Freedom!

 Warning: Massive Post

 School ended end of July. It was my best semester yet! I got all A's and loved my classes. It really was a lot of fun for me to go to school each day. After school ended we packed up and went to Kennewick. We spent a week there with Brandons Family. We had family pictures done as well. After we went to the Oregon Coast for five days with Brandons family. For the most part the weather was beautiful. We stayed in a house in Pacific City, Oregon. its a really tiny town but the beach is Beautiful and there is a huge rock in the ocean (much like the famous Haystack rock in Cannon Beach) One day the weather was so nice that we all got sunburned. Brandon was the worst i think. His back was so gross and he pealed forever. My shoulders were the worst for me. i couldn't lift up my arms for a few days, and i too eventually began to peel. The house we stayed at had a pool table which we made quite a bit of use out of. I was the pool champion. I know you think im just saying this but really i am. I beat Brandon's dad three time, His brother Michael twice, and Brandon twice. the only person to beat me was Brandon, and if you ask me it was out of pure luck that he was able to actually win. Also while we were there, shark week was going on on the discover channel. We watched a lot of shark week and i became quite afraid to go in the ocean. It was a really fun and busy trip. We saw more of the oregon coast than i really needed to. We saw everything from seaside down to Lincoln city basically. Our favorite was probably going to the Tilamook cheese factory. We loved their ice cream and reallly loved the self guided tour where you can observe the cheese being made. I think some of the workers forget they are being watched because they gave us quite the show.

 This is the view from the neighborhood we were staying in.

 Brandon And Michael at the beach.

 Us at seaside Beach

 Brandon kissing a shark during shark week.

 Brandon loves the tilamook cheese factory so much

 The rock at pacific city

 Skim Boarding

 Lincoln City, oregon

 Sorry this is sideways, this is a  hike we went on in lincoln city to a waterfall. It took us loner to drive the windy roads up to the hike then the actual hike took. There was this really scary suspension bridge over this massive canyon thing. I didnt want to stay on there for very long. It was very shaky and a really far fall to the bottom.

 This cute little place is called oceanside oregon. we almost stayed here but ended up staying in pacific city. it was so cute how all the houses are built on this hill and they have really great tide pools here.

 Theres this cool tunnel you walk through to get from one side of the beach to the other. It was kind of dark and scary inside.

 There were lots of starfish

 This is Cape Mears Lighthouse.

 This is a very friendly squirrel. I probably could have touched it but i was afraid it was going to jump at my face.

 Sid actually did touch the squirrel. After Bubba gave it an entire Bagel to eat.

Brandon did a lot of sand art our last day, here he is sitting inside a zia(?) for sean and sam.

After we got back from Oregon we drove up to snohomish to spend time with my family. We had such a good time and I love western Washington so much! I miss it! And i love dad and kristis house. We had fun feeding their fish in their pond. Brandon Read The Help while we were there and then we went and saw the movie with Kristi (which i loved! such a good movie!) We spent two days up in Canada with Greg, Melissa, and Nighean. We were able to go do a session at the Vancouver temple which is beautiful. We went to Tim Hortons for the first time, we went the the beach in Tswassen and we went into Vancouver. Melissa also made the most amazing homemade icecream!

 This is at a place called Grandville(?) Island. those are a bunch of floating houses down behind us and vancouver across the water.

 This is at a market there. it kind of reminded me of pikes place, but a little nicer.

 This is Brandon with his first ever Nanimo Bar. Grandad use to always by them for us when we would come visit and they are so good. Brandon was impressed as well.

This is the view from Gregs office. He is on the 26th floor of a building.

