iPhone Eyes in Vegas!

Here are some of the pictures off my phone;

Jana and I in the elevator before Friday's Game

My new Vans! (told you I had a new sole mate!)

Nate Dogg outside In-N-Out!

Jana and I outside of In-N-Out too before Saturday's Game.

The birds were SOOOO annoying, so we tried throwing french fries at them to get them to go away... then we saw this sign haha. Sorry!

Waiting for the game to start!

After we ate at Rainforest Cafe!

Anna and I finally got to meet up Saturday night.

Ahh yes, can't go to vegas without running into one of these guys passing out the cards!

The fountains outside the Bellagio!

Anna and I outside Serendipity 3!

Jana enjoying her $10 frozen hot chocolate... look at that smile on her face lol

Dad and Nate at breakfast Sunday morning, just a few minutes before we had to say goodbye. Miss you guys, see you soon though!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today is St. Patrick's Day. And for the last 17 days, for some reason, I have been waking up in a panic thinking... oh my goodness, is today St. Patrick Day? I don't know why, I haven't really ever thought much of this holiday... But I think to celebrate today I will go get some cream soda in a glass bottle, wear the cute green hair clip my mom gave me and watch the Disney Channel Original Movie- Luck of the Irish haha.

My mom had this cassette tape (yes, cassette tape... not CD) full of children's songs and we would listen to it all day, all the time, when we were in the car. These are the lyrics to the St. Patrick's Day song (and my mom's current facebook status):
 Today is the day for the wearin' o the green

 Today is the day when the little people are seen
 Today is St. Patrick's Day, so if you're Irish me lad
 Join the celebration for the grandest time to be had! 

In Chicago (the place where my family currently lives), every year they dye the Chicago River Bright Green!

Chicago has been dying their river every St. Patty's Day since 1962! I'd like to think that there is a little Irish blood in me, but I don't think there is.

Growing up my mom would tell us to leave our shoes out so that the leprechauns would come and leave money in our shoes. Last night I left my crocs out and I'm sad to say (but not surprised) there were no pennies left in my shoe. I googled this tradition earlier today and couldn't find anything... maybe my mom made up this tradition! Haha.

Another thing my mom used to do growing up would be to dye our scrambled eggs green and she would also take us to the library and have us check out  stories.

My favorite St. Pattty's Day story is this one:

There is a story of a man who once tricked a leprechaun into revealing the whereabouts of his valuables. The treasure was located beneath a bush in a large field surrounded by other similar shrubbery. The man needed to go off and get a shovel for which to dig up the treasure, so he tied a red ribbon to the bush so he could identify it on his return, and made the leprechaun promise not to take it off. Convinced he was more clever than the leprechaun and had secured his gold, he made off to get his shovel. On his return however, much to his dismay, he found that the little creature had tied a red ribbon on every other bush in the field.
Author Unknown.

So be careful today! Don't let a leprechaun fool you!

I Love Tacos...

Okay everyone... I think I've mastered the taco....
For those of you that don't know, my favorite thing to make/eat here at college is the taco. It is so cheap, fast to make, and healthy because you get a little bit from all the major food groups. It's really whatever I have in the fridge thrown onto a corn tortilla.
You can get 100 little corn tortilla's from costco for like $3. Now I know what you are thinking, 100 tortillas?? That's ridiculous, I'll never eat that. And you are right, you probably wont... but for 25 at the grocery store it costs the exact same. So you might as well stock up. I have found that they last a really long time up in the cupboard. For example, over a month ago I bought a package. And two sunday's ago, Anna made these delish chicken enchiladas (and enough to feed an army, except we all must have been really hungry because they all disappeared)....

....And I still had a ton of tortillas left over... So my point, they will last you a long time and they are so cheap.

So anyways, today I was wondering what to make for lunch and of course taco is the first thing that comes to mind. Usually I fry up whatever protein I have in the fridge (if I have hamburger, I'll use that, if not, one froze chicken breast is easy too), i'll throw in a chopped onion, green pepper.... really whatever vegetables need to be eaten. When the chicken/hamburger is pretty cooked, ill add some onion powder, garlic powder, and taco seasoning (it's like $0.50 a packet and will last lots of meals) and if im using hamburger (this might sound gross but it adds a little something something), a quick squeeze of ketchup. Boom! heat up a tortilla, add some cheese, salsa, salad mix, and you've got a taco.

