Cure my boredom please!

My dad's asleep, Em's sick and asleep, my mom just got back from having a root canal and is in the the tub, I let the neighbor's cat Big in to liven up this joint, it didn't work.

My dad woke up, "Wait, you let Big in?!"

Me while following Big and giggling, "He wanted to come in, look how happy he is!"

Dad sitting up, "Well, put him outside."

Me pouting, "But look how good he's being."

Dad switching channels on the tv, "Yeah right."

Me while picking up a purring Big, "Sorry, show's over mister."

Great, now my parents are going to Stake Sports Night and Em's in the tub. Guess I'll get back to updating my resume and writing my statement of purpose. U of U grad program ... hoorah!

A couple of great breaks between all of this familial excitement: Playing "Where's My Water?" and reading "The Scorch Trials". Aren't you jealous of my life?

The First Beanie of the Season

Too bad I'm too lazy to get a better picture of the amazing flower. I am proud of myself. I've got to practice because I might have promised a guy I'd try to make him one of these:

Thanksgiving 2011

Idaho Falls, ID

Our amazing view from the 8th floor of the Red Lion Hotel.

Things to remember:

• Eating in the breakroom of The Madsens
• Little kids playing on the intercom
• Uncle Dale telling me how proud he is of me
• My dad asking question after question about Topaz Mountain and if my arm was sore, or my eyes were blood shot, or if I slept well, or if I've looked at my rocks yet...
• Having to hold myself back from grabbing Buffy's boys and hugging and kissing them. I missed our boys.
• Watching Vy and Jordan play/fight. "Hi Vy!" cute little Jordan.
• Forgetting that Jay was still dancing in the basement using the kinect until he wandered upstairs an hour later. "Why are you so sweaty?"
• Fiesta Ole - My first and possibly last trip
• Dad to Jay, "Where'd you get that hat?" Jay pointing to his huge beanie, "Oh, you mean this?"
• Dad, "Now remember, you can eat for free at the bayfay tomorrow... Buffet," and Em and I going nuts teasing him until he got really loud, hit the steering wheel, and said, "Enough!" Hilarious.
• Em dramatically trying to wheel her luggage out on the wrong floor.
• Sharing a room with Em and making her laugh so hard at herself that she choked on toothpaste
• Grandma's not-on-purpose bend and snap that made me laugh so hard I both cried and drooled
• Before leaving, Grandma telling me she was looking at me during Thanksgiving dinner, and how she kept thinking to herself how absolutely beautiful I looked. I really needed that compliment.

Topaz Mountain

(Brent Bateman's Favorite)

What should I do on my first day off for the holiday? Be ready to make the drive to Topaz Mountain at 4:45 A.M. but the sheer terror of my dad's wrath if I wasn't ready to go wakes me up at 4 A.M.

I felt like a little kid ready for school when I climbed into the suburban with my backpack and lunchbox. My dad, Dra, Uncle Scott, cousin Brandon, Uncle Norman, cousin Alex, and I all rode together while my Aunt Kay, cousin Blaine, and his wife Christy followed in their car. I tried to stay awake and listen to my uncle's great stories, but I can't stay awake for long in cars.

I woke up later to my dad saying, "We went too far!" I opened my eyes, wondering why were at a toll booth, and saw my dad talking to a guy in uniform with a huge shotgun. Masking my alarm with my sleepy voice, I whispered, "Where are we?" So confusing. Apparently, we'd made it to Dugway. We flipped around and quickly found the dirt road we had missed.

Our first stop.

I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing. Dra and I started taking pictures and laughing a lot immediately. We were horsing around, using her screwdriver and hammer to chisel at the rock, and I asked if I could see it for a second. I blindly chose a spot, chipped away, and a huge piece of black rock fell out. Dra said we should show my dad, so we climbed back to where he was, and he was in awe. He called everyone over to show off the bixbyite (spelling is of course atrocious, I'd never heard of such a rock, and every time my dad said it, I thought of Clive Bixby). I was beaming until I looked over at Dra and she was scowling at me and my dumb luck. It was hilarious. My dad told us to show him where we found it, and we laughed that we couldn't because it was our secret spot. He didn't laugh. We showed him immediately.

So early in the morning, so cold and windy.

My dad was in heaven.

Our 2nd spot: The Geode ... Patch? Field? I can't remember.