We are now back in Rexburg. Brandon is working and since there is no school he works from 7-4. I am at home doing nothing. I am enjoying every last minute of freedom though. Yesterday i sewed a pillow for our bed. It took me pretty much all day. I also cleaned, vacuumed, and put away laundry, so i feel i am being productive. In a couple of weeks i start training for my externship(basically its an unpaid internship for Medical Assisting.) I will be doing mine at the student Health center here on campus. I chose to do it there so i can get hired on for the rest of my schooling and have a job! I had an interview with one of the doctors on Wednesday. he wants to train me to be his personal assistant. Basically i will be with him his entire shift preparing patients, setting up for procedures and assisting in the procedures. This will give me the best training i could ask for and i got the position! I am nervous out of my mind and i have a lot of reviewing to do before i start my externship. I am so excited though for the learning opportunity. With this position however, i have to work 40 hours a week unpaid! yikes! can you say slave labor! i realize though that its worth it for the training i will get and for my future resume! I will aslo be taking three online classes while doing my externship! we will see how long that lasts before i drop those classes! 

Here is my pillow i made btw

Time for a change.

As of 9:30 this morning i am done for the semester! I feel so free! Now i have to clean, do laundry and pack before we leave on Friday Morning. Our Bathroom sink is leaking and we are frequantly emptying the bowl that sits under the sink. I put in a maintanence request last week and they still havent fixed it. They better get on it before we leave or they are going to have a flooded apartment building seeing as we are gone for three weeks and we do not own any bowl large enough to occomadate that much H2O. Anyways, yesterday i went and got my hair done. I got highlights for the first time and its nice and short. I dont really love it today, so hopefully i will like it later on.I think i just dont look good no matter what they do to me so i dont know. Here is my before...

Heres what it looks like now....

Sorry these pictures are sideways. I dont know if i will ever color my hair again. Brandon likes it but I'm still not convinced it is the bet look for me.

Procrastination

Not only have I procrastinated writting on the blog for what is it, 3 or 4 months now? I am procrastinationg homework. Writting papers just isnt inticing me right now. this beauty is however...

 

Oh my goodness i just ate the majority of this hunk of watermelon. Watermelon is so good on hot sunny days.

On a different not we have three weeks of school left. not even that because next week is our last full week of classes! We are so excited to be done and we cant wait to start our seven week vacations! Next semester Brandon is on track and i am going to take three online classes and (hopefully) do my medical assisting externship(two people actually called me back today about them, maybe my luck has changed) I am terified for my externship. I feel like i know nothing. Its been an entire year since i took the first medical assisting class and i feel like i have forgotten it all! yikes! I pitty the poor person who I have to draw blood from or give a shot. I am not very well practiced anymore!

Anyways once school is finsihed we are packing up and going to kennewick for a week, then we will spend another week at the Oregon Coast with Brandons family. After that we will drive up and see my parents for a week. Then we have to head back to rexburg so Brandon can work and i can spend the rest of the break crafting. haha


This semester has been really good actually. I think it has been the easiest i have had in a long time. I have had a total of five tests in the testing center the entire semester and I have three classes that do not have any tests at all. I think im living the dream right now. haha On monday wednesday, and friday i am done with class at 10 am so i go work out and then spend the rest of the day relaxing and doing homeowrk. I know im such a bum. I do not feel like going into details about this semester, so i will just share some pictures of what our semester consisted of.

 We went to the duck pond a few times. We love the duck pond. So many memories at the duck pond, my favorite being the time I went with sean and sam and this kid picked up a goose. Im sure sean and same remember.

 We rode bikes. We are quite the little cyclists now, however my bike does have a tendency for the chain to break when ever i am peddling and going over a bump at the same time. its an inconvenience and it makes me nervous to ride my bike when Brandon isnt around to fix my chain for me.

 Here is at the skate park doing jumps and stuff.

 We had a lot of bon fires with our friends Justin and Rachel. Seriously there were a few weekends in a row where we had a bonfire both Friday and Saturday nights. we found this amazing park in rexburg with campgrounds and fire pits that has free wood(at least we hope its free) and it feels like you are in the woods. we love it and we saw a baby moose there a few weeks ago!

 This semester also consisted of Michael, brandons brothter. I just met him in April. we are good friends now. We were also very involved with flag football. it was freezing the majority of the season but i still watched every game. This is brandon and michael before a game in my pink blanket.

