The Shipleys in Real Life

I obviously haven't blogged since we've been engaged, and now as I am trying to put off doing my homework, it seems like an appropriate time. In two days, we will have been married for a month. Kind of crazy to think about. But also, just mostly wonderful.

Before I got married, the phrases I always heard from people were, "Marriage is SO GREAT. You're going to love it" "You get to be with your best friend all day every day!" "You never have to say goodbye to each other at night" "Waking up next to your best friend every morning is the best." These things are all so true! I'm obviously not a marriage expert or anything, as I've only been married 29 days, but I think people forgot to clue me into possibly THE best thing about marriage- and you don't have to agree with me if you don't want to- how HARD it is!! Maybe its because people don't want to admit that they've had arguments or problems, ESPECIALLY the first month of marriage. I won't try to sugar coat it- it is hard. I didn't realize how much work and school would take up our time and how little we'd really get to see each other. I didn't realize how much we'd have to budget and save for little things (or things I thought were little things) like couch covers (we found both of our couches on the side of the road for free) or a dresser (which we just got this past week- we've been living out of suitcases for 3 weeks). I didn't realize how much the toilet seat would actually get left up!!! I didn't realize how hard it is to not elbow someone/get elbowed in the face in the middle of the night, or share covers. I didn't realize how many of my clothes don't work with garments (although they are definitely modest), and how I wouldn't have any money to buy new ones after getting endowed. I didn't realize how cold our house needed to be for Matthew to sleep. Merging lives is hard. MARRIAGE is hard. That's kind of why its so great... and also why it's so worth it.

I'm not sure Matthew or I have been more humbled in my life. If you have a fight with your roommate, you can like brush it off and be like, "whatever, I'm definitely not living with YOU next year." You don't quite have that luxury with marriage. Some people thing that they might, and that's when people give up. Besides making covenants with each other in the temple, we personally promised each other to do whatever it took to make the other happy, to be selfless, to work things out. I've had to change a lot. So has Matthew. And not only is it not a bad thing that we are changing for each other, but it is an awesome thing. Mostly because these changes that we are making aren't really just for each other- they are making us better people, individually, and as a couple. I'm learning to not get so upset about little things. I'm learning to enjoy life a little more even with its mishaps. Matthew is learning that girls are not dishwashers, that I freeze at night when its too cold. He's learning how to comfort me when I do get emotional, instead of going into freak out mode: (There's a girl... she's crying... I don't know what to do...? What did I do wrong? How can I fix this??!!) I'm learning to rely on his priesthood for guidance. I'm learning that I can't leave trash all over the house or make a mess and not clean it up. He's learning that sometimes we have to get work done before he can watch soccer... or play soccer... or read about soccer... He's learning how to preside, and lead our home in righteousness. He's learning (slowly) to put the toilet seat down when he's done. I'm learning that you have to check Matthew's pockets before you put things in the wash (for things like... cell phones). He's learning that maybe he needs to be the one that does the wash from now on... We are both learning how to talk to each other and how to express ourselves better. We are learning how to make each other laugh, and how to resolve conflicts. We were already pretty good at it before we got married, but now we're almost pro's.

The point is... marriage is wonderful. You get to live with your best friend, forever. You never have to say goodbye at night, and in the morning, you wake up next to each other. But the most satisfying and wonderful thing about marriage is how you can love each other so much even when sometimes its hard to. We are not perfect people, and we annoy the crap out of each other and get on each others nerves a lot, but it is incredible how you can have a relationship where sometimes, you love an imperfect person, perfectly. I didn't realize how the little amount of time we get to spend with each other due to school and work would make me cherish the time that we DO have with each other so much. I have never been so happy than when Matthew comes home with school and we get "us" time. I didn't realize how happy we could be while still being so poor, and how good it feels to sacrifice something you really want for something that your husband really needs. I didn't realize I could be so grateful for couches, or dressers. Even really, really crappy ones. I didn't realize how much I would just laugh every time I see the toilet seat up. I didn't realize that I would prefer getting elbowed in the face in the middle of the night, via my husband, than sleeping alone. I didn't realize that it wouldn't bother Matt so much that I borrow his warm clothes at night since our house is so cold. (This might be news to him). The garment-appropriate clothing issue... is actually something that will need to be resolved through plasma donation and shopping, but I GUESS I've also learned you don't have to have SO many clothes.

