Tuesday, March 18, 2008

¡Voy a vivir en Costa Rica por un mes!


Hey everyone I am going to live in Costa Rica for the month of June! I am doing a study abroad through Weber State and will be studying Spanish and living with a host family, while having so much fun! Green jungles, waterfalls, beautiful beaches, and hopefully some neat marine life I can see while scuba diving. I have been studying Spanish for 6 years and will be getting my minor in it. I am still totally a fish out of water in my conversational Spanish and I’m hoping that this language immersion trip will help me out a bunch. I will miss all of you so much it makes me sad to think about it. I’ll keep you posted as I know more later. I just figured I would let you all know it was official because I’ve paid my deposit and I’m working on getting my passport!

Trip Home


I hadn’t been home since Christmas and it was due time. I just missed my family way too much. I had to plan it a month in advance, but I got to go home!! As has become traditional for the last few times I’ve gone home, I brought some friends- Anna, Maranda and Jon.

Talk about packing snacks for a road trip- Good Job Mar!


We started out weekend with a tour of the snowcave. It has since gotten bigger, collapsed on my dad, and then been rebuilt and reinforced. I can stand up in it now. Bryan enjoyed showing off all of his hard work, here are some fun pictures from the cave.


Crazy Faces- Jon, Anna, Me, Bryan, and Maranda
Tall enough to stand in!

Then we had a fabulous dinner that my Mothey made. If any of you have not had the privilege of eating her food, I apologize. She’s amazing and makes food of a restaurant caliber. As soon as the word gets out we’ll probably have people bringing dates to our house for a night on the town. We finished up the night with a chocolate fountain, Maranda was pretty excited, as you can tell! I was excited because I talked James into going to the store to get me some white chocolate because I love it so much and he did and I ended up with my very own bowl of white chocolate to dip in…could life get any better? I submit it cannot.


Well we retired to bed in order to rise early the next morning to go snowmobiling. But not before a home cooked breakfast, Idaho style complete with potatoes! Once again my mom is the best! Maranda and Anna had never been snowmobiling before and we so excited for their new adventure. While packing our lunches in the morning we were told to grab whatever we wanted to drink. We had small juice bottles so Maranda grabbed two. Then she asked, “Are there a lot of places to go to the bathroom up there?” to which my dad informed her, “Yeah, all over the place. You can go wherever you want!” She said, “Oh,” thought for a minute and put one juice back. LOL! When we stopped for lunch Maranda ventured off to go to the bathroom, she asked a few questions and I gave all the advice I could about being a girl and peeing in the wilderness… in the wintertime…with all your snow clothes. What an adventure. She came back with a little grin and informed us it was her first time ever peeing in the wilderness and it was successful. I’m so proud! Way to go Mar! I love you. Both Maranda and Anna did so well and everyone was impressed by their skills. Where ever we went they were right behind us following in our tracks! Jon did well too. After telling me over and over that he wasn’t very good he went out like an old pro and had a ball! I also improved on my carving and by improving I mean I learned a fact that no one had bothered to tell me before and made all the difference between me just tipping the snowmobile over on top of me and being able to successfully carve! I was proud, and so was my dad.

Anna is excited to go!

Me, Maranda, and Jon

Maranda's "I peed in the woods" face.

In front of the trailor after we were all done!


All in all it was a successful ride and we were all exhausted when we got home. We all ended up in a pile on my bed to lounge and talk, my brothers even came and joined us, it was awesome!

Sara's Wedding

Sara Buckley married Eric Woodbury on February 15. This wedding was a pretty exciting one. I’m really good friends with both of them so it was fun to know both of their family’s at the wedding. Eric’s family is the family that takes care of me in Utah and I love them so much!



I also feel an additional sense of pride because it was at my Ugly Christmas Sweater party in 2006 where they had their first kiss… underneath my mistletoe. They weren’t dating and it took Eric about another month to finally ask her out, but it all started at my house! Here is a picture from this year’s ugly sweater party of them under our makeshift mistletoe!


Sara asked Lynsi, Whitney and I to be her bridesmaids. We were to dress in silver (Thus the purchase of the silver shirt which I wore to the Dance too!) After the wedding I went around with Sara and Eric to help look for the details in the pictures they were taking. So I followed them around straightening her necklace and dress, moving hair out of her face, or anything else I could think of while they got their pictures taken. It was fun to get to spend so much time with them on their busy day. It was a cold one though; I couldn’t feel my feet when I got to my car because the only dressy shoes I have are sandals! It was windy so they didn’t have the fountain on but Eric knew the grounds worker (because Eric makes friends with everyone) and he willingly walkie talkied and asked them to turn on the fountain so they could take a picture. Talk about connections!



They had a dance at her reception and it was so much fun. All the girls danced to “Our Song” by Taylor Swift, which has become a sort of theme song over the last year. To top the whole night off I ended up catching the bouquet so you know what that means!