Rise and Shout, The Cougars are Out!

So I have officially began my life at BYU! Today is my second day, and I am really loving it so far. At first I was having a bit of hard time, but as the day progressed yesterday, everything was great...So let me start at the beginning!!!

On Thursday, after I got my final (Hopefully!) dental work all done, we left our house at about 12 o clock. Here I am in my "traveling" clothes...which my mom said didn't match, and well, she was probably right, but I was going to be in the car all day and no one would see me, so it's all good :-D

The drive to Provo is like 8 hours or so..and guess what! I drove about 2 1/2 hours in the mountains! For someone who never ventures off of the two lane road 5 minutes from her house and never has driven on the freeway, I think I did wonderfully! I gotta say, I do love cruise control, and I hate semi trucks!!


That night when we got to Provo, we went and got Daniel and went to our favorite Utah restaurant...Wingers! It was very yummy! After that I went to visit my friend Cortney in her dorm becase she was there all alone. haha. And that is about it for that day! The picture of me to the left is the next day right before we left to move me in!!










After I moved most of my stuff into my dorm (oops, forgot to take pictures!), I went and got my ID card, and then went to lunch with my parents, daniel, and michael..Daniel told me about the most delicious food ever at this salad place in the Cougar Eat...It was this yummy Barbque Chicken wrap...mmm!

Before we headed up to Salt Lake to visit Cindy and AJ, we stopped to take some pictures in front of my dorm, Horne Hall. Don't let the pleasant outside appearance fool ya...The inside looks like a prison, and my room is even smaller than a prison cell..haha nonetheless, I think it will be fun :-D

Like I mentioned earlier, we went up to Salt Lake to visit with Cindy and AJ and visit for the night! It was lots of fun. I'm so excited to be so close to them now, and I can't wait to visit with them lots over the next year! We went to this yummy pizza place, The Pie, which we came to found out was a pretty hot spot for University of Utah students...haha. nonetheless, it was probably the best pizza I've ever had! It got me really full though, I couldn't even finish one slice! Afterwards we went back to Cindy and AJ's house and just hung around for awhile and talked and lauged! It was so much fun! Cindy made some really delicious banana bread! :)





The next day we drove back down to Provo. My parents came and dropped me off, and said goodbye. It was really sad :( I'll miss themand Michael (and all my siblings in Colorado) lots. After that...I don't really remember what I did. I think I went to a barbque for lunch and went to get my books...that was excited. I'm pretty much a smart consumer, and purchased most mybooks online..and in all saved about 50-60 dollars!! After buying my books, me and daniel went to the grocery store to buy some food, and then headed over to his apartment before the game...we sat on his couch and watchd the U game. i was really bored, so i started reading that book by Covey...7 habit of sucessful people, or something, because it was sitting on the couch and didn't have anything more exciting to do. One of his roommates was in the shower for an hour, and that was strange. Besides that, it was a very uneventful hour or so!





Finally, it was time to go to the game. Well, we went kind of early. Our seats were pretty good though! The game was really long, because of countless fumbles and injuries. Hopefully the games will be more eventful in the future! Most people left when there was a minute left on the clock..but oh, not us. We sat in our seats until the timer read 0! Actually, I would have left earlier, but Daniel is not a fairweather fan, and we stayed till the bitter end. Boy was it hot that day! After that game we went back to Daniel's apartment. We stayed there for a little bit and talked to his normal (well...more so than the others..hahahahaha) roommate, Jared for like 30 minutes. I didn't have my camera, or else I would ave taken pictures, because Jared loves picturesof himself on facebook and blogs. Next time though! haha. Daniel took me back to my apartment around 8 cuz he was going to work at 9:45. Even though he lives fairly close, it took forever to drive back because of the post-football game traffic! It was intense, lemme tell ya. I kind of just hung around my apartment for a little, and then some of my roommates and I went to the New Student Orientation Dance...So i normally don't like dances at all, but this one was suprisingly fun..way crowded though! After the dance, a bunch of people came over to our building and went downstairs to play some games..It was a blast! Here are some pictures from the night...

So i guess I'll explain these pictures..the first few show us playing this game called "Around the World". I'll be honest, I was horrible. Everytime we messed up or missed the ball (or in my case,hit it way to hard and hit it all the way across the room), we got a letter, and once we got enough to spell PING, we were out. I was out in 4 turns! The next game though, I did much better at. It sounds really kind of weird and random, but it sure was fun! We all had a differnt part of the ping pong table, and we put a ping pong ball in the table..and well, the concept was to blow the ball off of the table. Let me just say, its harder than you think! Overall, it was a way fun night and enjoyed getting to know new people!

