Dear Diary

One year ago:

Dear Diary,

This super cute, funny guy in my ward has been hanging out with me a lot lately and thinks I'm cute and feeds me cookies and goes to Indian reservations with me and goes camping with me illegally in state parks and held my hand the other night (only after waiting for two nights to finally do it) and wants me to be his girlfriend.  This is so great!

Love,
Danielle

Okay, not exactly how it went down, but pretty close.  Just picture it.  It's pretty good, right?  So given multiple opportunities to hold my hand, he waited until the third night in a row of watching movies to finally bite the bullet.  I guess Fern Gully just didn't provide the right ambiance.  He just *had* to have the mood set to It Takes Two before he could make his move.  Can't go wrong with that, amiright? 

Soooooo anyhow, it's been a year since those proceedings took place.  And guess what?  WE'RE STILL DATING!  And since we are, we decided (or rather, I hinted that I wanted to and he so graciously planned to) celebrate on our recently established year mark.  So we did.

Sometimes, and by sometimes I most definitely mean all the time, we suck at coming up with dates.  We spend a lot of good, quality time together but when it comes to a date, we kind of both stare at each other and go,"uuhhhhhhhhhhh....what do you want to do....?"

Also sometimes I can be super cheesy and find these ideas that never in a million years would I have thought I would do.  Until I started being in a relationship.  This idea was for a date night jar where you write down a bunch of date activity and dinner ideas on popsicle sticks and put them in a jar.  And BAM, we have date ideas for a loooooong time (we also could get high for a long time with all those sharpie fumes in there--yikes!)

We didn't have to use the jar that night, though because Dillon had already made plans, woooooo!  He also had made me a gift which I love because it lets me know that he is paying attention to the things that I say.  What is this awesome gift, you ask?  It was a little thing he designed using the words to my favorite song by Mat Kearney called Count on Me.  I mentioned a few times casually that I liked it so I was pleasantly surprised when he gave it to me.  Best bf ever!

 And then he took pictures of these things with his way-nicer-than-mine (totes can't find mine anyway) camera so that I could blog about it :)

January, you've been beautiful, albeit COLD.

You've also been busy. 

With the new year brought a new school semester because, that's right!!!!, I'm in school again.  I'll finish someday, people.  I promise. It's been fun so far, but man did I forget how homework takes over your life.  Good thing I have a supportive boyfriend who sits by me (while watching basketball on a different device) and lets me do homework on a Saturday night.  So LAME (but good).

Also with the new year brought another calling.  I am still a stake institute teacher every other Thursday night but I was added to the service council in my ward and go to weekly meetings about service and fellowship.  I am looking forward to the opportunity to serve more. 

Also with the new year brought the formation of a new dinner group.  This is a unique dinner group, though.  In most groups each person takes a turn making dinner once every few weeks, depending on the size of the group.  In this group, everyone gives me $10 a week and then I plan a menu and cook every night Monday through Thursday.  It is the best kind of dinner group in my opinion :)

All this new and busy stuff also brought a little bit of crazy.  And when it gets cray cray around here, Danielle does stupid things like this:

She accidentally brings home the bank drive through canister.  Whoops!

Shout Out

Shout out!!!

To my mother Teresa for getting me a Kitchen-aid for Christmas and then letting me have it a month and a half early so I can bake delicious things for myself others.

To Costco for having Kitchen-aids on sale.

To winter for not being that bad...yet.

To Allison for being here over the holiday break and doing things with me like eating food and going to the temple.

To my fridge for (mostly) keeping things fresh so I can eat food.

To my garbage for graciously receiving all the things my fridge rejected.

To Dillon for leaving his TV at my apt so I can watch things like Harry Potter while everyone is gone.

To Dillon, again, for calling me before his boat set sail so I could hear his voice one last time before he was out of range for one whole day. ;)

To Amazon for remembering that I had a $12 gift card balance and for giving me free, super fast shipping.  

To my oven for cooking my snickerdoodles juuuuuuuust right. 

To my Christmas lights for being sparkly. 

To Delta Airlines for flying me home to my family tomorrow night!

WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Photo bombing!

We went as a ward up to Temple Square to see all the Christmas lights (and to try to spot our friend Megan who is serving a mission there--okay, only I was doing that). 

We gathered around at a certain point and took a group picture but it wasn't until later that we found this little photo bombing gem:

 

Kills me!!

All the glory of D.I. is now in my living room

D.I. means Deseret Industries which means Goodwill or the Salvation Army which means cheap clothes and a lot of old stuff that people just shipped in from their garage. 

