provo bucket list: snow shoeing

this past weekend we passed off another TWO bucket list items!

can i hear a "woot woot!" from all you peeps out there?!

#3: go snow shoeing.

the landscape management major/aboriculture class on campus organized a night for anyone who wanted to to go show shoeing up to the largest white fir tree in Utah.

my overall feelings of snow shoeing in five words you ask?

 hiking with 100 pound legs.

ha, i'm not going to lie, it wasn't my favorite hiking experience ever, but i'm still glad i did it.

there were 45 of us who went and strapped these snow shoes to our feet and hiked about an hour and 45 minutes to the tree.

regardless of the minimal snow utah has received lately,

we had wonderful,.sparkling, fresh powder in the mountains  that made it much nicer.

we began the hike at 6:00 pm, excited to  be going!

at about 6:30 i thought/complained to casey "how much longer"

at 6:45 we began the much steeper part of the trail

and about every 5 minutes i said to casey "i want a break."

did we break very much though?

no, because i felt peer pressured into not stopping from all the 43 other people around me.

i was NOT going to be deemed the most out of shape person on this adventure.

soooooooooooo,

we kept going

and we kept going.

let me tell you the basic experience of snow shoeing:

each foot becomes about 6 inches wider with the inside and outside added together,

and then sometimes on the steep parts your snow shoe doesn't claw into the snow nice enough and you totally start tripping up,
casey had good laughs about every 10 minutes watching clumsy kimber trying to not fall with huge clown shoes on...

and my tree hugging professor, phil allen, (literally he LOVES trees and is obsessed with them, that's why he teaches the tree class) would say "oh you're about 20 minutes away from the meadow"

45 minutes later we reached that dang meadow.

and then at the meadow he said we were "5 minutes away from the tree"

15 minutes later we reached the tree.

LUCKILY, that tree did not disappoint.

the pictures don't do it justice but it was a rather large tree,

i was glad i made it.

love this picture my friend chase took after climbing up the tree a little ways

the way down was awesome.

it took us maybe 35 minutes?

you could take a giant step and slowly glide with that foot a little more.

the snow made the pounding on your knees/toes not bad at all.
i'd go snow shoeing down hill any day :)


ps- don't forget to enter the giveaway below if you haven't already! there's pretty good chances you could win since only, like, 8 people read this here blog!


pps- i read the conference talk from Pres Monson called "Charity Never Faileth"
it is indeed an incredible read.
reminds us of the importance of not judging and just loving.
i needed that.

christmas lovin' and yard workin'

did i tell you our chirstmas decorations are up?

instead of writing a 3 page, single spaced paper, we hung up our christmas decorations the night we got back from thanksgiving,

(all of aunt malinda's decorations in montana got me oober excited)

more to come on our decorating the tree :)

we've also been cutting out lots of snowfalkes for fun.

like, legit ones.

some patterns are from the internet, some were created with our very own T.L.C.

we've also consumed approximately 2028910832037 gallons of hot chocolate this season and not sick of it one bit.

the landscape management club had a little service project last weekend:

raking up leaves and pruning bushes/trees for the (old people) community in provo.

it was freezing, but we sure had fun together.

the best part was getting to knock on their doors and tell them we were going to clean up their yard for them, FOR FREE!

it was the best activity we've had all  year long, we were all together, happy, and serving others in need.

 

in other news,
it's the last week of school,
2 fist pumps for us!
and then we have one week of finals and we will be arizona bound!

my major rocks.

the landscape management major rocks.

proof:

last week for our plants diagnostics class (aka memorize weeds, insects, diseases...oh wait i'm so ahead of that game!) we drove an hour away to the church farms in delta, ut to do some disease research on their corn crops. our caravan consisted of four 12 passenger vans. i was the front van with our professor. after we began the 10 minute off-roading excursion to the crop, one of the vans got stuck in a big old patch of mud. so everyone, including our professor, got out and started pushing that thing out, ha. took us like 15 minutes to get it out, but it sure brought some laughter. but really, all our professors are so awesome, down to earth, great people, who really have a passion for what they're teaching and love the students. i know this may seem odd, but i truly have a testimony of byu. no where else, can you begin class with a prayer, have your professor relate academic studies to gospel principles during a lecture, or have your professor openly talk about his mission to the whole class. i love byu.

secondly, i'm in the landscape management presidency and it rocks.
the people rock.
we have a blast together.
one of our presidency members is missing here, but oh well :)
if you're in slight contemplation of choosing a major, look at ours, it's the best.
plus, our professors are superb at networking for us and everyone graduates with a job who wants one.
the people are all just so great in the industry.

 
the above picture is us all laughing.
why are we laughing?
charley (bald guy) and i were arguing in the picture before this and then we all laughed how the picture before this one would actually look like we're arguing, oh goodness... 

lastly, the LM students have the wonderful priviledge to clean one section of the football stadium after football games.
as horrible as it sounds, it actually is fun with everyone.
everyone works so hard and we laugh and have a ball together.
plus, there's always great food afterward.
it's just dandy.

but next time you go to a byu football game, pick up yo trash people!

peace out.

chicago

so here are few pictures of my trip to chicago!
(descriptions will go clockwise starting with the upper left picture)

1. my hotel roomies
2. chicago skyline
3. the green river on st. patrick's day
4. millenial park

1. the bean at millenial park
2.  the best deep dish pizza i've ever eaten, SO good! i couldn't even finish 1 piece
3. the botanical garden with friends
4. my homeland in the botanical garden!