Marriage is great. Matthew is the best husband ever. We obviously don't have everything figured out yet. We've only been married a month. But I feel like my capacity to love has increased ever since we got married. I love how he makes me laugh. I love how he is so concerned about me. I love how he takes care of me when I am sick. I love his weird and sometimes inappropriate dance moves (we're married now... so its ok). I love how he is committed to making our house a home. I love that he is so dang good at making grilled cheese sandwiches!! I love listening to him pray. I love how he shares his food with me. I love him a little more every day, and I don't think I could / have ever been happier than I am being a Shipley.

Eleven Proposals

Matthew proposed to me eleven times.

This is not a joke.

It started out as a joke... but somehow, it happens that sometimes when I joke about things people take them seriously. This is one of those times.

We knew we were going to get engaged for some time, but Matthew decided he wanted to get the ring custom made, and designed it himself. It took FOREVER (don't get me wrong... it was definitely worth the wait!). But sometime into our "fake engagement" I made a comment, "You know, since this is taking so long, you should just propose to me eleven times... (since eleven is my favorite number) you know, so I don't have to wait SO long to get proposed to." It was a joke, but then I started getting proposed to all the time! Sometimes were silly, sometimes were more serious, and some were a form of apology (ha), but all of them were incredibly endearing. And every response was yes, yes yes.

Proposal #1: The Empire State Building

We went out to New Jersey for a week so that I could meet Matthew's family. One of the funnest weeks ever. I think I really lucked out in the in-law department... They are fun and quirky and there is never a dull moment in their house. And it is pretty cool getting to marry your best friend's brother. :)

One of the days on our trip, we spent in New York City. We went to the Manhattan Temple, 9/11 Memorial, and Empire State Building. Matthew's parents had gone up to the top of the Empire State Building once when Matthew's mom had come out to visit Matthew's dad in New Jersey, and we thought it would be pretty cool to do it at least once in our lives, and why not now? So we took the ridiculously fast elevator to the 102nd floor and took a bunch of goofy pictures. Matthew gets a text from his mom that says, "You should propose to her on top of the empire state building!" So he asked me to marry him. And I said yes.

Proposal #2: Ocean City, New Jersey

The next day we went to the beach! It was a warm, sunny day, but the water temperature was probably comparable to the night the Titanic sunk. Matthew convinced me to go out into the water with him, he attempted body surfing a little bit while I jumped waves. It took us a nearly an hour to "defrost" and get feeling back into our bodies. We took a long walk down the beach, ate frozen custard, chased off seagulls, got sunburned, and Matthew attempted to teach me how to play volleyball. And he asked me to marry him. And I said yes.

Proposal #3: Apology for throwing a yoga ball at my face

Kind of self explanatory. We were playing around at his house, I blinked, and all of a sudden I get smacked in the face with a yoga ball. Matthew apologizes profusely, saying that I was supposed to catch it, but mostly is just laughing. So I walk off because my face really hurts, I'm pretty sure my nose is about to start bleeding, and my boyfriend is laughing at me. He catches up with me, hugs me and insists that he really is sorry..... and also asks me to marry him. And I just laughed, and said yes. 

Proposal #4: Where we had our first kiss & said "I Love You" for the first time (Which anti-climatically is on my living room couch... ha)

On Valentine's day, after telling Matthew that I was going to leave the next day for the weekend to go to Idaho with a group of co-workers, he sensed danger ahead and decided that now was the time that we should have our first kiss. However, the reason I wanted to go to Idaho was to get a little space to see if dating him was something I really wanted to do. So I respectfully declined (ha). When I got back, I had come to the realization that the entire time I was in Idaho, I had only been thinking about him. So a week later we had our super awkward first kiss on my living room couch, watching... some movie, I don't remember.

A month or so later we were on that same couch, just talking... I don't even remember about what. And I don't know exactly how this happened, but at some point he said, "I just like you a lot." (Pause) "Actually, I love you!" That didn't register in my mind for a good 45-60 seconds, and when I realized what he just said, I reciprocated with, "I love you too." (Pause) "Wait... "I love you?" What? Is that a real thing? Did you just say that? Are you sure? Did I just say that? Do I love you? Well.... I think I do... WHAT? WE JUST SAID I LOVE YOU? Yeah... I do love you. I think... No I'm sure. Yeah! I do! Yes! I love you Matthew Shipley!" This is another reason I love Matthew. He can deal with all of this craziness that is Elise McAllister

The day we got back to Utah from New Jersey, we were exhausted, so we just watched Parks and Recreation, one of our favorite TV shows, on my couch. And he asked me to marry him. And I said yes. 

