Merry Christmas!

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas this year in Idaho with my family. We got to spend some time with my whole family and many friends as well. Though we were only there for a few short days, we made the most of it! We drove up in a blinding snowstorm and I managed to be feeling yucky with a nasty cold, so imagine my surprise when we stopped to visit Kellie at Deseret Book and realized that my coat's belt had been hanging out the door the entire drive! I have my own icicle!!

We arrived late Thursday night and left for our West Yellowstone cabin early Friday morning. We had to fight our way up the mountain on snowmobile...a difficult process because we kept sinking into the 3-4 feet of fresh powder. Kyle got his workout shoveling snow off of the deck....if you can see it the snow was above his knees! We even had frozen water lines and so in our best boyscout fashion, we began shoveling snow into coolers, trash cans, and melting it over our wood burning stove so that we could jimmy the toilet to flush without water! Quite the adventure! We considered it our Christmas miracle when the main water line finally decided to thaw enough to give us some water (and it may have helped that my dad had a blow torch!) I would NOT have made a good pioneer! In any case, we had fun pulling out our best survival skills...I just wish that I would have felt a little better! Due to my cold, I missed out on the snowmobiling the next few days while I stayed inside by the fire trying to feel better! When we got back to my house, we had a first ever Christmas games competition. Events included oven mitt present unwrapping, guess the Christmas Carol hat, sugar packet races, Christmas trivia of various forms, and even a mad libs version of the night before Christmas! We had a blast and true to form, the competition between siblings was fierce! Kyle and I walked away with three prizes though and were excited about our performance!


Christmas Eve was a blizzard and we ended up with about ten inches of new snow in addition to what was already there. Not to be discouraged from traditions, we braved the storm for some shopping and the classic movie (we saw National Treasure 2...AWESOME...though pretty unbelievable!) The Christmas lights tradition was vetoed by my parents who feared the storm, but Kyle and I, along with Nate and Kellie braved the storm in my little Taurus and saw some lights. Santa was successful in flight and we awoke to a very white Christmas with so much to be grateful for. The theme this year seemed to center around emergency preparedness and gifts were fun as well as practical! My mom received a new Bosch mixer which means....WE GET HER OLD ONE!! It still runs wonderfully after 30 years and I am stoked! Other highlights included camping gear (5 man tent, 2 sleeping bags, wind up LED lantern, Inner frame backpack,LED headlamp...camping anyone??), a Christus statue, the HAIRSPRAY soundtrack and movie (that's right folks... "you can't stop the beat!!") along with a promise not to watch in my brother's presence, and other wonderful things. We were spoiled rotten and felt extremely blessed to be with our family. Despite all of the gifts, we were most grateful to be together this season and reflect on the greatest gift giver of all, our Savior Jesus Christ. We are so grateful for the chance to reflect on His birth, life, and His truly awesome gift of the Atonement which allows us all to rejoin our Father in Heaven and our Savior when we pass from this life. We hope and pray that each of you experienced the joys of this season while reflecting upon its truest meaning.

This afternoon, we will head to Provo to Kyle's grandparents where we will meet up with his family who are in town from Mesa. We are excited to spend some time there and then will be back in IF for New Years and the Open House of the Rexburg Temple! I wish that every week could be holiday weeks!! More updates to follow!!

Weekends...Always Better!

I am so grateful for antibiotics. Period. I am finally feeling better and just in time! I probably cheated on the Dr.'s orders a bit because I decided that no matter what, I was going to wear a little makeup so I didn't feel like a swamp witch, and by Saturday, I decided it was time again for contacts. We had a fun weekend planned to compensate for the rough week we had. We started out with a double date with our friends, Chase and Amy (who my sister and I set up!!) on Friday night. They were kind enough to share some free movie tickets with us, so in turn, we made dinner!


We had a delicious fondue dinner to start off the evening (Sorry I am taking the picture cause I still felt really yucky!)



This was followed by the girl's pick for the movie. We went to Enchanted, and I am still raving about it!! In fact, I am listening to the soundtrack right now!! If you have not seen this movie, it is a must see!! Makes fun of every Disney film, yet in a perfectly satisfying chick flick kind of way!



Saturday morning, I had a breakfast get together arranged with my cohort (those in my Marriage and Family Therapy graduate program and their spouses). It was a wonderful celebration as Allison had just walked in graduation, Neal defended his thesis the week before, Miriam just completed round 8 of Chemotherapy, and Blake and I were still plugging along!


