"Just call them and tell them I want to be a mime."

Have I mentioned I'm a writer, not a speaker? I think I have... Which is why I was stressing ALL day yesterday about a five-minute speech. I just have something in my brain that triggers when I have to stand in front of a group of people and say something. I walk up to the front of the chapel or the classroom and my subconscious says, "Cue shaking and memory loss!" Frustrating. Luckily, I made it through the opening semi-smoothly. I honestly don't really remember any of the middle. I just remember the conclusion and the fact that I had to paraphrase a quote because I was almost over the time limit. :P Oh, well. Glad that's over! Who knew the last class of my college career would be so stressful?

This past week has been CRAZY! Family stuff all weekend starting Thursday when Jeff's cousin got married. I decided I love weddings. :) Seeing them all smiley and excited was so much fun. It brought back memories of my wedding day and I remembered how surreal and awesome the whole day felt. I was done getting ready probably an hour before we were supposed to leave for the temple, so I paced through the whole house. I couldn't sit down. lol. It wasn't because I was really nervous, I don't think. I just kept thinking, "Oh, my gosh! This is actually happening!" It's one of those things I've thought about since I was born, so it was really weird that the day actually arrived! (Okay, not since I was born.... But at least since I was four or five.)

When I first met Alex, I never really imagined him the romantic type. He seemed more feet-on-the-ground type who could fall in love but would never act head-over-heals for a girl. More like Jeff, I suppose. But man, he found a girl and completely lost all ties to the Earth! We went on a double date with him and his (then) girlfriend, and it was like we weren't even there! lol. All he did was stare into her eyes and hold her hand and smile. Jeff and I kinda felt like we were intruding, and we were the married couple! It was really cute to watch, though. :) And at the wedding, they were even more like that. Nothing really existed except for them and their happiness and giddiness about finally getting married. Aw... :) My mother-in-law commented on how cute they were and how much like newlyweds they were acting. Every time Alex talked to someone else, he'd say how beautiful his new wife was or how well she cooked or how talented she was a decorating. And I got to thinking....I'm pretty sure Jeff skipped that part. Jeff's pretty calm with his being-in-love stuff. Granted, I'm not wishing we were the couple who goes skipping through fields of daisies hand-in-hand and singing and laughing all day long. (The singing alone would kill any romantic mood on the spot.) Jeff's romantic in his own, silly sort of way. (Romance and serious do not go together for him.) I guess it helped us get on with married life quickly, though. We never had a period where we barred ourselves off from the world to enjoy only each other's company. We kind of hit the ground running, probably thanks to my job that has me working most weekends. It's just a give-and-take thing, I guess.

Whoa, long ramble. Moving on...

For Mother's Day, I made my mother-in-law some sugar cookies with little sayings on them and put them in a cookie jar with a ribbon on it. I thought it was cute and she seemed to like them. It's a pretty quick, easy way to make a cute gift. Pretty inexpensive, too. (Idea from http://iammommy.typepad.com/i_am_baker/)

Hooray for our five-year supply of wedding ribbon! :)

This was my second time ever using royal icing, and luckily it worked about as well as last time. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to royal icing, though. I was raised on buttercream. My first attempt at royal icing were these BYU basketball jerseys to celebrate the end of regular basketball season...

Which reminds me! Today I got to hold the Naismith trophy! It was big and kinda heavy. The whole time I was holding it, I kept thinking, "Don't drop it! Don't drop it!" And I didn't. What a story that would have been, though! Just think, I could tell my kids, "Yeah, I broke one of Jimmer Fredette's player of the year trophies." (Actually, it was BYU's trophy for our displays, but still... He's the reason we got the trophy in the mail.)

Anyway, back to the weekend... We hung out with my parents-in-law all day Thursday, which was fun because we don't get to see them too often. Thursday was incredibly long, because we had to drive a lot. The wedding was at the Bountiful Temple, then we had to drive Alex's friend back to Provo, then we drove up to Orem for the luncheon and the reception, then back to Provo to help move gifts into their apartment before finally going home. Whew!

Saturday was the Kentucky Derby! When I say that our family is a sports family, I mean that we watch every kind of sport. Basically, anything they show on ESPN besides poker. We even watch the National Spelling Bee! Which is not a sport, so don't ask me why they show that on ESPN. I guess it's the nerds version of sports or something. (Not that being a nerd is bad, because I'm the kid who read my history book for fun. Definitely not dissing nerdiness...)

Back to the Derby, this is a tradition we've had for a really long time. Everybody has to pick their horse to win it, then the place and show horses, and write them down on a paper. Nobody won this year... : / Kinda depressing. I actually can't remember the last time someone in our family actually picked the winning horse. I know my mom did once, but she doesn't really care about it. She may have cared about the Preakness that year... But usually it's not that exciting for her. But I think I get some sort of prize, because I picked Nehro to come in second and he did! I should have bet on it, because I would've had $8.80 or something for every dollar I bet. (The announce the earnings after the race.) If I bet $10, I would have got almost $90! That would have been sweet. Good thing I don't bet, though. I'd probably get too excited and start a habit, which wouldn't be good because usually I'm not very lucky with that sort of thing.

Animal Kingdom was the horse that won. He was a long shot, too. I think he was 20-1 or something around there. Insane! Those three or four minutes are the most intense ever! Almost as bad as watching any Olympic race. Those stress me out so much.

After the race, we watched Secretariat. Loved that movie! It shows that anybody can be great and that housewives are awesome. :) The only thing that made me laugh (which wasn't intentional) was the trainer's French. Some of those phrases were not correct in French. Maybe they meant to do that. Or maybe they used Google Translate (which is what my speech was on, funny enough.) The guy said in French, "Don't use poor judgment!" but instead of using the word "mauvais" which is "bad" in English and would generally be used in this situation, the guy used the word "pauvre" which means not having very much money. Or I guess it could also be used as "Poor little thing!" as well. But definitely not "poor judgment". Oops, Disney! :)

Sunday we were back at my parents' house for Mother's Day dinner. My sisters and I made her a collage wall of silhouettes of everyone in the family. (It's really easy to do! I'll explain later.) She seemed to really like them.

These are so easy! I might make one for myself when Jeff and I have a couple kids. All you have to do is take a picture of someone's profile and print it out the size you want. Shade one side of a piece of paper with a pencil (making sure there aren't any white spaces.) Lay the paper lead-side down on your painting paper (I used acrylic paints for this and acrylic paper.) Place the printed photo photo-side up on the paper. Trace around the face putting a pretty firm pressure on your pencil. When you take the photo and shaded paper off, you'll have a faint pencil outline of the face on your painting paper. Then you just fill it in with paint, pop it in a frame and voila! I think it would look so cute with bright colors in square frames. (The kind that don't actually have much of a frame around them. It would be very artistic!) My parents' house has more blues and greens, so that's why I chose these colors.

Tuesday I made dinner for a family in our ward while trying to set up tennis interviews before the team left for the NCAA tournament. So that was a little hectic. Monday was fun, because we went over to our friends' house for dinner and played a game. I like them. :) They're great people.

Which reminds me.... I should probably figure out what I'm doing for dinner.... Hm.... I hate deciding. It's only easy when I have a recipe I want to try out, but those usually take a ton of time. We have a ton of leftover ground beef I cooked on Monday, so it has to use ground beef.... And we've already had stroganoff and tacos this week. Well, this should be interesting...