Saturday, February 28, 2009

Housing

Well, it's official! We don't have to live in cardboard boxes next year like we were planning to! :)

We got up at 7 and ran over to The Regency, where they were having a lottery picking of names to fill up the open apartments there. We'd been TOLD that since there were five of us, there was a higher chance of us getting one, because that was five names to pick from. But we were horribly disappointed when they paper-clipped all of our names together, giving us an equal chance of getting picked as everyone else. There were a TON of people there too, and it was freezing as we sat there for about two hours. We heard someone ask at one point how many apartments were left open, and the guy drawing names told her there were only two left. We kind of panicked, but at the same time we were still pretty calm because we knew that there were openings at The Elms. We were all really tired, so we started falling asleep on each other, and with each name before, we'd all said "This one will be us." But by this point I just didn't say anything and didn't even open my eyes or lift my head from Somers' shoulder when the guy said he was drawing the next name. And then he shouted, "McKenzie Stevens!" And it took me a moment, and then I opened my eyes and was like, "Oh my gosh, that's US!" So we got the second to last apartment. Hooray! And we ended up getting the apartment that Somers and I had looked around before, so we know EXACTLY what the inside looks like. We're right next to the manager, so I'm not sure whether we'll like that or not... We don't really have to worry about disturbing other tenants since there's none right around us, but at the same time, we don't know how the manager is going to be.

It was so funny, though, while we were all waiting for the drawing to begin, and even while it was going on. I was looking around at all these girls, wanting the spots that we wanted, and it was just this huge competition. I saw some girls just glaring at everyone, looking at everyone as potential enemies. And with each name that got called, the less people liked each other, because it meant that the other person might get the next spot and not you. And whenever a name was called, people would politely clap lightly, but it would die out quickly, and you could hear some girls grumbling under their breaths. The girls that were chosen would scream and jump up and down, glad they got a spot, while the rest of the girls looked on angrily, not happy at all for them because they'd taken a spot that could have been their's. It was just so funny. And I was thinking about how these girls all viewed each other as potential threats at the moment, but the girls that got chosen (that had been doing the same thing previously) would now be living with the other girls who had looked at them the same way, and no one would even think about how they used to be "enemies." Everyone would be all "buddy-buddy" and befriend each other and act all cheerful come next semester, and people would become good friends--but originally, they had all looked at each other as threats and had wished that the others wouldn't get chosen. I just thought it was pretty funny, seeing some of the glares girls were giving each other. And it wasn't even up to the girls whether they got an apartment or not--it was all up to chance. I just found it extremely amusing. :)

When I came home, I ate quickly, took some medicine (I'm sick again) and went to bed. And I've been asleep for six hours now, and just woke up. Holy cow. I better be able to sleep tonight. I imagine I will, because I could go to bed right now and sleep another few hours if I wanted to. :)

--Cate

Friday, February 27, 2009

Pictures!

Ok, so I promised to put up pictures later, and right now is later, so here they are. :)

Alan at our halfsie party for Mack's half birthday. :)

McKenzie was heating up the hot fudge for the ice cream sundaes and accidentally left it in too long... and it exploded. :)


The delicious cupcakes that Mal made for Mack. They each have 1/2 on them :)
Mack and her cupcakes :) She was really excited. She loves half birthdays.
I left my camera on the table, and people decided to take random pictures with it. I just loved Krista's face in this one. She looks utterly repulsed by Alan. :)

The Studio 600 party in Salt Lake was a Whiteout party, so this was us before we left. It was really cool with everyone dressed in all white and the blacklights on.
On Valentine's Day, Mack and Dustin came in the morning while we were still asleep and decorated the whole apartment for us. They left us a breakfast of crepes with a delicious pudding filling and nutella. Mack left each of us a little note and a flower, and Dustin left a little bear with a note outside each of our doors.
This was our hallway when I woke up. The little bears there were for Somers and I, left outside our doors with letters from Dustin.

And that's all the pictures I have for now. Today Somers and I went to look at other housing, and we found two WONDERFUL places, and we're pretty much guaranteed an apartment at at least one of them. So we no longer have to camp out overnight! Hooray! They're much roomier, have more storage, look nicer, and are just better all around. So we'll see which one we get tomorrow morning :)

--Cate

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Hello!
So this past weekend was a lot of fun. On Friday night, Alan, Somers, and I went to Salt Lake City and went to Studio 600, an 18+ club. It was a LOT of fun, and we had a great time dancing the night away. Don't worry though, Mom--it's an alcohol-free club. :)

On Saturday morning we were absolutely exhausted, but we had to get up early to go apartment hunting. We set off to look at Monticello, which didn't look too bad, but apparently all of the apartments are taken now by previous residents. We also went to look at Campus Plaza, which is my favorite so far, but all of the contracts had already been sold. So... that was a no go. So we had a little panic moment, because those were the only two places we'd looked at and we hadn't really considered that contracts had already gone on sale. So we started freaking, thinking we weren't going to have a place to live next year, but no worries--we did a LOT of research and found a bunch more places to check out. We went to look at a place called Belmont this past Wednesday, and it looks okay... I'm not LOVING it, but it does look pretty good, and at this point I really can't be picky. Besides--unless I want to pay like, 300 dollars or more a month, all of them are going to look semi-run down. Belmont got TWO refrigerators though, which is AWESOME... we have a really hard time with just one. :) Somers and I are going to check out some other places tomorrow to see if we like them better than Belmont.