INCLUDING FURNITURE, you guys. 

So there I was, just minding my own bidness, wondering how hard it would be to re-upholster a weird old chair that I happened to be crouched down and looking at on my way to the old frame section (for a pinterest project, what else? The winter months are long), when all of a sudden there was a man standing by me.

I looked up and realized it was a creepy man (with bobby pins holding his hair back) standing OVER me, grossly invading my personal space.

He introduced himself as a salesman and wanted to know if I had any questions about the furniture or prices.  I was a little discombobulated as to how close he was standing and at what angle. Also, might I mention that it was over the back of the chair, because it was and it looked awkward.

I wish you all could have been flies on the wall or that someone had been recording it because, honest to goodness, it felt like I was on Candid Camera. 

I said thank you and that I didn't have any questions because the prices were all written on the price tags.  Guy didn't give up and let me know, super weird style, that prices could always be negotiated wink, wink, smile.

If I wanted that chair I was looking at to be $10, it could be $10 dollars.  I still said no thanks, I was just looking but then he started telling me about the furniture in his living room at his parents house and how the ugliest, oldest pieces were the most comfortable and how when he has a house of his own someday and on and on and on. 

So, I said I'd take the chair. Best salesman EVER.

I guess I'm going to have to learn to re-upholster stuff now because my "pladdish" chair (totes what he wrote on the slip even though I told him I was pretty sure it was floral) is hangin out in between our two new, classier couches that we got from the neighbor girls who were getting new couches for real.

The day that Pat the Penguin came to live with us

Remember back when we rearranged our living room due to new furniture?  Also remember how we were left with a gaping hole of non-decoratedness (litz a word) on our far wall b/c Martha decided to take her Paris picture with her? 

I sure do.  That blank wall has been mocking us ever since.  It would blind you right when you walk into our apartment and then laugh about it to your face. 

But I'm dating this super cool guy that can draw and paint and everything else like the such as.

So he made this:

Isn't he the best? Seriously, though, who do you know more awesome? You don't.   

First world problem:

My glasses won't stay on.

Show of hands, who knows that I even wear glasses (roommates and family excluded)?

Well, I do.  Except that I wear contacts instead because I've always HATED wearing glasses.

Out of medical necessity, I HAVE to wear them.  No, I'm not wearing them because I'm getting that awesome surgery that fixes your eyes (if you'd like to donate to that cause...).  I'm wearing them because I picked up a couple infiltrates (not a joke, totes what they're called) in Belize.

They're just these little white milk droplet looking guys that I noticed my last day on the boat.  They freaked both me and mom my out, so she tracked down my family's hometeacher (who is an eye doctor) and had him look at my eye.  Turns out I'm not going to go blind like we thought--whew. 

He just said that I would need to wear my glasses for a few weeks so that they could go away.

WEEKS?!?!  That's right, folks.  I have been wearing them ever since I got back from Belize almost 3 weeks ago.  That's crazy talk for someone who only wears them in 7 minute stretches right before bed.

This is super convenient because 1. I have ZERO peripheral and 2. they are too big and won't stay on my head.

It was cool picking up my glasses from the ground 87 times a day, until I started wearing one of these guys to hold my glasses on behind my ears.

Problem solved.  Thank you, stretchy headband.  You are waaaaaaaay better than the plan of using those chain/necklace thingies that old people wear.

Since you've been wanting to know:

My trip to Belize was A-mazing.

Last year, my parents made plans with my uncle, his girlfriend, and some friends of theirs to rent a catamaran for a week and go sailing off the coast of Belize.  I made plans to go home and babysit my little bros.  Once I got home, though, my dad got pneumonia and couldn't go on the trip.  That is how I ended up going to Belize.  Crazy, right?

The whole time I kept thinking to myself, "I'm in Belize, oh my gosh.  I can't believe I'm here."

Despite the one morning of seasickness (thank you dramamine for curing my seasickness and Teresa for getting that bag for me), I had an AMAZING time.

If you know me, you know I love boats and swimming and water.  I needed a few pep talks to get me in the water around sharks, though.  It was heaven, despite the sharks. 

We got a lot of nice shots, BUT I forgot/didn't have time to put them on my computer.  SO, all I have are the ones from facebook.

Enjoy:

 

YES PLEASE

My birthday is only a short four months away, so this gives all you guys plenty of time to figure out how you're going to get THIS to me:

It's perfect.

JK BFF, but seriously, isn't it so cool?