I love this group so much. They have truly been my saving grace through one of the most wonderful and trying periods of my life! So glad the grad school is nearly done! (just the thesis to finish!)


Saturday night, Kyle and I met up with my brother Aaron and sister-in-law Allyson to go to an Aggie Basket Ball game! Go Aggies!

Sunday was a day of rest, but busy with preparations for Christmas. We are giving these fun decorations to his sister and her husband for Christmas since they will be purchasing their first home in the next month. We have been at this since October cutting wood, sanding blocks, painting, stenciling, etc! Kyle was thrilled to be at the end of the painting...can you tell!


We finished off the evening by driving around to look at Christmas lights and dream of the huge home we might be able to afford one day. I am so glad to be feeling a little better and have the hope of a wonderful week with family for Christmas! We leave this week, so only a few more days!!

Trials = No Time To Blog

Sorry for the lack of excitement on our blog! Dev or Abby, I might just need to call one of you for a Macromedia Fireworks demo so that I can get a header on in this calendar year!

Life has been nothing short of exciting at our house....perhaps it could be exciting in a good way next time though?!?! My little Taurus' heat has been out this winter and with temps here dropping below zero, I decided it was not worth it anymore. Since we originally thought that the problem would be simple to solve, Kyle and I agreed to meet my parents in Pocatello so that my dad could teach Kyle how to fix a thermostat. We drove in a nasty snowstorm and passed far too many plows throwing rocks on the road and my brand new windshield ended up with a few large casualty rock chips. In the process, it became apparent how treadbare my tires are (Sliding through a winter wonderland!) and we realized we would need to replace two tires....SOON! In Pocatello, we discovered that the problem was far worse than a mere thermostat and so we returned again with NO HEAT (but we did get to stop and visit Angie and Mike and their new little boy, Joel!! SO CUTE!!). As we were getting ready to leave for home, we discovered that my car's engine was moving far more than we thought it should....very shaky in fact. We got it back to Logan by miracle (freezing all the way!!! I have new respect for the pioneers!) and took it in the next morning to find that I had two broken motor mounts...very dangerous and expensive. After this, the saga does not end. Monday, while my car is in the shop, I get a frantic call from Kyle that his truck's battery has died due to a broken/frozen door and that he does not have enough time to jump it and recharge the battery before rushing to take a final. I could not rescue him and was myself starting to feel really sick... Mysteriously, the flu like symptoms that I have been battling disappeared and then reappeared....in my EYE! I found a large stye in my eye (basically a badly plugged pore that has gathered infection). I frequently get styes, so this was not new, but after it would not drain or clear up for a few days, I went to the doctor to find out that it is a staph infection (and the possible cause of the nausea...who knows!). Not Fun.

Total cost of trials
snow tires- $125
Rock Chip repair- $15 do it yourself kit...car won't warm enough to do it, so professional replacement -$21
New Motor mounts- $360
Heater- $10 new thermostat...still didn't work...estimate for the real fix... $600
Staph infection -1 day missed of work....NO MONEY EARNED! Doctor visit...thankfully free with my $250 in student fees....Antibiotic...$4 (YAY Walmart reduced prescriptions!)

I don't think I like being an adult. Santa, will you bring me a new car and physical body?? I will submit pictures of what I would like soon! :-)

(I gotta go...my eye hurts too much to look at this screen.)

Under Construction

I always laugh when I see "Under Construction" signs which typically seem to come once a poor driver is already in the midst of the construction, or it is so close that there is no way to back out. Well, Blogging construction is no different. Here you are....whether the motivation be excitement about what is happening in our lives, wasting time from what you should be doing, boredom....etc. In any case, you have stumbled upon my blog and if you are a frequent visitor, can clearly see that it is under construction...due to the totally different backgrounds and color schemes! No Turning Back!! I have been sick to my stomach all day and so I finally took some down time in bed with Kyle's laptop to attempt to change our colors from "girly" (I preferred to consider it bright and uplifting) to more seasonally appropriate. Maybe now I can get Kyle to post once in a while! Check back soon....I hope to figure out how to make a cute new header to go with this soon!

Christmas Crafty

This has been a wonderful week for us! The beginning of the Christmas season always makes me so excited and Kyle and I have been able to do lots of fun things. We started by decorating our apartment. The stockings were hung by the bed with care...and the festive down comforter was pulled out for the color, but also since it has been snowing a ton here and I am COLD! Thank heavens for the space heater my parent's lent us!


One problem...we live in a TINY studio apartment, hence no room for a Christmas tree. So we did what we could!

