The Things I Do To Myself.

Hey Everybody! My life is boring so that is why you barely ever hear from me. As well as the fact that school is keeping me busy this semester and I'm completely ready for the final weeks before the summer break.
I recently had my spring break and I must say that it was fun. I spent the first few days cleaning and organizing because Daryl's parents were coming out here for the rest of the week. We just ran ourselves ragged but had a blast. They decided to go skiing the first day out and I know I can't ski and I would probably break something, so I opted out. Although I'm sure that I would have been completely entertaining to all those around watching. I did see a little girl, probably three years old skiing down the mountain and that just isn't cool. They have a smaller length to fall then me and look how awesome she can already ski. UGH! Oh well, I will not humilate myself for others amusement. At least not there.
After that day we went to the Sportsmans show where they have all sorts of booths there with information on hunting expeditions and camping, trips, and boating and so on. They even had the splash dogs there which are the dogs that jump into a pool after a toy, then they meausre how far they can jump. I swear, I thought this one dog was going to jump right into our lap. That pool had to be about thirty feet long and I thought he was coming right for me at the other end. It was awesome. I decided that I want to get a dog and do that. I'm going to get a chocolate lab, name him Chocolate, and have him jump in a pool of chocolate. I'm original you know. :) Although I'm not good at making animals listen to me, so it could be an intersting undertaking.
After that we did a little shopping, hung out with his parents and just had an overall good time. THe last day that they were here we did go golfing and I thought I could do pretty good. NOT REALLY! I'm lucky if I hit the ball AND I'm lucky if I see where the ball is going. I need a really bright pink ball so that I don't lose it. Luckily I missed all the water on the course, mostly because I missed the ball. AND I'm a really scary golf cart driver. I thought for sure I was going to dump us out a few times, but didn't. I'm like a nascar driver in a golf cart, if only they could go faster!
Anyways, I'm back in the final weeks of school, the weeks I like to call H E DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS WEEKS!!! But we're just cruising along. Only about six weeks to go then I'll be done til next fall. I'm hoping to get into this volunteer group that you do so many hours of work and they will give you a thousand dollars towards your education. So I want to do that over the summer so that I can put it towards tuition in the fall.
Thats everything exciting happening right now. Except for one thing. Everyone knows that I can hurt myself easily it seems. I think I'm taking after my Aunt Della who has a tendency to get hurt a lot. But I found interesting ways to do it. Last night I got out a pot to cook rice in and apparantly I didn't set it all the way on the counter. Who knew. Anyways, it fell and landed with the handle pointing down, on my toe. IT HURT!! I did a little jig, called the jig of pain and ran around the room for a minute. I don't scream in pain, I just continuously say OWIE!!! Anyways, I put ice on it and when I went to bed, I just saw a red mark there. This morning, however I found this.



You can kind of see the bruise that runs down my toe and to the top of my foot. Ignore the gross feet please!! If Jodi is reading this she is hating me right now because she doesn't like feet. They haven't seen the light of day in months. Anyways, needless to say I have a limp now because of this and it hurts like the dickens. But OH WELL. Eventually it will heal and NO ITS NOT BROKEN!!!!
Thats all for now. I hope you enjoyed this blog Will, I know you've been desperately waiting for one. :) I'm kidding. LOVE YA!!! See you all next time! Toodles!!

