It's That Time Again

It is officially the time of the year that really truly feels like football season, yep, rain, snow, and freezing cold.

It was pouring rain at the BYU game last Saturday, luckily it stopped not long after the game started, but I sort of enjoyed it. Something about cold weather just makes football better!

 ...so mom, in case you're wondering, & I KNOW you are, you did miss out by sitting up in that fancy suite.

President Monson

I wasn't with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it. -Thomas S. Monson

Tyler is officially certain that there must be sports in heaven, because the Prophet attends Jazz Games! My cousin's husband, Mitch, was two suites down from the prophet and sent us a text telling us so. We couldn't see him from where we were sitting, but then LUCKY us. On our way out we walked right past President Monson getting into the elevator. It was so neat to see him even if it was literally only for a second or two.

I told Tyler later that the Jazz game was fun, but what really made it worth it was seeing the prophet!

With all that is going on in the world today, its so great to have an amazing prophet to help direct our lives and be such a great example of faith. I love listening to him speak, because he always has great advice and he always has a great story to share. He's also such a cheerful person. When he first became prophet I went to the conference center for conference. I was fairly close to the front making it so much easier to see his smiley face as he greeted all the apostles on his way in. After the session was over he walked down into the congregation and started greeting people. It was so neat to see him do that. He was instantly swarmed with people, so I didn't bother to try to shake his hand, but still cool to see how personable and loving he was with everyone.

In addition to seeing the prophet, we had a great time at the game seeing the Jazz beat the Suns.

Tyler also attempted to win us tickets to the next game by doing a bunch of pull-ups for the Marines, but he didn't do enough for the tickets. He did do lots though and his biceps looked big doing them, so I was still very proud! haha.

Fall Break.

Our fall break was super fun...

We went to the Jazz game.

Carved pumpkins with Tyler's work friend, Scott, and his cute wife Sharlyn.

 Left to right: Scott's pumpkin, Sharlyn's pumpkin, my pumpkin, and well, its BYU, do I have to say who would have carved that one?

We went to Pumpkin Land with Chelsey and Mitch just to re-live our childhood.
Notice who finally shaved off his nasty mustache :]

Our break was fabulous until Saturday afternoon rolled around when Tyler got some really Bad News! Saturday morning we dropped Tyler's car off to be looked at because it had been making a funny little thumping noise since Wednesday night. When we went back to pick it up I new something was wrong, because I dropped him off and waited in my car. I waited and waited and finally after he had been gone 45 minutes he came out and told me that LOTS of stuff is wrong with it and its going to take $4,000 to fix it! Needless to say, if we find a cheaper bid than the pricey dealership one, Tyler might be trading it for something else. And of course, his warranty is no longer good, because he hit 90,000 miles this week! All I know is cars suck.

It is really too bad this happened, because we both really love his car :( We will miss it if it goes!

My Dream Home

I believe I jinxed myself by posting about crickets and how one was once on my bed. Well shortly after I was sitting on my bed doing some good old homework and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something black moving. I sometimes see things that I think are bugs...I'm sorta paranoid like that. So I didn't panick at first, but then it moved more into my line of vision and I freaked out. Luckily I had a quilt laying on my bed and it was on the quilt, not my actual bed. So after I calmed down a little bit, I knocked the quilt onto the floor which meant I no longer knew where in it the cricket was. I begged my little brother to come downstairs to find it and kill it for me, but he wouldn't. Thankfully hours later my mother came to the rescue--the cricket was still hiding int the blanket. The next morning I woke up to find a spider on my floor in almost the exact spot the cricket was. Eww. I hate bugs. They are one of the few reasons I don't like fall.

In case you don't believe me, I managed to get proof.


I decided I need to live somewhere bug free!

...do you remember this guy?

 ...or this movie?

It's pretty much official, I want my own Bio-Dome, but mine will have absolutely NO bugs in it.

Thank you Pauly Shore for the great idea.

Oh Happy Day.

It's fall break and I am HAPPY! 

minus the fact that i found a cricket on my bed this afternoon. eww

Its been a stressful busy last few weeks so this break feels amazing. 

