all this holiday baking has got to stop..

Can you believe it's Christmas time already? It finally snowed (a LOT) here in Provo, and it finally feels like it's time for the holidays.

We spent Thanksgiving in Parker, Colorado with Beau's family, and it was GREAT. So relaxing. I hadn't seen Miller... since our wedding, maybe? Here he is sitting in this cute little chair.


Thanks to Brady for letting us borrow his clothes while he's on his mission. I also like how the TV in the background looks like it's one of those fake fireplace things. I think really it was on the news and they were covering a warehouse fire.


Sammy, my running buddy! We went 5 miles on Thanksgiving. I still don't think that made up for the massive quantities of food I ate.


It's hard to take good pictures of children. They move around a lot.


We had a wonderful makeup free and shave free weekend. Thanks, Guy and Ellen!


Saturday we went to the barn to film a little video for one of Beau's Russian classes. Here's me and a fuzzy Buckwheat.


And THEN, we went to Salt Lake for some interviews (which reminds me, I don't think I've mentioned my job before. I interview people. More on that later) and went to this little Russian cafe/store, picture below. We had verenky (kind of like potstickers) and pelmeni (kind of like ravioli) and borscht. It was actually pretty good.


On the way back we stopped at a tack store in Draper, where I got me some new warm riding/work gloves. I get really excited about little things like that. I'm realizing that I haven't worked at a barn in the winter since junior year of high school, and I'm struggling to know how to dress.

So, my job. I work for the BYU Sociology department (specifically the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies) for a professor who is collecting oral histories about experiences with the Indian Placement Program. The Placement Program was a program by the church that placed Native American kids in Mormon foster homes. The program was completely voluntary, of course, and it was to give the Indian kids opportunities to go to school and live off of the reservation. It started in 1947 and ended in 1996, but it was mostly popular in the 70's. I interview families that hosted the Placement kids about their experiences. It's really interesting and I'm learning a lot about Native American culture. I also get to talk to some really funny people.

Welp, that's about it for now. Happy end of the semester, everybody!


Oh, an impromptu clip from Beau's video.

IT'S MY MAMA'S BIRFDAY.

Today is mi madre's birthday, which deserves a dedicatory blog post.

On Mia, the first horse I leased. My mom likes paint horses because she likes to think she's a cowgirl.

Skiing at Sundance with Dad. I'm her favorite daughter because I'm the best skier of my sisters. Last winter, she called Beau to go skiing with her when my dad was sick. Just Beau and Mom. What a cute date.

My parents are Appalachian Trail fanatics. They hiked 12 miles on Thanksgiving day.


Sometimes they let me go with them.

It's fun to have a mom that is so exercise and health oriented. She goes to the gym 6 times a week, always takes the stairs, initiates family walks/bike rides, and takes walks on her lunch breaks at work. One time she walked the 6 miles home from my high school because my dad wanted to finish watching the homecoming game.

Showing off her orange peeling skills.



I think this is my favorite picture of my mom (taken by Page when my mom was visiting their Wymount apt) because it simultaneously shows her compulsion to organize other people's things and Page's bag collecting habits.



I don't know any other girls my age that share clothes with their mom- not only are we the same size, but she has great taste in clothes. It comes in really handy.

Happy 55th, mother!

rip toby and other halloween events

Beau=golfer. Or 1940's person. Or Newsies boy.
And I'm a puppy!

First stop on our Halloween tour: my english teacher's house. She has the tradition of making doughnuts for the neighborhood/ward (since they are the same thing in Utah) on Halloween. I'm not even a doughnut fan, but they were way good. The garage was a makeshift bakery to cook the 1,000 doughnuts and tables were set up with powdered sugar, regular sugar, glazes, etc.

Next was Spencer and Aly's annual Halloween bash (shown as the old couple on the right). I have fun cousins. And Aly is the best hostess ever.


In other, more saddening news...

In January of 2007, my dear roommate Kate and I brought home a new addition to our dorm, Toby. We had been preparing for our new arrival by polluting the snow with the contents of a free lava lamp from Wells Fargo Bank and filling it with nice clean water for our new friend.













Unfortunately, we got the wrong kind of water conditioner (even though I worked at PetSmart for 3 years? Fail.) and he died in a few hours.


But then we got a NEW Toby, a much better Toby, and he followed us around all over Provo until he passed away this morning in Kate's home. It must be noted that he survived through 10 different homes, several traumatic water changing experiences (that lava lamp had a narrow opening), neglect while Beau had him summer semester, and many minutes out of water and on Katie Smith's kitchen floor while she freaked out that she had dropped him.

Rest in peace, Toby. He was a good little fish.

happy halloween!

Beau made this instead of studying.

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just a little update.

Not too much to report here. Beau is loving his Russian classes, and actually wants to do homework now. I have decided to pursue a masters in social work post grad, so I'll just look into programs once we move somewhere slightly more permanent after graduation. Right now I'm shooting for George Mason, but that could very possibly change.

