade saluting to the camera for his "last shot of this lifetime" (don't worry, we were standing about 30-40 yards away)...

...but Mike and Kenny were standing farther back and covering themselves...just in case!

The Tanerite was under this log...

...that's what's left of the propane bottle they stuck under there....

....this log flew about 5 yards away from *explosion* site (can you see Kenny's big grin?)...

...and this piece of paper from the propane canister was wedged into the log!

This is what the 4-Runner looked like when we got back (actually, it's a lot cleaner in this picture than it used to be).

Our next adventure was going to Faces of Nepal night at ISU. I have a few nepalese friends in my program and they invited us to go, so I thought--why not? Eat a little food, learn a little culture, what's not to like? ISU has a lot of nepalese exchange students (I've had quite of few of them in my classes over the years) and they've started doing a Nepalese Night as of two or three years ago.

This was our dinner. I can't remember the names of everything, but we had chicken curry (which was really good), rice pilaf, some nepalese versions of potstickers, a couple of other things, and the desert was carrot pudding (NOT my favorite).

This was one of the dances they performed.

This was part of their fashion show.

This is also part of the fashion show, but these are males if you can't really tell (sorry, the pictures aren't very clear).

Other than that, we've just been working and studying as always. But I did get a chance to rearrange and redecorate some of my living room and I LOVE it.

This picture is taken from the front door (above)

This picture is taken from the hallway (below).

We put up two bookcases (my boss gave them to me cause he didn't want them anymore) and they are *nice* bookcases! They aren't completely filled with books, but someday I would like them to be! 2 1/2 of the shelves are DVDs. I have a whole shelf dedicated to my school books/notes/binders/etc. These are the books that I thought were worthwhile to keep.

My decorations on the bookcases.

One of my rearrangement of decorations.

I made these blocks at enrichment for only $2.oo! I love enrichment projects! They provided the paint, vinyl lettering, and the blocks. I didn't finish while I was there because I had to leave early, so I got out my crafty stuff at home and finished them. Didn't they turn out cute? Just a combination of rub-ons, ribbon, fake flowers, and scrapbook paper. If you're interested in making some for yourself, give me a call and I can help you out! :) And the shelves I got at Family Dollar a while back for only $5 for the pair. I love discounts! :)

About time....

It's been a fairly busy last few weeks! Sorry we haven't posted anything for a while...I went to post something a couple of weeks ago, but then it crashed after I uploaded a bunch of pictures so

I was anti-blog for a little while. :) At the beginning of December I went with Kenny on a little field trip he had for his program down to Thiokel, by Tremonton, to watch a rocket booster test. The picture of us was taken before the rocket was "launched". It was really loud and really bright!!!! Kenny took a video of it with our camera but I couldn't get it to upload for the blog. Sorry.

Here is the actual launch. It doesn't go into the air at all, but it blows the fire and the smoke up a canyon into the mountain behind it. There was a lot of smoke! When we were leaving, it was raining ashes. A pretty cool experience, I'd say! :) There were other school field trips, like elementary, middle, and high schools there, plus other people in their vehicles.

I took some pictures of our house with our first real snow storm. We don't have many pictures of our house, so I thought I would take some.

While I was out on the curb taking a picture I had a neighbor stop and ask if I needed a ride somewhere...I guess that's an Idahoan for you. :)

About a week and a half before Christmas we were finally able to put up a Christmas tree. Normally we cut down a real one the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but this year we were unable to. So we borrowed a fake one from my Aunt LaDean. It fit perfectly into our living room!

Of course our dogs were a lot of help as we were putting on the lights and the ornaments.

And viola! It is finished!

A few days later I heard some rustling in the living room that didn't sound normal. So I went in there to investigate and this is what I saw.......................................
Our culprit.....Kallie Sue. Of course she was sitting in it so cute and so content that I had to get the camera out to take a picture of her before I got her out. Well, cats don't come out of Christmas trees very well, unless you intend to pull all the limbs out, tangle the lights, and break your ornaments....so I just let her be.

Not long after that I hear more rustling around, and of course, here is what I find:

Chevy just couldn't be outdone with creativity in causing havok!

So I let him be too.

Now for another eventful moment of our December: After I just got out of the shower, about 10:30pm, Kenny says, "Chevy's got a mouse!" So, of course, I had to go see it. Sure enough, Chevy had found and caught a little mouse. But he couldn't just kill it and be done with it, he had to play with it. He was so excited to have a LIVE toy to play with (besides the four other cats in the house). He would bat it around, toss it up in the air, let it run a little bit so he could chase it and catch it again, etc. Naturally Kenny and I were entertained as well, but we were just waiting for Chevy to actually kill the poor thing and put it out of it's misery. Well he wouldn't, so just as we were getting ready to catch it, it runs under our fridge!

