A Weekend Jaunt in SLC

The semester is over! Hallelujah! It was a crazy end to the semester, as always, but everything got finished. Aaron and I have been off of school for the past couple days, and boy we've loved it!

We had a fun excursion in Salt Lake City on Saturday. We started off with a live session at the Salt Lake Temple (my first time inside!) and I loved it! It was, if possible, more beautiful inside than outside! Aaron and I both needed that break from the world.

I dream of one day having a gardens that are a fraction as beautiful as the temples'.

Photogenic.

Love this kid.

When we left the temple, my stomach began to whisper, "Take me to Settebello. We wants it. We needs it." I couldn't say no.

Yes, these are leftovers. I wanted to take a picture of the full pizza, but my stomach took over.

Settebello is this incredible Italian restaurant that serves authentic Italian pizza (this ain't Pizza Hut). The chef is actually from Italy, and they ship almost all of their ingredients straight from Italy because they are a part of this sweet Napoletana society that works to preserve the authentic pizza of Napoli. Boy, is it magnificent! My brother Jared signed off on it, and he served a mission in Milan, Italy. Wonderful. They actually have a sister restaurant in Orem called Terra Mia, which is also excellent, although in my heart, I am still partial to Settebello.

As part of our end-of-the-semester celebratory meal, we got some gelato next door! A wonderful decision.

Mango & sweet cream for Aaron

Mint cookie & sweet cream for me

One of Aaron's cousins had a hotel room in Sandy he had bought, but he wasn't able to use it so he offered it to us! It's a rare treat for us to stay in a hotel room, so we couldn't pass it up. Hello cable television!

It was a wonderful celebration between semesters. The next term starts on Tuesday. Oh boy.

However, on a happier note, today marks the one year anniversary of the day that Aaron proposed to me. What a wonderful, surreal day that was! I can't believe we're starting to hit these year marks! I'm feelin' like an old married woman! Love you, husband.

White Can Be Pretty, Too.

It has been a very busy vacation! After we made it home from San Diego, my brother Ryan and his family met us in ABQ to head down to Ruidoso, New Mexico. We had a couple day trips that we embarked on during our stay there, one of them visiting the White Sands National Monument. 

This place is incredible! I have never been there before, but I loved it! We brought little round sleds that we greased up and rode down the sand dunes! I'm a little cautious sometimes (OK, a lot-a-bit cautious), and after much persuading (and teasing, joking, taunting, and threatening), I rode down the hill face first. It was exhilarating.

The boys were doing lots of cool tricks and summersaults down the hill, and then Aaron tried to pull me down to jump with him. 

It didn't work so well. I like to employ the dead legs trick that is commonly employed by small children. 

Bless his heart, he just kept trying. And failing. I'm just a little bit stubborn.

Allison was much more willing to be pulled down the hill:

After we tumbled down the hill for a while, we took our family pictures! They were very beautiful.

Many moons ago, when we were looking at taking our engagement pictures, we really wanted to take our engagement pictures out on the salt flats. With a piano. It was going to be legit! But then we realized the cost of buying a piano, lugging it out to the salt flats...yeah, it would have been a little much. But these pictures came pretty close to achieving my dreams of those pictures.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Let the Break Begin!

Fall semester is finally over! I'll tell you, I wasn't sure I was going to make it for a while. Aaron tells me that it's a part of my obsessive need to get As in college, a superfluous need that I was sure Astronomy would have squashed that right out of me my first semester of college (Hello failing my first test in college), but apparently I'm still holding onto that dream. When will I learn? 

Once the semester ended, we were immediately off to San Diego to meet the football team to compete in the Poinsettia Bowl! Waking up at 4 AM the first day after finals was a dream come true, really. It's not like we were exhausted or anything. We piled 240 people onto 5 charter busses and made our way to San Diego. 12–13 hours later, we finally made it to our beautiful resort, Paradise Point. It was so beautiful!

We did a lot in San Diego from Monday to Thursday: a parade at the Gaslamp Quarter, performances at USS Midway Aircraft Carrier and tailgates before the game, sea lion watching at La Jolla beach, and lots and lots of eating. We also made a stop at SeaWorld, and I managed to put aside my distaste for the treatment of the sea animals long enough to enjoy our trip! Hello killer Shamu. 

