the BIG update

Hey Friends,


Well, I had a new years resolution to keep a journal better... (aka update my blog more)... and this is my forth posting of the year ha. A lot has happened in my little world since January 2012. So, lets start.

If you read my last post I talked about preparing for my great alaskan adventure part 2. Well, now that it is September I can say that I successfully completed my adventure. Driving a Motor coach (a giant 55-62 person bus) for Holland America and Princess this last summer was a wonderful experience. Aside from working 60-70 hours a week, I was able to meet wonderful people from the company as well as many remarkable tourists from all over the world. I also was able to see and catch up with so many of my good friends from Alaska. I also decided to drive up to Alaska which was an adventure in and of itself. Alaska is SOOO far away and Canada is SOOO big!! and full of mostly tree's.... My contract started on May 2nd and went all the way until August 18th. I enjoyed it so much that there is a very good possibility I will be heading up again this coming summer. I have so much gratitude especially for the Heath family who let me live with them the whole time! We had so many great times!

Also I am sorry to report that my sister missionary and I decided to go different ways over the summer as well. Although it hasn't been easy, I am enthusiastically (... kind of) diving back into the dating world. That is for you Mom ha!

I am currently in my Senior year at UVU with expected graduation pending in April of 2013... then real life starts. This last week I hear back from the State Department, with whom I was in the middle of applying with, and they invited me to try back again in 11 months. I previously had surprisingly passed the first two cuts in the application process so I was not surprised when I didn't quite make this third cut. My hopes have not been shattered though ha, the average new hire for the State Department is 32 so I would have been beside myself had I made it. I have some time.

Other than that I occupy my time being involved with UVU's clubs and my Church. I am the website guy for utahimf.org and am involved with the Utah International Mountain Forum as well as the Foreign Affairs Club. Before this job, the extent of my website design capabilities involved changing the layout and colors of this blog ha. However thanks to my Uncle and Friend Rick he has helped me learn a thing or two about website design. It has been great learning from a master! Both clubs have been very rewarding to be involved with and I have been able to attend and meet many international dignitaries. Being an active participant of my LDS (Mormon) faith, I have been given a calling as a ward clerk. I really enjoy seeing how the Church operates behind the scenes and my responsibilities include counting tithing weekly, attending administrative meetings, counting people in church attendance, updating the ward directory and other ward records, monthly reports, counting more things and keeping a history of our little ward. It is something that I enjoy immensely!

Basically all of the time that I am not schooling, websiting, or churching is spent ... reading political articles and blogs. I am such a political junky and I am loving every second of this presidential election year... most of the time. Because I have not yet found "that" source that I can 100% trust 100% of the time, I have found that I have to read articles from all over the spectrum, the crazy right, the crazy left, moderates, random people who think they know something about someone, polls, and everything in between. I love it! Although I am ready for November 6th to come around so we can focus on solving issues. But hey I still love it!

Thanks so much for reading about me! Follow me on twitter and instagram @akguy2010!

Have such a wonderful day!

-J

The Great Alaska Adventure 2

I can't believe that I have not posted about this yet. As the title of this post suggests, I am going to be going on another Alaskan adventure, and this one I am going to get paid for! I am going to be driving a tour bus (motor coach) for HAP Alaska (Holland America Princess... Alaska) My contract starts at the first part of May. I am super excited to have this adventure. I am currently in my training course right now and it has been most informative. I now know a lot of random things about busses and how they run. I will be based of of Anchorage and from my understanding will mostly be taking people from the airport to their boats. 

As part of this adventure I will be driving up at the end of April. A good friend of mine, Michael Nelson will be joining me for this adventure as well and we are looking forward to becoming a lot more manly when we are up there haha! Lots of camping/hiking/kayaking and other manly things. 

I can't wait for the end of April!!! Maybe in preparation I will change my my twitter name from @akguy2010 to @akguy2012! 

The Great Vegetarian Experiment: Half Way

So being a vegetarian is way less intense than I thought it would be. In short, I am going strong and really enjoying it. I just feel better. My grandma who asks a million questions kept asking to give more details about how I was feeling better ha. Well, I have more energy, I am eating a lot better things for me, I also have been avoiding sugar and soda. 

