Summer Recap

Let's talk about our (last) summer in Provo. It was SO busy. Between me being in two classes, Mason working, all the packing, my family coming to visit two separate times, the trips to the Parkeses, the trips to the Waite's, the trip to McCall, a trip after that to Las Vegas, and the three day drive to get down to Auburn, we were pretty busy most of the time.

We didn't get to do as much hiking as we would have liked, but we still got to take in the beautiful Wasatch mountains every time we looked out our window, or left our house to go anywhere. I miss the mountains.

When I think back over the summer, what I mostly remember is driving. It seems like we were always on the road headed somewhere far away.

But we also had some fun visitors come! First Ryan and Kaylyn came out to see us. They slept on 2 twin air mattresses in our studio for a few days, and then they spent a few days up at the Waite's house. It was SO fun having them in Provo!

Fresh off the plane! (Mason is paying for parking.)

We hiked the Y (and a little beyond).

Ryan said if we stood like this we'd all look swoll.

We watched a lot of Amazing Race. ("I'll bake the cake," "Because he likes to DRINK beer.")

Played a lot of Nertz.

Walked around the new temple:

We went to Cafe Rio. Ryan and Kaylyn liked it so much, they ate it again in the Salt Lake airport on their way home!

We saw the Provo River being fuller than I've ever seen it, and went to Bridal Veil Falls. The water was freezing!

We went to a concert in Park City to see a band called Superbubble. They played funk. It was a little weird.

We took them on a tour of campus:

We went to Swig like 100 times, and somehow this is the only picture I have documenting it:

We took the train up to Shell and Nate's house, and on the way we taught ourselves to play Texas Hold 'Em. (Although Ryan pretty much knew how to play already.) Also, Kaylyn had to use the train bathroom to change her pants, and she was so afraid of it! But she did it anyway. I've never used the bathrooms on there. Or on an airplane.

Then once we were in Layton, Nate took us on a canyon adventure while Shell stayed home with the kids. It was weird doing that without Michelle there... all the rappels seemed so much scarier!

Ryan and Kaylyn both were climbing all over the place the entire time! And they enjoyed hiding behind rocks and trying to scare us. It worked one time.

Kaylyn lookin fly in the slot canyon

Team building

Smiles all around

Nate, our fearless leader

 Ryan rappelling

Mason being cute

Who's buns are those way up there?

Why, they're mine, thank you for asking. This was a big scary rappel. I think it was about 80-90 feet, if I'm remembering right. I had a nosebleed right before I went down. There were tons of biting flies at the top. And it was so scary!

SO RELIEVED TO BE DONE.

And then Kaylyn blew through this one like a total champ!

And then nate put us all to shame with the record descent.

We had to cross some really cold water!

And then Ryan stepped on a cactus in his bare foot. (His shoe and sock had a giant hole that left his big toe totally exposed!

And then on the hike back to the car, we got to see some amazing views

We explored around Temple Square in Salt Lake.

We weenie roasted and Kaylyn taught a bunch of people songs on her ukulele.

And of course I can't leave out these two gems.

It was a blast. I hope Ryan and Kaylyn consider going to BYU one day, because it is a special place, and living by the Waites ROCKS.

Then, just a little while after Ryan and Kaylyn were home in GA, the Griffioens came out to play! It was so great to see them. We did a lot of the same things with them as we did with Ryan and Kaylyn, anthough I didn't take nearly as many pictures. I did really enjoy one night when Beck and Ben met Mason and I at Swig, and then went back to our apartment to play Nertz. They are so fun! (Also, it's a good thing we saw them that night, because we reminded them their flight was the next day. They thought it was the day after. That was a close one!)

It was also so fun seeing their kids. We spent some time up at the Waite's house again with the Griffioens and it was fun to see all the kids playing together.

We also picked the neighbors raspberries, which were delicious!

The trip to McCall is always such a treat. It is fun seeing Mason's family and spending time with everyone. The highlights for me this year were playing frisbee golf with Maddie and Tony, going on the ski-do things (basically giant jet skis), and playing corn hole with my peeps. I love this reunion! Also, as an added bonus this year, Mason's parents got a sweet cabin within walking distance from the place we usually stay. Mason and I slept there the first night, but then we roughed it in our tent by the lake the rest of the week. As per tradition.

Also, Mason and I did a race! Neither of us trained too intensely for it, ha, but we both had a good time. It was called The Wasatch Half/10K. Mason did the half, I did the half of the half. It was so beautiful. It was fun to actually not care about my time and to just take it slow and have fun.

That same day (a Saturday) we drove down to Vegas to see the Parkeses for our last hurrah. Mason forgot to bring his church clothes! Luckily he had some old clothes from high school still in his closet. (Which afterward, we cleaned out thoroughly!)

On our drive back, we hit a deer on the highway outside of Fillmore. The thing totalled our car! We are so grateful we are both ok. We were going about 80 mph when we hit it!

It ended up being a tender mercy. We were both ok, we got some money from our insurance, and we didn't have to tow our car behind us on our drive to Alabama, saving us money on the trailer and the truck (we got a 12' instead of 16'). Also, everyone we had to work with after this (AAA, the highway patrol guy, Progressive...) was so nice and helpful and explained how everything works in great detail to these two ignorant college kids.