Our total of two windows were decked to the nines making us feel the elements of the tree without the space for one.


I collect nativities and so we were able to squish them onto a display table and window sill this year.

Then, came time for making some Christmas cards! I really have no idea how many we will send...they might end up strung from a cute ribbon clothesline to continue the decor, but I had fun being crafty and thought that I would share just a few! :-)


We also were able to attend Kyle's work Christmas party and though we were a little upset that we had to pay $8 a plate and serve ourselves...we were excited in the end when he won a top door prize...a $50 gift certificate to BestBuy!! Hooray! Now if only he can collect a lot more of those cards, he might be able to afford the flat screen TV he is dreaming of.... one thought from the patient (or trying to be) wife....Keep dreaming! I love our little space saving 13 inch screen!! :-)

Thanksgiving...Arizona Style

Kyle and I were so excited to get to spend some time with his family in their new home in Arizona this year for Thanksgiving. It was the first time that either of us had been there and actually the first time that we got to fly together!! In the past, we have always been flying out to visit one another, so this was so nice to just be together! Since his parent's have recently moved into a new home, there was a lot of work to be done! We helped them out by painting and picking all of the old dried out oranges off of their 8 trees so that the new crop will be ready to ripen in a few months....( sorry I cannot get this link to remove! I am not the best at this blog formatting thing yet!)

Then, on Thanksgiving day, we had the privilege of jumping into an outdoor pool!!! I have never been outside in a swim suit in late November, so I was loving the Arizona warm weather! Their pool was not warm by any means (a frigid 64 degrees!) so we called this new tradition the "Polar Bear Challenge." Crazy! If I can get it to work, I will try and upload the video, although there is no sound with it. If there was, you would hear SCREAMING cause it was so cold...that and the fact that Kyle's siblings Melissa and Cory refused to jump in and had to be thrown in!

On Saturday, we were privileged to attend the Mesa Arizona Temple with Kyle's cousin who will be leaving on his mission in a few months. It was all decorated for Christmas and reminded me of a summer time temple square. It was pretty strange to see lighted camels in their desert environment and a nativity sitting on green grass with palm trees in the background! The best part is that I saw my old friend Eric Basset from BYU there in the session!! He is getting married in January and his fiancee was going through to receive her own endowment that day as well! I loved the feeling of reuniting with old friends in the place that matters most!

We had a wonderful time on our mini vacation and are so grateful to Kyle's family for helping us to get out there for a visit. We had a great time and though I did not include any photos, we also hit the Black Friday shopping adventure!! That was fun for me because it is a long standing tradition in my home and so we still got to continue it. It was a little different though shopping in a city with millions of people there....so many more people in lines! Yikes! Now we are excited to be safely back to Utah where we can focus on this wonderful Christmas season.

YAY Babies!

This is a quick shout out to all you pregnant ladies!! Congrats to Cody and Kristin for their new little Elijah born yesterday! Kristi and Andrew, I am anxiously awaiting news that you have a little arrival! To Angie and Mike...You should be ready any day now too! Please update your blog with the photos soon. I am so excited to hear that your family of two is a family of three! We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Kari and Eric's little boy as well as Nate and Dre's little one too! It seems that there are pregnant people all over!! YAY! If I missed anyone, please let me know cause we love looking at the pics of all the cute little babies!

A little note of gratitude to all of you. My world is made complete and full because of the friendships that we share with you all. I have been reflecting on this so much as we approach Thanksgiving. What a joyous thing that we have a holiday celebrating gratitude and family time. It is a shame that commercialized holidays tend to minimize this wonderful month to remind ourselves of how truly blessed we are. I look forward to many years to come counting my blessings and trying to 'live in thanksgiving daily.' May you each be blessed with a spirit of joy and gratitude this season! We love you all!

Kyle and I are off to Arizona to visit his family for Thanksgiving, so look forward to some fun updates from the land of warmth coming soon!

The Game of Tag

Thanks Abby D. for tagging me AGAIN!! She must know that I need to take blogging breaks from thesis writing. Here we go! You all get to learn all about my darling husband!

