Tangled = Best Movie Ever!

Oh my goodness, this movie was adorable, hilarious, tender, artistically beautiful, whimsical, MUSICAL, and basically everything else good. Squeaky-clean, well worth it. If you don't see it in theaters, make sure you netflix or roku it as soon as you can!

A Funny

The other day in Women's Chorus we were doing a particularly shrill warm-up exercise. Afterwards, I heard a girl behind me mutter, "You hear that highness? Those are the shrieking eels." It took me a while to catch on, but once I did, I couldn't stop laughing! :)




My guess is this guy would agree with her.



EEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCHKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We Were Care Bears For Halloween

We got 5 dollar sweats from Walmart, made some tummies with felt and fabric, and glued felt to headbands for ears. Then we went to a dance party. :) It was a fun Halloween!

A Picture For Those Days When You Just Need A Laugh...

A little gem from my Child Guidance class. :) I laughed SO hard when I saw this. I think being a parent will be a pretty interesting/hard/hilarious/do I laugh or cry? experience. :) Love to you all!

Murder Mystery Dinner!

We had a ward murder mystery dinner this past weekend. Roaring twenties themed, and SO fun. I may be almost twenty, but I love dress-up just as much as I ever did! Here we are, all dolled up and ready to sleuth!


Bre and Joseph. I accidentally broke Joseph's cane later that evening. Oops!



Nate and I. I got that dress at DI for 6 dollars. Not bad :)



Peter and Jen


The gang :)

Ward Campout

This weekend my ward went up to Peyson Lakes in the canyon for a campout. It was really fun! The girls stayed at one campsite and enjoyed AMAZING dutch oven dinners (courtesy of Bro. Mullen), while the boys slept under the stars and ate hot dogs. :)



Camping! It's been far too long since my last campout. I think it was...in high school?



Beautiful Shirlei, a girl from Brazil who's living in our complex. And she's getting baptized in two weeks! Woohoo!



Our campsite.



Eleven people, an air matress, and two plastic spiders in a tent. It was a leetle crowded.



The next day we met up with the guys and hiked to Grotto falls. Icy cold! But super fun to stand under and push your friends into.



It really was freezing!



This was my first time canoeing. It was so easy and fun! The lake reminded me of Greenbriar back home. I'm thinking we should take our canoe up there sometime, Mom!



Off we go canoeing! I don't have any pictures of our canoe wars with the rest of the ward, but rest assured that we were capsized several times.

I love my ward. Most of the people from this last year are moving out this fall. It'll be all new friends, callings, and experiences. But we certainly won't stop having such good times. :)

Inception

Oh. My. Gosh.

I have never, ever, EVER seen a movie like inception. It is amazing. It is mysterious. It had my heart and mind racing throughout the whole thing as I tried to keep up with the multiple layers of plot. I can't even describe it to you. This is a movie that keeps you on edge and makes you think. It's not sadistic or sexy, which is so refreshing. It is an action movie but it's not based on killing people. It's about dreams and multiple realities and the incredible power of the subconscious. My friends and I were discussing it for about an hour after we had seen it. Too intense for little ones, but if you like an action movie once in a while chances are you will love - or at least be irresistibly intrigued - by this one. Dad, if it's showing on planes within the next couple of months, I think you should watch it. But make sure you don't get up to stretch during it, because chances are you'll miss something really important.

Uneconomical Addiction

Freshman year I took a look around the Cougareat and noted with relief that it would probably be easy for me not to spend money there. None of the locations tempted me at all. Really, AT ALL. Taco Bell - I don't like cheap mexican food. Subway I can really live without. Teriyaki sticks = yuck. I went for months without buying anything from the Cougareat until...the buffalo chicken wrap came into my life.

That's right. L&T broke me. Delicious soups, salads, rolls and wraps. Picture this: chicken strips, lettuce, celery, bleu cheese crumbles, and cucumbers on a delicious spinach tortilla, doused in a delicious bleu cheese and buffalo sauce mix. My mouth is watering.

I get it every time I go there, and I'm ashamed to say I go there a lot! At least once a week. It adds up because the wraps are $5.00. I'm thinking they lace the wraps with some addictive substance because I just keep coming back! Well, they say the first step in overcoming an addiction is admitting it to close family and friends, so it looks like I'm on the right track. For now, I think I'll go get myself a wrap.

Just Kidding!

We did break the record! 3,927 participants and 120,000 water balloons! Haha!

PS Congratulations Katy and Aaron! She is beautiful :)

World's Largest Water Balloon Fight!

And I was a part of it! BYU wanted to break the world record for water balloon fights. They've been really into breaking records lately, a while back they wanted to have the world's largest capture the flag game on campus. Seeing as BYU has over 30,000 students enrolled during Fall and Winter semesters, that's actually a pretty feasible goal. I don't think we cracked the record today...we needed 4000 people to show up and I'm positive there were only about 1000. But it was SO fun! I was on the orange team, so we pretty much dominated. :)

After the countdown, thousands of water balloons were chucked into the air. I was wet instantly. It was so fun to watch all of the rainbow-colored water weapons soar! And man, some of them hurt. Alot. We had over 20,000 balloons and I got pegged in the face, chest, stomach and butt many times. But hey. There's not much I won't do for a free t-shirt!

Blog Makeover

Okay, I realized the other day that I've had that same pink blog template for over a year. I do love that one, but it's time for a change! I've been picking over backgrounds for over an hour now, and nothing's really jumped out to me. This tree one is cool; it reminds me of Virginia, which I like, but I don't think it'll be the face of my blog for much longer. I'm tired of surfing the web though, so it looks like for now it's going to stay.

