Yummy Food, 80s Trivia, and Girlie Gossip

Well, good morning everyone! It's rainy and ugly outside where I am, and I should be in bed. But, since I'm not, I'll fill you in on the fun stuff of the rest of my 3-day weekend :)!

Church: Had the most awesome analogy given to us by a 16-year old on Sunday. He was talking about raising the bar and how all of us can strive to be better, but that often we don't because we are afraid of failing. We continue doing what we are doing (which is good), but we don't strive to do more because we know we can achieve what we are already doing and we fear that we cannot succeed if we try to do more, to improve. We have a fear of falling. The analogy he spoke of was that of a father who helps his young baby to learn to walk. The father holds the baby's hands and gets him on his way a few steps, then lets go. And at first, the baby will fall after a couple of steps or so. But there is no punishment. The father simply picks the baby back up, holds its hands again and gets it going again. And then this teenager said, "And that's an earthly father. How much more does our Heavenly Father help us?" As we strive to do better, as we strive to become what our Heavenly Father wants us to become, what He sees we can become, He will help us. Yes, we will fall at times. But that is where our Savior's atonement comes in. When we fall, we can get back up. And we will not be alone. We will have help. Anyway, I was very impressed with this young man's insightfulness. I was touched by this lesson. His talk was based on a talk given in General Conference in October. If you're interested in reading it, you can find it here: "Raising the Bar." This talk was actually directed at future missionaries, but as this young man said, it has applications to everyone.

I took a nap after church. Man I was tired. I was laying down, studying scriptures, and then it was an hour later and I was waking up. And since I knew April was supposed to be on her way over, I decided to get a quick shower. After my shower, I started cooking dinner, which consisted of Mexican Confetti Pinwheels (what can I say? this seems to be a hit at every party :)) and black olive pizza. Yum :). April got there around 6:00, so we talked while I finished up dinner (with April's help on the pizza so that we were sure to get lots of olive-y goodness in every bite :)). Oh yeah, and when I got into the Great Value of crescent rolls for the pinwheels... I have never seen such dried-out crescent dough in my life! It was so dry it was breaking apart! The up-side, however, is that they came out just fine, at least taste-wise. And really, that's all that matters ;). Oh, and April was in charge of the chocolate. She brought oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and double chocolate muffins. More on that shortly. But here are the obligatory food pictures :):
So, let's go clockwise from the top: double chocolate muffins, black olive pizza, oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, and Mexican confetti pinwheels. With Mountain Dew and Diet Dr. Pepper to wash it down (okay, I admit it... I have done horribly at not drinking soda the past 3 weekends!). And here we are, all ready to eat:
We sat out in the dining area and ate and told stories for a very long time. I think we covered everything from dentists to school to doctor appointments, and I'm sure a lot of things in-between. I just can't remember them all. I just know that I was laughing very hard! For example, did you know that I did not swallow pills until I was like 18 years old? I couldn't do it! I had a mental block! I would dissolve them in water (which tastes nasty, just FYI). Either that or I would take liquid Tylenol. But they don't really give a dosage for a 17 year old. So, it was always a guess about how much I would have to take. But I finally learned to swall half of a pill when I started getting a toothache (which turned out to be a tooth in need of a root canal). And now I take Lysine pills that look like horse pills (not to mention my multi-vitamin, which is no small cookie), so I guess I got over that mental block... Anyway, all of this came out in our conversation at the dinner table.

So after I cleaned up the kitchen and washed all the dishes, April and I headed to my room to play some 80s trivia games. We actually played the one with both the 80s and 90s. And we ended up playing best 2 out of 3 (April won!). We made up new rules: If we rolled the sports category, we could roll again (because who knows the sports trivia questions?). But, if we rolled it 3 times in a row, we had to take the sports question. And you'd be amazed how often this happened. It was as though the sports trivia questions were determined to be asked. Oh, for the third round, we also made up the rule that you had to actually guess the correct year in which the event occurred. This made it harder (and totally does away with that so-called 'one-in-ten chance' that I've seen blow up in someone's face before :) (which also happened to me one time in this game... The answer was not Batman, however. Hey, coincidentally, does anyone know which year Batman came out? :))) . Oh, and those oatmeal chocolate chip cookies? Divine. Oh my gosh! I think I ate about 7 of them on Sunday night!
But it was a lot of fun. And it turns out we asked a lot of questions from the 90s as well as the 80s. Oh, and April, don't forget that, when you want to be asked a question from the 90s, if you get it right and have to guess the year, don't guess 1986. It's just not possible... :). Now that was hilarious :).