I am excited to have no homework and actually have time to breath!

Two thumbs up doesn't do my excitement any justice, so instead I went for 8 thumbs!

Props to my MacBook for making this possible.

Yay for Fall Break.

My sympathies go out to all you BYU students who won't be celebrating these next few days with me.

Guess you should have thought of that before you decided to go there :).

How to Get a Win:

If you want your team to win, just bet AGAINST them!

We are VERY loyal to our Cougs!

Tyler is extremely loyal to the team, but after the recent losing streak our faith was diminishing.

So much in fact, Tyler chose San Diego state on his pick 'ems last Saturday!

And what did they do?

They pulled out a Big W.

Needless to say, Tyler's pick 'em lost, but he was still a way happy camper!

Our cougs looked like a different team out there so we hope they keep up the good work.

GO BYU!!!

We were both in a great mood for the rest night so we celebrated like this.
Yay for winning weekends!

They're Baack!

I had NEVER ever heard of people getting crickets in their houses until they started showing up in MY house. 3 falls ago, I started noticing them in our basement. And not just occasionally, they would show up DAILY! Several new ones everyday, then I noticed, they were practically waiting for me. They love to chill at the bottom of our stairs. They REALLY crossed the line when one showed up IN my bed. I'm a complete bug wimp, so let's just say I didn't sleep in my own room for a week, I stayed in Kev's old room. I was very glad it was there for me. Luckily that year was the worst of them, last year there were way too many but none in my bed thank goodness. But this year, I'm getting concerned. I spotted 4 this weekend. One of them was HUGE. It looked like it was on steroids. I tried to catch it to kill it but it got away and hid before I could get to it. I hate that they can do that, and worst of all...I hate that sometimes I will kill them and think they are dead. Then I will go to get a vacuum to suck them up with and I will come back and they will be gone. I really don't understand why of all bugs, we have crickets in our basement, but we do. And I've mentioned them to other people in our neighborhood who have said they've had them too, but is this really a common thing elsewhere? Anyone else ever had them? I think it's disgusting. One reason that I hate fall.

Would you be ok sharing your house with something as disgusting as this little guy?

Sister Blackburn

I hope they call me on mission, when I have grown a foot or two.

I hope by then I will be ready, to teach and preach and work as missionaries do.

I hope that I can share the gospel, with those who want to know the truth.

I want to be a missionary, and serve and help the Lord while I am in my youth.

My friend Hope got her mission call this week and I couldn't be more happy for her.

She has been called to serve in the Cochabamba Bolivia mission.

She leaves on January 26 and I'm going to miss her.

She's been a great friend and been a part of some great Schaefer Beer & Grandma Joyce adventures.

They won't be the same without her.

But she's definitely ready to go serve the Lord.

And she has definitely GROWN a foot or two.

And as she recently put on her facebook status, she might be a little tall since the average Bolivian woman is only 4 1/2 ft. tall. (Hope is 6ft. tall)

Congrats Hope & Good Luck!

I had to post this picture, because 1. blogs are always better with pictures. and 2. because I asked Hope to take a picture with me before I left and she instantly asked if I was going to put it on my blog. So how could I not?

Pardon my gross hair, it was the result of dance class followed by a long walk to my car in the rain...followed by a sad attempt by me to fix it.

Blog Stalkers Annonymous

Good old technology has allowed us to pour our lives onto the great and glorious world wide web!

Facebook, Blogging, Twitter, Buzz, you name it--we do it!

And deny it all you want but we're ALL guilty of either blog stalking or facebook stalking. It's funny how it happens, on facebook, you look at a picture that a friend of yours is tagged in...pretty soon you're going thru the whole album and then you look at another album of there's and pretty soon your clicking on people in the picture and so on and so on....pretty soon your are looking at pictures of someone 5 states away & you don't have the slightest idea how you got there! Same goes for blogging, somehow you run across a blog and the person doesn't know you but you read their blog and feel like you do KNOW them. The best is when you finally meet one of these people, say a friend of a friend, and in the back of your mind, your like I do know who you are, but only because we have 80 facebook friends in common and your in all the pictures...we've never actually met!

