My Turtle swims sideways, your turtle swims upside down

Well what a weekend this has been so far! Tressa and I came down for Elizabeth's graduation. She graduated from U of U! My parents and Rachel came out for the graduation as well and it was sooo good to see them. It was really exciting to go and see Liz Graduate. It made me really excited for my graduation in TWO years. Liz's mother-in-law came and that was pretty exciting too. We love her and it is always fun to see her. Here are some pictures from the day. By the time it was over I was so sick of the graduation song and our family's version. Ever since I graduated from high school we have had our own version of the graduation song taught to us by Eldon and we have sung it at every graduation during the march since. It goes like this (to the tune of the graduation march) My turtle swims sideways, your turtle swims upside down. My turtle swims sideways! your turtle is dead. Through the graduation I wanted to cheer or yell Liz's name. Actually I wanted to bring an awesome sign for her but Mark kept telling me this was a formal event and that I couldn't. Oh well. We had fun anyway.

Be carefull, You're coming up on old maid age.......

That was the warning my Grandpa gave me about a week before my birthday. I am not sure what I am supposed to do about that but thanks for looking out for me Grandpa! My birthday was Great! I had a lot of fun. I was pampered at work with birthday signs, cakes, and flowers. Then my best friend took me out to dinner and Tressa and I went to Utah where I was given more flowers by my sweet Grandpa. Here are some pictures from all the birthday fun.

College fun with my new wing Woman!

When I started at BYU-Idaho My best friend Catherine Loveland was my "wing woman" and I was her's. We were amazing at it. I usually had at least two dates every weekend. If one got a date she made sure the guy brought a double for the other.

We had code words to let the other know the kid sitting on our couch needed to leave and we could tell right away if we needed to back off at a certain function and give the other time to work her magic with the new potential "friend". We were 19 years old and had silly goals and games. In the end she found some one she wants to spend forever with and I am so excited for her.

I am over our little games and getting dates for every weekend, however I am not over having a wing woman. So I am training a new one up in the ways of a boy scout. ;) Over all she is doing really well.

We have gone to other functions but these are pictures from guitars unplugged and I made her get all dolled up with me to go. She was planning on ditching me once we got there but I won her over in the end. Here are some pictures of the fun.
Here we are getting ready

After I got her ready. Can I just say I was say I was very surprised when she busted out this face?

Here's one that's more like Tressa:

I love how people often tell me they think she is the older one, or they are all so surprised that we are 5 years apart instead of one or two. Yeah, she's just that mature.

I am so grateful for Tressa. What a blessing that she came to school with me this year. I don't think I would have gotten through the semester and wedding maddness without her.
I am happy with my brand spanking new little wing woman. One who wont set me up on dates and push me towards guy after guy but will go and do about anything with me and have a blast while doing it!

One of my Heros

I wanted to take a moment and write about one of my new heroes and role models. Well she's not so new but recently I have been reminded of how amazing she is and what a wonderful person she is to chose to pattern my life after. This woman is Sister Marjorie Hinckley. Every time I watch a video of her or read something she has said or written I am amazed at how wise she was and what an amazing woman she was. I was searching the Internet to find a quote she said for a scholarship application and ran across a whole web page of her quotes. Here are some great ones! Two of my favorite are numbers 5 and 7.



1. I couldn't possibly have understood this when I was young like I do now. When we look back on decades of life we see that the seemingly insignificant things we do over and over actually weave the pattern of our lives. And if those small and simple things are good, we will end up having lived a fulfilling life -- and that is a great thing!

2. The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead.

3. Sometimes the pattern of life seems a little monotonous -- and discouraging. It is like climbing a mountain and, after reaching the top, getting knocked back down to the bottom to climb it again; but I guess the fun is in climbing and not in arriving. I hope so!

4. I decided that if I lived to be eighty-five I would stop counting calories and eat anything I wanted to eat. And I do! I would make my mother's lemon pie, but I have quit cooking too!

5. We all have a responsibility-- a responsibility to make a difference, to be an influence, to lift someone. We are all in this together to work out our salvation, to reach our potential, and to be our brother's keeper -- to help each other.

6. We each do the best we can. My best may not be as good as your bet, but it's my best. The fact is that we know when we are doing our best and when we are not. If we are not doing our best, it leaves us with a gnawing hunger and frustration. But when we do our level best, we experience a peace.

