We turned 21!

My twin brother and I had our 21st birthday this week. He's on his mission now so we didn't celebrate together. Now that we're growing up we probably won't be celebrating together very often. Nevertheless, my sweet husband planned a great day with me. He originally planned surprise birthday party for me, but when I accidentally found out about it we made other plans.

My day started out with breakfast in bed, and for lunch we went to Costa Vida. Thanks to one of their text-deals, we got deep dish nachos and two drinks for $6. The nachos are so big you can split it with one person and be happy.

After that we zipped to Idaho Falls. My phone has had drama for a very long time, so we took it in to get fixed, and it was ready for pick up. Turns out the Best Buy Geeks say the Thunderbolt has had tons of issues, so I'm not alone in my frustration. When they turned on my phone, they realized it wasn't fixed, so they sent it back for repair. I told them they could just give me a new phone, I mean c'mon, it was my birthday! Ha, didn't work.

My Grandma Beal is on the verge of death. It's sad but true. I decided I wanted to see her on my birthday so Justin and I made a stop at Turtle and Crane and saw her. I was proud of her; she remembered Justin's name and his major and where he was from after only telling her once. She always thinks I'm Mitzi because she just can't comprehend that 'little Kelsey' is all grown up and married now! Me niether Grandma!

When we got home we skyped Justin's mom, Judy, and I finished some homework. Then we went out to sushi! I love sushi. I used to go at least once a semester, but I haven't been since my birthday last year, so it was a great treat! Trisha, James & his girlfriend (Justin's brother), and Scott and Christina (our married friends), joined us for the occasion. This was Justin's first time having sushi and he quite liked it. Poor Trisha being pregnant meant she couldn't have raw fish, but she had a 'cooked sushi roll' and quite liked it. I had a sampler plate which has all sorts of different kinds of sushi on it which is the best! Mmm I love it. From there we bought my favorite ice cream at Broulims (Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip!) and had Trisha at our house to eat some. 

Overall it was a fantastic day. I got to spend all day with Justin. The weather was sour but everything else was wonderful! Chase and Rachel brought me strawberry cheesecake the night before which I'm sad to say is now gone! It was so good! My mom, Jon & Judy, and Jon & Laura sent me gifts through the mail, and my husband got me (drumroll) an ipad! I was shocked. He got it for a great deal off Ebay and now he can use my laptop for his accounting classes since his laptop is broken. You'll have to click on the pictures to see the whole thing...we're trying to figure out doing blog posts off the ipad. 

That weekend we had friends over to play the 'Tripole" game Mitzi showed me a few months ago. Justin had a second interview with the company we are excited about in Las Vegas. My parents surprised us this week and took Justin and I along with Chase and Rachel out to lunch.

I did my RAD simulation this week. This is where we dress up in protective gear, and we have several "aggressors" attack us in various ways and we have to use our techniques to get away. They record it so you can watch after and see it all in real time. I did the simulation at Madison high school in the wrestling room. I had some sweet combinations, and my instructor said she's going to submit my video to the RAD Hall of Fame. Heck yes! It really was awesome. I want to do it again.


Justin has been busy coaching the club men's team. I've been stressed trying to get girls to commit. I think it will be better when the actual season starts in the spring. For now we've been in love with this beautiful 57 degree weather!

We are excited to have Easter dinner with Chase and Rachel tomorrow. I'm so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. I know that He lives, and that through His atonement, I can be forgiven of my sins and live again with Him. I'm grateful for a modern-day prophet whom Christ communicates with directly to lead His children during these troubled times. I'm so grateful for the holy temples that dot this good earth. The work we do there makes it possible for me to have an eternal family and to provide others the same blessing. Christ is my redeemer, and the Savior of the world. I know He lives!

Teaching, Rolls, and Ultimate

Pretty slow week last week. I don't mind. I have a very easy schedule this semester which I love! I have tons of online classes which leave my schedule nice and open for work so I'm also able to bring in the big bucks!

My dear friend Lauren came up this weekend to visit. She is leaving for Madrid, Spain for her mission on May 1st! It worked out wonderfully because Justin went down to Provo to play in another ultimate frisbee tournament, so I could play with her without neglecting my hubby. T-Rexburg did well in Provo. They played BYU, ISU, BSU, and a few Montana teams. Fun fun!

We ordered jerseys...What can we say? We love it!

Saturday Lauren and I hung out all afternoon going on bike rides, walks, and doing all we could to enjoy the beautiful weather. That night we had a fire out to Beaver Dick Park and roasted star bursts and marshmallows. One kid showed up and ended up complaining, "I hate married people!" Ha....haters gonna hate!