Found here.

Meet Dusty

This is Dusty:

 He is Dillon's adopted brother

 He has muscles and likes to watch skimboarding

 

 He has great hair and personal style

It was his birthday last month (4/20) and we all celebrated.  

Happy 29th, Dusty!!

Awesome Antics

Last week was finals week for BYU.  That meant that the previous week was the last few days of classes and reading days.  All my roomies were a bit stressed, as was the general population here.  Many hours were logged in the library.  But not by me.  I spent only one evening in the library.

Stacy had texted me earlier that particular day, telling me of all the annoying people who surrounded her as she was trying to get her papers written.  Some of them included Clicky Girl who kept clicking her mouse for an hour in an attempt to win a game, maybe.  Also, there was Mister Cough Every Five Seconds.

As Stacy was heading back to the library that night, Dillon and I were heading to Walmart to snag all the on sale Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs that were left over before they were all gone. 

Someone asked where we were going, to which I responded, "The library!" as a joke.  But that gave me the idea that no one expected us to be at the library and that would give us the perfect opportunity to surprise Stacy and do to her all the annoying things she had told me about earlier!

So we went to Walmart and got a year's rations of those eggs, and then headed to the library.  Sometimes when I am up on campus I feel like an undercover cop because I don't go to BYU but people don't know that when they see me.

It was like a treasure hunt trying to find Stacy in the Asian section and while looking, we ran into my other roomie who we enlisted to help!

She got her friend to cough every five seconds while I clicked on a computer and Dillon threw jellybeans at Stacy.  It was short lived since we didn't want to annoy all the people actually studying.

But we weren't done yet!  We wanted to do the same thing to another friend.  Sadly, his answer to our inquiry of his whereabouts was that he was going on a run.

So, naturally, we tracked him down and blasted Eye of the Tiger out of Dillon's car as we drove behind him.

It was a very successful evening.  

FABULOUS NEWS!!!!!

1.  Saved by the Bell is now on Netflix, and yes, I have watched it already.

AND

2.  I have been called to be a stake Institute teacher!  I LOVE teaching and am super excited!!  I will be teaching every other Thursday night during the summer, starting May 10th.  Wish me luck!!!

Vacay

Well, the weather took a turn for the worse last week during my family's visit.  Mother Nature was once again confused as to what season she wanted to be experiencing. 

Luckily we only spent a day and a half up here in all the crazy, snowy weather.  Most of the trip, my family was down in sunny St. George. 

We forgot cameras, SD cards, and batteries, swam as much as possible, and had our first sno cones of the season!

Most memorable part of the trip?  When Matt ate his weight in cottage cheese at Tucanos.  Not a joke.

As always, enjoy the picture selection:

 in Zion

 hotel sponsored Easter egg hunt

 Snow Canyon down in St. George

 super good at getting in formation for pictures

 on the trail

 sibling love

 educational markers (don't know what that was for)

 Patricia out in the middle of nowhere

 brave Geoffy climbin' rocks

 no firearms :(

 Matt just being a mountain goat

incredible views

And those, folks, are the only pictures we managed to take.  What can I say? We live in the moment.  

All In a Day's Work

What happens when you drop a whole canister of plaster on the ground:

Not TOO bad.  You should have seen my pants.

A two'fer

That's right readers, you get two posts in one!!! And you only had to look once!!!

The first shall be exactly what Stacy posted about (which, I SWEAR we don't plan--we just do all the same things, together).  It shall be titled:

Chalk Up My Nose

Here's what happened:  we went to the Festival of Colors down in Spanish Fork (even though last year I said I didn't ever need to go again due to the amount of chalk I inhaled) because I'm a sucker for a good time.  We wore painters' suits to combat the extensive clean up involved afterward.  

 before

 got myself a 'stache

 not clean anymore

 yes, please, hit me in the face again

 llama llama ding dong

 don't mind my freakish oopa loompa legs or demon face

 completely covered and DONE

Post numba two is:

FHE Wild and Crazy Style

We combined with another group and competed against them in a series of RIDICULOUS games.  

Some of them include:  unwrapping a present with oven mitts on, pulling every tissue out of a box with only one hand, blowing a bubble and then blowing it across the room without popping it, moving an Oreo from your forehead to your mouth using only your facial muscles, a scooter relay, and my person fav, balloon musical chairs.  

The only way to explain is a video (okay, it's not, but the video is so much funnier than any explanation I could give). 

(maybe) needless to say, I got out on this round b/c I didn't pop the balloon in time.