 And here is Travis, brandons cousin and the quarterback. Brandon is behind him

 We also went down to Utah and had so much fun with family. It was crazy to see lexi and how big she is now. And all of my nieces and nephews are so cute and we have so much fun everytime we are with family. thank you michelle and ustin for having us we had a great time and michelle, you are a great cook.

 We went mini golfing. this is Brandon "K-towining" it. We played a lot of crouquet this semester as well. Im sorry i dont have any pictures of us playing but Brandon and his friend Justin do this when we play croquet. thankfully it works in golf as well.

 For fourth of july weekend, Dad and Kristi came and spend the weekend with us. We had so much fun with them. Dad and Brandon went golfing while Kristi and i went shopping. We did Crafts, ate good fooe, and on monday for fourth of July we went to Jackson Wyoming. We had nevver been there before and we were very impressed with how pretty it was. Seriously coming over the pass and down into Jackson is stunning.

 Here I am being a bear.

 We watched fireworks in rexburg at the temple. This was more than a disapointment. We saw one firework about every five minutes. the fireworks from peoples yards were better than the ones rexburg shot off from the fair. needless to say we didnt stay too long. We decided to go home and we watched Project runway to prepare us for next season, which starts July 28th on lifetime and everyone should watch! :)

 Here is Brandon and I watching fireworks.

 While we were in Jackson we ate at Bubbas Barbeque. I was supposed to go to fulfil a communications assignement. It was actually pretty good and we liked the name.

 Look how cute my dad is in a cowboy hat.

 We had such a great weekend with them and we are so grateful for everything they did for us while they were here. And i really appreciated Kristi's help decorating the apartment. And im sorry that i wouldnt eat the raisons in the trail mix and left you guys with all of the. Hopefully some day you can forgive me for that. 

Name that Tune

Brandon has discovered a new talent. He plays songs on his teeth with his finger nail. I know it sounds weird, but I think this is a real talent. I tried and i just cant do it the way he can. So to give you a little taste of his new skill, we have a game. Five songs played by the master himself, and you guess what they are. And now, enjoy the musical stylings of Brandon Roy Plunkett.

PS turn up your volume.

number one:

 number two:

number three:

number four:

and finally, number five:

And to prove to you this isnt as weird as you think, i remembered that i saw someone do a similar talent on Ellen. Heres the link if you want to see kiera knightly perform her tooth song. She is such a copy cat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6xsytKHwFw

One year older....and wiser too!

So on the thirteenth i celebrated my 21st birthday. I heard this song many times that day, mostly from Sean and  Sam who called me three times while i was still on the phone with them. It was a great birthday, since it was Sunday we didn't do too much. We had stake conference which left us a lot of down time. Brandon let me watch any movie i wanted, so i watched Pride and Prejudice, and i made some hair accessories while watching it. Brandon got me some yoga pants that i had been wanting for a long time now and they are so cozy and perfect. I don't actually plan on doing yoga in them, mostly just lounging around....kind of counter productive...Im sure those pants hoped to cover a much more active bum but oh well. We got an ice cream cake from dairy queen Saturday night and then our friends Justin and Rachel came over and had it with us. Brandon also let me open my valentines gift a day early cause i couldn't wait and he got me a new black shirt. I was very happy cause I'm starting to feel like my wardrobe is getting a little blah and i really wanted something new to make me feel cute again. I got Brandon settlers of Catan because lately we love that game, unfortunatly you need more than two people to play with. So if anyone wants to play with us, let us know!

On valentines day we went out to eat. We left for Idaho Falls when Brandon got home from work at 4 thinking we would beat the dinner rush, but nope, still like a 45 min wait at Olive Garden. It was totally worth the wait. We went through so many breadstickes. It was so good. We really like going there. We used the gift card Brandons Parents gave me for my birthday to pay for dinner. So thank you Bubba and Tammy, Dinner was Delicious!

 This is my sad attempt at some sort of Valentines Decorations. I made it out of whatever we had...aka left over paper from the cupcake decorations form the wedding, and valentines wrapping paper. It turned out alright I think.

