ChRiStMaS cHeEr

With Christmas just around the corner I thought I'd post a little festivity today. Actually, now that school is over it's all I can think about:) We are going over to see Brandon's grandma on his dad's side today. We don't get up to see her that often but she always has us for Christmas. So, that's where we will be this afternoon should anyone desperately need us.

I'm so excited because we have gotten a lot of snow the past few days and there is supposedly more to come. Christmas isn't Christmas without some of the white stuff. I think Brandon has other opinions about the snow. One last thing:

May all your Christmas wishes come true!

Happy Holidays

a little risk-taking on an early tuesday morning in december

well, i've decided to open my blog back up to anyone and risk being stalked by a crazy stalker mcstalkerington. so, hopefully i don't get any crazies and if you are crazy reading this i hope you don't stalk me. just know that my husband is very large and VERY in charge. check you all later when something new and exciting happens to us...

good news

for the two of you who are actually reading my blog: the data for my thesis was saved. they were able to recover all of it. so all the work of this last semester was not in vain. oh, happy day!

lots of turkey with a side of finals

have i ever mentioned that i love the holiday season??? well, i love the holiday season. a radio station in salt lake starts the christmas music the day after halloween and sadly, that is when i started listening to it this year. it always cheers me up. anyway, we had a crazy busy thanksgiving weekend. this is one of my favorite photos of the weekend. it's a goodie. we had houseguests all weekend (which is not a bad thing for those of you houseguests reading and you did not overstay your welcome). for thanksgiving, we had brandon's parents and my parents, krista and the babe (as he is so lovingly referred to as in our family), jeremy, and more food than we could possibly consume. of course, we planned our attack on the black friday sales--where we would go, what we would get and if we should even go to bed or not. we ended up going to bed, but brandon and i got up at 3 am to meet his family at his grandparents house. brandon stayed there and napped in the chair with his grandpa while us chickies went buckwild!! it was absolute chaos and hilarity. i never take it too seriously and mostly just go for the fun of it. as brandon, so famously says, "i thought we were in breadlines???"

on friday night we had another dinner party with some friends and the moen side of the family. i think people really enjoyed the whole mexican thanksgiving theme we had going on (tacos and leftover thanksgiving stuff:). we played games and laughed and the little kids scared mamma (for those of you who are new to my blog, that's our teenaged kitty) so badly she thought for sure she would have a heart attack. the next night we had brandon's cousin and his wife over for some more thanksgiving leftovers and more game action. we do love the games. on sunday, after church, i finished putting out my christmas decorations. i am totally ready and excited for some good holiday times and some new traditions.

as all these dinner parties were going on i was neglecting my thesis paper even though my advisor has asked for a full draft by the 1st and i was sure by now it was lonely. one problem: now it's finals week and i've got so much other stuff do and exams coming up that any hope of completing a draft is rapidly disappearing. oh well, there is always next semester. i do have to say how unfair it is to have thanksgiving weekend just a couple weeks before school ends. it's like a tease for the semester break but only to thrust me into one of the busiest times in my life. last weekend left me with little to no motivation to do anymore schoolwork this semester. but i don't really have a choice (well, i do actually. i could always fail the papers/exams but that might get me academic probation and i'd have to do the classes over again--not a very good looking option) so i will trudge through it and hopefully come out on top.

wow, this blog has turned out quite long so thanks to all of you who have stuck through it and read the whole thing. i think i will start paying some attention to my papers and such so, until next time....

i'm not a quitter, i'm not a quitter...even though at times like these i desperately want to!!!

OMG. A horrible, no good, very bad thing happened to me this week. My thesis advisor called me and said, and I quote, "there is something wrong with the data that we've collected." WTF?!?! What do you mean something is wrong??? I have been collecting data since last January and there might be something wrong with it? That is just not possible...I was wrong. It is very possible and now a reality for me. After looking at the problem for a couple of hours we figured it out but that doesn't save all that I have previously collected.