Well, it's getting late, but i figured i'd post a few pictures of my room and what not,just so yall can see! It's really funny, my roommate, Andrea, and I got the same bed spread and sheets, and we didn't even plan it!!! Isn't that crazy? We really get along way well, and I'm so grateful to have her as my roommate! I have four other apartment-mates, and I just love them all! They all have really fun personalities, and I really can't wait to get to know them better! Anyways, it's getting late, and tomorrow is the first day of school! Luckily, i only have two classes, and the first one is at 2 :-) Oh the wonderful love of a college student! lol. I'll write my blog about labor day weekend tomorrow...hopefully :-) Good night!

Farewell my little town of Litteton...For now

It has been quite the bittersweet week, I must say. Tomorrow is the day I have been looking forward too (and actually dreading) since that fateful day last November when I received my acceptance letter to Brigham Young University. I have wanted to go to BYU ever since I can remember. When asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I always would say "I want to go to BYU and be a Mom." (and an elephant, but that's a story for another time). And not much has changed. That's really what I want to do (except I don't want to want to be an elephant, and I'm wanting to get a degree...not just get married..maybe ;-) jk). For the most part, I can hardly wait, but I can't help but be sad and anxious/nervous about the future and what's to come this year! I think I will name this week..the week of tears. All of my goodbyes over the past couple of days have been hard in different ways. I can honestly say my family are my best friends, and it's really hard to say goodbye to the people I have been so close to for the past 18 years, and I'm really going to miss them all so much. Isn't it so great that we have so much technoloy, like blogs, webcams, cell phones, etc. that will make it so much easier to keep close even when we're far. I'm so grateful that we're an eternal family! I don't think I've cried so much in one week befre (and the worst is yet to come...Saturday!) Even though I'm leaving most my family in Colorado for awhile, I'm SO excited to be near Cindy and AJ and Daniel. I'm so happy that I'll have three of my siblings so close, it makes moving to Utah so much easier, and I can't wait to spend time with them all. I can't believe I'm actually leaving...It's so weird. Utah ain't no Colorado, but it'll suffice for the time being :) Honestly, i can't think of a better place for me to spend my college years than at BYU. It's kind of sad. Friends from high school have been posting pictures from their first weeks of College..It makes me sad, really..all the pictures they have are of them being all drunk and high! I'm so grateful to be going to a school where I won't have to worry about things like that :) Anyways...I leave tomorrow (well, I guess today..) at about 12, and we'll get there at 7 or 8 and go get Daniel for dinner at the best restaurant EVER...WINGERS!!! I'm actually not going to move my stuff in til Friday. So friday, i'll bring my stuff to my apartment, and then go to some orientation things, and then go up to SLC with my parents and Michael to see Cindy and AJ (Yes, i'm prolonging saying goodbye as much as possible). Saturday we'll come back down...and let the water works begin..I'll be left in Provo. No looking back. Am I ready for this whole new life? Well..maybe not entirerly, but I'm really excited, and I know that I'm in the right place. My ward seems like ts gonna be great, Im leaving in Heritage Halls, my roommates seem so nice and fun, I got my job with ChaCha, and my classes are just what I want! Don't worry everyone, you'll be reading plenty of blogs in the months to come... :)





So for now...I'll say farwell to Littleton..but don't worry, I'll be back :-)





And for entertainment purposes...here are some before and after pictures of my room (pre-packing and post). The first pictures...my room isn't normaly like that, I just had all my clothes and stuff strewn across everywhere, and the after picture? Probably the cleanest it's ever been, thanks to Kristalyn and Diana and My mom...I couldn't have packed my room up and gotten everything ready without them..Thanks guys :)



BEFORE

AFTER

If something can go wrong..oh, it will.

