Galentine's/Valentine's Day

This week I celebrated two holidays: Galentine's Day and Valentine's Day. For those of you who don't know what Galentine's Day is, it's ladies celebrating ladies. My girlfriends and I all got together and went to a delicious sweet shop called the Chocolate. It was nice to hang out with them, since I hardly have time to do so, and to eat delicious desserts.

Then for Valentine's day, mom made a very nice dinner and then I showed her, dad, and Cheri the first episode of Pushing Daisies. That show is beautiful and the best thing of all time. After that, I have a very VERY special date planned. Now this guy who I went with, he isn't the most lively person I've met and he's very laid back. Oh, did I mention that he's a cadaver a.k.a a dead person? Yeahhhh, I spent my Valentine's evening with a cadaver for my anatomy class. So, I think I should win an award for the most unique Valentine's date.

Anyways, that's all for now. I will now leave you with a great quote from Pushing Daisies.

"[A hug is] like an emotional Heimlich. Someone puts their arms around you and they give you a squeeze and all of your fear and anxiety comes shooting out of your mouth in a big wet wad and you can breath again."

I see dead people

Today in my human anatomy class, we finally got to start working with the cadavers! So I literally saw dead people today. I thought I was going to be unsettled by it, but actually I thought it was fascinating. Of course the body didn't look as I thought it was going to be, since it was all dissected, muscles pulled apart, some limbs unattached, and nothing like an actual human being, but it was very interesting. I now feel that if I can observe the cadavers without feeling sick then I can be a nurse!

Now another cool thing that happened today in class was I suddenly got hit by the spirit. As we were talking about the different joints in the body and how some of them, like the synovial joints, are special compared to other joints because they have certain properties that prevent the friction of bones rubbing each other raw, WHICH prevents people from enduring excruciating pain that would lead to the bones becoming pretty much disintegrated. Anyways, it just hit me that there is no possible way that there could not be a God. I cannot conceive any way of how our very VERY intricate bodies could have been made by some explosion or whatever, and not by a very intelligent being. So, it was really neat to have my testimony of the creation and of our Heavenly Father strengthened in my anatomy class. Who knew?!

Anyways, I better get back to studying my million things of anatomy.

Quote of the day

Here's a quote from a tv show I adore called Pushing Daisies. I whole-heartedly agree with this quote. Trying to be happy is a very brave thing to do, especially during this day and age where there are a lot of people suffering depression or some kind of sadness in their life. I believe that if we try to be happy, even though we may feel sad for any particular reason, we'll eventually learn to overcome the veil of despair that looms over us and be enlightened by the rays of happiness. Starting now, I want to make a goal to wake up every morning and choose to be happy. Even if school is stressing me out, if I'm feeling sad about something, or whatever may happen, I won't allow myself to be sad. I will constantly try my best to always be happy. Anyways, this is a quote where I think that everyone should have printed out and placed somewhere where they can see it everyday

"I think it's brave to try to be happy. You've gotten so comfortable being unhappy. Wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up in the morning and choose to be happy, to let the water wash everything away?" - Vivian Charles in Pushing Daisies.

Best work day of all time!

So today at work, I had a pretty awesome day. For being a trophy/sports shop we have dealt with some cool items/done some cool trophies, medals, plaques, etc through out my time working there. We've engraved on samurai swords, machetes, and other awesome survival blades. We've made an acrylic award for the rapper Jay-Z and trophies, plaques, medals with color picture that looks like an actual photograph. But the items I got to play with today are supreme compared to anything we've ever dealt with. Ladies and gentlemen, I got to deal with REAL LIFE DINOSAUR BONES. Did you hear me? I SAID DINOSAUR BONES. This has been the highlight of my entire day. We have four authentic dinosaur bones sitting in our plaque room. There are three bones belonging to a Triceratop (a rib section, a vertebra, and a horn), and a metatarsal bone belonging to a Hadrosaur.

In the end, we are no ordinary trophy shop but we are the coolest one in the entire world because we get to have dinosaur bones in our presence. Yeah that's right. real. life. dinosaur. bones.

Why yes, I am holding an actual Triceratop's horn. AWWW YEAH.

Here's a picture of all four bones.

This is the Hadrosaur metatarsal bone.

This is the Triceratop's rib section.

This is a vertebra of a Triceratop.

And this is the grand horn of a Triceratop.

Things I've done

Okay, so here's just a list of what I've been up to since April. I hope that I can remember everything and they won't be in exact order of what I did first.

• Went to the midnight premier of Harry Potter 7 part two, which was absolutely amazing! There were so many feelings and tears during that movie.
• Moved out into Park Plaza apartments with my friends.
• Went on a road trip to St. George with my friends where we went hiking around town and at Snow Canyon, swimming, and other fun things.
• Went to the Tracy Aviary in SLC with my friends where we saw different types of owls, eagles, vultures, peacocks, and a whole bunch of exotic birds. We only had to pay $1 since they had a special offer and I would recommend people to take their little kids to it. It's was pretty cool.
• Marshall Kenney Dutson was born in November. What a wonderful bundle of joy he is.
• Went to the ranch in Fillmore for Thanksgiving.
• Saw lots and lots of movies.
• Had an awesome Christmas party with my friends, which consisted of secret santas, lots of food, hot tubbing, and other fun things.
• Had an awesome Christmas party with my family. It was nice to have most of the siblings over and all the kids running around the house.
• Taylor took my friend Andie and I to St. George for oneday, since he had a meeting to attend, where we went repelling, rock climbing, and went on a crazy adventure in some random place we found off the side of the freeway in the Virgin Gorge.
• Had another New Year's party with my friends, which was fun.
• Diesel Dean Ogden was born. It's so nice to have this little guy only two minutes away from home.
• Started my fourth(?) semester of school. I'm just taking Human Anatomy, but just that class alone is really kicking my butt.

