New Toothbrushes

One of the perks of having a dental hygienest for a roommate and friend is getting a great toothbrush for a fantastic price :)

Laura ordered sonicare brushes for me, Brian, and Wayne. We all got together for our toothbrush's maiden brushings!

Yay for good toothbrushes! It betta' help! ;)

DEMOLITION DERBY!!!

Dere's nuttin' like sum good ole' redneck fun! This weekend Sam and I went with a bunch of friends to the Demolition Derby at the Madison Fairgrounds. It was a riot! Glenn Beck even came out to our neck of the woods! (Yes, THAT Glenn Beck :) ).

Na na na na na na na na, Na na na na na na na na... BATMAN!! And Robin.

Too cute of a picture to pass up!


Remember, this is the Madison Derby, so I think we'll have to wait for the St. Anthony Derby to get all those fun shots of hick mullets ;)

Pop's Birthday!

It was my Dad's birthday on Sunday. I got the task of making his cake! Speaking of eating something that looks like something else, I saw these cute cupcakes on Bakerella (I just love that name by the way! BAKE-eralla...get it? Cinderella spent all her time in the kitchen by the cinders. Bakerella spends her time in the kitchen baking. hehe :) )


I was pleased with my work. :)



Since Dad likes to mow the lawn, I made the other part of the cake look like grass and found a John Deere mower in the grandkids' playbox (No worries, I washed it!) to put on top. (So it looked like grass, you see? Not just a square of badly frosted cake. I was slightly concerned that my cake could end up on cakewrecks someday. Then I remembered I'm no professional. I'm safe! :) )

Dad blowing out his candles!


This is the gift Heidi found for the three of us daughters to give him. Pretty spiffy, eh? The eyes tick back and forth even! It must miss Ohio though. I heard it made a break for it around 2:15 a.m. Didn't get far, thank goodness!


Happy Birthday Dad! Sure do love ya!

FOURTH OF JULY!!!

Laura and I went to the store and we found some hot dogs! But better...they were DONUT hot dogs! [Hot dog! Hot dog! Hot diggity dog!] We had a fun time eating them and taking pictures. For some strange reason, it's oddly exciting to eat food that looks like a different kind of food.

We ate at the park and watched an episode of Smallville. [It's been WEEKS! Seriously! The reunion with Clark was well recieved :) ]

Whilst we were watching Clark on my laptop, this creeper man came up and asked, "Can I watch what you are doing?" He was an older, skinny man with a backpack and a helmet.

I thought to myself, "You want to watch me and my friend lay here on a blanket watching a movie? Whatev, just do it at a distance, Creep-o."

I let laura do the talking since I was so creeped out by him. She said we were watching a t.v. show and it was almost over. He asked how much my computer cost. So then I was alert and on guard to protect my macbook, planning my possible actions if he did by chance make a grab at my computer. Laura offered him a banana, to which he declined because he was currently unable to chew food.

To my relief the man FINALLY left. Laura looked at me and said, "What? Did you think he was going to steal your computer?" Well, as a matter of fact... I sure did. I felt so sheepish... Katie, get a grip on your imagination! ;)

Ice cream! I just threw this picture in because I wanted to. Because ice cream pretty much is one of the best things. Ever. 

Vafter Vaura vand VI vang vome vatriotic vongs vin va "V" vanguage ve vlayed vith varklers. VAY!

Happy Independence Day!

23 Years of Making the World a Better Place

I celebrated my day of birth this last weekend. I tell you what, they just keep getting better and better. Really. They do. A birthday is a day to live it up! I dare say that this was the best birthday yet J

Friday at work as I was minding my own business, someone came in with a vase of flowers and a balloon…FOR ME!!! Now that’s something that has never happened to me before. I like it.

Festivities started Friday night. Sam and Jules threw me a super hero party! It was a blast! Some people even dressed up. It totally made my day!

I was Kate Kent. Who's Lois? ;)

And since super heroes supposedly are supposed to wear their underwear on the outside...I'm sporting Liz's birthday present on the outside. (They are pretty great shorts by the way. Aqua man, Superman, and Batman are just a couple of the supers on them)

Cat woman and Indiana Jones came to help celebrate

Nacho Libre even made an appearance!

with ... gardening girl? Now THAT is a super power.

So did Michaelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle! (Anybody else start singing their song like I did? Loved those guys!)

Those feet covers are pretty great.

And I absolutely LOVED Celeste's costume! Can anybody guess who she is and from what movie?

We played some games, and of course ate cake!

Happy Birthday to K-T! Sing it with me!

Saturday morning I woke up early (not on purpose) and I went running with my friend, Andi. (That was on purpose. I must enjoy putting myself through pain). Now that I had that out of the way, I could get on with my HAPPY birthday ;)

After my shower I didn’t bother doing my hair OR fake-up as Sam and I had made plans to go do baptisms at the temple. We decided that we would go to the Idaho Falls temple, seeing as it’s usually about a 3 hour wait to even get into the dressing room to do baptisms in Rexburg on Saturdays. On the way down, my mom called. She informed me the I.F. temple was closed for cleaning. Good to know…. We were already on our way to I.F. though.

Instead, we went to the Museum of Idaho to see the Titanic exhibit there.

Just in case you were wondering, cutting off a good portion of our faces was no accident. Remember how both of us were planning on getting soaked, so neither of us did hair or make-up, only to end up in public anyways? Yeah, ‘nuff splained.

The museum was so great! At the beginning they give you a “boarding pass” with someone’s name on it who was on the “Titanic”. I was 63 year old Mrs. Isidor Straus, or Rosalia Ida Blun Straus. I was from New York, New York. We owned Macy’s Department store back home, so we had it made! We traveled first class with a maid and a manservant. Sam was a 15 year Lebonese who had just gotten married 50 days before and was traveling back third class to the states after their arranged marriage where her new husband was an established cobbler.