The first week was hard, I felt like I was always hungry... then I realized this probably has nothing to do with being a vegetarian. Lets face it, when I want a snack, the chances of me eating something with meat are slim, even before I was a vegetarian. It was a mind game. Don't worry, I won it ha.

The hardest part of not eating meat has to be when I go somewhere where someone has already prepared dinner. I feel super rude/ slightly embarrassed when I pile up with lots of everything minus the meaty main dish. Then I have to explain what I am doing yada yada.

I have been surprised by the people who have said it was a great idea. People like Brian Hardman or Teddy Haslam. Needless to say, I foresee myself as a lukewarm vegetarian when this January experiment is over, meaning eating small amounts of meat when it is prepared for me. When I do fix something for myself it will most-likely be fish. But we'll see.

I do not regret this strict month-long experiment and may make it a lifestyle choice with a couple of adaptations. 

The Great Vegetarian Experiment

Happy New Year everyone! So one of my good friends @notjustwatching (Teddy) and I decided that to kick off the new year we are going to be vegetarians for the month of January. Crazy right? It is something that I have always wanted to try after working around so many heath aware folks throughout the last couple of years, plus I don't eat that much meat anyway. I am going to do weekly posts to share my thoughts along this process as well as share any funny vegetarian stories that happen to me. It will be a learning experience for all of us :)

Now, we are not being vegans, just vegetarians. If you have any great, easy vegetarian recipes will you please let me know!

Reasons Twitter has Changed my Life @akguy2010

I love twitter... alot!

Here are the top 5 +1+1 reasons I heart twitter!

1. Twitter is information based. A lot of people draw the comparison between twitter and facebook. While they do have some similarities, twitter is a whole lot more simple than facebook. No pictures, creaping on others.

2. Everything you 'tweet' has to be in 140 characters or less. Sometimes this is sort of a game if you have something long you want to say.

3. I have funny friends I follow. For example, @makinUVbetter and @cmacmitch are two of my personal favorites.

4. You can follow businesses (most businesses have an account) and get coupons and insider information.

5. You can follow people/business that you have an interest in. I follow the @StateDept, @Mittromney, @Obama2012, @archjournal, @Jasoninthehouse @ldsinstitute @TheEllenShow ect all of which give me updates as well as information that I deem necessary.

+1. You can trend funny things like #mormongirlproblems, #byuzoobie, #areyoukiddingme and find like tweets which will make you laugh.

+1 Also there are all sorts of twitter related terms like "twette", "tweeting", "trending", "tweet at" ect.



In short, twitter has changed my life and I am on it way more than facebook. If you have a twitter account you should follow me @akguy2010 and I might even follow you back.

Hope you are all having a great day and if you don't currently have a twitter account/ do not actively engage in tweeting, you should repent and try it.

Career Path DECIDED!!!

After much research and deliberation I have finally decided what I want to do with my Political Science emphasis in International Relations degree which should be in my hands in December 2012. After reading about several of different opportunities and programs, I have decided that I would like to work for the Department of State. So what does this mean? Essentially the Department of State, or the State Department, is in charge of all 265+ embassies around the world. Once you are admitted to the program, a lengthy process, you will be given 2-3 year posts in any one of the embassies. The posting are kind of run like the military, or LDS mission calls in that you don't really know where your next assignment will be. Most of these foreign places have government housing and they pay for nearly everything, aka private schooling, transportation, travel home to the US ect. Also for 95% of the posts your family is more than welcome!! It is going to be a career full of adventures, foreign cultures, missionary work, and lots of surprises along the way I am sure!!

There are 5 main career paths in the Foreign Service Officer category. The one that I am most interested in is the political advisor. Starting out, a political advisor is responsible for communicating with and being informed on local politics and which political factions will most favor the US interests in the area. This is so they are able to advise the Ambassador one way or another. One great thing too, for me at least, is that no language is required!! However, for my degree I have to take 4 semesters of a language. So going in I will hopefully be bilingual.

I also have been able to put together a rough 2 year plan for myself:

Spring Semester 2012 - Continue working on my classes. Pass all 19 credits I am registered for.

Summer 2012 - Make bank in Alaska!! Whoop Whoop!!

