Joan's Funeral

On Friday March 27th my great-aunt Joan passed away. She was 89 years old and had lived an amazing and full life. Taryn did a wonderful tribute to Joan on her blog so here I will talk about the funeral. Sadly, I was the only one of my sisters that was able to make it to the funeral, we could not find a flight that worked for Karleigh and Taryn already had a flight this week. I went down on Friday evening and then had to return on Sunday afternoon but it was great to be there even if it was only for a short time. We held the service in Joan's church building on Saturday morning, my uncle Rocky gave the eulogy and my cousins sang. It was a beautiful service and I think it was a good celebration of the life she lived. The tree outside the building was full of blossoms and looked very similar to a tree from a painting in her home. The painting was of a park Joan walked through on the way to school as a child, it was done by my aunt. As my aunt Cara said, the tree was for Joan. We also went out to the cemetery for a short service. Joan served in the military during WWII so she received a flag for her service. This flag was given to my mom which was very special. I have an aunt and uncle who are Jewish, and if I understand correctly, it is part of their beliefs that it is important to watch the casket lowered and then to throw some dirt into the grave, it helps with the healing and closure. We were all able to take part in that so that was a new experience. Although we all missed Joan it was good to come together as a family and celebrate what a wonderful woman she was. We were able to get together and talk about our memories, it brought together family who do not get to see each other often. I walked around the house with a few of my cousins and we recorded some of our memories of her. They are older than me so it was interesting to see how our memories differed. We also wen through Joan's things and were all able to take things to remember her by. I love her and will miss her but I know that she is in a better place and with those that she loves.

The view from Joan's back porch, I have so many memories from here.

The Last Birthday!

Sunday was Katie's birthday. We began the celebration on Saturday night by finally making it up to some hot springs. It was REALLY hot, like painfully so, but it was still fun! I have the worst time trying to keep my eyes open in pictures so these were the best we could get and we took like 10. In my defense it was dark and the flash was really bright.

On her actual birthday she celebrated with her family and I celebrated by staying up until 4:30 am finishing a 12 page paper. We did give her her presents though we got her Bolt because she loves Disney movies and a shirt.

Then on Monday we went to dinner at Panda and ate cake. I'm not going to lie I am pretty proud of this cake. Katie collects teddy bears so we gave her a cake bear to add to the collection, until we ate it. This is Tucker I think he is pretty cute.
That's it for birthdays this month. So we have a break and now I can look forward to graduation, and Festival of Colors this weekend.

St. Patrick's Day Festivities!

I don't know why but I love St. Patrick's Day! I take the holiday seriously, as far as wearing green goes. I, like Taryn, slept in pajamas with green on them so no one could pinch me in the morning! When I went hot tubbing at night I wore my green suit and pinched Jonny and Katie when they didn't have green on their suits. I even considered jumping out of my car to pinch a guy who wasn't wearing green but I thought that would be a bit much. We had a group dinner, Karleigh, Ashley, Katie, Jonny and I. I made corned beef, cabbage and potatoes for dinner and it was delicious nice and salty. The pictures do not do it justice, but pictures of food rarely do.

I was surprised most of the group knew that St. Patrick's Day was in celebration on St. Patrick ridding Ireland of snakes. Here are some pictures of us in our St. Patty's attire after eating.

Katie, Karleigh and me. Yes, Karleigh does have a sunburn.

Jonny and I, he isn't quite as decked out in green but his hat has green!

So that is pretty much it. Hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's Day!

The Tap Project PR

I am working in the Bradley Public Relations Lab at BYU this semester. It works like a real PR agency clients come to us and we fulfill their PR needs. I was put on the account for the UNICEF Tap Project. Last week was pretty much spent pitching the story to the media which, I am not going to lie, is not one of my favorite things, but for this cause it was kind of exciting. I think that it helped that it was for such a good cause and something that really matters. I just wanted to talk about it really quick because I think it is pretty amazing! The Tap Project was created by and advertising agency as a nonprofit advertising campaign for UNICEF, I believe that was in 2005. It has since grown into a nationwide campaign, over the past few years major cities across the U.S. have been participating which ad agencies in each state coming up with their own twist on it. The idea is that during World Water Week, the week of March 22, people can go into participating restaurants and pay $1 for the tap water they normally receive for free and all the proceeds go to cleaning up water in third-world countries. Even more amazing, each dollar provides 40 days of clean drinking water. So yeah I think that is a worthy cause and I am happy to be supporting it. Anyway, it has come to Utah for the first time this yeah and they pick BYU's Ad Lab as the agency to handle the account, so we have been helping with the PR aspect. I have really been enjoying it. It is my first time really getting to do real PR and I love it. I was able to get the local ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX stations to agree to cover the story along with several newspapers and radio stations. It is really exciting to be working in my field and even more exciting that I love doing it. So there is my little bit about Tap and PR. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I tired to put up our logo but it didn't work. You can see more at http://utahtap.org or at http://tapproject.org.

Happy Birthday to you and you and you (and almost you)

March is the month for birthdays! We've had 3 birthday parties this month and it's only the 13th! It started with Kaleigh's 19th birthday on the 1st. We went to Macaroni Grille the night before and saw Marley and Me. Then on her actual birthday she came over for dinner and I made her cashew chicken and a cake. She opened her presents and we all ate cake and ice cream it was fun. Hopefully her first birthday away from home was good.

