Colorado and the Train ride home!

Well, after spending a little over a week in Iowa, Edwin and Jennifer and the kids took me to the train station and I left Iowa. The train ride went fairly well, although the train was over an hour late getting into the station, and an hour late getting to Denver. Ben picked me up at the train station and took me the rest of the way home. It was nice spending almost a week with Ben and Shanna. I helped Shanna rearrange the basement, and also helped move the toys down into the basement. I went on a nice hike with Benjamin on Saturday. It was pretty, although it was snowing that morning. Then Monday morning, Shanna took me to the train station and I rode the train through the rockies, and through grand junction up to provo. It was a gorgeous ride. Thank you Leonora and Kevin for picking me up and letting me stay there.

Going to Iowa

Well, I figure its high time I update my blog! I have been a little slow at updating it lately.

At the end of the semester I decided I'd take a couple weeks vacation to go and visit Edwin, Jen, and the kids in Iowa, and to visit Ben and Shanna and their kids in Colorado.

I rode to Iowa with my friend Jessica Bahr that lived in Des Moines. We left friday afternoon, and spent the night at Ben and Shanna's in Colorado, then woke up and drove the rest of the way on Saturday. It was a pretty interesting drive, although I found Nebraska to be quite boring to drive through. Iowa was really pretty though, nice rolling hills and it was good to see green after being in Rexburg for the winter for so long. Edwin and Jennifer came and picked me up saturday night and took me back to their place. I helped Edwin teach his primary class, which was enjoyable going to primary again.

I then spent a day shadowing Edwin at the hospital. It was really interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed the hours I spent there, although it did make me a bit drowsy. While I was there Edwin also took me fishing for a day. I caught my first Bass that day. Edwin filleted it and cooked it that night. It was pretty tasty. I did get sick while I was in Iowa, but got feeling well enough that Edwin and I drove down to Nauvoo to go to the temple. I helped Edwin teach his primary class again and enjoyed that. Jennifer made me a purple tie that I wore to church as well.

I also spent half of a day shadowing a pathologist that lives in Edwin and Jennifer's ward. I really enjoyed that and it made me want to go to med school. The night before I left we also made tie dye shirts, which was pretty fun. I really enjoyed my stay in Iowa playing with Grace, Anne, and James and visiting with Edwin and Jennifer.

Shooting, Xc skiing, Snowshoeing, and a half submersed jeep.

Well, it has been a little while since I've posted on here and I've had quite a few adventures since then, so I thought its due time that I write about some of them, and put some photos up on here.

This year for valentines day, I bought myself a Shotgun because I once again found myself without a valentines. I find its a good way to treat myself, and get something that I've wanted for a while to ease t

he pain of singles awareness day. Its been fun to go shooting with people from school and has been rather adventurous.

I've also gone snowshoeing a couple of times, thanks to Linden for letting me borrow his

snow shoes. It has been a lot of fun hiking around in the mountains in the winter time with them, and I will definitely go more often than I have.

I have also gone cross country skiing a couple of times this winter, and will definitely be doing more of that this next winter. Its been fun.

Another interesting thing that has happened is that Rexburg housing decided that since our roof has been leaking the entire two semesters that I've lived here, that they should finally do something about fixing it now that its almost finals week, and is the perfect time to have a torn up apartment. They decided to rip out our skylight and re-roof the house, and while doing that I came home to a giant hole in the roof. They didn't even let us know

they were going to be doing it.

The most interesting thing that has happened recently though, is that I went off-roading with my roommate and some friends last night by the Menan Buttes. Dillon was up visiting from BYU and I Kayla Pascoe was with us. My roommate Marshall was going through a puddle when his Truck just died. It wouldn't start, wouldn't do anything. so I pulled him out of the puddle and was towing him back, when I realized we were going the wrong way, so we left his truck there, and all got in my jeep to head out. I was heading out, and being careful through the puddles, when we came to what would more accurately be called a pond-puddle. It was deceivingly shallow looking, but I still wanted to take it safe, so I thought I'd stick to the left side of it, which looked fine from the outside, but there was a hole right in the line I chose to go through the miniature lake. The engine died, and I could see water out of the drivers side window, that was slowly seeping in through the door. It was a pretty interesting thing to see happen. The water came all the way up to the driver side seat cushions, and the jeep was at about a 30 degree angle. We called some friends who came with their trucks and pulled me out, and towed my jeep back to my apartment. If all goes well, the engine is just hydrolocked and should be fine if I can get the water out of it. So hopefully all goes well. No one was hurt in the process, and I only had to wade through about 3-4 feet of water, and fumble numbly as I hooked the tow strap up to my jeep to get it pulled out. Luckily as we were headed out the door that night, I thought it would be a good idea to grab my coveralls, just in case anything happened I would be warm as I laid in mud to get my jeep out. I also always have my boots in the back of my jeep, for just such an emergency.

Ice Climbing!

I have wanted to go ice climbing eversince I started coming to BYU-I and saw that the school took trips ice climbing. I always tried to get someone to come with me butno one ever would, so I decided that if I was ever going to go ice climbing I should just take the plunge and sign up and go without knowing anyone else that was going with me.