Let me first explain that collecting data for my project is not easy. Students are required to come back five times but somehow undergrad students are just not that accountable and I have had a lot of drop-outs. Anyways, it took me 11 months to get the 40 that I do have and now that might have been all in vain.

Back to the problem, I may have lost about 30 of the 40 I have collected. One of the biggest bummers of my life. Dropping out of the project was my first thought, I'm not gonna lie. But after some inspirational words and apologies from my advisor I thought quitting is not what I want at all. So, I left the meeting feeling like whatever the circumstance I would keep plugging away.

Well, after my advisor spoke with another professor who works with the computer program that we use, he discovered that there is a chance that we can recover the data. Whew!!! I don't want to celebrate just yet but things are looking pretty positive right now. We will see what can actually be done. In the meantime, I'm frantically trying to create a "readable" (as my advisor suggested) draft to submit on the 1st of Dec. and there is a small chance that I can still propose my project before the end of the semester.

Best case scenario: I will have data for all 40 people collected thus far as well as a proposal before Christmas. Worst case scenario: I will only have data for about 12 people and I will not get my proposal in before Christmas. Either way, quitting is not the answer--even if I really want to.

Photo Op

So, this is what mamma does when we aren't home?!?! What a lush!

privacy

just so you all know, i had to set my blog to private because my mom forwarded me a link to an article saying why it's so unsafe. so, i'm just taking as much precaution as i can. i can add anyone but you guys are the ones i thought were looking at it. thanks for being my reader:) here's the link to the article:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4699330

my life flashed before my eyes

this past weekend we went down to the sand dunes with krista and her main man mike. i was not born on a four-wheeler like brandon and mike were and have not had much experience handling one in the sand so, i'm very timid. everything was going great until we (and when i say we i mean mostly mike and brandon) wanted to go to the back side of sand mountain. the obstacles back there are giant in comparison to the ones i was doing in other areas. "okay," i thought "lets try it." if i don't want to do anything i won't. that was NOT the case.

we went around the easy way but everyone wanted to go back the hard way (over the mountain instead of around). i'm thinking how awesome that sounds and that now instead of choosing which things i want to do, i HAVE to do them. anyways, i did the first thingy with such ease after looking at it for ten minutes and watching several other people do it before me. in fact, i enjoyed it. that didn't last long. the next thing was a twisty kind of thingy and i almost made it but then i started slipping back down this gi-normous hill. i braked and the bike stopped-kind of. OMG, HELP ME!! i had no idea what to do except to die. that's when i saw flashes of my life. brandon came down to where i was and grabbed the bike. we were slowly sliding down the hill together. he told me to get off the bike-say what??? get off???? anyways, i composed myself and since i trust him ever so much i slithered off. by that time mike was there holding the other end. i tried to climb up to where krista was and for those of you you have not ever tried to climb up a steep incline of soft sand, i'll just say it was better than the stairmaster. when i finally made it up i saw that brandon and mike were turning the bike around so brandon could go back down and get it up to where we were.

after that i was completely terrified until we got back to the truck. we went for another ride after that which was less traumatizing but at least i got back out there after i had such a horrifying experience.

FYI

I have had a week straight out of H. E. double hockey sticks. Mostly due to the amount of stress I am experiencing related to school. It seems that only 5 weeks til the end of the semester is not going to be enough time to complete my To Do list. I have spent this entire week focusing just on my thesis since my advisor thought today would be a good day to require an outline of my proposal. That means that I have really slacked off in a lot of other areas in my life and I certainly do not have time to catch up next week or the next week after that or the week after that. You get the picture. Plus, the holidays are coming up which I'm excited for, but it's difficult to manage holiday parties/get-togethers with school work.

I was able to sneak off to see a play last night. I usually go to all the ones they have at school because I can either go for free or five bucks. They just started a new one that was pretty funny so, I got a little stress relief there. And, since I went with a good friend, we had a little bitchfest afterwards. Those always seems to be a stress reliever for me.

