Dental Prom

Remember how in high school you went to prom? Well apparently dental school is just like high school, because last night we had dental prom! Actually it is really just an excuse for the girls to dress up, and everybody to get together. Oh yeah, and there was an open bar.

We went to dinner before, and here are some of the people that came.

This is Julianna and John. Julianna is one of my classmates.
Qi Qi and Julianna showing off their dresses!
Qi Qi, Steve, and I at dinner.
Brandon and Ann. They are both dental students.
Finally, this is Julianna, Qi Qi, and I at the dance! I was going to take more pictures, but my batteries died. Sad, right? You can't even see how cool my dress is. I guess that just means I'll have to try it on again so I can take pictures! Yeah, so we had a good time dancing. I discovered that you can get non-alcoholic drinks at the open bar, but you do get really funny looks from the bartender. Also, it's really weird to see your instructors get drunk... especially when they start getting a little too friendly.

Well that night we had a crazy snow storm. Parking was terrible, and I felt bad for all the girls who were trying to walk in high heels. Luckily we survived, but we did get the message that church was cancelled. I have never heard of church being cancelled for snow before!

Anyways now it's Sunday, and I'm not really sure what to do with myself. Maybe I'll go sled down the hill or something!

Crap Wrap

I finally uploaded some pictures. Also, we got snowed in and church got cancelled. So I'm probably going to write a whole bunch of random little posts ('cause I'm bored). Yay!

Remember how I mentioned "crap wrapping"? Yeah, here are some examples!

This was two years ago. This was the present I lovingly created for Blake! Yeah, I pretty much just enjoy putting tons of random stuff on top of my presents.

This picture is from this Christmas. That's Calvin and Blake with their custom-wrapped presents! Yeah, we think we are super funny!

Sleeping in

Sleeping in is totally not worth it.

I swear it makes me feel more tired than actually getting up on time. Well, time to start my Saturday! Too bad it is noon, and I'm still in my pajamas.

Christmas break

I woke up this morning with the cheerful message that clinic would not open until 10 due to inclement weather. Well after braving the snowy, treacherous roads, both my patients ended up canceling. So now I find myself with an entire day to entertain myself, so I figured I'd start out with some blogging!

Well this is basically what I accomplished over Christmas break. Wrapping the presents is pretty much my designated job when I come home every year. I actually don't mind - in fact I think it's kinda fun. I put on a movie and go to town! Yeah, pretty sure the brothers have figured out I work for Santa.

We also have this tradition of exchanging sibling gifts on Christmas Eve. I'm not really sure why we don't wait till the next day, but who am I to mess with tradition, right? Well we have instigated the art of "crap wrapping." That basically means you try to make it as difficult or time-consuming to open the present as possible. It usually involves multi-layered duct tape, a couple of boxes, some shredded up paper, and so on. I didn't take a picture this year, but it was pretty entertaining!

Since most of us are getting older, we also tend to stay up way too late Christmas Eve. My poor mom was mad at us because we didn't even go to bed until after midnight. That also meant that Carson (the youngest brother) had to drag most of us out of our beds at around 7:30.

This was my favorite present of the morning:

Yes, that is a Speedo with a Canadian flag on the butt. Ha ha ha!! That's Mitchell showing off his swim-gear. He's a pretty talented little swimmer, and apparently he can show off his skills in style now! He also got a one with a big eagle on the butt.

Among other things that happened, we set out on a mission to tie quilts for all the brothers (and me). It was somewhat entertaining to see my almost 20-year-old brother attempting to pick out fabric for his! We also set out to watch all three extended Lord of the Rings while we working on these projects. I only got through two, but Carson and my mom made it through all three. Here is my lovely quilt!

We also attempted to go skiing, but bad weather halted those plans. We made it up to the ski resort again on New Year's Eve, and went tubing for a couple of hours. After dark, they have all the ski instructors come down the hill with flares, then they do a fireworks show. We sat down at the bottom of the run with our cousins, and it was fun, but it was freezing! I believe the temperature was somewhere around negative 5!

I reluctantly flew back to Omaha the next day, and I am pleased to report that I had no cancellations, no delays, and no lost baggage. In fact I didn't hardly even have to wait in the airport. It was awesome!!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve traditions are always fun. Well I happen to have a mother who loves to plan all kinds of exciting activities whenever I happen to be in town. So since we were lucky enough to have our father home from work for a couple of days, we got busy with our "family activity wish lists." This is what we did for Christmas Eve!

We went skeet shooting. Here is Carson manning the skeet launcher at the back of our truck. He was getting pretty good!
Here's Calvin. He refused to wear pants, so when his shorts proved too cold he climbed into the truck and began entertaining himself by singing - loudly.
My mom making an attempt at the hand-launcher. This thing was entertaining, and it tended to launch them either too close, or way too high. However, It was fun to watch my mom run around with it!
Mitchell and my dad.

Blake.

Me with my gun. It was freezing, so I've got about three layers on. We had a lot of fun, especially when we decided to figure out what would happen if we threw out an unopened can of Mountain Dew and shot it! Yeah, it wasn't that exciting - we should have shook it up first - but we still thought it was hilarious. In case you guys were worried, none of us shot our eyes out!

That night we had the traditional fondu, then we stayed up way too late for Santa's liking watching The Christmas Show. Ha ha. Well hope your Christmas Eves were great!

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.)