Pi Night

Who knows what significance March 14 has? 

I sure didn't know that it was a holiday for math nerds everywhere.  I found out that it is PI day and that most people celebrate Pi day with PIE. 

I am now converted to math and all its holidays.

We celebrated the splendid day of 3/14 with a plethora of pies.  They were all soooo good.  I LOVE PIE!!

Masterminding

What to do on a Saturday night when your BF is out of town?  Play Mastermind with your BFF, of course.

It was my first time playing, folks.  And my LAST.  Game CRAZY.

I felt like I was in the middle of a math test.  Serious mental block after every move.  The colors kept taunting me, "So you think you're right?  Got this in the bag, do you?"  And them BAM, wrong color, wrong placement, wrong, wrong, wrong. 

Apparently I have no deductive/logic skills.  But Stacy does.

 Got it in FOUR tries, take that Mastermind!!

Gloating over her elusive pattern choice.

At least I am fulfilling my goal of trying something new everyday.  Yesterday was "confuse your brain and make yourself feel like an idiot."  CHECK!

This is not a test!!

What was your favorite part of elementary school?  Maybe art?  Maybe recess or lunch?  Maybe even sustained silent reading (which was super cool, especially when it was a read-a-thon and you could bring your pillows and stuffed animals and sit under your desk--or someone else's)?

Mine happened to be FIRE DRILLS.  Seriously, though.  It was always an exciting time.  You never knew when it was going to happen (except most of the time they told you it was going to happen "some time today.") so you would be sitting there, doing your work and then BAM! Fire drill.  The sirens would buzz and everyone would look at the teacher so that she could tell you what to do, even though everyone knows that when the sirens go off you exit the building immediately.  We were always told to leave our stuff behind which was a little disconcerting to me, even though it was a drill.  What if it hadn't been a drill and my Lisa Frank folder had gotten burned up?

This afternoon at church we had a fire drill.  Except it wasn't a drill.  It was right in the middle of our first class.  We were learning by listening to a talk by a man using a football analogy.  Right when he was about to say that the ball was hiked, the fire alarms went off.  We were all pretty confused because it sounded as though a whistle for the game had been blown.  When we figured out that it was in fact the fire alarm, only I seemed to be excited.  There was no teacher to look to so I felt it my duty to get everyone moving.  "Come on people, fire drill!!! Grab a buddy and head for the door!!!"    

We all exited safely and stood around outside while the sirens kept wailing (very loudly).  Stacy and I had decided not to bring our coats that day.  Bad idea for the middle of February.  We quickly found a place in the sun until we were told to go home. 

We were then told we would be able to come back for our last meeting at its regular time.  When we did mosey on back up the hill, we found our meeting room a little toasty/muggy due to the boiler that had been leaking steam and caused the fire drill.  The temperature was finally perfect for me. 

Jobless No More!!

 
That's right, I'm a working girl again as of this morning.

I applied for an orthodontic tech position last week, got a call for an interview on Monday, interviewed Tuesday, got the job today, and start tomorrow!  Woohoo!

I will be pouring up models of impressions that dentists from around the country send the lab at which I'll be working.  It's every morning Monday through Friday and works perfectly with my school schedule.

********************************************************************************************************

In other news, we went up to Park City this last weekend.  No, not for the Sundance Film Festival (though Dillon and I went to a show up at the Sundance Resort earlier last week), but for the people watching.

I was so hoping to see Bruce Willis but alas, all we saw was a crazy man who kept shouting at us,"I think I'm going to the show!!" and Grandmother Willow at the Family History Center on Main Street.  The senior sister who set up a movie for us LITERALLY ran to bring us popcorn during "Remembering Nauvoo."

(do you see her?)

The night ended with us going The Pie and getting the best BBQ Chicken with smoked Gouda pizza I've ever had, while watching a man at the table next to us experiment with one of those smokeless cigarettes.

Photo shoots can be good for your education.

At least that was the case on Saturday.

The first day of my history class brought the news of EXTRA CREDIT, which I absolutely adore.  All I had to do was drive for a few hours to one of many different monuments or national parks commemorating the past. 

My friends and I chose the Fremont Indian National park about two hours south of Provo.  We took the back route and stopped at as many thrift stores as Cameron could find.

One of the requirements was to stay at the site for THREE HOURS.  What better to do at that place (that took you 20 min to discover entirely) than have a photo shoot?

You are welcome.  BTW the guys are doing what is called leaning.  It's all the rage in Never Never Land.

Killing me right now.