Second Catch Up? Ketchup? Catsup? Something like that.

School started up again in August which meant we had to move Alyssa back down to Cedar City. It's always hard to move your only sister to college then come home to the empty house, until you realize that there will be no more fighting over the bathroom in the mornings. :) But it is sad to not have her around. Anyway, this year SFHS has gone to a 5x5 schedule. So we have a total of 10 classes and not 8 like last year. Its good because you can take more classes a semester and get your graduation requirements done faster, but there is usually a lot of homework every night.  Luckily I have a few easier classes to balance out the homework load.  My favorite class currently is Early Childhood Education. In ECE we learn all about teaching young children while we teach preschool!

Their favorite thing is launching balls in the air with the parachute.

September=Birthdays.
My birthday was a surprise.  The morning started with Alyssa HAVING to go up to Dollar Days at Randy's Record Store in Salt Lake. Basically they cram a warehouse full of duplicate records, mark them all a dollar, and sit back and laugh at the customers acting like it is black Friday.  After 3 hours, 3 LONG hours, we found a stack and bought them, including Alyssa's giant sealed mystery box.  I had my birthday dinner at Pei Wei in Sandy. Alyssa made me open my presents in the restaurant (quite embarrassing by the way).  Then the big surprise.
We got to go to our first Real Salt Lake soccer game. I was happy for two reasons, I love RSL, and I got to spend the night with my family, it was kinda like a birthday present for Alyssa and me.  It was THE best! Even though they lost.



Besides the birthday festivities, I conquered one of my fears! (Sort of) As a part of the FCCLA (Family Career and Community Leaders of America) presidency, we got to attend Utah State University's Recycle Redesign fashion show put on by their fashion classes. When we got up there, we toured the campus, then got to make our own outfit that would be featured in the fashion show.  My group unanimously voted me to be the model so I agreed and we started on our design.  We made a dress out of newspaper, and another group we worked with made a Seashell type dress with a poofy skirt. I wasn't nervous until I got backstage and saw the 600+ person audience. 



Our group after the fashion show.

Whelp, that wraps up our second catch up. Until next time! :)

Random Catch Up of Random Pictures

             As you know we haven't posted very much lately, but no worries! Posts will (Hopefully) be more frequent because I (Kelsie) will be posting every now and then. So, lets get caught up! First off, I am not as clever or funny as my dad, so there may not be as many corny jokes. :) Our random catch up starts with the beginning of the summer, Alyssa came home for the summer anxious for our first 'family outing'. We saw Anberlin in concert at the Complex.

Wing Nutz for dinner before the Concert

Lead Singer of Anberlin (Phone Picture, Sorry)

In July, I got the opportunity to go on Trek for Stake Youth Conference.  Our Trek wasn't a normal Pioneer Trek, we did a Book of Mormon journey.  We all met at the Stake Center at a whopping 7 am (better than 5am. :)) to load the buses. Due to a communication error, our buses were an hour and a half late, so we were assigned our families there, instead of at the Trek site.  After get to know you games, we loaded the buses and headed off to our first stop to do a service project.  You've probably heard of the new Jerusalem film site in Goshen Utah, but if not, it is where most of the Church videos were filmed the past 2 years or so.  Visiting the site was breath taking.  I really felt like I was walking the streets of Jerusalem in Biblical times.  

All Packed :)

Once we arrived at the Trek site in Elberta Utah, a whole 45 minutes away from Spanish Fork, we were assigned to a handcart and we set up camp for the night.  We made Family Titles of Liberty then had dinner.  

My family was the Abinadites. If you look closely you can see my lovely flag holding skills.  Here are more random Trek Pictures.

Don't get me wrong, our tunics looked and felt like hospital gowns, without worrying about it hanging open in the back.

Our entire Group.  

In August we went to another concert, this was part of the "Summer with Alex Goot and Friends" tour. We saw King the Kid, Landon Austin, Luke Conard, Sam Tsui, and Alex Goot. And the local artist that was sick and didn't really want to be there anyway.. Alyssa and I got in an hour early for a meet and greet, too bad their tour bus broke down in Arizona and they didn't get there until right as the show started, but we got to watch King the Kid do their sound check, and previewed a few of their songs.  They moved the Meet and greet to after the show, throwing off our train schedule, and that's a whole other story.

