New job update

I would like to announce that I am now the proud owner of a UTA bus pass. I found out that there is an express bus from Sandy to BYU. It only takes me about 15-20 minutes longer to get to work than if I were to drive myself. AND I can actually do stuff (like read or sleep) during my commute instead of just waste time driving.

This will especially come in handy when I start up my graduate classes again in May. And the bus has wireless Internet connection for my laptop. How cool is that? And it’s not one of those ghetto city busses. It’s actually quite nice…with reclining seats.

And the best part…my bus pass is free! Since I am a student at the U, I can get an education bus pass for free. This is gonna save me lots of gas money, and not to mention that Chester (my car) will get a nice little break. What a great deal!

My new job is going really well. I am liking it a lot. I’m just so excited to be working in a job where I really get to help people and (hopefully) make a difference in their lives. The mission and values of where I work are things that I really believe in. My job is basically to train leaders so that when they leave college, they can go out into the world and make a meaningful contribution and make a difference themselves.

I specifically work with the Communications division of BYUSA. That means that I am in charge of the students who are in charge of all the marketing, PR efforts, publications, media relations, website, etc. that comes out of the BYU Student Association. Plus, I teach a leadership class and help out with the campus activities division as well. So far, I love it!

I love that I get to work with people specifically with the assignment to build character, teamwork, and leadership skills in them. And I love that I have the resources available to me to be able to do that. I’ve been encouraged to do what it takes to build good relationships with these students and really build a great working team, and that means I can take them to lunch, take them on retreats, etc.

I love that the fact that I get to play and get to know people as part of my job is so highly encouraged! In fact, this weekend we are taking the students on a retreat up to a cabin. With the sole purpose of having a good time and getting to know each other. Yesterday, the office staff went out to Thanksgiving Point for a good majority of the day to do the same thing.

I have also been told that I will have plenty of resources available to me to do the things that I want to accomplish with my students. Things like redesign the website, print new posters and brochures, have big recruitment events and efforts, and other really cool things. It’s so nice to actually be able to have what I need to reach my goals.

I also have a HUGE office. With a door that locks. And a table and chairs for meeting with students. And a big whiteboard. I really want to bring in a love sack or something. I’m really looking forward to decorating it and making it really cute and fun. And the best part….

I have my own temperature gauge. I don’t have to freeze and wrap myself in a blanket anymore! Oh, I am so happy about that. Anyway, I am just really excited about this new change in my life. So far it has been wonderful and I think it will be really great.

When we went to Thanksgiving Point, we went to this stained glass studio and got to see them working on the windows for the Draper Temple. How cool is that?! Here’s one of them in progress…

Anyway, I am just really thankful for these cool new opportunities in my life right now.

...and here we have Idaho!

Since we had to drive a very long way (SLC to Boise for Brooke's wedding) in a very short period of time (2 days), we decided to cram as much as we could into our little weekend jaunt. We made sure to sing the Idaho state song as we crossed the Utah/Idaho border. We told jokes as we passed through the town of Bliss. We saw some haystacks, and tractors, and potato fields. And of course, we made sure to eat some potatoes while in Idaho.

I have always made fun of Idaho, but the city of Boise really grew on me in the 24 hours we were there. It was so clean and quiet and green and there were so many cyclists and runners. We passed by tons of running/sporting shops, and they even have a 26-mile paved running trail by the Boise River. It was so awesome! We took a little jog on it Saturday morning and had a great time. There was also this huge park where the entire town had gathered for an Easter egg hunt. We jogged by several parks, the Boise State University campus (and saw the blue football field), and several other sites. I loved that so many people were out on the trail just enjoying being outside.

There were also a bunch of cute little restaurants and bars in downtown Boise. We decided to dine at the City Grill. It was housed inside an old national bank building. I ordered the noquis (potato pasta) to keep with the tradition of eating some form of potatos while in Idaho. It seriously was the best meal I've had in a really long time. It was so fabulous.

On the way home, we took a little detour and stopped off at the Golden Spike. Where the two railroads met back in 1869. It seriously is out in the middle of nowhere!
I have always wanted to stop there, but never had time, so we made the detour. It was pretty cool to learn about it though.

Here we are on the spot where the golden spike was driven.

We also passed the ATK rocket display thingey. It was pretty cool to see all the different parts of a rocket.

Here's me inside a rocket part. And here's Matt running around the rocket launcher.

Anyway, despite it being a long drive, we had tons of fun!

Year of a million weddings

This past weekend my cute mission companion, Brooke, got married. We went up to Boise for the festivities. Everything about the wedding was so totally Brooke. I loved it! It had a complete fairy tale princess theme.

