And the Nominations Are...

Best Picture:

-The Artist
-The Descendants
-Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
-The Help
-Hugo
-Midnight in Paris
-Moneyball
-The Tree of Life
-War Horse

Best Actor

-Demián Bichir
A Better Life

-George Clooney
THe DeSCeNDANTS

-Jean Dujardin
THe ARTiST

-Gary Oldman
TiNKeR TAiLoR SoLDieR SPy

-Brad Pitt
Moneyball

Best Actress

-Glenn Close
ALBeRT NoBBS

-Viola Davis
THe HeLP

-Rooney Mara
THe GiRL WiTH THe DRAGoN TATToo

-Meryl Streep
THe iRoN LADy

-Michelle Williams
My WeeK WiTH MARiLyN

Best Supporting Actor:

-Kenneth branagh
My WeeK WiTH MARiLyN

-Jonah hill
MoNeyBALL

-Nick Nolte
WARRioR

-Christopher Plummer
BeGiNNeRS

-Max von Sydow
exTReMeLy LouD & iNCReDiBLy CLoSe

Best Supporting Actress:

-Bérénice Bejo
THe ARTiST

-Jessica Chastain
THe HeLP

-Melissa Mccarthy
BRiDeSMAiDS

-Janet mcTeer
ALBeRT NoBBS

-Octavia Spencer
THe HeLP

Best Director
-The ArTisT
Michel Hazanavicius

-The DescenDAnTs
Alexander Payne

-Hugo
Martin Scorsese

-Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen

-The Tree of life
Terrence Malick

(Sorry about all of the weird capitals in random places. The website I copied it from is doing weird things with it, and I got sick of fixing all of them. I figured you got the idea anyways...)

Snow Storm Today

Here is a video of 4th North during the snow storm today! CRAZY!

The Gay Rights Movement

Because I think this is important to pass along:



(Allie, Steve might cry....)

2011 to 2012

I know that it is already January 15th, so this is a little late coming, but I have just been busy. Every year I make a list of the new movies I have seen and the books that I have read for the year. Here are my lists:

New Movies in 2011:

-No Strings Attached
-Winter's Bone
-The Kids Are All Right
-How to Train Your Dragon
-True Grit
-Gnomeo & Juliet
-The Last Airbender
-The King's Speech
-Black Swan
-The Fighter
-Burlesque
-The Next Three Days
-How Do You Know
-The Tourist
-I am Number Four
-Pirates 4: On Stranger Tides
-Rio
-Blue Valentine
-X-Men: First Class
-Green Lantern
-Transformers 3
-Beastly
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
-The Lincoln Lawyer
-Just Go With It
-Captain America: The First Avenger
-Red Riding Hood
-Bad Teacher
-Bridesmaids
-Horrible Bosses
-Friends With Benefits
-Crazy Stupid Love
-The Help
-Something Borrowed
-The Town
-Your Highness
-Real Steel
-Footloose
-Breaking Dawn: Part 1
-Larry Crowne

Books read in 2011:

-Spider Bones by Kathy Reichs
-Shopaholic & Sister by Sophie Kinsella
-Shopaholic & Baby by Sophie Kinsella
-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
-Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
-Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire by J.K. Rowling
-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
-Matched by Allie Condie
-Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop
-Buried Prey by John Sandford
-The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
-Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
-Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
-The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind
-Can You Keep A Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
-The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella
-Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
-V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
-A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard
-Shock Wave by John Sandford

Sadly, my list of books this year I feel is considerably smaller, although I haven't actually counted to check. I used to listen to books on CD while I would drive. And even though I still do that, since my commute to work is now about 5 minutes, I don't usually listen to books on CD while I drive anymore. So, most of these I actually read, with the book in hand, or on my kindle that my awesome Alaskan family got me for my birthday.

So, that also leads up to another huge change for me this year, I got PROMOTED and am FINALLY managing my own Baskin Robbins!! I have worked at Baskin Robbins for 9 and a half years now! I know that is a long time, and sometimes I feel like it really should be time to move on, especially since I am not doing anything with my degree. However, I am LOVING the challenge of managing this store. Without trying to sound too conceded, I really am doing an awesome job of it. When I first took over the store, the store was making negative numbers, meaning that my boss was spending money that he was making at his other stores to help keep this one open. He has been doing that for three years now and out of his six stores, my store was the second worst. I took over managing in April, and by June I turned that around. My store is now making money for the first time in 3 years! So, I think I am pretty cool and doing a great job!

