Day 6- A picture of some one you'd like to trade places with for a day

This one is hard! But after much contemplation, I think I've come up with one. If I could trade places with one person for one day it would be.... Drum Roll.... OPRAH! Ha. I have to say, as I'm writing this blog, my hubby is scolding me. ha. He thinks I could pick some one else. But let me tell you why I would choose to be Oprah for one day. There are a few reasons.
1- Oprah has a lot of money. Fortunately she uses it for a lot of different purposes. I'd love to be able to spend my money on the kind of things she spends it on. Granted, I don't agree with everything she does, but for the most part, she spends it on deserving people. Her shows where she gives stuff away are usually people like teachers and police officers. I would love to be able to share my money with people and do good things for people in the world. I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't spend it on a few new pairs of shoes, ha, but I could buy lots of shoes and still be able to do good things with the amount of money she has!
2- Oprah has the ear of a LOT of people. Everyone always says that if you want to convert a lot of people, first convert Oprah and then your work is done. Ha. That's probably not totally true but it kinda is! There are a lot of people that listen to her. It's called the Oprah effect. If you put a  product on Oprah and she says it's something she loves, EVERYONE wants one. ha. It would be quite a responsibility though, to have that many people listening to you. You'd have to be careful about what you said and I don't necessarily agree with everything Oprah says and the people she invites on her show. Especially recently. But if I got to be her, I'd make sure I used it well!
3- I'm impressed with the way she came from nothing and real hardships and made something of herself. It would be interesting to know what that feels like. Granted, I've had my fair share of hard times but nothing like she did and I can commend her for doing what she's done.

Day-5 A picture of your favorite memory...

I know this is kind of cliche to say my wedding was my favorite memory. But I very clearly remember exactly what was going through my head at this moment and it's a beautiful memory. i had just come out of the most beautiful sealing in the world. Elder Jensen said incredible things to Justin and I and then we became a forever couple. There's nothing more amazing. After that, we cried as we hugged all the important people in our lives that were there to wish us well and then I fixed my makeup and walked outside the temple... I remember thinking about all the women I had seen do exactly what I was doing and how bad I wanted to be them. I wanted the beautiful dress and perfect hair and make-up and amazing flowers and more importantly the handsome husband. The husband I imagined to be the end-all-of-end-all, funny, sexy, smart, charming, wonderful and a whole lot of other things. I was overcome at this moment because I realized that I finally had all those things I'd wanted for so long. I looked phenomenal and I was walking out of a temple of the Lord with my husband who was everything I've ever wanted and more. I couldn't have been happier and I was lucky enough to realize how lucky I was. The rest of the day was amazing but I don't remember every little detail quite like I remember this....

Day 4 - A picture of your night

I like the way my friend Heather did this post. Lots of pictures of a bunch of things that were included. So here goes... My night included...

BYU Basketball...
A LOT more basketball games that are all summed up just fine with this pic...
Some Yummy home made nachos...
VERY yummy ice cream and sprinkles...

And our favorite people in the world. :)

Day 3- A picture of the cast from your favorite show

This is a little embarrassing cuz if I was really being honest with myself, I'd admit that I'm truely addicted to TV. Ha. If I start watching a show, I have a hard time not finishing it. I also don't have a hard time watching shows with bad acting. Ha. I just like drama, so I watch it. So over the years, I've watched my share of shows and a lot of them have been very very good. Recently, I watched all of Prison Break and was in complete awe. If I could, I would marry Micheal Schofield. Ha. No worries, I still love you Justin! Haha.
Before Prison Break though, it was easy to say what was the best show ever made.... 24!!! There's simply not anything better. Period. End of Story. I started watching it after my brother was given season 4 for a Christmas gift. I saw the first episode and was instantly hooked! So I watched season 4 pretty fast and then went back and watched 1-3. I watched season 5 with my freshman roomie Malorie and got her totally hooked! Then when I met Justin we watched season 4 and 5 before 6 came out so he could be as hooked as me. :) Then we watched 7 with some friends and LOVED it! They didn't love season 8 as much as I did but i literally cried as Jack went away at the end of the last episode. It was awful! But beautiful at the same time. My brother is actually naming his first boy jack after the one and only Jack Bauer. Ha. We'll see what his wife has to say about that. Ha.
Just so I'm not a total weirdo, I do like girly shows too. And my favorite of those is with out a doubt Grey's Anatomy. I love the drama and I love the medicine. Perfect show for me! :)

