Fall Intramural Sports

Ultimate Frisbee
For the past few years Rand has been playing ultimate with some of his old roommates and they have always had a pretty good team. This year they got the t-shirt in their division. I'm not sure if I should credit them more for this, or their fans (wives and relatives) who had to sit out in the freezing cold as they pursued the t-shirt! :o) It was a lot of fun to watch!

The Champions!


Left: Rand, Ryan (the Giant) and Ben. Right: This was at half time as they walked off the field, kind of a cool picture.

Cowgirls Football

Anyone who has been around me the last few years knows that my favorite intramural sport to play is football (though I do love softball in the spring/summer as well!) But I've been playing football for the last, I think, 6 years. Some friends of mine and I put a team together back in the Fall of 2002 because two of our guy friends wanted to coach a team. We were hardcore: we practiced twice a week and just loved it! Vince was the defensive coordinator and Eric the offensive. We had a book of plays and Eric would signal them in from the sideline. It was beautiful. At the time, we were the only girls team doing anything like this. We even made it into the school newspaper as one of the 'top 10 most ridiculous things about intramural sports'! Our name is the Cowgirls (Vince and Eric are huge Cowboys fans (sick, I know) and they won the team name decision. But I refused to have our shirts be blue...so we went with 49er red to offset the 'Cowboy-ish' name.) Now there are a number of teams out there with coaches and playbooks...they learned from the best!

Well, the team has changed alot over the years. I am actually the only original cowgirl left. Everyone else has moved away or doesn't have an affiliation with BYU anymore to be able to play. It's still a blast and I have loved playing with everyone who's ever been on the team. Sadly enough, we've never gotten the t-shirt. I think in the past 6 years, we've gotten 2nd 4 times, and 3rd twice. Ugh! And every 2nd place finish was to the BYU Track team! Two of those years they had olympic athletes on the team. That's no excuse...they are beatable, in fact, we have beat them in regular season. But they always pull it off in tourney! They are definitely fun to play though. And over the years, we've created some good rivals with a few teams and it's always fun to play them each year (as well as in other sports).

As much as I have my complaints with some of the things in the intramural system, I really am glad they have it here because I have met some of my best friends through these teams and with how busy we all get, these games are some of the only times we still get to see each other!

Cowgirls 2007

(we switched to green shirts the last three seasons because too many teams were wearing red shirts and it got confusing on the field. We even had the track team one year purposely have only one girl wear a red shirt to try to get us to throw the ball to her! But we are far too smart and competetive for that and we had a back up plan for it: bright orange hunting beanies! haha)

Cowgirls 2006

This game was SO cold! I would keep hand warmers in my pocket to warm my fingers up between plays for games like this (a must, especially as the QB)!


Cowgirls 2005

*Sadly, I don't have any pictures from the years 2003 or 2004! I wish I did...sorry to Cam and Lisa and everyone else from the team those years!

The Original Cowgirls 2002

We are just missing Strat, who was our 'team mom'. She wore a 'cowgirl' hat to the games and brought oranges for half-time, haha. And she brought two candy bars to each game. At the end, Vince would give one to the defensive player of the game, and Eric would give one to the offensive player of the game. Just a little throwback to the city little league days!

Below: My first 3 years playing I was a wide-receiver. The pic on the left is me lined up on the line ready to go. The pic on the right is right after we lost the game (2nd place finish, of course)...this is my 'defeated' look.

Adventure Passport to Fun Times

So back when Rand and I first started dating in the summer of '06 these little booklets had just come out. We thought it would be a fun idea to visit all these places in the book together during the summer. Well, we didn't get to them all that first summer, and with planning a wedding last summer it just didn't happen either. I think our goal now is to visit all the places before we leave Utah for dental school (a more feasible goal, I think!) I'll try to remember to put a mini picture of this book each time there are pictures from a place we've 'made it to' in here.

One of the items in the book is: drive the Alpine Loop. We had tried a number of times to make this drive and it just never seemed to work out (including the night he proposed...but that was apparantly just part of his 'scheme'...story listed below if you care.) So finally we made the drive in October '07. Unfortunately we had just missed all the major color change and most everything was orange and yellow now...but it still made for a great shot!

Chinese Conference

Back in September/October of '07 I helped to run a conference on campus titled Chinese Leadership in Arts Education. Three colleges on campus (Health and Human Performance, Fine Arts and Communication, and Education) hosted about 30 people from China who are either professionals, educators or administrators in the fields of music, art and dance. They were here for 2 weeks. Though it was tiring, it was a lot of fun and they were wonderful people to meet. All but 3 of them spoke absolutely NO english. We had interpreters, but they were not always there during free time. Charades was a fun game we played out of necessity!

There were trips to Sundance, Salt Lake City and Temple Square (including Music and the Spoken Word where they were recognized as guests there that day...which they loved), the Olympic Park in Park City, and of course, shopping trips to Park City, University Mall and Costco! They attended many performances by BYU performing groups, including being able to sit in on the classes, which they loved (as did I...there are perks to the job for sure).

Rand was able to attend many of the events with me and they loved him! They were shocked that I was married (they didn't believe I was married so young. When I told them I was 28, they were even more shocked. I guess that in China, or perhaps just at their schools...I'm not sure which (I was at the mercy of the translator) they are not supposed to get married while they are in school.) From the first day they arrived from the airport and Rand was with me to pick them up, they loved him. He impressed them with his 2 - 3 phrases that he knew, and after that, they continued to teach him more and more (like holding up the fork to him at dinner and telling him how to say it in Mandarin Chinese). They used some of the words they knew in english to let us know what they thought of him, "Cool".

