The Dogs

Lizzie and Darcy were very calm and perfectly photogenic yesterday, which never happens so I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures.

O snap.

The Brotherhood's Conclusion...

"Why must all good things come to an end?" - Nelly Furtado couldn't have said it better.

We concluded our Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants last night by watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. It was an emotional night filled with friends, candles, and burnt popcorn. Our awesome, white pants traveled the world. They went to Disney World, New York (2x), St. George, Cedar City, Italy, Switzerland, and France.

Traveling the world can take it's toll on a pair of pants, and this was no exception. Our white pants were no longer just white. Since one of the rules of the traveling pants is that they can never be washed, they took on a yellowish tint with splotches of black, gray, brown, and blue. Last night after the movie, the pants got their first wash in almost six months. And how did they turn out??

Before and After
(Slight exaggeration)

Here we all are at the commencement exercises, about six months ago... (Notice Tim's face)


And last night.... (And Justin's in this)



A group of friends brought together by pants...

We are awesome.

The Greatest Elephant Ever Made

Some people slept with bears, I slept with an elephant, and I would like to dedicate this post to my little stuffed friend, who is also my oldest possession. He is named, simply, Elephant, and my sister, Kimberly gave him to me before I can even remember. I picked him up about a week ago and realized that I've been neglecting him after all he has done for me. He slept by my side through thick and thin, hot and cold, and now that I'm older it's time he gets some recognition, in the form of a blog post. He'll always have a spot in my heart, and my bed.

I am the Hero of Hyrule!

I've finally done it! After 18 and a little years, i finally beat the original Legend of Zelda on the NES- and with one arm! Ganon didn't stand a chance against what I got!

What a joyous occasion it was!

A Mission Farewell, a Brick Wall, and a Cow from Hell

...not in that order.

Yesterday was pretty decently eventful day. It started off, like every Saturday, with me trying to sleep in, only to be disturbed by the morning activities of my family and our two overly noisy dogs. Eventually my dad comes into my room and tells me to get up and do some odd job. This morning it was to help clean out the garage of all our family's piles of worthless junk that seem to gather every summer.
Lucky for me, my buddy Robert came to pick me up at ten so we (Robert, Jack, and I, along with Robert's special guests, his cousin and her fiance) could go tail-gate at our final BYU game together... Robert leaves on his mish in about a week and a half and gave his farewell talk today. He gave a great talk: funny, inspiring, and just plain good.

BYU easily laid waste to SDSU at the game. After Robert dropped me off we met up again to play basketball at his friend James' church. I swear, whenever we play with James, he ends up bringing along at least one idiot. I never know which person it is until we start ballin. The way you can tell this person apart from the others is that he believes the very survival of the team depends entirely on him. Yesterday this person thought that he was JJ Redick in the sense that he would try to shoot the ball from about 6 feet behind the 3-point line. It didn't really matter that any of his 4 team mates were open. If he didn't take that shot - We wouldn't stand a chance! What a freaker.

Later that night I went to Rachel Smith's house to hang out with her while she was visiting from Logan. We talked for awhile before going to Smith's to get some candy for her and egg nogg for me. At Smith's we decided to buy caramels and make caramel apples. As we searched for the best apples to use in our little activity, we stumbled upon the "Grapple." Looks like an apple, tastes like a grape! Needless to say we bought some of those as well.

Our caramel apples didn't look very impressive but tasted pretty good. Mike called and came over with three other guys and partook of the caramely fruits of mine and Rachel's labors. It was at this time that Rachel causally informed us that she had a long horned cow in her back yard. We were a little skeptical so she grabbed a flashlight took us outside to show us. It turned out that it was actually on the other side of the fence of her back yard. We shone the flashlight into the darkness on the otherside of the fence but the yard was too large and we couldn't see anything. Mike and I decided to hop the fence and look for this cow. We slowly moved into the darkness, flashlight in hand. We got close to a small shed-like structure and I shone the flashlight into it. That's when we saw it's eyes looking at us. They glowed green in the light. It started to slowly walk out of it's shelter and that's when we saw the massive horns on it's head. In the darkness it seriously looked like something straight from Hell. I don't remember all that was said and done, but about two seconds after it started out of the shed towards us, it turned its walk into a run straight at us.