And now, I'm at school running participants for my thesis and trying to tread through the tumultuous oceans of research that are either irrelevant to my topic specifically or I do not understand what the devil they are talking about. Great!! (In case you can't read my tone, that was sarcastic:)

Enough complaining for now. Must get back to the articles and opinions of so many great researchers that have come before me. In parting, I would like to leave you all with one of my favorite Halloween jokes:

Q: How do you tell the difference between witches and warlocks???

A: Warlocks have Halloweenies!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

Fall Break

Fall Break was so awesome. I think that with every break from school it gets harder and harder to go back. I am very patiently waiting for graduation day, May 2010!! Well, maybe not so patiently. Jeremy (little bro) and I went down to St. George, Utah for a little R & R since he was on break too. The drive down there took, what seemed like, an eternity. We left a day early to surprise our parents and ran into lots of other people trying to get away for the long weekend.

I had just heard about a week earlier that one of my cousins was going to be in Vegas during that week to get married. I drove down there on Friday to be there for the ceremony. It was great because most of my cousins live in North Dakota and I hardly ever see them so, the timing was perfect. Besides, I love weddings and this was no exception. Thanks, Monica and Ryan for letting me share your day! Afterwards we went to this bizarre restaurant where the waiters/hostess swear at you and talk about specific body parts (Monica, you know what I'm talking about:). Needless to say, it wasn't the first time I had seen a guy table dancing with his red g-string pulled up and his pants sagging down but it was one of the better times--ha, I'm sure you have a great visual.

So, all in all it was an awesome weekend even though Mom had a few chores for us to do. Yuck!!

brandon's favorite place on earth

of all the places he's been, little sahara state park is brandon's favorite. he used to go all the time and then of course, he got married:) we finally replaced one of the four wheelers that were stolen a few years ago and made the two hour drive down to the sand dunes. krista and mike were jealous! brandon is in the process of building a four wheeler with a bullet bike motor (kinda scary if you ask me) so, in the meantime he has to settle for borrowing one that is not quite as fast as he'd like. but, we still had fun. i, of course, am somewhat timid around the giant hills of sand. i loosened up though after awhile and did a few CRAZY things. we look forward to many more trips down there and welcome anyone who wants to go with.

First Sign of Winter!!

It snowed for the first time this season in the Salt Lake Valley (it's already melted though). I am so excited because I LOVE snow. I may be the only one over the age of 15 who does but I truly do love it. There is nothing like it. Plus, I am so ready for the holidays. It's my favorite time of year. There is so much love and good times spent with family and friends from Thanksgiving to Christmas. And, I can't wait to start listening to Christmas music. Brandon on the other hand can. He would rather not listen to it and the snow means his job gets harder. He is looking forward to Christmas because that means he is that much closer to next summer. Besides, the snow is making it hard to finish the landscaping in our yard. Bummer!

i'm married to an old man!!!

yesterday, big B and i went to the peace gardens for a little walk but mostly to take pictures (much to B's chagrin). we were sitting on a bench when i noticed on his left sideburn were several little "greys." i teased him about it and he didn't believe they were really there. "yup, i'll prove it," i said. here they are in all their glory. well, i shouldn't have been so bent on being right because now he's super depressed that he is old enough to have greys. he laundry listed all the things he has been noticing lately that make him feel old. i won't go through them here but the list was quite long. to top it all off, in less than a year he will begin his 30's. he's pretty heartbroken...

mamma says "happy halloween"

mamma has a variety of outfits. all of which she hates. whenever we put them on her she pouts and acts like she can't walk. at least her halloween costume isn't too restricting. i like to call her batty catty. brandon refers to her as our love child. she is our little baby. although she is more the size of a toddler and acts like a teenager!:)

i'm a former blogophobe but now am a self-proclaimed blogaholic

So, I'm just learning how this all works. But, I love the idea of having a blog so that my family who live near and far can keep in touch. More to come...