Karleigh and her Funfetti cake with rainbow chip icing. I dyed the frosting different colors so it was a little more exciting.

My 22nd birthday was one week later on the 8th. We went to P.F. Chang's the night before, as always it was delicious, I love the lettuce wraps! Then on my birthday Jonny and Karleigh made me cheese stuffed shells and Hailey and Katie joined us for dinner. I opened presents and we ate the yummy cake Katie made for me. On Monday my roommates and Jonny took me to Pita Pit for dinner.

Then. four days later on the 12th it was time to celebrate Jonny's 23rd birthday! We went out to dinner with my roommate and Karleigh to Cafe Rio and came back and he opened presents and we ate cake. Ok so I have to brag a little bit here. The cake wasn't quite as inventive and "cool" as last year, I mean what could beat a G.I. Joe cake for your 22nd birthday, but this cake was pretty good none the less. It was a more mature cake and it took more culinary skill, so of course I went to Taryn for advice. It was white cake with chocolate frosting and a layer of fresh strawberries and whipped cream in the middle and strawberries on the top. It was good and I was proud.

I'll put actual pictures, more than just cake, on Facebook. And you'd think the festivities were over now right? Nope, Katie turns 21 on the 22nd so we have a week and a half to take a break then it is back to celebrating, it's a hard life. For those who haven't seen it here is Jonny's cake from last year, I obviously had help from Taryn, but I'm proud of it.

Taking the Plunge

As promised a post about the Polar Bear Swim. It has been over a week now since I did the swim but I have been waiting for the pictures. Every year Raintree, where I live, has a Polar Bear swim and for the past 2 years I have come up with reasons not to do it, but I figured this was my last year here, and it had been slightly warmer for the two days before, so I decided to go ahead. The idea of the swim is you dive into an unheated pool, in the middle of February, in Utah and swim there and back, if you make it you get a free T-shirt (only with college students would that work). So my roommate Katie and I headed down at 7 so we could get small shirts (we dove in at like 7:15 and they had already run out so we settled for mediums) our roommates Hailey and Karlie were supposed to do it with us but they came outside then ran away. So here is a picture of us before we went outside into the cold and rain.

We got outside to find tons of people waiting to dive in so we went and signed our lives away, or signed a form saying if we died it wasn't Raintree's fault. There on the table is the coveted T-shirt!

We then went over with our forms and had to hand them to someone once he had five those people lined up and on the count of three dove on in! I'm on the end in this picture, not really paying attention, I think I was talking to someone, well whatever I was doing I missed the count but got in within a second of everyone else. Oh and I was wearing the rash guard so I could dive in and not worry about my suit coming down, not to keep me warm.

I originally thought I would swim with my head in the water because you swim faster than if you doggy paddle, I was totally wrong once I dove in and my head was under I knew that wasn't going to happen. In this picture again look to the far side of the pool but that is me on the return trip (Katie is nest to me and a little behind me).

It was a strange feeling, I could feel my muscle control slowly leaving me and it got harder and harder to move my arms and legs. Getting out of the pool was a little difficult my arms did not want to work to pull me out, but as soon as I was out I was pretty warm or at least numb enough that I didn't feel cold anymore. So finally our victorious picture, I look weird but that's ok. So we went over got a shirts and jumped into the hot tub. So that was the Polar Swim cold but worth it.

Marley and Me

Ok, I have to do a quick post about this book/movie. I read the book over the summer, I think it was this summer and I liked it a lot.

There were some parts that were a little slow but overall I really enjoyed it. Now I am not normally a crier in books and movies, I'll tear up slightly and feel like crying but I never do, A Walk to Remember made me cry for the first time last year and I only teared up in P.S. I Love You. But for some reason this book really got to me. At the end I was bawling and had tears pouring down my face and I was crying out loud. I don't know what it is but something about animals always gets me. When they announced that the movie was coming out and Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston were playing the leads I was a little worried. I love both of them but they belong in comedies and I didn't know that I would like them in the movie. Well I was wrong, I think that this is one of my favorite roles of Jennifer Aniston, and I LOVE Friends so that is saying something. I thought she did amazing she got all the emotions rights and just played it well, as did Owen Wilson. I saw it on Friday night with Jonny and I have NEVER cried like that in a movie, it took everything I had not to cry out loud I had tears down my face for probably a good half hour. It was amazing. Jonny cried a bit as did the guy next to me and the girl next to him and really most of the people in the theater. Saturday we went to dinner for Karleigh's b-day since it is on a Sunday and then Jonny and I wanted to take her to a movie, we were going to see Valkyrie we went 2 hours early to get tickets and it was sold out so we went to see Marley and Me again because Kars wanted to see it and I really didn't mind seeing it again, it was good. You'd think I would be ok the second time, apparently not, I didn't cry as long and didn't feel the urge to cry out loud but I still cried more than in any other movie. Katie (my roommate) came too and was crying along with me. Well the point is it is a really good movie and book, but if you cry a lot in movies then you might want to watch this one from the comfort of your own home because you will likely be bawling by the end. Also, here are a few reasons I think I'm so touched by animals, my babies! Sorry this was a bit longer than I was planning!

Also, a post to come sometime soon, the Polar Swim, as soon as I get the pictures from my roommate, but here is a teaser diving into an unheated pool in Utah in February (I'll get it up soon so you can see the pictures Taryn!)