Harry Potter Madness

As most of you know, I am completely obsessed with Harry Potter. This is my blog, so I'm going to be arrogant. Usually I try to be respectful of each individual's relationship with Harry Potter, but not today.

I think I first read Harry Potter in 4th or 5th grade... I just remember that by then there were a couple of books out and that your status in my elementary school was determined by how many times you had read them. One of my favorite things about the books is that they were supposed to be my exact same age. If I were a wizard, I would be going to school with these characters! [Note: I have recently found out that everyone thinks that they are the same age as the HP family. This is false. My point is proven by looking at the cast of the Harry Potter movies. Daniel Radcliffe? Born 1989. Rupert Grint? Born 1988--okay so maybe he was held back... Emma Watson? 1990. Matt Lewis? 1989. And I was born in 1990. So we are ALL the SAME AGE. This only applies to you if you were born in 1989 or 1990, or graduated high school in 2008.]  My two best friends at the time, Katie Hathaway and Stacey Hansen, were just as in love with these books as I was. We decided that for Halloween in 5th grade, we'd dress up as Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Naturally, I was Hermione. Stacey was Harry, and Katie of course was Ron (red hair was a very large factor here). My mom was super great and made me the best costume EVER, complete with the caps they described the students as wearing in the book. I even had an invisibility cloak! It looked exactly how I had pictured it as I'd read the books. P.S. I believe this was before the first movie was released, so all we had to go off was the book. I think we did a dang good job.

Stacey/Harry, Katie/Ron, me/Hermione with our awesome teacher, Mrs. Wood

Anyway, as I was growing up, there was always another book or movie to look forward to. The final book was released the summer before my senior year in high school. Even in college, I believe I still made it to all the midnight premieres for the new movies. I LOVE midnight premieres because everyone is automatically best friends. You all know you automatically have something in common. You laugh together, you cry together... it's a lovely bonding experience.

As I'm sure you all know, the final installment of the films was released July 15, 2011. I decided that this event needed to be made epic. Although all my prepubescent friends adored the series, I didn't feel like Harry Potter carried the same appeal it had ten years before. So I decided to throw one of my infamous movie marathons the week the movie came out. I decided to throw the party the 12th and 13th. We'd watch 4 movies the first day and 3 the second. Naturally we had to have treats inspired by the series, so I proceeded to bake oodles of tasty things, even coming up with my own Butterbeer concoction! (All the recipes I found for Butterbeer online either had alcohol in them or tasted icky.) Here are the treats I made:

I love the little tuft of cotton candy to look like a potion is brewing!

Solid chocolate... Mmm

Isn't he cute?!

Licorice dipped in white chocolate

Tootsie pops dipped in Pop Rocks

Chocolate-covered chow mein noodles

My special blend of cream soda with butterscotch flavoring

The whole spread :)

I'd say the Harry Potter Marathon was my best yet. Everyone loved the food. And yes, I made it all myself. Re-watching all the movies was pretty fun. I can't remember the last time I sat down and watched movies 1-4. Since they've been around the longest, I've seen them the most. So I tend to just tune them out if they're on tv or something. But it was nice to watch the entire series from beginning to end.


The day after all the festivities ended, I got to see the final movie! It wasn't officially released until midnight Thursday night, but I had a couple of awesome connections and I was able to see it in the middle of the afternoon the day before! It was incredible. I invited my friend Michael to come with me and we had a blast. I bawled for the majority of the movie... I mean, I cried when I read the book (I always knew there was more to Snape!) but seeing it all happen in sort-of-real life was heart-rending. I won't go into detail if for some reason there's a human on this Earth who hasn't seen HP7.2... Contact me personally if you'd like to discuss the movie further.

Me and Michael!

 Although my get-up for the midnight premiere has often consisted of a super awesome Hermione costume, I decided to dress up as Lavender Brown this time. For those of you who may not know, Lavender is Ron's girlfriend in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I think my costume rocked.