Then the rest of the summer was filled with packing and loading and taking finals and quizzes early.

 Our vacuum just decided to completely die while we were doing our final cleaning. 

All loaded up in our 12' budget truck!

I'll save pictures from the drive for another post.

The things I miss the most about Utah are:
-The dryness. It is SO HUMID HERE.
-The mountains.
-And most of all: the Waites. I miss being close to them. I wish they could move to Auburn so we could still hang out all the time.

I realize that I missed a couple things we did this summer, like hiking Horseshoe Canyon with the Waites, for example, and our last hurrah at their house where we just sat around and talked for like 4 hours. But an incomplete blog post is better than no blog post!

It's been too long

Lots has happened since I last blogged. Perhaps the most exciting was that we walked in our graduation ceremonies! Such a surreal moment for me--I never expected to actually do that. It is a goal that has felt impossible for so much of the time. But we did it, and it was awesome. The Parkes Clan came up (and down) to celebrate with us and clap and cheer for us. We hosted a lunch back at our apartment where we ate sub sandwiches and some cupcakes that we made. We LOVED spending that time with all of them, they are so cool and fun!

Obligatory Graduation Selfie

Our commencement ceremony! I think I remember them saying there were over 8,000 graduates at this ceremony! Arthur C. Brooks gave a great speech for this, you can read it here: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/arthur-c-brooks_more-love-less-contempt/

Enter to Learn, Go Forth to Serve

By the library

At Mason's convocation!!!

I'm in here somewhere.... (my convocation)

Michelle and Lane

Axe throwing that night with the fam! I had SO MUCH FUN with Maddie during this.

On a more somber note, Grandma Mingledorff passed away in March. I almost didn't go to the funeral (in GA), but after much coaxing from my siblings and a particularly emotional conversation with Mom, I decided to go. I am grateful that Mom didn't tell me I had to come, but that she offered her personal insights and allowed me to make my own decision. It was really, really hard being there, especially for the viewing, and I was a total basketcase pretty much the entire time, but now looking back on it, I am glad that I decided to go. Some of the highlights for me were: spending some time with Russell and having some good talks with him, seeing all of Dad's siblings together (they are SO FUNNY), seeing Grandma Johnson, the closing hymn that Grandma picked out for the funeral (may the good Lord bless and keep you), seeing the beauty of Georgia (including the Camellia tree outside Grandma's house), and of course, all the Dairy Queen I got to eat. Shell did a really great blog post about it all, and since she has so many great pictures I don't have, I'm just going to link her post here:

http://nateandmich.blogspot.com/2019/05/grandmas-funeral.html

 I found these clovers in Grandma's yard. They have hearts on them!

All of the girls (minus Jen) in the car on the way to visit Jenna!

We made it through finals last semester, and now we are in spring term! Campus is beautiful, the weather is fantastic most of the time (although it's supposed to rain like every day for the next ten days, and be back in the fifties...).

We are both enjoying our classes. Mason is taking a neuroscience class from my favorite professor ever, Dr. Rebekka Matheson, and he is killing it and learning a ton and teaching me pieces of what he learns and I am loving it! He is also in a service through learning class, and has to do some community service for 20 hours this term. He's continuing to work as a TA, which he is so passionate about, and finds to be very fulfilling. Hopefully he can get his senior thesis done this term and then he will be free as a bird!

I am in 2 Psych classes (309 and 310) and they are really challenging but I think I'm enjoying them. Probably the most stressful thing about these is that I'm in a ton of group projects, and that always stresses me out. But my groups are good! I'm also in an English class (well, really I think it's actually a history class,) and that one is a TON of work with about a million assignments, but it's been pretty interesting so far. We have a class blog! To see the things I've posted, you can search for the label, "Posted by Brianna P." Here's the link to the blog: https://rhetciv.blogspot.com/

Shauna and Doug and their kids came out here for a funeral, and we got the immense pleasure of watching Evan (their youngest) for most of a day. It was so fun, even though we don't have a ton of experience watching little kids. We played on the playground, fed ducks, swung in the hammock, and watched a bunch of Magic School Bus. Also, funny story: he had a little accident that was totally my fault, and after when me and him were both soaked he kept looking at our shower and saying something. I can only understand about 60% of what he says because he's so little, and so I thought he was saying he needed to take a shower. I asked him, "Does your mom make you shower after you have an accident?" To which he replied, "Yeeees," in his cute little Evan voice. So I turned it on, he told me to turn it off because it was too loud, to which I replied, "It's not as loud once you actually get it!" And then I popped him in for a minute, and he just kind of ran around in the tub. Then we dried him off, washed his clothes, and watched Magic School Bus.

I can't believe I haven't posted about this, but we decided we are going to Auburn University in the fall for Mason to get his PhD!!!! We are very excited, and very nervous, and pretty much every other emotion too. He has to be there by August 12. Time to look for an apartment!!!

Oh, also, I had a birthday in the past 2 months too. Mason is so fun on birthdays. He made me the cutest cake (yellow with chocolate frosting and a heart made of jumbo chocolate chips on top.) For presents, he got me a shower cap (which I've wanted FOREVER) and my very own harmonica! I haven't had a ton of time to practice, but I learned the Piano Man harmonica part, and happy birthday. I sent this video to Mom on our birthday: