Outdoor Learning Center Retreat

I don't have a ton of time to write so mostly this week will be pictures.This first one is of my class. My English teacher has a tolerance of a late assignment one day late as long as you bring a treat for the rest of the class. The first assignment most of the class was late on so we had a party the next time :)

These next few pictures are of my trip I had this weekend.I have joined a volunteer group called the Outdoor Learning Center Volunteers. which basically means that our school owns a bunch of acres of land and the school has activities on it that students can buy tickets to. the volunteers get to go for free, as long as they do the driving and all the other things that they need them to do. so this weekend was a retreat for all of us to the OLC (Outdoor Learning Center), where we got to do some fun activities and get to know each other better. It was fun, here are a bunch of pictures from it.

These last few pictures are of the ripe apple trees that the school is growing. it is a very beautiful site. They sell them for $.50 a pound. a good price if you ask me. I haven't got any, but it is fun to go an walk around and see the beautiful site.

Well that is all this week. very short, but it is also late so I don't have time to write. I hope the pictures told you quite a few tales :)
Love, Tesia

Constitution Day, Dinosaur Potatoes

This week was the real start of school work and studying. I am very glad for the school supplies that came on Tuesday and Wednesday. I am all officially organized and ready to get started on the year. These are the only pictures of the boxes that I got this week. This box is the first one that came, it was really funny because it was such a huge box, and all it had in it was 2 packets of magic erasers and a binder; the rest of the box was full of bubble wrap stuff you can sort of see it poking through in the third picture.

The classes I am taking this Semester are Chemistry 106, Social Science Stats, Advanced Writing and Research, Doctrine and Covenants, and Great Books of the World. I am really excited about this Semester. All of my classes are definitely going to be a lot of work, but at the same time I can tell that my teachers are good teachers and are going to teach me a lot. I think I am most excited for my Great Books and Writing classes. The writing class seems like it will be the busiest because of all the writing and reading. The Writing class is interesting, you can basically decide in the begging what grade you are going to get. They way my teacher has it set up, There are 4 major papers, each one you do will get you a letter grade more. So as long as you plan on doing all 4 papers, and the small HW assignments, you will get an A. The hard part is that you need to do good on the papers [its a college class, what do you expect ;) ] anyway I am not positive I will do great in any of my classes, but I am positive that I will learn a lot from my classes and that is what excites me about them.

Hmm what else happened this week. My roommate, Kim, was cooking her Potatoes this week and found one that looked like a Dinosaur. It really was quite cute.

On Monday I went to the Library to do my HW and study. While there some ladies came and started handing out free cake. This was in celebration President David O. McKay's birthday (the Library is named after him). This actually went on all day. I got Cake a few time :) It was very good. My favorite was the Chocolate with the Boston Cream in the middle. Here is a picture of the nice ladies handing out the cake.

Another thing that happened is Constitution Day was this week. During this day all the main area on campus was filled with US flags. There were also quotes from all of the Prophets about the Constitution, and all of the founding fathers. There were 4 presentations that were put on periodically throughout the day, sadly every time they went on i was in a class so I had to miss them. It was really quite fantastic to see all of these.

Here is a water fountain that I think is a really nifty thing, this is made specifically to fill a water bottle. The cool thing, if you look on the top right corner there is a little green screen looking thing, this tells you how many water bottles this particular fountain has saved (compared to a store bought disposable water) they are trying to encourage people to bring there own water bottles and not litter or use up the plastic ones you get from the store. Well I hope that made sense. These fountains are in every building on campus. they are really cool and very nice for filling up my water bottle. I am very grateful for them.

And last but not least here is a really yummy flavor of Laffy Taffy that I discovered this week. It is caramel Apple very funny!

Well that is about it for this week. Hope you are all doing well. I love you bunches and bunches.

Home, now Back Again

Since it has been a long time since I have updated anything on this blog I will attempt to update it from about the time I went home from this past Spring Semester, up until today. It will probably be a quick summary of everything, and I don't have a ton of pictures but I will do what I can.

While I was home the family did a wonderful job at making sure that I ate correctly while still having a fun time and eating fun food. The picture of the recipe is for apple Crisp. Dad, Catherine and I did a lot of research looking for the lowest calorie Apple Crisp, partially so we could have a fun dessert and then also so we could use up all the apples before our vacation so they wouldn't go bad. With all the apples we had we ended up quadrupling the recipe. While making this it slipped my mind that while you need to quadruple the recipe that does not mean in any way that you should quadruple the topping. Well I ended up making a ton of topping for the apple crisp. Needless to say it was a very sweet dessert and very yummy. I don't have any pictures of the dessert but I am sure mom and dad still have 2 or 3 containers of it in the freezer ;)

Catherine and Dad we also both very good at being creative with the food that they made. One day when we had a huge Watermelon, Catherine decided that she wanted to make a shark out of it. This consisted of using an ice cream scoop to scoop out all of the Watermelon and then carving the shark mouth out of the other side and putting all the scooped watermelon back through the mouth.

Shortly after returning home we went on Vacation to our Grandparents. We started out in Alabama. While here we all pitched in and spent the 3 days helping Hanna paint her bedroom (Catherine and I did that with Hanna) and helping Grandma rearrange and revamp her Garden in the Backyard. It was a lot of fun, we all had a wonderful visit. I had the opportunity to spend one on one time with Grandma Kellar. I got to learn more about Grandmas childhood and hear stories from her. It was an amazing time to get to know her better. following are some picture of us all helping out.