Overall, it was a great experience and they were very generous and gracious people. I collected a few very nice items from them such as hand painted theater masks, Beijing 2008 Olympic items, and of course, chopsticks (which the man told me was to wish 'good fortune and children very soon' for me and my husband! haha!)

As we drove this group back to the airport (Rand took the picture and his cousin Jared is in it...we realized the switch we should have made after the fact. Cut us some slack though, it was about 4:30 in the morning), one of the men told us how impressed he was by the students here 'in the U.S.' He mentioned that he noticed how much confidence they had and how good and impressive they were. As I thought about it later, though I do believe many students out there are confident, good and impressive...I feel like much of it had to do with the church. All the students they were exposed to were students at BYU. The majority of them (perhaps all) were LDS. I think the knowledge of the gospel gives added confidence, goodness and 'impressiveness'. I wish I would have thought of that to share with him before he got on the plane. We did have one man who spoke very limited English tell us that it was his hopes to have his daughter one day attend BYU! :o)

Quick Catch Up!

October General Conference

My family always comes up for conference and so we attended Sunday afternoon with my parents and Brian and Emily.

BISHOP ERICKSON
We had a little family gathering at Rand's parents house the day his dad was set apart as Bishop. What a neat experience for him and for the family to watch (and help) him serve. And what a lucky ward!

Ash and Devin's Idaho Reception
My cousin Ashley and Devin were married in the Sacramento Temple in August. Because Rand and I had already taken time off for our wedding and honeymoon, plus our reception in Cali just 2 weeks earlier, we weren't able to make the trip there for the wedding. BUT, we were able to make a quick trip up to Rexburg for the reception there a few weeks later.

The similarities between both couples (and our dating stories) is kind of funny! Both Rand and Devin served in Chile, and Devin's dad was the mission president of Rand's mission right before Rand's mission president. (And our cousin Erin's husband, Justin, served in the same mission right before Devin's dad was mission president there! Small world!)

Below are pictures of some of my favorite people (and cousins) in the world!

Top Left: Trent Top Right: Ryan

Bottom Left: Lauren Bottom Right: Emily and Sarah

And of course, Chad is missing because he is on his mission!

BYU FOOTBALL 2007

BYU vs. Arizona: First home game!

Rand's dad and brother were able to join us for this game, along with my die-hard BYU fan friend Cameron! She is such a blast to attend games with! Her hubby had the unfortunate fate of attending the U of U and supports them...so Cam ditched him for a day and joined us!

BYU vs. Air Force

It rained...I think that's obvious! Rand and 'the Giant' sporting some sweet do's!

BYU vs. Washington
Me with my cousins Trent (who's a freshman at BYU right now) and Ryan (who's dream is to one day play football or baseball for BYU).

Probably my favorite picture of Rand and I at a football game! Well, it's running a tight race with the picture at the top right of our blog.

BYU vs. TCU

The above group picture here is my favorite. We were all posing for a picture when some huge play happened. Some of us stayed true to the picture, and some of us stayed true to BYU!

This was also Rand and Kevin's first time meeting!

We had to put a picture of Kenny with his hard hat on in here...he wore it every game!

BYU vs. UTAH

Rand saw a shirt on campus once after this game had happened that read:
"Enter to Learn, Go Fourth...and 18"

Nothing more needs to be said!

Oakley, UT

We took a trip up to Oakley with some of our friends (Ben, Kim, John and Amanda) to Amanda's family's cabin. It was a fun, chill, quick trip. As you can see, there were some fun games and competition:

We must note for below (just for John, who is in the red shirt) that he got a 'double ringer'!

I love horseback riding! I love horses! I might not feel this way if I had to care for them day in and day out, but when it comes to occasionally riding them...I love them! They are such beautiful animals and so fun to ride.

Thanks to Amanda and her dad for putting this together!

CALI

At the beginning of August we drove to California along with Rand's family for our reception there. While we were there we of course had to visit a few 'must see' places.

First up: the Sacramento Temple! I still remember when they announced that the temple would be built where it is. That weekend I was in town and was heading up to a fireside being held at the Mormon Center building located there. My dad got all excited and said he'd drive me (I was pretty sure that being, I think, 22 at the time I could handle it myself), but my dad insisted he wanted to drive me so he could time the drive! He was so excited it was only 15 minutes from our home!

Baseball (you should be hearing the voice of James Earl Jones right about now! Go watch 'Field of Dreams' for those who are wondering why!)! Is there anything better on a summers day than heading to the ballpark? As soon as Rand's brother, Jason, knew when we were heading to Cali, he checked the game schedules. At the time, Bonds was on track to break the record while we were there. So after pulling off a small miracle, they secured three tickets to the game (for Jason, Rand and their dad). Unfortunately, Bonds had already broken the record about 5 days previous by the time we went. So, my father-in-law, being the wonderful person that he is, let me take his ticket for the game. I LOVE ballgames...just chill with friends, chatting and watching the game, the seventh inning stretch, double plays, rally caps...the list goes on and on!

I think these people missed the memo that Bond's wasn't playing this game!

Just some fun and random pictures of us in San Fran!

In all my times down to visit San Fran while growing up, I had never been to Alcatraz. That was a pretty cool experience to go out there. You can take a audio tour about the facilities that is pretty neat.

And of course it was so fun to see my family and friends back in California! If you want to see pictures from the Cali reception, just visit this site my brother created: http://www.randandchelsy.com/