Running from a charging Hell cow is just as intense as it sounds.

Luckily, with some difficulty on my part, we made it over the fence. The next hour consisted of Mike and I telling our story about 25 times, making it sound better every time.

Eventually we were joined by Tim, Tyler, and Chris. We all went to Cascade park to play steal the flag with Tim's brother Sam and a bunch of his friends. Mike and I volunteered to be on defense of the flag and the jail. Now, how I managed to break my arm by running as fast as I could into a wall is hard to explain but I will try my best. The "jail" was a bench that runs along a wall on the East side of the school. About a half hour into the game a couple people were trying to free their team mates from the jail and I was trying to block on in particular. He tried to run around me in a curl route to the jail. Trying to beat him there, I ran fast as I could straight at the jail to try and cut him off. About two feet before the jail I tagged him but I guess that since I was so focused on him, I didn't realize that I was headed straight for the brick wall and when I finally did realize this, I had a split second to put out my hands to stop myself. I hit pretty hard and fell to my knees holding my right arm in pain. Fortunately that pain wore off and I kept on playing.

Later at Tyler's house I realized that I couldn't straighten my arm all the way, and it hurt to bend it too far, but didn't really think about it. It wasn't till I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping in pain because I had rolled over onto it, that I realized that something was a little messed up. It looked like I had a very obese elbow. I really don't know why, but I decided to tough it out till morning and then told my parents I needed to go see a doctor, but only after Robert's farewell! So that's what we did! They took some x-rays, during which I felt some of the worst pain of my life as I tryed to position my arm how they wanted it. They told me later that i had a Radial Head Fracture. I can't have a cast for it because it would make my elbow stiffen up so all I've got is a sling and some Pain Killers. It's not all bad though, my parents tie my shoes for me and plus, I've always wanted to break a bone. I can still use my fingers, I just can't put my hand in positions that make them useful. However, there are certain things that I've found to be difficult without the use of my right hand.:

1.Taking off / putting on shirts - This has to be the worst part. I don't have a cast to stabalize my elbow from bending so getting in and out of t-shirts makes me want to scream.

2.Peeing - It's rough, and potentially messy.

3.Tying shoes - I feel like a little child asking my mom to tie my shoes.

4.Scratching - Some places are inaccessible to my left hand and will forever itch.

5.Sports - I'm in a volleyball class at BYU. That's a no-go now.

6. The Trapese - It's hard to hold on with one hand

Butter

I saw the second Batman movie for the fourth time last night, and guess what! It's still awesome.
I saw it at the new theater in front of the mall. They opened it up for a free night of movies for University students. The best part of the night? Free popcorn and drinks, and at this theater they let YOU put on the extra butter. Never again will I be watching a movie with a lack of greasey love on my warm, salty, kernels. Yum.

That was sick.

The Cathedral of the Madeleine

On Saturday I completed one of my tasks in order to prepare for my trip to Spain. The assignment was to visit the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City using only public transportation. The idea was to help get us used to using public transportation since that's all we'll be using while we are in Europe. The Cathedral was awesome I didn't even know this place existed! Enjoy my awesome pictures:

Crazy cool. This is called a tympanum. It took seven years to make, and it's on the front of the church.

The ceiling was the coolest part. It was made to look like a starry night.

We stayed for the beginning of a mass before we headed out. To begin, they had a youth choir sing. The way that their voices reverberated off of the walls made for an amazing, booming sound. Once the pastor started his sermon, my group and I decided to leave because it was a little.
Before we got on TRAX to head back to the bus stop, we had lunch at The Lion House, and I would recommend this place to anyone. It was delightful.