Proposal #5: Kiwanis Park

I guess if me and Matthew had a significant location to our relationship, it could be Kiwanis? But not really, we just go there a lot and talk, and its always wonderful. On a Sunday, we went to Kiwanis park to talk wedding plans... which didn't really happen, we just talked about typical Elise-Matthew things like weird dreams, arguments for and against getting a dog, what we will and will not name our future children, appropriate cheesesteak condiments, social experiments, and making $1 bets on things that really don't matter. And somewhere  amidst my assertion that we are not naming one of our children Lionel Messi, and him trying to convince me that having a dog is a bad idea... He asked me to marry him. And I said yes. 

Proposal #6: Via Text?

Proposal #7: Via Email...

And I said (emailed) yes.

Proposal #8: Just Cuddling.

Rough day at work. Worked 13 hours straight and came home and vented to Matthew, who patiently listened, and just held me. After we talked, and cuddled, and kissed goodnight, he asked me to marry him. And I said yes.

Proposal #9: Cascade Golf Course

This proposal came on the day of our "# month anniversary" (No, I'm not telling you how many months we've dated ha). And I cannot tell you how sure I was that I was going to get for real proposed to on this day. Like 100% sure. I took a really long shower, took a long time fixing my hair and makeup so that if pictures were taken I would look decent, wore his favorite pair of pants that I own... etc. Pretty dumb. He had texted me earlier that morning asking if it was ok if we watched the US vs. Jamaica world cup qualifier game (I actually know what that means now) that night after we went mini golfing, and I said ok... secretly thinking that this was a setup to get me to THINK we were doing something... but really he was going to propose. So after we both got off work, we headed up to Cascade Golf Course to Mini Golf. It was pretty great, because we are a couple of crazies and couldn't take much seriously. This is one reason I love Matthew. He is a goofball and can always make me laugh. At the end, he totaled up the scores and we had tied! (A few hours later I re-calculated and he actually beat me by 2 strokes but whatever.) As we were walking away, one of my favorite country songs was playing over the loudspeaker. Matthew asked me, "Can I propose to you during a country song?" To which I replied, "Matthew, you hate country music." "I know, but you love it!" (This is a true fact.) And so he asked me to marry him. And I said yes.

We got into his car and I expressed that we should go grab some nice food since it was our #-month anniversary, but Matthew said he had a stomach ache and suggested eating chicken nuggets at his house. I thought this was an odd plan, because, we were DEFINITELY getting engaged that night. But I said ok, because he and I weren't super hungry and we went to his house where we DID indeed watch the soccer game and DID eat chicken nuggets. Which were good. But I still thought it was very strange that he hadn't proposed to me yet, and why this was our pre-proposal activity. When the game ended (and when I woke up... because I fell asleep during it) Matthew was like, "Well, I'm really tired. Time to get you home!" It was 10pm. On a Friday night. I said, "Matthew, its 10pm on a Friday night... our curfew is not til 1:30." He said, "I know... but I am just super tired... haven't gotten a lot of sleep this week... been working on.... "stuff" " Now I was really confused and a little annoyed because this was supposed to be the day!! I convinced him to play a game of Phase 10 with me (which I won), and then he took me home around 11pm. WHAT THE HECK?!

I got home and was frustrated with myself for building up all this anticipation, and frustrated for not being engaged and frustrated for eating chicken nuggets on our #-month aversary... So I pouted and watched "You've Got Mail" with my roommate until 2am. At around 1am Matthew texted me saying, "Get some sleep!" Which I ignored because he made me go home early because he was tired, yet was still up at 1am?!! Eventually I went to bed, figuring that maybe it wouldn't even happen this weekend, and planning on sleeping in...

Proposal #10: The Paintings (Saturday, June 8th)

At about 5:30am Saturday morning, there was a loud banging on my window. The first time it woke me up, but I didn't register that I needed to get out of my bed. The second time, I groggily pushed back the blinds to see Matthew outside my window waving and telling me to come outside. I thought, "What the heck is this....?" Got up, put on a bra, some sweats, and tried to make myself look less like a homeless person in the bathroom. I was wearing my soccer jersey from age 6 for PJ's and slipped on some flip flops. I got outside and Matthew said, "Let's go on a drive!" 

"It's 5:30 in the morning."

