Favorite Pastime...

It's Saturday... and there is nothing I love more about Saturday's in the fall than BYU football. The Cougars have a bye this week so instead of watching them play, I thought I'd post another entry on this blog.

I have so many memories of watching the Cougars while growing up. In some ways, I feel like I had some of my most trying, growing experiences in what use to be known as Cougar Stadium. One of the greatest games I ever watched there was the BYU - Utah game in 2001. I went with my Grandma to the game. Those were the days of Luke Staley, Brandon Doman, and Reno Mahe. The Cougars were down with not much time left and pulled off a miracle victory of 24-21. I remember being so down during that game as I saw my favorite team losing. I thought for sure it was over. My grandma kept saying "you've got to have faith, Amanda. Just have faith." I don't know what is was that enabled the Cougs to come back... maybe it was my grandma's faith... but the point was that they did it. They were 12-0 after that game. They were denied the chance to play in a BCS bowl. After learning the BCS didn't want them, they still had one more regular season game. They lost to Hawaii and lost their bowl game as well finishing the season at 12-2.

One of the worst games I've ever attended at Lavell Edwards Stadium was the 2003 BYU-Utah game. The Cougars had one of their worst seasons, finishing 4-8 that year. The end of the season, playing Utah, was just a fitting element of the their terrible season. It was a cold miserable game. It snowed for much of it. I went with my brother and Alaris. It was a game with only defense, no offense. BYU was shut out... 3-0. BYU's NCAA record for most consecutive games without being shutout ended at 361 games. This streak extended over 28 years. I wouldn't have cared if BYU had lost 90-2... as long as they scored points. It took me weeks to get over that game. Thinking about it now, I'm not sure if I'm over it yet.

For every bad memory I have of BYU football, I have at least 5 or 6 good ones. The #11 Cougars are off to a terrific start and really, need to run the table to get the respect necessary in order to play in a BCS bowl game. This means that they have to take it one game at a time. I've enjoyed going to the games with Trent this season and all of last season. As much as he pretends not to really care about the games, he gets excited when the game gets exciting. I know, I saw him at the nail-biter against Utah last year. We even rushed the field after they won. Our favorite game this year was the UCLA - BYU game. Of course, it wasn't even close but people were still extremely energized. No one left early because they wanted to see if the Cougs could secure the shutout... which they did.

Here's to you BYU... keep winning!

Fishing for Food!

Last Saturday after going to the BYU - Wyoming game, Trent decided he was sick of watching football for the day. I can never get sick of it, so I sat on the couch and watched a couple of the late games. Meanwhile, Trent decided to go fishing. We live quite close to the Jordan River so Trent took the new fishing pole I bought ($17 at Walmart) and went to the river. He was only gone about 10 or 15 minutes.

I was surprised he came back as early as he did. When I looked towards the kitchen where he was walking in, I noticed he actually caught a fish! It wasn't a very big one but he brought it home as his trophy regardless. Later, he told me the fish swallowed the hook and he wasn't able to get the hook out so he decided to kill the fish. I won't be too graphic in the details... let me just say, he used a rock. I think a part of him felt bad for potentially killing and wasting the fish so he decided to try and cook it for some yummy eating.

He gutted it (with much trial) right in our kitchen sink. I was dry heaving part of the time but kept wanting to get pictures of it. I won't post any of the gross ones because I don't want anyone to get sick from reading this. Trent really struggled getting the scales and skin off the fish. This was disappointing because of the "high quality" Ronco fileting knife he was using.

(This is totally unrelated to the story but several months back I got sucked into an infomercial -- it only took five minutes of watching -- then I called and bought Ronco knives. They are not all they are cracked up to be. They sounded so good on the infomercial!)

Since he couldn't get the skin off, he cut it into chunks and cooked it on the grill. He didn't use any spices or flavoring element at all. Disgusting. I give him props because he actually tried eating it. I don't think he liked it though as he threw the majority of it away. Yay for fishing!

Trent seems pretty proud of his catch!

The head looks dirty and disgusting because of the rock.

The finished product. Are you hungry?

Painting... oh the joys...

Trent & I have spent much time over the last couple months painting our house.When we first moved in, all the walls were white and boring. Now, after a short two months, we are basically wrapping up the painting party. People say hindsight is 20/20... and using it, I think it would be worth it to pay a professional to paint. It's a ton of work! We used three colors in our house. The majority of it is a taupe color and then a lighter taupe. Our loft upstairs is dark "brick red". The contrast looks good.

To assist in our painting project, we purchased a paint sprayer. Many people told us it would be impossible to spray our house since it is fully finished with carpet. For the bedrooms, we taped and covered everything with plastic. Our taping job proved sufficient and my preference would have been to spray as much as possible. Although the precise taping takes A LOT of time... the spraying is fast and the paint coats very evenly. We had to make sure not to stay in the rooms too long though for fear of passing out. I have no doubt I killed many brain cells sucking in the paint fumes. The final "major" piece in our painting pursuit was our garage. Trent put up some really nice shelves to help organize everything and then we sprayed the entire thing white. Had we not owned a paint sprayer, painting the garage would have been out of the question. With the sprayer it was easy to coat the ceiling as well as all the high and low places.

That's not to say we sprayed our entire house. We actually rolled quite a bit. Our downstairs was all painted by hand. My mom came over one Saturday and helped me paint the kitchen. Trent & I spent a lot of Saturdays laboring, with the noise from college football games sounding in the background. Any time a good play was developing in the game, I would stop my painting and hustle towards the couch to see the outcome. I'm finding that I don't really need to see a game in order to visualize exactly what's taking place in my mind. I guess that comes with extreme familiarity to sports. Some people might argue my familiarity is too extreme. One thing that is not very extreme is my painting talent. We still have a little touch-up work to do but overall, a lengthy job well done.

Trent - Spraying the garage

Amanda's Turn...

Rolling the downstairs

Wedding Reception

Although a wedding reception requires a lot of work and is often very stressful for those involved with planning it, the best part of a reception is not the food (surprisingly)... it's not the decorations... it's not the weather... or the colors... it's the people. The people.

There was a "stealing" theme at the reception... my cousin Tanner thought he would be funny and "steal" the bouquet

My niece was more interested in stealing the cup from Trent's nephew

Who knew that people in Utah danced??

Talking to Kaydee... what a cute family!

The flower girls... and part of the wedding party

The wedding party...

My brother's beautiful family

Mission Prez... and Sister Bryner

The cousins with the bride

Grandpa and Amanda

Laci & Mark

Alaris and the Peck with me

Stuart Summers... one of the coolest people I know

The Cottrell's... they have real dancing skills...

My sister conversing with her boyfriend's family