December is in full swing...

And with it finals. I'm pretty much hating it. I had a final this morning at 7:30 - the earliest possible final on the earliest possible day. Have to love that. I don't have a final until Wednesday now, so I have a little time to recover. The last one is on Thursday - then it's home free. Hopefully I can pull out some sweet A action. We'll just have to see how everything falls into place. Last Saturday, Janet, her roomies, and I went to Salt Lake to check out the lights. Here are the pictures.

From 12-06-08

Here's the tree in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was way fun to see - it's a little blurry because I had to take the picture way super fast as there were constantly people in the way.

From 12-06-08

A pretty sweet self-portrait.

From 12-06-08

I'm pretty much professional. Yeah right. I hate taking pictures of things at night with my camera - it really doesn't do well at all. All of my pictures end up being at a strange upward angle because I have to set my camera on something so it looks halfway decent.

From 12-06-08

Did I mention Im pro?

From 12-06-08

This is what Christmas looks like on acid.

From 12-06-08

None of them were really in focus - this was the best one that I took. I love the bright green light.

From 12-06-08

This was the first time in like 30 years that I got to go visit the statue of Christ. Loved it. There were approximately 45,000 sister missionaries lining the ramp up to the upper level and it took all I had not to give in to them and watch the Christmas movie with an uplifting message about Christ.


It was a good day - and we finished it off going to Provo to Brittney's birthday party and getting to hang out with Scott, Kevin, and Devin. Good people.

It was a sad day, as well, because of our loss to the cougars. Read this. It's a pretty good run down of the game. It was way super intense in the last few minutes when Cummard (their star guard) fouled out of the game with only 6 points. They kept missing foul shots and we kept not capitalizing. But, my favorite part of the whole ordeal is in that article when Cummard makes the most blatantly rediculous statement (and I quote)' "Both fans are crazy," said Cummard. "Their fans are crazy; our fans are better. I'm glad we got the victory. Their fans have a lot of mean things to say and our team didn't let it bother us today." ' Maybe the rest of the team didn't let it bother them, but his six points (after scoring 30 points a few nights before) says something a little different.

The next post will be from home. That sounds nice. No homework, no stress, no finals. Until then...

So - this has turned out to be one of the craziest weeks ever. It all started last week with a sweet visit to Idaho, then one day of classes, followed by a drive down to Clearfield to go to dinner with Mer and Cory and crew, and catching the 9:45 flight out of SLC to get to AZ at 11:45. We got picked up just a few minutes later by a shuttle driver who had good intentions and a super thick accent. We dropped off the lady who was riding with us, and he turned to us and asked, "You know where you live, right?" His GPS wasn't updated and he had no idea where we were going. Mom was pretty sure she was going to get hate-crimed, and had a look of sheer terror on her face for the ensuing 30 minutes until we arrived safely at Louisa's house at around 1:30 am. We had a really fun time there - lots of time to play with the kids and a really amazingly delicious thanksgiving dinner. I'm glad I got to go. Thanks again Louisa! And happy Birthday! I didn't get to call her today because of how crazy life got between FHE and work - so I hope a sick blog shoutout will make up for it. :) Here are my pictures from the trip

From 11-27-08 This is one of the flowers that was growing in Louisa's neighborhood that I snapped while we were on a walk. From 11-27-08 Here's the Thanksgiving Day spread. Delicious. From 11-27-08 Here's Tyler at dinner after he had gotten enough food on his shirt to merit taking it off. Not to mention the sick hair-do... From 11-27-08 Tyler putting the last touches on the nativity scene. It was way fun to get to put up Christmas while the temperature outside merited the use of the AC inside. From 11-27-08 The Fontanini nativity. From AZ From Mom Found this on mom's camera. Knew it needed to be on the blog. He didn't come to AZ with us, but this picture did. From 11-28-08 Another picture of the nativity. From 11-28-08 More of the lights. From 11-28-08 The temple at night. From 11-28-08 I couldn't get any good pictures of the floating lights themselves, so here they are just included in the picture instead of being the focus. Pretty cool, I thought.

From 11-27-08 These represent about half of the rolls that we made. The best thing ever. From 11-27-08 Little Kara enjoying her dinner. From 11-27-08 Tyler again. He was rocking some sweet hair all week. From 11-27-08 Kara wasn't too sure what to think of me. From 11-27-08 Audrey's newest pet. From 11-28-08 We got to go to the initial igniting of the Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple. This was part of the nativity there. From 11-28-08 The lights around the temple. From 11-28-08 View across the reflection pond towards the visitors center. From 11-28-08 More lights.