"I know! Come on!"

We hopped into his car and he handed me a package wrapped in newspaper with instructions to not open it. We start driving, and I'm less than half awake. Sometime down the road I say, "Matthew, I'm really thirsty... can I have some water?" He looks around the jeep and says, "I don't... think I have any in here- we can stop at my house though?" I said that was fine and then half-passed out in the front seat. We got to his house and he hopped out and grabbed a water bottle for me, I drank a little and then half passed out again.

"Matthew, where are we going?"

"I don't know."

"Ok but really, where are we going?"

"Haha, I really have no idea..."

We got to a T in the road, Matthew stopped and asked, "Left or Right?" I didn't have enough energy to question or think about why he was asking me this, and just said, "I don't know?" He said, "Let's go left!" And we went left, and then took a road "Closed to thru traffic" going down the mountain towards the entrance to Provo Canyon. Somewhere along the way, he took a right and came to the Indian Road Trail head, a trail that neither of us had ever heard of or been to. He parked and said, "This looks like a nice place!" We got out, and just started hiking up this trail... At 5:30 in the morning...in my pajamas and flip flops... with two cuts on the bottom of my feet from playing around at my apartment 3 hours earlier. Don't get me wrong, It was a great view of the valley, tall grasses on either side of the trail. But I was half-asleep and thinking to myself, "What the heck is this....? Matthew knows I hate hiking haha" We just hiked for about 10 or so minutes before I was tired enough to ask how much further we were going. He pointed to a small hill in the distance and once we got there, we meandered into the tall grass and found a couple of rocks to sit on.

He handed me the package and said I could open it. In it were two paintings. When I saw what they were, the first thought that popped in my mind was, "These must have taken forever!" If you don't know Matthew, you won't know that he is a HUGE perfectionist. Everything he does requires time, effort, draft after draft, and has to be oh-so-detailed. I knew that these had taken him several hours, at the least. The first painting was of Matthew, down on one knee with a speech bubble that said, "Will you marry me?" It was all in shades of blue (his favorite color- and one of our wedding colors). 

The second painting was of me, with a blank speech bubble, with an orange colored pencil taped to the bottom. It was in shades of orange (my favorite color, and the other of our wedding colors). (I later asked him why there were a bunch of ducks in the background, and he said, "They're not ducks, they're birds!" (Same thing, babe, haha.))

I took off the colored pencil and wrote in my answer. (I said yes.) At that point, I knew that we had come up so that I could get proposed to, but as he was only on number 10 when we started this little adventure, I wasn't sure if this was the only proposal I would be getting on this random hiking trail at 5:30 in the morning. That is, until he said, "Are you ready for number eleven?"

Proposal #11: The real one (Saturday, June 8th, 6:00 AM)

"I should probably kneel for this one, huh?"

"Yeah, probably."

Matthew got down on one knee, and I think I started like having a mini-anxiety attack. You always like... can picture these things happening, but when it actually happens, you kind of freak out, you know? No big deal, only the biggest decision of your life right here. But I knew it was right, as I always had, despite the ups and downs and crazy things we had experienced together and despite the doubts I'd had in the past and the fears that I experienced. All the good things infinitely outweigh the moments of disagreement and miscommunications, and making those hard moments into good ones is one of the greatest, most rewarding feelings ever. He said sweet, loving words, that I would have probably gotten emotional at had I not been ridiculously exhausted, he pulled the ring out of his pocket, and then he asked me to marry him. And I said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes....

Afterward, we hugged and kissed, and called our parents, who were still half-asleep (Just like us). We took a bunch of PDA pictures and climbed back down the mountain, only to realize that the fleet of runners from the Utah Valley Marathon had surrounded the street we were on (Remember how the road we went down was closed to thru traffic??). It took us a good while to get home, after convincing a police officer to move the cones out of the way so that we could get back onto the main road, and convincing another police officer to let us turn left, going across the main running route ("I was just on the mountain proposing to my girlfriend, and we got stuck! I need to get back to my house!"). We took a nap for like an hour, and then Matthew had 2 intramural games, and a bachelor's party. And THEN he took me to a nice dinner at Texas Roadhouse :) It was way better than chicken nuggets. 