Won-Won!

After bawling my eyes out at the afternoon show, I got ready for the midnight premiere with a bigger group of friends. A bunch of people dressed up so it was super fun! And yes, yes I did see the movie twice within about an 8 hour time period.

Lundy (foreign exchange student), Dan (Sorting Hat), Brooke (a wizard), Cheri (Prof. Trelawney), Leland (Draco), Jon and Richard (Fred and George), Ryan (Harry), me (Lavender), Taylor and Allie, DeeDee (Ginny), Lindsay (Tonks), and Katie (Death Eater).

The midnight show rocked. I cried a whole bunch (again) and it was awesome. Katie is probably going to kill me for saying this, but one of the most satisfying moments during the movie was when I heard her sniffling off to my left. Katie doesn't cry. Ever. I think I've seen her cry about twice in the 15ish years I've known her. I told her beforehand that she would cry. A lot. She didn't believe me. I hate to say "I told you so"...

The whole experience was rather bittersweet. We really went out with a bang, but I'm a little sad it's over. Now I just have to track down Matt Lewis somewhere in Leeds and convince him to fall in love with me. Then we'll get married and live in England and I'll be BFFs with the whole HP cast. Well, in real life, not just in my head.

Caribbean Cruise

This last June, my family was able to go on a cruise to the western Caribbean. It was kind of a Brad's-graduation-trip-slash-last-hurrah-before-he-leaves-for-his-mission vacation. I'd been on a cruise before, but I was like 12 and don't remember a ton. I will apologize in advance for this mega-post.

We were on the Freedom of the Seas, a ship from the Royal Caribbean cruise line. The ship was absolutely GORGEOUS. Supposedly it's the second- or third-largest ship in the world. It's longer than the Statue of Liberty is tall! There were some way cool features on the boat. The bottom decks were mostly staterooms and dining rooms. Each family was assigned a dining room (we were in one called Leonardo's) and table number. We had to share a table with another family. They were nice enough, but it was always kind of awkward. Our waiters were the coolest people ever! Our main waiter was named Olena; she was from Ukraine. She was a freaking ninja! I'm a huge fan of her.

Freedom of the Seas

On the 4th Deck, there was a big promenade with some shops and restaurants and stuff. There was also a casino, a theater for the evening entertainment, an ice rink, and a little movie theater onboard. Up higher on the ship, there was the big buffet diner place called the Windjammer Cafe. There were also a bunch of swimming pools up on that deck. AND there was a soft-serve ice cream machine and you could have as many free ice cream cones as you want! The top deck was pretty cool--there was a climbing wall, a mini golf course, basketball courts, and a FlowRider where you could surf and stuff.

The Promenade

Attractive FlowRider instructor from New Zealand

The climbing wall!

Mini golf course!

We stopped at 4 different ports; the first was Labadee, their private island on Haiti. It was absolutely beautiful, but effing hot. We got tickets to go on an alpine slide, which was way fun. It was kinda funny because the company's address was in Utah. We spent most of the day at the beach, though. The sand was super pretty and the water was the perfect temperature. Random funny story... when we were in the water, there was a border of rope held up by buoys to set a boundary for the swimmers. My brother held up the rope and something attached to it looked like this super nasty mangled head or something. We're like "Sick! Dad, what is that?!" "Oh it's just part of a boy or something." "Gah! Part of a BOY?!" "No, a BUOY." ...I guess you had to be there.

Labadee,  Haiti

 When we got back to the ship, we were talking to Julio, who cleaned our room. [Side note: he was the coolest dude ever. He would always leave us the coolest towel animals and every time we passed him in the hall he'd excitedly say hello and then joke around with us a bit.] Anyway, Julio is from Haiti and so while we were all hanging out on the island, he had to hurry and finish cleaning the rooms so he could visit his family. I guess he had to travel like an hour each way and only got to see them for half an hour! It was ridiculously depressing... I'm glad he got to see his family though. He probably has super cute little black children. :)

Our next port was Jamaica. It was probably my favorite of all the ports. I think seeing all the adorable black children had something to do with it. It is a beautiful place though--very green, and the water is really blue. When we got on land, we met up with our tour guide/driver for the land excursion. He told us to call him "U." (Or maybe it was "Yoo" or "Yu." We'll never know.) Our tour was way nice because it was just our family in the car, so we could pretty much do whatever we wanted.

