Sunday Dinner

Since Mom gave me a crockpot to bring down to Provo, I decided I needed to use it. :) So, when Sean took Jennifer to Walmart, she picked up some chicken (which is extremely expensive at the Creamary). Its taken me a week or two, but I finally made a big meal on Sunday. I'm going to post the pictures I took (yes, I took pictures). I want your guesses about what I made.

Merry Christmas!

This is a great video. Enjoy!

Well, with midterms and papers finally out of the way, I figured it was time for an update from BYU-Provo. Here's some of the things Jess and I have been up to.

For Halloween, our apartment and friends made caramel apples. They were pretty good. Here are the final products.

You all saw Jessica's finger, well here's the pumpkin that caused the damage.

There was also a Halloween Dance. Jess and the rest of the apartment went as zombies. Me, well I went as Princess Leia. Put that costume to use again.

We've also gone to a few sports games. Football, soccer, and basketball have all had us in the stands. It's been a lot of fun, except when its freezing!

For our birthday, our roommates got a ice cream cake and put little plastic things for the candles. It was a lot of fun.

Some friends and us went up on the mountain to watch the Leonids Meteor Shower. We saw one really good meteor, which lasted for about 5 seconds. We also saw the one the next day that lit up the entire sky. Pretty cool. And what's even cooler is that I actually understand what's going on.

Also, on our birthday, we went over to Brian and Sam's for dinner and presents and a movie. And, of course, a yummy dessert. It was so much fun! I love my family!

School has been going well. A bunch of tests. Jess and I both got over 90% on our last American Heritage Test. I also got over 90% on my Calculus Test, 89% on my Chemistry Test, 100% on a Book of Mormon Quiz, and 94% on my lastest Astronomy test. The one and only real paper for this semester is over, having been due on our birthday.

Well, that's pretty much the gist of college life for the Pickup Twins. Can't wait to go up to Kristi's for Thanksgiving. Hope I don't get sick again! Love you all!

Carving Pumpkins

So, for FHE this past Monday night, our group decided to carve pumpkins. Us girls worked on one. I got to carve the face out. It was going so well. Then, I was almost done when I decided to completely forget about all the knife safety I learned at Girl's Camp and jerked the knife out of the top of the pumpkin (I was carving the hair) right in to my waiting finger. It was bleeding pretty good. I now know the sensation of warm blood running down my hand. Below are some pictures I took to show Mom so she could tell me whether I should go to Water Aerobics or not. :)

Pumpkin Cake

I was really bored Sunday and decided I wanted to make something exciting. But, being the college student that I am, there wasn't much selection because we don't own a bundt pan. Then I remembered I had my Bake 'N Fill pans....but no recipe book. No worries, it was online. I made a yellow cake and filled it with chocolate pudding, and then vanilla pudding because the chocolate didn't fill it in all the way. As I looked at the recipe book online, they had an frosting design for a pumpkin! Since it is almost Halloween, I thought this would be a really good idea. So as the cake was cooking, I whipped up some frosting, which takes a little bit more effort without a hand mixer. Finally everything was ready. I had three different colors and I got to decorating. It was so much fun! We are saving it for FHE

monday night because we are carving pumpkins. :)

Computer Science 100

This semester, I am taking a CS100 class, which is the Fundamentals of Computing. It has been really interesting and some of the projects have been a lot of fun. First, we are lectured on an editing program (pictures, sounds, and movies) and we have to do a project using the tools we've learned. Then, and right now, we are learning how to read and "write" programs using JES language. Really all we have to do is understand what the programs are doing. The projects for this is to follow the directions, which instruct how to write the program, and then apply the program to a picture. All of these programs have to be linked to a website, so I've also learned how to do this. The pictures above are some of the editing I've done. They aren't all of them because I do about seven different things to each picture. Kaleb is the final picture of my project using GIMP, a photoediting program. Shayli is "thresholded" and is the result of my own program I wrote. The first picture it a restored picture I put together and colored. That took so much time! The photo was originally black and white and ripped down the middle. I thought it was pretty good, but the example was way better, although I suppose it should look better because they've been doing it for a while...:)

Relief Society Lesson

So, for those of you who don't know, I was called to be a Relief Society teacher in our ward. Today, October 11th, was my first lesson. It was Chapters 41 and 42 of the Joseph Smith manual---about baptism for the dead and eternal families. I thought it went really well. Good length and people commented, which is always good. I wasn't nearly as nervous as I thought I would be.

On Friday, I got 100% on my CS100 midterm exam. Very exciting. Monday and Tuesday is our American Heritage midterm, which is proving very nerve racking. Can't wait until its over. It reminds me of AP tests. Yuck.