Confession

My family already knows that I like playing basketball on mini hoops and with a mini ball. My parents got a small indoor mini hoop one year for my little brother who was like 7 years old, but I think I played on that hoop in the family room more than anyone. I played on it through my high school years. I could hit any shot in the room :)

Another one of my favorite things, still, is to play on the real basketball hoop at my parents' house, but I like to lower it as far as it goes (7 1/2 ft.) and have a dunk-fest by myself.
When my family got together this Memorial Day, Kalli had her camera and I just happened to have a mini ball available, so we took some action shots.

I know this is lame to post pictures of myself dunking the ball, but I figured I would finally confess my childish hobby/talent.

Kalli knows how to make anything look good and she worked her magic making the hoop actually look pretty high (it's not). However, I have to say, if I was a foot taller, I would be getting paid to do this right now!

The REAL Good Green

If anyone told me 6 months ago that I'd be mixing up vegetables and fruit in a blender and drinking it (by choice) I would NOT have believed them! Well, now I am, on an almost daily basis (and so is Joel which is pretty remarkable for him too) and I am really liking it!
I heard about the Green Smoothie Girl from my friend Natalie's blog a while back. The first time I saw this lady's site I think I was up till 2am reading her posts on her blog and reading what she had to say on her website. A few weeks later I braved up and made our first green smoothie. We were pretty grossed out after my first attempt, but I'm glad I kept at it. After a few tweaks to her recipe I finally had my own version of a "green smoothie" that I liked and even craved after a while! I made my first one out of a little bit of fruit, water, and about 2 1/2 cups of packed spinach. I wasn't used to the taste or the green color so I had to ease my self into it by adding some healthy orange juice, and a few other naturally sweet things.
I didn't like the green color at first, but now I really like it and actually prefer my smoothies to be green (they turn a nasty brown color if you add blue or black berries)
I have never been one to happily eat veggetables or salads and when I do they usually aren't the dark green kind, so disguising them with fruit is perfect for me! Plus you can pack waaay more greens in than you'd eat in a salad at dinner or lunch, and it's already smooth and smashed up so your digestive system doesn't have to work as hard....it's genius I tell you!
I make a big blenderfull in the mornings now, half for my breakfast and I put the other half in the fridge for Joel's "pre-dinner snack". It's so nice being able to drink something yummy and easy to make and know it's so good for you. We've been trying to implement a few of the green smoothie girl's other suggestions and I've finally been realizing that what I put into my body really affects how I feel (and how I will feel down the road).
I've tried to make a few other different kind of smoothies, but the one that Joel and I like the most right now consists of water, orange juice, spinach, banana, frozen fruit, almonds, and a little raw honey (I'm trying to slowly get rid of the juice). I made one last week that was pretty good, it was made of almond milk, spinach, banana, organic peanut butter, and raw honey. A few weeks ago my friend Kristin and I spent quite a while gathering ingredients for a hot pink smoothie I was so excited to try it out the next morning, but much to my disappointment neither of us could handle the taste. Both of us were gaaging it down. It was vvveeerrrry pretty though, it really was the most beautiful color of pink, the picture doesn't do it justice.

This is what our "every day" smoothie looks like usually (in a frosty mug! haha yum!). Here's to health!

Kind of random, but kind of funny!

Kalli and I were taking some video for fun on Memorial Day at my parents' house and I was jumping on the tramp. I guess it had been a while since I had landed on my back, because I apparently forgot how. Kalli told me to jump on my back and before thinking about it at all, I went for it and it ended up being a little awkward, as you can see in the video. It's like when a little kid tries it for the first time. We laughed about this for a long time!

Fueling our inner Nerd

Joel heard about this website (makezine.com) on channel 11 a while back where they teach you how to make all kinds of cool/nerdy stuff. We watched a few of their "how to" videos online and made fun of how weird and nerdy they were, but after a while we were like "wow this is actually pretty sweet" and "haha....yeah, we definitely need to make that".
I think this magazine has officially made it onto my Christmas list. Yep, that's right.
I mean haven't you always wanted to make a TV be gone! or an atlatl? They have some things that are a little more practical like the macro lens on a budget, I could reeeeally use one of those babies.
This one is sweeeeeeet (Cymatics) It totally makes my inner nerd do that snort laugh thing.
So who wants to join our "sciencey/crafty nerd club"? I think we should make This first hehe.

Favorite Sports Memories

I have been to some pretty awesome sporting events in my life:

• BYU football team beat 5th ranked Texas A&M the first game of the year
• The NBA Finals, Jazz vs. Bulls game with Nick and his brother Jeremy outside in the parking lot of the Delta Center on a huge TV with thousands of other fans (I think they lost that game - still awesome!)
• A professional lacrosse game in the Denver Broncos stadium with Jeremy, Justin, and Breanne.
• A few MLB (pro baseball) games including some spring training games in Arizona (my favorite place to be in the spring).