Sam Tsui

Alex Goot

Alex and Luke Conard at our meet and greet after the show, they did an acoustic performance of a few songs.

Me and Sam

And this concludes part 1 of our Random Catch Up of Random Pictures, tune in next time for a back to school/September update. :)

Have you met Junior?

Have you met Junior?  Well, let me introduce her to you.

 She likes pink, obviously.

 And flowers, duh, she's a girl of course.

 Well it's not much of a mystery, Junior is Kelsie, and you have met her before.  She has many talents such as model / photographers assistant.  She does a pretty good job at it too.

 Here she is helping out a friend by being a runway model and showing off an outfit made from recycled materials.

 You work it girl.

 Asian chef.  Kelsie has developed a talent for making spring rolls.  We frequent a Thai restaurant that makes spring rolls and we finally got the idea to make our own.  They turned out to be really simple to make and if I can get her to roll up some hamburger, cheese and bacon I think we might be on to something good.

 Just like a pro.

 Another one of Kelsie's talent's you have seen before, golfer.  And yes, you will have to endure a couple of months of golf pictures and shameless requests to go golfing.

 Here is the 9th green for the first tournament at Spanish Oaks.  Did you ever hear how Kelsie got the nickname "Junior"?  She got it when she joined the team last year when Alyssa was playing for the team and the coach couldn't tell them apart or had a hard time remembering her name or something like that so Kelsie became Junior to Alyssa's Senior.  Actually I think he was able to remember Alyssa's name, don't know why the name Kelsie gave him problems.

 So now that Alyssa has graduated and moved on to college life will the coach have an easier time remembering her name?  Of course not, she will forever be Junior as far as the school golf team is concerned.  It is so ingrained in the mind of her coach that when they announced the first tournament results this year over the intercom Kelsie was referred to as Junior Christensen because that is the name he sent in for the announcement.  The guy doing the announcements even stopped to ask, "Who is Junior Christensen?"

 This past weekend we we traveled down to St. George for a tournament.  It was a 2 day tournament where they played 18 holes at St. George golf course and then the next day played 18 at Dixie Red Hills.  They were lucky enough to get a cart to ride the first day but Saturday they had to walk all 18.  That meant we had to walk also.  You can see Lonna, Alyssa and Shelbie (Alyssa's roommate) sitting in the cart.

 By the way, if I had my choice I would golf at Dixie again just because it looked like this.  Red rocks, green grass, not just the fairways and greens but the entire area was green and the layout was more entertaining.

 We found out that we both hate water.  Stupid water.

So this is Junior.  Golf anyone?

All About Alyssa

I figured we had been in Mexico long enough so I decided to bring you up to date on what has happened since Puerto Vallarta.  We have had a bunch of things happen over the summer and the following months that this might take a few posts so I decided to split it into 2 different posts.  Now I just have to figure out the best way to split it up.  Good thing I have two daughters, if I had three this wouldn't work.  Let's start with what has happened in Alyssa's life.

After the cruise we decided to celebrate the summer by having Alyssa's knees scoped, both of them at the same time.  She did really good, we even had a couple of hours of entertainment when she was coming out of anesthesia.  After a week her pit crew had ice changes down to a science.  If you want to get her to laugh take the back of your right hand and put it over your right eye, now wave your fingers.  When you see her she can explain it to you. 

Then she went to college.  She is now an SUU Thunderbird all the way down in Cedar City.  It has been hard to have her 3 hours away, but the plus side is that she is close to year round golf just 40 minutes away.  More on that later.

Another good thing about her being 3 hours away is that it is not too far away that she can't come home over a weekend when something major happens, like a wedding and her sisters birthday. 

Alyssa has made some new friends at school.  This is Shelbie.  She is from Arizona.  She doesn't know Utah cold yet, I think.

You remember I mentioned golf right?  I decided I wanted to spend my birthday golfing with my 2 favorite golf partners.  You know those people who ask you who would be your ultimate golf group of all time?  I'm lucky, I already have 2 of mine.  Now if I could just get the third one to take up golf I would have a complete foursome.  Anywho, I was able to get a tee time in Hurricane at Sand Hollow.