I think that's most of the highlights of my life since April, but I'm not exactly sure. I only have pictures of my two St. George trips on my computer, so I'll just post a couple from both trips.

Here we are about to go climb through the Crack in St. George.

Here we are in Snow Canyon about to climb up some steep cliff to see Pioneer names

This is us after going repelling and rock climbing.

Here I am repelling.

Here's an area we found on our crazy adventures of climbing up two mountains

and then finding our way back down a gorge that risked our lives several times. Pretty

much this was the craziest adventure I've ever been on.

Previously on Amy's life...

Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. I guess it's partially due to that I forgot my username and also probably because I forgot about this blog. Oops. BUT I really want to get back into blogging mainly so I can document my life since I'm really bad at writing in my journal. Anyways, seeing as the last time I posted was in April 2011, I have a lot of catching up to do. I figure that I would just do another list of things that happened to me, except I do want to talk about a few things that have happened somewhat recently. First of all, back in November my sister Summer had her seventh child Marshall Kenney Dutson. He is an adorable, chunky boy and I just love him so much. The picture I have of him isn't current, so you can't really see how big he's become. Marshall is number 14 out of all the grandkids. Next on the list is about two weeks ago, on January third, my sister Chelsey had her first baby. His name is Diesel Dean Ogden. Oh boy, he is such an adorable baby. It's so nice to have a nephew who only lives two minutes away, so I definitely get to see him a lot. Diesel is number 15 out of all the grandkids. Now, while I'm on a roll with these babies I also want to mention that my sister Lindsey is pregnant, but isn't finding out what the sex is, and also my sister Britt is pregnant with another little girl! It's so very exciting to have so many babies in the family and by June I will have 17 nephews and nieces! WOWZA

Now that I'm done with baby news, pretty much all I've done with my life is started a new semester of school, in which I'm taking Human Anatomy as a prerequisite for the Nursing program. All I can/want to say about this class is it is the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. It is most definitely not a piece of cake. Besides school I've been working, living on my own with my friends, gone on some crazy adventures, and some other things. I'll make another post that contains all of the things I've done since April so

that this post won't be super long.

Anyways, I'll try my best to keep this old thing updated and I'm sure I'll have some exciting things to post up in the future. Also, these two pictures of my latest nephews are from when they were just newborns. They've already changed a lot, especially Marshall who's grown a lot bigger. I'll have to get some recent pictures to put on here.

This is baby Marshall. Look at cute he

is!

This is baby Diesel. Look at that adorable face!

Kiddies, Weddings, Adventures oh my!

Hey everyone!

After these past three super busy weeks of my life, I felt that I needed to post about the many awesome things that have gone on in my life. Now to start off, two weeks ago on March 20 my sister Lindsey and her hubby went on a trip to South America, which meant that we got to watch her three cute little boys North, Railay, and Rowan. We got to babysit them for an entire week and since it was my spring break that week and my parents were super busy at the shop, I did a lot of the babysitting. It was so much fun to watch those crazy kids and it definitely helped me prepare myself for when I had kids one day, which won't be for a while but still. I enjoyed have little Rowan snuggle with me when he was tired and playing games with the North and Railay. They were a blast to have. Then on the thursday that week, my sister Tiffiny came up with her two sweet little kids, Weston and Hailey, because they had an appointment at Primary Children's Hospital for poor little Hailey. We had a lot of fun playing with those kids and it was so cute to see all of the cousins playing together. So, that's what happened the first week. Then on the second week, which was the last week of March, we had Chelsey's family bridal shower and that was a lot of fun. She sure got a lot of cute things! And now for these last couple of days.

On April 1 2011, Chelsey Elizabeth Wilkinson married Taylor Dean Ogden in St. George. It was a beautiful wedding and Chelsey looked absolutely stunning. It made me a bit sad to see my sister get married and leave, but I am super happy that they are finally together. I am sure that they are going to have a wild, adventurous marriage. Then after the wedding on Saturday, my family and I went up to this canyon area that had this small slot canyon thing called "The Crack". It was really cool walking through it and boy was it claustrophobic! The walls were squeezing me tight, but I made it through! After that we had a picnic in the park by the temple and then we all made our way back home. I had an amazing time with my family at Chelsey's wedding and Taylor's family seems like a very awesome family. I'm glad that I got to know them.

OH, also this weekend was General Conference. Sadly I wasn't able to see Saturday's sessions, but todays sessions were amazing! There were many powerful talks today and I especially loved Elder Scott, Elder Holland, and Elder Utchdorf's talks today. They were very good.

Anyways, that's all for now. Here are a few pictures from this weekend. I could have put up a lot more, since my mom had over a thousand pictures, but I am too lazy to put a lot up. ^^;

Here I am entering "The Crack"