MBA All Stars

Our intramural season came to an end last night. What we lacked in skill (it had been a loooong time since we had played basketball), we made up for with spirit. I had a blast playing and am really looking forward to next year!

What to do when your buns are burning....

While making Sunday dinner today I forgot about some buns I had put in the oven to toast. I remembered them once I saw the little tendrils of smoke coming out of the oven. Upon opening the oven, I found that the buns were very, very black and smelled very, very burnt.

I grabbed the tray out of the oven and since they were too hot to put in the garbage and too fragrant to keep in the house, I did the first thing that came to mind - run outside and throw them in the bushes by our door.

After dumping the goods, I noticed our neighbor (who we don't know well at all) was standing right there watching the whole thing. I muttered "burned food" at her before racing back inside. Consequently, there is no photo with this post because I figured the only thing more strange than throwing food in the bushes would be to go back outside and take a picture of it.

BYU's Final Home Game

Yesterday was BYU's final game of the season - our last chance to watch Jimmer play in person.

The first game we went to this years was against Utah State. We showed up 15 minutes late, parked across the street from the Marriott Center, grab a bench to ourselves, and have no one sit in front of us. It was a great game, competitive til the end and the Cougars came out on top.

Boy how things change!! By the end of the season, Jimmer-mania had swelled to epic proportions and if you weren't there an hour early, you were going to have to watch the game on television. If you wanted a decent seat, I guess you needed to be two hours early because we were squished in at the very top.

I saw this at Walmart and was glad that someone else took a picture because when I went back with my camera it had been taken down. Just one example of how great it is to live in Provo right now and watch our college town transform into Jimmerland! Hoop it up 32!!

** Picture is not mine and was borrowed from CougarBoard here.

3 feet of the good stuff!

Our lives this winter have predominantly been ruled by two things: skiing/snowboarding and BYU basketball. Last weekend was a tough call because we had two really enticing options - watching round 2 of BYU vs. SDSU or heading for the mountains to enjoy 3 feet of perfect powder.

We chose the powder and unfortunately a lot of other people did too. The crowd at the bottom of Mineral Basin was RIDICULOUS. We stood in this line for close to an hour. But the snow was AMAZING and the time spent in line was completely worth it!

Although the powder was light and fluffy, the fact that it was 3 feet deep sometimes posed a problem. Amy fell over backwards, down hill and butt-first, and had to be lifted up by her arms because she couldn't stand on her own (When pulling someone up, I recommend grabbing the person under their arms and not by their mittens - those just slide right off).

At one point I lost momentum in a flat spot and was buried up to my waist in snow. For the life of me I could not lift my legs and eventually had to fall sideways and roll until I got to a place where the snow had been packed down enough to stand. Nat, however, took the cake.

Amy and I met up at the bottom after becoming separated from Nat. After waiting for awhile we called her phone. Reception isn't always the best on the mountain, so when we heard Nat say, "I'm dragging a tree" we thought we heard wrong. She must have hit a tree, or run over a tree.

But we she finally got to the bottom there was indeed a branch stuck in her binding. She managed to break most of it off, but there was a small piece that wouldn't come out. The best part was all the people that kept telling her, "You know you have part of a tree stuck to your ski," as if she didn't notice the pine bough attached to her leg :)

Exhibit A

Title: Dave does laundry while Mel is at work

Critical Eavulation: Clothes were clean, dry, and less wrinkled than if they had been left balled up in the dryer. Folding is overrated anyway, right? I guess I'll give him a pass.

 

4-for-4

The last of the Lamberts, my brother Derek, will be starting college this year and yesterday he got his acceptance email to BYU. Hooray! 

Four siblings attending BYU is great, but even more impressive are the 22 grandkids in a row from my mom's side that have all gone to BYU. Derek will contintue the tradition as number 23. Way to keep the legacy alive!

One more reason to rise and shout? The four Lamberts will all be living in Provo next school year. Fun times ahead!!