Her cake had a castle, a glass slipper, and a horse-drawn carriage on top.

Reed wore a top hat and carried a cane.

They had this cute light-up carriage and princess outside the reception. Oh, and Brooke wore a very poofy princess dress and tiara. It was great!

One thing I really loved was the Boise Temple. It is very similar to the Buenos Aires, Argentina Temple. Anyway, we had a great time and congrats to Brooke and Reed! I love you guys.

Unemployed and momentarily insane

So I'm unemployed this week and loving it! I can't believe my week of unemployment is almost over. Sad! I have done lots of fun and exciting things with my time off this week. I've spent countless hours at the gym, and I even swam a mile and ran almost 5 miles in one day! Go me! I've also made some pretty good progress on a T-shirt quilt I am making, I took care of Matt while he was sick on Monday and Tuesday, I have worked on my talk for church and my Relief Society lesson I have to teach this Sunday, today I went and got massages with my mom and sisters, and then we went to lunch, and I have slept in every day. Oh, and I did my taxes and other boring paperwork stuff that had to get done. What a glorious week.

My T-shirt quilt in progress.

I also momentarily went insane last night. I signed up for an Olympic-distance triathlon. That is TWICE the distance of the other triathlons I have done. I think I was feeling pretty confident after my swim/run yesterday morning. It's in July, so hopefully I'll be ready by then. And I'm seriously considering doing the Logan Marathon in September. Anyone interested?

Lucky, charming, and magically delicious

This year's St. Patrick's Day celebration was quite the success, if I do say so myself. I think it was probably one of the best years thus far. We had so much fun at our annual St. Patrick's Day party.

We had plenty of Irish festivities including kissing the Blarney Stone, limerick writing, learning an Irish jig, watching the St. Patrick's Day Veggie Tales cartoon, eating green food, doing heel clicks, and going on a treasure hunt.

The treasure hunt took us all over West Jordan in search of clues that eventually led to the treasure. All the clues were written in limerick form. I love doing stuff like this! And I love that everyone participated and really got into it!

Here is Courtney imitating a leprachaun, Matt kissing the Blarney Stone (you have to do it upside down), and Emma performing an Irish jig.

Emma taught us all a jig, and we had so much fun learning it and making fools of ourselves! Krista and Brittany were actually really good at it. Here's a little video clip of the "jig-off" we had to determine the winner.

For more jigging videos from the evening, check out Garrett's blog.

And let's be honest, what would a good Irish party be without drinking games? The first one we played was with these cool dice that I found at Target. You rolled the dice and had to do whatever the dice said. They said things like, "Hug someone wearing green", "Kiss an Irishman", or "Swap drinks with a friend". It was hilarious! Of course this was all done with water and green punch. Who needs alcohol to have a good time?

Then things got a little crazy. We played another drinking game (out of my Best Drinking Games of All Time book) where you had six glasses full of whatever and on your turn you have to roll a dice and drink the contents of whatever numbered glass corresponds with the number you rolled on the dice.

We raided Caron's fridge and filled the shot glasses with whatever we could find...grape juice, ginger ale, hot chocolate, whipped cream, salsa, chicken broth...etc.

But the funny part comes when you roll the dice and the glass is empty. You then get to fill it with whatever you want. And the next person who rolls that number has to drink the contents of the glass. Well, people started to get a little mean and fill the glasses with weird concoctions like hot chocolate mixed with salsa and ginger ale. Gross!

And guess who got the worst of it? ME! I had to drink salsa mixtures like 5 times. It was disgusting. But I've also never laughed so hard in my whole life. It was so funny, I seriously thought my abs were going to die from laughing so hard. Good times.

We also went to the St. Patricks Day parade downtown at the Gateway. This parade is so fun because really, anything goes. We mostly went to see Emma's Irish dance school perform. Here she is!

They were awesome. We also saw a girl on jumping stilts.

Some lepre"cons", some police on these hilarious stuffed horses, a bagpipe band, and lots of other fun stuff.

We have decided that next year we will join the parade either as a pogo stick brigade or the Ninja Turtles. After the parade, we headed over to the Irish festival and watched some really cool Irish dancers and listened to some Irish bands.

It was tons of fun! I love St. Patricks Day! Top O' The Mornin' To Ye!

First race of the season

Ahhh, the first race of the season! On Saturday, Caron, Matt and I ran the Rex Lee Run 10K. It was so much fun! I'm not sure what my "official" time is since the results have not yet been posted, but according to my watch, I finished the 6.2 miles in 68 minutes, 36 seconds. Not too shabby. And, the best part is that I reached my goal of running the entire race without stopping to walk! Woo-hoo! Matt and Caron both did awesome, too.

