Crew Team Breakfasts

After practice each morning the Crew Team heads over to Shafer Dining Court for breakfast. It's pretty empty around 8am, so we just shove a bunch of tables together and everyone sits in a giant mass. Most people who do not have 8am or 9am classes come to breakfast and just pig out. Shafer breakfast is actually pretty good. They always have scrambled eggs, sausage, tater tots or potatoes or something, an omelet station, fruits, yogurt, cereal, waffle station, bagels, toasts, doughnuts, breads, etc... It's definitely not all good for you, but most of it does taste pretty good.

There are a few people on the team who order an omelet every day. The omelets are HUGE. The omelet lady sees them walk in and begins cooking their omelet. She has their order memorized, and when it's done, she just calls over to our table. Too funny! Also, there is one guy who every single morning has 2 full glasses of orange juice, 2 full glasses of milk, and 1 glass of water. It's actually pretty disgusting.

I don't go to breakfast every day, but a few times a week I do. It's fun getting to know the team and become more involved with the Crew Group!

Big Day Today!

Today is quite an eventful day for the family (still pretty bland down here, but exciting!). First off, my cousin Jacob left THIS morning at around 5am for the MTC in Utah! He was called to serve for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Baguio, Phillipines mission. He is learning the language while at the MTC, too. He will be gone for two years, but I know he will touch so many lives and do great things with the gospel over this period of time!

Gray, Grandma, and Jacob back in July

Next up: today is Harrison's 12th birthday! In our church, the 8th and 12th birthdays are pretty big birthdays. When we are eight, we are baptized, and at the age of twelve, boys receive the Aaronic Priesthood. Harrison skipped school today to spend the day with Mom. They went out to lunch at Olive Garden, and they are having cake and presents tonight.

Alfredo Pasta!! Yum! So jealous because that is one of my favorites!

AND pumpkin cheesecake! It looks so good!

Harrison is now out of the "little kid" group he has been in for so long. He has earned his ranks as one of the older kids, as he has more and more responsibility and is growing into quite the young man.

Harrison likes adventures and outdoors most of the time. He was all for collecting wood for our fire place, and stepped up his game as Gray came out to haul wood as well. He is a pretty hard worker when he wants to be and when he is not distracted by the other boys!

He started middle school this year, and he is really enjoying his time there this year from what I have heard. He is learning to play the clarinet in band class, and he is excelling in all areas like usual! Smart just like the rest of us!

Harrison is really good with little kids. He helps out all of the time with Evan, making bottles, changing diapers, getting clothes, etc... He loves hanging with little boys like Kyan and Andrew, and teaches them all sorts of tricks.

He is a great big brother to so many little guys. His four younger brothers really do look up to him and often make decisions based on what he does. While Harrison emulates Gray in many things, the other boys emulate Harrison. It sets pressure on him to be an example, and he does pretty well most of the time!

Happy Birthday, Harrison! Hope you are having an awesome day, and I'm jealous I can't be back home to celebrate and enjoy some cake! Love ya!

School Stinks.

When I go back home, everyone always asks me if I am enjoying college: yes and no. It seems like I go through cycles of enjoying it just fine, and then really hating it. It's fun here when I'm headed to crew, or to the gym, or sometimes to club meetings, or sometimes just hanging out with a few of the girls on my floor. However, I get really frustrated being down here, too. It's super quiet, not many people here share my standards and values, it smells like an ashtray all the time, sirens ring all day and all night long, people can be really rude to others, classes are really slow and boring, and there's not much to do here that comply with my standards with other people.

I'm really grateful and so blessed for how my college path turned out. I wouldn't change any of my decisions, but I am ready for school to pick up a little with more interesting material and knock out all of these required honors courses that annoy me daily. It'd be nice if the school year would go by a little more quickly, too.

Right now I'm on the hating it part of the cycle.

Visiting the Homestead

I went home last weekend. It was a lazy weekend with not much going on, but that's what I like.

I made a smoothie for the boys and me. Yum. If I make another smoothie, I'm not putting raspberries in it. They were too overpowering, but the boys thought it was pretty cool.

It's funny how quickly little babies grow. This man is such a little chunk. He is growing so quickly, learning all sorts of little tricks. Mom got him this play mat thing and he seemed to like it pretty well, despite this picture! He even grabs up for some of the hanging toys.

Sooo tired.

And Evan DROOLS like crazy! It makes him smell, too! Not his cutest asset ever!

During the hurricane a few weeks back, one of the big trees in our neighbors yard fell over. Thankfully it did not fall on their house, it fell in the opposite direction into our yard! The cleaned it up and chopped the tree up. When they were done, they let the boys take any of the wood they wanted for our fire pit. So nice of them!

Little boys like stuff like that. Ohhh the excitement.

Get your game face on. Moving tree limbs is serious business.

Gray came out to help. And to show off just a tad.

So naturally Harrison had to step it up. It's awesome how he emulates Gray and tries to be just like him.