After watching a movie, we went to bed. And I have to say I slept quite soundly. I felt all young and stuff again, since this was the second night in the weekend that I stayed up until after 1 a.m. Go me! And it's so incredibly wonderful to just allow your body to wake up on its own in the morning. For me and April, that meant right about 9:30 yesterday morning. Really, who really needs to be functioning before that time? I can seriously tell you (from the experience of being expected to function before then most days of the week -- days like today) that it's seriously unnecessary to function before 9:30 a.m. :). Anyway... So we got dressed and headed to Krispy Kreme for breakfast. Why? Well, because I had a coupon to buy 3 doughnuts and get 3 free. Yum! And so we did. We also got chocolate milk and regular milk (I got the chocolate). No, we did not eat all 3 doughnuts in one sitting. Even though, in this picture (although you can clearly see we hadn't eaten any of the doughnuts yet) it looks like I've eaten 10 doughnuts... And sorry it's so dark. The flash didn't go off, I guess because it was bright outside...
We actually only each ate one doughnut. Then we left and went to America's Thrift Store. I have found a lot of clothes there that I love! And for cheap! That shirt in the picture above... I got that at the thrift store. Oh, I also got those jeans I'm wearing at the thrift store too, but that was one in WA. And April loves thrift stores. So... Off we went to the thrift store :). And, though I went with no intention of spending any money, I did leave with $20.02 worth of clothes. And I'll include a small sampling... April found a sweater-dress, reminiscent of the 80s. We laughed so hard. And then she tried it on and it really didn't look so bad. Okay, so here's selection 1:
I bought a lot of sweaters. I will need them next year, but I will also enjoy them this year. Turns out I don't have a lot of sweaters... Well, I do now :). Oh yeah, and April found this dress and she likes kind of vintage-looking stuff. She liked the bow part at the top of the dress. She said, "You know, there's a fine line between cool vintage-looking and ugly. But it's only a buck fifty, so I'll get it..." She cracks me up. And below is the other picture we took (thanks Stefanie, by the way, for taking our pictures!).
So, there's the sweater dress on April. It would look great with leggings... 80's style. Oh, and allow me to be conceited for a few short moments... I don't think I look like I ate 10 doughnuts in this picture. In fact, those are my new favorite pair of jeans (once I wash them). And, to quote my best Julie-friend, I look "skinny." Woohoo! I'll take that compliment and pass it around ;).

In other grand news: plans move forward on Lyman Family Reunion 2008. And I must say again: I LOVE my family! Our latest endeavor? To come up with t-shirt slogans. Let me just say that I have a slightly twisted, and yet oh-so-hilarious family. And, for those of you who are family members that read this blog, I shared the shirt slogans with my roommie and explained the reasons for them and she was like, "you have the coolest family! I want to meet them! Bring them here!" And she laughed almost as hard as I did.

Oh, and I have had a correct guess on the movie quote. I do not know who guessed it, as it was an anonymous comment. However, the guesser did inform me that this quote cannot be googled. I will post the comment next week, as usual. I do want to say that I don't actually try to get one that can't be googled (although I'm totally proud that it worked out this way on this one). The way I get my movie quotes: I watch my movies and write them down... Old fashioned-like :). But it's fun this way for me ;). So good luck and best guessing to all of you! I'm off to eat my lemon-filled doughnut :). (Oh, so I'm not expecting good results from tomorrow's Strive for Five weigh-in, by the way).

*Along with the anonymous person who guessed it at 12:57 a.m. CST this morning Kristin has also correctly guessed the movie quote correctly at 10:00 a.m. CST. Okay, and Elka guessed it at 10:11 a.m. CST, but I think she cheated :) because she said she did.*