The Rex Lee Run is held each year to help raise money for cancer research. One of the cool parts of the race is that you can run for a cancer fighter. You wear their name on your back during the race. Matt and I ran for Matt's grandpa.

This is why I love race days...I love seeing all the people come to run. There's just so much energy being there with everyone, and it's so exciting to look both in front of you and behind you and just see a sea of runners. Bring on this year's race season!

So long, farewell

Friday was my last day of work at Creating Keepsakes. I've been the web editor there for a little over 2 1/2 years. I have enjoyed a lot of things about that job. I've learned so much, and I've really enjoyed working with the extremely talented and creative people there.

For my last day my cute boss, Leslie, took our team to Thanksgiving Point for lunch and to make glass flowers. It was so much fun!

You get to pick what colors you want your flower to be and then they melt the glass down on this big pole in a fiery furnace. Then you smash down the glass with a big metal spade and pull it out with tweezers to make the petals. It's not as malleable as you might think! You seriously have to have a lot of hand strength to pull it out. It actually is quite hard.

But it was really fun, and interesting to see how you actually do stuff like that. I am going to miss the creativity of working in the scrapbooking industry. But I am super excited for my new job.

My cute red punch friends gave me a supply of red punch packets and a red punch poster as a goodbye gift. I'm going to miss them! Thanks to all the wonderful people I have had a chance to work with over these past few years...you guys are awesome!

Some random facts

I got tagged by Danielle. Enjoy reading about, well...me!

1. What time did you get up this morning? 6:30
2. What do you usually have for breakfast? It depends. Cereal or yogurt or toast or fruit or oatmeal or eggs or sometimes leftovers. Whatever sounds good. Today I had oatmeal and yogurt.
3. What is your favorite CD at the moment? One that I don’t have yet. Caron’s Summer Staples CD. I have been thinking about it for days and how I need to remind her to make me a copy!
4. What kind of car do you drive? A Honda Civic named Chester.
5. Favorite sandwich? Probably some type of club sandwich from Great Harvest.
6. Favorite item of clothing? Do shoes count? If so, I would have to say my Reef flip flops. I love them! They have been with me for almost 10 years, have been to 3 (almost 4) different continents with me. I won’t wear any other kind.
7. If you could go anywhere in the world for a vacation, where would you go? Tahiti, Italy, Greece, the British Isles, um anywhere really. I think the question should be…where would I not go?
8. What color is your bathroom? Purple and sage green.
9. Where would you retire? I don’t know. I really like Utah, but I don’t like the cold.
10. Most memorable birthday? Probably 21. My roommates filled my ENTIRE car with newspapers that they stole from campus and got in trouble for by the campus police. Then I went roller blading with my friend Sarah and bruised my tailbone. (I had to sit on a pillow for 2 months after that!) Then at work, my coworkers wrote me a really cool song and made me a bunch of leis. Then my roommates threw me a party with all my friends. It was so much fun!
11. Favorite sport to watch? Basketball or football
12. Are you a morning person or a night person? Um…neither?
13. What is your shoe size? 7 1/2
14. Pets? No way! I hate pets!
15. What did you want to be when you were little? The Secretary of Education. (So I could make it so we didn’t have to go to school as much!) Or an astronaut. Or a dolphin trainer.
16. What are you today? Today I am Christy Lee Shepherd. Same as every other day. :)
17. What is your favorite candy? Trail mix…does that count?
18. Your favorite flower? Plumeria
19. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to? March 17. It’s St. Patrick’s Day!
20. What are you listening to right now? The printer at work printing stuff
21. What is the last thing you ate? Oatmeal and yogurt
22. Do you wish on stars? Of course! Don’t you?
23. What faith are you? LDS
24. Who was the last person you spoke with on the phone? I think it was Caron last night
25. Hair Color? Dark brown
26. Name of your favorite school teacher? Mr. Cox for Yearbook in high school
27. Chocolate or vanilla? Definitely chocolate
28. When was the last time you cried? I think it was a few Sundays ago
29. What is under your bed? A stuffed animal that my favorite mission companion gave me
30. What did you do last night? Went on a bike ride and running, made tacos for dinner with Matt, took Caron “shopping” in my closet, almost fell asleep on the couch…
31. Favorite smell? Plumeria flowers and baked goods baking
32. What are you afraid of? Not being good enough
33. How many towns have you lived in? Um....a lot. I’ve lived in 8 different states and 2 countries. And a lot of towns within those states and countries.
34. Do you make friends easily? I don’t know. I hope so.

