FREEDOM....well almost

LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!!! This last friday was the last day of classes and I can't tell you how amazing it feels to almost be done!! I only have four more tests and i've offically finished my second year of college! I know i'm prematurely excited about being done but i'm so close I can almost taste it. Each semester I get closer and closer to applying to my program. Even though everytime i think about applying for my program i have a mini heart attack i still am very excited to apply! Part of me can't wait to get started and then the other part of me doesn't want to grow up yet! I really don't feel old enough to be doing any of this right now!! It feels like i was a senior in high school just a few days ago. I can't believe i'm almost through with two years of college!! I guess it's like they say time flies when your having fun. I'm sure the next two years will fly by as well.

The Sweet Smell of Spring

I was on my way to class today and could smell just cut grass and it smelled so good to me! I love all the smells that spring bring! I especially love being able to hear the birds sing! It's been so nice to walk from class to class and not have to worry about being cold along the way! And i especially love that i don't have to scrape off frost from my windows! The weather has been great and i hope it stays like that for a while!!

ahhh....WARMTH!!

So this last week gave us some CRAZY weather!!! Both my roommate, Krista, and i were pretty sick of it! This week Krista's cousins were down in St. George at there grandparents condo and invited us down. We gladly accepted this invitation! It was SO nice to escape to some place warm. It made me realize that i should have started doing this ages ago!!!

Every year Krista's uncle invites some of his friends down and they go on a big horse ride through Zions. After their horse ride on Friday they took us all to a huge buffet down in mesquite. I'm not a big fan of buffets but it wasn't bad and they paid so it was a free meal. Something every college student can appreciate! The cowboys were going down for the seafood buffet but since i'm not a seafood fan I mostly just ate salad and these AMAZING gralic red mashed potatos! I did tried lamb for the first time in my life! Definately not one of my favorite things! I almost tried oysters, they were on my plate and everything! But when it came to actually trying it i just couldn't get myself to put it in my mouth they looked way to gross! I did LOVE the soft serve ice cream!! Probably the best part of the whole entire meal.

Saturday we woke up and went on i bike ride. I now have a new respect for all those that go on long bike rides!! It about killed me!! It was still way fun to go onthough! The trail was really amazing it took us up to the Tuacahn. Before i recommend this trial i do have to warn you that the trail has a ton of killer hills so don't expect it to be way easy. The way to the Tuacahn took like 45 min and about killed me! The way back only took like maybe 20 min and it was fun because we were just cruising down the hills. Krista's aunt had a road bike and we all had mountain bikes so we had a hell of a time trying to keep up to her but i think we did pretty good! In case you're wondering krista's aunt had a little speedometer thing and she said it was about 13 miles all together but that is counting from their condo so i'm sure it's like 2 or 3 miles shorter than that. Also we didn't go all the way up to the tucahn we just went to the sign. From what i hear the rest of the way to the tuchan is straight up hill just a little fyi in case you wanted to try it out. The trail is great for bike riding, running, walking, rollarblading, etc!! It even has a little pond thing for fishing! If you're ever down in st. george and want to try it out give me a call and i can try to explain to you where it is at! I can't guarentee i'll be able to get you there but i'll will sure try! When we got back from the ride we went and got some lunch and then laid out in the sun for about an hour. I can't even explain to you how good that felt!! It was so incredible! We left saturday night so we could be back to go to church but we sure didn't want to leave. No worries though we're going back again this weekend!

This sunday was pretty good church was good as usual but what was special was that Susan W. Tanner and her husband came and spoke to us about friendship, courtship and physical relationships. There talk was amazing. They emphasized the importance of having a friendship has a foundation and how the physical part of a relationship, while important, is not the most improtant part. It was all really really good I'm very glad i went! They focused a lot on friendship and how important friendships are. It really made me think about the importance if being social and making friends with every one. As most that read this know i'm not a very social person. I usually keep to myself and don't necesarily go out of my way to meet people. This talk really made me want to be better at that. Overall the talk really made me want to be a better person.

Reading

I LOVE LOVE LOVE reading!!! When i get a house of my own i very much would like to have a little room dedicated to reading. I'd have a nice comfy chair next to a warm fire place and then bookshelves filled with hundreds of books, so pretty much i want a library. Reading never fails to put me in a better mood. I think what i love so much about reading is that i feel like i'm living vicariously through the characters in the book. It's almost like i get to experience there love, heartache and adventure. Another reason is it gives me time to get my mind of my worries and focus on something else, it takes me to another world. I get so absorbed and enthralled in my books I've found my self worrying about the characters a little to much or even wanting to pray for them!! ha ha it's kind of sad how involved i get in my books. The down fall to my love of reading is that once i start a book i do nothing but read that book! I don't sleep, i don't study, i just sit and read until i'm finished, my family and roommates can probably attest to that! It's almost like an addcition because once i start i can't stop. I just finished a book called Tribunal, it's a sequel to Traitor written by Sandra Grey. I think what i love so much about these books is the intergration of LDS standards. The author writes about these LDS members and there struggles through both WWII and the cold war. Intertwined is little life lessons i think we all need to learn. Most of all is to have faith in God no matter what. I must put a warning label on the books i read because i love pretty much any book i read so i wouldn't rely to much on my recommendations. Next on my list to read is Masterpiece and The Secret Life of Bees. If you have any suggestions of other books let me know because i'm always looking for a good book to read!