It was kind of a bust. We did see a lot of sheep though. I don't like sheep, it's no secret. There were literally hundreds of them. They scattered when my cousins Brandon and Alex jumped from behind a hill and scared them, but then they would gain back their stupid sheep courage and start following us again. I stuck close to my dad, then we realized there was a muddy water hole they were trying to get to. They weren't going to mob us after all. We saw the sheep herder on his horse. He had four super cute dogs with him, but they were all business, no play.

Our third spot, the south end of Topaz Mountain.

Can you see the windy road at the bottom? We parked close to the road and climbed up to this spot. I think it was the only time I was truly warm all day. My dad kept muttering, "Shoot!" Apparently, when he had come before there were these "two rocks that were amazing," and he couldn't remember where they were. Again, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Instead of destroying rocks, I mostly watched all the people around us and talked to my non-stop-talker cousin Alex.

My partner in hilarity.

Overall, it was a great time. Would I go again? Probably, but only if it was warmer.

A few things:

1) Best run ever Monday after school. Why? Well, at one point a guy was running towards me, then we waved and passed each other, then I watched as his shadow turned around once he was past me and checked out my butt. High fived myself. (In my mind of course.)

2) Embarrassed myself Monday night. How? For FHE we had a turkey dinner and auction to raise money for a family's Christmas. We've been hearing about this auction for about two months, and there has been a sheet passed around relief society every single week. Last week I was real tired of reading lame auction items. (They weren't lame, they were typical: 1 plate of cookies! or 2 loaves of my homemade pumpkin bread!) So I wrote down: One Drop it Like it's Hot Lesson by Amy Bateman. I passed the sheet to my roommate and watched carefully, excited to make her laugh in church. I got no reaction. Argh. So boring. She didn't even notice. I had great intentions of crossing my name off ... and I forgot to cross my name off. The joke came back to bite me in the drop it like it's hot butt. So Monday night, I'm sitting next to my friends and being ridiculous and laughing a lot and having fun during the auction. Then I see my roommate Natalie who was handing our Bishop (the emcee) the certificates for auctioned items look at me funny, then she handed him the certificate, then he looked at me funny. My insides dropped. I tried to get my Bishop to look at me and notice my miming motions of tearing the paper up, and the slitting my throat motions to get him to abort. It did no good. My face went bright red as the Bishop laughed into the mic, "I'm just going to read this one off! One drop it like it's hot lesson by Amy Bateman!" The entire room erupted in cheers and woots and laughter. I turned sideways and shake-laughed. I refused to demonstrate even though I felt extreme peer pressure from the chanting crowd. My other roommate Baylee was laughing so hard she was crying, and I was laughing so hard, my armpits were sweaty. My lesson went for $60. Guess I'll have to get my nephew Eli to give me lessons before I give lessons.

3) Today at school I asked one of my boys to stomp on our recycling. He stood in it and bounced, then tried to step out, but his foot was stuck in an empty kleenex box. I laughed way too hard.

4) I went disco skating with Eric, Andrea, and Kolten at Classic last Saturday. It was an absolute blast. Eric and Kolten have some major moves on rollerskates; I was so impressed and entertained. We met up with some of their friends who were also pros on skates. At one point while Dra and I were rollerblading around, one of their excellent skater friends jumped out of the rink on to the carpet and started doing sexy leg lifts with his rollerskates on. I will never stop laughing about it.

Crazy Hair Day - Spirit Week

This picture doesn't do the height justice, there's a cup under my hair.
When I got in my car this morning, I bonked my hair and managed to honk the horn at the same time.
Have a great Friday.

Tiny Tribute to My Dra

You're always happy to cheer on the mutton busters. Why do we struggle to take good pictures of the two of us? Remember when the lady lost her shoe?

You're always up for something fun, and it's always so much more when you're with me.

You're always with me during the hardest things I do in life. I couldn't ask for a kinder more thoughtful person to have on my side no matter what.

You make me laugh harder than I think is possible. I'm so proud of you in this picture.

Latelys:

1) Four grants down, one left to write ...

2) Girls night out? I loathe them. I'm surrounded by girl idiots at all times. The other night, I convinced myself that I need to work on being nice to girls outside my usual circle, so I got it together and went to a girls-only get together. I was really struggling after we ate disgusting homemade english muffin pizzas, then I got pulled into a corner and asked how my love life was going, then I was forced to sit in front of a t.v. that was insultingly playing a soap opera. I was ready to kill everyone in the room just to climb over their dead bodies and get out. I begged them to watch something else, pointed out that we could be watching Extreme Animal Phobia, and convinced the room of screaming girls that it'd be way more entertaining than a soap opera. On the show, one lady was deathly afraid of spiders, and she was forced to complete a task where she carried a tarantula from one container to another. Again, the room of girls was screaming, I was laughing, then I hear one winner cry out, "Wait! Are those trained spiders?!" Forehead slap. See? Idiots.