7. Each of us can ask ourselves each morning, "What can I do to make life happier for someone today?"

I think one reason why she is my hero is reflected in quotes 5 and 7. I truly want to learn how to better serve others around me. I would like to better realize what sister hinckley points out, that this life is not about me. How nice it will be to end my life knowing I spent it as a tool on the Lord's to bless his other children. Sister Hinckley definitely did.

How to Loose a Guy in One Date

So I was going through my Email this morning and I found a paper I wrote from my freshman year here at BYU-Idaho. We were supposed to write a personal narrative and I got 100%. My extremely feminist english teacher LOVED it. Hey, you gotta write to your audience to get an A. Reading over it I don't think it's quite 100% quality, but it is still fun to read over. (and yes, this really did happen in high school) It's kinda long, but enjoy.

Deborah Allred
Sister Soper
English 111, Section 33
February 1, 2005

How to Lose a Guy in One Date

Some men are like bugs that smash into a girl’s windshield. As she cruises down the highway thinking just how good life is out of nowhere, “Splat” some creature hits her windshield, and the glass becomes a pin board for her first bug collection. She tries spraying the bug with washer fluid while using the windshield wipers to try to scrap the bug off. This smears the bug onto her windshield even more. The more she tries to clean the bug off while driving, the bigger the mess she makes and the harder it is to remove the pest’s presence from her car. It isn’t until she stops at a gas station and pulls out the squeegee that she will fully be rid of the bug. Tres Davis was the bug on my windshield. He wouldn’t get the hint that I didn’t want to give him my number or go out with him. I couldn’t figure out how to get him to leave me alone. Finally, I realized that I needed to do something drastic. I needed to use my squeegee.

I was relatively new to Lee Davis High School, having moved there the end of my sophomore year. Because of this, I didn’t have any friends to sit with at lunch the first day of my junior year. I hesitantly walked into the lunch room that reeked of potato wedges and burnt chicken sandwiches. The other students were loudly greeting the friends they hadn’t seen since the beginning of summer break as if to remind me that I didn’t have anyone to greet or call me over to sit with them. I paid for my lunch and sadly turned to face the students and the dilemma of where to sit. I stood at the beginning of the tables scanning the room for a familiar face but couldn’t find one. I felt a rock forming in my stomach. With every table I looked at, the rock got heavier and heavier until my legs seemed to be filled with cement. I couldn’t walk to a table even if I found one.

“This is ridiculous,” I thought to myself. “You are a very friendly, sociable girl. If there weren’t friends around in California you would make some. Why should Mechanicsville, Virginia be any different?” I finally picked a table where a brown haired girl was sitting across from an empty seat. We started to chat and get to know each other as I chewed on my cheese balls and realizing that the lunch ladies must have thought it would be funny to put rubber in them instead of cheese. We were finishing our introductions when my nose started to burn as the sent of way too much Old Spice filled the air. Expecting the owner of the over whelming cologne to be our elderly principal, I turned to find a sixteen year old boy with a huge amount of gel in his light brown hair smugly sitting backwards on the chair next to mine. He said hello to the girl I was chatting with and then, in the smoothest voice a sixteen year old sophomore could muster, he turned to me and said, “And who are you?”

“I’m Deborah Allred and you are?” I politely answered not impressed by the show the boy was putting on.

“I’m Tres Davis. It’s just like uno, dos, tres. You’re going to remember me forever,” he replied with a smirk as if he was going to add on, “Because I am God’s gift to women.”

Obviously this boy had never been rejected by any girl he had ever gone after. He oozed with self admiration and confidence. “This is going to be an interesting year,” I thought to myself. As the first semester continued, so did Tres. He started showing his interest by making a point of sitting at my table every lunch. Then he moved on to making crude suggestions and comments that showed his intentions thinking they would win me over. I told him I thought they were vulgar and insulting to my morals. I assured him that I would only go out with him in his dreams and my nightmares. After his dirty remarks didn’t work, desperation started to set in. He would flat out tell me that he liked me and wanted to take me out. But Tres had already ruined his chances with me by his crude comments. I wondered how many different ways I had to turn him down before he would give up. He was very persistent and I finally had enough. I had to do something I knew would give him the hint.

“Here is my number. PLEASE, call me. I have something really important that I need to talk to you about,” Tres said as the bell rang for class one day at lunch. Not wanting to take the time to discuss things further, I carelessly grabbed the chicken scratch and ran to my next class across the building. I got home and reluctantly started a long night of anatomy and chemistry homework. As I tried to memorize all the bones in the human skull I came across Tres’ number stuck between the pages of my anatomy book. I picked it up and stared at it for what seemed like an hour, but in reality was about two minutes. “Should I call him?” I wondered. “What could possibly be so important that he REALLY needs to talk to me about? I would just be feeding into his ego if I called. But then again, what if there really is a problem that I could help him with? I don’t want to be rude to him when he really needs my help.” I took a break from my homework and dialed the number.