1. What is your husband's name? Hot Hockey Boy....and then I later learned that it was actually Kyle Richard Hicken. I still prefer his initial nickname!
2. How long have you been together? Married 3 months, together since last March
3. How long did you date? hhmmm....I stalked Kyle for 6 months before we actually "dated" but I would say for the "real" time, it was probably about 6 months (still too fast!!!)
4. How old is he? 23...for a few more months....."Here's to me...Mrs. Robinson!!" :-)
5. Who eats more? Definitely Kyle. What can I say? My food sure beats the Ramen he was living off of.
6. Who said I love you first? Kyle....a little too soon for me. He said it at Easter at my parents, I finally returned it when I knew I was going to be marrying him....ironically in line for a roller coaster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH!
7. Who is taller? Kyle by about 4 inches....perfect for me to fit in the "nook"
8. Who sings better? Define Better...kyle is tone deaf, but he can blast one out with the radio like the best of them. I would probably feel fair to say that it would only be me performing in a public karaoke night.
9. Who is smarter? That is the great thing about marriage!! He is smart where I am weak and vice versa...let's be honest, could a therapist and an accountant really share the same talents? NO! That is where I am so helpful in his writing and talking areas and He deals with our finances!
10. Whose temper is worse? We could argue on that one (hee hee! I crack me up!). Both of us have the potential to fire up, but we have also both been working diligently on this for years, so I would say we have both mellowed considerably.
11. Who does the laundry? Typically me. Kyle always seems to get bleach on his nice clothes and so he protests washing, but he is really good at folding and putting away (my personal least favorite chore).
12. Who does the dishes? It is a trade off. We are usually both working on them since we have no dishwasher.
13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Kyle right now, but that will change eventually....I mean, it has only been three months!
14. Who pays the bills? Kyle organizes it, Alli pays it.
15. Who mows the lawn? Sadly, like Jake and Abby, we have no lawn **sigh**. One day, we will and we will probably both do it cause we share a love of yard work!
16. Who cooks dinner? Alli. hands down. But Kyle is great on nights that I am working late to prepare something small.
17. Who drives when you are together? usually Kyle, but he drives pretty fast at times and makes me car sick, so if I am paranoid, I do... and if we are driving at night, I do cause he always falls asleep.
18. Who is more stubborn? I think I am....ok, I know I am!
19. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? He is so good at that, but I would like to think that I can admit it too.
20. Whose parents do you see the most? Pretty equally right now, odd since his parents live in Arizona, but we have been lucky to have occasions for them to visit.
21. Who proposed? Kyle
22. Who is more sensitive? Alli.
23. Who has more friends? hhhmm... Kyle's friends are all over, so I think if we were looking strictly at numbers, I would win, but that is pretty subjective. I am just more of the extrovert, but he holds the record for all the friends he has had since birth!
24. Who has more siblings? We are equal! Both have two older boys and then two younger girls.
25. Who wears the pants in the family? Since i have to wear skirts to work, Kyle does! ;-)
26. Where did you meet? We met country dancing, but I first drooled over Kyle at a hockey game...It just took another six months for fate to cross our paths for good!
27. What was the first thing you said to your husband? "I have seen you somewhere before...You volunteer at the hockey games don't you. I have seen you there and never got the guts to talk to you, so thanks for asking me to dance!" ... or something like that. It was by far the most forward I had ever acted towards a boy in my life, but it worked!
28. Where was your first date? I would say playing fugitive with some friends and then talking all night,but he would say it was a Kalai concert.
29. Where was your first kiss? The one we told people?? At a cosmic golf course. The actual one... at my apartment sitting on the couch!
30. Where did you get engaged? The unofficial....when Kyle called me from Cleveland and told me he was packing up to move back to Utah and that we should probably get married before the semester began again so we could get housing. SHOCK TO ME!! The official.... on top of a mountain after off roading at sunset (where incidentally, my ribs got cracked on the drive!)..pretty expected at that point since we had a temple, photographer, location, decorater, etc. already booked for five weeks later!...We just had to wait for the ring!
31. Where were you married? The Idaho Falls Temple
32. Where was the honeymoon? Park City, UT
33. If you could have changed anything about it what would it have been? Maybe not getting food poisoning...yeah, that was definitely icky!

ok, so now I am supposed to tag others. I am truly convinced that this whole Blogger obsession with tagging is directly related to seeing if people actually read your blog!! HHMMM.....I could just wait and see if anyone comments on this section to know if they read it!....Then again, I believe in the principle of agency, so I tag EVERYONE who reads this! I know that sometimes people struggle to know what to blog about (Abby B. here is an idea for you if you choose to accept the challenge!) so here you go! TAG!