Today I had a funny conversation about blog stalking with Chelsey --how we've seen someone in the grocery store & they don't know us, but we follow their blog. How funny it is, how we stumble upon blogs and then even though we don't know the person we read them cuz they're cute or they are great writers, or whatever the reason be. Then we wondered people do the same thing to us (blog stalk). I don't find my life very exciting or STALK worthy, but hey you never know!!!

And then there is the debate, if your going to someone should you leave a comment, or "follow" them so they're at least aware you're doing, making it a little less creepy. Or would they find you doing that more creepy/weird? I'll admit, I've got many blogs I read that have no idea I read them, some that I decided to "follow" even though they don't know me.

So here is our question...what do you do? and have you any funny stories of run-ins with people you stalk on social networking site or on blogs? and thirdly, if your going to stalk a blog are you brave enough to add a comment? ...p.s. if you do happen to stumble upon my blog & stalk it, now would be a perfect time to admit it! And I promise I won't think your weird or a Chester (unless you really are in fact a Chester), heck chances are I'll be flattered people actually read this!

CornBelly's

 Friday Night we went to CornBelly's at Thanksgiving Point with Tyler's sister's family. My sister & sister-in-law both work there & we were lucky enough to land some free passes off of them. We had lots of fun & were so glad we invited little kids around, they made everything way more fun! There was lots of fun activities for the kids & we all enjoyed trying to get through the corn maze! We eventually gave up & decided to come back out the exit once we ran back into it. I guess that is what we get for not grabbing a map on the way in! It was a perfect way to start October...although it felt a little strange to be at a Corn Maze & not be the slightest bit cold. It was nice & warm out & I sure didn't mind. I was also really glad to get away from the awful BYU game...& I think Tyler wastoo. We saw the first part of it before leaving and it was enough disappoint us & be ready to get out for the night!

Me & My Mustached Date! 

Something about fall always makes Tyler want to grow him some facial hair.

 

 Lydia & all her cute kids with us. 

(Sadly, we don't have a picture with Dustin. He was kind enough to take the picture for us.)

  Chaston loved this ride. He kept waving and giving us a thumbs up!

 I think Tyler & Dustin had as much fun on the tricycles as McCall did, if not more!

 Tyler was very eager to hop up on this tractor.

Brinley loved going down the slides, she could have stayed there all night.

McCall was such a cute big sister to take her down with her.

McCall, Chaston, and Brinley on the fire truck.

Girls Night with the Hunsaker's.

Tyler's mom had all the girls over for a girls night while all of the boys went to priesthood session.

We gave ourselves pedicures & had lots of fun doing it!

Its clear he's NOT an Eagle Scout YET!!!

So yesterday afternoon I called home looking for my sister who wasn't answering her cell phone. Nate answered & talked to me for a bit before he decided to inform me that he had STABBED himself with a knife. Yes, I said STABBED. I didn't even think it was for real. He's kind of turned into an onoxious little tween lately...so I thought he was pulling my leg. But I asked and he was serious. Then he proceeded to tell me it was bleeding really bad, but he didn't think it was too bad of a cut.

He was home alone but luckily my dad works semi close and rushed home to take him to the ER. 10 stitches later, and his leg was back in tact.

Funny thing is on the phone with me while he was waiting for my dad Nate thought the whole thing was sooo funny! This is how the conversation went.

Nate: Nicole, want to know something sooo funny?

Me: Sure.

Nate: So I was sitting there with my pocket knife & thinking about the scout motto and all that good stuff, and how we're NEVER supposed to cut toward ourselves...and right as I was thinking I should stop cutting that way I stabbed my leg....(he then proceeded to laugh).

Needless to say, he's still got to learn a few more things before he gets his Eagle.

I think he learned to be more careful with knives though...he learned stitches hurt WAY more than actually stabbing your leg...and the Emergency Room is no fun!

...however, he did think it pretty cool that his knife had blood on it. And was very excited to show me the blood on his shoes this morning! --gross!