Adventures in Texas, Part 2!

Monday morning rolls around and I wake up to the smell of good food. No, actually I woke up to Josh knocking on my door and telling me there was good food. He and his dad had gotten up and gone someplace to get colachees (I don't know how to spell it, so sound it out), breakfast tacos and donut holes. The first thing i tried was a colachee. It looks like a mini hot-dog bun. I bit into it and there was a sausage and melted cheese on the inside... very yummy!! My breakfast taco was basically a burrito with egg, cheese and sausage in it, with salsa to dip. Also delicious. Josh didn't get a breakfast taco or anything special, so he felt a need to hog the colachees (he had 4). So there was a lot of teasing... After we all got ready, we packed in the truck and drove around Austin, going to a lake and enjoying nature (and the warm weather!! VERY nice change from Rexburg weather). Then we went to a park really close to downtown. Austin is bigger than i expected. The only real state capital I've ever been to is Boise (oh and Olympia, WA) and both are pretty small, from what I remember, so I wasn't expecting skyscrapers. We drove around a bit downtown, through the University campus and then back to the house. The boys went disc golfing and I stayed home with Taylor and Sister Cameron (My back was hurting). After some TV watching and such, I had a very nice conversation with Sister Cameron. I think she's going to be a really great mother-in-law... and I mean that!! We're a lot alike.
When the boys came back, we lounged for a few minutes and then went to Texas Roadhouse (Best restaurant ever!! especially since we were REALLY in Texas!!). Afterwards, Josh's parents dropped all of us kids off at a place called Main Event. For those of you from Wisconsin, this place is like a Funset Boulevard. It has bowling, pool, arcade games and laser tag. So we did some games and a little laser tag. I came in 7th on my team, so out of 13 or 14 people, that's not bad. Josh and Zack were dominating, though. I played a few shooting games at the arcade, got 1st place on Guitar Hero, and played Taylor on air hockey (I won 7-0... sorry Taylor!!). It was a really fun evening.
The next morning, Josh and I went shopping... ring shopping!!! And we found my ring. (I'm writing this on 12-27. Yesterday he called me and said he bought it!!!) Here's a picture...

Then we went to Whataburger (good food!!) and went to Walmart so I could get part of Josh's Christmas present. He wanted a fleece blanket that's double thick and tied like the one I have. They didn't have any fabric, but on our way out, we saw $4 fleece throws and got 2 of them (dark blue and brown) For the rest of the time before they had to take me to the airport, we cut up the fleece and were just starting to tie it when we had to get to the airport.
Leaving Texas was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I'm glad to be back with my family for a short time.
My flight from Austin to Phoenix took its sweet time getting to the gate, boarding and sitting on the runway. By the time we got into Phoenix, it was time for my next flight to board. So again, I made the mad dash all the way across the airport to my flight, which was just starting to board. We made good time getting to Boise, landing a little early. However, since the 1st flight had been so late, my luggage didn't make it in with me. Luckily it was delivered to me the next day, everything was still inside and working!! (aka my laptop!! I learned my lesson there!)
All in all, this was a great trip and I'm so glad I went!! Now I just can't wait to get back to Rexburg!

Hyatt Christmas Traditions- Tree ornaments!!

The Hyatt family has a lot of Christmas traditions... lefse (a Norwegian treat from Great-Grandma Heller), Christmas Eve, Little Tom Tinker... but I'll focus on a few at a time. Right now I want to do the ornaments. Not only is this a fun tradition, it also explains a little about me!
Every year, Mom and Dad either look for or create the perfect ornament to commemorate something that happened that past year. Every year, when we put up the tree, we get to see our new ornament. There's a lot of excitement involved with this and every year, when we ask when we get to see our new ornament, they ask, "What ornament? We didn't get you an ornament!" No Hyatt tradition is complete without a lot of heckling involved and no Christmas is complete without "ornament teasing."
I've painstakingly taken a picture of each of my ornaments. I have a complete collection now since next year, Mom and Dad won't be getting me one. This is a tradition I hope to bring to my future family. So I'll start at the beginning...





These are the first 4 years of my life. As you can see, there's nothing really special about them or descriptive of what life was like. They're just there to be Christmasy and cute.

This one is one of my favorites, probably number 1. This year, I started a dance class while we lived in Tucson, AZ. I didn't stick with dance (unless you count taking 2 classes in college), but I do remember going to this and I remember the one day I got to wear "the crown." I was so proud!



This was my first year of school: kindergarten! We were still living in Arizona at the time and I loved school (and still do, mostly). I was in a bilingual class where I was the only English-speaking native in there. I learned Spanish and could communicate with my classmates very well... then we moved to Iowa and I forgot everything.