So we pulled our fridge out a little ways and couldn't see it, so we threw Chevy back there to see if he could catch it again...no such luck there. So then we pulled our stove out too and finally saw it and caught it. Well, obviously, behind our fridge and stove it was very dirty because--let's face it--those things only get moved when they are replaced, when you move, or when you are looking for a mouse. So late at night we are scrubbing behind the fridge and stove, and vacuuming our fridge to get that nasty dust off it.

Finals went okay for me this last semester. I studied hard the week before and the week of finals...that's basically all I did, besides work, eat, and sleep. This is how I ended up:

Hematology: A-

Immunology/Transfusion Medicine: A

Intro to CLS: A

Molecular Biology: A-

Microbiology: A-

Clinical Chemistry: B-

I am kind of frustrated with my Chemistry grade, but I don't think there's anything I can do about it. But my other grades were good. :)

The Monday before Christmas we started our journey to Glendive, Montana (just across the border from N. Dakota--so a pretty far drive) in a snowstorm. We had to take the back roads from Pocatello to Idaho Falls (which took us almost 2 hours). We picked up my Grandma Logan in St. Anthony and continued our trek. The weather was not friendly the entire way there and I am so glad that Kenny is a safe and cautious driver because it could have been really bad! Besides the snow and ice, we had unbelievable windstorms as well. But I'm glad to say that we made it, both ways, in safety. We got there around 9:30 or 10:00 pm (after leaving Pocatello about 6:30 am--it was a long day!). The whole week was so nice! We got to view the little town of Glendive, and my sister, Julie, and her family came from Seattle as well. She is about two months shy of having a baby, so I got to see her fat belly and feel her baby kick! I got to relax, eat lots of junk food (which I'm paying for now), play games, scrapbook, etc., all without having to worry about homework! Yea! Christmas morning was lots of fun, especially with my nephews, Peyton and Ethan. They had so much fun opening presents.

Here is Ethan wearing his "cool-dude" FBI hat that he got for Christmas.






Ethan and Peyton with two of their many racecar sets they got for Christmas. It was hard to get this picture because they could hardly be distracted from their racing. But they did pose long enough for me!





Peyton was actually on top of this present as he was tearing the paper off in haste. I think it was another racecar track.

One of our days there we took a drive to Beach, North Dakota. So I can now mark N. Dakota off my "States-I-need-to-visit". We ate at this little Mexican restaurant and the owners themselves served us. It was yummy! The terrain in that area is unlike I've ever seen and I wish I would have gotten a picture. They don't have mountains; instead non-rolling foothills. They are really choppy, but really cool! We came back on the Sunday after Christmas and the drive was much better coming home. It was a fun trip, but there's no place like home!

Since we've gotten back, Kenny and I went snow shoeing nearby, and we took Kenny's brothers sledding. We met our friends, Shelley and Grant, in Arimo and found a couple of hills to go to. It was lots of fun! We also went down to Ogden to spend more time with Shelley and Grant, and our other friends, Cade, Nicole, Brad and Aubrey to play games and do some more snow shoeing. We are trying to get our fun in while we can because tomorrow our last (yes LAST) semester starts! Wahoo! Well, technically my summer internship is a semester (meaning I pay summer tuition fees, then work 40 hours/week for free). Please pray for us that Kenny might get a job right away! :) Thanks for reading, and sorry this was so long!

Okay, scratch that other post, I finally figured out my color scheme. :)

If you check my blog in the next few hours, please don't be alarmed by the poor choice in color scheme. I'm trying to get it fixed.

Twilight

Kenny and I went to see the Twilight movie last night and let me tell you...it was a ZOO at the theater! We drove by at 6:30pm to get in line to get tickets for a late night showing and the line was wrapped all around the outside! We went and got dinner then went back and stood in line to get tickets for the 10:50 pm showing. We figured that late showing shouldn't be bad, but it was packed! We stood in line for half an hour with flirty teenage girls all hyped up behind us...that was fun.

Now for the review (if you don't want it to spoiled even a little bit then don't read the next paragraph in bold):

Kenny and I thought it was really good. It followed the book really well and I thought the actors, for the most part, fit the characters. I think they demonstrated the realness of starting at a new school, or the start of a relationship very well. It also had some good humor and some good action. I didn't go in with real high expectations because you can't really do that with a movie produced from a popular book, however I think they did a good job. I wasn't really disappointed.

Now back to real life, I am celebrating the start of my Thanksgiving break, although it won't be much of a break. My teachers decided to pile on the homework and I have tons due the week we come back. I am very frustrated! So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I will pretty much be doing just homework. BREAK is definately an OVERstatement! Oh well, at least I have Thanksgiving off! :-) I did take my Molecular Biology final exam last Thursday (my teacher wanted to end class early in the semester) and that felt good! I am not sure how well I did, but it's over! YEA!

Clarification

For the post below I want to clarify one thing. The chocolate lab puppy, Izzie, is not the same puppy as the puppy of the owner of whom we think broke into the animal hospital I work at. Just wanted to clear that up in case there was any confusion. So, no, Izzie is not linked to a crime suspect!