I had to wake up at 3:30 and get

all of my stuff together and make it to the ORC to catch the van to go at 4 am. We then drove to Hyalite Canyon near Bozeman Montana and parked at a trailhead and took a short 15

minute hike to get to the ice. The leaders of the trip went and set up four ropes fo

r us to climb on and then came and gave us some instruction of how to ice climb and what to do. It was pretty cool being able to just hack into the ice with the ice tools and kick into it with the crampons and then just climb up it. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and found that I like ice climbing just like I like rock climbing. I did have to be a little careful of where I stepped though, crampons can rip your pants pretty fast, luckily I only had one mishap where I kicked a hole in my pants while climbing.

I also decided to take my hammock with me, which was nice so I could have a place to sit down and relax that wasn't in the snow. It was a long tiring day, but also very fun. After we spent most of the day on the mountain, we stopped for pizza at a place called

MacKenzie River Pizza Co. It was some pretty good pizza. We then left to head back to Rexburg and made it back at 9:30 pm. I highly recommend going ice climbing. It is very fun.

4 tests and more adventures

Well, this last week has been a busy one. I had four tests to take throughout the week, one for each one of my classes. So tuesday came around and I spent over 5 hours in the testing center taking my linear algebra test, and then my physics 220 test. I spent the entire day on campus because I was there from 8 am until about 10 pm, I had work at 7 and made it there right after I finished my physics test. At 8:30 I had my tutor teaching methods class to go to, and then I had a futsal game at 9:00 that I was late to because my class didn't get out in time. I enjoy being busy though, for the most part. Since I was so busy though, it meant the state of my apartment was a little bit lacking in cleanliness, but thats ok. I don't have any tests this next week and can take time to clean up and organize and get back into the swing of things. I did well on the 3 test scores that I've gotten back so far. The lowest was in my chinese class, a 90% with a 97% on my microbiology test and I got a 96% on my linear algebra test. I'm rather amazed at how effective the human brain is at learning and remembering all of the information that I have learned from my classes, its truly amazing.

So after I took 4 tests this week and was busier than I've been in a long time, I decided to have an adventure this weekend by going snowshoeing. It was the fist time I went and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had my buddy Jon, his roommate, and their dates come with me. I was going to take Katelyn with me as well, but she hurt herself snowboarding and wasn't feeling up to it. We went to Bear Gulch/Mesa Falls area and we were going to hike along the old railway trail, but I couldn't find where it started, so we just ended up hiking through the woods. I think this was a better choice though, because we were on untracked powder and it made snowshoeing quite a bit more fun that it would have been otherwise I think. Well, thats about it for my current post, I don't have the pictures from snowshoeing on my computer yet, so I'll put pictures up later.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, college life this semester is keeping me the busiest that I've ever been at college. I have 15 credits this semester, I'm working as a TA grading lab papers for my old Chemistry Professor, Brother Collins, and I'm working as a math Tutor doing my best to help others succeed in their math classes. So this semester is slightly busy. Two of the classes I'm taking are rather homework intense classes, Linear Algebra and Physics 220. I've never been a fan of homework, but I'm doing well with keeping up with the classes I have right now. My microbiology class is interesting, but its also been rather simple compared to the biochemistry class I just finished taking last semester. I'll see how I do on my first test though. I've decided to take a brief hiatus from dating until I get caught up on homework and tests, so since I have 4 tests to take this week, I most likely won't be going on a date this week, except I am planning on going snowshoeing for the first time this weekend. That should be a fun adventure and I'll be sure to take pictures of it. I had a fun time on my date last weekend. I took a girl out to dinner and then rock climbing at the local climbing gym. It was pretty fun. I think that she just wants to be friends though. Well, I'm always grateful for sundays, I've decided that I won't work or homework on Sundays, so its always nice to have a break. I also try to plan out all of my other work so that I don't have to do much homework or studying on the weekends. I figure I need to have some sort of social life and if its just on the weekends then that is fine by me, although I did make a futsal team (like indoor soccer) this semester. We won our first game 16-8. It seems like we have a pretty good team put together.

Well, in spite of how busy I am, I did take time to come home this weekend. Kevin, Leonora, and their baby came up to visit. They were also so kind as to bring me some dried mangoes from Costco. I also came home because Katelyn Hanny gave her farewell talk today in her homeward. She leaves on Feb, 9th for her mission.

Anyways, I think thats enough blogging for now. I'll just put a picture up of the lunch I made myself last week when I came home from class to make myself lunch. Oh I also forgot to mention that I made myself a potato cannon for fun. So thats been fun. Well enough rambling for now. I'll catch you all later!

Christmas Break

Well, this christmas break was a good one. It was a nice break from school for a while. I was definitely glad to be done with the two chemistry classes I was taking at the time, quantitative chemical analysis and biochemistry. I pulled an A- in both of them. It was a good christmas break though. It was a lot of fun playing with Joseph, Suzanne, Ali, and Ethan. I hadn't seen them for a while. I also tried paragliding with my buddy Dillon who went and bought a paraglider. It was a lot of fun. Sadly though, I got strep throat and was sick for the second week of the break, but I still went and played while I was sick. It was fun. Alas as all fun times start though, they must also end. I'm back up at college now. I'm taking 15 credits and working hard in my classes and working as a math tutor and a TA for my chemistry professor. well, thats about all I feel like writing for now. I'm going to try and update my blog more regularly. We'll see how it goes.