Are you sure this water's sanitary?

This past Saturday evening, I got asked on a date by my friend Bret. He is a big fisher, so we went fishing with one other couple up at Silver Lake. It's beautiful up there (Look at my camping post from the 3rd of July). I had never been fishing before, so I was pretty excited! It turns out i'm pretty good! I caught 2 fish within the first 20 minutes and then one more at the end of the trip. More than anyone else there. I was pretty surprised, but it was way cool! We kept the three I caught and I even helped cleaned out the fish. GROSS!!

Look at that! I named him Steve.

Up close and personal.


Me cleaning the fish. It was SO slimy! At least it wasn't wriggling around. I tried to hold a live one and I couldn't hold on to it.


Look at those guts! Bleh.


This is Bret!

It was a really fun date. On Sunday, I went over to Bret's house and we cooked my catch! It was actually pretty good.

Happy Moon Day!

On July 20th it was the 40th anniversary of the US landing on the moon. When we found this out, of course we threw a themed party. Why not?

Cheerio, dahling.

Us girls at the Arch House love to plan fun things to do. Last Sunday was no different. We planned to have a tea party!!! Now maybe it's because we had watched all 6 Harry Potter movies the week before, but we decided that we would only talk in British accents. And of course we had to wear our dresses from church. What is tea time without the proper attire? (Weird...as I'm writing this, i'm thinking in a British accent).

Our party was complete with crumpets and story-telling and even a poem recited by Mary Vance herself. We felt oh so proper during the occasion. It was funny to hear Mary talk because her accent changed every five seconds or so. After tea time we watched Persuasion. Only Suzanne was persuaded to stay awake though (Dad, that joke was for you. You would say something like that). We had a jolly good time together.


Jen

Tayla

This is my home teacher, John. He happened to come visit as we were preparing for the party and he stayed.

Yours truly

Suzanne

Monica

Mary

Finally! A good ratio.

Last weekend some friends and I had a hankerin' to go on a hike. So of course we did. Now, at BYU you hear a lot of talk about ratio. What ratio, you may ask? The ratio of boys to girls. Usually it is the boys saying "now this is a pretty good ratio" BUT on this specific occasion....there was one more guy than girl. Glorious!! Anyway back to the hike...a friend of ours is from Orem, so he knows the area pretty well and he found us a beautiful place to go hiking. The hike itself was really easy and only took 20 minutes, but it was fantastic! At the top of the hike there was this:


I have seen waterfalls before, but not up close like this. The sound of the water hitting the rocks below was so calming. I loved it!! Two of the guys decided to run under the falls:

As you can see, it wasn't a very big waterfall so Suzanne and I decided to be daring. We took off our shoes and took the plunge (I made Suz go first).
I was terrified for a few minutes beforehand.

Apparently the color of the day was red. Suz and I matched like always and this time Bret joined the club.

The feeling of water rushing over me was SO cool! The only downside is that the water made my shorts heavy and they are already a little big as it is so I had to hold them up the whole way down the mountain. It was such a fun trip to take. If anybody has the chance to run under a waterfall, I'd recommend it. Here's the whole Group:

Mosquitos bite.

Last night my roommates and some guys from the ward went to the lake to have a bonfire. It was way fun, but there were TONS of bugs and mosquitoes. I am feeling the effects of wearing shorts. My legs are so covered in bites that it looks like I have chicken pox....what a delight.

Expelliarmus!

I love love love Harry Potter. So of course, when I heard that the sixth movie was coming out, of course I cleared my schedule of unimportant things like sleeping. Midnight showings are the best! There are so many crazy people to see and everybody is just so excited. My roommates and I went to the theater three hours early to partake in this excitement (and get good seats). We were really hyper and probably really obnoxious to those people on either side of us, but oh well. We had fun taking pictures and playing Phase 10.

The roommates plus Jen.


Again


Mary can be so beautiful sometimes. :)

These next two pictures are reasons why Suz and I get asked out on so many dates.....maybe not.


Haha every time I look at these I can't help but laugh. My roommates are the greatest and we've had so many good times together. I'm going to be sad when I have to move in a month. At least I'll have Mary and Suz with me still!

ps- the movie was great! I laughed almost the whole time. It helped that I was loopy from lack of sleep though :)

Meet Aspen Carter

She is 7 years old, is very shy, is really hard to get a hold of, and LOVES to swim. I mentor her. This mean I hang out with her each week and we do fun stuff together, kind of like a big sister thing. The pictures above are of when we made chicken nuggets for dinner.

Videos

I finally learned how to put my videos on here, so here you go. These are pretty fun.



This is from our hike to Silver Lake. It's beautiful!


The Jonas Brothers!




These girls were so funny. They were dancing the whole night!


Nick Jonas--what a stud. He is by far the most talented Jonas Brother (plays the piano, guitar, drums, and sings) and, in my opinion, is the most attractive. He's the one playing the piano in this video.