Fall Semester 2012 -  Keep working on my classes, hopefully graduate in December

Spring Semester 2013 - Work on my resume so I am awesome on paper too :) Internship possibility

Summer 2013 - If I didn't do an internship in the spring then do it now

Fall Semester 2013 - Start the process for acceptance into the State Department

Also a couple of my long term professional goals are first, get accepted into the State Department as a political advisor. Complete a full- adventure filled career at the State Department retiring speaking 14 different languages (hopefully ha) and have one of those cool studies with a bunch of foreign stuff I have collected. After that I would love to teach at a college or university about my experiences in the foreign service.

So I came to this conclusion last week and it is amazing how having a specific professional goal has made me want to learn all I can from my Political Science classes even though they are sometimes really boring. I know that life doesn't always go as planned, but at least I have a plan now so I can tell if it is not going according to plan ha.

Right now I am at the networking point so if you know someone who is in or has been a Foreign Service  Officer and can e-mail me their contact information that would be great! My e-mail is jordan.giles03@gmail.com. I am also open to any other career advice you may have!

Thank you for reading and I hope that you have a great day!!

Jordan

Your Future is Perfect

I had a professor today in one of my political science classes make an interesting statement. He said, "Your future is perfect, meaning that you have not made any mistakes tomorrow." His comment caught me off guard because usually most of my political science classes are all fire and brimstone regarding past governmental decisions and not necessarily positive about current or future prospective ones. He then went on to tie his comment back to our discussion by explaining that as we learn from past mistakes we can avoid future ones (or something like that). His little tangent has made me think. The future has the potential to be perfect. In the future we can always make the right choice whereas in the past we haven't necessarily done so. I had never really thought that in the future I could always make the right choice. I feel that we as people tend to look at the past with regret and look towards the future with apprehension. Why are we not more optimistic? We have more opportunities for things such as education, employment, hobbies than ever before. We can have the perfect future starting tomorrow. What a hopeful thought in a time of hopeless thoughts regarding the future of most things.

My future is perfect. Your future is perfect.

The Race

Wow 9 months have gone by since my last post, not that I have actually ever been very good at posting, but still 9 months?

I have a great life, stressful, busy, but happy and good. My life has changed a lot in the past 9 months. I changed my major to Political Science (loving it by the way), I begun my first real relationship (and unfortunately put it on hold as she is serving the Lord), I got to spend 10 days in Alaska and visited 2 of my area/ went on a cruise, I purchased a soccer dad car, I moved to Orem, I bought an iphone, I went to my first mission reunion, started twitter (PS you should follow akguy2010) and on and on. Life is so good, but sometimes I have to remind myself of that.

Recently I quit my grown-up job and went back to my high school job in the fast food industry. There were a lot of contributing factors to that decision, but changing my employment has been a great thing because it has significantly lowered my stress level allowing me to move on. It has given me time to start planning my life and set some goals. I feel like since I return from my mission I have been in some sort of race, buy a car, go to school, get my degree as fast a possible, get married and raise a righteous family, get a real job, get promotions, serve in the church. Guess what, the race doesn't matter. I feel like I just came to that conclusion, dumb I know. There is no reason that you cannot enjoy life as it is right this very second. Yes things are going to be stressful, but when it comes down to it personal peace of mind and happiness are worth everything.

I am happy, life is good, things are going to work out.

Life Update

Once upon a time it was the first day of school and I thought that I knew all of my classes, and more importantly, the times. So I went to my evening Biology Lab at 5:00pm only to realize that its starts at 7:00pm. Bummer! Thus I am going to take this opportunity to update the cyber world of what I have been up too.

Things are going pretty good right now. In December I finished my first semester of school since I have been home. I officially became a Biology major with hopes of becoming a Microbiology major and transferring to BYU this coming fall as UVU doesn't offer a Microbiology major. School was good, chose to do night school and work at doTERRA during the day. Needless to say, I have was pretty busy! This semester I expect to be just about the same as the last one. I am taking Philosophy, Racquetball, another Biology, Biology Lab, Chemistry, and last but not least Institute. I am very excited to be in school again. I enjoyed the break but I seem to be happier when I am busy and stressed out :)

I am still living at my grandma's and it's working out pretty well. I am planning on moving out this summer with a bunch of friends. About a month ago I made a pretty exciting purchase, I bought a saltwater fish tank! I love it so much!! I literally could sit and just watch it all day/night. Over the last couple of weeks I have purchased my first specimens, I now have 10 hermit crabs, 10 snails, 1 starfish, 1 peppermint shrimp, and I yellow wrasse (my only actual fish). It has been very fun to watch my little ecosystem become more stable. I will be sure to keep you all up to date as well as post pictures soon! 