Yes, that steering wheel is on the right side of the car. Super trippy.

The epitome of Jamaica

Our first stop was tubing down some river. It was a big surprise to us--my mom forgot she'd signed us up for it! It was GORGEOUS. We just floated along down this river and we had a river guide named George (like "George of the Jungle," as he explained). George was pretty great. He had a long ponytail and was missing some teeth... and yet I was strangely attracted to him. Probably because he was serenading us down the river. Yes, you read that correctly. He would change the song he was singing whenever something new happened. For example, when someone was heading for some brush on the side or it looked like they were headed to some rocks or something, he would sing Bob Marley's "Don't Worry." ("Every little thing is gonna be all right...") Whenever he was next to me, he would start singing Marley's "One Love." You know, the whole "let's get together and feel all right." I think he was in love with me. Naturally. Anyway, at one point he started singing "Lovin' You." My parents just busted up laughing--it was super funny hearing some random Jamaican dude with a heavy accent sing an awful song from the '70's.

Pretty view :)

Some random "pirate ship" on the side of the road

After tubing, we headed to Dunn's River Falls. It's a hike up these really pretty water falls. It was a little scary in a couple places because it was really slippery and/or unexpectedly deep. It was pretty cool though. (According to Wikipedia, the falls are 600 ft. high.) I had heard it was a really tough hike, and it didn't end up being nearly as bad as I thought; regardless, I was proud of myself for doing it :)

The official sign saying we made it!

All sweaty after climbing the falls

The next stop was Grand Cayman. We got on a little tour bus with some other people and headed to a little port to get on a boat that would take us out snorkeling. There were just 3 guys in charge-- one guy who drove the boat, another who was kind of the tour guide (who was basically a black version of Patrick Swayze), and some random white guy (our videographer) who went by "Froggy."

Snorkeling was super awesome because they took us out to the middle of the ocean and we just plopped right down and checked out some really cool fish. I heart snorkeling, even though sometimes I get a little claustrophobic with that big thing on my face...

Then we took our little boat over to Stingray City. That was super cool! It was just this big sand bar in the middle of the ocean where all the stingrays gathered. Unfortunately there were several boats full of tourists trying to see stingrays. But luckily our Patrick Swayze-esque tour guide was a freaking ninja! They had food for us to give to the stingrays, plus our guide knew the names of all the stingrays and caught one really big one for all of us to hold (and kiss for good luck). So yes, I held a stingray. AND kissed it for good luck. It kinda creeped me out... any of you who know how much I love loathe animals knows that is kind of a big deal.

Stingray City

Our last stop was Cozumel, Mexico. Our first excursion was driving ATV's through the jungle! Pretty adventurous, I know. It was pretty cool. We got really dirty/muddy and I got over 25 mosquito bites (I just wore my swimsuit top with my jeans because I didn't want to get my shirt all muddy). It was cool (at first) because we got to take a bunch of pictures with exotic animals. Like baby crocodiles. It was kind of awesome, but after they made us stop like 5 times, it got a little old. Unfortunately my mom had a little mishap... When she was turning, she felt the ATV start to tip over. She looked back and saw her wheel rolling away! Something like that could only happen to my mom. Haha. 

After our ATVing adventure, we went to a little beach club thing. There was a bar/restaurant and some gear you could use for snorkeling and stuff. Once you got out into the water, some of the fish were cool, but the beach was super awkward. It was super rocky and not easily accessible. We didn't stay there really long, but it was a pretty beach.