I later found out that Matthew hadn't slept at all that night, and that around 4:45 in the morning, he was about to go to bed, but then thought to himself, "I'm just going to do it now!" So he did. He figured that since I already knew it was coming it was the only way to really surprise me. And it worked. It was wonderful. The point is... We are engaged. I love Matthew Shipley. He is the greatest, funniest, sweetest, most patient and perfect guy I know. He is mine, and I am his, and eternity is looking pretty great right now :)

Stake Conference Weekend

This weekend was Stake Conference, and it was so great! It is fun to get out of the usual weekend routine and do something different.

Saturday I woke up late, and me, Matt, and Rachel went to Walmart. It was one of those days where I looked like a mom of 17 children, the way my cart was mexi packed. I had been putting off grocery shopping for a few weeks, because my family was going to come up this week and take me grocery shopping... But they aren't coming anymore (Super bummed), so it was time. Rach met Matt and Matt met Rach for the first time, and it was good bonding talking about childhood memories and made-up languages. and Israeli politics. (Matt's classic response: I like Jews!)

Then me and Matt unloaded groceries and went for a walk! It was so nice out (but super windy)! For some reason I didn't think of flying a kite, because that's probably one of my favorite things in the world to do. Anyway, we walked down to the park on 4th and told each other stories about our families. We swung (swang? swinged?) on the swings and watched a little asian child go around on his scooter. It was kind of weird. And there were couples everywhere. And there were two precious children pushing the baby swings with no babies in them. Anyway, then Matt got motion sickness (hahaha) so we had to leave, and walked down to his best friend LJ's house, and I got to meet his wife and kids (but not him). They are so precious! One of them was eating a book and the other one played a little soccer with me and matt and jumped around on clean folded laundry. Then I went home to get ready for the adult session of stake conference.

It was so wonderful! It was entirely themed on missionary work, which was kind of weird, just because the majority of the stake has served a mission (kind of an older stake with lots of RM's). But it was neat to hear how we can be preparing to serve a mission, even if its just to uplift our lives spiritually. Then my stake president told one of the most bizarre stories I've ever heard, which is sooo worth repeating, haha.

My stake president, in his youth, used to go ride his four-wheeler across the sand dunes in California. One weekend while he and his friends camped out in the park, they awoke to a strange man with a long ponytail in a pickup truck nearby. As they started getting up and ready for the day, the man in the pickup truck awoke also, and pulled out a hot air balloon out of his truck. He attached it to the gas canister, hopped on it, lit the flame, and rose up into the air until the rope that tethered him to the truck wouldn't let him go any higher. (He didn't have a hot air balloon basket, he just held onto the metal gas container) Then he let himself down, and went back up again, and repeated this a few times. Eventually, he came back down and hopped off the canister, and approached the teenagers that were with my stake president. He said that he loved to go out with his hot air balloon on the weekends, but when he untethered himself to the ground, he drifted over several miles and then spent the rest of the day walking back to his truck. He asked if one of the teenagers wouldn't mind following him, and then giving him a ride back to his truck. My stake president agreed, and the pony-tail man lifted off, and started sailing. My stake president was getting his four-wheeler fixed up and ready when he noticed that the ponytail man was very far up in the air and he was losing sight of him. He quickly jumped on his four-wheeler and raced after him as fast as he could, but eventually the pony-tail man was too far to be seen. He came back to the park ranger to notify him that there was some lunatic wandering around in the desert, just so he would be aware. They went back to his truck and found the wallet in it, and learned his name was Leonard Peabody. (unrelated to the story, but what the weird name?!) They went along their way and started four-wheeling, cause there was nothing else that they could do about the situation. Later that evening, one of their friends came into the camp with his four-wheeler, having had to come late, and exclaimed, "You guys will never guess what I just saw!" He then proceeded to tell them how on the drive to camp, he passed a man, dripping wet and stark naked walking down the road towards the camp. When night came, Leonard Peabody walked into camp... stark naked and told them about his adventure that day. As soon as he lifted off on his hot air balloon, a jet stream caught him and quickly started carrying him at an intense speed across the dunes. The stream carried him over the boundary of the park and so he let go of his gas container and floated to the ground. He covered up his parachute with some sand and started making his way towards the campground again. The boundary line of the park was marked by a stream so when he got to it,  he cleverly decided to take his clothes off before he crossed it so they wouldn't get wet. He started his trek across the steam but an intense current made him start to uncontrollably drift downstream, since he couldn't use his arms to paddle since his arms were holding up his dry clothes out of the water. When he finally realized that the current was strong enough to drown him he relinquished his hold on his clothes and let them drift downstream while he was barely able to swim to shore. He then made the rest of his journey, stark naked, to the campground.  The moral of this story? (According to my stake president) 

Don't do stupid things. 