A month in the life of BranDee and Daryl....mostly BranDee

Hey all. Sorry its taken me so long to write another blog. Christmas break flew by, school all of a sudden started, and I've been on my toes ever since school started. This semseter is going to be a hard one and its already stressful. But let me back up and tell you a little bit about Christmas.
Christmas was a blast. We spent the day with my parents at their house. A huge snow storm moved in the day, so my brother and his wife couldn't make it down on christmas, which was sad. But they came down a little later. My Aunt Della made us all Utah Jazz scarfs that are nice and warm and very cool. I need to get a picture of Daryl in that scarf since he isn't much of a fan. :) Daryl got his electric razor that he has been begging me for, for a very long time. He also got an awesome new robe that is really warm and comfy, he wears it ALL the time. I also got him a lot of Kansas State stuff, like key chains, magnets, a pen, a sign that say #1 Wildcat Fan, and a Kansas State mug you put in the freezer. He didn't get as spoiled as me, but he got plenty of things. He seemed very happy with everything that he got.
I of course, got my car, books and games from my parents, and a tripod from my sister in law, which I absolutely love! It comes in real handy and I don't have to borrow one from other people. AWESOME!!! It turned out to be a really fun day. We played this game called Uno Flash and that game is crazy! If you have never played it, you really need to. There is no telling who is going to win. You each have your own button and you have four seconds to lay down a card and hit your button, or you have to draw four cards. You don't get to choose who gets skipped, the game does, and you feel on edge the whole time. Its TONZ of fun. I had a blast with it. Its kind of an expensive game, so I'm waiting for my birthday to get it for myself. :)
The Monday after Christmas, I came home from being out and about to find a very sick husband. Daryl ended up getting really bad food poisoning that stuck around that whole week. I felt so bad for him, because he was really sick. On New Year's Eve, which was also my older brother Will's birthday, I came down with a cold. We ended up spending New Year's Eve with just the two of us, hoping that we would make it to Midnight. We barely made it, but as soon as twelve oh one hit, we were already in our bed fast asleep. It wasn't a very fun day for us.
School started back up for me on the 5th of January and I've been going ever since. I only have three classes but they are jam packed. I have my Senior Capstone class this semseter and this is the last class you take when you are done with your major in sociology. You spend the semester doing a research project on something that you find intersting. It is not easy. First you have to decide you topic, then its a lot of research, survey questionnaires, more research, and a lot of writing. Its tough, but I have an awesome professor to help me through it. My topic is on gender and behavior. I'm basically looking at Men's perception on how they fell they should be treated by women, and vice versa for the women. Its kind of interesting.
They other hectic class is my photography class. We get to work on one body of work throughout the entire semester AND we have to apply to three different art shows. I'm really scared about the art shows, because I have yet to do that. YIKES!!!! But it will be really good experience for me. I originally went back to an idea I did a year ago with Body by Candlelight, and I wanted to do it all in color. Well after the first pictures came out, I wasn't to happy with them and a little lost. My professor gave me some artists to look at that work with low light and I found some very ineresting that involved light movement. ANyways, Daryl and I got the idea of glowsticks and went out this past weekend hunting them donw. After we did, I spent an evening, with the help of Daryl, and a few friends, and we came up with some great pics.

In this pic, we took glow sticks and tied them together with string, then let them spin. Our friends son, Christian is the kid in the pick reaching for the glowing world.

In this pic we cut open a glow stick and put the liquid in water, then let it swirl around. It turned out really good and Daryl says it looks like the galaxy.


Daryl calls this one the autopsy of an alien. This was when we just started having fun with the glowsticks. It actually turned out really interesting and my professor told me today that he is very intrigued by it. So I'm EXCITED!! Now I have tonz of ideas flowing through my head and I can't wait to see where we go with this. Its been lots of fun.
Anyways, not much else is going on. Daryl is waiting on word to see if the union goes on strike at the refinery. If that happens, then he will be working seven days a week, twelve hour shifts. Not something I'm hoping for. Plus his parents were talking about possibly coming out here next month, so I'm hoping it doesn't happen. The money would be nice, but I would hardly get to see him.
I guess thats all that is happening now. OH, one other thing. This past weekend we spent the day with our friends James and Michelle, because saturday was Michelle's birthday. I got to decorate a gingerbread man and I made him in Daryl's image. Tell me what you think. Oh and by the way, the green candy is his sideburns.
TOODLES!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and so on......

