A magical week

This has been a fun week. And there are even pictures this time! Isn’t that crazy!!!

Scholastically things have been going really well. The topics for my thesis are really coming together well. I started in one area, and now I am in a completely different area. The cool thing is that processes means there might be 3 or 4 papers I could right in the area. Heck, I could almost turn this into a dissertation. I still have a lot of work to do, but I am glad that it is heading in the right direction.

The real fun happened on the weekend. Friday Emily and I went and made sack lunches for the poor. It was a lot of fun. We even optimized the system. It was great! The rest of the night was spent study so that we wouldn’t have homework the next day.

 

The next day, Saturday, started with me going to a service project. We were helping an old widow get her yard cleaned up so that she could sell the house. It was a lot of fun and a lot of good work. There was still a lot to do when we were finished, but we were certainly moving in the right direction. After that we went for a BBQ and it was wonderful!

 

After the service project I hurried home because Emily and I were going to the festival of colors.The dirctions we had were wrong though, so we missed the 3 o’clock throwing. We went in anyways and just had a blast. I managed to get it in my eyes and in my nose, but still I enjoyed. Probably mostly because it was with Emily. She took special pleasure in throwing handfuls of colors me. :) It was great. We even ended the day wearing trash bag sheik. I must say, we do pull it off.

 

As you can see it was a lot of fun. After that we went home, and I did nothing for three hours. Well technically I didn’t do nothing, but it was pretty boring. Emily had gone to get ready, because w were going to the traditions ball that night! She had a beautiful dress, and had done up her hair (with no less than 47 bobby pins in her hair! A a bottle of hair spray!)

It was so much fun. We both got dressed up (Emily more so than I.) It was just such a classy and fun date that night. There was dancing, there was picture taking, there was just wandering around and talking. It was so much fun.

 

It was just a magical night with a magical girl.We ended the night by going and looking at stars together. How perfect! And that was my magical adventure for the week!

More adventures

Still nothing really huge these last two weeks (that is why I didn’t write last week), but I still had some more adventures. I guess I will tell everyone about them.

 

So lets see, last week Friday… Well Emily’s friend Zack had come into town, so we went on a double date with Him and his girlfriend Ashley (also a friend of Emily’s from back home). We started with dinner at Café Rio. It was really good. It was also fun getting to know Zack and Ashley.

After that we went to Nickel City. It is this place where they have a ton of arcade machines, but they are only 5 cents. Me and Emily had a blast playing the various machines. We also played a round of laser tag. It was super intense. I was running a long like mad. Unfortunately I hadn’t taken off my sweater so I was also sweating like mad :p It was really fun though, and Emily managed to get the high score!

After we were done at Nickel City we went to Sub Zero. They make ice cream there right in front of you using liquid nitrogen. It was a lot of fun to watch, and the ice cream tasted really good. We then took Zack and Ashley home and then me and Emily came back and watched The Office together. It was just a great night.

On Saturday I attended another hacking competition. It was put on by Raytheon, a lock company that does security related work. It was a lot of fun. I was actually able to tie for first place, which was pretty awesome. If I had just a little more time I could have probably also taken first place, which would have been just awesome.

After that I came home and it was time for boy’s night. Well, it was supposed to be boy’s night, but Jared had come into town and so had Drew and Cassi, so it started off as everyone night. This was just fine by me. First we went to Café Zupas (I took Emily since it wasn’t the boy’s night part yet.) It was really good. After Café Zupas we went back to the FLSR and played a round of Buzz. We followed this by some Rock Band. It was a lot of fun. After this Emily went home for a girls’ night and I styed over at the Russian men’s house. In the end nothing happened, but it was still fun to just spend some time taking with the boys.

Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day. It felt like the beginning of Spring. For the afternoon we went to Kiwanas to have lunch. Song made Greek shish-kebabs, and they were just delicious. It was so much fun. After that Emily and I went to a Gig Harbor reunion. Gig Harbor is the city where she is from. It was fun. Luckily I already knew the people that were there, so I didn’t need to feel like an outsider. After that we went to the park and just laid looking at the stars. It was a lot of fun. If only the weather would just stay like this.

 

This week was also a lot of fun. On Thursday our complex had a dance. Emily and I attended for a little. It was pretty fun. I tried to dance with her, but I don’t know how to dance anymore, and I try to lead her through far to complicated steps. Nonetheless it was a lot of fun. I was grateful to have the dancing time though :)

Friday was also a good day. Emily had to take a test really late, so we just picked up dinner at Taco Bell. We then hurried off to listen to a faculty violin concert. Except that when we got there it was a Schubert piano concert. It was okay music, but Schubert isn’t either of our favorite artists, so after the second number (we had already been there over an hour) we left. We went to The Chocolate and got dessert. it was tasty and fun. We then came home and went to bed.

The reason we went to bed so early was because the next morning their was the ward temple trip at 5:30 in the morning. It was awfully early. It was a good way to spend the morning though. After that we did some shopping and then returned to help with the ward breakfast. We helped make the bacon, and make bacon we did. A lot of it. Like 10 pounds of it. We then got to eat breakfast, it was delicious. There was so much fresh fruit that I pretty much just ate that. It was amazing.

Later in the afternoon was the Student Research Conference. I had to present, so we went to that. Luckily my presentation went well, but it wasn’t that interesting. Emily is amazing to sit through that with me.

Afterwards we came home and just kind of relaxed. It was wonderful! We made a light dinner of soup and salad, and finished the night with some abstract algebra. Not the most fun way to finish the night, but still good since I could help Emily with it.

 

Lastly, it also really good to see what other people write on their blogs these last two weeks. It is good to know that my best friend Drew is feeling better. It is also great to see the adventures Brittany had up in Oregon. I think I definitely need to visit Oregon this summer and see Jason and Alysha :) That would pretty much make my summer. I hope everyone else is having just as great of a time!

Little Adventures

Well, another good week for me, but that is how life has been recently. It is nice to have things going mostly well. There are a still things that I don’t know about the coming months, but I will take care of those as I need to.

 

Anyways, I started the week out well. My cousin Ashlyn had her birthday party on Sunday, so Emily and I drove up to wish her happy birthday. It was great because I got to see all of my family. It is always such a wonderful time to see them. We also watched Sons of Provo that night. If any of you have not seen that movie yet, you have got to find an opportunity to watch it. It is so funny, and touches on all the funny parts of life in Utah Valley.

The week itself was full of little adventures. Shopping, and driving in small blizzards, and who knows what else. It is fun to be able to have little adventures throughout the week. None of them are that big, but I still enjoy them.

On Friday we had one of these little adventures. We got all the stuff to make our own pizza. It was hard work to make the dough and everything, but it turned out really well. It tasted delicious. Since we had extra yeast we also decided to make cinnamon rolls. Both of them turned out incredibly. It was great. Emily is a great helper when we cook, and it makes everything more fun.

Saturday was also a good day. In the morning I got to eat the cinnamon roles for breakfast. One of the best breakfasts I have had recently. I also got to play Wallyball at night. I had never played before, but it was a lot of fun. It is certainly something that I will want to do in the future. It is probably not everyday I can find a wallyball court, so the time to take advantage of it is now.

 

And that is that. Nothing really crazy this week, but it still has been a week of fun times. I hope you are having a good time. I hope because besides Cassi and Alysha none of my other friends are writing :( Hope to hear from the rest of you sometimes. If you have new blog addresses you should let me know!

President’s Day Weekend

So me and Emily have really fallen in love with Once Upon a Time. The episodes are so good, even when the characters are idiots (a.k.a. Prince Charming). We have been going to the Whitings to watch it with them on Sunday night. It is great to be with Family, and it is so enjoyable. Unfortunately there was no episode this last Monday :( To go with the episode we made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that turned out amazing. We finished Sunday with a little Hercules. It is always fun to watch old Disney movies.