Sooo cute.

And Suzanne and I finished painting our room gray. It looks nice--better than before, but that's not really saying much!

I'm going home in a few hours. Glad that I live close enough to go home basically whenever I have a free weekend! Problem is, I won't have another free weekend for a long time!

Unexpected

I was never the athletic type. Ever. The closest I got to sports was summer swim team, which was completely relaxed and basically just for fun, or Parks and Rec Field Hockey throughout middle school. I did attempt track in the 7th grade, but something went wrong with my foot, and I ended up having to quit. All throughout high school, I never did anything physically active or strenuous.

A few weeks ago, someone asked me if I had even done Crew. Of course not. She told me that I looked like I would be good at it because I have long legs (courtesy of Dad), and that I should try it out. At first I wasn't going to, but then I figured what the heck. Might as well do something while I am here because up until then, I had plenty of free time to mess around, do homework, and still get more sleep than I have in years during a school year. So about three weeks ago, I went to the first practice.

The first week of practice for the Crew Team is called "Hell Week". It's basically intense conditioning in order to weed out those who are not serious about it. The first day was really easy: they showed us some of the movements for rowing on an erg machine, and then we did cardio for forty minutes or so. The next three days, however, we were running up and down stairs, pushing and racing trucks down the parking lot, sprinting, doing circuits, etc. It was really good, but I was really sore after the first week.

The second week they put us on the water and started teaching us how to row on the water. It was really fun. Because we were just learning and numbers varied each day, I was put in a mens boat. The boat construction is different for men and women, so I was in this huge boat with all these guys who were loads stronger and taller than me. When we carried the boat down to the dock, I couldn't even reach it! It was really good though, because I sat in front of a varsity rower, and he was able to really help me figure everything out!

Practices start at 5am, so it's early!! This week we have been on the water each day, getting stronger at rowing and working together in the boat. Crew really is such a team sport, because if one person is off just a little in the boat, the whole thing messes up! I'm really glad I decided to try it, and I'm looking forward to improving this semester!

Stitches

Out of nine kids, only two of us so far have ever needed stitches. The first one was Rachel a few years ago--she sliced her finger with a knife trying to open a toy. I think it was her thumb. Anyways, two weeks ago we had six cousins here and all of us Kemmey kids. Five boys were in the kitchen cleaning and getting lunch. Ryan was cleaning and ran to get a trashbag, which are in the laundry room. As he ran to get it, Tanner was coming in the door, and the doorknob hit Ryan's eyebrow just perfectly, and cut it. Mom and Dad were downstairs, and I was in the kitchen. It really wasn't a big deal at all. The cut wasn't bad, just slightly deep. However, because it was bleeding a little, the little boys freaked out and made Ryan freak out. The boys ran downstairs yelling, so Mom was freaked out too. No big deal, however, and Ryan was fine after the chaos stopped. His biggest concern was that the ice was too cold!

Car ride over to the ER.

Before any stitches, and after it was cleaned off.

Not a big deal after all!!

Ryan was supposed to be going up to the pool, but instead he got 2-4 stitches!

And for laugh's sake: Evan really loves dark chocolate. With eight older siblings, he gets food shoved at him pretty early in his life! He was sucking on the chocolate, and got so mad when we took it away!

Home Improvements

A week or so before I left for school back in August, my Aunt Lisa came with her family. Aunt Lisa is really talented when it comes to painting and home improvements, and she's taught me a ton about it. She has been letting me paint with her since I was probably about ten. The house has been kind of mixed-matched for a while, so while Aunt Lisa was here we did a little in the house to make it all flow together. There's definitely still work to be done throughout the house, but we got a pretty good start.

Aunt Lisa and I: painting team!

This is what the dining room looked like before. Green on both the top, and on the bottom. Cream curtains with red floral patterns were hanging only above the windows (they weren't panels).

This is what the dining room looks like now. We kept the same rug to make it a more costly makeover. Actually, the rug works out really well because it has multiple neutral colors that Mom likes, and it helps flow the rooms together. The paint on the bottom is a Heavy Cream, and the top is some sort of blue. The ceiling had two fresh coats of ceiling paint as well. The curtains we bought at Target, but we wanted them a little longer than they were, so Aunt Lisa took out the hem and added a chocolate brown banner on the bottom that looks awesome!

We have had that "K" frame for a while now, but we finally had a good use for it! We put some of the most current pictures of the family (from Evan's blessing day) in there, and hung it up!

The next room to attack was the kitchen. Before, the top half was a very bright, cheery yellow.

This is after we had filled some of the holes and dents in the walls from the table, benches, and bar stools, and after we had tested a few swatches of colors. However, you can see the bright green on the bottom, and how it went with the yellow. The kitchen definitely didn't flow with the rest of the house!