Today's meal though included flavors from all over the world. Last night I made indonesian satay on the BBQ and served it with a salad with balsamic dressing and quinoa (my new favorite cooking obsession... im still learning how to use it).

So today I had leftovers, so I cut up my leftover chicken (Indonesian) and put it in the frying pan on top of a tortilla, sprinkled on some leftover quinoa (South America), feta cheese (Greek), and since I was out of salsa, I added some Zest Lite Italian Dressing (Italian). It was delish. 

The End.

Onion.

I love cooking with onions. They add so much flavor to everything and I always have a couple on hand because I'm using them every time I cook. But this morning as I was making my marinade and chopping up the onion, something happened that has never happened before! My eyes started burning and watering! Why does that happen??

sulfuric acid!

When you cut an onion, you are slicing cells that release enzymes that mix with the air and produce propanethiol S-oxide which is a sulur compound that goes up into your eyes. This gas reacts with the water in our tears to form sulfuric acid... which burns... and causes your eyes to tear to wash away the irritant.

So now you know.

VEGAS BABY!

Just got home from Vegas last night. I wanted to upload some of the pictures we took. I'll blog more about it later!

the four of us outside UNLV's arena 

Nate and I

The Three Wutzke Children

Nate walked out of the bathroom like this, we couldn't help but laugh

Let's go Cougars!!

Nate and Dadd!

BYU coloured M&Ms of course!

Jana and Dad!

Nate and I, happy as can be!

We won!!

We were up kinda high, but great seats because we could see the whole court!

Doing some sightseeing in Vegas

I wanted to have an Anna Gleave Photography moment.

Best Makeup Remover.. Seriously

My grandma introduced my mom and I to this make up remover. All three of us swear by it. I've been using it since my senior year in high school and I will never use anything else. It's super gentile on the eyes and works really well to get all your makeup off, even water-proof mascara!!

Avon Eye Makeup Remover

Best part about it?? It's on sale for 99 cents!!!!

Boarding!

Anna, Me, Michelle, Dan and Chase all went boarding on friday. After we ate at red robin. It was a blast.
The End.

I've grown lazy with my blogs... it's because I have been soo sooo soooooooooooooooo busy. School is kicking my butt, work is eating up all my time. I've felt friendships start to slip out from under me, and my room is good evidence of how busy i've been. But it's a new week. I've set new goals. Here is a much better description of our snowboarding adventure...thanks to Anna!!

oh and as an additional pitch- it is cool to wear a helmet when you ride/ski/bike.... the expression 'better out than in' does NOT apply to your brain.

Amazing facts about the nervous system

• Billions of nerve impulses enter the brain every second 
• Human’s have an estimated 60-100 billion neurons, a spinder has 100,000 neurons 
• Large myelinated neurons conduct impulses over 200 miles/hour 
• One neuron can send 1000 impulses per second 
• Spinal cord is 17 inches long, stopped growing at age 5 
• Most neurons remain the same form birth 
• Brain contains trillions of synapses and new ones form when we learn 
• We loose 10,000 a day after the age of 35 
• Everyone has their own unique pattern of wrinkles or gyri on the brain 
• If you play the violin there will be a larger motor region in the cortex 
• Neurotransmitters influence behavior, moods and emotions

In a talk I stumbled upon by Russell M. Nelson called "The Magnificence of Man" he talks about throughout the ages, people have tired to explain the existence of us being here without scriptural understanding. Some try to explain our existence by "pretentious words such as ex nihilo (out of nothing), others have deduced that, because of certain similarities between different forms of life, there has been an organic evolution from one form to another, many of these have concluded that the universe began as a 'big bang' that eventaully resulted in the creation of our planet and life upon it".

I love the part when he says "To me, such theories are unbelievable! Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary? It is unthinkable! Even if it could be argued to be within a remote realm of possibility, such a dictionary could certainly not heal its own torn pages or renew its own worn corners or reproduce its own subsequent editions!"

We were created by God and formed in his image. He knew exactly what he was doing. My physiology teacher referes to our Heavenly Father every lecture and calls him the "Master Creator". Of all my semesters here at BYU, this one has been the hardest, but has helped strengthen my testimony even more about how there truely is a Master Creator and he created us in his image. In Abraham 4:26-27 it says “The Gods took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness. …

So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them”

"God has made it plain over and over again that the world was made for mankind. We are here to work out our divine destiny, according to an eternal plan that was presented to us in the great council of heaven. Our bodies have been created to accommodate our spirits, to allow us to experience the challenges of mortality and continue our eternal progression." -Russell Nelson

The human body is so amazing.