Overall, we had a blast! I got to see a couple movies I hadn't seen before, I got some really pretty jewelry from the store on the ship, and they had really good shows every night for their evening entertainment. The food was great, and I got pretty adventurous. I'm not a big fan of fish, but I tried quite a bit of it at dinner. The only thing I absolutely hated the entire trip was this cold papaya soup. It sounds fruity and delicious, right? WRONG. It tasted like vomit. Literally. Luckily you could order as much food as you wanted for no extra cost. So don't worry, I didn't go hungry. 

Here are some of our favorite towel animals. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture every day... there was also a really cute hippo, some swans, and an elephant.

A bat

A monkey

An alligator

After we got off the boat, we had several hours to spare before our flight left. We decided to go to Kennedy Space Center. It was super fun! I've always been really intrigued with space travel, so it was a lot of fun to see shuttles and stuff in person.

The actual control room they used for Apollo 13

 

Well that just about sums it up! Sorry I'm a blog slacker... I'll try to update more frequently. Thanks for reading! 

Lobbying Internship

This semester I had the amazing opportunity to do a lobbying internship through Utah State. I joined the Government Relations Council in the fall and I was later selected to be one of about a dozen interns chosen to lobby on behalf of USU.

We met once a week to discuss the importance of lobbyists, to collaborate and share resources, and to come up with a plan of attack for persuading legislators. We were asked to focus our lobbying efforts on the proposed budget cuts for USU and all the colleges and universities in Utah.

Something I didn't realize is that state legislators rely on lobbyists for most of their information about specific issues. So it was up to us to provide state legislators with information about the consequences of budget cuts. I won't get into all the boring statistics and thing, but we found out some pretty interesting stuff.

So when the legislative session started, we lobbyists started going down to the capitol about once a week to meet with legislators and sit in on committee meetings. I felt so official wearing my professional clothes and nametag! We got to talk to a lot of pretty high-up people. It got discouraging at times. A lot of legislators were a bit condescending and hard to convince. However, there were several legislators who were extremely respectful and very helpful in furthering our cause. At the beginning of the session, the proposed budget cuts were a full 7% for all colleges and universities. By the end of the session, that was decreased to about 2%. Yay lobbyists!

One of my favorite experiences happened on Aggie Ice Cream Day. It was our last day at the capitol and most of the time we just handed out ice cream to everyone that worked there. While I was in the House kitchen, Tim Cosgrove, the representative for my home district, walked in. I'd never met him before, but we had spoken on the phone and emailed a few times. I decided to introduce myself and I asked to talk to him about a bill my parents were concerned with. He asked if I had a minute then to talk to him and I said sure. So I kind of abandoned my post in the kitchen (sorry, guys) and followed Rep. Cosgrove. He took me back through some super fancy lounge areas, which was pretty exciting. Then he stops in front of these big doors and says "I'm going to take you out onto the floor with me for a few minutes."** I was SO excited I could hardly contain myself. We walk in and one of the cute old men in the green coats (called "green coats") got out a folding chair for me (it was pretty much the fanciest folding chair I've ever seen) and I sat down next to Rep. Cosgrove. I got to chill there ON THE HOUSE FLOOR with Tim Cosgrove for at least 45 minutes. Meanwhile some of my lobbyist friends were up in the gallery and I could tell they were all going "Is that Natalie? What is she doing down there?" I felt super cool. :)

**For those of you who don't know, hardly anyone is allowed on the House Floor. The general public is allowed in the House Gallery during floor time, but no one except State Representatives are allowed down on the floor (where all the legislators sit), especially when floor time is in session.... Which makes the fact that I got to go on the floor during floor time way more impressive.

Here's the picture I got with Rep. Cosgrove on the floor :)

And now for some pretty pictures of the Capitol. I fell in love with this building.

The Rotunda

The House Floor

The back of the Capitol with the reflecting pool

The back of the Capitol

Spring Semester

Let's start out by saying that Spring Semester 2011 was one of the craziest I've ever had. I took 28 credits this semester, which might have been a stupid idea. Luckily it turned out okay.