Gum Graft

So a couple of years ago i got my dental implants and i thought after that the worst was over, at least for my teeth. But i've been getting a lot of infections where one of my implants is lately, so I went to my periodontist and he suggested I get a gum graft. For those of you who don't know what that is i'll explain. I'll go in and the doctor will put me to sleep (thank goodness!) then he'll separate part of my existing gum tissue in order to make a pocket for the graft. Once they've made the pocket they'll go to the roof of my mouth and cut a small piece of gum tissue out and place it in the pocket then suture the graft and existing gum tissue together. I'll be getting the gum graft in two places. One is on my lower front tooth and the other is my lower back tooth on my left side. When my periodontist told me i had to get the procedure done i wasn't too worried about it except for the whole costing an arm and a leg thing. I'd already had my implant surgery and i didn't feel much pain from that so i figured this should be super easy. Well my mom talked to the nurse and the nurse told her that I couldn't be very active and i couldn't be bumped at all in order for my grafts to take. She also said i'd pretty much be on an all liquid diet. I sort of felt like the nurse was exaggerating a bit because after my implant surgery i was up and ready to go the very next day. So i decided i'd google gum grafts and see what other people experienced. Almost every story i read the person said it was the most painful thing they had ever experienced. This really started to worry me. I read about two or three that said their faces got all swollen and bruised. That started to really worry me because i really don't want a swollen face! Some thing i am grateful for is that i'm getting totally put out! A lot of the experiences i read about said they just got local anesthia and were awake for the whole thing! I'm pretty sure i couldn't do that. As i continued to read i found out that they have the procedure posted on youtube. So being as curious as i was i went to you tube and watched a ton of them. They are pretty graphic but below are the links to them if you want to see what i'll be going through in about two weeks. None of you probably care about this but i really thought it was pretty interesting. I guess i'm one of those people that like to know what is going to be done to me before i go and get it done. Here are a few before and after pictures to give an idea of how much better it's suppose to look.

Found this picture online my tooth isn't that bad.

Here is sort of a sequence of what takes place:

Here are the links for the videos (hope they work)

http://www.periodontics-dentist.com/vdir_gumsurgery_v

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38i-xmwwQxA

Watches

I LOVE LOVE LOVE these watches!! They are a little pricey but i think they are worth it!
The top one i would probably use on more of a daily basis at work. The other two would really just be more for when i dress up.

Black Light Rollerblading

This weekend I got to feel like a kid again! Friday the institute had a black light dance. So my
roommate Krista and I decided we wanted to make shirts that would glow in the black lights. So we made our trip to walmart and bought white t-shirts and some neon pant. Excited about panting ours shirts we got started right away. We started by using a toothbrush but that got too tedious so we started using our fingers! It was so much fun and sort of theraputic. The dance wasn't really that great there weren't enough black lights to do our shirts justice but it was still pretty fun. I probably had more fun making the shirts but that's okay.

Saturday when Krista and I woke up the sun was shining and the birds were chirpping. It felt like the perfect spring day! We really wanted to go do something outside so we racked our brains for some good ideas. We didn't know where we could go hiking and we didn't have bikes or anything else like that. Discourage from our lack of ideas i started doing homework and while Krista continued to figure out what we could do. Then she decided she wanted to go to the DI to see what she could find. So she went while i finished some homework. Right when she walked in she found two pairs of $3 rollarblades each our perfect size!! When she got home we bladed up and set out on the town. After putting on the rollerblades I was reminded how long it had really been since i last had rollerblades on. I was sort of nervous about what was going to happen. It was either going to go really well or really horribly! To start out we went over to the church parking lot that is next to our apartments and practiced up a little bit. I will admit I'm not very good at stopping, granted i only had one break and it didn't really work. I ran into the curb a couple of times it was pretty funny! We started getting bored of just riding around the church so we started thinking of places we could ride. There was only one problem, cedar is nothing but hills!! I'm pretty sure if i would have tried to ride all over town i'd be in an emergency room right now! So we racked our brains for ideas of where we could go. We could only think of one place that might work. We drove to Discovery Park in search of a trail, we weren't too sure if they had a trail around it or not but we thought we'd at least try. We were in luck they had the PERFECT trail for rollerblades. It was the perfect day outside not too hot and not too cold! It was really meant to be! We've decided that rollerblading will become our new saturday morning activity. It was probably the best $3 purchase i've ever made! Hopefully the weather stays warm so we can really make this a habit. It was so nice to feel like a kid again, it surprisingly relieved a great amount of stress. Here are some pics of our adventure

This is us in action

our RAD blades