1-4= self explanatory in the botanical garden
all of us landscape majors were in heaven at this huge conservatory,
it seriously was superb!
all the specimens were incredible!

1-4= more happiness

1. cactus!
2. jumping picture! upon landing our feet on the ground after this picture, our professsor in the middle did the splits as he slipped to the floor, awesome
3 and 4. got curbside hot dogs at this teeny hot dog place in downtown chicago,

1. sleeping during our layover, 3 am departure=horrific
2 and 3. botanical garden

1. studying so much for my competition the night before!
2. us two turf grass competitors with our turf grass professor

lastly, this was me the whole trip, behind the camera taking pictures of everyone during the whole trip.
i did really enjoy it,
and i'm finally done with the video of of the trip, yay :)

it seriously was such a blast with everyone.
i love representing byu and i loved my experience in chicago!
go green/landscaping industry!

quick update!

i'm still in chicago.

casey is driving to mexico today.

byu won FIRST place in our competition overall here at student career days in chicago for the green industry/landscaping industry,

which is a HUGE deal, and super exciting!

go cougars!
where's waldo kimber?

i got 7th place in my individual competition and my partner got 1st! woohoo! go turf/weeds!
this is the trophy byu won, not me personally :)
 

last but not least,

happy birthday grampa!

so many more photos to come of this chicago trip!
and lots of whining from kimber as we now approach the 2nd week's time that i haven't seen casey!

weekend did's

what a busy friday and saturday we had!

here's is the low down:

friday

7:30-1:30 pm- went to a golfing tournament thing for my major to meet/golf with a bunch of employers!

fun indeed and i improved my game of golf indeed. poor casey had class and research during that time

2 pm- dance class

3 pm- go home, meet up with casey, take a short nap

4 pm- dance class

5 pm- drive back to the golf resort and go to an opening social for my major with casey, twas fun :)

7 pm- race around getting ready to drive up to Bountiful to go to my cousin's reception (Steven Beckstrand)

i know, horrible blurry picture that i didn't realize was so horrible but i still want it documented.

so excited for these 2!

9 pm- on our way driving home- we realized we didn't really have any other plans for the night so we stopped at the Bountiful temple bc it was just beautiful there on the hill in all its whiteness. i love how vibrantly white the temples are in the night. we walked around and just talked and laughed like we were dating. good little memories we made :)

on our drive home i fell asleep pretty quickly and casey was the good husband a drove.

he always drives and i always get to sleep! sorry love, but thanks for driving

once we got to orem he decided it necessary to stop at the new winco in town!

we have testimonies of winco from CA.

he picked up lots of cheap granola and of course his chocolate covered gummy bears.

i stayed sleeping in the car while he went in :)

i was pretty much a walking zombie after the car ride home and fell immediately to sleep again.

saturday

i was able to go to a fun baby shower in the ward in the morning and take a fun saturday test at the testing center.

during that time casey took his 1st practice DAT test! crazy days coming ahead of us!

casey's dad arrived soon after all that was done and we went to yummy costa vida for lunch.

i then drove them to the byu football game so they could get there sooner, 

came back home to drop the car off and walked to the game to meet them!

dumb game. they lost.

going to the rs broadcast would probably have been a better use of my time...lightning will soon strike me 

immediately following the game though we had stadium clean-up.

yes, that means we cleaned up the trash in the stadium (east bleachers). yuck.

again, for my major. 

casey was a good husband and stayed to help me. it was more fun with him there :)

we were exhausted and starving by the time it was done but we still had to walk 20 minutes home!

the walk home was pretty funny though, i can't even recall what we were laughing so hard about except for the fact that we were! i love those times.

we got home put our stuff down and raced out the door to the car to realize we locked ourselves out of our apt and the car keys still in the apt, haha, luckily we could still laugh at this point and weren't mad :)

coincidentally our landlord was outside at the time randomly and let us back in.

we then were able to get keys to our car, race to little caesar's and get pizza and crazy bread. so worth all $5.

after scarfing down all food imaginable, we played just dance, watched a movie, and stayed up way too late.

all in all, i think we can say that we enjoyed our friday and saturday.


ps- i'm very grateful that i you can have the capability to create a mormon tabernacle choir playlist on pandora :)

gotta love it

it's in the landscape design room by the fridge and the microwave