But I think last Friday night topped them all. My Dad called me Friday morning and asked if I wanted to go to the Jazz playoff game against Denver. Of course I said yes since I haven't been to a Jazz game in like 7 years. He said they might be pretty good seats because his boss was offering them to him. He called back and said they were on the 8th row!! And they came with a VIP dinner before the game. I was pretty pumped all day waiting to go. I was just telling Kalli a couple weeks ago how much I would love to see a Jazz game from just a few rows up.
Well, as excited as I was to see the game, it was way more amazing than I had thought!! The whole game I was just taking it all in, hardly believing that I was there with such great seats. It was so fun to just sit there and watch, I wanted the game to last a lot longer (even though I had a headache from all the noise!). We were so close, it was like we were in the game. You don't know how big, fast, and athletic these guys are until you see them up close. It was awesome!


Check out that ticket! Pricey; however, I thought it would be more for those seats.


We had to check out the seats when we first got there. We were pretty excited about them at that point! (we watched Korver hit like 90% of his warm-up shots from all over the court)


We went up to the dinner buffet in a ritzy banquet room on the top floor of the Energy Solutions Arena. It was a pretty small room with an awesome view. There were about 20 other rich suckers eating some of the best food anywhere! (My Dad was pretty excited about the shrimp!) We felt a little awkward and out of place, but happy to be there none-the-less. Needless to say, we felt pretty rich that whole night.


Even watching them warm up was exciting.


Their layup drill was more like a dunk exhibition. I didn't get the best part of it, but for a while they were all just dunking it as hard as they could - Ronnie Price (UVU alum!!) was having his own dunk contest. He was doing some awesome stuff!




The noise was almost unbearable! The crowd was pretty rowdy from the start. My Dad and I were both hoarse by halftime just from trying to talk to each other. My Dad didn't say much the second half because he literally lost his voice.


This kid was hilarious. Every time-out he would get up and dance and try to get the crowd pumped up (not that we needed to be). He looks old, but he must have been in his 20's and a little handicapped (I hope).


The party at the end of the game! I think the only thing that would have made it a better experience is if the Nuggets would've at least put up a fight the last quarter or two.



Just chillin courtside! They let the fans come down on the court after the game. We didn't really want the night to end so we took advantage.


It's going to be hard to top this one. It kind of makes me think it would be worth it to just splurge every once in a while and spend $200 a pop for that experience! (Maybe not on a teacher salary)

How can you not love Disneyland

Well, it's been a few weeks, but I still want to post some pictures of our Disneyland trip with our friends, Kristen and Ian. We had such a fun time at the beach, Disneyland, and California Adventure. We did each in one day, so we weren't there for very long, but it was really fun. The weather couldn't have been better. I think it was about 75 to 80 degrees all three days!

Kalli and I hadn't been there in a long time and didn't remember much, so we were surprised how much we loved it. Everyone was happy, the place was amazingly clean, the rides were fun, and the atmosphere was just really cool! The only thing we could have done without were the parades that jammed up the park every hour. It was kind of funny how we dreaded those. We would see people starting to place blankets on the street..."oh no, here we go again". But it was a perfect trip to get away from school and work for a few days.

The beach was awesome. We didn't spend much time there, but it was so nice to just walk around in the water and take a nap on the warm sand.

We went to Santa Monica beach because we heard it was really nice. In the background of this picture you can see the Santa Monica Pier which I guess is pretty famous. While we were there, someone was shooting a scene for a movie on it, and we were watching a TV show last week and one of the scenes was on the pier. It was pretty cool with a carnival, restaurants, and a few crazy people!

here's a little video we took of all the people running down the pier for the movie they were shooting. There were tons of people!

Joel's never had so much junk in his trunk ;)

Classic
I realized I'm getting older (and wiser) after choosing to wear running shoes instead of "cute" shoes to Disney Land. Function before fashion?

This is one big lego animal!

We ate lunch at the Jazz Kitchen just outside of the park in Downtown Disney. We ate in the courtyard of the restaurant which was so nice. There was hardly anyone there, the weather was perfect, the water fountain and birds gave some nice mood sounds, and the food was delicious! This was one of my favorite parts of the trip, just having a nice, relaxing lunch with Kalli. Ahhh sweet! This was one of my favorite parts too! and their Parmesan fries were waaay good. yum.

Our picture from the buzz light year ride.

Elastagirl, get cha hand off ma man!

I took almost 24,000 steps the day we went to Disney Land! My feet were glad I wore comfy shoes.

There was definitely some "California Screamin" going on! (my favorite ride) lol I love everyone's faces in this

We definitely saw our share of 3D movies. I think this one was the best however. The Bug's Life underground theater was awesome. And the show seemed to be a kid's show, but the effects were crazy! They sprayed us with a mist that engulfed us so fast, I thought I was going to suffocate. They gave us a bee sting where something came out of the bench and poked us (kind of hurt and scared the crud out of everyone!). Then the bugs crawling under our behinds was a little creepy. That was one of the last things we did, but I kind of wanted to do it again!

California Adventure was sweet at night (a lot better than our small camera shows) (I was totally lazy and wouldn't use my big camera. I didn't want to haul it around with me...Joel told me I'd regret it and I totally did)

Well, until next time(you mean next year?;) "happiest place on earth"!!
*kalli's comments in green

CA....we miss you

We went to California with Kristin and Ian last week....the weather was warm, sunny, and beautiful....ahhhh. Just wanted to post this one pic for now.