3) Andrea turns 25 this week. I cried while running on the treadmill yesterday morning. Why? Shrug. Dra's going to be 25? It just got to me.

4) Toby calls everyone Amy, and I love love love it.

5) Our stake halloween party was a huge success. Being in charge of the food wasn't too bad. My buddy Kolten and I paraded around in our matching pink pegasus costumes, learned the sweet moves to Thriller, and repeatedly raced through the huge blowup obstacle course. We might have thought it was a great idea to race backwards, but I managed to slam right into a girl version of Monstro. Oops. I was fine, she was fine, so it was all just hilarious. I would have beat him though.

6) Went paintballing for the first time yesterday. Drive out there: 20 minutes. Gear: $26. Excuse to shoot a guy who has a girlfriend yet kept telling me how hot I looked all decked out: Priceless

Brotherly Sisterly Hike

This was on our way down, but we stopped to take some pictures. Some guy sneered, "What, do you see an animal or something?" Uh, does there have to be an animal to take a picture?

My favorite part of the hike was teaming up with Zach and teasing Em about her irrational fear of skinwalkers.

Em: "Seriously, if I was on this hike by myself right now, my number one fear would be skinwalkers."

Me: "Not bears?"

Zach: "Who's the most famous skinwalker? Walker Texas Ranger."

Once upon a time, we went to the circus.

In trying to take a picture of ourselves and jumping the gun before the flash was done flashing, we captured this. I love love love this picture.

One of our best attempts.

The only picture of the actual circus I took. I was too amazed by all the hullaballoo to worry about busting out my camera. My favorite was when a guy exploded out of a cannon, but he was on fire! "I did not expect that!" I kept shouting to Dra over the loud music. Truly is the greatest show on earth.

What can I work on while I fake like I'm watching the Fast Five with my roommates? How about a video of some fun summer stuff? I gave myself away when I laughed, then they noticed I had headphones in. I'm not sorry.

Special thanks goes to:

* Cherry Hill

* Lake Powell

* Utah State Fair

This little lady turned 21 today.

I would lasso the moon for her.

Baby Abey Turns 3

How can you not adore this kid?

Mona Rope Swing

Isn't this little froggy so cute?

We always have fun at the rope swing: fishy water gets up our nose, some stranger always belly flops, people always get rope burn because they lack the upper body strength to hold on so they just slide down the gross rope ... However, this trip had some unique instances.

• Boys threw eggs at each other as they did tricks off of the rope swing. One boy got hit right in the tender bottom.
• A girl who stood for a good 15 minutes trying to muster up the courage to jump out of a tree ended up slipping and falling and landing back first in the water.
• A crazy dog ran around barking and growling at us. The dog's owner had shark teeth.
• Found the above froggy, a little boy might have smushed it trying to play with it.
• Tried out the mini rope swing, not so fun. Em tried to swing on it in a circle back to shore with no success.

Lava Hot Springs - Ward Trip

I love this picture. What the crap am I doing? Hilarious. Jon is the boy on the far right, and he and I tumbled down one of the waterfalls. I surfaced laughing and unscathed, he had a big cut above his eye. Sorry buddy. Sure was fun though.

The waterfall we tumbled down.

What a great trip! Our 3 hour drive took us about 5 hours due to a two big rig accidents, but I didn't mind too much because I loved rolling down the window and thanking the construction workers and making them smile. I rolled down my window when we passed the firemen, but they were super hot and I got really intimidated so I just smiled and kept my mouth shut.

We rolled in at about 10 o'clock at night and were greeted by a spectacular bbq. I was really excited to go to the hotpots, so a big group of us headed on over. I swear I burned my bum in one of the super hot pools, but it was fun being ridiculous and pretend flirting with tattoo boys to make our group laugh. Turns out I don't really like the heat in hotpots, my heart was racing. I swear they're not good for you. We saw speedos, massage trains, old gross men, rule breaking bikinis, it was a blast.

