My new baby

What have I done?'

I think the title says it all. I really hope the picture turns out decent. I can't ever tell on my phone. I fell in love with this truck last Saturday when it came through the shop for an oil change. I told my boss that it was my truck that day. on Thursday I saw it on the lot with a window sticker. Since I have connections I was able to get the key to it before any of the salesmen got into work. The truck was going to go to auction on Monday or Tuesday an wasn't actually for sale (high miles). I text one of the salesmen and told him I wanted the truck and for him to make it happen. Zack came through with shining colors. It has everything I want: 4X4, access cab, TRD Sport, SRV5, V6...everything. I couldn't let the opportunity pass me by. And the funny part about the whole thing? The truck belonged to one of the finance guys at work and he's been the only owner. How often does it happen that the finance guy is the previous owner of your new purchase?

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Easter 2011

Lady of the Lake Easter cruise

I finally had family come for a visit. The weekend went by really fast but we had a lot of fun. I wish all of my sisters could have been here but that will have to be another trip I guess.
Mom flew in Friday night and it stopped raining about an hour before she got here. April flew in Saturday morning and them we headed down to downtown Charlotte. Total bust. 10:30 in the morning and NOTHING was open. The town looked Luke a ghost town. We headed to the mall and did some shopping and hit the movie theatre. Then we headed up to Mooresville and I showed them downtown. I love downtown Mooresville because it's so small town feeling. We spent a lot of time in an antique store just looking at all of the old things they have there. for dinner we went to Cracker Barrel because April had never been. Crazy huh?
Sunday we were just lazy in the morning then went on our Easter cruise. I love it. The boat just meandered around Lake Norman while we enjoyed a nice lunch and beautiful sightseeing of amazing houses on the lake. After lunch we headed to Lazy 5 Ranch. April wanted to check it out but I was a little worried because we all know how clinically insane April is about animals. My fears were unwarranted. The place now has April's stamp of approval which I honestly thought was impossible to get. Check out April's FB for pics.
Monday we went to Waffle House. I promised myself when I moved out here that I would never EVER eat at one but I broke that promise for family. It's not a bad place but I like IHOP a lot more. After Waffle House I introduced Mom and April to Ollie's which is a discount store kind of like Big Lots. After that we stopped by my work for a brief moment then went to NTI to take a tour of my school. There was another graduate on the tour with us. He graduated in 2007. After that tour we went to JR Motorsports then I dragged them down to MWR (Michael Waltrip Racing) and made them go on a tour there. It's one of the race shops and they actual take you on a tour behind the scenes and you can go on a catwalk above the work area and see them working on cars. We finished the night by going to dinner at a "place we don't have back West" which ended up being Bojangles. It's a fast food chicken place. They spice up the fries and the chicken bites were (surprise surprise) too spicy for Mom's taste. All and all I would say it was a successful weekend. I can't say as much about putting pictures on here. I have tried three times and it keeps cutting Mom out. hopefully this last try will work on one of the pics. If not...I'm sorry Mom but I'm done trying. :-)

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A need to knit...and other stuff :-)

Camo cap

Somewhere out of the blue I got a sudden urge to want to knit. Only slightly odd since I have never knitted before. Grandma Larsen tried to teach me how when I was little but I got so frustrated with how you have to wind the yarn around your hand that I gave up. Needless to say I decided it was high time I try again so I bought a book, some needles and some yarn and voila I am now a successful knitter! I now have a few different types of needles (I'm loving the circular needles) and a few different colors of yarn and I've made a few beanies.

After successfully knitting a few hats I started to get a completely different urge. Next on my list of random things to start doing was to cook...from scratch. I went to our old family website and copied down a few recipes. what has gotten into me? I'm feeling all domesticated like some wild animal! I have made (in the last week mind you): Jody's chicken casserole, Creamed Tuna on Toast, chocolate mousse, dinner crepes and Grandma Jam!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Well, I figured I'd better get my blog updated before April got hers updated. Below is a small collection of the pictures I took while I was visiting family over the 4th of July.

For anyone who might not already know, I surprised a good portion of my family by going home as a surprise for my mom's birthday on June 23rd. I flew in to SLC on the 22nd and took the shuttle up to I.F. where my dad and mom picked me up. Mom had no idea who they were picking up because she couldn't think of who would be coming home since I'm in school, Robyn's out of the country, and April was going to be visiting in a couple of weeks. I'm very happy that the surprise worked out so well.

