Goodbye 21...

...hello 22!

You know, I don't think I'll ever get over my age sounding more mature than I feel.  Haha.  Guess I'll just have to live with it. :)

Amigurumi!

Isn't it lovely outside today?  I walked out the door after work and didn't immediately think "Oh my goodness I might die!"  Haha.  Sad that that equals a nice day.

So, I decided to be a good aunt yesterday and finally finish (well, and start, too) the project I told Nephew A I would start after graduation.  (He kept asking me, "Have you graduated yet?  Because then you can start on my snake!"  I forget that that boy remembers everything.)  Hooray for crocheting!

Isn't he cute?

Oh, and remember that hippo I did a while back?  He's finally getting a home!  Turns out (after telling me he wanted the hippo...oh, no, an alligator...or a dragon...or a snake) Nephew B really did want the blue hippo after all.  Hooray!  And they're done at the same time! :)

If only they will play this nicely always...

Get ready, nephews!  Your presents are coming!

Bowling Fiends

Over the past few years, my birthday has morphed into a week- (or two) long celebration.  Not quite sure how, but I'm not complaining.  So, keeping up with that glorious tradition (and not at all due to the fact that Kailei is going to be out of town on my birthday....ahem, ahem...), last night was Birthday Awesomeness: Part 1 (otherwise known as bowling--for free!  Man, am I glad that AMF keeps sending us coupons right around my birthday.)  Here's the crew:

Yeah, we're awesome.

We were definitely the loudest ones there.  (Sarah said she overheard one group specifically ask to get a lane as far from us as possible.  Sorry people...)  But really, how can you not be?  We had to cheer everyone on!  Come on!  We kept looking at the nearly silent groups around us and saying, "Why are they being so quiet?  How can you bowl and not be loud?"  We even joked that we were probably more obnoxious than the intoxicated bowlers.  Haha.  Sad, but probably true.

And now, copious amounts of pictures.  (For a blog post, anyway.  And this isn't even the half of it.) 

Oh, look, it's Brad's Happy Bowling Dance.  

Of course, we couldn't leave without taking some glamour shots among the bowling balls:

 

I look like a chipmunk.  Eating a bowling ball.

We had ice cream afterward (sorry Kailei and Noor) and...took more pictures!  It was fun!

Ok, maybe a little bit too much fun.

And...we're putting the camera away now.

Thanks for coming, guys!  It was awesome!

It's an adventure!

It seems like you guys are getting the lame-o version of my summer. Sorry about that. I've done so much stuff it's hard to cram it in. (And, as my family can tell you, I don't like to shorten my stories. The long versions are so much more fun!) So, here's my attempt to describe the adventures we had last weekend.

Last Friday, we set off for Gallup, NM--again. This time, it was for the bi-annual Smith Smith Smith Family Family Family Reunion Reunion Reunion! (I love that you can change the font sizes on this thing.) Yeah, we're pretty exciting. Our reunion consisted of: eating, doing crafts (one for the kids and one for the adults--I did both :) ), shooting, eating, skits, and eating. I don't know why, but it's not an official Smith gathering unless there's LOTS of food and not nearly enough time to eat it all. Or enough stomach-capacity, for that matter. We had fun just visiting with each other, though. The older girls (16-25--the single ones, of course) slept together in one of the rooms in the cabin/lodge we stayed at. I love my cousins. They're pretty much awesome. The first night we all wanted to play Uno, so the 6 of us scrunched up on the top bunks of 2 bunk beds (not a very level playing surface) to play until about 1:00 a.m. Fun times.

Just so you all know, I took a total of...6 pictures of the reunion. And all of them were taken on the way home. Apparently I was too lazy to get the camera out. Or I just forgot.





So, the way home was a special adventure. We were driving along, it was raining off and on, and there was fog everywhere, which was cool. Then, traffic suddenly stopped. But, since it was such a nice day (for us desert-dwellers), we didn't really mind.

(Don't Seth's feet look nice and cool?)

But, after nearly 20 minutes of not moving, we started getting...anxious, I guess you could say. And really curious as to why we weren't moving. After a few more minutes, some lady drove by yelling "The road's washed out!" to everyone, thereby solving the mystery. Great. So, we flipped a U and decided to go down the control road to get to Payson rather than going the long way around. (Or so I was told--I really don't know where anything is up there.) Another lady rolled down her window and asked us where we were going, so we told her. Apparently we looked like we knew what we were doing, because she followed us into the forest even though we told her it would probably be a bad road. (Did you notice that awesome foreshadowing there?)

We all trundled along for a while (Seth with his phone/GPS going) and then went left at a fork in the road, passing a sign saying "Primitive road". Yeah, that was really reassuring. But, we didn't really want to go the other direction (it was longer), so we decided to risk it.