Hairspray

Has anyone seen this movie?? Now that it is at our dollar movies, I have been able to drag Kyle to it once and went with my sisters again last night. I LOVE IT! What a great story! Not only is it a new musical (and thank heavens for the recent revival in movie musicals! Keep em Comin'!) but the message is great! Pretty girls lose, chubby girls win, segregation is abolished, Inter racial love works, and she even closes the big opening number on top of a dump truck!! How much better can this get! Plus, so many great quotable lines too! A definite keep for me, possibly surpassing my old "favorite recent movie" title! YAY for Hairspray!!

Hope you all love it too...I definitely thought it was worthy of a post today since I cannot get the songs out of my head!

I'm Edward??

Which Twilight novel character are you?

You're Edward Cullen - You have great taste for the finer things in life, a classic style, and you understand the way people work so you can manipulate easily. You have many talents and a bit of a temper, but you are mostly level-headed and rational. Take this quiz! Man, I am a boy?? Dev, did you manipulate yours to be the wonderful yet quirky heroine? Yay for reliving the Twilight moments!

Ode to Cafe Rio

Oh Cafe Rio, How I Love Thee!

Intense cravings are not new to me. The internet recipe database has become one of my new best friends in my quest to make Kyle think that I am the best cook ever. Last week, we made a copy cat recipe of PF Chang's lettuce wraps and this weekend, my craving for Cafe Rio overcame me. The Pork Barbacoa salads are enough to make me melt! We got very ambitious and decided to attempt this tasty meal.

Look at the following links if you want to attempt these recipes at home (although our suggestion would be to get several people involved with it potluck style so the burden of cooking does not fall on one. Kellie, Brittany, and Ann were good to help out. They made homemade tortillas!). We even cut up corn tortillas into strips and baked them to get the crispy strip effect!

Looks close enough to the real thing...right? Here are the links to try it:

http://heatherwells.blogspot.com/2006/10/cafe-rio-barbacoa-pork.html

http://missnemesis.blogspot.com/2006/11/and-i-saw-that-it-was-good.html

The group gathered to enjoy this treat. maybe we can have this instead of turkey for Thanksgiving!

I have also heard of adding a can of Dr. Pepper to the pork roast to help add the flavor, but the top link was the recipe we used and it was so close it was scary! YUM! I found the salad dressing to have a little too much lime flavor...anyone out there have the real recipe for the tomatillo ranch?

Of course, the next natural response to such a great meal is for Kyle to be out like a light! And yes, that is my teddy bear he was cuddling with. Guess he missed having me napping next to him!

All this talk is making me hungry! I am going to go enjoy some leftovers!

Print Competition

All right, I know....enough with the wedding photos stuff already right? Well, not just yet! Since we do not have kids to take pics of in their adorable Halloween costumes (but we have LOVED seeing all of yours!) we had to post what we have been up to. On Monday night, we took a trip to Salt Lake for family night to support our favorite photographer, Robin Spencer, in the Intermountain Print Photography competition. The best part was....She entered US! :-)
Let me tell you how weird it is to be standing by a picture of yourselves and having people next to you ooh and aah over it...without being recognized! TOO FUN! The best part is that this print won a "Print of Distinction" award (a really high honor) and helped her to gain total points. The competition was not finished when we left, so I don't know how it turned out all around, but it was super flattering to see ourselves blown up and commented on by spectators!

For Halloween, we both spent the day at work (where I had wanted to dress like Sigmund Freud or at the very least, Oprah....darn dress code!) and then we spent the evening cheering on the Aggies in the first basket ball game of the year! I LOVE Aggie Basket Ball!

Other exciting news, my darling sister has been trained well. She encountered a fantastic sale at Down East Outfitters and walked away with 39 multi colored undershirts for $5. I am not kidding. It worked out to be 7.2 cents per shirt. The bargain shopper in me was busting with joy....especially because I benefited! She shared the wealth! YAY for new undershirts!! :-)

I've Been Tagged!

All right. I am sitting here at my computer trying to begin work on my thesis again and yet this blog is haunting my mind. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to start a blog! I am the type of person who feels the need to have all other details completed before I can begin writing, so here is my last blocking element to my thesis writing today. I have been tagged. I now am supposed to share six interesting (or really just the first things that came to my mind) facts about myself and then tag six others.

Here I go!

Fact #1- Bed making. I go through phases. I used to hate making the bed, so I would sleep on top of my covers (because I tend to sleep like an egg beater and roll out of them anyway) but now I have discovered the ultimate bed making tactic. If Kyle has left for work and we did not get the bed made before he left, I will make myself into the bed and then just gently slip out of it. it is so much easier than trying to walk around a million times just to get the corners tight.

