Andrew's birthday weekend

Andrew Man had his birthday this weekend. 10 years old now. I was just younger than him when we moved into the house. He is so freaking cute. Just look at him! Button up shirt, little tie, hair all done, he's a cute kid. We all tell him how to dress and how to wear his hair. Having 4 older sisters, he can't really get away with anything but goodness is he going to be a stud when he is older. Just look how good he looks! I just can't get over how cute he is. 

For his birthday party he wanted to do a bunch of minute-to-win-it games. He was such a stud, he won most of them. In this game, they had to stack dice on a Popsicle stick in their mouth. He had it down. 

He had a bunch of his friends come over. Including his adorable friend Anika.

In this game, you had to put a nylon over your head with a ball stuck in one end. You then had to swing the ball around and knock over a bunch of cups. We were timing them to see who could knock them over fastest and Andrew beat everyone by 30 seconds or more.

Malsue and Abby were on kitchen duty. Mom had the idea to make mystery menus. She changed the names of a bunch of food and let the kids order at random. Some pretty interesting stuff. 

Charlie is so little, I put him in a bag and hauled him around so he wouldn't get stepped on.

The strange assortment of food.

Kids were happy anyways. And loud. Very very loud. 

For this game, we split the kids into two groups. We put a bit of vasaline on their noses. they had to use their noses to then pick up a cotton ball and put it in the other container. After two minutes, which ever team had more cotton balls one. I believe the final score was 21-20 with Andrew's team winning.

Seriously there were kids everywhere. This was that fun mummy game where you try to wrap the person up as quickly as you can from head to toe. 

A huge pile of torn up streamers was thrown all over the house. Yipee. 

Andrew thought we should have some sort of cup stacking game. I wasn't paying super close attention to the logistics of this game but I think Andrew won. Oh and that is Anika in the pink shirt.

I love Malsue so much. People think we are twins a lot of the time. I picked her up from school and walked through the halls wither her for a moment. People kept asking us if we were twins. Okay people, we went to the same school together for a year, I was clearly a senior and wore the "senior gear" all the time. We are not twins. We couldn't be any more related, but we aren't twins. Even my roommates have made a few comments saying that we look like twins. They saw this picture and said we have the same face.

After the craziness of Saturday's party, we had a family get together at our house on Sunday. It was nice to have everyone together. Mom made her excellent pulled pork with rice and a cake for dessert. It is always fun to have the family together. 

First round of the season, last game of the season

Now that the weather is warmer and warmer, I can go golf now. I have always enjoyed going to golf back at home. Grab my clubs and drive 3 minutes to the nearest course, pay a couple of bucks and enjoy myself for a few hours. Things are a little more complicated now that I am away at school. There is a course in Provo, but it's like a private country club or something so I tried to find a public course near me. I found Hobble Creek golf course. It was about a half hour drive south of Provo, in Springville in a canyon. It was a pretty nice little course. I really didn't play very well. It was my first time out in about 6 months. Goodness gracious am I sore from it. Oh well it was fun and my golf class will start soon so I had to go do something. 

Last home game of the season. I went with a few of my roommates. It was fun to go with them. It was a good game. Refs were horrible, but they never are great either. Cougars won. I had a good time there. During one of the time outs, Vasa Fitness did a flex cam and I was on it. It was pretty fun. 