These two are from when we lived in Iowa, a few firsts for me. The snow globe represents when we moved into a real house with a yard, a swing set, and SNOW!!! Mom and Dad weren't too thrilled about the snow, since we didn't have a blower and it was probably one of the worst winters we've had in the Midwest. Not nice of Mother Nature since we'd just barely moved from ARIZONA!!

The bus is because I got to ride my first bus to school. I thought that was a big deal because only the big kids in movies rode buses to school. I rode a bus to school from then until we moved to Wisconsin and the high school was in my back yard.




This was the year my family spent 7 weeks in Seattle. Among the things we did were a small Heller family reunion, seeing my uncle Lane and aunt Patti get sealed in the temple and other things all around Seattle, Tacoma and Arlington. I think this was when I really developed my love of all things Washington.


This year I played soccer. Yeah, surprising, I know, considering how much I complain about flat feet and sports asthma and such. But I played for 2 years. The first year we were yellow and black and the next year we were black and blue. My second year was better, we only lost 2 games, whereas the first year, we only won 2 games. the year after that, I decided I liked swimming and softball better.

These next three were all Washington specific. The first here is Baby New Year 2000. We moved to Puyallup, WA during the summer (that's pronounced pew-ALL-up for all you non-Washingtonians). We spent New Years 1999-2000 at our house with the rest of our family.
The next is Santa riding a moose. This is from the trip we took to Northwest Trek, a wildlife park a little while outside Puyallup. It was our first time going. Part of the park is a tram ride where they show you the grazing animals in their habitat with no fences or cages: Moose, elk, caribou, deer, goats and buffalo. Well, the tram driver informed us it was moose mating season and the bull moose didn't have anyone to fight with, so the day before he'd picked a fight with one of the trams. Sure enough, at one point we pulled up at a part and there he was waiting for us. The driver had just started to say, "ok, if he looks like he's going to charge, i'll speed up to try to discourage that" when the moose charged and rammed into the side of the tram. Luckily the tram's A LOT bigger than he is, so the only damage was a small hole in the side.

This was the year we had a Spanish exchange student at our house for a month. Her name was Bet. I'm the one in the pink jacket with the huge glasses. This picture was taken in front of Admiralty Head Lighthouse, close to where Grandma and Grandpa Heller live.




This year, we went to Disney World and it was like Disney's 100th birthday or something. We went to every park and Megan was afraid of all the rides. Still is, in fact, she won't go on any ride unless it's a kid ride or you force her to.







This is when we moved to the state I still claim as my home: Wisconsin!! Gotta love the cowbell...






Probably my second favorite ornament: my violin-playing blue-and-white BYU cougar!! I went to BYU music camp this summer. It was like a cross between EFY and a music major. We had dances. devotionals, rehearsals, theory classes... The best thing was a Sound of Music sing-a-long. We all dressed up as somthing from there, mostly there was a lot of leiderhosen. I dressed up as Maria in her ugly dress.



The next 3 are just big steps in life... getting my license by the skin of my teeth (i was 4 points away from failing... happiest D- of my LIFE)!!







Graduating high school... My colors were Green and gold, so just pretend that blue is green...







And my first year at BYU-Idaho. Great year. I lived in the dorms with my best friend Kiersten and we had a blast!!









2 left... We moved to Boise and floated the river... SO MUCH FUN!!! the water was freezing, though...








And this year's was our trip to the Oregon coast. We stayed in Newport and went all up and down the coast. This is Yaquina Head lighthouse.
Well, that's my ornaments... stay tuned for more Hyatt traditions...

Adventures in Texas, part one!

