Utah fun!

Okay, more updates about Utah. I will eventually get to Christmas, but it will probably be like next week! Plus, Blogger is being especially irritating about how I organize my pictures, so this will be a short one.

I've spent a lot of time this week catching up on random Cedar stuff. My car is still in Nebraska, so I've been cruising around Cedar in my grandpa's sweet old '88 Chevy truck. Seriously, this thing is a beast, and it only fits 3 people in the cab, but it's fun to drive, and it's the best thing for loading up things like old toilets!

As most of you probably already know, Cafe Rio is my favorite place ever. I've found a suitable replacement in Omaha with Chipotle, but since there is actually a Cafe here in Cedar, I've been about 3 times. Yum! Plus, I've been stealing my brother's left-overs from the fridge. However, I don't think they will be too upset since we've had an on-going argument about whether Cafe Rio is better than Costa Vida (which it is!).

Here is the view from my parent's front porch. Not bad, huh? Yeah, I love the mountains, and it makes me happy to be back home. We did actually try to go up skiing the day after I took this picture, but the weather was so bad at Brian Head (the ski resort down by Cedar) that my mom ended up coming off the mountain early. They said they got several feet of snow, plus drifting winds. However, we didn't get anything down off the mountain, so we actually ended up having a green Christmas. Yes! (If you are curious about my animosity to snow, check out my blog from last winter. We got way too much snow for my liking.)

As I said, no snow at the house. Just rain. This is Shasta looking through the gate because I wouldn't let her in the house (she's not allowed in). Poor thing was soaked from running around in the rain digging in the dirt (hence the muddy nose).

The Toilet

The onslaught of finals finally got over, and I flew out to Utah the next Saturday. Luckily the flight wasn't too eventful, but I took a shuttle from Las Vegas to St. George, and when we got out, some guy took off with my bag instead of his. Luckily I had his stuff to hold for ransom, and he had his phone number on it, which we called. He was nice enough to bring it back, but it made both my dad and I laugh because all he said was "they look a lot alike!" Yeah, they didn't. Mine was a blue adidas duffle bag with a shoulder strap, and his was a black bag with a handle. Hmm.

Well this week has been pretty eventful with the fam, and my parents don't have wireless internet, so I finally decided to update. Most of my dad's side of the family lives here in Cedar, so we did a lot of family get-togethers thus far.

First was the traditional white elephant party. This is always an interesting event because I'm the oldest cousin, meaning there are a lot of young kids that don't really understand what a funny white elephant gift is. Therefore, my gift of old unearthed N'Sync CDs lost its effect when one of the 3-year-olds unwrapped it. Ha ha. However, the old WWII gas mask was hilarious, as well as a set of old dentures. My mom got the family pretty nervous by telling all kinds of stories about her dad who used to come up with all kinds of crazy presents. So of course, we spent a lot of time brain-storming to come up with our "gifts." Luckily my grandpa has an old work shed, and my brother and I headed out to see what treasures we could find. We came back with this beauty:

Yep, we found an old toilet!!!
This buddy was pretty dirty when we first unearthed it, and we brought it back to the garage to hose it down. Too bad my uncle drove up to drop off some of the cousins and caught a glimpse of what we were doing. Luckily he didn't ruin the suprise, but he did ask my dad if we had some kind of a blow-up in one of the bathrooms!

One of the cousins couldn't resist the extra-large present even though most of the family was afraid of it. (It took two people to carry in, and we had to utilize the elevator to get it down to the basement.) Poor kid! We did sweeten the deal by putting some large candy bars inside the toilet, but Blake ended up stealing it back so our poor aunt didn't have to deal with it. It also probably saved us from finding it in the middle of our driveway in the near future!! (Our aunt is well practiced in the art of pranks.)

Diet Coke-cicle

This is what happens when you leave a 24-pack of DC in your trunk overnight. Oh yeah, especially when it happens to be an ice-storm that night.

Haha! Is it weird that I kinda want to keep the exploded can? I don't know why. I'll probably just recycle it with the rest of the non-busted cans. Seriously, I thought this was hilarious! (Just in case you were worried, only two of them exploded. The rest are still intact, and perfect for drinking in their icy deliciousness!)

Studying woes

Today I will be completing my last two finals. It has been rough to keep myself motivated, and it has required a lot of self-bribery! Ha ha. For some reason I focus 5 times better if I'm wearing my headphones. I don't know why, because I'm home alone - it's not like there are any noises distracting me. Whatever works, right? Well anyways, I can't hear a thing, so I'm paranoid that someone may come to my door, or my fire alarm will go off, or something!

Yesterday I totally overdosed on both caffeine and sugar! We had a Christmas dessert day at the clinic yesterday, which meant that all the assistants and secretaries made us all kinds of delicious goodies. It was just what I needed after the two finals yesterday morning. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm growing about five cavities under my braces thanks to that. Good thing I know a lot of dentists who are almost eager to do free dental work! I'm just excited because after today I'm mentally checking out for the holidays, and I'm officially going to start a Diet Coke diet (we all know it needs to happen). We shall see if I am at all successful!

In other news, we got another snow storm last night. It actually started out as this weird hail/rain/ice thing. It totally freaked me out because I wandered out of the house around 8-o'clock to get me a fountain drink, and the sidewalks were all icy. It was one of the more strange things I've encountered out here, but I'm okay with it because we only got maybe 2 inches of snow. WAY better than last year's snow-fest.

Punched

This was pretty much how I felt after Dr. Dowd's glorious pharmacology final today. Just snuck up and punched me in the face while I was minding my own business...

No seriously, I thought this was hilarious. It must be on account of the lack of sleep and fun in my life right now!

Around the house

Check out my socks. I had to cut them so I could wear them with these sweet shoes!

Yep, these are like boots but they are high heels! Just thought I would share, especially since I've been wearing the socks around the house all day. In fact, if someone came to my door I probably wouldn't even take them off! I think they are really funny, and they are the perfect socks for me because they keep most of my foot warm while my toes still have freedom to move!

So basically it's finals... two-and-a-half-weeks. (Yeah, we don't do finals "week" anymore.) This is my attempt to distract myself from studying. Unfortunately, I must return to the joy that is pharmacology!