Face Reading

A few weeks ago I went to a BBQ with one of my friends. Her grandma was visiting their family and I got to chat with her for a few minutes. She was a cute, perky old lady. My friend walked over and asked "Grandma, have you read Melinda's face yet?" At which point the old lady turned to me and said, smilingly, "Well, dearie, I didn't know whether or not you wanted me to." She focused her gaze on my face and this followed:

"You're musical and skeptical. You have a good sense of adventure and you have a good brain - sometimes it takes you a little longer to catch onto things, but once you've got it you've got it. You have a clearer sense of right and wrong than a lot of people. You're stubborn. You don't like being told that you're wrong. You also really enjoy looking at artwork." She took my hands. "You're right handed. And you're faithful in your religion. How high can you lift your eyebrows?" I hesitated, a little embarrassed, but then I went ahead and showed her. She sat back and smiled. "Good. You're gaining more confidence in yourself."

I was astonished. This woman had just barely met me, knew nothing about me, and yet by looking at my face she knew everything about me! My friend told me that she was taught face reading by her parents. By looking at certain facial features, expressions, the way you talk and carry yourself, she can pick out certain traits in you and tell you about yourself! It was a really fun experience. If you're interested, you can learn a little about facial shape and personality here.

SUPER Belated Pics

This is from months ago. Oh well. :) We set up a campsite on the roof of our apartment building. It was really fun! But I am TERRIFIED of heights, so I was glad when we came down about an hour later. I don't really know why the pictures are so small...but you get the general idea! Haha I am so bad at figuring out blogger.


We are ready.

Well, sort of.

I did NOT want to go up.

Scary scary scary!

The ladder of death. It was named Rickety.

Safe on top!

Our floating campsite!

It was a good time. I'm getting a little more daring in my old age :) or a little more subject to peer pressure, I'm not sure which one. Maybe I'll post pictures of our end of the year couch burning soon. Love to you all!

Mice Sing Better In German

I found this on youtube today, and I was laughing so hard during it that I was disturbing other people in the computer lab. I may or may not be wanting Cinderella in German for my birthday.

Only Harry Potter Fans Will Get This

Haha :)

Kristan Ruby Lusvardi

I love and miss this beautiful girl. I think of her almost every day, but I know she's still around somewhere :) and I'm sure she's just as perky and peppy as she ever was. We love you, Kristan!

Beachy Beachy, Here I Come!

I've been counting down to beach week for what seems like forever. I'm looking forward to playing in (hopefully) the sun, eating delicious food, playing games all day long, conversing with the fam, playing with my nephews and nieces, and rinsing all the sand out of my swimsuit. Yup :) This is going to be a very fun weekend. Despite the red-eye flight.

Old Spice

I wonder how much Old Spice sales have gone up since they switched to the humorous advertising tactic. :) Enjoy a few of my favorite commercials.

Possibly the Worst Running Playlist Ever

Saturday I went running and was having no luck finding good, motivational songs to listen to on my iPod. Perhaps sensing that my endurance was failing, shuffle picked out the following tracks for me. I kid you not :)


"No Air" by Jordin Sparks
"The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles
"Come so Far, Got so Far to Go" from Hairspray
"Help!" by the Beatles
"Far Away" by Nickelback
"Wanna Go Home" by Michael Buble
"Carry That Weight" by the Beatles - the Beatles were really not helping me out today
"Nobody Said It Was Easy" by Coldplay
"This Is The End" by Relient K

Good thing I had some disney songs on there as well. Otherwise, I don't think I would have made it.

The Miracle of...Wait...What?

I'm currently in an infant development class at BYU. It's really fascinating, and I love the material, but I keep having dreams that I'm pregnant and don't know how it happened because I'm not married and don't even have a boyfriend. I wake up feeling disoriented, confused, and extremely guilty, before I realize that it was all a dream and that I'm not actually pregnant. (You can imagine the relief!) Hopefully we'll stop watching "The Miracle of Life" before too long so my dreams will return to a state of at least semi-normalcy.

Auto Tuned...

I thought this was pretty funny...the things you can do with Auto-tuning. :)

Can We Please Get Beach House With a Foosball Table?

Seriously. We have one here at the Villa, and as entertainment is somewhat limited in my complex, it has become my default activity. My friends and I have tournaments. We play for about an hour every day, and practice has made - not perfect - but SO much better. I creamed one of the best boys in my ward. And I'm giving THE best boy a run for his money. One of these days I'll beat em' all. But in order to do that I need to keep practicing :) so can we find a beach house with a foosball table?

PS Good luck today Marie! :) We love you!

Best Friend Photoshoot

My friend Jason is a really good photographer, and this last weekend my two best friends Jen and Vanessa and I wandered around downtown Provo taking some artsy shots for memories :) it was really fun. We took over 200 photos, so here's just a few of my favorites. I love you all!


The beginning of our modeling career.


Random brick wall in southern Provo.


I like this one. It took a few times to get it right though :)


Jen (a.k.a. Lil' Crack and J-dawg), Melinda (a.k.a. Lil' Crunch and Melly), Vanessa (a.k.a. Lil' Sketch and Granny Jo)


Just chillin' by a colorful van. Ya know.


I decided it would be a good idea for us to all squeeze into the gate around the tree. It was a very painful idea.


Goofing off.


Vanessa loves me :)


We found a sweet door on the north side of the Provo Tabernacle.


My roommate Jen is GORGEOUS.


This one took over 5o takes to get all of our faces in it.


It's been a great journey so far...


Best friends for life.