 

On Monday we had a lot of fun as well. We had school off on Monday for President’s day. Originally we were going to see if we couldn’t one of Emily’s friends in SLC on Monday, but that didn’t work out. Regardless, we decided to still go down to SLC. We started with lunch with dad. Emily really enjoyed meeting him, which is good. It was fun to get to spend some time with him.

After that we went to downtown. First we got a tour of the conference center. It was a lot of fun. It was really cool to be up on the roof looking around the valley. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we forgot our cameras and so only have a couple of photos from my phone :( Here they are anyways.

After that we walked around temple square a little bit. We ran into two sets of missionaries that spoke Chinese, and that is pretty awesome. We then just walked around town. It is crazy how much SLC has changed since I lived there, but it was still fun to get around.

To end the night we met up with Drew and Cassi for dinner. We went to get Indian food. It was a lot of fun to catch up with them. Afterwards we went back and had FHE with them, followed by two rounds of Buzz. We then let them get back to their busy lives, and headed back to Provo. Overall it was just an amazing day!

 

Not too much happened during the rest of the week. Emily was really busy preparing for three different tests she had that week, so most of our time was spent on homework. On Friday when she finished the last of her tests we went to Szechuan Garden to celebrate Ben’s birthday. That was fun. We finished that night by watching The Six Sense together. I was amazed that Emily had never seen it before. For being so easily startled she did a great job of watching the movie. Though one time she grabbed me really hard, and that was actually enough to startle me, in a part that has never startled me before :)

Saturday was a fun normal day. I made us some breakfast and then we went off to the temple. Afterwards we just did homework. Dinner was interesting, as we tried to make stuff we had on hand. In the end we made tuna mac and hash browns. A funny combo, but it was good :)

And that was pretty much the week. What about the rest of you, did you have a fun President’s Day weekend. If so, those that still read this should blog about it! I would love to hear stories, especially from all my flagship peeps.

Valentine’s Day

It was really hard to decide what I should do for Valentine's day. I am not really good at these kind of things. My cousin Jason is a pro at thinking up creative ideas, but that is not me. Moping aside, her is what we did:

I woke up extra early so that I could go and write all over Emily’s car. It was actually really hard to do, since there was snow all over her car. So I had to take a towel and wipe off, and attempt to dry off the various window surfaces. It took a while and didn’t work out that great. I then wrote several notes on her car, making reference to things that have happened or we have said to each other in the past. I thought it was pretty cute, and so did she. Unfortunately it rained later that day and a bunch of it washed off :(

Since we had to eat dinner at the FLSR together we didn’t go anywhere for that. Instead after dinner we went to The Chocolate. It is a restaurant that specializes in desert. Emily told me she wanted to go there sometime when we first started dating, and so we headed up there. It was really fun, and the desert was good. I don’t remember the name of what we got, but it was essentially a half cooked giant cookie with a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It was really delicious.

After that we came home and I gave her some flowers that I had bought for her. Luckily roses are one of her favorite flowers, and so it was good I went with the traditional valentines flower. I then got out a bottle of sparkling cider and we drank that while we watched Stardust together. It was really fun. Emily gets really into movies that we watch, and she really enjoyed it.

And that was what we did for valentine’s day. Oh yea! Emily also made me an enormous amount of fudge. It is really good. She made so much that even though I have been forging myself on it, I still have a bunch now. She really is incredible!

 

The day after valentines I also woke up early. If you remember most of what I had written had worn off of her car, and so I decided to write some more. It was a great surprise for Emily. Unfortunately that night it rained again and off it came once more :(

Wednesday night was also fun because we went to a graduate student society dinner and lecture. The lecture was a great lecture about numbers and how they are used to represent various things in our lives. Me and Emily really enjoyed it, and it was a fun way to spend the evening before getting back to Homework.

