Sea Turtles

I live in a nature documentary 150 minutes out of every week.

Today is a prime example.

I'm taking a class entitled Living With Wildlife. It's a pretty awesome class, all things considered. Our grade is partially dependent upon our completion of the Hunter's Education course. We are required to participate in a service project connected with wildlife. We get to meet a grey wolf later in the semester. There are potentially disgusting labs that I'm actually looking forward to. Really, I think this will be one of my favorite classes all semester.

Today, however, we were introduced to the topic that will be discussed in class the next few weeks. 

Sea Turtles.

Pretty awesome, right? 

Well, I'm sure it has awesome potential. Today, however, was not the kind of awesome I was going for, although it was pretty awesome...

The lecture starts with a beautiful description of the Hawaiian islands. (Hooked the entire class with this one.) Then comes the introduction of the sea turtles. Pretty standard stuff: size, weight, color. 

However, then my professor begins to explain the love-making logistics of these green sea turtles. In story-telling format. For example: "Now, the male (insert description of love-making parts here) latches on so tightly, clutching on with the claws on his front flippers. He doesn't want to fall off."

Wow.

So, for a glorious 75 minutes today, we talked about the exhaustion, the drama, the quest, the heartache of the Honu Sea Turtles' love-making.

We'll be back after these messages...

Mama's Birthday!

Monday was a wonderful celebration of Mama's birthday! This was a big one, too! In fact, to get you guessing how young my sweet Mama turned, here's a few fun trivia facts:

•In 1800 only ___ cities on earth had a population of more than 100,000
•___ is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of of 2 squares in 2 ways
•The average elephant produces ___ pounds of dung each day (Kind of gross, but I thought it applied to our Thanksgiving post)
•Number of chapters in Genesis in the Old Testament
•Noah's Ark was ___ cubits in width.
•Tineke Hybrid Tea Rose has double ___ broad petals
•In Numerology, INFINITE as well as SINCERITY add up to ___

We celebrated in style! :) Mama wanted to go to some hot springs, so we headed about 30 minutes away to Crystal Hot Springs for a warm dip away from the inversion. It was so nice!

Keith and Barbara joined us for the rest of the evening. 

Dad cooked Chicken Tsao and potatoes for dinner (SO delicious!). 

We were all so full, and so content!

We had some of our family and friends over for cake and ice cream! 

Mama got all the candles in one big breath! 

Go Mama!

Mama received many special gifts from many special people. 

I was slacking on my photog job, but I did get one picture 

of my beautiful Mama in her mink from Demarious.
Doesn't she look beautiful!
Happy Birthday, Mama! 

We were delighted to share your birthday with you!
Lots and lots of love!

Love, tu familia!

Not really a "farewell"...

For your happy information, 

Toph will be giving his 

"talk before he goes on his mission" 

on Sunday, March 8 at 1:30 pm. 

More details to follow...

Hair Cut!

Yesterday I decided (kind of spur-of-the-moment) to get my hair chopped off...

9 inches later, here it is:

Wait... Karma? What karma?

For any blog stalkers... 

The ESPN game I was set to play the national anthem before has been moved to an away game. 

Translation: I won't be playing the national anthem this year. Unless things change, in which case I'll post a new date on this delightful blog. 

xo

Another great weekend!

Last weekend we had Alana and Evan up from Orem. What a riot!
Friday night Toph, Alana, Evan, myself, and our dates went to the hockey game against BYU. USU won 10-2! w00t! After the game, the 8 of us were joined by 2 more to make a party of 10 at the Villi, followed by games up at Grama's house. It was a delightful evening!

The next day we went sledding on Old Main. I was the only one who had done this before, so I was able to introduce Alana, Evan, Toph, Daniel, and Nina to the beauty of sliding down Old Main Hill at ridiculous speeds.

The girls rode one sled down a few times. Nina loved the bumps!!

I think this is the girls again... I liked the action shot!

Toph, Daniel, Evan, Alana, Me, and Nina in front of Old Main!