They have a links course that turned out to be a really fun course.  My apologies to those non golf people out there, just think of it as a green grassy area with lots of little bumps and valleys that looks like it should be on the coast of England but has been placed in the desert of southern Utah.

Here is Alyssa on one of the par 3's.  A couple of apologies here.  First to Alyssa, I try not to take "butt shots" when I take pictures, I just didn't have another one available.  Second to non golfers, par 3 is... just go golfing and find out, it really is a fun, relaxing, aggravating frustrating game where you can be outside for a couple of hours and forget about the rest of the world.. 

This is the last hole, great finishing backdrop huh?  I had fun, it was a good birthday, thanks girls for going golfing with the fat bald guy.

Alyssa also came home for Thanksgiving.  It was awesome!  We almost died!  We went up to Jerry and Terri's house and had Thanksgiving in the man cave.  I want one.  I think we may have started a new family get together tradition of playing bunco.  We had so much fun we almost missed Blackthanksfridaygiving.  I call trademark on that by the way.  It's new because black Friday has invaded Thanksgivings turf by starting at 8 on Thursday.  I drove home as fast as Lonna would allow so the girls could change shoes and put on elbow pads.  We then observed something I hope to never see again, Walmartians fight over kids toys.  This will take some time to repress.  And that wasn't even the almost dying part.  That came the next day when we went to Sherry's cabin and rode the 4 wheelers.  After a quick warm up run with Larry he turned us (Alyssa, Kelsie, Kati and myself) loose on our own.  I let Alyssa guide us up the roads because I trust her navigation skills, the problem came when I said "let's head back down, here, this road looks OK"  Little did I realize how icy it was.  I could tell it was steep so I said we would take it slow.  You can imagine how icy roads and brakes get along.  Once I started going sideways I started thinking "Oh crap!  We are all going to crash and die!  What will I tell Lonna?  How do I tell Jenni?  What if I only break a leg when we all go over the cliff and I end up on my own floor and all my co-workers laugh at me?  Who's going to insert my catheter?"  Hey!  these are valid concerns and worries I have when faced with bodily harm.  Thankfully my 4 wheeler hit some snow and stopped sideways, Kelsie then stopped by running her wheel into mine and Kati ran into Kelsie, gently.  That's when I got off and saw Alyssa spinning off on the other side angling to the mountain side of the road and not the cliff.  I swear I heard her laughing.  It could have been me hysterically screaming, I'm not sure.  After getting Alyssa's 4 wheeler unstuck I let her guide us down the rest of the way.  We made it down safely.  Ton of fun though. 

Graduation Cruise part last

 Welcome back.  And welcome to Puerto Vallarta.  I like this place already.  Green and tropical looking, much better than the rocks and desolation of Cabo.

 And frogs.  Big frogs that play guitar.

 A short taxi ride will get you to the tourist trap, I mean shopping district.  It was nice to have a street to walk down and not have any cars to worry about.

 They did seem to have a lot of dead mannequins.

 Too soon?

 After we wore out the first shopping location we moved to the really cram packed off the beaten path no air conditioned place a few blocks north to resume our shopping spree.

 See, they are happy to spend dad's money.

 By this time we were severely dehydrated and happened upon this awesome ice cream stand on the boardwalk.  The owner came down from somewhere in this great land of ours, I want to say California or Colorado (I'm sure someone will correct me, also remind me what her name is) to sell ice cream and Popsicles that taste just the same as fruit.  The lime was delicious.

 We then went to visit some old church.  It was only a block or two away and I was all for taking some churchy pictures but they wouldn't let us, bummer.  So this is all you get.

 We finally found the beach.  It was wet

 It had big waves that would push you over.

 It had nasty rocks that would make you bleed.  I thought their beaches were supposed to be fluffy sand?

 We also saw a beached whale.  A bald, stark white with a farmers tan beached whale.  So sad.  Someone should have pushed it back into the sea.

 Congrats girls.

 Back on the boat for the 2 day ride home. 

 Oh, and more dancing.

Go graduates, Go graduates, it's your birthday!  Well not really, just felt like singing.