Work is going good. I recently moved over to a different suite in our building. I now work with people with real jobs ha. It also feels like I work in a library because it is so blasted quiet! I do however enjoy that I now have many less distractions and can do my work in peace. For those of you who don't know, I manage all of doTERRA's Professional Accounts, which are mostly spa's and salons who purchase product in bulk. I really enjoy it.

And last but not least, 2 weeks ago my parents surprised all of us and took us on a cruise/ Disneyland for  Christmas. It was wonderful! We had so much fun! I didn't think I was in such a need for a vacation, but I was. While on the cruise, when I wasn't eating or napping, I was able to read and finish the Hunger Games series. They were fantastic and I would suggest them for anyone who is looking for a good new series. Disneyland was fun as well, but crazy busy. Needless to say I have a fantastic family!

So, in a nut shell, things are going good. 

Work Crisis: Someone stole my chair!

I enjoy my job. I work at a little desk in the corner where I don't have to talk to many co-workers. I mean I would like to talk to people but often my workload does not allow me to. My job stresses me out sometimes. I work with large Hotel/Spa chains who often ask me very hard questions that I have no idea how to answer. Besides my plant, I have only one comfort at work, and that is my chair.

Until recently there has been a chair shortage at my workplace, how that happens I don't know. I witnessed weeks of chair theft, luckily I work most of the day everyday so I was rarely a victim. In an effort to rectify the situation my work purchased about 12 new chairs. I was lucky enough to secure one of them for myself. That was about 2 weeks ago. I thought that with the surplus of chairs the pirating would discontinue. I was right, at least until last Monday when I walked into the office and my brand new chair was gone. It didn't take me long to discover who did it. It was one of the new girls. Now I had a moral dilemma, should I ask her to give my chair back? Should I take it back when she was not looking? Should I just let her have it? All bad options, I put that chair together, I was part of it and it was part of me. I remember the time I put it together backwards so I could only lean forward and instead of backwards! We bonded!

So a week went by... Every day I would mention to my neighbors around me that I missed my chair. I just couldn't bring myself to steal my chair back! Or so I thought. Finally after a failed attempt on Tuesday to take back what was mine, today I finally struck back, I did the lowest of the low, I stole it while she was in a meeting... Actually technically I didn't steal it back, I got cold feet, so my good friend Taylor stole it back for me.

So today I had a pleasant day in my good ol' chair. I still feel mildly guilty about the whole situation, but she should not have stolen my chair :)

Missionary Moment

I had a pretty cool missionary moment this week at work of all places. I have been praying for missionary opportunities and this was a pretty good answer to my prayers.

I work at a company called doTERRA which is a fantastic place to work. I am pretty sure that 98-100% of the employees are active LDS so there are not many places for missionary work... or so I thought. For my job I manage all of doTERRA's Professional Accounts meaning mainly our spa accounts. I work with people all over the the world and its pretty cool. I have a couple of accounts in Alaska so when I talk with reps for those accounts I love to talk Alaska. There is this lady that I have been working with named Monica and she has a couple of account that I manage so we talk all the time and have a great working relationship. She knew I was LDS because when I initially met her I told her that I loved Alaska and had just spend 2 years up there for the LDS Church.This last week she called me and asked/told me something else. She told me that she had been trying to get ahold of the LDS church but she couldn't get a hold of anyone from the church listing. That made sense because usually there is not anyone at the church to answer the hall phone during the day. So she asked if I could get her in touch with the church. I of course have tons of contacts with the church and asked if she would feel comfortable if she got a call from the missionaries. She said yes and that she actually had time right now and had a slot available later that afternoon. She then asked me a doctrinal question, she had observed how LDS people are fairly aware of how they appear meaning they are modest. She then told me that she had some tattoo's and was wondering if that could cause any problems down the road. I of course told her that the church suggests you don't have tattoo's but if you have them there is not a lot you can do. Basically I told her not to get anymore and that if she chose to join the church she would still be temple worthy as long as she met all the other criteria. It was great! I then called the mission office and gave them an official referral. It was great to talk to them again! After I gave them the Monica's cell I e-mailed her and let her know that I contacted the mission office. The next morning when I came to work I  had an e-mail from Monica saying that she had met with two sister missionaries and had a wonderful time!