Alright, my first real trip to Texas and it's awesome!!
We took the 9:30 shuttle from Rexburg and got to the airport in record time! We got there about 1:00 and had 3 hours to wait til the flight, so we walked all around the airport and got Chinese food. Funny thing, Josh's fortune said all the answers you need are right in front of you.(Guess who was sitting in front of him? haha) Mine said You form passionate relationships without compromising your independence. We've never had fortunes that seem this real before.
The plane came in a little late and we didn't get on until about 4:20 (20 minutes AFTER we should've boarded.) Once on the plane, they had to fix something that was loose and then we spent forever on the runway. We finally took off at 5:20, almost an hour after we were scheduled to. By the time we got to Denver, it was almost time to board the other plane. So we ran from gate 17 to gate 56. I was breathing real hard by the time we got there!!
But we got there on time and safe. Our luggage was even there. Josh's parents met us there and drove us to their house. The next day was Sunday and I went to church with the family. It was absolutely hilarious because i had at least 2 women who came up to me and were like "Oh my gosh!!! you're the girlfriend!!" One thing everyone mentioned was what a good guy Josh is and how lucky I was. The patriarch even. Froo what i understand, he likes Josh an awful lot and has kept tabs on him for a while, always asking how he was doing on the mission and everything.Well, at the end of church he came up to me, put his arm around me and said real soft, "That's a fine young man you have there, you know that, right?" And of course said, "Yes, I know."
That night, his family made Caesar Salad. I love caesar salad and he'd been raving about this for a while, and about his dad's fried shrimp. So Sister Cameron made the salad and cooked up some chicken, while Brother Cameron made the shrimp. And I could go on and on about how good this salad was... it was deluxe!!! And the shrimp? OH---- MY... the best thing i have ever had!! My best description would be that it's like shrimp scampi, but just like 100 times better!!! I'm drooling just thinking about it.
That night, we drove around and looked at lights. Now, I haven't mentioned how passionate Texans are about their footba team. For those of you who lived in Wisconsin, imagine how crazy people were for the Packers and times that by about... oh... 500. I swear, EVERYTHING was like a shade of burnt orange (Josh tells me they've copyrighted the color, so am I allowed to put this on the blog without breaking the law? haha). What does this have to do with Christmas lights? Well, we saw at least 5 Texas mascots, whether they were inflatables or light sculptures. (Maybe Green Bay's problem is they don't have a mascot?)And then there was this street where the whole cul-de-sac just goes nuts!! The whole street had a theme; each house had a part of the Night Before Christmas and they decorated accordingly. Also, each house had a string of lights going from the house to a point in the middle of the street and a star in the middle. For all of you that lived (or live) in Oshkosh, imagine about half of Menominee Park packed into a small cul-de-sac and you'll get the picture. To top it off, they were selling hot chocolate, had a bonfire and a tv outside so you could watch the game. They really do do things bigger in Texas!!
To be continued....

Health Care Administration deliciousness!

So today we had an awesome dinner type thing for some people from my major. I was allowed to invite a guest and, yep you guessed it, i invited Kayla. So I got there first since it started at 6:30 and Kayla was working till 7:00. I just chilled, talking to some of the other people there. Of course I waited till Kayla got there until i ate. The food was delicious! We had ham (it was good), kabobs (they were good), potatoes (they were good), corn (it was good), green beans (not so good), rolls (they were good, have you noticed a theme yet), and cinnamon rolls (they were good). So yeah the food was good. It was also nice to just sit and have a nice home cooked meal with Kayla (that was cheap! yay for cheap). I also paid a little extra (2 bucks) to join the health care society, which i'm really excited about. As a result of joining the society I will be attending the meetings every monday next semester. I will also be visiting different hospitals and clinics, and meeting bunches of administrators and CEO's and stuff. I also got an awesome pen just for joining. Not to mention i got the delicious meal. All for the low low price of $5. That's what i call a poor college student discount.

Anyway i'm even more excited about my major now than ever before. As a side note about a week ago in class we watched a video about laprascopic surgery using the DaVinci machine (look up online its really cool) and i learned that i'm fascinated by surgery. I'd never want to actually perform one but i'm really excited about being able to see some of them.

Anyway just so ya'll know, now i'm just a poor college student studying but someday i'll be running a clinic, or ambulatory surgery center or maybe even a hospital (and getting paid really well to do it too). So watch out the next time time you chew out a nurse or doctor, because i may very well be that doctor's boss. hahaha.

Love ya'll, have a nice day.

Time crunch

So why is it I seem to get more done when I have less time?
Take finals for example. I have 3 on Thursday (genetics, physics and family history) and one on Friday (physics lab). I don't have to do exams during a scheduled time for Marriage and Engineering math 2. However, this means that I have to do the finals NOW! Marriage is due on Monday and math is due Wednesday.
So it's wednesday before finals week. On top of regular homework assignments (which are numerous), I have (check planner) a group project on something magnetic for Physics, a presentation for marriage today, a test in physics (that's a post test to see how much we've learned from the pre test at the beginning of the year), and an extra homework assignment for Bio. On top of this is 2 hours of work tonight, 2 hours tomorrow, 1 tutoring appointment today, and then whoever else decides to sign up last minute this week.
Somehow I've finished all my homework AND 3 problems on the math final. I'm now at work in the open physics tutoring lab and I'm doing this and my physics homework at the same time as watching for people who need help. I usually go to bed at 10 on wednesday nights and wake up at 7 thursday mornings and finish it. Today, i'm going to get as far as possible so tomorrow I can go to the library to use Maple (a computer algebra system)on solving more of the final. Either that or work on my essays for the marriage final.
So to sum up the rambling, when I have lots of free time, homework doesn't get done. But when it's finals/mid term week, I get sooooo much more done. Why is that? Does anybody know?
And speaking of time crunch, I've got homework that needs to get done so I can make room for my extra load. Tootles!