“Hi, is this is Deborah Allred. Is Tres there?”

“This is him. How are you girl? I knew you’d call. You just can’t get enough of me,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I’m okay,” I said, ignoring him. “So what did you need to talk to me about?” I started to get into my sympathy mode, expecting to hear a sob story.

“Actually I didn’t have anything to tell you. You wouldn’t give me your phone number. So I just had you call me and now I have it on my caller ID.”

“You punk,” I yelled as I angrily slammed the phone down. What was he thinking? What was I thinking? I totally played into his grimy little hands. I felt so stupid to have actually thought that Tres Davis would admit to the fact that he needed someone’s help. Oh well. There was nothing that I could do, so I went back to my homework. As I sat there I imagined that every bone in the skull I was memorizing was Tres’ head and that the inside was empty.

Two weeks later, I sat at the dinner table with my family finishing dinner, and the phone rang. I answered and on the other line was Tres. He had been calling me non-stop for the past two weeks. He’d call to invite me to an activity with him, and I would have to think up a lame excuse not to go that obviously was a lie. Tonight, my mind was blank as he politely asked me if I would join him and his friends for a movie after they were done eating at Applebee’s. He was using a new approach, and I couldn’t think of one excuse that I hadn’t already used. I told him that I would go, and he excitedly told me that he would give me a call after they had finished eating. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. My mind started to go into a panic, racing to think of a way out. I felt trapped.

I waited the fifteen minutes he said it would probably take them to finish, and dialed up to the internet to tie up the phone lines. He wouldn’t be able to reach me now. I triumphantly checked my email and wrote some lengthy letters to a few of my friends. A half an hour later I started going cross-eyed from staring at the computer screen for too long, but I was desperate. In my mind the smell of Old Spice started to fill my nostrils and I could hear the inappropriate jokes he always made. I knew I had to do something drastic, and I had to do it fast. Logging off the internet I grabbed the phone.

“Hey Rob, how are you doing?” I had met Rob a few weeks previously and had started to develop a crush on him. I made small talk with him for a few minutes before I got to the point. “Rob, I have this problem. There is a guy from my school who wants me to go to the movies with him and his friends. I really don’t feel comfortable with him. Honestly Rob, I really don’t trust him.” Before I could even open my mouth again, Rob spoke. I felt like a little snow globe all shaken up and he could see right through me.

“Do you want me to go with you,” he asked. I was filled with excitement and relief to hear those words. I told him that I would love for him to come and to meet me at my house as soon as he could get there. My stomach twisted as I waited for Tres to call me with more details about our date. I rehearsed in my head what I would say to him and how I could make him think that what I had to tell him really wasn’t mean. The phone suddenly rang. The high pitched bell rang in my ears as I swallowed my guilt and hesitantly walked across the room to answer the phone.

“Hello Tres.” My voice nervously cracked.

“Are you ready to go? I’ll be over to pick you up in about ten minutes, and then we’ll head over to the movies,” his booming voice eagerly informed me.

“Yes I am ready, but I have a question for you,” I said as I began to tell him my plans for the night. “I have this friend who came over while I was waiting for your call and my friend wants to do something. I really don’t want to leave my friend alone with my family. I feel really bad about the position I am putting you in, but do you think it would be alright if I brought my friend along?”

“Sure! Of course she can come if she doesn’t mind,” he replied.

“Tres, it’s not a she. It’s a he.”

There was a long pause before Tres echoed, “He?”

“He,” I reinforced.

“Oh, well actually I don’t think I am going to have room in my car,” he stuttered, trying to combat my unexpected blow.

“Oh that’s okay. I wanted to drive anyway,” I said cheerfully, slyly grinning at my victory. “We’ll just meet you guys there!” I hung up the phone and Rob and I drove over to the movie theater. We waited for Tres and his friends to meet us there. After an hour of waiting we decided to declare them a no show and go see “Ocean’s 11”. As I lay in my bed still on a high from the rush of the evening, I kept going over and over the events in my head. I was reminded that the next morning I would have to face Tres at lunch and it was not going to be a happy meeting. Dreading the inevitable confrontation, I settled in for a sleepless night.