Hey everybody! So its been a couple weeks since you last heard from me, but a few things have been going on. First school finally came to an end. HAPPY DAY!!!! Finals week wasn't so bad, I had to turn in my portfolio for photography, I had two papers to write and then I had one test. Of course, it was the test that I dreaded because it was social statistics and I worked really hard in that class. Well yesterday, I finally go the courage up to take a look and see if they had posted my grades. I don't know why I was so worried though, because I walked away with a 4.0 for fall semseter. YEEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAW!!! As you can tell I am ecstatic about it, because it was a lot of hard work through out the semester. But I'm getting there. If all goes as planned, I have two semesters left and then I am done!!! HAPPY DAY!!!!! Keep your fingers crossed. :) So to celebrate last night, Daryl and I were going to go and see a movie. But a really bad snow storm rolled in and it became a complete mess on the roads. So we opted for staying home, cooking steaks, and watching movies. It was an awesome night.
Moving on, in my last blog I talked about my car and how we were having some issues with it. Really BIG issues. Well after the new transmission was put into it, we went to pick it up, thinking all is good now. When we got there, the mechanics still hadn't test drove it to make sure that there was nothing wrong. Well there was something wrong, the car was STILL not running well. So the mechanic offered to take a look at it and give us a call, letting us know what the problem was. When he did call the next day, he said we needed a new catilic converter(I KNOW I spelled that wrong, but I don't really care.). So for a few days we had a car that sounded like a race car, because they had removed the converter. We took it to a muffler shop and we asked the guy to put everything back together and test drive it, to see if the other mechanic was right. When we got the call, it wasn't good news. The converter was being plugged up by antifreeze getting sucked through it. THere were several leaks, we needed new parts and it was going to cost us another arm and a leg to fix it all up. By this time, Daryl decided that the car wasn't even worth putting that much money into it. Already this mechanic is telling us that it probably wasn't our transmission all along. Which is really frustrating because we paid for something that we didn't even need. UGH! So guess what we did? You guessed it, we went shopping for a new car. And I already have my christmas present. A NEW CAR!!!!! See!

This is a picture of my new car. Its a 2008 Hyundai Sonata and I love it. Its a great car. Daryl said he would probably never buy a foreign car, but we heard great things about this car and we got an awesome deal! It took us about a week and we didn't get much for my other car because of the problems, but we got it off our hands so we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. HAPPY DAY! It was much sooner than planned, but I'm happy with it. It sucks that we have to go back to a car payment after not having one for a year and a half. But we got the payment down around where we wanted it and its all good.
Here are a few more pics of my car.



Anyways, so that is what I get for christmas and thats fine. At least now we have a car we know is reliable and it has a great warranty on it, so if something goes wrong, we may not have to pay for it. Which is a great thing. Plus its a black car and I haven't had a black car yet. :)
For Christmas we'll be at my parents house and I'm really excited. Its going to be a lot of fun. We drew names this year and I got my Aunt Della's name. Which means my shopping for her was extremely simple. Just find the Utah Jazz stuff and we're all set. I even asked her if she wanted something else and she said no. No imagination I tell you. :) Oh well, it made shopping easy for me.
Not much else going on around here. We've got a ton of snow outside. Because we've had consistent storms for about two weeks now, the snow has just been piling up. I think we have at least a foot from all the snow, which is awesome. Daryl and I had a snowball fight and he won. ONLY because he pushed me into a tree and all the snow fell onto me. What a cheater.
Thats about all for now. I'll try and get some pretty winter pictures for my blog and I'll try and get on here telling you all about my christmas day. It will be fun!!! Can't wait! :)
See ya later!!!!!!

Wow its December.

