no mere mortal can resist.

i bet you all had the same reaction i did when you saw this movie.

i MUST learn this dance!

i learned it tonight. (and hopefully i will get to ahold of a video here shortly...)

.

.

.

what else have i been up to lately???

i realize that i fail miserably at updating this blog.

i'm repenting though.

even though that means i will have to limit my pinterest time...

*wipe a tear*

one of my favorite classes this semester is sports nutrition.

at times it makes me want to re-think my life and just go into dietetics.

i mean, what a better major than someone who loves food as much as i do?

it just makes sense.

but i guess i'll just have to own a bakery on the side.

hmmmm...

but i digress.

back to the subject.

sports nutrition. yes.

we had to develop a menu for an overnight hiking trip, and make sure that all of the calorie/carb/protein/and fat requirements fit.

the extra credit?

we had to make it.

and guess who made pizza tonight?!

it was... (considering it was supposed to be eaten while hiking, and NOT gourmet?)

actually pretty good.

i mean... flatbread pizza? not my first choice.

but it's hard to pass up pizza while camping.

i mean... come onnnnn!

(granted, we cheated a little. i mean, how am i supposed to dehydrate the spaghetti sauce to make a leather when i don't even own a dehydrator??? i mean, i want one. but i have nowhere to put it. and i have too much junk already.)

we just threw regular sauce and veggies on the flatbread, but you would normally use reconstituted sauce and re-hydrated dehydrated veggies (if you like veggies on your pizza.) top that with some cheese and you are set to go!

i can just imagine this cooking over a fire right now...

(and my mouth is watering.)

taken using my new phone!

i'm impressed.

alas... i haven't gotten cool enough to get a smart phone yet.

maybe someday...

well that's enough to bore you for now! 

(if you really want to see more of what i've been stalking for the past few hours... check 'em out!) 

here and here and here...

can you tell i'm excited for this summer?

i am SO going hiking.

wishin' i could do this every day...

i've been very selfish. i've been showing you all of the fantastic things that i've been finding online... but i haven't told you anything of what i've actually been up to! (actually... i just haven't had any of the pictures on my computer to upload. but i love you soooo much that i actually braved the darkness underneath my bed to pull out my hard drive. you better believe i did!) 

so two weeks ago, my mom came up to play. 

and did we ever play!

(she also happens to love taking pictures... so what a better combination for us photogenic primadonnas?)

we heard about this hike from a guy at the fair.

talk about totally RANDOM.

i never believed that we would actually find this place.

you head out of rexburg, keep driving (and driving... and driving...) we actually made it all the way out to the highway on red road before we figured out that the "crater butte" we were looking for was back about 3 miles. and then off on some random dirt road.

poor baby car.

i promised him that i would give him a nice washing. (still hasn't happened...)

this was all you could see of the "crater"

you go from seeing tons of nice, sage-brush-y idaho landscape to a full-blown forest in a matter of seconds. 

pretty awesome.

me breaking in my brand-new hiking boots.

:)

boo-ya!

my sister and i ran in the temple-to-temple relay race.

domination!

(this was after i'd finished my 3.4 mile run)

ps - i hadn't run in like... 4 months?

probably not a smart move... but since when is that any fun?

finishing was sure fun though.

we had to pass on one of those slappy-wrist things... i know that they think that is supposed to be more convenient or something like that... but that takes a lot more coordination than i realized.

my heroic picture in front of the idaho falls temple.

funny (or maybe not-so-funny) story: 

the guy that was supposed to run the last leg got lost. so when my sister shows up (having sprinted to the end of her leg) with blue lips... i knew she wasn't going to be able to run the last 2.8 miles to the finish.

i'm standing there.

at the finish line.

i'm the only one in shorts.

with tennis shoes still on (i swear there was a little voice in my head that kept telling me not to change all day... little did i know...)

next thing i know, i've ripped her headphones out of her ears, and i'm jogging towards the corner.

sometimes i'm just too dang nice.

(bah.)

we're the studliest women i know.

the grand finish!