Dad, you should be proud.

Let it be known that I have successfully cooked a roast in the crockpot just like dad. I even made gravy. I know it's not that hard, but I felt good about myself. It was pretty tasty too.

Camping--A lesson in patience

So a few weekends ago, my roommates and I decided to rough it out in the woods all by ourselves. We booked a camp site in advance and then set out on our way. We had clear instructions on how to get there (it was only in Springville) and allotted ourselves about 30 minutes to get there. Little did we know that it would take almost TWO HOURS to get there. The reason? Construction....bleh. I hate it. We ran into it at every turn it seemed like. We had to take at least 3 detours. So annoying. At least we got to know the neighborhoods of Springville. We saw a house that looked like Rigoletto lived there, so that was cool (Funny side story: We went to a bridal shower this past weekend and it was in the house next door to the Rigoletto house). We finally stopped some ladies walking down the road to ask them for help.

So we found the campground, but we didn't know which space was ours, so we had to ask the lady in charge. Here is a video documenting our frustration (this is the end of the almost 2 hours).

I love how the video ends with Jen's thumbs up. That means we found it!!! So as you can see, we weren't in the best shape after so many frustrations. I couldn't stop laughing! I think I was laughing so I wouldn't cry. I really can't remember though. Anyway, we got there and had a smashing good time!
The fire that Jen and I tried to build. We couldn't get it started so we had to ask a man across the way to help us. He told us it should only take one match to light a fire. We had used about 20... He started ours with just the leftover coals of our failed attempt. How embarrassing.

Suz documenting our trip. Isn't she a dream?

Everyone minus me.

Me and Mary.

Jen in our tiny tent. It's a 2 man tent, but we definitely squished all five of us in there.

Haha I love this picture.

Don't we look great when we first wake up?

Next time we try an outing like this, we will know A) how to get there and B) how to start the fire.

Stadium of FIRE!!!!

So on the Fourth I helped set up chairs for the Stadium of FIRE. Then that night I got to go to the show! It was one of the most exciting things I have done in a long time. One of the things I was most excited about was this obnoxious yellow and orange shirt. I had to wear it that night to get in, and as I walked to the Stadium people were asking me questions as if I knew all the ins and outs of the production. It was kinda cool.

So because I was a volunteer, I got to sit right on the field with the other volunteers and military families. It was cool because the dancers were right there in our faces. I almost got hit a few times with those poles they are holding.


These kids were SO cute. I especially love the little boy.


This flag was ENORMOUS! It was like a hundred feet long or something. At the end of the night they respectfully retired it by fire. (As you can see, it's kind of old)

SHeDaisy! They were really fun live. I love their music.

And without further ado........ The Jonas Brothers!!!!!!!
The stage was way cool.

All three singing together. I took tons of video clips, but my computer wont let me put them on. Too bad. Heather, I think Taylor and maybe Emily would like the pictures of the Jonas Brothers. You should show them.

Anyway. It was a totally fun night! I think I'm going to volunteer again next year. I kinda like the idea of free T-shirts and tickets.

The 3rd of July.

My roommates and I wanted to have a really exciting Fourth of July weekend. On the 4th, I was going to Stadium of Fire and a few others were going with family to party, so.....we planned an action packed day of fun on the 3rd. We started off bright and early with a hike up to Silver Lake. It was SO beautiful as you will see from the pictures.

This is the whole crew. I'm pretty surprised we got all seven of us in this because nobody was around to take one for us, so Mary had to use her long arms to snap this shot.

Silver Lake.

So on the way down the mountain....a cougar was attacking Suzanne so I saved her and this is my battle wound. That would be cool if it were true. But I really just tripped (on the most level part of the trail) and cut myself up on the gravel. It doesn't look that bad here, but it was a nasty cut and it bruised a lot over the next few days. Putting rubbing alcohol on it was TERRIBLE.

There was snow at the top! How cool is that? There were some little boys up there that kept pelting us with snowballs so, of course, we had to fight back.

This is a really cool picture. The lake is high up on the mountain, so the edge looks like it just drops off...which it does.



When we got home, we went swimming. Don't ask what Mary is doing. I don't think any of us know.

We then made a FEAST!!! We made lots of BBQ chicken salad. It was delicious.

This is the puppy that lives next door. His name is Cha Le (it sounds like you're saying Charlie with a British accent). He is so adorable and we like to play with him most days.

Okay. This is proof that people in Provo are ridiculous! People were camping out on the side of University Ave 24 hours before the 4th of July parade was supposed to happen. What a waste of a day. Most of the people brought their TVs and movies and video games to play. I guess it could be fun, but I don't get it.

We ended off the night with some yummy desserts and the dice game. Or, in Suzanne's family, Farkle.

What a great day!