Day 2- A picture of you and the person you have been closest with the longest

It's easy for me to tell you about the person i've been closest to the longest. I've had a lot of friends over the years and they've all been great to me. But none of them have meant as much as my little sister and forever best friend, Kristi Ann Cheney. She's now a Teshima, and that makes Evan the luckiest man alive. The best way to describe us is through this sample of pictures of us. There's a hundred million more but they wouldn't all fit on here. :)

The shenanigans of Jessie and Kristi Cheney started very young...

I hated watching her get hurt and made sure i bandaged her up every time...

I'll never stop protecting her and bandaging her up when she needs it. Speaking of which, aren't we due for another rehab session princess!? Speaking of "Princess"... That silly name came from a boy we met on a vacation once... This is us on that vacation. It's a little embarassing but atleast you can see how far we've come!
We'd never admit that we liked to match but we actually do. In my mother's defense, she said we chose these outfits. i guess the cat's out of the bag! Matching really is cool! I may have taught her how to pray but she's the one that's kept me doing it all these years. She has a testimony that can shake mountains and i'm so grateful to have her by my side keeping me doing what's right. We LOVE taking pictures together, if that wasn't obvious already. But what i love about this pic is the hug. ha.

Family pictures right before Jon went on his mission...

We've made it a habit of doing crazy things together and our AMAZING dad has made that possible....

Tarpon fishing in the gulf of mexico? Who gets to do that?! (This fstupid fish took both of us 2 hours to reel in! It was crazy tiring but we made it and it was worth it. Dontcha think princess?!)

Snowboarding together at Nate and Kelsey's cabin in Kamas, UT. I'm pretty sure we got a few bruises from this one. :D

Swimming in shark infested waters in the British Virgin Islands?! Another thing most people don't get to do. Thanx for that one dad. :)

Yes, that is a rattle snake. And also dad's fault. ha

We started making these faces when we were 5 and we will never stop making them!

Kristi has been my best friend for forever and I don't ever see that changing...

This last picture is from Kristi's wedding in April of last year. She was simply THE most beautiful bride I've ever seen in my entire life. Right after she came out of the temple I remember being very emotional and not wanting to let go during this hug. She had finally made the last covenant she needed in order to make it to the celestial kingdom and I was SO proud. And I still am.

At her luncheon, she let me make a toast to her and Evan and I could barely speak! It was after a beautiful slide show of pictures of the two of them in relative chrinological order. I stood up to make the speach and could barely speak. I said that I was having such a hard time because I noticed during the slideshow that the first half of the pictures, the ones from her younger years almost all had me in them with her. The second half were of her and Evan from their dating years and engagement. It made me cry because for the first part of her life I was her best friend and confidant. And now that was Evan's job. (I'm even crying while i write this!) I felt for a second that I was being replaced when in fact that isn't true. She just gets to have 2 best friends now.

Kristi, I love you with all my heart and I can't wait to take a million more pictures with you.

30 Days of thought...

A few of my friends have done something on their blogs that i think is very cool and i want to copy them. :) I think it actually started out as a facebook challenge but I like it on the blog better. Facebook is good for pictures but not for explanations or stories. If you wanna see pictures of what's happening in my life, go to facebook. If you wanna know what the picture is of and what is happening, then read my blog!
Anyway, I'm gonna start doing this little 30 day challenge for 2 reasons. 1- Because it will give me something to write about every day! 2- Because I think it's been interesting to read some of the thoughts and I'd like to think about and write abuot those things too. :)

DAY 1- A picture of yourself and 10 facts.