The Dentist. I really hate going. I never have. When I was little, I bit the dentist, and was kindly asked (er..told) to go to a dentist that specialized in children. So I did. For a long time, I think til I was 12. It was a really fun place to go, well, before I went back to the dentist room. There were games and puzzles...It was like they were trying to trick everyone into thinking it was a thrilling place to be. It wasn't. I didn't like going, especially when I had to swish my mouth with that flouride junk. Thank goodness I no longer have to deal with that! I've always had a really, really, bad gag reflex, and all those long tools that dentists have really make me feel miserable. I think last year was the first time I actually succesfully made it through those xrays they take without gagging really bad. I mean, they used to not even take xrays because it was so bad. A few years ago when getting a root canal (more on that in a second), the dentist got really upset with his hygenist because when i started gagging, she didn't even take it out. Anyways, on to the point of this (I wrote about this awhile back, but I'll do a brief recap for those who didn't read it). Back in 2005, I had to get an emergency root canal on a tooth because of a cavity that really...was bad. It was horrible in itself, but it was nice to get it done and not have pain in my mouth anymore. Fast forward to this last April. That tooth was hurting really bad. This was NOT supposed to happen! I looked at my tooth, and realized the gum was really swollen. I went into the dentist, and since my reguar dentist wasn't in, some other guy looked at it, and told me to go to an endodentist, which is a dentist that specializes in root canals. I went there and he basically told me my tooth was beyond saving, and it had to be removed because the root canal had failed (this happens to only 5% of root canals...). Great, just what I wanted to hear. I'm only 18 and I'm already having to get teeth pulled? I cried the whole way home, thinking that everyone would think i was weird,even though in reality it was in the back of my mouth and no one would notice unless they were looking into my mouth, very closely. Anyways, I got the tooth pulled, and my dentist said i needed either an implant or a bridge because my teeth would start to shift, and it would mess up my mouth. Those are both pretty darn expensive procedures, so we opted for the less of two evils, and what my dentist recommended, the bridge. That procedure took several visits to complete, but finally in July, it was done! I was so happy, and once again, felt like my dental woes were over. This last weekend, that part of my mouth was hurting reallllyyyy bad. However, I thought it might have been my wisdom teeth this time! Well, I went into the dentist, and although my wisdom teeth were about to surface, it shouldn't be causing all that pain. My dentist started saying that it was probably the bridge, and after isolating the pain, i realized it was. He began to tell me and my mom that I might need to get a root canal, this week, on one of the teeth on the bridge, because sometimes when putting a bridge in, it kills the roots of the teeth underneath it.......AH! This is not what i wanted to hear, and he said that he would want me to get it before I left for college, just so it didn't get infected. He decided to take some xrays then, and decided the roots probably weren't dead, but that the bridge had been put on incorrectly and that was probably causing the pain. (Later when i went in to get this taken care of, he said this very,very rarely happens. Oh, of course it would happen to me!). At that point, he numbed me up and used this scary tool that he thought might be able to "knock" the bridge into place. He warned me that this could break my tooth or the bridge. This just about made me cry. Luckily, it didn't, but it made me sure grateful that I was numbed up really well..Because it jolted me so much, and I can't imagine the pain that would have accompanied that! Well, that didn't work, so he had me come in 3 hours later, and basically, they took the bridge off and made an imprint for a new one, which they had to have rush delivered for next Thursday morning. The day I'm leaving for BYU. Needless to say, this has not been a good day! I'm just hoping and praying this will be the end to all of dental issues. Ah!

(just for the record, I haven't had a cavity for 6 years..Not since that cavity was found in 2002, and it didn't get taken care of til 2005. I really do have good teeth. I swear. Just take this as a lesson to make your children brush and floss there teeth..lots!)

The end.

Go Green? I think I'll pass

Alright, I know that its good to care about the earth and what not,but I think that this whole "Go green" thing is getting a bit ridiculous. I feel like every store I go into, every channel I watch, and every newspaper I read has something to do with becoming eco friendly. I think that there are television channels that are claiming that their station has "gone green." How do they even go green? Make all the actors on their television shows drink out of biodegradable cups? My high school was overrun by kids who thought of themselves as hippies and felt the need to make sure everyone knew how horrible we were for not recycling and using hairspray, and not devoting all of our efforts in life towards making the world cleaner. And this whole global warming thing...I believe in the 1970's there was speculation that the world would be going into a "potential ice age"...has the weather changed THAT much in the past 40 years to say that global warming is a real danger? Don't get me wrong, I'm not out there litering and making an effort to polute the world, but I'm getting tired of all these tree hugging, environmentalist people! (No offence if one of you are reading this!). Today we were at target and while browsing through some aisles my mom exclaimed, "Katie, I found the perfect shirt for you!" So I go over and see what she found, and it was a shirt that exclaimed "Go Green!" I was not amused. However, the icing on the cake, and the main cause for this rant of mine, is a sign my mom and I saw the other day. We were at this new store, the sunflower market, and upon arriving and trying to find a parking spot, and since it was raining, we were elated to find a parking spot fairly close to the door. However, right before pulling in, we saw this sign:
Since when has having an 'eco friendly vehicle' been reason enough to be able to park in a spot that is just as good as a handicap spot? What's next? Special parking permits that you have to have in order to park in these places? My mom said she wishes she decided to just park in this spot...just in spite of the sign, but alas, we did not. I say we all go buy big diesel trucks instead of those honda prius...just in spite of this sign :-) (well, those of us who have lots of money to spend on a new car, plus the gas that those diesel trucks seem to like..haha)

High School graduate? Apparently more like elementary school grad!