And... then Saturday night Alan, Alan, Julie, and I went to a BYU Hockey game. Since we bought tickets to the game, we were allowed to skate for free an hour before the game. But, of course, I was dumb and forgot to bring SOCKS, so all I had were my flats socks, which are like... nylons, basically. It really didn't do much for ice skating. So now I have some lovely bruises on my ankles and a cut above my ankle where the ice skate dug into my skin. But it was still fun. Alan (Miller) body checked me into a wall to demonstrate how it was done in hockey... jerk... :P He also tried to teach me how to skate backwards... that failed miserably. :)

We lost the hockey game badly... I think it was like, 8 to 0. Not so great, but oh well. We had fun. :) Afterwards the four of us crammed into the backseat of Alan Rosenhan's car and watched Zoolander on Alan's brand new Aluminum Macbook. We WERE going to go to some hot springs, and bundle up for the 2.5 mile hike into them cause it was cold that night, but it was getting late and Julie didn't want to have to hike into the hot springs. So we settled on the movie instead.

And... this week has gone by really slowly. I got my Ecclesiastical Endorsement for next year this week, and... oh, I also got a reccomend for the Draper Temple Dedication.

And... tomorrow night, if Somers and I don't find someplace better, we're going to steal one of the Alans' cars and camp out in front of Belmont so that we can be the first ones to buy a contract because according to the manager there that's the best idea, since we're trying to get five people into ONE apartment. So. We're planning on having a little campout/party that night in front of Belmont :)

I have a bunch of pictures, but it's getting late, so I'll post them later.

--Cate

Friday, February 13, 2009

Three Day Weekend

Hello!
I realized I haven't updated in a while, or put up pictures, so I figured I would now before too much else happens :)

I guess I'll start with two weekends ago. McKenzie took us to Dustin's church ball game in Payson.
Afterwards we went back to Dustin's house to hang out. However, some of the guys from his church ball team came over as well, and apparently one of them, Will, had just had a game room added to his house and he wanted to show it off. So we all piled in cars and went to his house, which seemed a bit strange at first since we didn't really know him, but he was Dustin's friend and he didn't mind us coming along. So we went over to his place and hung out there that night. It was a lot of fun--they'd made their basement into a big game room with foosball, ping pong, pool, basketball, and a Wii.
There was one of those little horse things in the basement too, and Krista and Somers had fun bouncing on it :)
Mal stole one of the guys' hat. I'm pretty sure it was Eric's, Will's cousin, but I'm not entirely sure. :)
McKenzie looks like she's up to no good. :)
One side of the basement. Somers was trying to balance on a Wii snowboarding game. McKenzie was giving me death stares. :)

On Saturday we went to the Draper Temple Open House, which was really cool. It was so pretty, but it was FREEZING.
Macey's coat got caught in the car door. We were in such a rush to get to the church building where a bus would shuttle us to the Temple that Macey slammed the door too quickly behind her and shut her coat in it. :)Our little group in the visitor's center (where they had delicious white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies).After the open house, we went to the Macaroni Grill in Orem for a nice dinner all dressed up. We thought it was hilarious that there were four girls and one guy, which is usually what tends to happen when Alan hangs out with us. :) We had a waitress take a picture with all of us in it, but I don't know who has that photo, so I only have this one that I took.

On Monday, the show Chuck was airing in 3-D, and McKenzie didn't have a pair of 3-D glasses. So she decided to look up online how to make her own and created her own set of glasses from her Pop Tart box. She kept getting the position of the eyes wrong, though, and so I told her to put the box over her face and then mark where her eyes were. She looked so ridiculous I just had to take a picture :)

These are some photos from earlier that I just never posted for some reason... They're from our last three day weekend, when we went ice skating and stayed the night at McKenzie's.

This photo is from... I think either the first or second week back at school. There was a decades party, and the only decade I had clothes for besides the present was the 40s... So I dolled myself up with a 40s hairdo and makeup :)

Us at the skating rink. It was absolutely PACKED, which was kind of a bummer because you couldn't skate very fast and people would fall in front of you and cut you off. Apparently the rink is ALWAYS full.