This was a great experience for me because it helped me remember that while my job at doTERRA is very important, the church and the gospel are what are really important.

I will keep you posted with Monica!

Missoula, the Police and the La Quinta

Let me tell you of an adventure that I had this last weekend. I had the opportunity... no wait... the privilege of going to Missoula with 3 of my good friends. We went up to Missoula Montana Sunday, and came back on Monday. Needless to say it was a lot of driving. We had a lot of fun though!

To make a long story short, we went to Missoula to pick up a car from the police so they didn't auction it on November 13th. I left my house around 9:30am, went and picked everyone up, and we were on our way. The car ride was fun, we listened to a lot of music sang, played this game called "King of Pain"... well half of us played :). We played several rounds of those alphabet games where you have to think of something starting with an A then a B etc. We then stopped and ate lunch in Pocatello, ID at Olivers Restaurant. We chose a little hometown restaurant and we sure made a good choice. Our waitress was Rayleen (Ray-ray for short) and we had some good quotes from her. "I get off in 30mins, then I am off like a pair of dirty shorts," and, "I don't know how they make it, it comes to us frozen," and finally my favorite, "I'm an ankle biting bit**!" then from behind another waitress said,"Amen!" It was so funny! After we ate we loaded back up and finished the trip to Missoula. We got to Missoula about 8:30pm and stayed at the La Quinta. There were 4 of us and 2 queens, sounds okay right? Here's the catch, there were 2 boys and 2 girls ha! The girls had no problem sharing, but we boys do not share beds for anything. We the played cards and watched dirty jobs the remainder of the night, oh and we went swimming. Then we went to bed.

Ray-ray and us at Oliver's Restaurant

In the morning we woke up at ..7:00am to an ipod while the person was still asleep... Erin...:). Then it took her like 5 mins to turn it off because she couldn't find it. I would just like to mention that previously we agreed that I would set my alarm for 8:30am and that is when we would arise. After we ate we dropped the girls off at the mall and we went to get the car. I quickly found out that in downtown Missoula there is not a lot of parking available for trucks pulling trailers. So my partner in crime, Colton, dropped me off at the court house and drove around till I was done. Consequently the Court House was not the correct place, so I went to the Police Station that was behind the Court House. The GPS only told me that I had reached my destination at the Court House.... I was close :). Fortunately there were no hang-ups with getting the paperwork done so I could claim the car. $125.00 and a colored paper later we were off to the impound yard.

Upon arriving at the impound yard I had my first encounter with the car. It was pretty beat up. There was some sort of dent/scratch on every side and surprise it didn't start when I turned the ignition. We did jump it though and it started right up. So I drove it to the trailer and we loaded it. Upon driving it there I discovered that the brakes didn't work. Luckily the E-Brake still worked otherwise I would have hit a fence :). Also when I drove the car up onto the trailer the whole trailer lifted up! Apparently the trailer didn't get hooked up tightly! We drove the whole was up to Missoula from Utah with a trailer that wasn't tightened!! We then loaded it up and away we went, after of course with picked up the girls.

The ride back was uneventful, it snowed the whole way so that was fun. I was so proud of my truck. It did so good pulling a trailer with a car on it!

And that was the Missoula report. I know, my life is exciting!

Reviving the Blog

Well apparently having a blog is the thing to do.

Here is a little catch-up for the last 2 years. I spent my last two years in the great mystical land of Alaska. I was there serving a christian mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can honestly say that it was the best 2 years of my life. I served in 5 great places and was able to see most of Alaska. I served in Fairbanks, North Pole, Palmer, Anchorage, and Cordova.

I returned from my mission in August of 2010. Since then I have been going to school at UVU and working at doTERRA.

I am loving school. School seems a lot easier now that I am home from my mission. I went to a year of school at SUU down in Cedar and needless to say, I was not as valiant as I maybe should have. Technically I am undecided major-wise but I am leaning towards a Microbiology major with an emphasis in medical research. I guess we will see how far I get with that.