He even gave us a pass along card type thing with a picture of a man holding onto the bottom of a hot air balloon with the words "don't do stupid things" written on the bottom. Probably one of the most entertaining stake conferences I've been to. 

I'm finishing writing this blog post almost 2 months later... And I can't remember what I was going to write about after that.. So I'll just end here ha. 

Snow play

One time... It snowed a lot in Provo. And I feel like the older I get, the less people there are who are willing to play in the snow with me. I grew up in Texas, so on the rare occasion that there was snow, it was a BIG deal, and everyone and their mom was outside playing in it. So I feel like I still have that mindset, and this week I was determined to play in the snow. Luckily, Matt (probably reluctantly) agreed to go gallivant with me so our adventure began!!

First we went to rock canyon to sled. I had bought a cheap plastic round sled a couple months earlier for our last snow day when me and Ariel built a snow slide on our front porch, so that is what we took. I have NEVER been sledding at rock canyon, but one time Krista went and she came home looking like this:

So.... I was just hoping we wouldn't die. When we got there, I was reminded of how childish this activity was because of the fact that me and Matt were the only adult-aged people there who didn't bring small children with us. Apparently sledding is a kid thing. I made Matt go first, and he did fine, and then I took about 6 1/2 minutes to mentally prepare myself and then accidentally lost my footing and just started careening down this freaking steep hill of death! I lived though, and it was fun. We went a couple more times, then had a competition to see who could roll a ball of snow down the hill the farthest (I won), and then we went down together which was scarier than heck because we are both too big to be on that sled together, but luckily an obnoxious asian pre-teen encouraged us via taunting and we did it! But seriously, that guy was obnoxious. 

And THEN THE REAL FUN BEGAN! I don't know why I'm making a whole blog about this, but it was cool enough and we have good pictures so just bear with me. THIS IS WHAT WE DID!!! We went back to my house and filled up ketchup/salad dressing bottles with water and food coloring and determined to go and vandalize people's front yards (aka, write in the snow). It took us awhile to figure out what exactly to do with it, but eventually we made our way to the park on 4th north and started making a "treasure map" aka, a bunch of dotted lines going around the park with little "activities" or messages along the way. This is how it went:

(This is hard to read, but its next to a BBQ and it says BBQ raccoons for dinner)

(This one went underneath the monkey bars. And then my bandaid dropped into the snow so I buried it and put an X over it, hoping someone would think that was the "treasure" and dig it up... excuse my immaturity)

 (Part of the treasure hunt included going up the stairs and down the slide)

(Just in case you weren't 100% sure what yellow snow was... and unfortunately we couldn't find the yellow food coloring that day... :(  )

(lava)

So while we were doing this, there was a family with 2 children at the park, and they were building a snowman when they got there but strangely left once we started drawing. The two kids were swinging on the swings during most of our treasure-hunt creation, and the little girl was FREAKING OUT that we were doing it. "MOM, IT SMELLS LIKE THEY ARE MAKING A FIRE!" (Because yes, child, if there were two hooligan college students being arsonists, they would be spreading gasoline in the SNOW where it could  easily be lit) "MOM THEY ARE BEING SO RUDE" "MOM THEY ARE PUTTING UGLY COLORS IN THE SNOW". And my favorite moment was when she came up to me and stated, "You are SCARY." Which made me want to cry, because no one has ever said that to me before and meant it. I asked her if she wanted to squirt some colored water in the snow, to try and lighten the mood but she shook her head and said "No WAY" and ran off. So at the very end of the scavenger hunt, as a tribute to her, we made some fire.... that kind of looked like a flower.

And then the part you have all been waiting for: the actual treasure:

Yay! A cool rock!

Then we decapitated the children's snowman (Don't worry, they already had left)

Also, it was my turn for dinner group so we went home and made some delicious quinoa!

...NOT.

And afterwards, we had a fun little DG conversation compliments of Ryan Moser. Thanks buddy.

Last night I had the craziest dream!!!

This is a true statement. Recently, I've been retelling my dreams, and it was suggested to me that I should keep a "Dream Journal." I feel like the only point of this would be to make myself laugh really hard, but this is a still a good reason, so I'll probably end up doing it. However, I'm an awful journal-keeper so today its just goin up on the blog.