We came back and played games. Anyone played Ligretto? Well, it's Whacky 6. No one had ever heard of Whacky 6 and I took a lot of guff for it. I also learned a new game called Lucky Duck. More like Lame Duck. My dad graciously let us borrow his mattress pads so we camped out in the Tolbert's garage. I slept like a lamb as usual.

Floating the river was a blast. I regret not going down in Taylor's three man raft. A lot of people had major cuts and scrapes from getting rocked on the waterfalls. Other than Jon, our group did great. Poor Jon. I had so much fun I slept almost the entire way home: Sure sign of an excellent trip.

Dreams Come True

Yesterday was a glorious day. I got up and headed over to my school to continue decorating my classroom. I have really worked on matching colors and what not. I have never put so much effort into my room, but it feels nice. Feel free to come visit me, but I'll need to you to say you love everything.

Last night I had plans with my hilarious college friend Camille. Oh how I love my Camille. We decided to start with hitting up the batting cages. In college I would come home from a crappy day of waitressing, dump my saved quarters on the bed, turn to my Camille with, "Had a hard day, want to go hit some balls?" We had the best of times. Unfortunately, I'm not as good as I once was. Last night, I was swinging and missing every time, Camille told me to scoot back, it was the difference I needed. I ended up hitting one of the cute worker girls who ran to the middle to work on one of the machines. One in a million shot doc, one in a million shot.

We headed to dinner afterwards and chatted it up at Paradise Bakery where I reminded her of my obsession with purchasing a little kid bike. So Camille drove me over to WalMart and encouraged me to ride a few bikes around. I couldn't stop smiling. There's something about bikes that cheers me up immediately.

I did it, I bought a neon green and black boy trick bike. I asked Camille if she wanted to stand on the pegs at the back so I could give her a ride to the front of the store, she encouraged me to calm down a bit.

We drove to Camille's house and raised the seat and pulled off all of the stickers. We decided to bring our old bike gang back to life, (in college we used to ride over to James and Jackie's place), so Camille pulled her bike down from the ceiling in her garage, then we rode about 4 miles round trip to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple then back to her place. I probably embarrassed Camille as I waved to everyone as we passed by. We jumped curbs, bunny hopped, laughed, dodged glass, and I even did a trick for the line of cars as we crossed Bangerter.

Once back at Camille's, I confessed I was a little sweaty. I told her I might as well ride my bike home. She loaned me a backpack, and sent me on my way like a little kid on his way to school. Turns out, it's kind of far back to my place, but I just took 10600 South the entire way and it's basically downhill. I loved it. I promised Camille I wouldn't jump any curbs, and I'd play it safe. A little over 1/4 mile from my apartment I thought, "Holy crap! It is so hard to pedal... Oh no!" I jumped off, my new bike already had a flat tire! So I dug in my backpack, gulped a lot of water, pulled out my cell phone, and started walking my new bike home.

I called Camille and told her I made it home safely, then I called Emily to relay my amazing adventures. Then I got scared to haul my bike upstairs and confess to my classy roommates that I really did purchase a little boy's bike. Thankfully they just laughed.

Granite Flats Continued - Cascade Springs

I think these two pictures of Eli are hilarious. He looks so bored; but we actually laughed a lot.

Eli and Toby

*Some day I'll type up funny stories from the trip.

Emily Ferrell

Look at the treasure I just found on Emily's desk. I will laugh for weeks.

Em - You always know how to put the spring in Springfield.

Granite Flats - 2011

Helped Dra waterproof her new tent.

I admitted later to my uncles that I felt like a giant nerd walking around her tent spraying it with a water bottle. They laughed really hard when I muttered how pointless spraying the tent down was because it poured about two hours later.

I needed a break from the stress that is involved in helping my dad set up our family tent. So I came to the river to fill up a water gun, almost stepped on a snake, yelled to Dra, she couldn't hear me over the river, then watched it slither into this bush. We never told Eric we saw a snake right by his tent.

My Uncle Scott takes us up Mt. Timp every summer. He'd heard from the rangers that we probably wouldn't be able to make it to the top because of all of the snow, so he decided to head up on Tuesday for a test run to see how far he could get and he invited me and my dad. So Tuesday morning, my Uncle Scott, my cousin Brandon, my dad, and I headed up the trail. I was so excited that my dad was coming with us on the hike.

My hiking buddies.

My Uncle Scott is in front of my dad.