I work at doTERRA which is an essential oils company. It is a fun place to work although like every work place it has its faults. I work in customer service but my main responsibility is I manage all of doTERRA Professional Accounts. These are huge accounts that order thousands of dollars worth of product at a time. Most of my accounts are huge Spa's and Resorts in the US, I do have a couple international accounts though. I really enjoy my job although I would like to move into something not exclusively customer service oriented.

Work and school keep me busy so I really don't have much of a social life. In fact yesterday was the first time I had some friends over to 'hang out' at my place! I know big deal!

I purchase my 2005 F150 not long after I got home, its awesome! It was kind of an impulsive thing but I don't regret it!

That is it for the brief update. I am sure you will hear more about my Alaskan Adventures as we go!

Mexico, Alaska, Laptop, and School Ending.

This is a good news post. Several things have happened since my last post the most important being that I got my mission call to ANCHORAGE ALASKA whoop whoop! I cannot tell you how excited that I am to be headed there in July!

Several other things have happened, the first of which I went to Mexico last week and it was so much fun! It was great to spend time with my family because I don't get to see them very often. My Mexico trip started off with a tragedy, on our way out somehow my backpack got carried out to the car but not actually placed inside and my dad accidentally ran over it with the car. So my laptop was out of commission. Luckily the only part that broke was the screen, everything else was fine. But the good news out of this was that I sent it away last week and I got it back today, far earlier than the original estimate from dell!

The third thing is that school is ending, tomorrow is the last day of class and then finals start. I am not too worried for finals in any of my classes except for Planetary Science because that class has proven to be my most difficult worthless class that I have.

I am excited to be moving home, Cedar has been a great experience and I wouldn't do anything else differently! I am moving home on May 3rd so like a week and a half. Its so weird that I am finished with my first year of college!

Hope everything is well!

Surgery

So I have a bit of news, I have to have a little surgery, not really excited for it but whatev.

I have been doing my mission papers and part of it was getting a physical. Well I went in and went through all the motions at my physical and then my doctor saw in my file that when I was a baby my parents took me in because I had a little hole thing above my tailbone. It turned out to be a pilonital cyst... so my doctor started to ask me if I had any pain or anything around my tailbone area. I told him that I was having lots of pain about once a month, so he took a look and told me that it would be good to have that operated on. This was such a relief because I had always thought that it was my tailbone that had issues and was causing the pain, but to find out there was a legit reason for my pain was nice.

So this morning I met with my surgeon and we decided that I was going to get it done on May 7. It is going to be a great way to start off my summer haha! This is not supposed to be a huge ordeal, but because of the location the there is a pretty long recovery time. I will not be able to do anything for up to 7 days, and then I will have to take it easy for 3 weeks.

It is spring break right now so I am back in Pleasant Grove, and boy has it been nice to just relax and not have to worry about school or church responsibilities! I have been working at taco for a little extra cash so that has been good.

For those of you who know my tall blond friend Nate, he received his mission call this last week and is going to Sweden. So thats pretty cool!

Hope everything is well!

School...

School has been so much harder this semester than last semester. Last semester I had all relatively easy classes. This is not the case this semester. I am taking 17 credits of hard classes! Literally all of my time is spent either doing homework and studying, or church responsibilities. I am pretty much burned out haha! It is now go time in nearly all of my classes. Microbiology and Planetary Science are kicking my butt but I am still doing okay. My goal is not to fail any of my classes haha! I don't think that I am close to failing in any of them as long as I don't do any worse that I have been doing.

Overall I have really enjoyed school down here and living on my own. The only thing that I surprisingly have missed is working. I miss earning money haha! I have not been struggling because of my very generous Grandma Mary, but I have had to be more careful than if I was working. It has made me feel very grown up to have to live on a budget!

In short, I am very excited for spring break next weekend and what a glorious break from school it will be!

Hope everything is well!

Airsoft, glasses and Maks Birthday

Well I have not posted in a little bit. Life here is crazy, but good. I am still loving it! I am still serving as first councilor in my Elders Quorum presidency, and so that is keeping me very busy. I have finally got to the point with my calling that I feel comfortable with it and am starting to enjoy it. School is so hard and literally requires all of my time, but I am getting through it.

Alex one of my new roommates brought some airsoft guns and in short, we all ended up buying some to defend ourselves. Our apt and bodies have suffered a little haha!

