Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The yearly struggle: What to dress up as??

Nachooooooo?

Nah, we went with Darth Alexa this year...

I went trick-or-treating with the Vanfleet family.

Only 2 of the boys dressed up (Ryan and Austin were "too old" and Wyatt wouldn't wear a costume yet).

Here's Daniel as Robin Hood

Chase as a very stoic Bill Nye the Science Guy

Baby Wyatt as a very cute Baby Wyatt

The Vanfleet Family of Pumpkins  :)

Fall Pictures

Me with the Y on the mountain in the back--

FYI I'm also freezing my butt off in the COOOLD weather (notice my big red ski jacket?)!

A pretty shot; you know I like pictures of the Y  :)

The Halloween Sky

There was a very beautiful moon out tonight,

and it seemed just perfect for taking pictures behind big, bare, creepy trees around campus.

The sky was so pretty on my way to work!

The moon and the Y

A very creepy tree.  Spoooooky!

Clean Up Your Crap (and other recent happenings)

This is the sign on the back of our front door in the kitchen.

Yes, our apartment needs help.

In other news, my hair goes into a tiny ponytail:

And, I needed to put a tribute up to Ashley who started on of my new obsessions.

Collecting water bottles.

I'll call it recycling to make me feel better.

Ashley started it by giving me this Idaho ROCKS water bottle.

It's my favorite one.  I like it because it's sturdy and not lame and flimsy like Zepherhills bottles. Blah.

And another of my recent addictions:

Vitamin Water!

Really, it's delicious.  Of course, this is just plain water that I filled them with to reuse the (very sturdy) bottles.

Well, I think that's it for me.

I know, really interesting life, huh?

The Lone Red Tree and Pink Sunset

Some fun pictures I took today....

The lone red tree

I like the blurry people in this one :)

Beautiful sunset

Pink clouds!

(view from behind the Hinckley Center)

I Chopped My Hair Off!

So, I finally got sick of having long hair because it's getting to that time of the year where it's cold and you have to start wearing jackets and stuff.  I feel like my long hair gets too bulky on top of all that stuff, too.  And I was just ready for a change.

So, here's what my hair looked like before...

...and after.....

I love it!!  <3

Happy Birthday Barcodes!

Today is the 57th anniversary of the first barcode patent.  Google is featuring the barcode (one spelling out "Google" in Code 128) on their homepage.

My barcode:

Click the link to make your own barcode:

by Barcodes Inc

Operator Retreat

A couple weeks ago my work threw a retreat.  They ahuled us up in vans to this cute little place in the mountains called Hatch Patch and we spent half the day up there doing team-building activities.

To be honest, I really didn't expect it to be much fun.  I'm not a huge fan of things like that.  BUT, it turned out to be a really great time, and I enjoyed getting to know my fellow operators.

Here are some pictures from the day:

Operator Olympics!

This is my team leader, Arron, running in the Olympic torch in his toga

Making a country flag

Our country name was "Determa," so we were the Determa-nation :)

That's me holding the stick

Our motto:  "Never give up!  Never surrender!"

I drew the stars-- skills!

Presenting our nation and flag

Playing  "hobble-ball";  we got saran-wrapped and then played volleyball

P.S. It was freezing cold- I was wearing shorts!

Hobble-ball

Every nation did skits at the end.  They turned out pretty funny.

Here's my group (we were synchronized swimmers)

Diving in to begin our synchronized performance

I got an award for these awesome balancing skills ;)

 

Arm waves

Awards ceremony

Certificate for Slaughtering Stars (drawing awesome stars on the flag) and Best Balanced (in the skit)

General Conference

What a great opportunity to listen to the General Authorities this weekend!  Wasn't Conference awesome??

Hooray for 5 new temples announced!
-Ft. Lauderdale, FL!!! (2nd in Florida)
-Brigham City, UT (14th in Utah)
-Conception, Chile (2nd in the Chile)
-Fortaleza, Brazil (7th in Brazil)
-Sapporo, Japan (3rd in Japan)

My Favorites

Talks

Saturday morning
President Uchtdorf's talk about love, the great commandment.

Saturday afternoon
Tad R. Callister's talk about not letting the few things we don't know get in the way of the things we do know.

Sunday morning
President Monson's talk about service. (warm fuzzies!)

Sunday afternoon
Jeffrey R. Holland's emphatic testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

Quotes

"Though we are incomplete, he loves us completely.  Though we are imperfect, he loves us perfectly." -President Uchtdorf

"God will not intervene to stop our use of agency." -Dallin H. Oaks

"Don't let a few things we don't know get in the way of everything we do know." -Tad R. Callister

"We need to put a delete key in our mind." -Boyd K. Packer

"The lock is on our side of the veil." -Boyd K. Packer

"Young people cannot understand the loneliness that comes when your life changes from one of preparation and performance to one of putting things away." -President Monson

"[insert entire talk]" -Jeffry R. Holland  :)

"The pure spring becomes polluted when not protected." -Quentin L. Cook

"The ultimate operation is a spiritual change of heart." -Dale G. Renlund

"Put temptations out of reach-- way out of reach!" -Dale G. Renlund

"Societies will struggle until sin is denounced as sin." -D. Todd Christofferson

"Mere wanting is a bad excuse for poor conduct." -D. Todd Christofferson

People

(who are just plain awesome)

Joseph W. Sitati (from Africa)

Jeffrey R. Holland

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Dieter F. Uchtdorf-- I think he's my favorite apostle, if we're allowed to have a favorite :)

and of course President Monson!

Football Hypocrite

I went to the football game last night.  You all may think that I'm a hypocrite for this, but lemme 'splain.

Earlier this week I got a text from one of my friends from last year, Andy (he was roommates with Neil and John-- they were all my FHE brothers).  He lives in Salt Lake and he said he was coming down to Provo on Friday night because his uncle had given him tickets to the football game.  He asked if I wanted to go.  So I said sure.  I thought it would be fun to see him and hang out.

The game turned out to be pretty good.  We won at least (35-17).  And it wasn't horribly bad to be in the same stadium as all the hooligans (who have calmed down a LOT since we lost to Florida State).

Just so we're clear here, I went to spend time with Andy, not to watch the football game. :)  I explicitly stated this when he asked me if I wanted to go: "I'm not a huge football fan, so I'll go if you don't mind me being boring."

Well, we had fun anyway!

The two of us and my roommate went to Wendy's afterwards.  It was probably the best Friday night of this whole semester.

Siesta Key- in a box!

Sorry I've been slacking on my blogging lately.  It's because I just shipped my digital camera in to get it fixed, and I've been to lazy to transfer these pictures from my phone.  But I finally did it, so here there are!

I got a package from home this last Monday.  It had some stuff my fam had picked up from Siesta Key for me, and then some other random fun stuff.

My t-shirt

Sticker- now where to put it?

Sunglasses

Necklace

And to top it all off, a High School Musical DVD board game.

Pretty awesome.

I love packages!