This is the most recent pic of myself taken on my birthday last week. :)

Fact 1- I am a people pleaser. I like everyone to be happy and I don't like it when anyone is mad at me. It makes me feel terrible and I have to fix it! It's a good thing and a bad thing cuz it's good that everyone is happy, but sometimes I go way too far out of my way and it ends up making people more upset. ha



Fact 2- I love to cook new things. I hate to cook old things that are only mediocre. Ha. That means that i like to cook new things and yummy things that i know will impress people. I really don't like cooking old boring things like hamburger helper. ha. I don't mind doing it for my hubby at all, because i'd rather he'd eat that than cereal for every meal but I don't particularly like it. but if i get to cook some new shrimp pasta or something.

Fact 3- I love to entertain. I get this from my mother and I love it! She is the best party planner ever and I hope one day I can do it as well as she can. As stressed out as I was planning my little sister's bridal shower, when everything came together and the food looked perfect and the invitations were amazing, and my house was spotless and 30 people showed up and they all loved my food and had a blast with my silly games, I was SO happy. ha. Simple pleasures.

Fact 4- My favorite food is sprinkles. I could eat sprinkles with no ice cream. :)

Fact 5- I HAVE to seperate my food. Potatoes can't touch the roast or corn and especially not the salad. And i always save the best for last. So if i Have to eat turkey at thanksgiving because it's the only protein, then I eat it first (dark meat for me!) and save ALL the green bean caserole for last because it's a gift sent from heaven. Especially when mom makes it. :D

Fact 6- I don't understand yelling as a form of stress relief. I really don't understand yelling at all. Unless you're yelling at a child to not run across the street or to not touch the stove, i don't understand! Raising your voice doesn't change what you say, it just says that you're mad, and there are better ways. Yelling just makes me shut down and think about how yelling doesn't help anyone and I quite listening to whatever point you're trying to make.

Fact 7- I also don't understand getting angry. When the toilet floods and you have poo water all over your bathroom, getting angry doesn't make it go away and it doesn't make the guys that are gonna fix it come sooner, and it doesn't make the smell go away! So why not just laugh about it?! Granted, you can't laugh at everything and there are serious problems, but honestly getting angry doesn't make them go away either. Like crashing your car. Yes it sucks, and it's not something to laugh at but getting angry doesn't change the fact that you have to buy a new car. I think the answer is to move right to the solution.

Fact 8- This one came from a friend that did the same thing but it's way true for me too! I don't know what i'm going to do when i'm pregnant because I always sleep on my stomach and I simply can't sleep on my back! When there's a beach ball in my tummy, it's going to be hard to sleep on my belly and that's a problem!!

Fact 9- I don't cry in response to pain. I cry like a little girl for movies and for my own emotional problems but when I get hurt I simply don't cry! My teeth went through my lips and into my dad's head when I was 13 and I didn't cry. I fractured a bone in both my feet at gymnastics and didn't cry. When I fell on my face and almost ripped my shoulder out of it's socket, I couldn't get up cuz I couldn't stop laughing! I don't know what my deal is. Ha.

Fact 10- I love blood! ha. No, I'm not a vampire, I just love to watch surgery and clean wounds and watch people while they're given stitches. I love helping people when they get hurt and trying to make them feel better.


There's my 10 facts! I hope they weren't too boring!

March Madness!

My knowledge of sports is relatively limited. I grew up in a family that liked sports, but we were more of a gymnastics/dance/track family. Ha. None of us played a real team sport till I joined the Lacrosse team my junior year of high school. (My last blog says a little about that. Ha.) Anyway, Even today, my other sisters danced, but the only other sibling to play a team sport is the baby of the family who's starting to play basketball and volleyball. We were also pretty strict about sports on sunday. This meant no playing or even watching sports on sunday at all. My dad was a sports fan though. He grew up playing every sport but was also an individual sports man in high school doing gymnastics and swimming. He also reads the paper like mad, including the sports section. So even though he didn't watch much pro sports (NFL games are all on Sunday), he did read about them. So every once in a while, he would sneak the TV on with the volume on mute and try to watch the world series, or the PGA tour when Tiger was about to win it all or something. Ha. The point of all this is that we didn't get a whole lot of exposure to sports as kids.