The museum, as I said, was fantastic. I learned and was reminded of so much. The story of the Titanic really blows my mind! All those people! And their experiences. And their lives coming to such an abrupt, painful end. Living the last hours of their lives in sheer terror. Well, maybe some of them had come to peace about it. So much could be learned with the story of "Titanic". But I'll save you my thinks.

Anyways. Remember the boarding pass? At the end of the tour there is a list of all those who were on the “Titanic” and whether they lived or not. Sam lived. I died. L Although, my story is kinda sweet. When I was asked to get on a boat I said, “I will not leave my husband. We will die the same way we have lived: together”. {aaaah}

When we got back to Rexburg Sam went to work and I picked Celeste for her lunch break and we went to lunch at the Taco bus. Oh yeah!

The taco bus is a Blue Bird bus painted white. The back of the bus is the kitchen. And then they’ve got benches and counters to sit at and eat.

Here’s all the mexi’s checkin’ out the sports channel and waiting for their grub.

The food was soo tasty!

I highly recommend going there sometime if you are ever in Rexburg. I'll come with you. :) The dining and experience is one of a kind J

That night I partied it up with my family. We had dinner, I opened presents with the assistance of Jake and Lizza, and then we ate some cake and Grandma's rhubarb pie!

My birthday loot. Thanks everybody!!

Heidi's cute card she made me. It says, "Ever noticed how in every family there's usually one person who is shockingly normal? We should get ourselves one of those" Because, obviously, it's not me... How sweet. ;)

Me with the cake Mom labored many hours in the kitchen for. Looks great, eh?

When I went home to my apartment that night, it was raining. I decided that my birthday was going to go out with a splash! Lit-rally :) I went puddle jumping.

It was a fab day. Thanks again everyone for making it that way! :)

I'm Not Talking About Parking Spaces Here

I've had a recurring feeling lately that all the good ones are taken, and the rest are handicap :(

Right...or Left? Left or Right?

Last night Sam and I headed out for another photoshoot ride. She was looking for paths through trees to take pictures of for a school project. We headed east of town going past the temple. We kept driving and driving, stopping here and there to take some pictures. As I was out shooting, I realized how out of practice I am becoming of taking pictures of stuff. It was fun to have the opportunity to get into the groove of it again. I need to do this stuff more often. I mean, I did go to school for it. But then the question arises, what do I do all of these random pictures? There's my dilemma.

The lovely Samantha, and partner in crime:

And a random garage door. (I was going to upload others that I took, but they aren't working. I give up)

It has been raining for the past couple weeks here in the burg. Because of that, everything to SO GREEN! I LOVE it! I love the blue color of the sky and clouds with the green of the fields. Probably my favoritist colors ever.

See? I could stare at it forever!

I took a couple steps into a field for some pictures and somehow convinced Sam agree to make me the subject of her pictures.

and my foot got stuck...

really stuck. But, hey, look at me, I'm still happy!

Yet, I finally managed to pull my foot out of the gloopey mud entrapment. Free pedicure!

Now I was free from the mud, but Sam threatened to leave me there because my foot was too sullied for her car mat's pleasure. Beauty of chacos - Easy to clean! I found a puddle in the middle of the road and got a little off. Enough that Sam gave me the okay to get back in her car, which is all I ask for :) (Well, not ALL...)

Once we were back in Sam's car we were back on our adventure. Just two happy besties taking turns we didn't know would take us anywhere in particulars. We were explorers! Soon we found ourselves in a forested area. So pretty! Eventually the road turned to dirt and we just kept going, curiosity and the beauty of the area giving us the only push we needed.

As we were driving along, I voiced my thoughts to Sam that it would be great if we had a GPS so we could mark where we were and come back again. My follow up to that think was the thought that a GPS would also be nice so we would know where we were...

Eventually, the road we were on started showing signs of water run-off damage, the crevasses caused by the water were getting too wide and deep for Sam's Hyundai Accent. The road was thin, so Sam decided that she was going to drive backwards until she found a wider part of road to turn around in. As she was driving in this manner, we suddenly felt a rough jolt as her rear driver-side wheel dropped into a hole. I got out to inspect and push if needed.

Sam thought maybe Jason could come pull us out. Which he totally could have with his big, powerful Chevy. Except...we had NO idea where we were...

I wasn't sure her little engine could pick her little car out of the rut. Amazingly, it DID! Thank goodness! We wouldn't be stranded afterall! Whew!

Check it, the deep crevasse of supposed doom.

The Accent's puny wheels.

Me, sitting where Sam's car once was. Wha? No problem is too big for the unstoppable duo of SAM AND KATE! No big.

I'm sitting, quite comfortably, in the rut Sam's car and just been in. (With a look that could get me the understudy part for Qausimodo in any stage production of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I'll keep this picture handy in case I ever hear about a casting call.)

We finally found our way out of the forest and picked a direction (west). We decided to just keep driving until we recognized where we were. I figured we would end up in Lyman. Or if we did happen to have made it into Wyoming, we could pay Meg a visit. ;)

As it turned out, we picked a good road to drive on. It led right to the wonderful little landmark of BIG JUDS! And heck, why not? Let's just get a little bite to eat.

Er, it is Big Jud's afterall. A BIG bite to eat. Three wonderfully, delicious, creamy scoops each. Yumm!

Right now, you may be making the same realization that I just did. The last few entries have all been about food. Craigo's, cupcakes, cookies, and now ice cream. You may be thinking, "Does Katie do anything BESIDES eat?" Not really. It's the hightlight of my life.

fin.