Alright, so it's a common known fact that my sister Diana has been mistaken to be younger than she really is, right? (No offense Diana! this has something to do with what I'm writing), but I've always felt like I looked older, or at least my own age. Well, this summer has definitely made me rethink this assumption I have made. When we were in California, I'd say about 4-5 times while giong out to eat, we were asked if we needed two children's menus. Let me remind you of who I was in California with...My dad and mom, who are obviously not under 12 (and in some cases of restaurants, under 9), and my little brother Michael, who is 11. If I'm counting right, that is ONE person who should qualify for the children's menu. So the people asking if we needed two children's menus were thinking that I was that young. This happened once or twice here in Littleton before when we went out to eat as well. When we went to the airport to go home, I got out my ID to show the person checking our luggage so I could get my ticket, and she's like "Oh no dear, you don't need to show me that! Only people over 16 need too!", she was cute and old, so I just laughed and told her i was 18, and she laughed embarassedly. This occurance made me try something out at our next stop, security. Now, if you're over 18, you have to show your id before going to security. Well, I just decided to see if I could slip by without showing them it...and alas, I did, without even a glance of wondering "hmmmm is she older than 18?". I'm not gonna lie, after that happened, I decided I'm not too confident in the airport security (at least not at John Wayne Airport!). So you may be asking "Why is Katie writing about this right now? All this happened back in June!", well something happened today that reminded me of this, and made me think, Why would anyone think i'm younger than 18! Me, my mom, and Michael went over to the elementary school to bring michael's school supplys into his class. His teacher seemed really cool, and after awhile he was like "Oh Michael, is this your sister?", and he's like "yeah", and I"m like Hi! My name is Katie. He looks at me for a second, and is like, is she younger or older than you Michael? I starred at him for a second, waiting for him to laugh, crack a smile, or at least show somewhat that he wasn't actually considering I was younger than 11...but nothing. After a few seconds I was like...I'm older. And he was like, oh okay. He was probably thinking "oh, she must be in 7th grade". haha. I was boggled after this experience, and slightly confused. Do I really appear to be 10 years old to people?! Sigh...Anyways, there's the end of my rant! Hopefully this means I won't look really old when I'm like 40!!

Summer Youth Conference, 2008!

Well, this post is definitely overdue! At the end of June, I went on probably one of my very favorite youth conferences ever! It was only one day, but it sure was fun! I've been waiting to get a picture CD from someone at Church, because I didn't get that many pictures, but I finally gave up on that. Most of the pictures they got are of me and cortneylooking very tired at the camera (so out of character for me, I know!), or of my back (I don't know why!), so these pictures will have to do! If you don't want to read the whole down, at least scroll down to my raft's picture (we went white water rafting..I just noticed I didn't mention that!)...It's pretty sweet!

So, we started out the day bright and early at 5:30 AM at the Church. For someone who never got up that early, even for school, I was not thrilled. Okay, it really wasn't that bad. They told us if we weren't there by 530, they'd leave us behind..Yeah..Right. I was there promptly at 530, and I was about the only person there, besides Cortney (whose mom made her get there at 5:15), and like one leader. We stood oustide the bus for like 15 minutes, had a prayer, and then boarded our bus! They gave us a "continental breakfast" of granola bars and Sunny D (they said it was the preliminary breakfast, because there would be an even better one at the place we were headed..yay!)

The bus ride over was pretty exciting! It was about 2 1/2 hours long..We watched "American Mormon", which I've been wanting to see for awhile...It was actually pretty funny! We were sitting my Janelle and Sam, probably the cutest girls ever!, and that was fun as usual.

When we got to Wilderness Aware (actually, I'm not really sure that's the name...), we got this great continental breakfast..cough. As you can tell, we all enjoyed it very much. The picture of me is definitely just being posed...That thing had like 500 calories in it, I definitely only a bite or two (especially cuz I had a donut before it..haha). We sat around for awhile just chatting, so that was fun! I was getting pretty excited to get our raft trip!

Janelle and Sam definitely had the best water white rafting outfits, ever!
Here we are about to get onto our buses down to the Arkansas River! Our paddles and lifejackets definitely were very attractive. Just wait til you see us in your helmets..boy you'll be blown away!


