What The Shrek?

Emily and I had and interesting Saturday night. We decided to make some more of our medley music videos. We had some technical difficulties, as you will encounter in one of the videos, but all in all they turned out pretty well.

Lunch, Hammock, Study

I enjoyed a nice lunch at school today, by myself of course. But I was quite amused by what happened. If you are familiar with the U of U, there is a very large grassy region by the union bulding. It is covered with tall, old trees, and it provides for a nice lunch area and reading. Well, today as I was eating, I glanced acrossed the way a little and saw a student fussing with a large blanket-like material. I thought he had brought a blanket to sit on while studying or whatever. I went back to reading. A couple minutes later, I look up again and the blanket material is suspended in the air between two trees. It was then that I figured out this was not a blanket. This student had brought a hammock to school with him to set up on the trees so he could take a nap in. It was the coolest idea I have ever seen! Man, I'm jealous.

Summer Lovin`!

Today is my last official day of summer vacatioin. I go back to school on Monday. I guess I'm ready to go back. At least it will get me away from the pool a little bit. (I'll still go to the pool everyday for work.) But I've actually decided that I have two pretty sweet jobs. With coaching swimming, and lifeguarding, I get to dress casual any time I want. I can wear flip-flops, sunglasses, shorts, heck I even get to wear a swimsuit for lifeguarding. What more could I ask for? But anyways, back to school. This semester I am taking psychology, health, environmental studies, and intro to visual arts, and for Institute I am doing the first half of D&C. Have you ever noticed that the last three letters of Institute are "UTE?!" I'm still not quite ready for school yet though. There are a couple more things I must get to be totally ready. This morning, I was up at the U with one of my good friends, getting ready for school. Being up at school made me excited to get started with it again.

I've had a pretty awesome summer. I've had fun in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, camping, and backpacking. And of course, I've pretty much lived at the pool most of the time. But, I got a pretty nice tan from being at the pool so much. I really have had a fun time this summer, and for my last party of the summer, we are going to watch the premier of High School Musical 2 tonight, followed by a new Hannah Montana!

I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Has Come!

Wahoo! The four-month long fight is over. Megan and I are finally friends again. I am so happy! I didn't have a recent cool picture to put on here, so I though ya'll might to see what I call "Sweaty, hot, Lauren after her morning jog." It makes me laugh!

6 Months!

My best friend has now been out on his mission for 6 months!

Party Like It's Yo Birthday!

Emily had a little friend birthday party last night. It turned out to be a big success with some weird costumes from Nedgie Wedgie, some cool party hats, and a major water fight. We also had some "Tattoo Art By Lauren." Above are pictures from the wicked awesome party.

Weird Addiction

This summer, I have become addicted to chocolate soymilk. It is so good. I have shopped around in attempt to look for the best deal on chocolate soymilk, and it has come to my conclusion that Target is the way to go. Not only do they sale chocolate soymilk, but they sell it in "light," so there are less calories and fat and stuff like that. Plus, Target seems to have one of the cheapest prices, and if you buy the soymilk that is not a real brand, it is even cheaper.

Onions Make Me Cry

I was up at Park City this morning to coach a swim meet. When I stepped out of my car, I was taken in a fancy by how cool the morning air was. Down here in the valley, the mornings have been so warm. I am usually up by 6:00 a.m. everyday, and the temperature is usually in the high seventies. I have forgotten what a cool morning feels like until this morning. It wasn't cold, cold, it just felt really cool compared to the valley. It was a nice change.

This evening, my family and I had a little BBQ/picnic for dinner. I was chopping up some freshly picked onions, and, oh my gosh, I almost cried! Boy they were good onions, but the burning sensation in my eyes from the onion fumes were brutal on my eyes. Luckily I was the only one in the kitchen at the time!

Starry Boyfriend

"Starry Boyfriend." I read this word on a friend's blog, and thought it was good diction to describe the perfect boyfriend. It kind of made me chuckle.

I Need Super-Model Skills

Have you ever posed for a picture that you thought would look really good or cool or funny, but ends up looking retarded? And then the other person or people posing with you look perfect? Photography is an unfair subject I say. I guess it could also be the effect that this picture was a result of being stuck inside at a swim meet that was delayed by lightning last night. Hmm.