(my team was out looking for the "lost sheep")

and the weekend wasn't even close to being over!

i bet you wanna know where we would find 3 such adorable dresses.

we made them.

you heard me right.

well... mom made them... she just told me where to sew.

don't leave your attitude at home ladies!

cousins.

best friends.

sisters.

the photographer (aka mom)...

told me that this picture made my feet look too big.

but the converse are just so sweeeeet!

they caught me napping.

i like to pretend i'm a cat lying in the sun some days. 

(come on... you do it too... don't lie!)

skill.

or just weird.

i was NOT going to lose that hat.

{which i made by myself!}

best. shoes. ever!

{everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.}

                             steven wright

***

walking takes longer... than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. thus it stretches time and prolongs life. 

life is already too short to waste on speed. 

edward abbey

***

chicken enchilada bake here

(psssst! i'm making this... if you want to come over for dinner...)

making up for lost time...

today was our last long field trip.

it was a very sad day in the life of jessica ellis.

i'm gonna miss this.

our first stop was to qumran... 

where we were diligent scribes...

and took a bath in a ritual bath...

i don't know if that is actually ok or not. 

;)

i've only been waiting my whole life to see this.

and i think only my dad can really understand my excitement at seeing cave #4.

this is for you dad!

another shot of cave #4

jars that were found inside of the caves, that contained many fragments of scriptures.

i didn't tell you about my eye.

you see the little red blotch there?

i was giving someone an airplane ride...

and my knee made contact with my eye.

you didn't know i was that flexible, huh?

but it sure makes for a good story!

(you also didn't know airplane rides could be dangerous!)

my ariel and i on the bus!

heading toward MASADA!!!

this bus ride was awesome...

we totally made up a song to help us study for our ancient near east class.

 masada

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

:)

at one point, the jc students had to walk up that.

no joke.

i would have died.

luckily, we got to ride the tram up.

this section of masada is called the hanging palace

this is a view looking out from the top level of the hanging palace - you can actually see the bottom of the seige ramp that the romans built in 73 ce...

what no one else saw, was the guy taking a picture of the crazy american chicks.

i saw you buddy.

this was the room where they found the "lots"

this is the room where the remaining 10 zealots wrote their names on pieces of pottery, and one piece was picked. that person was to kill the remaining 9, and then finally take his own life.

this is what happened - they set fire to the fortress, leaving only enough food to show the romans that they died willingly - and not because of starvation.

walking down to other levels of the hanging palace

i don't know why anyone would want to take a hot bath here...

that sounds totally ridiculous to me.

today was a day for songs.

megan and i made up a sababa song.

(sababa means cool in hebrew)

it goes to the tune of hakuna matata.

i know you want to learn it.

so here ya go.

sababa masada

it's a wonderful place

sababa masada

it's a zealot craze!

it means no romans,

for the rest of our days...

it's our live free - die hard philosophy!

sababa masada!

(sababa... masada... sababa... masada...)

have you seen enough cisterns yet?

i didn't think so.

this is jess.

jess likes to pretend to be a bird.

or maybe she's just trying to find an excuse to air out her armpits...

we'll never knowwww...

see the dead sea?

it's way up there in the top left...

the seige ramp as seen from the top

ninja pic.

or maybe we should just call this "zealot stance"

jeffie (haha... jefferson), meg, and i

the synagogue where the leader of the zealot movement probably convinced everyone there to take their lives rather than become slaves to the romans.

the next part of the field trip was to a wadi by the dead sea.

we went to wadi david (the biblical story related to this is when saul and his soldiers fell asleep in the same cave where david and his followers were hiding. david had the opportunity to kill saul, but chose instead to cut a piece of his clothes off. he later used this to prove to saul that he was not trying to kill him)

there were tons of beautiful waterfalls, but considering it was mid-summer, they were probably fairly small.

now, when you read about the "valley of lemuel"

...think of this.

i like ashley's idea.

it was hotttttt.

we look way too nice and composed in this picture...

this is more like it.

holding to the iron rod is a little bit difficult when it burns your fingers off...

the dead sea is back there somewhere...

so i will have to work on getting ahold of some pictures of us in the dead sea. 

but, i didn't trust myself to take my camera anywhere near that water.

i'm so proud.

this is like a rite of passage for me!

anyone that wants to be a part of the sandal-tan club should contact me asap.

so that we can get an awesome tan picture too.

:)