I'm not being biased when I say, my raft was the best. I was put in a group with Cortney, Janelle, Sam, Sister Jones (Sam's mom), and Brother and Sister Ballard (some of my favorite youth leaders ever!). Our boat master guy was pretty awesome. He said that our group was great and that he wouldn't have been afraid to take us into the hardest rapids on the Arkansas! I honestly don't think I've ever done something as thrilling as white water rafting..I really want to go again. It's really such a cool experience to be out there on the water, it's like all your worries and thoughts just go away, because you are totally just concentrated on manuevering through the next rapid..ah, I can't explain how great it was! I really hope I can go again. As for this picture..Well, there was about 5 pictures of each group taken. I tried to smile, I really did, but for some reason, in every single one, I had some funny face on..This was definitely my favorite, which is why I chose to get it for myself (my bishop got an 8x10 for everyone that went!). This is definitely a picture I will keep for years to come! Just a funny story...So the whole time, we were joking about how it would be funny if someone fell out while we were on the river. Well, no one did...But as we were getting out of the rafts, we were in about...2 feet of water still? Sam was like "Katie you should fall out on purpose", so I pretended too..Only, that pretend turned into my losing my balance and falling backwards, out of the raft, into the water. It was really funny. I was teased by her and a bunch of other people for falling out of the raft when it wasn't even moving. lol, I guess that's what I get for joking around! he he.



Ah, I love the mountains so much! They are soo beautiful. After our tour on the river (about 2 hours long), we stopped on the side of the river, and had a lunch provided to us by the rafting company. I didn't eat a sandwich (yes, i'm kind of weird and really try and avoid eating sandwiches that the bread isn't toasted...i just think they taste soggy and nasty!), but there was a lot of yummy fruit, vegetables, and chips and dips that were there as well! We hung around there for about..oooh, an hour or so? We all changed out of our wet clothes, and got ready for our service project. I didn't get a picture, but somehow me and cortney brought the exact same shirt, and a similar pair jeans. It was kind of embarassing, but funny at the same time. Like I mentioned, after rafting and lunch we had a service project. We went over to same place near the river, and picked up trash, and pulled thistles for awhile..it was thrilling. Cortney had an allergice reaction to the thistles though..haha. I didn't get any pictures of the service project, cuz my camera was in the bus, but if i ever get a hold of the ones from the ward, i'll have to post them.

After all the stuff we did down by the river, we had some time to kill before our barbque and fireside, so we went over to this little down, that was supposedly having an art festival. We all got out for like an hour and just walked around. It was such a cute little town! While we were wandering, we found this cool kayaking competition going on! All these people in kayaks would go into this place (see the picture below), and do all these cool tricks! That was neat.!

There was this really weird shop that sold overpriced, strange objects, such as the one below. This town, as cute as it was, was very very strange. There was like women walking around on stilts and long dresses, and this old (okay...maybe liek 40 or 50 years old) belly dancers..Trust me, that's not a sight I ever want to see again! After meandering through the town, my group went back to the place the bus was, and after realizing it was not there, went into the local kmart.


For the last part of our youth conference, we went to a house of some people that my bishop or someone knew up in the area we were at. It was so beautiful! I absolutely loved the house, and its surroundings. Course, i'd be scared out of my mind to live there (maybe I've read/watched too many stories about scary things happening to people who live in the middle of nowhere!). We had a nice barbque, with hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, watermelon (my favorite!), and really yummy brownies! Here's just a couple of pictures from that...I just realized I have very few pictures of people besides me, cortney, sam, and janelle. haha. It was pretty windy outside, so me and cortney tried (and failed) to find ways to keep warm. This first picture is our attempt to cover ourselves with a blanket..I actually really like how the picture turned out though! Anyways, after dinner, we had an amazing fireside by Bishop Dunn, of the singles ward in my stake. He talked for about an hour, and it was one of those times where I really felt my testimony grow! Definitely a great way to end my last youth conference...as a youth anyways. There was then a testimony meeting, and we boarded the bus for our journey home!





Well, here's the last picture I took before we got home. We look kind of grungy and tired, but hey..it was a fun trip! The bus ride home seemed a lot longer than the one there. A big ol' rain storm hit us on the way back, and even though i thought the bus would probably veer off the road and kill us all, we made it safely back to Littleton around 11pm. We watched this movie, Return with Honor, and everyone take now..NEVER WATCH THIS MOVIE. Honestly, worst LDS film that's ever been created. Anyways...I'll never forget this youth conference..I wish it would have lasted longer!!