Love Them Mountains!

These pictures are of the small backpacking trip my dad, Emily and I took over the weekend. I am kind of a mountain freak, so I had oodles of fun. Emily had a really difficult time with all the bugs. She was positive that she was the only person in the entire Uintah mountains being attacked by flies. Anyways, we did alot of mosquito swatting and we even went fishin'! I can't wait to go again. Here are some videos I took of the trip as well.

Favorite TV Shows of All Time

In my 19 years, I have watched some pretty good shows on television. These are some of my favorites:

Recess


Arthur


Looney Toons (Bugs Bunny)


Full House


The Brady Bunch


Most of My Favorite Nickolodeon Cartoons


And my current favorite tv show, Gilmore Girls

Lazy, Crazy, Hazy Summer Days

Hiking was one of our favorite family activities in the summer. We use to do alot of it. And we always wore these cool, crazy-colored wind breakers. Most of our hikes were in the Uintah mountains, which don't seem to get too warm in the summer.

Basically anything with the word "swim" has always appealed to us, even if we had to swim in a dinky little pool in our backyard. It was still fun! But poor Emily was too young in this picture, and had to sit back there in her stroller. He he he!

This is me, trying to make my way out of Grandma's pool. It's funny that this pool seemed soooooo deep to me when I was little. I remember thinking that sharks lived at the bottom of the deep end.

Swimming at Grandma's in the summer, has always been a cousin favorite. We still have swim parties, just not as often as we use to.

This is the house we lived in a long time ago.

I went visiting teaching today. The lady we were visiting was telling us about the crazy things her kids have been doing this summer. It all brought me back to those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer when I was younger. Our old house was in a circle, or coldisack (however that word is spelled). We were constantly outside playing with all the other kids in our circle. My best friend, whose name was Michelle lived in our circle too. Maddie was best friends with her older sister, Amanda. We had some theory going that Maddie and Amanda were the witches, and they became active whenever the dark clouds were out. Michelle and I were the princesses, and we became active whenever there were pink, sunset clouds. We liked eating raspberries off of Amanda and Michelle's raspberry bush. We loved jumping on the trampoline with sprinklers underneath. We loved riding our bikes around the circle as fast as we could, or until one of us wrecked. And of course we loved playing barbies. We did lots of crazy things, such as throwing pebbles at passing cars. (This however was not the best idea, and we got in trouble for it.) Sometimes we would pick grass, and make little bird's nests out of the piles we had picked. I remember one time, I snuck 2 eggs out of our fridge, and layed them in our grass. I had Amanda and Michelle convinced that they were turtle or chicken eggs, so Amanda cracked them open to check. On of our favorite things to do in the summer, was to set a tent up in the backyard and sleep in it. We would always get so excited and hyper while my dad would set it up for us. But Natalie usually chickened out and ended up sleepint in the house. And if we were not doing one of these mentioned crazy activities in the summer, we would be found swimming at Grandma's pool with our cousins!

RTOTD (Random Thoughts of the Day)

*Eighty-Eight degrees sounds so much cooler than 90 degrees, even though they are only 2 degrees apart.

*I often wonder what inspires Nedge to blog about some of the topics she blogs about.

*What if what we want in life, really is not what we want at all?

*I think seasons 2 and 3 are my favorite seasons of Gilmore Girls.

*I love the sport of swimming and I feel like I am never going to get away from the pool.

*I have recently become addicted to chocolate soymilk, and I really need to go pick some up from Harmons.

*It is funny to call "Harmons" "Hormones."

*I don't know.

*Why is the rum always gone?

Kiss The Tree!

In some of the recent comments ya'll have left me, Kristen mentioned a little phrase about "Kissing The Tree." I have had requests to further explain this, so here it goes. When I was in 10th grade, we watched this movie about bullies in my health class. It had actual footage of kids being bullied at recess. My favorite scene dealt with a group of girls. This group of about 5 girls were bullying another girl. They grabbed her, walked her toward a tree and began yelling "Kiss the tree!" They forced her head towards the tree, and made her kiss it. Well, I took this scene as something hilarious, and I began to make fun of it. It has been a little inside joke with the original rebel miamaids of the Prairie 8th ward for quite some time now. The next funny part of this, is that Jeff Tree's last name is "Tree." This makes it really funny to say "kiss the tree," if you know what I mean.