On Friday we had a fun date to Extreme Air Sports. It is this place in Provo where they have trampolines, rock climbing walls, foam pits, etc… It was a lot of fun. We went with Taylor, Ben, Serena, and Regan (Taylor’s date). It was a lot of fun. Everyone that is in Provo should go there at least once. Afterwards we went to Chili’s for dinner, and it was a lot of fun.

Saturday was just a day of homework. We did have some little adventures, but I won’t write them her. We worked really hard on Saturday so that we could enjoy fully our day on Monday (vacation), which you will hear about next week.

And that pretty much wraps up this entry. It was fun seeing what some of my friends and family did for Valentine’s day. My favorite had to be Alysha making Jason bacon roses. Coolest thing ever!

Hopefully everyone had as great a week, and I wish ya’all a great week this week!

A week…

This week has been a pretty good week. It also had its annoyances. I had to get a new phone shipped out to me since my old ones camera stopped working. And then, after I had transferred everything over, the camera on my new phone stopped working too :( Luckily, this time I found a solution and can temporarily fix it. Maybe if I didn’t drop it so much…

Emily also had fun with her phone this week. She broke the screen on the phone and had to get a new phone as well. I spent most of Monday night figuring out how to get her pictures and videos after her phone. Well, after hours of work I was finally able to coerce them off of her phone. It made me feel awesome! There is nothing like struggling with a computer to finally best it in one-on-one battle. Man, I am such a nerd =p

 

Thursday I went to the dentist to get a ton of cavities filled in. Most of them were tiny, but I decided I might as well take care of them now. The dentist though was crazy slow. I was there for about 2 hours, with an hour and half of that having my mouth propped open. My jaw hurt for three days! It was so annoying. On top of that the texturing of the Resin fillings is not the most impressive. So if anyone has suggestions for skilled dentists in Provo please let me know!

Friday was steak night with my brother. It was fun to see my old friends and to just chill and eat some steak. Saturday was also a lot of fun. Me and Emily made hash browns and German pancakes for breakfast. They turned out so yummy. I love how we usually end up cooking breakfast foods together on Saturday morning, it is so delicious!

Later in the day we to The Slab for pizza. It is a really interesting pizza place that does very customized pizzas. I really liked my pizza, but I have to admit it left me crazy good old American pizza. After that we hit up the ward and stake valentines parties. They were fun, and involved the eating of way too much chocolate covered items, but that is life, right? We also went up to the canyon to look at the stars for a while. They were so bright and beautiful. It was great fun.

 

So that was my week. Sorry that it is so much of a laundry list of things. I will try my best to form a more interesting narrative next time. Hmmm… that could actually be a lot of fun, I will have to consider on that…

北京杂技 (Beijing Acrobats)

In general not too much happened this week. It was a nice and quite week. Unfortunately it was also a crazy expensive week as I had to visit the dentist, get my car insured, get it registered, etc… You name it and I probably had to do it this week.

 

Friday and Saturday were fun though. Friday I went to watch the Beijing acrobats with Emily. They were really amazing. It is crazy what some people can do with their bodies. My favorite number was probably the lion dance. Even though I knew there were people under the costumes it was so easy to forget because of how convincing the performers made everything. It really was amazing.

Saturday was also a good day. Me and Emily went out to Carrabba’s for dinner. We got their chicken pizza. It was so good, though I must admit that I think I like the bread the most of all. I could probably eat that bread until I died. After dinner we went to my uncle’s house where we watched Mulan and made cake balls. The cake balls turned out pretty well, but not quite as good as the ones I made last time. I am still getting everything figured out with them.

 

And that simply is what happened this week. All the little moments this week were wonderful :) , but nothing really large happened that I could report. I do finally have the pictures of the cheesecake I made for Emily’s birthday, so those will have to sate everyone for this week.