 I am the person behind the Camera here showing how hard Hanna and Catherine were working. I was working hard also :)

Mom and Dad worked really hard and did a great job at helping all of us have the energy to keep going.
 

Not sure if you can tell from these two pictures but the piece of plastic that is hanging from the tree is actually in the tree. It has been there so long that the tree has grown around it!



I also had a very nice picture of Ammon and Grandma, but I promised Grandma I would never put it up anywhere for others to see. So you will just have to trust that it looks really awesome.

After Grandma Kellars we all drove back up to visit Grandma and Grandpa Collier. That first day we all spent a good time with Grandpa showing us around and getting to see the Collier Cove. Grandpa got tired part of the way through so we all went to the park while Grandpa sat down and rested we all ran around and played. this particular park has a treasure hunt around it to find certain carvings. we almost found all of them by the time we left.
Look how strong Ammon is! ;)




Here is what the beginning of the Collier Cove looks like. It is really very nicely done.

following are some pictures of us all Working at Grandma and Grandpa Colliers Sycamore place. We helped them get started on their house on Sycamore. we did a lot of cleaning and painting and fixing things.

  Catherine and my big job was to get up the flooring in this particular room. it had some really sticky glue underneath it which i refused to get on my shoes. It was very interesting figuring out how to get the last piece that I was standing on up! I ended up standing on a rag while Catherine pulled up the last piece. ahh good and funny memories.
 Here you can see me trying to pull up flooring while standing on the flooring that is not yet pulled up.

After the wonderful vacation it was time to go home. While we were on Vacation Ammon had turned 16!!!!! So once we got home we made some wonderful Bread Pudding as his Birthday Cake and had a fun family party for him. It was quite a challenge to get him to blow out the candle. we apparently all wanted to do it for him. In the end he finally got to blow it out.

 

 
During the Vacation I also got an e-mail from BYU-I inviting me to comeback for Fall Semester. After many hours of thinking, pondering and praying about it I finally decided that this is something that I should do.
Because of this the majority of my time was taken up with getting ready for college and figuring out what I was going to do.
While at home I got to stay up in the attic. This was a fun time. I never really truly unpacked my things, instead I pretty much took up the entire sleeping area of the attic with my stuff just thrown on beds and stuff. I think at one point we counted i had taken over 5 beds! It was quite crazy and something that we all laughed about quite often.

One day while up in the attic and figuring out my future. I looked outside and saw Dad mowing the lawn out front. It was a cool looking opportunity so here is a picture of Dad hard at work.
 
A little while later I went with Catherine and Mom to buy stuff for her mission and clothes for me. while I was running out the door I got a good picture of Dad all geared up in his work clothes mowing the lawn.
 
 We had the missionaries over to feed them dinner. and Catherine made them a Hair thing, can't really remember what it was called, but here is a picture of how awesome it looked in her hair.
 

 I love Mom and Dad so much! They just look so cute together. Sometimes it is an interesting experience to get a picture of them. At this point they were just looking really cute, and I had my camera with me so I tried to take pictures, dad kept moving

 First to the right.Then to the left

 Then just a bunch of jiggling around while mom tried to hold him. lots of laughing at this point in time.And last of all a nice photo of them both.

sadly I can't put the photos up./
Catherine and I went out with each other a lot to buy clothes for her mission and also for me at college. Here are some of the things we considered getting.

 
We ended up getting the Blue clear one for her shower shoes.

This is a dress we ended up not getting but seriously considered getting. The picture makes it look a lot nicer than it actually was.

 After all of these wonderful experiences it was finally time for me to head back to college. I had all my things figured out and everything was set. So at 11:30 PM on Sep, 6th we took all of my bags and headed to the train station. Yes I still love taking the train.

Following are a few Photos of my trip to Utah while on the train.

 Once I got on the train I took this picture to show I had made it all safe and sound.


They responded with this picture of them all waiting to wave goodbye to me.


On the train ride I had a layover in Chicago Illinois (I think that's where it was) While waiting for the next train I stayed in what they called the great hall. These are some pictures of that great hall.

 Here are some picutures of the scenery that I saw while headed back west.

 Here we see a pile of torn up railroad where I guess the old tracks used to be.

I arrived in SLC on the 8th and spent a wonderful day and a half with Sarah and Brandon. Sadly I did not get any pictures of this. I did have a wonderful time though. 

on the 10th I got on the shuttle with my suitcases and made it to Rexburg later that day and started unpacking. 

I was very proud that my "thread around the hangers to hold them" idea had worked so wonderful last time I packed.

 

A On Friday the rest of my packages were brought up to me by Sarah's grandma-in-law. I am very grateful for them doing this for me.

Dad and I spent a while on the phone figuring out things that I needed and sales that were online so most of my school supplies will be coming in the mail sometime this upcoming week.

On Saturday my two roommates showed up. they actually had a lot more stuff than I did!!! which i didn't think was really possible but it was apparently. and we did get it all to fit in this tiny apartment.

the complex That I am staying at grows Vegetables for all of us here to enjoy. below is a picture of me and Jocelyn (one of my roommates) picking a lot of vegetables so we could get them before the others take them all. there were a bunch of ripe cherry tomatoes. and we also found onions, though they were fairly small, and corn. 

 
All-in-all it looks like it is going to be a wonderful semester. last but not least here is a picture of the living room while I am in the kitchen.

Hope you are all doing wonderful.