Hey all! Sorry you didn't hear from me for a month, but my life is very very boring, so there really isn't a whole lot to write about. I figured, I better get on here and write something while I have time.
I have recently finished up my fall semester, just finals week is left and I only have to go in for one final, which is awesome. Then I get a month off until spring semester starts up again. I thought I could be graduating in the spring, but it looks like that won't be happening. So if all works out, which it should, I should be done with school by december of next year. YEE HAW!!!! And here is the scary thing, I'm thinking about going to Grad School. How crazy is that? I have no idea what I'm thinking, but thats what I'm considering right now. I'll probably take a year off to make up my mind completely, but thats the idea floating around.
Daryl and I went to Kansas for Thanksgiving this year and that was a lot of fun. We got to spend time with our nephews and niece, as well as the rest of the family of course. We blew up a boat, a couple pumpkins, and an old stove while there. It was awesome. I really need to put some videos on here, you guys would love them. I also went to see the movie Twilight. Yes I like those books, but I'm not obsessed like some girls are. Those people are like the people who are obsessed with Harry Potter. I think they need help. :) Anyways, I liked the movie and was happy that I got to go and see it.
Then on Black Friday, I went with my mother in law and sister in law, shopping. It actually wasn't as bad in Manhattan, Kansas as it gets here in Utah. Probably because there aren't as many people there, I don't know. It was busy and Kate, my sister in law, almost got ran over in the Walmart by some crazy lady. And that was around ten o'clock, after the majority of crazys are supposed to be gone. But I was able to find some awesome deals and I am completely done with Daryl's Christmas gifts! YEAH!!!!!
The only other thing that I've been doing is working on my photography. I won't be able to enter any of my work in the student show at Weber, because you have to frame everything and I don't have any money for that right now. But there is a statewide competition that I'm entering in January that I could win some money in. I'm not planning on winning anything, but you never know. I'll put some of my work in this blog so you can see my latest stuff. My final project I found a cemetery out in the middle of Skully Valley UT, that was really interesting. There used to be a town there name Iosepa (pronounced, Yoseepa) which means Joseph in Hawaiian. These were all polynesian/hawaiian people that moved to Salt Lake to be closer to the Mormon church and moved out into the desert to make a city for themselves. All that is left of the town is the cemetery and I found it very intriguing. The descendants of these people have a celebration there every Memorial Day weekend to commemorate their ancestors. I'll try and put some of those pictures on here. Anyways, that was my most recent project.
The only other thing happening is my car decided to die on us, the transmission went out. So we had to get that replaced and that cost us an arm and a leg. YIKES! So Daryl is already looking for something else to replace it with. It looks like my Christmas present could be a new car. :) I'm kidding, we're going to hold off for at least a month or two and hopefully find a great deal. Which is very possible. I'll keep you all posted on that.
Anyways, I guess thats all for now. See ya all next time!!!!
This first pic is one I did out at the Great Salt Lake. I put the flowers out there and took it. The other pics are all from my photography final.

Happy Halloween!!

Hey all! Another Halloween has come and gone, and boy was it a fun one. Instead of sitting at home, waiting for trick or treaters who would never come, we headed off to a party. And we had a blast!!!!
I have some friends from High school that I haven't got to see very often because as we all know, life after high school becomes different and we all go our seperate ways. But my friend Amanda, who I've known since kindergarten, sent me an email inviting me to a party at her house on halloween. I had to say yes, since I don't get to see her at all. So I was really excited to go, because I figured I would get to see people that I haven't seen in a long time. I was even more excited when I learned that four of my friends I've known since elementary school were going to be there.
Of course for a halloween party you need to dress up, so Daryl knew days in advance he wanted to be a hillbilly. (Very appropriate choice for him I think. :) ) I had no clue. So just hours before we were supposed to go the party, we began throwing together a costume for me. It started out as Indiana Jones, then my dad said I looked like the crocodile hunter, by the end of the night I was juat a chick with a aussie looking hat on my head. :)

We took the picture last night at the party of us in our final costumes. I've decided that next year I want to have an awesome costume, so I'm going to make my own and be Little Red Riding Hood. I better write that down before I forget about it.
Anyways, of course we spent the majority of the night reminiscing about things we remember doing as kids. It was a lot of fun. We talked about things I had forgotten and Daryl realized he married a freak. :) Hey, when you're a kid you do the dumbest things. Of course my lovely friends were quick to remind me what a wussy I was as a kid and sadly it hasn't changed. I'm still a wussy. :) But hey, I'm trying. :) Since we haven't been together for years, all five of us, we had to take a picture of what I like to call the Central five. Thats because we all went to Central Elementary School as kids, which has since been torn down. We even had a time capsule there, I wonder what ever happened to it. Oh well, not important I guess. So here is a pic of the five of us.

From left to right, Theresa, Kristi, Me, Shaunta, and Amanda. These are the girls I used to run around with every single day.
Of course there was drinking, not me becuase I find it more entertaining to watch drunks. We spent the majority of the night just laughing and having a really good time. Even Daryl got a little crazy and became the ugliest woman I've ever seen. So you'll see in the last pic. Thats about all for this, if I think of anything else, I'll post them. SEE YA ALL NEXT TIME!!!! P.S. Thanks Amanda for a great party! We soooooo need to do that again!!!!!

LETS GO HUNTING!!!!