I tag…Garrett, Jill, Leslie, and Bill.

Running shorts and swimming pools

Yesterday I swam 1400 yards. All the front crawl. (That means no switching it up with the side stroke or back stroke or something.) That is a major record for me. That is .8 miles! Go me! And the coolest part is that I think I even could have kept going. And the other cool part about this is that it is almost the distance of an Olympic distance triathlon swim. Maybe I could do one after all.

I'm so proud of myself. I'm actually starting to like swimming, which is also a major accomplishment considering how much I hated it when I first started. I think I'm starting to like it because I'm actually starting to be decent at it. Hurray for swimming!

Also yesterday I went to Sports Authority to buy a swimming cap. Well I ended up leaving the store with my swimming cap, some anti-fog spray for my goggles, and three pairs of running shorts. Why do I need three pairs of running shorts? I don't. And why do I need anti-fog spray when I've gotten along perfectly fine without it? I probably don't need that either. (Just for the record, I am taking one of the pairs of shorts back.) But why does this happen? I go into a store with one thing on my list and I come out with 5 items. I have got to be better about that. But I just get excited every time I go to a sporting store like that. And I will say that everything I bought was on the clearance rack.

It's official

Ahem. I have an announcement. Caron and I just bought plane tickets to China!!!!!! We will be there from May 22-June 4. Nihou! (That's the only Chinese I know.) Woo-hoo!!!

Another one bites the dust

We survived my sister, Laurie's wedding last Saturday! They got married in the Mt. Timpanogos temple. (Before the snowstorm.)

I was kind of sad that Nathan wasn't there. I miss him!

Kyle was the honorary flower girl! We made him carry Laurie's train. It was hilarious.

It was kinda windy, but at least we got some pictures in before the crazy snowstorm hit.

The reception was at the Alpine Arts Center. It was really pretty. Since Nathan wasn't here, Kyle walked around all night with Nathan's picture pinned to his shirt. We indulged in a chocolate fountain and the most delicious chocolate wedding cake with strawberries on top. Doesn't it look divine?

We had a lot of fun just being goofy at the reception.

We danced a ton and even did the Crocodile Rock for old times' sake. Pretty much it was just me, Scott, Allison and Kyle who were dancing. Everyone else was just staring at us wishing they were having as much fun as us!

Here's me, Allison, and Kyle just being dorks!

But at least we are fun dorks. :)

I made Matt come with me so that I wouldn't get bombarded as to why I am not married yet. I think it worked pretty well. Anyway, congrats to Laurie and John!

I Know You Are But What Am I

On Leap Day, Emma had a fabulous Pee Wee Herman/DDR party. It was great fun. We played Connect the Dots (la la la la!), showed off our mad dancing skills at DDR, had pancakes, wore red bow ties, and watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

I volunteered to bring a fruit salad because on the TV show, Pee Wee's Playhouse, I remember an episode where Pee Wee said, "I love fruit salad". And then someone said, "Why don't you marry it?" And so he did, and there was a fruit salad wedding scene.

I didn't have time to make the fruit salad because I was in charge of Laurie's bachelorette party earlier that day, and I was at the spa and the Cheesecake Factory. So I asked Matt to make the fruit salad. The funniest part was that he asked me what fruit salad was. I seriously laughed for like 5 minutes! So I told him how to make it, and he ended up doing a great job.

Here we are playing DDR while wearing our red bow ties. It was a great time! Emma always has such great parties!

Life is good

Yesterday I had a completely awesome day. I seriously had an ear-to-ear permagrin all day long. First of all, I accepted a really amazing job opportunity. I will be working as a student government advisor at Brigham Young University. I will specifically be working with the communications division of student government. I am super excited! I have been wanting a job like this for a long time, so it's really exciting for me to be getting into that field.

Second, I was able to change my grad school program to part-time instead of full time, so that it will work with my new job. And I will still be able to finish in 2 years! I only have to go to class one night a week, so that will totally help on commuting time.

Third, I found out that my trip to China is going to be less expensive than I thought and I get to go to three cities in China! And my new job is going to work around my China trip.

Fourth, Matt took me to Coldstone to celebrate and they had my favorite ice cream flavor of all time! (Which they haven't had in 3 years.) Oatmeal cookie batter ice cream. Mmmmm!

Fifth, I finally felt good enough to make it back to the gym after a week-long leave of absence due to my extreme illness last week. And I got in a fairly decent workout and I didn't die!

Sixth, I didn't have to cook dinner because for FHE we had a soup night provided by the bishopric.

What a completely fabulous day! Life is good.