Here's what pictures I have floating around:


A small portion of Beau's Provo rec softball league! Some guy I don't know, Andy, Brandon, and Beau. I like watching and getting eaten alive by bugs (September) and freezing to death (October). This was after a game where they won after being behind by 13 after the 3rd inning. In the bottom of the last inning Beau was at bat. It was 17-17, 2 outs and a runner on 3rd. Beau hit a hard line drive over the third baseman and the runner came in to win the game. Hooray!



The babes turned two!!



And baby Cooper was born to Bryan and Alyse! He is only two days old here. Such a cute baby with lots of hair!


And just to brighten everyone's day, I'll leave you with Beau's favorite lolcat.

MANZANAS galore!

I've been wanting to make caramel apples for a long time, like since Beau and I were dating. But he's allergic to them. So we never have. BUT, Beau just discovered that fresh picked apples don't make his throat close up! It must be some crazy preservatives or pesticides. So I thought it'd be super fun to make caramel apples.


I was in Spanish Fork this week for a riding clinic, and I stopped by my grandpa's house to pick some apples. He died last year, but his house hasn't been sold and the tree still remains. I can remember playing in the backyard in the sprinklers and climbing the apple tree. I also had a lot of imaginary horses but we don't need to go into that.




My grandpa was pretty smart and planted a red apple tree but grafted green apple tree branches into it so the tree produces both kinds of apples.








I invited a couple from the ward over Saturday night for the festivites.. and let me tell you, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory has nothing on us.

Chad and Danielle aren't normally dressed like twins. They had just come back from the BYU v. CSU game.

YAY for having friends in the ward.












I bet you can't tell the difference, so I'll just tell you that the above pictured apples are from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and the one on the right is ours. Maybe we should sell it for $8 like they do.


YUM.

end of summer wrap up

Maybe one day I will have an interesting enough life to say "here's what happened at a really cool event!" and then write about it. But until then, I'll continue with mass picture uploading and captions.

Us at Beau's friend's wedding reception. Dane and Beau went to high school together, and Dane happened to marry a girl from McLean. We got to go to their fancy shmancy reception at the Ritz Carlton. I have never had so many good desserts in my life.

This is also a testament to what humidity will do to your hair.

Reagan and Tyler snuck away for a weekend to go to NYC and the four remaining adults (me, Beau, Grandmama, and Pappy) were in charge. Pretty good ratio. My mom and dad met me at work and I gave any willing participant (Adriel, Brooklee, and Grandmama) a pony ride. Dallyn politely declined.

This is also the same horse that, on my last day, Martha and I put Beau on. He POSTED and knew TWO-POINT and even checked his diagonal! Then Martha set up a jump and we pretty much died laughing at Beau's attempts.

I think we went to the District all of two times this summer. This is one of them.

Same trip.

Adriel cut her hair. But not while we were in charge. I don't think she understands that she did a bad thing.

I love box turtles. When I was younger I would catch one at the beginning of the summer and keep it till September when it was time for my little friends to go hibernate. I would buy worms from the fishing stores and keep them (the turtles, not the worms) in a big pen in my back yard. On the very last day we were in Virginia, as we were getting in the car to go to the airport, this turtle came to say goodbye to me.

MIDDLE GIRL REUNION!

Age order, which clearly has nothing to do with height: Maria, Shawney, Natalie, me, Eliza, Sarah Rose, Anne, Sarah Michelle.

At the taking of this picture, Maria was a few days returned from her mission to Brazil and Eliza had just gotten set apart to go on her mission.


The middle girls are named so because the "big girls" were a few years older than us, and we were the "little girls". But then one day someone (probably Mel) decided that we were getting to be too old to be called little girls, so we became the middle girls.

And that is all! More to come about Beau's game-winning hit in tonight's softball tourney.

And I'm still missing this guy terribly.

ode to Killian

I try not to mention my "horse thing" to people other than family, in attempts to not to not be like this:
Or like these creepy people:

And this one just makes me laugh.
Anyway, most people view horses as being a little girl thing, like my little pony or black beauty.

And sure, a lot of horse people ARE weirdos. Especially in the under 15 category. But I promise, the REAL horse people, the ones that are taken seriously by the horse community, are pretty normal and just have a very consuming hobby.

With that intro, here is my ode to Killian, the most fantastic horse I've ever had the privilege of riding.

Before we returned to Virginia, I'd been searching for a good horse to lease for the summer. Many people who don't have the time or money to keep their horse lease them to others, either on their own farm or they allow the leasee to move the horse to their own farm. Typically, the leasee pays for expenses, but doesn't have to take the risks of actually owning a horse. I was in communication with a few different people, and mostly by luck Killian was the first one I saw. I took him for a trial period, but before I even jumped him I knew that he would be an awesome horse.
Go ahead, make fun of me all you want for getting sappy about a horse.





But I have never felt so strongly that this is what I'm supposed to be doing in life. Horses are my thing.