After: much better. Suzanne doesn't like it, because she thinks it looks too masculine. However, I think the neutral colors look really nice. The fit Mom's personality really well too. The plaid curtains are reused from before, and the colors fit really well! We added a few little gizmos to the wall, including the star and the 9 Be Attitudes above the sink.

We added a little clock to one of the walls.

And a "K" ring for keys!

The last room we painted was the foyer/entryway. It was pretty dark because there is no natural light coming in, and also the paint was peeling off in the corner behind the door.

Paint peeling off behind the door. Also, the door was white and looked dirty.

After: the colors are actually pretty similar as before, and they are exactly opposite of what the dining room is now. The Heavy Cream color is on the top, and some blue color is on the bottom, but it is lighter than the blue originally.

There was a vase with fake flowers in it sitting on this table before, but now it has a picture of our really good friends, a friend plaque, and a little basket.

This basket is hanging right by the door. Mostly for decoration, but you can put keys/junk in there if you wish.

So that wraps up the household improvements my Aunt and I completed about a month ago. Mom wanted us to get to the big living room that houses computers and the piano right now, but there wasn't enough time and also we aren't quite sure what we want to do with that room yet. It's a work in progress still.

My Uncle Carl (Aunt Lisa's husband) is in the Navy, and right now he is working in DC, so he is pretty close. They are both super-handy, so they both came over Labor Day Weekend to help fix a leak in the bathroom and really redo it. It looks awesome now!!

The weekend before labor day weekend, my Uncle Came and started working with the little boys, ripping up the flooring and fixing the floor, and taking out the old vanity.

Labor Day Weekend my Aunt and I made our way in the bathroom to paint it! The color is the same dark green as is on the bottom in the kitchen. It looks really great with the plaid shower curtain we have in there right now.

The floor is now tile!! It looks AWESOME!! My Uncle and Dad laid the tile down. I need to put a picture of the bathroom all finished, but I don't have one. Just imagine a really awesome looking white vanity, the toilet back in place, the mirror, and a shower curtain haha. A lot is missing in this picture, but it shows some of the changes!

The house is being put together, one room at a time. Suzanne and I just painted our room and got new bedspreads. We are working on decorating the walls and tying the room together. The downstairs bathroom is the next big project!

Mom's Gettin' Old

Happy Birthday, Mom! Today mom is turning one year older. In the past year she has done so much, and is truly the best mom in the world. She loves each of her children so much and constantly serves them. Which is probably no different today: she is still running Gray to classes, kids to school and practices, and nursing babies. Ha, not much relaxation going on, but what do you do! Yesterday Mom's friends from work had a big birthday lunch for her, so she celebrated a little. Hopefully we'll do something to celebrate this weekend because I'll be home :).

Mom is pretty crazy--don't let her fool you. Her and Leslie both went to get Slurpees one night when they were staying with us. Crazy women.

Mom really shows so much love for each of her children and does so many things for us each day. Over the summer she tries to do fun things, so on July 11, we went to 7-11 and got free slurpees. Mom didn't want to stop at just one, however, so she drove to multiple 7-11's so the kids could have 2 or 3 different flavors. Too funny. Mom does small things like this to build awesome memories.

Mom loves Dad, and they both show how important it is to show love for others. They are the best pair of parents I can imagine, too, and they balance each other out.

Mom is super attractive. Always. No seriously, she is. She had to be in order to save the gene pool for the sake of her children.

Mom is one of my role models, and I learn so much from her as I get older myself. She has instilled in me a value for hard work, love, and dedication. She has helped me learn about my divine role on Earth and how to become a strong mother and individual like herself. I know many people are inspired by her and all that she does. She serves others willingly. Mom drills in the importance of an education from a very young age, and works with Dad in order to help her kids grow intellectually. Mom is completely devoted to her role as a mother, wife, and friend, and she is such a great example for so many people.

Love you Mom!! Hope your day is great!

Party Week.

Not only did Mom have a birthday this week, but my friend Sidrah had her 18th Birthday on Monday! I met her at the Freshman Research Institute the week before everyone else moved in, and we've become pretty good friends! She is so awesome, is full of personality, and is extremely outgoing. On my birthday, she corralled everyone into going to Coldstone, and she had only known me a day! I was excited to help her celebrate for her birthday!

I prepared stuff to heart attack Sidrah's door Sunday night. On Monday morning before I left for crew, I snuck up to her door and heart attacked her. 18 hearts about her. It's one of those things you learn from being a Mormon. Nobody else in the building had heard of heart attacking before!

Another group made that birthday sign, and I did all of the hearts. Sidrah in front of her door!

Sidrah's birthday package from her family.

A bunch of us went over to Chili's for dinner to celebrate. A group of some 5th floor girls with Sidrah!

elevator picture.

Some of the group at dinner.

This is only half of the group. There were almost 30 people who came and helped celebrate (and eat some good food!).

Becca, Me, Sidrah, and Sammy.

Some of the group--a few people had already left!

Happy Birthday Sidrah!