The First Post EVER!!!!

J: So hello everyone,
This is Josh and Kayla, and we have no idea how to blog but we'll figure it out as we go along.
K: I think I better type, Josh is having problems typing...lol
J: That's a Lie! I'm just having fun and being silly...like always.
K: uh-huh, you just keep telling yourself that, honey...
So if you're reading this, you either know we're eventually going to be engaged... or we're already engaged and we just didn't tell you until it happened
J: Or, your really really good at hacking...
K: lol. Oops, Lol, you do need to capitalize. my bad. So what should we write about?
J: On our first post ever!...we could talk about Rexburg in the snow..better yet, Rexburg on ice!
K: we're a couple of regular comedians...that's why we're JK...we're the biggest joke in town!
...Not...
J: Okay my turn since she really doesn't know what she's doing.
K: WHAT?!?!
J: nothing honey...anyway so Rexburg in the snow, we've decided we have plenty to talk about...better said complain about so let's begin.
K: Here's my first complaint. IT'S COLD!!! Now, I grew up in Wisconsin where cold is guaranteed for at least 4 months out of the year. So if I'm saying it's cold... it is!!!
J: I grew up in Texas and California...my nose hairs freeze into icicles!
K: TMI, honey. that's disgusting!
J: but it's true!
K: yeah...anyway... whoever said it was alright for it to get to the negatives in the beginning of DECEMBER?!?!? More like DecemBRRRRR!!
J: Mwamwamwa, lame joke. So enough about the cold, my first pet peeve is the wind. I'd be able to handle the cold if the wind didn't just cut right through every layer of clothing I'm wearing.
K: It's the truth. This is the 3rd winter I've had here and temperaturewise, Wisconsin is worse. However, there's nothing like going outside thinking it's 9 degrees and then getting a huge -10 degree gust in your face. Wisconsin never had this much wind...
J: and it stings too.
K: YAAAAH! ok, next pet peeve. Actually, there are two that are related. Ice and salt. Rexburg does not use salt on their roads. They use some weird red rock that turns everything including your shoes and the bottoms of your jeans into red-brown crusties. Or, they just don't take care of it at all. Take the parking lot of my apartment complex for example. Now I know that for the very cheap price I'm paying, my apartment will not be as nice as some. Which I'm fine with. But is it REALLY that hard to shovel and salt the parking lot? It's an ice-skating rink death trap!! Without the skates!! Not that I can ice-skate anyway...
J: at least you don't have stupid boys at your place. In most places in Rexburg they try to get rid of the ice as much as possible but at Sunrise, oh no we're too smart for that, we embrace the ice. The other day a bunch of dumb guys came out with buckets of water (LOTS of buckets of water) and turned our parking lot into an ice-skating rink (ON PURPOSE!!) needless to say they got chewed out and had to sit outside till like 1 in the morning telling everyone the parking lot was frozen over. The one good thing out of all this, they put a dumptruck's worth of salt (real salt!) on our parking lot, so i haven't seen ice in like a week. It's pretty awesome.
K: you haven't seen ice at YOUR place... you do have to brave my parking lot every night.
J: good point, i also have to brave pretty much everywhere else in ICEberg too.
K: They should really change the name to that... it's rather fitting 50% of the year.
J: next pet peeve! NO panda express!!!! I know its like a sin or something. They do have a couple of chinese places in town and even a thai place but honestly they are overpriced and nasty! We need a panda and we need it now!
K: Come on, if Oshkosh, WI can have 3 decent chinese places plus all the not-so-good places, can't Rexburg even come up with one?!?!
I don't know if there's really anything else... I really do love Rexburg, but like all things, it's not perfect...
J: Oh i know there are more things to complain about and maybe we'll talk about them in another post, but i really do love this place. Rexburg is an amazing place where you can make amazing friends and meet the love of your life. Hence this campus is lovingly nicknamed BYU-I Do.
K: Yuk-yuk-yuk
J: yeah yeah, but seriously this place is amazing and we're happy to be up here, cold and all.
K: Amen to that!
J: so i suppose we should finish up our First Post EVER!!!! but thanks all for reading and stuff.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF "THE ADVENTURES OF JOSH AND KAYLA", COMING TO A BLOG NEAR YOU!!!
K: Always the drama king...