• Derek - Freshman
• Natalie - Junior
• Amy - Graduated, but supporting husband and second year law student Jeremy
• Melanie - Graduated, but supporting husband and second year MBA student Dave

Mmmmmm ... caaaaake

Tonight BYU beat Colorado State, but more importantly they scored more than 80 points which earned everyone in attendance free Magleby's cake - rich, chocolaty, delicious cake. Mmmmmm!

 

Life without TV

A couple weeks ago our TV starting acting strange. It would randomly turn off, and then turn back on a few seconds later - not desirable, but we could live with it. Then it started happening every 30 seconds. Now we were beyond our tolerance limit and decided to call a repair man.

They came and replaced a part, after which our TV worked for one day and then died; Nothing but black screen.

It took us a week to get a repair guy back to our house (scheduling is a beast when you're both gone all day). After messing with the TV for a few minutes, our repair guy determined that it needed to be taken back to the shop for further investigation.

And so we have been without for almost two weeks now - a real hardship, I know. I don't think I realized how much the TV was on until it wasn't:

No Wii
No movies from our collection
No movies from Redbox
No MoTab Sunday morning
No Planet Earth Sunday evening
No TLC while I iron
No Brady Bunch while I make dinner
No Law & Order re-runs while we eat dinner
No Bones on Thursdays
No Fringe on Fridays
No Food Network at night
No sports - which prompted us to buy tickets from a scalper to the BYU vs Utah game since they stopped taking All sports passes and we had no TV to watch from home

Instead we have been playing games, getting ahead with homework, cleaning out the house, organizing photos, reading, listening to music, going to bed on time, or even EARLY.

So it hasn't been all that bad. But I will be glad when it comes back :)

Skiing with the Fam (minus Nat who was sick)

This weekend my family came down to Utah for a ski trip. My mom watched baby Anne while Amy, Dad, Derek, Dave, and I spent two days on the slopes at Snowbird. There hadn't been any new snow for a few days, but the weather absolutely gorgeous - sun out and blue, blue skies!

Action shot of me; There are no action shots of Dave because he is not patient enough to wait for a photographer to ski to the bottom and get the camera out :)

Hiking Mt. Baldy - here we took our skis off and hiked up part of the mountain to reach terrain not accessible from the chair lifts. Quite an adventure, but it really wore me out!

On the hike up Mt. Baldy you pass this sign. Note the last warning - it comes in to play later

After the hike you had to ski across the mountain to get to the good snow. Somewhere along this traverse we lost Dave. Here I am at the end of the traverse ready to go down.

>>Short Story Break<<

After skiing down the softest snow of the day, we paused to watch a few skiers jump off some nearby cliffs. Then to my horror, I realized that the guy on the next cliff over was Dave. Dave's cliff was narrow, steep, and I could see no easy, medium, or hard way down. So he took of his board, choose what looked like the least rocky/treey path down and prepared himself for a slide. If I hadn't been so worried about the outcome of said slide, I would have taken a video. So you'll just have to imagine an orange blob tumbling off a cliff at great speed with a snowboard careening close behind. Luckily both the board and the boy came out of it with minimal damage - phew!

On the Cirque, looking for the least scary way to drop into Great Scott

Amy taking a break while we wait for the lost brother to show up

No trip to Snowbird is complete without a couple passes through Mini Miners Camp - sort of a snow roller coaster through the trees, complete with wood cut outs of a general store, train station, old men with pick axes, and a graveyard. It's designed for small children with short skis, but we still enjoy it as big kids.

On the chair with my cliff diver - thanks for taking up this crazy sport! I love doing this with you!

A Passionate Sixth Grade Boy Speaks to His Love

On our most recent trip back to Texas, Dave's mom brought out boxes of old school work that she had saved for each of her kids. It was hilarious to look the at grade reports (Dave rocked at kindergarten), the artwork, and read through stories they had written.

In Dave's box we found these two gems, and since Valentine's day is just around the corner I thought I'd share:

 

 

We googled the first line and found that the assignment must have been to write a poem based off The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, but I personally like this version better.  I still can't decide what my favorite part is - the hike/bike date, the famous picture of a dove, playing in a meadow, or the 20 lb bag of gummi bears. What a funny kid, and what lucky girl I am that he's mine :)