The football game was very typical of BYU: horrendous first 3 quarters and a fabulous 4th quarter. After all of the nasty fans who swore at us and made disgusting gestures at the band, it was very satisfying to thoroughly destroy them in the game. My favorite sign of the game:

My career in band is officially over. I've had 11 years of band filled with private lessons, middle school band, high school band, and college band. With one last BYU fight song, it was all over. Marching Band has been one of the best things I've ever done. I've met almost all of my best friends there and I even met my husband in band! Call it bizarre, but I can truly say that I've had the time of my life performing throughout my life. It's been a good run.

After a quick visit with my grandparents in Seal Beach and a 12 hour drive with Jared and Brianna to ABQ, my relaxing Christmas break can finally begin!

Exotic Living

This is a pomegranate. For those of you who just rolled your eyes and said, "Well, duh!" don't mock me. I had heard of them, of course, but I didn't even know what part of the pomegranate you're supposed to eat! Were we supposed to peel them like oranges? Chew on the skin? Sit there smelling its general appetizing scent? Aaron and I decided to buy one when were at Target last week, and as exciting and sophisticated as we felt when we bought it, we had no idea what to do with it.

So we went to youtube.

We found 2 videos that seemed promising.

This one teaches you how to seed pomegranates under water to avoid those fatal stains that can squirt up at you. Yes, the man is very pompous and appears to believe himself to be the first person to eat a pomegranate. 

This one is pretty cheesy and the two boys look like they want to do just about anything rather than hitting pomegranates. This one teaches you to cut open a pomegranate and hit the outside to shake loose the seeds in the bowl. 

We tried each technique on different halves of the pomegranate to figure out which one we like more. Surprisingly, the hitting technique was much better! With the water, it's hard to loose the membrane off of the seeds and even harder to drain the membranes out of the water. The juices in the seeds were diluted as a result of the water as well. 

We found the seeds quite delicious once you get past the feeling that you're eating a raspberry that intermarried with hard kernels of corn. 

We also don't recommend shoving a huge handful in your mouth and trying to eat it at the same time. The initial jolt of juice is delicious, but then you have the unfortunate sensation that you're gnawing on wood when you try to swallow them.

Go buy yourself a pomegranate! Grab a spoon and whack away. It's wonderful for stress relief.

I Want To Be Scarlett O'Hara

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Yikesabee. Here are some of the things I have been up to!

I gave blood at the American Red Cross and I had an unfortunate incident where my vein rolled out of the way of the needle. I'm not kidding. It rolled. I know you're jealous; I've got ninja veins. The other arm worked perfectly and after two weeks, my giant bruise is finally gone! 

I switched with one of the tenor saxophones in the Men's Pep Band so that he could travel with his wife with the Woman's Basketball team and I could travel with Aaron with the Men's Basketball team. We left early Monday morning and traveled to Dayton, Ohio.

I got to meet a few of the players. I had a nice awkward conversation in the elevator with this player, Chris Collinsworth. "Where are you from?" "Albuquerque. Actually BYU. I'm actually in the band." "Oh. Well, thanks for supporting us." "Thank you for letting us...come...support you." 

Watched an incredible game against Iona! NCAA history making game where we had a comeback of 25 points! There's a picture of us from when they showed us on ESPN. Yes, that is me on the top row, second from the right, screaming as loud as I could. Best game ever. 

If I could put how I felt into one visual image, this would be it!

We made our way down to Louisville, Kentucky for the first round NCAA game. We visited Churchill Downs, the famous arena for the Kentucky Derby!

Every girl has wanted to date a cowboy at some point in their life. For me, I first fell in love with Curly from Oklahoma. Lucky me, Aaron happens to be a part-time cowboy! Just ask him to sing you one of his cowboy songs. You'll love it.

My dreams of becoming a southern belle became clearer.

I got to hang out with great friends and my great roommate, Jill.

Then, there was the sad Marquette game. To be fair, they're a Number 3 seed. We knew they'd be tough.

We came back late Thursday night and it's back to business as usual! Tests, midterms, homework assignments, and projects galore. To make myself feel better, I made myself this delicious Nutella Banana Bread that has pretty much made all of my dreams come true. Try it. Hasn't my picture convinced you?