I took 5 classes and an internship. I took Business Correspondence, which was basically an English class. We learned about grammar and stuff. I've always been pretty good with grammar, but it was interesting to learn all the technicalities behind where commas are placed and whatnot. Although it was at 7:30 a.m., it was pretty fun; my neighbor Kraig was in the class with me and I got to know him pretty well. I'm pretty sure he kept me sane this semester. I came out of that class with an A, no problem. :)

I also took Dress and Humanity. I needed to take it for my Depth Humanities requirement. Oh. My. Gosh. This class turned into a much bigger hassle than I expected. My professor was a way nice lady and I really liked her; I just didn't like how she taught the class. The first couple days of class, she gave us the information for ALL the projects we would do throughout the semester. Good idea in theory, but I feel like we never talked about the requirements for the projects again until they were due. It was super frustrating. Luckily most of the projects weren't that big of a deal. We had to get into groups and do a project on what people wear in other countries (we did Switzerland) and I made a couple of friends through that. Yay friends! We also had to make a portfolio and stuff, but the project that almost made me (and my mom) explode was for the Recycle Redesign fashion show. Everyone in class had to create a (wearable) look using recycled or recyclable material. Some people are super creative and their stuff turned out great. Mine, however, was a mediocre dress made from old bedsheets I found at Deseret Industries. Then I sewed on polka dots that I'd cut out from Capri Sun pouches. I don't know what I would've done without my mom! It all ended up okay and I came out of that class with another A.

I had to take a biology class for my Depth Science requirement. It was called Plagues, Pests, and People. I was a little apprehensive because although I used to be really great at biology, I haven't taken a biology class in years. It ended up being really interesting. My professor was hilarious--he had a very sarcastic, dry sense of humor. I learned a ton and ended up totally dominating my research paper and class presentation. Unfortunately I had to deal with a bunch of obnoxious hooligans that were super disrespectful and loud all the time. Immature people are my favorite... Anyway, I ended up with yet another A. Woot!

In addition to my three MWF classes, I had two night classes. I ended up liking both of them, but I'll say that I will never take another night class if I can help it. Both these classes were about 2 1/2 hours long and extremely difficult. The first, Law and Policy, was taught by one of my all-time-favorite professors, Tony Peacock, which was the main reason why I took it. The reading material was super difficult and a lot of the lectures didn't make sense. I didn't know if that was just because it was once a week and I was out of the class-mode or if it was because the class was a little more disorganized than some of the classes I've taken from Peacock before. I also found out a month or two into the class that it was actually a graduate-level course. Surprise! I ended up with a B+ in that class. All things considered, I'll take it!

The other night class was Preparing for Law School. This was probably my favorite class this semester. And yes, I'm pretty sure we've already established that I'm crazy. Three attorneys that currently practice in Salt Lake drove up to Logan once a week to teach us. It started out just as information about law school, the LSAT, what law school is like, etc. Then they started teaching us a torts class, very similar to what we would see our first year of law school. I learned so much and feel like I can make a much better-informed decision about whether or not I will actually go to law school. This class showed me that I can do very hard things. Weird. For our midterm, we were given two hypothetical scenarios. They were emailed to us at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and by Thursday night at 9, we had to identify and analyze every potential legal issue. It was supposed to be 20 pages long. Yes, that is a 20-page midterm written in 48 hours. Our final was similar, only we had 20 multiple-choice questions in addition to two essays, which all had to be completed in three hours. Those were the absolute shortest three hours in my entire life. I ended up with a B+ in that class as well. But again, all things considered, I'm very happy with it.

In addition to all this, I was doing a lobbying internship. More on that later.

I know I had some divine intervention this semester. There's no way I could've done it all by myself. I couldn't believe I did it. 18 doesn't seem like too big a number, but when you compare it to some friends and roommates only taking maybe 6 to 12 credits (12 credits is considered full-time), it's a whole bunch. Yay me.