I made rolls on Saturday. I wanted to try Mitzi's rolls that she brought to the girl outing last week, and Justin was gone so I needed a distraction. I accidentally used double the butter...and it was a glorious mistake. These rolls were amazing! And they make a million so Justin and I have been enjoying them all week.

I also had a quarterly Relief Society training Saturday morning that was a really great experience. It's funny that I assume that because everyone's a member of the church they have the same (or similar) life I do. But we really have a plethora of people will different trials and I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve and be a part of meeting people's needs.

All last week I taught at the middle school and I wrote all the lesson plans. On each evaluation our observers gave us tons of positive feedback so I feel very encouraged! I love teaching. I took pictures of what my students worked on this week. We did a 'renewable resource' activity that my teacher said she is going to tell her Ph.D. math friend about--score! I had a bowl of 30 star bursts with a class of 25 students. I told them they could take one, or none, or more than one, but that they should consider that after each round I would double the amount of starbursts left.
At first the kids went crazy and almost depleted the 'renewable resource' but after a few rounds they earned up to like 80 starbursts. One kid was so fun about it. There was always the boy who would take candy no matter what, and this other boy kept saying to him, "Stop taking the candy! It's for the greater good!" It was so cute. My teacher in the back was dying laughing. Granted they understand what a renewable resource is!

This group created a hydro-and-geothermal method to use a renewable resource in  Rexburg. The geothermal energy will melt the snow and they'll use the water for energy by building a dam. I'm so proud!

These guys decided solar energy in Rexburg will power everyone's TVs. 

Individually students created an innovation to replace a non-renewable resource with a renewable resource.

This airplane will have solar panels on it's wings! These kids are so smart.

These posters were around the room. Each has a resource on it (Nuclear energy, natural gas, fossil fuel, coal, diamond) and they had to answer specific questions about each resource.

I provided all the paper, pictures, and posters for them to do their projects and stations. I really loved teaching natural resources because it is easy to use earth science stuff to teach it. We had a lot of fun, and I'm excited to student teach in a year from now.

Girl's Weekend

Last weekend my sneaky sisters and I planned a surprise baby shower for Trisha. My sisters in-law, sisters, and mother gathered for (what I presume will become) our annual girl gathering. We had too much fun!

We all arrived Friday and stayed up late watching The Help, sewing hearts, and chat-chat-chatting! It was so fun to listen to everyone and to add my two-cents every once and a while.

That night when we all went to bed everyone pulled party gifts out of their cars and assembled the party. I did my duty keeping Trisha distracted in bed while everyone else got things ready.

Saturday morning I had some online homework left to do, but I was greeted after my assignment by crepes prepared by Jory! Nutella strawberry whip cream toasted almond crepe please? Delicious! Not to mention the ham & cheese crepes...yum!

After the ladies got ready we proceeded to open gifts. My mom, Mitzi, Rachel, and I pitched in and bought Trisha a date night complete with a Red Robin gift card and a gift card to Edward's Theater. She also got a voucher for free baby sitting by me and some make up. Rachel got her a baby seat cover that didn't get through the mail in time (blarg!) and Trisha got a ton of great baby clothes and diapers from everyone else. I spent some time that morning curling some of the sisters' hair with my wand curling iron. Fun fun!

We had Anna's fantastic soup for lunch and ate all afternoon. The highlight of the day was going to Family Dollar where I scored a great lamp and Mitzi and Rachel scored cute maxi skirts. Who knew??

We ate Christy's amazing sweet chile enchiladas that night and sewed some more. I think we sewed a total of over 30 hearts. These hearts were Jory's idea and they will all go to kids in hospitals. We watched Pitch Perfect and Rachel and I did our nails French tip! Most of the party crashed after that but Mitzi, Jory, and I watched Dan in Real Life. After cleaning up the house a little Mitzi and I were motivated to do one more movie, so we watched 27 Dresses. She hadn't seen it the whole way through before and due to our fatigue it made everything that much better! Thanks do daylight-savings-time, that put us to bed at 3 AM.

Sunday we had a tremendous church service! We had great talks in sacrament meeting about the atonement. Sunday school was also good, but Relief Society my mom taught the lesson and having all my sisters around made it so special! I cried the whole meeting.

After devouring my mom's Sunday dinner (not to be forgotten, thanks to Mitzi's tantrum!) we all took off. Trisha, Rachel, and I all drove together. That 90 minute drive is so pleasant when we are talking the whole time! I loved the weekend so much, but I was missing my husband so bad! Newlyweds...lol. Kuddos to Christy for putting the whole thing together, and Trisha for giving us a great reason to get together. Hooray for my mom for having 9 kids, two of which are my sisters giving me 5 amazing sisters-in-law. LOVE!

Vegas was RAD

I’m taking a women’s self-defense class called ‘RAD’ which stands for “rape aggression defense.” It is two hours twice a week for three weeks. At the end a man dressed all in protective gear ATTACKS YOU and you defend yourself using the skills you've learned. I feel a lot more confident in defending myself and a lot more paranoid.

March 2nd & 3rd was the annual “Trouble in Vegas” ultimate Frisbee tournament. As some of you may remember, I went to this tournament last year with a mixed club team (men and women). This year we were able to take a men’s team down as well as a women’s team. Justin and I are involved with both teams so we took the weekend off to play in Las Vegas!

We left Thursday to start the weekend off early. We drove down in our little white car with another married couple that we’re good friends with, Scott and Christina. We rolled into Vegas around 11:30 PM, but not before a state cop decided to pull me over! I was so confused when I saw the patriotic lights come on in my rear view mirror because I wasn't speeding! Turns out he said I was ‘crossing the yellow line’ a lot (whoops!) so he wanted to make sure I was ‘okay’ aka…checking if I was sober. If I wasn't awake before he pulled me over I most definitely was after. Holy smokes I was shaking for like 20 minutes after that. Adrenaline rush!

At the apartment we locked ourselves out of the bathroom...whoops. We stayed up for an hour trying to open it with Justin's trick he used on his mission to no avail. This involved a hanger, floss, paper, and a computer cord...Good times.

Friday we saw all the sights we could see. We drove to Las Vegas Boulevard and walked up and down the strip. In 75 degree weather we saw the Luxor, New York New York, MGM, the Bellagio, Monte Carlo, Circus Circus, the Mirage, the Venetian, Treasure Island, Excalibur, and Caesar’s Palace. We also saw the M&M store and a bunch of stores in between like you see on The Devil Wears Prada. $1550 for a pair of men’s alligator shoes whaaaat? It was fun. Justin and I packed lunches but we were starving at around 2 so we split an appetizer as our friends got lunch at Gilley’s. We were on our feet from 11AM to 7PM. After we were done walking up and down the strip we went to the outlet malls to kill some time before dinner.

Caesar's Palace

M&M store

I'm sorry Mom!

The Mirage

Vintage Cars Museum

act 'fierce'

Excalibur

One thing that was fun on the strip was all the people dressed in costumes. There were people dressed in hello kitty, master chief, minney and mickey mouse, optimus prime and bumble bee, and Darth Vader. Our friend Scott got a picture with Darth Vadar and he got to hold his light saber. Sweet!

I made a dinner reservation for us at the Stratosphere. 800 feet above Las Vegas you can eat at the three star restaurant “On Top of the World!” that rotates counter-clockwise, so by the end of dinner you see the entire city from 800 feet in the air! It was amazing. Like I said, we packed food for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the whole trip so we could spend money on fun dinner Friday night. Justin ordered lamb and I ordered salmon; both were to die for! We also ordered a dessert and the four of us split it. Delicious! That was definitely the highlight of the trip.

dessert...red velvet cheese cake with a white chocolate shell...and reindeer chocolate horns and fruity garnishes

waiting for our elevator...it took surprisingly long

Saturday morning we got to the fields at 9:30 and it felt like 3 PM. The sun feels so weird down there! At 9AM it feels and looks the same way it does at noon and at 6PM. In Idaho there's definitely a morning, afternoon, and evening "look" to the day. Down there if you didn't know what time it was you would guess it was 2 PM no matter what time of day it was. Anyway...our women's team played three games plus a pick-up game with BYU and our men's team played five games. We won our first game and played awesome! We were so happy to have a win! This was my first tournament win in a year and a half! We lost the next two but we were fine with that because we were so happy we won the first game. The other teams were good sports so even though the last team killed us 13-2 we had a lot of fun. Justin's team won two of their five so that wasn't too bad. We headed back to the apartment and cleaned up, then went to dinner at a buffet. We drove by the Mirage and saw the show they put on every hour with huge flames you can feel from the street. We were dead after that so we made it back to the apartment for the night.

The show at The Mirage; it goes off every hour. You can feel the heat from the street.

Dinner in the Stratosphere

Men's Team

Because this is my favorite

captains

Sunday we drove back all day with no harm or accident and no cops pulling me over. Overall it was a crazy fun trip and I'm so happy we went! Now it's back to reality in Rexburg with 20 degrees outside...spring come quickly!