The Idaho Falls fireworks were nice to see too although we did discover why we love being on the other side of the river. I absolutely loved being at home and just spending time with family. I couldn't believe how much I had missed my family and how much my nieces and nephews had grown (take a look at Tanner!). I spent a few days in Woodruff with Penny and her family. I was able to see her new fence and the pigs that the boys are raising. I was very glad to finally be able to see what I'd been hearing about for a while. :) I also got to take August and Addison to the movies which was nice. Another fun thing I did while I was at home was help Brandon surprise Britney by getting the basement insulated and sheet rocked. We didn't get all of the sheet rock up but we got most of it and you can really start to see how the basement will look once it's done. Another project I had while I was at home was getting a bunch of old family photos scanned in for my grandma as well. Any family members wishing for a copy of those just needs to contact GG or my dad to see if they can send a CD or something. :) I had almost three weeks at home and I felt like I barely had any time there but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Busy Month

Wow. I don't really even know where to start. I haven't had a busy month yet but this month is going to be busy. My normal schedule is school from 6:45 - 1:00 then work from 2:00 - 7:00. I don't work on Fridays but I volunteer to help with a race team instead. This month I will be volunteering at two races, a carnival, and hopefully a contest amongst the NASCAR pit crews. I won't find out if I can volunteer for that one until Monday or Tuesday. The Pit Crew Challenge is on 05/19, the All-Star Race is on 05/22, the carnival is on 05/23, and the Coca-Cola is on 05/30. This is still in addition to my normal volunteering for the race team. I'm pretty excited. Volunteering for the races pretty much means I will be helping drunk people locate their seats for the race before and during it. It also means that I get to watch the race for free. :) At the carnival I am going to be in charge of the velcro wall. It's supposed to be for kids but I don't how young of kids it's supposed to be. I personally would LOVE to try it out and I have a friend or two who are going to the carnival who would like to try it out. For the carnival I just have to work for a few hours then I get to just hang out at the carnival if I want to. And I get free shirts which is an added bonus. Free clothing works for me. :)

I am also looking for a new place to live. My roommate's boyfriend is going to move in and he has two kids so she would like to have her extra two rooms emptied by the end of the summer. So far I am not having any luck but I do have a few months to look. I would love to have a place of my own for a change but that is just out of my price range at the moment. I'm not really looking forward to packing up my stuff either. I can't believe how much stuff I have. I know most of it fit in my car for the trip out here but I just don't see how it did. Good thing I'll be able to make multiple trips this time around.

Playing catch up

Ok, it's been a while so I'm trying to play a little bit of catch up. For the slideshow above just scroll over a picture to get a view of the entire picture. A good portion of the pictures are from a volunteer opportunity I had for a fundraiser for Victory Juntion Gang. VJG is a camp for "kids with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses". It is 100% free to the families and there are cabins that they get to stay at while they are there too. There are a few pictures from a trip to Myrtle Beach that I went on with my friend Ashley just so we could say that we went to Myrtle Beach.

I've been putting off updating my blog because I haven't felt like uploading all of the pictures and creating a slideshow then writing about it. That's what happens when you fall behind. The longer you put it off the harder it is to get it done. So here goes. I'm going to write a brief outline of what I've done over the past months.

I spent Thanksgiving with my roommates Thomas and Sara at their mom's house with their family. I have been lucky to have good roommates. Whenever I hang out with the kids from school it just makes me even more thankful for my roommates because they are drama free. I like my school and everything that I am learning but it is primarily made up of barely-out-of-high school kids and this is their first experience living away from home. I have to admit...I'm feeling too old for that.

Christmas I spent here in North Carolina and I had the house to myself. My roommates went on vacation with their mom for a few days. I did get to Skype with my family for Christmas which was a nice compromise to not being able to physically be home for the holidays. Unfortunately there was no snow for Christmas itself but we did get a little snow the week before. The snow only stuck around for a couple of days which was my perfect idea of snow. I like to see it for a little bit then it can go away and I'm happy.

School has been going great. I earned my second SOC pin (Student of the Class) in Automatic Transmissions. Student of the Class is the person who has the highest overall score in class and I have come close in most of my classes so it was nice to get a second one. My first one was from my Service Writing class. I really wanted SOC in Auto Trans because I got my lowest grade in Manual Trans and getting the highest grade in Auto Trans, in my head anyway, makes it even. :) I just completed my second NASCAR course which was Chassis applications. The NASCAR classes are my favorite because they are so relaxed AND they start 15 minutes later than the core classes. Starting 15 minutes later allows me to sleep in an additional 30 minutes because I don't have to sit in traffic waiting to get to school. I have fabrication classes for my next three classes and those are NASCAR classes as well. I'm so excited to be able to sleep in until 6:00 for the next 9 weeks. It's pathetic I know. I still have some core classes to go through so it's going to be hard switching back to the earlier schedule.

I have been volunteering with a race team up in Hickory for the last couple of weekends. It's a great experience that lets me experience what it's like to help out in a shop and see if it's something I really want to do. I have only been able to help out getting the cars loaded and going to the track and then helping at the track but it has been a lot of fun. I've been helping with a small team that races on asphalt and the guys have been great. I pretty much just go and pick up the race tires once we get to the track, fill them up with air, measure their size, then when another guy decides which tire is going where on the car, I put them on the car. I get to fill the cars with race gas as well. Race gas smells different and looks different than regular gas. It's kind of got a flowery smell and it's a bluish purple. Pretty cool. Once we are done with the race, I take the race tires off and bring them back to the officials.

And that's the last five or so months in a nutshell. I'll really try to stay up to date with my blog so the information I provide has a little more detail and isn't just a sentence or two explaining what's been going on. :D