Adventures with the Skousen Family!

I can't believe that I have already been back from my trip for a week. It was so much fun and even though it was a quick one it was jammed full and I had so much fun and it actually seemed like a much longer trip than a week and half. Thursday night when I flew into Utah Libbey picked me up at the airport and I stayed the night with the Chuy's, Libbey had to work early the next day so I didn't get to spend as much time with the Chuy's as I would have liked to. Friday morning on his way to work Erick dropped me off at the TRAX and I rode down to Provo to Dallas Roberts, Brea's school. I dropped my stuff off in her car and then rode around for a little bit. While Brea finished her day of school I hung out and read my book.
It was so much fun to spend time with Brea and Darrell and I was grateful for them for letting me stay the weekend with them.

Saturday night after Brea was done with school, she, Darrell and I went over to Kyle's apartment where we went swimming for awhile at Kyle's pool. Brea and I had brought all the stuff for dinner and after we were done swimming we walked back to Kyle's place where we started to prep dinner. Kyle wanted to add some vegetables from his garden and to show it off so we walked over while the rice was boiling.

His garden sure had grown a lot since last time when I was there a couple of months before.

Kyle's roommate showed up, so while we waited for him of course we had to have a quick photoshoot with Brea and Darrell. :D

Kyle needed a bit of a hair-cut, but he was liking it because when he put gel in his hair he looked "awesomly-cool" with curly hair.

Darrell and Kyle picking squash from the garden, the sqaush plant was taking up the whole front of the garden, where there used to be paths there were no longer.

The squash that was picked...we ate some and Kyle kept some and Darrell and Brea took some home to eat later.

Saturday afternoon we went up to Salt Lake to a dress sale at Sallee's work, on the way home we stopped to have lunch...it was super yummy, except Brea's burger that was not all the way cooked and the server who didn't seem to care when she told him---BOO Bad Servers! :(

Darrell was either being silly or distracted by the game on the TV whenever we took a picture :D

The best part of the day had to be when Brea broke her window, she opened it and then it got stuck at the gas station (it had been raining earlier in the day so we were a little bit concerned about having it open). Rather then Brea get out of the car when Darrell was trying to fix it she moved over and Darrell climbed in, so we had all 3 of us in the front seat with both doors closed :D

I had so much with Brea and Darrell those couple of days, I am so happy that they let me come and stay with them. I can't believe all that we were able to squish into only a few days.

Book Giving

One of the main goals for me being at home is for Mom and I to sort through our stuff, give away, throw away, and box away the remaining. We haven't been working very hard on it until these past few weeks, our first item that we have been tackling have been the piles on piles on boxes of books that we own. Mom and I went through both of our boxes, labeled them and recorded what we had and made decisions about many of them. Today we took many, many boxes away to the library and to church for people to have.
This is what the car looked like when we left for Newport, one side of the car full of LDS books that we were giving away and the other side full of non-LDS romances (I want to just point out that we are left now only with 30--yep that's right 30! romances, and that is only because there were some that I wanted to read before we gave them away).


I wanted to really show how many books we were getting rid of so I told Mom to take a before and after photo (I was at work by this time), so she took a before and after photo of the table at church where she left the books....

Family... you should be proud!

Relay for Life 2009

For those of you that don't know Relay for Life is a "fundraiser" that communities do every year to raise money for Cancer research, for a couple of years while working at JC I have participated and walked for a couple of hours. This year I wasn't sure if I would have time off to walk and then when I discovered that I all the time slots were filled up. But Mom and I decided to purchase a Luminaria bag and decorate it for Dad. Friday evening they line the track with the luminaria bags and then at about 10 pm they light all the candles, it is such a beautiful thing to see the track all lit up. Last night Mom and I went a little before 10pm and found Dad's bag and took pictures of it lit up, Momma M had also bought one for her Dad who passed away several years ago from Cancer so we took some pictures of her's also lit up. I love how involved JC is in raising money, this year our goal was $5,000 and I know that we had raised over $5,500 when we still had another event happening...If I am home next year I hope to be able to walk again.

Lincoln Country....What is Going On?

Today in the mail we got a little paper/flier thing called "District Dialog," I was just glancing through it when I saw a box entitled "Our 2009 Graduates: What Is In Their Future?" and it shared a bunch of statistics, this is what there was...

HIGH SCHOOL	NEWPORT	TAFT	TOLEDO	WALDPORT
# of Graduates	149	101	69	52
# Planning to attend 4-Year College or University	52	33	14	10
# Planning to attend Community College	56	35	38	18
# Planning to attend Trade School	12	10	3	0
# Planning to join Military	1	6	1	1
# Planning to Work Full Time	11	10	12	23
Amount Awarded in Scholarships	$384,510	$436,510	$137,813	$151,500

What is happening to Lincoln County? Where have all the students gone and why are there so little planning on going to any form of school at all? How did Taft get more in scholarships than Newport? This just made me sad reading this.

Aloha Days

This week we have a bunch of tropical fruit on sale (papaya's, pineapple's, mango's, etc.) and so it has been designated as Aloha Days, part of it being Aloha Days we have been invited to wear our "Hawaiian" shirts this week and lei's that we have. If you know me when I get an opportunity like this I go all out, so Mom found some Hibiscus flowers for me at Dollar Tree, I borrowed her Hawaiian shirts and I have been wearing a different Hawaiian necklace everyday this week. The other exciting part is that we can wear shorts/capris all this week--everyone has been taking full advantage of that :D