Love or Infatuation?

Lately I have found myself stuck pondering the thought of love and infatuation. Infatuation is a more a short-time obssessive crush on someone, while love is more of a long-term thing. But can infatuation lead to love? Is it ok to be infatuated, but inside really hope it does not lead you to love someone? I feel like love an infatuation are the most commonly mixed up emotions of people my age. What happens if a person becomes infatuated AFTER they have allready been in love? I think it is a scary feeling for that person, but perhaps it is a feeling that they long to have once again. I feel so naive. If only I could run in to a Love Doctor, then maybe I would not feel so confused or scared of what the love or infatuation outcome may bring. And now, a quote from the Beatles: "All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need."

Two Jeff's? How Can It Be?

This picture is kind of hard to see, but it is really cool. Elder Larsen's sister e-mailed it to me today. This is Jeff Larsen, on the left, and Jeff Tree, on the right, at the MTC. This picture was taken back in about February, when both Jeff's were in the MTC at the same time. Cool, eh?

"The Horror! The Horror!"

My phone fell into the pool this morning. It is not working, but I am letting it dry out. Oh my lanta, I hope it will work again!

The Promised Hiking Technique Video!

In my last blog, I promised that I would post the hiking video Natalie and I made in Yellowstone. Here it is! Natalie is the star of this hot one!

Howdy Partner: Yellowstone and Wyoming!

My family and I just got back from an excellent vacation. We went to Yellowstone and to Jackson Hole Wyoming. Everything was awesome! Our vacation began on Thursday, June 7th, which happened to be my birthday. Our first major stop was the Idaho Falls Temple, pictured above. It was pretty, and we were able to use the clean bathrooms in the visitor center. The above picture includes Emily, my grandma Stapley, Maddie, Ben, and me. My dad and Grandpa Stapley were taking our pictures, and my mom and Natalie were wandering around temple grounds.

When we got to Yellowstone, we saw lots of animals. We saw like a buttload of buffalo. We even got stuck in a stampede of buffalo. There was a huge herd of them trying to cross the street, so we had to wait for about 30 minutes for them to move. We also saw deer, elk, a fox, geese, ravens, and we even saw a grizzley bear with 2 cubs, and chip munks. We also saw Natalie, she was quite the little animal.

This is me in the car, driving through Yellowstone on my birthday.

My sisters and me at Old Faithful.

There were all these cool painted buffalo all over West Yellowstone, Montana.

This is my famous "licorice smoking" picture. I think this was taken on Friday, as we sat through buffalo crossing traffic in the upper loop of Yellowstone.

Yellowstone lake was ginormous!

You are now looking at the Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming. I love Wyoming! I always have, and I hope to live there someday.

Ben, Maddie, Natalie, Emily and I on a trail above the Yellowstone River.

These cowboy boots were the coolest decoration ever! This was at the Bar J Ranch in Jackson Hole, which was really neat. I want to live there so bad!

This is a picture of the Grizzly bear we saw in Yellowstone. You can't see them in this picture, but there were 2 baby cub bears following this mama bear. It was really cool to see a wild bear with her cubs!

This is a the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

These cowboys here are the Bar J Wranglers. They are a cool cowboy band in Jackson Hole Wyoming. They are at the Bar J ranch. When you go to this peroformance, you get a HUGE western dinner. I had BBQ Beef, and it was amazing! Then you get about an hour and a half of this hilarious and awesome western band. This was my kind of vacation!

I had a blast, and I wish I could go back. Before I end this blog, I have to document some conversations that happened on our trip:

Conversation 1:

Grandma Stapley: "I just wish I knew where we were."

Grandpa Stapley: "Well, we are in Yellowstone."

Conversation 2:

Ben climbs into the car

Maddie: "Ben you smell like a port-a-potty!"

Ben: " A port-a-potty?!?!"

Lauren: "Ha ha ha!"

Conversation 3: (this conversation occured many times with various members of our family)

Dad: "Look, there's a beaver dam."

Lauren: "A beaver what?"

Dad: "Dam."

I have a video Natalie and I made in Yellowstone on proper hiking technique, but it is not ready to put on here. I will put in on my blog tomorrow, so make sure you come back to watch it!