The next day, I slowly bought my lunch and sat down at the lunch table looking around for any sign of Tres. He was nowhere in sight. I ate my lunch and talked with the others at the table. I was trying hard not to show any sign of the fact that my heart was beating so fast I felt like it was about to leap through my chest. Ten minutes before the bell rang for class, Tres sat down with a thud two seats away from me. At that very moment my heart stopped beating and smashed to the floor of my stomach. I finally got up the courage to look over at him as he sat there staring angrily at me. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and I waited like a scared puppy for it to come. Finally he tore into me. He called me a few unrepeatable things and let me know just how upset he was with me. Blankly, I stared at him until he was finished. And like many times before in the lunch room, I calmly explained to him that I just couldn’t go out to a dark place with a guy that treated me the way he did. The bell rang and we parted ways.

After the night at the movies and the final run-in explosion in the cafeteria, Tres stopped the inappropriate comments and the relentless pursuit. By calling Rob to go on my date with me, I had pulled out my squeegee. He had realized that I did not want him to stick to my windshield anymore and left me alone for my remaining month at that school before my family and I moved again. I felt relived and victorious to have helped the over confident, smelly, sixteen year old sophomore to finally get my point. I never again had a challenge as great as Tres Davis during high school, but I realized that no matter how many times and different ways you tell a guy no, sometimes you just have to get creative and find a way to get through to them. If I am ever asked, “How do you lose a guy in one date?” I will simply reply, “Just bring your own.”

My own little corner in my own little room

Well the semester is a little more then half over and I finally got around to hanging my pictures and putting some decorations up. HA So I will now post pictures of my room. Tressa posted in the beginning of the semester about what a feat it was to fit every thing I owned into my little room. When I first got here the furniture was so awkward and was talking up so much space. There was one bed against the wall, the other bed was perpendicular to the opposite wall blocking the closet, there were two desks and a self smashed into a corner of the room, 2 dressers in the tiny little closet, and then two dressers under each bed. with all the dressers you'd think there was storage space but all three dressers that are mine only have 2 drawers and I have a lot of stuff. So after 2 or 3 days of moving furniture, raising the beds, and moving junk from one side of the room to the other and then back to the first side, I finally got the room livable. (And all of my stuff stored. Now that is an accomplishment!) Here are a few pictures of my room and how we got it all in.



Any nook and cranny is filled with stuff.

Our tiny little closet
Any thing we can hang we did.

This is my grateful wall. I started this last year and every semester I have a wall that I write the things I am grateful for when I am not feeling especially great. It really does help to get me out of whatever funk I am in and clear my mind and remind me of all my blessings and how lucky I really am.




And here is Catherine's side:
Can you tell she likes pirates and beast man?

So there you have it, this is my little basement apartment room. Thanks Tress, I couldn't have done it with out your help. She really sat there as I vented about how much I hate the room and whoever arranged it and told me I could do it when i just wanted to leave it a disaster.

Well here you go

I have been told that I need to post so here I am staring at the screen trying to think of something worth posting about. I just looked over and saw my Family 100 class. It is Called "Strengthening our families. An in-depth look at the proclamation to the Family" I'm sure many of you have heard of this book and can i just say I LOVE IT. I highly recommend it to anyone! I took the Family 100 class because it was part of the family cluster for the social work major and thought it would be a breeze. When I bought my textbook for the class, I seriously had my doubts about it being a breeze. It is 400 pages just on the Proclamation to the Family. I mean the proclamation is great and all but it really isn't even a page long after you take out the super sized heading, how can anyone get 400 pages out of 9 paragraphs? Leave it to BYU professors though and really it is one of the best books I have read.

Growing up I always thought about my future family and all the little children I would have. All I wanted in the world was to be a great mom and raise them in the gospel. When the mothers would sit around at whatever social gathering I would sit right with them and listen to all their talk and take it in. I have quite a few journals from my youth that I wrote for the sole fact that when I was raising kids, I didn't want to forget what it was like.

I don't have a family yet but it has an amazing tool to help me prepare. Some of the things I read I am like, "yeah, yeah, I'll come back to that when I am actually married, or actually have kids" But it is still very interesting. So if you want a good read about good parenting, spousing (is that a word?), and family bonding I TOTALLY recommend it. I have learned so much about past relationship blunders and the future relationship I want to have. Yep, it's pretty rad and a breeze! So there you go Liz and Tressa, that is my post for the day.

And For your viewing pleasure.....A Picture.