To sum up: the road was slick and muddy, the lady had 2 kids in her week-old car with her and was therefore understandably freaked out, and she was caught in the middle of our Carpenter/Croft caravan (my sister and brother-in-law and their kids were following us in their car). So, we were pretty much stuck with the consequences of her inexperienced driving. Namely, her getting stuck in the mud on the side of the road and having to find some way to pull her out. (I'm not saying that I would have done any better, of course--I probably would have been about 50 times worse). Thank goodness there were lots of trucks behind us with chains and towing capabilities. There were a few casualties, though. Sarah's flip-flops:

(Don't be deceived, she's crying on the inside.)

lots of napkins (thanks Uncle John!), and the cleanliness of our towels and car upholstery. But, none of us got stuck (and the lady was safely bundled up between large trucks after her rescue), so it wasn't too bad. We decided to say it was an adventure because, let's face it, it totally was. And it rained almost the whole way home from Payson. Free car wash, baby!

As you can probably guess (and the Guthries know), this is the extremely condensed version of the story. But, it still proves that any outing can be an adventure with a car full of Carpenters. Even going from Heber to Payson. :)

Dr. Carpenstein out.

Weight Check

So, I just got on Wii Fit for the first time in about...a year. Apparently I've lost 6.8 lbs since the last time I checked in. Sweet!! Thank you dance class! And...stinkin' Jillian Michaels, there, I said it. (My mom and I have been doing "the 30-day shred" for the past month or so. I want to smack those perky people so bad sometimes...)

*Sigh* I guess this means I'll have to stick with Jillian for a little while longer....

Tidings from Philmont

Hey everyone! I survived! Haha. We left for Philmont last last Friday (after gratuitous procrastination by pretty much everyone but my dad in packing), stayed with my aunt and uncle in Gallup for the night, and got to Philmont the next day. Here are some of the highlights of our week in the New Mexican mountains:

-I got to go horseback riding with my group, the Prospectors. (We were all over 21 and single. Nice, huh?) At first, I was pretty nervous. I haven't had a whole lot of experience with horses (try one experience in my entire life so far), so being handed some reigns with a horse attached was not exactly something I'm familiar with. (It went something like, "Ok...what am I supposed to do with this?" as the horse is blocking my vision and backing me into the fence I'm standing in front of.) But, thankfully, I was riding right behind our wrangler, Eric, so I could talk with him to distract myself or have someone competent nearby when I screamed in fear, whichever was most appropriate. (I resisted the urge to do the latter, by the way.) And, really, we just walked in a straight line, so it wasn't like I needed a whole lot of horse-riding skills. My horse, Star, was pretty awesome. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of him (I was a mite occupied with staying on him). This is the only photographic evidence I have of my 2-hour horseback ride.

Pretty awesome watch tan/burn, huh?
(This, my friends, is why we wear sunscreen at higher altitudes even though it feels nice outside.)

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be giving highlights. Meh, who says highlights are supposed to be brief? This might take a while. Sorry.

-Um...we went to the handicraft lodge a lot. My mom had a few classes to go to and the Prospectors had about 1 activity a day (although 2 of them were hiking--blegh, didn't go on those), so we were pretty much allowed to run free. Sweet. This is what I made:

Yay for branding things!

My favorite color combination! (The aqua and lime green--as evidenced by my pajamas, favorite outfit, etc.) This bag will eventually be used for my crocheting stuff.

This is the back of the bag. The little brown thing is supposed to be a bull with "Philmont" underneath it, but it smudged kind-of weird.

-One day, my fellow Prospectors and I went to an old (mining) ghost town/museum thing. It was a bit odd, but fun. We found some awesome stuff there and some...really weird stuff. As in piles of random rusted metal things. Lots of piles. (As we walked into an old barn full of rusty saws and farm equipment I had to ask, "Is anyone else thinking about all the ways we can get tetanus in here?" Yes, I'm morbid that way.) Lots of pictures of that are in the photo album I put up, but more info on that later.

-Pretty much all the families there were awesome. Of course, when every dad is a stake president or high councilor, that's not too surprising. Pretty much everyone we talked to made me think "Wow, I really liked them." That's always fun.

-The weather was heavenly. Cool during the day and moderately cold at night (freezing when you woke up, but oh well).

-The whole YM General Presidency was there and the new General Primary President (Sis. Wixom) was there. Sis. Wixom is awesome, let me just say. She's so cute! It was cool to be around them and see them as both leaders and normal people.

Well, there's a lot more, too, but I'd rather not bore you all. If you want more details, feel free to call me or something. I love to talk. :) If you want to see more pictures (trust me, there are a lot), you can follow this link to the album I put up on Facebook. (Don't worry, you won't have to sign up for a Facebook account or anything to see it. Or if you do, um...let me know and we'll come up with an alternative.)

So, there's my week at Philmont in a very small nutshell. Hope I haven't bored you all to tears. ;) Oh, and having a bathroom and shower across the hall from my bedroom instead of across a dirt field is glorious. In case you were wondering.