Gratitude.

Whenever I see my manager at work he always smiles at me really big and says "hey lady, it's a great day to be alive!" and gives me a high five. It puts a smile on my face and reminds me that ya, it is a great day to be alive... i have so many things that I am thankful for.

Today in relief society, we learned all about gratitude. The teacher started out by drawing a chart on the board. Down the left side is when things are going well, or when things don't go well, and along the top is big/small things that help us remember to be grateful.

	BIG	SMALL
WELL	3 Nephi 11:15-17 When Christ comes down to visit the people. What a great big moment for these people and how grateful they must have been.	Alma 34:37-38 Amulek reminds the people that they live in thanksgiving daily. A small thing to show the people that they have many things to be grateful for.
DON’T	Moroni 1:1-3 Everyone Moroni knows has died and he is the only one left, wandering wherever for the safety of his own life. He never once complains, and in the last verse in chapter 10, he wrties "I am brought foth triumphant through the air to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah".	(we ran out of time to get to this box so I tried filling it in myself) 1 Nephi 2:4 Lehi tells his family that they must "take nothing with them, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness". This is a time when I think thing were not going so well for the children of Lehi. Who would want to leave everything behind? But Nephi obeyed, and I am sure realized that he was very grateful to have a righteous father that lead them out of Jerusalem.

As I was listening to this lesson I realized that I have so many things to be grateful for. I could fill out this chart on my own of personal experiences I've had.

President Thomas S. Monson gave a talk called "An Attitude of Gratitude". He says:

A popular refrain from the 1940s captured the thought:

Accentuate the positive;

Eliminate the negative.

Latch on to the affirmative;

Don’t mess with Mr. In-between.

Good advice then. Good advice now.

This is a wonderful time to be living here on earth. Our opportunities are limitless. While there are some things wrong in the world today, there are many things right, such as teachers who teach, ministers who minister, marriages that make it, parents who sacrifice, and friends who help.

We can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude. If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues.

We have so many things to be grateful for. Let's live our lives with an attitude of gratitude. I recommend reading the full version of this talk here. And I challenge you (and I am going to do this too!) take some time every day to fill out a gratitude journal. Just write down a few things each day that you are thankful for to really show yourself how blessed you are!
here's my new blog: My Gratitude Journal

Smoke Detector.

EVERY apartment I have lived in here at school has had the same thing happen around this time of year. I will be studying/sleeping/cleaning/doing something when suddenly a high pitched beep! will come from my ceiling. I'll ignore it. Hours later, I will hear the beep! again, and a few hours later it'll go off again.
It has happened in the dorms, last year at Alpine Village, and now at this apartment.
I reached up and took the battery out... that should do it, right? No. Wrong. It continues to beep!. Each beep! drives me closer and closer to insanity until I can't take it anymore, grab a chair, reach up and try to rip it out of the ceiling. ...
As I am looking at my smoke detector now, dangling helplessly from the ceiling by one little cord and no battery, I see something scary.... one little red light (somehow it still has power) and I know... that when I least suspect it... that thing is going to beep!.

Best Mom

It's been a stressful week. Midterms are so exhausting, and it doesn't help having type A personality where everything has to be perfect. Yesterday when I got home from having a fun night, I was surprised to see a care package from my mom filled with cute necklaces, bracelets and rings. My mom is so awesome. She knew what would make my day.

Anatomy Midterm

Oh man... just finished one tough midterm. Never have I studied so much for a midterm at BYU (hours and hours and hours) and it is finally over. Wow, I have been stressing out so much for this test and now that is over, there really isn't a better feeling in the world. I felt really smart in the lab walking around with my clipboard, leaning in to get a good look at where the pins were in the cadaverous and being able to write down the answer with perfect spelling (well I at least did that for half of the questions)

I drew all over my arm to help me remember the muscles... not the best idea to do before falling asleep at the table at 4am... i woke up with blue and red ink all over my face, my eyes blood shot, and my breath smelling terrible (gross I know).

But it done. Yay!!

Too Old.