January 16, 2013
I watched Star Trek for the first time, and subsequently had bizarro dreams about outer space and aliens. Naturally, it mirrored that of the acclaimed Dcom original, Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century. If you missed this super awesome movie when you were 10 years old, here's the link to Protozoa's hit classic, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, or if you want to watch the whole movie (thank goodness its online), go here. It's zedis lapidusly awesome!

 January 19, 2013
I had a weird dream about my best friend Brig... that I won't share here, haha. But my other dream was that my family and I lived in Japan, and one day there was a HUGE tsunami that wrecked everything. We were scavenging through our ruined house, and tried to get into our bathroom, but there was something blocking the door. Eventually we kicked it down and found a dead japanese man in a hammock. It was pretty gross, so we were about to leave when I had the thought to go check it out, and lo and behold there was a little Japanese baby girl clutched in his arms! We pulled her out and were super happy to have this little child! So we called up the Japanese government and informed them that we wanted to adopt this child, and they said, No way, Jose, we're putting her in the crappiest orphanage that Japan has to offer, and we will come get her in the morning. So that night we decided to escape to Germany so that they couldn't take her away from us. It may or may not have involved jumping across a giant green ocean on large pieces of floating tofu, and flying over a cement wall with chicken wire at the top, like you see in prison. Once we got to Germany we all donned superhero identities and robbed a Museum. And raised a Japanese child.

January 20, 2013
I was a secret agent on a cruise to France. I was very sneaky and told the bad guy following me that the ship left at 6pm, when it actually left at 5pm! HA! He totally missed it, and I sailed away to the beautiful country! Later in the country, I was riding an over-sized bicycle being chased by the villains and totally biffed it, scraping my appendages but no breakages. My secret agent team happened to be a group of children that I was simultaneously babysitting (weird), and we were running out of food and starving so we snuck into an abandoned grocery store at night and pilfered supplies for the rest of our mission. Unfortunately we were found out, and had to shove the cashier boy out of the way so that we could scan our own groceries (for some reason, suddenly it wasn't deserted, and there was a cashier there), which was obviously 10 times faster, so that we could get away in time. On our escape, they caught up with us and captured us, but that is when I woke up. The next day I totally biffed it in real life on the ice... premonition.

January 21, 2013
This was an awesome dream!! After months of trying to convince my family, they finally agreed to take a family trip to Uganda!! I was so stoked! We got to the Entebbe Airport, which strangely looked like Grapevine Mills, the mall that I grew up going to, and ate some McDonald's (there are no McDonald's in Uganda in real life, btw). Then we trekked through the jungle where I showed them all the cool places I lived while I was there! On our taxi ride to church we were chased by a pack of wild dogs, but luckily we drove fast and ran into a shelter on stilts that we climbed up into until the dogs went away. Then we ate some pineapple (Pineapple in Uganda is WAY better than Pineapple in the US, btw#2). After getting back to the village, I ran into my best friend from my childhood, Alyssa Call, who was wearing some sort of caveman dress and was hopping around on her knuckles like Tarzan, building a house out of bamboo. This seemed natural enough to me in the dream, so I helped her out. And then her little sister came and bit me. (This is something that always happened in real life- Alyssa's sister liked to bite. I called her jaws.) But mostly, I just went and relieved the best 6 weeks of my life in the place that is so close to my soul!! Uganda!!

January 22, 2013
Today (the 23rd) I had to teach a resume workshop for my job, and I was pretty nervous about it, so naturally, I dreamed about work. I was driving the IT minivan around in the snow- a recurring theme in my dream, is that whenever I am driving, my breaks NEVER work. Its always like I'm driving on ice, and I glide around. It is super freaky- trying to get to a work meeting. I remember being really happy, because I was able to park in the service vehicle spot which was freaking awesome. The meeting was underground and we were all sitting on beanbags. It was really cool- and the sorting hat was there. Above ground was my house, which they were re-modeling to be geometrically circular and neon-colored. I didn't really like it. I also had the ability apparate and disapparate (Harry Potter), but only while I was on a certain portal point. At some point there was a blizzard/tornado and I had to get to my elementary school to meet with my former 5th grade teacher because I was in an alternate universe, and I needed to get back, via the children's books that my teacher wrote. I was driving the IT van back to the school through the blizzard/tornado and cars were flying all around me and their doors were being ripped off. I finally made it and accessed the classroom through one of those eye scanner things, found the books on the shelf, and then the characters within came to life, and I was automatically in a different cartoon-world. Like toontown at disney world. Then it just got super bizarre... I was flying, or using a jetpack... Don't really remember...