Fact #2- Earrings. I never realized that I was weird, but up until a few years ago, I had never owned or wore a pair of dangly earrings. My former roommate Heidi made me borrow a pair of hers to complete a cute date outfit one night and I was hooked! Now I wear them all of the time. YAY for Dangly Earrings!

Fact #3- PRAISE ME!- those who have lived with me might remember that I need to be validated for the things that I do well. Since becoming a therapist, I have discovered the outright need to express these desires instead of just getting feelings hurt when someone is not recognizing good things. This desire to be forthright in my declaration of needs has turned into a joke for my whole family. At the appropriate time, we turn to someone near us and in a long drawn out, yet humorously demanding voice, shout things like "PRAISE ME!" or "NURTURE ME!" just so that no one misses out on helping to fill your needs. Kyle and I have expanded ours to include such favorites as "LOVE ME!" and "LISTEN TO ME!" among others. Try it at home, you will never feel neglected again!

Fact #4- Bargains. I am a compulsive bargain shopper. I take great pride in finding a deal. I think it is the hunter element that is in my genetic makeup. I delight in finding coats for $7 (marked down from $89), shirts for $2.50 (regularly $15 or so), shoes for $2.50 (you can imagine the potential price), etc. I found my wedding dress for $25 on a hidden bargain rack at a shop and saw the potential for what it could be after a good cleaning and some accessorizing. I delight in telling Kyle how much I "cost" for the day..today...pants $6.50, lace cami $2.50, zip up jacket $3 after a huge coupon deal, shoes $2.50 at D.I....total...$14.50! YAY!

Fact #5- Blue and White. I truly bleed these colors. I have been these colors at every school I have attended since kindergarten. Two elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, BYU, and now USU....all Blue and White. See why I have a hard time cheering for the UofU?

Fact #6- Thesis. This is the bane of my existence right now. Everything hinges on the success of its completion. if I do not defend by May, I will lose the opportunity to walk with my brother and sister, lose my jobs due to the loss of my malpractice insurance, and disappoint myself cause I have not met my goal. Yet, it is SO HARD to get going on it. This is the fact that rules my life right now, so I had better end my ramblings so that I have no more excuses not to write on it.

Tag...you're it to Angie, Shannon, Michelle, Kristin, and Josh (if you guys ever update your blog that is!) (sorry, I don't have a total of six to tag!)

Have fun!

Support my friends!

Hey everyone, if you have a second, pass this word along. Some of my friends made a film and entered it into Apple's film festival contest. They only had 24 hours to film a three minute film and received the components that they had to include at midnight on Friday and had to submit by midnight on Saturday. These are some fantastic guys and I was pretty impressed with their film only three minutes long). If you can, create an apple account and vote for them. This could be a big break for my friends and help with their future aspirations to bring more quality family entertainment to us! (plus it is just fun, included in the film is my former FHE spouse, my neighbor, and a bunch of friends!)

Hey, you've got to check out this film!! http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=1272 As some of you may or may not know, on Saturday October 13, a group of Utah State students were involved in a very special online film festival. Apple's Insomnia Film Festival is unique because it requires of all its participants to write, shoot and edit an entire 3 minute movie in one 24 hour period. They took on this challenge and produced the film "Imagine". The film seriously has potential to win. Due to the online nature of this festival, the success of the film depends completely on the number of high ratings it receives on the festival website. Please visit this website, view the movie, and give it the rating you think it deserves. If the server is busy, please keep trying. Every rating helps these students reach their goal of having a winning submission. Voting closes on November 9th, but the earlier the votes come in, the better chance the movie will have of being recognized. Thanks to all of you for your support in this effort.

The Advent Creative team Clay Olsen Jackson Olsen Cam Lee Pete Smithsuth Ryan Shaw Scott Hyldahl

Buddy Walk Weekend

This weekend, we were in Idaho Falls helping out Darci and Brady with "The Buddy Walk" which was an event they organized through their non profit foundation to raise awareness for kids with disabilities. We were just there to help out, but we got to have a little too much fun playing on the awesome toys!

Can you guess who kept winning?

The little girl who it was all about! Darci, you really need to start your own blog!

We also carved some awesome pumpkins with my sister and her friend while at home. Look at the "girly" pumpkin on the right. That was ours, a design made entirely by hitting cookie cutters with a mallet to make cutesy cutout patterns. I loved it, but Kyle thought we ought to be making something a little more frightening.

Ok, so I know that I have been tagged, but it will take me a little while to come up with my cool facts, so stay tuned, more posts to follow!