Yellowstone

A few months ago, I started researching and applying for various jobs in national parks near home. I didn't think anything would really happen with it. It would be for pretty much the entire summer, in the woods somewhere, and I wouldn't get to see my family or anything.
Today I got a phone call from some guy who works at Yellowstone. He offered me a job to come work in the park over the summer. I would be gone from May 1st to August 20th. Quite a long time. Strange thing is, I didn't even apply for the position he offered me. He said that I would be working at the deli by the lodge at Old Faithful. I would be working at the Subway in the Disneyland of national parks. I want to work in national parks, but not at a deli. I wanted to go with the rangers or something. Not a deli. It'd be a full time job, I'd live up there, they'd pay for me to live there and I'd get paid decently and not have anywhere to run and spend it.
National parks don't have very good cell phone service so that's kind of a bust. If I were to go away for the entire summer, there are a variety of things that I would miss out on. First of all, I love to be home with my family. Home is so much better than anywhere else. Second, Darick comes home July 17th and if I was gone all summer, I would miss any and all the time we would be able to spend together. That would really suck because it's already really hard not to have him around, but to have him back and me gone would be really hard. It would take the entire summer. I wouldn't be able to work at the theater, which is one of my favorite things to do. Working there is so great and I love the employees (for the most part).
On the reverse side, if I was ever to get a summer job in a national park, now is the time. Before I get married and start a family, now is the time for anything like that. What are the odds of having this opportunity again? I want to work with the national parks professionally, but it would be different. When I start a career there, I'll be married and be working on a family. Right now, I'm only tied down to my family at home and they can manage the summer without me.
It's a lot to think about, lots to consider, going to have to pray about it a lot for sure.

Apartment hunting

I feel bad that I haven't been writing or posting very much. There just always seems to be something going on and some reason to not post anything.
For a while there I was really homesick. Even though I am only about an hour away from home, I miss it all the time. My mom just did her job too well.
The last week or so I have been going crazy trying to find a place to live for the upcoming fall/winter semesters. It is super frustrating because there are a ton of places that are advertising great prices, availability, everything I want, it all looks great. When I am finally able to get in touch with someone, it is all different from what they advertise. Many places won't show a picture, which is suspicious. I've gone and looked at a few places that sounded pretty good. The prices they advertised were within my price range, and they hit most of the things on my list. When I showed up to see the place, I was horrible disappointed.
One place advertised that the building was in good condition and fully furnished. When I got there, the building was a disaster and "fully furnished" was a total lie. The walls and carpet were stained and beat up, there was a table and chairs, but that was the only table and sitting in the entire place, no couches or anything in the living room, one of the bathrooms that was connected to one of the bedrooms didn't have a door and there were no closets in the bedrooms. It was as close to campus as you can get, so that's still good. When I researched the place and contacted the lady, the rent was well within my price range and rent included all the utilities. The advertisement also said that there would be plenty of parking. A few days ago when I was able to meet with the landlady, it was very different from what was advertised. The rent was about $35 more a month than advertised and I would have $20-40 for utilities each month. Parking was also a bit of a lie. There is only one spot for each apartment, and it would have to be split between the 4 people that live there. No telling if anyone else there would have a car or not. So yeah that one was a bust. Bummer too, I was quite excited about that place.
The most frustrating part about finding an apartment is false advertising. All these places seem so great on the advertisements. As soon as I call them, the prices are much higher and the nice things are in shorter stock. Many places are either too far from campus to walk, too expensive, or want a full year contract rather than a fall/winter contract.
Should anyone find anything that hits the majority of things on my list and is less that $400 a month, let me know:
-parking (covered is nice but not necessary, just need a spot)
-rent/utilities (I don't wan't have to pay a ton for rent and then utilities, I want to landlord to pay as many of the utilities as possible)
-laundry (either a washer/dryer in the unit or something on-site)
-private/shared room (after this semester I really want a private room, a shared room is not a deal breaker but a private room is the ideal)
-kitchen (I want the appliances to be in good repair, some places say they don't have a fridge or a microwave and I'll be needing those)
-quality (not dump, but not the top of the line, no stained walls or smells of mildew)
-social scene (LOL like I care)
-distance to campus (I'd rather not drive every day, something within walking distance is best)
Yeah that's pretty much everything on my list. My mom has given me a few leads on basement apartments which would be really nice to do. If I do an apartment, condo, townhouse, or basement thing, I need to figure it out really soon. A lot of places are already mostly full and it's been like a week since you could start signing contracts. Sheesh.