Us as kids with Elder Scott and Elder Jensen.

So, you wonder what this has to do with March Madness? Ha. Me too. Ha. Jk. Well, my hubby is about as crazy about sports as it's possible to get. He knows everything there is to know. He's practically a sports encyclopedia. :)

There's my hubby playing golf in St George a couple months ago. :) Isn't he cute! :D ---->

So when we got married I started to watch a lot more sports. He's also friends with a lot of people that know as much as he does. (BTW, he's nudging me to erase that comment cuz he doesn't think he knows everything, but as far as i'm concerned he does!) Anyway, in order to keep up with him and his conversations, I had to start learning more. I'm a person that isn't afraid to ask questions so I asked a TON of questions. And i started learning a lot! Now, 3 years later, i am much smarter about sports. :D I'm very proud of my learning curve. ha. Granted, a lot of what i have to say in conversations are things he said in a previous conversation that I have stolen, but it still makes me sound smart! I'm certainly never going to know as much as he does, cuz the more i learn, the more he memorizes. Ha.

So we're coming into the end of march and this means march madness!!! For those of you reading this that don't know what that is, it's the college basketball tournament. And what's great about this tournament is that a lot of people have a chance to win! The reason people love it so much is that they publish the bracket at the beginning of the tournament and a lot of people go through and guess who's going to win each game and by process of elimination, who's going to win the whole tournament. And it's a HUGE deal to win this tournament. A lot of people put their own brackets with their predictions into betting pools and whoever gets the most guesses right sometimes wins a prize. Some people bet thousands of dollars on it. Our group of friends usually does one and the winner get to be taken to dinner by all the loosers. Ha. It's been a fun tradition. my first bracket experience was pretty pathetic. I prolly only guessed 5 or 6 games right. but since then i've gotten a little better! Well, i guess not really compared to some people, only compared to myself. Ha. Justin and i were talking a few minutes ago about the brackets and i realized it must be REALLY hard for him to do this! The reason being that he actually knows a LOT of the teams that are playing and how good they are and how well they match up with their potential match-ups. So he has to really think about who he thinks is going to win every single game! Some choices are easier than others, but some are hard! Ha. Most of my choices have to do with how much I like the color of their jerseys or their mascot. Well, at least it was that was in the beginning. Now i know a little more and can make more educated guess, but i'm still terrible at it. But it's still fun! The cool thing is that sometimes he think about it too hard, so he does terrible. Last year he didn't get ANY of the final 4 right. Which is un heard of. Granted, lots of people didn't get them right because there were a lot of unforseable upsets, but he was upset! That's another thing that's great about the brackets is that really anything can happen and no one really knows. Some teams catch on fire and play out of their minds and others just have a bad game but as soon as you loose, you're out! I guess we'll see what happens this year!

I'm especially excited to see what happens this year with BYU because it's the first time in a long time where we have a real shot at making it past the first and second rounds. BYU got Jimmered this year so it's been a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately our chances got significantly lowered when we lost one of our best players due to an honor code violation, but we still have more potential than we usually have. I hope we can pull it off!

A quick note about last year... BYU played Florida in the first round last year, and I had a final I had to take towards the end of the game. And we were doing really well! So we went to our final that happened to be in our classroom and the teacher turned the game on and put it on the projector and said "Do your test! but this will be on." Ha. The thing is that it was at the end, so we expected it to be one for another 10 maybe 20 minutes. Turns out it went to 3 overtimes! So there were a lot of people, including myself who were done with their test but still sitting in the room watching. Ha. And we won! (and I aced that test! ha)