Hey all! Sorry you haven't heard from me in awhile, but things have been a little hectic around here. School is reaching midterms and that means tests, papers, and all sorts of crazy stuff due! YIKES!!!! Thats okay though, I'm either working hard or hardly working. Mostly hardly working. :)
Anyways, this year Daryl decided that he wanted to go Elk Hunting. Something he has wanted to do since he first moved out here eight long years ago. Of course from the moment he bought his tag, its all he talked about. I, of course, was excited for him as well as myself. While hubby's away wifey will play, and all that.
I don't know how long it was between him recieving his hunting permit until he actually went hunting, but I think it was a couple of months. He really started talking about it as soon as September rolled around. Which was fine at first, then I was like, I get it you're going hunting. :) I only kid here, I was happy for him. So of course because thats all we discuss I start dreaming about him hunting and shooting an elk and I think, that should be good luck.
The weekend before he was to go hunting we were watching the news so we could see the predicted weather for the upcoming weekend. It wasn't good news. The week was supposed to be wonderful, in the high seventies and lower eighties, but what was this, a really big storm moving in on Saturday? After weeks of beautiful weather, God sees fit to bring rain in on opening weekend for elk hunting. I found it rather amusing, Daryl not so much. But I thought Elk were easier to hunt when it was cold and wet, because they were moving down from the higher mountains. (I don't know anything about hunting, so I think I'm just making stuff up here.)
Of course Daryl was going, there was no way he wasn't going. They were predicting our first snowfall since last winter and really cold temperatures. Of course Daryl and his buddy James, who went hunting with him, packed all the warm clothes and everything. I made sure that they took extra food just in case it snowed so bad that they were stuck up in the mountains longer than planned.
So while Daryl was freezing, hunting for a big elk, I was down in the wet valley hanging out with my family and playing games on the Wii with my brother. I heard from Daryl once and he said it was really cold and wet. I of course was like, I'm sorry but remember you wanted to go hunting, this is supposed to be fun!!!
When he made it home Monday, after a horrible weekend of weather, he didn't bring anything back with him. I was a little sad because I would have loved for him to get one, but he was just happy to be back. The funny thing was that day they came home was a nice sunny, warm day.
Here are some pictures of where they were camping:

I believe this is day one of hunting. Do you see the bear? Well if you do then you're making things up because all you should see is a tent and the vast forest around them. This is what we call roughing it.


This is what we call the first snowfall of the year since last winter. I also call the boys CRAZY for going up there. But they still had fun.


And this is what it looked like on the day they packed up and came home. Poor guys.

I only make fun of them because I could never stay out in the cold the way they did. I would be too much of a wuss. Of course, after that Daryl decided he needed to go hunting the following weekend, still wanting to get his elk. When he said this I took his chin in my hand, kissed his nose and said, "Honey, its going to be worse next weekend." He groaned, got smart, and went hunting with a buddy that has a camper. GO DARYL!!! And this past weekend was much colder than before, but he wasn't nearly as cranky when he got home. Thank the Lord for campers!!!

Some recent work.

I almost forgot to add some pics that I've recently taken for my color photography class at school. I have four pictures that I printed, but only two that I really like. So I thought I would add those two for all to see. I also promised Jodi that I would add the pic she helped me with, with the glow in the dark stars.
We were asked to take pics that would be titled "My Heart's Desire" and "Darkness Visible". Its supposed to be in a pair, where the pictures tell a story. For the first one I did a picture of the Consitution of the United States, on an American Flag. That one I am really proud of because it turned out awesome. And if it doesn't look good on here, you'll need to see it in person because it truly is one of my best. The picture that goes with it is a picture of three of the founding fathers of our country kneeling and praying. I wasn't to pleased with it, but its not horrible.
For Darkness Visible I took pictures of some glow in the dark stars and of my lava lamp. The lava lamp pic is pretty boring, which I figured it would be. But the glow in the dark stars turned out really cool and Jodi helped so I'll dedicate that one to Jodi my awesome assistant for that day!!!!


Like I said, they look a lot better when you see them in person than they do on here. Its a little hard to take pictures of them without a flash showing up somewhere. If you are interested in seeing the other two, let me know and maybe I'll post them on here for ya. I hope you like them, I'm very proud of my flag picture. One of my best so far.
Thats all for now! TOODLES!!!