Cumulative GPA: 3.84

On the non-academic side of things, there wasn't much going on. Mostly because there wasn't time for anything else to go on. I didn't have much of a social life, partially because I was living in Logan... I feel like there's not much to do. I made several new friends this semester, but they're "school friends" -- I don't really see them outside of class. Plus, I was driving home once or twice a week for most of the semester, so I didn't interact much with the people of Cache Valley.

Despite my lack of social life, some interesting things did happen with my roommates. At the beginning of the semester, we had a few new girls move in. Three of our roommates moved out in December because they got married, were moving to a sorority house, or are preparing to go on a mission. The new girls that moved in were pretty cool. I got a new bathroom buddy, Megan, who is one of the sweetest people I've ever met. Apart from a little bit of drama near the end of the semester, our whole house -- all 9 of us -- got along pretty well. I'm so glad I got to know so many great girls. Here's a random fun story: the last Sunday of the semester, I was sitting amongst my roommates when one of them got up to bear her testimony. She proceeded to tell us that for the last month and a half of the semester, she had been raising ducks in her room. Ducks. Like, quacking, pooping ducks. How did I not notice DUCKS living in my house?! I have no effing idea. It's a good thing I didn't find out about it earlier, or I probably would have freaked out. Anyone who knows me knows how much I like ducks. Or how much I loathe them, if we're being honest. But when everything came out into the open, there were only about 5 days until I was moving, so at that point there was nothing I could do about it. Ah the joys of roommates. :)

Overall, the semester was a success. I almost went crazy. Okay, I DID go crazy. Thanks to everyone who put up with my psychotic tendencies. My mom probably had to deal with it the most, getting a couple of phone calls from me every day, being forced to listen to my whining and stress-induced freakouts. It's a good thing she loves me :)

Christmas Break!

Ok, it's time to play catch-up. This semester has been absolutely insane (as I will explain further in another post). So now it's time to bring cyberspace up to speed.

My Christmas Break was super great. It was so fun to hang out with my whole family. Scott and Ashley got to visit from Pennsylvania and Melinda, Ben, Emerson, and Sammi got to visit from Ohio. Since we probably won't all be in one place again before Brad leaves on his mission, we decided to get a family picture taken. It was so fun with everyone here! We went to Ocean City for our traditional Christmas Eve Chinese food, we watched a bunch of movies, played trains a whole bunch, and just soaked up each other's awesomeness.

One of my favorite activities (and one of the few I actually documented) was making a gingerbread choo-choo train with E.


One of the movies our family got for Christmas was Toy Story 3. E would ask to watch Toy Story 3 over and over and he'd usually cozy right up to Aunt Nat :)

The rest of the break was good. I hung out with my friends and we had a couple of movie marathons. We had a Heath Ledger marathon where we watched "10 Things I Hate About You," "A Knight's Tale," and "The Dark Knight." It was a hit and everyone had a great time. Of course we had our traditional gigantic pizza from The Pie. Unfortunately, a pretty awful blizzard hit that day and what was usually about a 5-10 minute drive to The Pie became a 45-minute venture in the snow.

My friend Lundy hosted a Matt Damon marathon where they watched a couple of Bourne movies and Oceans 11. Then on New Year's Eve, Lundy hosted a New Year's Party slash X-Men marathon. That one was super fun. We all had a good time and made some new friends. It was SO fun to hang out with my guy friends again! All my best friends in high school were guys, then when they all left on missions I felt like I didn't have any friends anymore! So now they're back (or will be back soon!) and it's been a blast.

This Christmas break was one of the best. It was a great combination of spending time with family and friends and needless to say I didn't want to go back to school. Luckily, I wasn't dreading it as much as I have in the past... usually by Christmas break I'm really sick of my roommates and want nothing to do with them. This year I was pretty lucky and didn't have to deal with too many crazies :)