Dustin and McKenzie are like our temporary parents while we're away at school. McKenzie's the oldest in our apartment, which automatically made her the "mom", and since she's dating Dustin, he became our "dad" by default. They like to take care of us :) Like the weekend when we all got really bad colds, which happened to be the weekend we went ice skating. They took us to McKenzie's house so we could be comfortable in a home and made us soup. :)I don't know why, but for some reason we all decided to put our hair on top of our heads for the night while at McKenzie's. So we basically looked like dorks playing canasta and watching Disney movies :)

Well, this week was pretty slow. It seemed to drag on for everyone, and we're all SO glad that it's finally the weekend. Yesterday was pretty fun though. I think since everyone realized that it was Thursday, which meant the next day was Friday, we were already in weekend mode. :) Alan came over (actually, he came over every day this week because he was so bored) and we all just goofed off for a while, listening to music and dancing around the kitchen. Eric came over a little while later and we turned on Step Up 2 because we wanted to watch the dancing. That movie is horrible, though, because the plot stinks, as does EVERY dancing movie, so we ended up fastforwading through the actual movie parts and just watched the dancing. :) Then we danced around the kitchen some more, and then turned on 27 Dresses (Eric left at this point, but Alan stayed. He'd already seen the first half on Tuesday when he came over and we watched it, and so he ended up seeing the first half AGAIN because each time we watched it, curfew hit before the movie was over).

On Tuesday Alan and I made a trip to Costco so I could buy a bunch of food for our Enrichment activity next Wednesday. But Costco failed me... I only found four things I needed there. So now I'm making a Walmart trip with Julie tonight to get everything else :)

Last weekend was a lot of fun. Julie, Alan, Alan, Krista, and I all went to Idaho. Krista stayed at her house the whole time, so we didn't see her, but the two Alans, Julie, and I stayed at Julie's house. Her parents are really nice, and we hung out with her younger sister, Karen. We got there late Friday night, so we pretty much just talked for a bit and then went to bed. On Saturday we went to a jewlery store and Alan bought Julie a new ring, and it's absolutely gorgeous. It's a blue topaz with white gold, and she loves it to death. At first she was a little unsure because she loved the ring but it's noticeably bigger than her previous one. But they got it, and she loves it. We then went straight to Rexburg, and I got dropped off at Rayne's house over at BYU-I. I spent most of the day there, just talking with Rayne. After a while we went over to Jessica's dorm to pick her up, then we got some pizza and went back to Rayne's house and watched a movie. I was there almost all day, which was a lot of fun.

We drove back to Idaho Falls later that night and we just messed around for a while, playing their Wii and talking. Julie showed me her wedding dress, which is absolutely gorgeous. I didn't get to see her in it though, because her mom was sick and didn't really want to help Julie get into the dress. But it's absolutely beautiful. On Sunday we went to Julie's home ward, and it was so funny in Relief Society, because, of course, they had Julie introduce me. And so I stood up and this lady behind me was like, turn around dear, so I turned around so the people behind me could see me, and the lady was like, "Ooh, she's cute. Good thing Justin's home this weekend." I just laughed, cause I thought it was hilarious. And then when people were coming into the room for Sunday school, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around, and the same lady was like, "Pay attention--Justin's coming into the room now." I just thought it was the funniest thing, that his MOM was trying to set me up with him and she didn't even know me. :)

Don't worry though, Mom--I didn't even speak to him. No worries about me getting married too young. :)

After church we had a delicious pot roast dinner with carrots that had been cooked with the meat, mashed potatoes, and peach cobbler. Yummmm.... Then we packed up, picked up Krista, and then headed back to Provo.

The rest of the week was slow... there were a few nights that were fun just because Alan would come over and we'd all stop doing homework and goof off. :)

We DID watch a LOT of snl skits online this past week. And I thought this one was hilarious, so I'm going to post it. It's a spoof on Beyonce's Single Ladies Music Video featuring Justin Timberlake :) I actually found an article on it saying how Justin Timberlake had to convince Beyonce to do the skit because she apparently doesn't have a great sense of humor. Apparently he went to Beyonce's dressing room in a robe and then just dropped the robe and was wearing his outfit for the skit, just staring off into space. She thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen, so she agreed. :)


Anyways, so today once Julie gets back from her class we're going to go order me a new Social Security card and then go shopping. Tomorrow we're going to this Valentine's Day Ball or something, and hopefully that's not lame. I'm excited for next weekend though, because on Friday we're going to Salt Lake City to Studio 600, which is this huge three story club, for their Winter Whiteout party. It's all blacklight and everything, and we're way excited. Alan has been to several of the parties at Studio 600, and we WERE going to go to the Conference Party and the Neon Party, but Neon was the night we went to Dustin's basketball game, and we decided not to go to the Conference Party because they were going to Conference on Sunday and didn't want to spend gas money on two trips to Salt Lake in the same weekend. So it should be fun. A lot of people from our ward go to Studio 600, so there'll probably be a big group of us.

And... I think that's about it for now... I'll update again later :)

--Cate