After sledding, we went and saw Bride Wars. Mama joined us for that adventure.
It was so much fun having Alana and Evan up for the weekend!
We're excited to play with them again soon!

The Textbook Challenge...

Sometimes school has a tendency to make you want to rip your hair out. 

The day you buy textbooks is definitely one of those days.

However, today I experienced nothing short of a miracle.

I had to purchase 7 books this semester. You can't even count that on one hand. 

(Unless you are the seven-fingered man/woman... and if you are could you please post a picture of your hand?)

ANYWAY... 

Estimated cost of textbooks this semester: $750+

Total cost of textbooks after a little playing on the internet: $234.17

I love today.

New Years in Pasadena!

Heaven knows I have some subconscious obligation to post at least 5% of the pictures I take... here's 17 out of 264 from this fantastic week!!

My friend Alana (who, to remind frequent CarterBlog flyers, is my friend I met in Belgium. She's a regular guest star on this blog!) invited me to spend New Years with her family in Pasadena, California. I thought about it for about 2 seconds before purchasing my plane ticket! My dear Daddy woke up at a bright 2:30 am to give me a ride to the airport to catch my 6 am flight... yuck. :)

Alana met me at LAX a few short hours later and we immediately started playing! We went to Santa Monica and had breakfast on the pier after walking along the beach for a little bit. It was a beautiful morning!

After breakfast and an adventurous stop at Venice to see the canals, we headed to the Getty Museum. It is an amazing museum filled with sculptures, gardens, paintings, photographs, etc. We spent a few hours there before the big rush came. If you ever have a chance to go see the Getty, GO! It's free. You don't need a better excuse!

That evening we headed to Disneyland... where we got in free. It's a fun story, really, but we owe it all to Ian, Alana's older brother. He did some talking, played the "I have a friend from Utah" card, and we were able to ride a few attractions in California adventure. SO FUN!

Waiting in line for the Screamer:
Sitting on the Maliboomer:

Alana and I snuck into the Disney store in Downtown Disney only to find the dresses of our favorite princesses, Sleeping Beauty and Belle!

Here's some of our crew in front of California Adventures: Me with some of Alana's family: Alana, sister Megan, nephew Gavin, and brother Evan.

The next day we went to see some of the floats for the Rose Parade up close. I had NO idea how intricate these floats could be! This is a close up shot of one of the faces on the Alaska float. If you look closely, you'll see beans, seed, and baby pinecones. In order to be in the parade, every single exposed spot of the float has to be covered in organic material. The detail blew me away!

New Years Eve was spent on the parade route. It was NUTS, but SO much fun! Any car driving down the street is an open target for marshmallows, tortillas, etc. We saw a kid almost get arrested. It was quite the entertaining altercation! The Finlays quickly taught me a few tricks about the art of the parade route... and I had a ball!

If you smear shaving cream on the tortillas, they stick much better!

Throwing the tortilla... (I only threw one the whole night... I promise! :) )

A toast to ring in the new year! Pictured is me, Evan, Alana, Ian's friend Kristen, and Ian.

The whole point of this adventure was to sleep ON the parade route. This is us. Sleeping on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. That's right, folks, ON the road. Not the sidewalk. The ROAD.

This is our "We survived sleeping on the parade route!" picture... It rocks. :)

Later on New Years morning, Ian, Alana, Kristen, and I went to the VIP tailgate party for the Rose Bowl. Don't ask me how they got tickets... I just went! And it was great. Free food. No complaints... :) It was DELICIOUS!

In front of the stadium... We didn't go to the game, just the tailgate party. And in this picture, we were staring at the sun. I'm still seeing spots...

Our last morning, Alana and I went down to the Santa Anita racetrack and had breakfast at Clockers Corner. Part of the movie Seabiscuit was filmed here. It was a foggy morning, but I had fun walking around and chatting with some of the jockeys.

At the racetrack:


All in all, it was SUCH a fun week! Alana's family was so good to me and they showed me a great time! Wahoo for celebrating 2009 in sunny California!