I guess the ripe old age of 21is when things start falling apart. I woke up yesterday with a sore back but today, it is even worse haha! You see, Saturday night dan planned a really fun date where we got to go to this place called Jump On It and then we made milkshakes after. It was so fun! But I feel like I've already turned into a mother because every time the boys did something outrageous, I was worried they'd get hurt! Ever since then I've had a sore back

*Might I add- Dan had the directions memorized. (Great, makes sense, that's what boys like to do) When we got off the interstate, it was dark and kind of confusing, we didn't really know where to go. I pulled out my handy little iPhone and got us the rest of the way there! Despite Dan teasing me that the iPhone took us the long way, and me teasing him about "some bridge", we both ended up being right. Turned out that there was construction and the road Dan was used to taking had been shut down.

Oh and one last thing. Monoploy is my favorite game. I remember living in Wisconsin and Thad Christofferson (the boy who lived across the street) liked it just as much as me and we'd play. I remember living in utah and making Jana just suffer though me smoking her, writing out her debt on paper because she was completely out of money and I wanted to keep playing. I remember setting up monoploy on the dining room table and taking the next couple nights to play with my dad.  I remember designing a monoploy board for a school project and my mom and I taking it downtown Toronto to get laminated. I mean, I used to have all the cards memorized, prices of everything. So it should come as no surprise that I have many strategies and I play to win. Friday night Dan suggested a friendly game and of course I agreed. I haven't played in years..... let me just say that I've still got it lol (and it wasn't just luck!!)

The Hygienist I Want to Be!

Kristin Chenoweth as a hygienist back in 2006 on the show Ugly Betty... my inspiration!!

Easy Dinner

This morning I woke up knowing that I would be having an extremely long day. I had to drive down and meet with my financial advisor, class from 11-4 then work 4-close. With all my busy days, my eating schedual has been awful. I'd go for hours until realizing I haven't eaten anything at at that point it would be 3pm. Or I'd grab something unhealthy because it was fast. So today I decided to make something easy, fast and healthy.... White Chicken Chili.

So easy, anyone can do it.

1 jar of Great Value (aka walmart brand) Black Bean and Corn Salsa

1 can black beans

1 can white beans

3 chicken breasts

Literally dump everything into the crockpot at low setting, I didn't even have time to thaw my chicken out, I just dumped it in. By the time I was home from class, I had a delish bowl of chili. (Use a fork to shred the chicken breast before dishing it up)

It looks bland, but it is really colourful. I wish I had my roommates camera to really capture how yummy this chili is.

It was way fast and filling and now i'll have lunch for the next couple days!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! 

It's been a few days since I last posted, I've been busy. This weekend, T-Mobile had a promotion where all their phones were for free. It was so busy and very exhausting. Sunday was a great day too. We had a missionary fireside where missionaries came in from the Referral Center and told us all about different ways we can spread the Gospel. (If anyone has questions about Mormonism, you can always send me an email or check out mormon.org for yourself)

Here are some pictures from my day yesterday:

Dan surprised me and gave me these pretty flowers

We made a heart shaped pizza (my idea and he was a super good sport about it! I am very impressed at his skills)

Yumm.

We made oreo pie too! (ours wasn't as pretty as this)

My Sole Mate

For those of you that do not already know, my guilty pleasure in life is shoes. I love shoes. Heels, boots, flats, running shoes, sandals.... it's bad. You would think that I picked up this trait from my mom (which maybe I did a little bit) but the root of it comes from my dad. I always tease my dad that he is a women when it comes to shoes because he has SOOOO many pairs of the most classy shoes I have ever seen (Cole Haan, Ecco, Coach). But he is like me, when he sees a good deal (be it on ebay, or the outlets) he can't resist, and neither can I.

So anyways, I have a new "Sole Mate"...VANS!!! Now, if you would have told me this day would come 4 years ago, I might have made a gagging gesture...I am a very loyal Sperry Topsider wearer (and still am). They are super cute and classy, but Vans are just so stinkin' cute that I couldn't resist. I bought my sister a purple pair for christmas and that inspired me to expand my love for lace up, canvas shoes. I'm glad I made the switch. I think im already addicted...

Valentines Surprise!

My mom and brother are so sweet! They put together a cute Valentines' Care Package for me! I know I should have waited till Monday to open it, but I was just too excited!

Inside was a pair of cute shoes, two necklaces, earrings, a bracelet, passport and luggage covers, and a box of the most DELISH sugar cookies I have ever had. I'll see if my mom can give me the recipe.

Thanks again Mom and Nate! And Happy Valentines Day!