 My Mom always made big heart shaped cookies for us when we were kids and put our names on it. My dads always said "My love" but since I call Brandon Sweetheart, i thought that was much more appropriate. They dont look very good, but what can I say, I am not a master with frosting, not to mention I just bought one of those cheep tubes of pink frosting, which isn't as workable as I would have hoped.

This past weekend we went down to visit Michelle and Justin down in Utah. We always have such a good time when we go and we love spending time with them. Our weekends consisted mostly of this.....

We played a lot of Wii. Michelle and Justin bought it the same day we got there, and Parker was in Heaven. By the end of the weekend, he could work everything all by himself and he was getting quite good. He was so cute. He was always asking Brandon to play with him, and Brandon, being the good uncle that he is, just couldn't say no. We also went down to Provo to have Dinner at Aaron and Laurels. Their apartment was adorable! they live in this historic house that has been turned into apartments. it was so cute and had sooo much character. We loved it! and dinner was amazing. We had so much fun.We played ticket to ride, which was a fun game, however, i did find it a little bit frustrating haha and we also got to ride Aarons scooter! that was way fun, but I think i could use more practice before I would feel comfotable riding on a busy street.

 Aaron and Laurel have this cute little bistro table, Justin and Brandon shared a romantic candle lit dinner.

 There Brandon goes!

And heres me when i got back. I was probably shaking a little i was so afraid i would crash it! haha

And on a Side not, look how cute this little girl is!(she just ate chocolate)

While we were in Utah, Aaron Brought me my bike I bought a few weeks ago. I cant wait to use it if it ever stops snowing here :( 

One last thing, I forgot I had pictures of this, but Brandon and some of our friends had a rec. Volleyball team this semester. They had a lot of fun, and even though they never won, they had some really close games. 

What You've all been waiting for!

Last night I got a threatening text from Sam to post on our blog. She even went as far as to tell me to forget about my studies! so here I am slacking on my homework just for you Sam. (and for the record it wasn't threatening at all.) We have so much to talk about which is unusual! First of all Christmas was very nice this year, way too quiet for my taste, but we enjoyed our little Christmas with Josh and Dad and Kristi. We had a really great time, and the three of us carried out our Christensen traditions. (poor Brandon was the lone newby) Here we are making our doughnuts. We do this every year on Christmas Eve morning. this year we had to do it after dinner that night though because Brandon had to work.

Here's my dad rolling out thou dough, this job was passed onto Josh later on. My dad is the designated doughnut cooker. You have to work your way up the ranks in the family, cooker being the most sought after job, the lowest being....

A shaker. Brandon, as a newcomer was a shaker, the powder sugar shaker to be exact. I on the other hand have been apart of the family for almost 21 years, and I'm still a shaker. Cinnamon Sugar shaker, to be exact. I probably am a professional cinnamon sugar shaker though.

the finished product!

Here we all are on Christmas Morning. Tradition is to all line up in the hallway before we can go out to the family room to see our presents and stockings. I know we might be a little old for it, but here we are still doing it.

Here's Brandon with his stocking. We each got a windshield wiper in our stocking and we were so excited! we really needed new ones haha

I found the pickle this year! its an ornament you put on the tree Christmas eve and whoever finds it first gets to open the first present.

On a different note, we finally made it to rexburg and moved into our new apartment. We like it a lot and it has been so fun to make our own little home for us. Here are a few pictures of the place, its definitely not finished yet, i have more pictures to hang and such, but i will post updated pictures as they come.

 

I think our apartment looks so much cuter in person. these pictures just don't do it justice.

So this past weekend we had Monday off for MLK day so we drove down to see Michelle, Justin, Parker and Halle. it was so fun to see them. We love hanging out with them and we are so grateful to have such amazing family.

We all went to In-N-Out Burger for the first time. Honestly, we werent very impressed but it was still good. its just one of those restraunts you have to go to once, so we can check that off of our list ofthisngs to do.

Michelle and Halle at in n out. Halle is so adorable! However she didn't really like Brandon and I, she would only let me hold her if I got her from her nap.

We also went bowling. I won, so no big deal. i did have a huge advantage because Michelle and Justin did have Halle Bowling for them half the time. Thanks for the great weekend Michelle and Justin!