My cousin Brandon and I chatted a good deal as we hiked, but at one point we were just minding our own business, keeping quiet, then all of a sudden my Uncle Scott was yell-whispering at us, "Get back here! How the heck did you miss that?" We walked right by a moose. I thought he was big, my Uncle said he was a baby. Shrug.

We had already crossed some snow ... then came this.

We made it across just fine.

I was super scared as we crossed, I slid a lot, but it wasn't until way after the hike when my dad and I were headed back to the valley to shower that he admitted how scared he was. It was pretty sketchy in parts but the debris helped a lot.

The great thing about all of the snow is the waterfalls. Amazing! We kept saying, "Hey! We've never seen that one before!"

We slid down this whole thing. There's actually a chute at the top on the right. We were sliding down, then my Uncle Scott crossed over halfway down the chute, sat on his butt and yeehawed the rest of the way down the chute. Brandon and I were above him, so we crossed over to the chute and laughed really hard as we slid down. It's not fun to have wet-jeans-butt, but it was worth it, and it was hot enough that I was pretty much dry by the end of the hike.

As we were hiking down, we took a different trail that led to Scout Falls. The trail was super steep and went through a tree's roots. My Uncle Scott said he didn't want to climb it, but the roots were huge and it looked fun to monkey up. I told him I wanted to check it out. I loved climbing through the sturdy roots. My Uncle Scott and Brandon were right behind me, and we all laughed at how beautiful the falls were. My Uncle Scott went underneath the waterfall and pretended to wash his armpits. Too bad I was super lazy at taking pictures.

That night my sisters came up to Granite Flats. Andrea and Eric were excited to hike Timp, but not happy when we told them that you could only get about halfway without crampons and ice axes. The next morning, we sat around debating which hike to hike or whether to hike at all. I really wanted to hike as opposed to sitting around camp and playing games. I talked them into going up Timp again, promising them beautiful waterfalls, and off we went. I loved it. I hardly took any pictures, but above is a gem. Andrea needed a potty break.

My cousin Jessica, Emily, and I all crossed the snowfield. It was so much easier than the day before. We started hiking about an hour and a half later than we had the day before, so the snow was super slushy by the time we got there. Andrea and Eric hiked back down to my Uncle Scott and waited for us. We crossed to the top of the chute, Jessica loaned us garbage bags, I offered to go first even though I was crazy scared, and off I went. I regret not telling Em to wait a bit before going, I wish I had her descent on video. She was screaming the entire way and it looked like she came out of the chute. The video's of my cousin Jessica.

Toby Mister

My mom had the brilliant idea of letting Toby play with a paintbrush and water. He and I played with letters, but it was hard to paint and video at the same time.

My mom came out later and helped out. Isn't Toby the cutest?

Bell Canyon Hike with Zach

(Go ahead, shake your head in boredom, I realize this is around the 3rd or 4th time I've posted about this very hike.)

The 2nd falls is amazing; there's so much water! As Zach and I compared the differences between last year's trip and this year's, I reminded him how last year we had been riddled by mosquitos. I looked down to adjust my jacket ... and squished a mosquito. The spray from the waterfall made us so so cold.

We found a bridge! We're not sure if it was there last year, but crossing it led to a trail leading left of the waterfall. We were hoping for a better view of the falls, but the trail was super overgrown.

I loved this tree standing its ground in the middle of the waterfall.

Salt Lake Bees

vs.

Sacramento Rivercats

Win: 5-3

What kind of name is the Rivercats? Bothered me.

Loves:

• Churro
• #32 who I named "Little Kid". He looked kind of like the redhead chubster on Sandlot. He was fantastic, and I loved calling out to him.
• Watching awkward gross men try to hit on a skinny girl with fake boobs. Loved making my friends laugh by calling things out like, "No chance, you're old!" but making it look like I was commenting on the game.
• Helping the old people in front of us read their tickets so they knew which seats to sit in.
• Big rain drops
• Listening to the guy next to us tell us everything baseball and faking like I knew/cared what he was talking about.
• Embarrassing my friends by faking like I was super scared of foul balls and loudly complaining that I should have brought my mitt. (I really am scared of foul balls, just not super scared.)
• Watching the guy with a broken arm in a sling three seats down from me get nailed in the stomach by a foul ball, listening to him yell at the kid in front of him for not catching it, watching him lift up his shirt to show us the imprint of the stitches on the baseball, and me not being able to stop laughing for way too long once I knew he was okay.