February 2nd, 2013

I was in the Urgent Care center yesterday and got put on some weird drugs, so I blame that on the insane dreams I had last night.

My first dream is that I was on this like reality TV show that was all about learning how to do hand-to-hand combat. Except nobody got like "kicked off the island." Instead every week, someone DIED. You basically got trained by this long-haired hippie guy whose family got killed by ninjas when he was a child, so he devoted his life to learning the art of warfare and then decided to force people onto his TV show to be the "ultimate warrior" or whatever. It was super scary. Throughout the week, you just got trained by this guy and then every Thursday there was basically this exercise where everyone was given a weapon and then put in different parts of this dark maze-like structure and then as soon as someone killed someone else the game was over, and it just repeated itself week after week. It was like the real life version of Agatha Christie's 10 Little Indians (Which I read in 6th grade and also gave me nightmares). And then one time we were all having a group breakfast together catered by this hibachi sushi ninja cook guy, and it was really gross. Somehow I escaped, but then got roped into ANOTHER reality TV show (did I mention I hate reality TV shows?) where everyone was put into groups of four and the game of the week was that you had to dive to the bottom of a swimming pool to grab an assortment of objects, and the group who got the most objects won. But on our team it was me, one of my co-workers Michael Jeppessen, a mentally handicapped guy I went to elementary school with and this random goth girl who refused to get wet. So we were pretty disadvantaged haha. And we lost. But the creators of the TV show kind of recognized that it was kind of unfair, so they gave us a prize, which was that they sold all of the objects that we had fished out of the bottom of the pool, sold them, and bought a one-dose cure for cancer, and then brought this boy from Zimbabwe who had cancer, and they let us feed this cure to him, which was really cool in the dream and everyone was crying and emotional, but it was obviously really bizarre. After I woke up and was contemplating this part of the dream, I wondered... What if there was a reality TV show-type class at BYU? So like the class would start out with 14 students, and every week one of them would get kicked out of the class, and the week they got kicked out corresponded to the letter grade they got; so the winner would get an A, the runner up would get an A-, B+, B, etc etc. Kind of weird concept, but I think it would actually be really cool, except for the fact that half of the class pretty much fails the class. Oh well.

And then I was going to school at a really over-sized BYU, and me and Brig and Aaron were in this weird sewing-costume-class together, and Brig and Aaron both made each other sweaters for the class and then tried them on while I took pictures, and Brig was modeling** it off in the same seductive way that he acts out females when we play "Time's Up" together. Some girl made me a sweater and it had holes** all over it so it was awkward to wear. And the instructor of the class was borderline gay. Go figure. I remember randomly dropping one of my classes and enrolling in some random geography class, and when I walked in I happened to know every single person in the class. But they were all people I knew from different places in my life. Brig, Aaron, this one random guy I sort of dated freshman year, Alyssa Call, this one girl my best friend dated in high school to make me jealous, etc etc. And I had to ride a trolley to all of my classes. And then BYU turned into outer space, and everyone had weird sailor- moon / star wars powers and were shooting each other with laser guns.

Third dream, one of my best friends from Washington, Whitney, was getting married (which is ironic, because she's getting married this next weekend), in a giant field, and I was babysitting children** / working on my sewing projects from my 2nd dream, and her wedding colors were like lime green and periwinkle, so my mom made me this really obnoxious colored lime green sparkly dress that I had to wear to it. And the entire family from the cosby show was there at the wedding... I remember that during the middle of it I realized that I had a staff meeting for work that I had to go to, but then I didn't actually have to because it was President's Day weekend and there was no work. So I missed the actual wedding part of the wedding coming and going to the nonexistent meeting. And then somehow I was in charge of a bunch of miners who were drilling rocks on this giant cliff. And there was a lightning storm that broke pieces of rock off and fell down the cliff and crushed a bunch of people. And then I was a superhero and there were 3 other superheros with me that were going from job interview to job interview, but we didn't know we were all applying for the same jobs, so we got really mad at each other for ruining each others' chances of getting the job. I don't know exactly what went down but there was a lot of really bizarre stuff. But yeah. super weird. Its always interesting taking drugs when you sleep! Your dreams are insane!!

The point is... I have weird dreams. That is all. Go watch Zenon, its awesome.