Here is a picture of our blinds

Another new thing that I got was glasses. I got them last Friday, on Saturday Kiley Price was baptized and I was so surprised how many people had to take double takes to recognize me! Kiley's baptism was such a great experience! She is so cute! It was funny, Robyn told me that when Kiley went in for her Bishops interview the bishop asked her why she wanted to get baptized and she said " Because I want to swim in that pool!" I also got the opportunity to stand in the circle to help confirm her and that was really special to me.

Here is a picture of me with my glasses

Makena's birthday was on Sunday but we celebrated it Saturday night. We went to Kiley's baptism in the morning and then one of Makena's co-workers got sick so she had to go into work till 5. It was at this time that I went to go pick up her birthday present. I had been looking at necklaces on the Nordstrom website and found one that I wanted to get her, however just as I was leaving to go to Nordstrom my dad was like you should call before you go just to make sure it's there. So I called and of course it wasn't there so I called all of the Nordstrom's in Utah and none of them had it so I was like "oh no!" So the following 3 hours were spent at the University Mall looking at jewelry. But I finally found a different one that I really liked at Nordstrom. Then at 5:30 we went to dinner with her family at Macaroni Grill. She then wanted to watch a movie so we went and rented Red Eye, and I learned that a Red Eye is not a physical red eye haha! That was pretty much my weekend!

Hope everything is well!

Institute Dance

Well this weekend Makena came down to spend the weekend here in Cedar. So last night we went out on the town haha, not really, we just went to dinner a formal institute dance and then we went and saw Jumper. We had a lot of fun! We went with two other couples that were way funny! All but one of them were from Vernal, so lets just say they were really funny! We went with my roommate Alex, his girlfriend, and then his very red-neck friend James. James went with one of my other really good friends Kim. I really wish I had some red-neck friends because they are so funny!

here are a couple picture of last night

Apparently we only know one pose so we just had the camera zoom
in so it looks different

Hope everything is well!

Mike Moon

Tonight I got invited to Mike Moons house for dinner. Mike Moon is a very funny guy, last week I randomly ran into him and he was like, "Would you like to come to dinner on Wed?" I could not turn down a free dinner so I accepted. When we got there dinner was not quite ready so he said that we could play wii. He was pretty good at it haha! He surprised me by how cocky he was. He creamed Nate and I at the wii! The meal was really good, we had an Italian dish. It was a fun night!

As for an update for the rest of school. I am so incredibly busy that I have not had much time to just hang out. I am doing fairly well in my classes. They are very tough this semester. I have a little work to do in Microbiology but I am passing haha. I am doing excellent in English, Math, Planetary Science, and History. History is definitely my strong point this semester followed closely by Math surprisingly.

As for a relationship update, I am still dating Makena.... That is all on that update haha!

I hope everything is well with everyone!

Second Semester

So pretty much it had been so long since I last posted that I forgot my password.... but then by some stroke of luck I remembered it!

Well things have been pretty hecktic as of recent. I was asked to plan and be in charge of my wards opening social which was last monday. It went really well. I was pretty stressed because I didn't get very much help from anyone so it was pretty much a one man show haha! I planned this party as a Bunco Regift party. I was told to plan on 150 people which was apparently not reasonable so I am not sure who told me that number but it was incorrect. We had 56 people there so it was much more manageable. I am glad that it is over! It was fun though and I heard good things back.

I think one of the biggest reasons I was so stressed is because last thursday I was asked to speak in church. I was like are you kidding me? I am planning the freakin ward social tomorrow and you want me to speak?! So I spoke. I was asked to speak on Pres Monsons talk on finding peace for 7 mins so I didn't think that it would be too bad right? Well there were two other speakers and I was the concluding speaker. Of course the others ended early so I ended up speaking for like 15 mins. It was ok though, glad thats over too thought haha!

I have been really glad to be back in school. This semester I have a pretty tough schedule. I have all my classes on MWF so that is good but it makes MWF's very long. I start off the day with english 1010 at 9, then go to microbiology 2060at 10, then I have an hour break, then Math 1050 at 12, then history 1700 at 1, then planetary science 2010 at 2. Wednesdays are really long because I have micro bio lab from 3-5 so that is my really long day! I really like all of my professor's though! I have had a ton more homework thought but I actually like it surprisingly haha!

Hope everything is well with everyone!