Hiking Mt. Charleston

This afternoon Bradley and I took Lance and Carter hiking up Mt. Charleston. It was so much fun! I was a little bit nervous that we wouldn't make it to the top, but we did! It was the first time I've seen real green plants in the past two weeks. Of our group, we were the last to the top, and the last to the bottom, but we made it with two babies!!

Photoshop Fun

For one of my classes I am learning how to use photoshop. I have never used it before, but I've wanted to learn for a long time, so it's exciting! I'm using it in my Inscape class so that I will be able to edit the artwork that we get for our student journal. Fun times :)
The view from Kate's wedding reception was absolutely beautiful.

This was at Brad's sister's house in Idaho. I was watching his nephew play Lego Star Wars on the... game station, or something like that.

Dad and I taking pictures on our way to the George Cannon cabin!

Lovin' School

This week has been consumed with school work. I am loving my classes right now. It's so much fun to be far enough into the major that most of my assignments are actually meaningful now! In one of my classes I am working to help build an online archive of Victorian literature. If you go to - http://vsfp.ctlbyu.org/index.php?title=Help:Contents - you can see some of the work that I've done. It looks like wikipedia, but it's not (and I actually CREATED my webpages! It was so hard!):) For another class we've been editing student essays, poems, and stories to publish in our journal Inscape. go to inscape.byu.edu to see it. It still needs a lot of work, but we're having fun with it!
I'm really enjoying it all!

Who's a Big Deal?

Well, I guess I pretty much am. Haha, just joking. But I had an article published in LDSLiving News today! It's the first thing I've had published, so today is an exciting day! Also, we just got the Nov/Dec 2008 issue printed, and under the editorial staff, in tiny little letters, is the name Ashton Carrington! That's one life goal that I can mark off my list - I've been published!!!!!!!!
Here's the article online: http://ldslivingonline.com/article.php?articleId=79800

Midway Night!

Well, spur of the moment decision - Heather and I are going to her condo in Midway for the night! Just the two of us :) I have been having one of my frantic moments when I jump online and look for a plane ticket to anywhere, as far away as possible, for as little as possible (which usually leads me to Brittany and Phoenix - wish I could do it right now!). But my bank account wouldn't allow it... which has never stopped me before, so I guess that means I'm growing up a smidge. So instead she's stealing me away for the night to Midway. I am very excited!

Stressful Day

It has been a bit of a stressful week. I am working on 2 projects at once, they're both due by midnight, and I have no idea what I'm doing. And I haven't procrastinated either! No one seems to know the answers to my questions! Tomorrow it will all be over :)

Bradley and I have started something fun though. I went online and searched for fun conversation starters, and cut them up and put them in a bag, and then we take turns drawing questions out of the bag. Whoever draws the question has to answer it first, and then the other answers the same question. And then we switch. Last night was the first time we tried it and I thought it was a lot of fun. It's a good way to stay in and stay busy at the same time. And we have another bag full of date/activity ideas for when we get bored. If anyone else wants the lists, let me know!

If you don't sleep, you end up with one very long day...

Yesterday was CRAZY! I woke up extra early to finish up a project for one of my classes. I think I hit a record - I wrote 8 pages in 1 hour, and had it done before my class at 8! I wasn't even late to class :) At noon I went to work and gave a presentation that I've been working on, basically about how a blog can benefit the company financially. It was so much fun. I just remembered Dad working on all of his presentations over the year and did what I remembered him doing. I did research, I organized my thoughts and made them as simple and clear as possible. Thanks for the example Dad!

So I presented on blogs, and everyone else had a different online feature that they were presenting on. My boss is really trying to use the internet as much as possible. He says that if we just let the internet era pass us by, we'll go out of business. So we're getting online like the rest of the world. Well, the meeting lasted 3 hours, and ended at 5 which is when I'm usually supposed to get off of work, which means that I didn't get ANY of my usual responsibilities done. And our next issue is going to print on Monday and there were a bunch of things that I absolutely HAD to finish by midnight. So I stayed at the office while everyone else went home except for the 2 owners. At about 8 they were getting ready to leave, and they stopped in my office to tell me that they have high hopes for me in the company! They said that they've been impressed by my organization and work ethic and that they hope to have me be big and important :) haha, not those exact words, but that was the jist! They were especially impressed by my willingness to stay and work late on a Friday night. Okay, so I was in the office, on cloud 9, feeling good. I finished all my work just after 8, and went to lock up and set the alarms. Well, the key they left me didn't work... which set off the alarm... which made me panic! I called all of my co-workers and couldn't get the alarm off. I fought with it for half an hour! Haha, so I just hope that the little alarm episode doesn't negate everything nice they said earlier (it really was more dramatic than I'm telling it. I was panicked!!)

General Conference Traditions

I am working on a couple of articles right now and I could use a couple of good ideas. First, I need to know people's General Conference Traditions. Even if the tradition isn't yours, tell me some good traditions that you've heard of.
I'm also working on one call Kid Friendly Decorating. I've found a lot of fun ideas, but I'm still searching for more! So please let me know what you've tried and enjoyed. Thanks!

New Blog!

My boss has asked me to master the art of blogging and to create on for LDSLiving. So I am trying to get used to them and find out why they are so popular these days. I have never had a blog before and I'm not entirely sure how to use one. This will be fun...

So interesting thought of the day - I found a really cool idea from Better Homes and Gardens for painting bedroom walls. They suggested that you take 1" painters tape make a grid on the wall. Then, paint all of the bare squares various colors. It looks like this

I want to try it!