The trip was way relaxing - just the thing I needed before hitting "dead week" here at school and the impending doom that next week's three finals hold for me. Prayers are welcome. And money. And love. Good luck to all in the same boat.

Cleaning Out the Cell Phone Pictures

So I realized a lot of my history is on my cell phone - and I also realized I have a program that steals the pictures off my cell phone so I can have them on my computer. It works nicely because a few of my close friends have some pretty compromising pictures of me, and I have a few of them - and now that they are on my computer they can't get to them. Anyway, here they are.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

This is when Blaze took me out to play golf and I wore my sweet Grandpa Harris hat.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

People who love me know that I love pumpkin cakes.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Just give Kermit a call if you want to kill that lamb at his house.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

The quad in fall.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Chuck Norris at the ward halloween party.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Jake's dad is probably the manliest man alive, so Nate dressed up like him for halloween. Pretty sweet.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Speaks for itself.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

I wonder where I got it from.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Right before she pulled the trigger and ended up on her bottom.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Janet rocking the skeet.

From Cell Phone 11-24-08

Val was pretty much the best shot in the entire world.


What a week. I had two tests in my biology classes, and about a million other things that needed to be done - and they all seemed to be needing attention at the exact same time. Thankfully - everything went better than planned, and Janet and I got to spend the weekend at home with the fam in IF. We got home on Friday night and devoured some potatoes and stroganoff that mom had fixed, and then watched Glory Road. During dinner, my position at work was discussed and we also discovered that my 88% in Chemistry wasn't quite up to par. :) It was pretty funny. Saturday we got up and headed out to the Skyline debate tourny to see my beloved debate coach, and then made it over to Taylorview to visit Blaze at the wrestling tourny he was running. We dropped by Toys R Us to discuss Christmas break employment, and made it home just in time to catch some sandwiches and head out the door to go shooting. Mom bought some clay pigeons and a thrower to use to test out her new shotgun - but it turned out that it was physically impossible for anyone except me to throw the clay pigeons. I tried to throw with one hand while holding the shotgun in the other so that I could rock out - but it didn't work too well. All of the shooting pictures are from saturday. We ate some bajio's for dinner, and then went to Forgotten Carols. It was amazing. After watching Get Smart with Val, we went to bed. Sunday was church, dinner, a stop in Poky to visit Janet's family, and home. It was quite the weekend.

Today in the Statesman, I read this story about a kid here in logan who had no history of any alcohol at all dying of an alcohol overdose that is apparently linked with a frat initiation. Who needs that? My condolences to all of the families involved.

48-24.

In just a few short hours, I'll be in Arizona with some of the cutest little kids on the planet. Needless to say, I'm pretty pumped for that. I'll be sure to post some pictures of our adventures.

Hope everyone has a good thanksgiving. Until next week...

A few weeks in pictures.

Okay, so not really a few weeks in pictures, but at least the last one and a few other various photos from my goings on.  Here they come.

From 11-6-08

One day coming home from school, it was raining, but just barely.  It was way cool to me because there were leaf-shaped patches of dry cement, and leaf-shaped stains on the concrete.  These are a few pictures of that day.  

From 11-6-08

From 11-6-08

This last Saturday, we finally had the chance to gather everybody up and go shooting. Nothing too special - we just had a few extra moldy pumpkins that needed some help bio-degrading.

From 11-6-08

World, meet Jake Daley.

From 11-6-08

What shooting trip is complete without a self-portrait?

From 11-6-08

Just plinking some targets. Notice Jake and Brian's position.

From 11-6-08

Same picture, just a few seconds after Jake and Brian realized that the 9mm was a little louder than their .22s.

From 11-6-08

The group afterward. World, meet Jake Daley.

From 11-6-08

Sick action shot. We call this poor-man's skeet shooting. Jake and I have a big plastic sack that we would load a hunk of pumpkin into. On the given count, we would launch said pumpkin dozens of feet into the air, at which point Brian would blast it into little pieces with his shotgun. He missed the first time. Que verquenza.

From 11-6-08

Off of the hood of the durango. The crew.

From From Andy

Sunset over Yellowstone Lake. It has been a while since I've been there.

From Blaze

I miss this man. Like a fat kid misses cake. Minus the cake. Add a hotty.

From Mine

Probably the best picture I have ever taken.

Other happenings of notice -

Our football coach got fired. It's about time. Seriously. Read this. 8-38? I could do better than that.

Our basketball team tore up Montana this last Friday.  It felt good to be in the spectrum with so many screaming people.  I would really hate to come play there, especially if I was BYU (who won't come to Logan, hence the game in the Energy Solutions Arena).  

I'm pretty pumped for this weekend - home with the fam and some forgotten carols. It's going to be a blast.

That's about it.