This year was also a year of traveling for me. I was lucky enough to take a week vacation up to Seattle and Portland that I just loved! It was so much fun! I loved seeing the places, visiting people (including my awesome Sis, Elisabeth!) and traveling with my friend Jennifer. This year I was also lucky enough to go down to the Shakespearean Festival twice with my family, and take a trip to Moab with a lot of my Photo friends. I want to spend another post on this to give the trip justice, but I also got to fly up to Alaska to surprise my brother and see him in his play of Les Mis! The entire cast helped fly me up there to see his performance, because if I hadn't donated my kidney to him last year, he wouldn't have been able to do that play this year. not only was he in it, he was the lead! So cool! I loved spending time with my family there and getting to see Kodiak! Like I said, I'll post pictures and go into more detail later on.

My third niece, Sophie, was born this year! She is a total doll and I am loving getting to know her! One really interesting and cute thing to me about Sophie is that she growls at people to show them that she loves them! I have no idea where she got that, but I think it is so cute and unique to her personality.

This past year I have also been able to spend a lot of time with my mom. With our schedules being so different, most of the week we were passing ships, but after I got her addicted to Grey's Anatomy, we spent most of every weekend together, eating potatoes and onions and watching Grey's Anatomy. It really was a lot of fun. Even though she technically moved in January, it has been a big adjustment for me to not have her here with me anymore. I really miss her a lot, along with all of my family that has decided to pick up and move to Alaska. (Geoffrey moved there in February and Allison in July.) I love you guys all so much and I really really miss you. It has been a huge adjustment for me this year to have now HALF of the family up in Kodiak. It just isn't the same. Our family has always been really close, so it's weird to not see you guys nearly as often as I would like.

To end my post, I think I should post a couple of things that I would like for 2012:

1-I would like to reach my goal weight this year. I have been working hard to get there, and I think it is really a reasonable goal to try and hit it this year. I also am working on getting my body fat percentage lower, so I would like that to be in the high teens by the end of the year.

2-I want to get my spending more under control. With the recent development of my shopping addiction, I have a lot more on credit cards than I am comfortable with. Especially since I am also now paying off my student loans, etc... so I would like to get my money issues back under control.

3-I would like to continue traveling more. I especially would like to always make a trip out of the anniversary of giving my kidney. That was a huge deal for me, and I think it would be fun to honor it in that way.

4-I want to try and take more pictures this year. I have had a block about it this year. I am not entire sure where that comes from, but I really only took pictures this last year if people dragged it out of me. So, I want to do more personal shooting this year in the hope that I will start enjoying it again.

5-I would like to try and be more organized and clean up after myself better. I am great about it at work, so I am not sure why the same habits don't apply to where I am living... I have been working on a lot of things that make me feel better, such as losing weight, or going tanning, or just working out in general makes me feel better, eating better... so I think the next step for me is cleaning my room and staying more organized.

6-I really want to stay in better contact with people. I like spending time and knowing what is going on in people's lives. I miss my friends and family, so hopefully I can find more time to spend with everyone.

That is all of my resolutions for now, and I don't even really consider them resolutions. They are just goals for what I would want to do, and hopefully they can happen within the next year. Love you all, and here is 2012~

(The top picture taken of me was taken by my friend Meghann Larsen. I helped model for her for an assignment for her portrait class.)

Douglas Hansen

I received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice informing me that Douglas Hansen, the man who robbed me, died while in federal custody on October 29, 2011. That was all the information they gave me. I have no idea what happened, just that he died.

I'm feeling a little guilty because I am relieved that he is dead. I in no way believe that he deserved a death sentence for robbing me, but they day after he robbed me, I was searching people's faces trying to find him. I have become much more jumpy. If I see someone in the corner of my eye that I didn't know was there, it makes me jump. When random guys come into the store, I am worried what they might do. For weeks after I got robbed, I kept the phone under the register so that if it happened again, I might be able to reach it to dial 911. And sometimes, at night, I dream that he comes back in. Sometimes, he doesn't know who I am, and just orders like a regular customer. Sometimes I relieve what happened and I try to somehow already have the phone under the register so that I can call for help.

The police told me that this guy has been in and out of prison all his life. He does something, so they put him in. Then he serves his time and gets out. Then he does something else, so they put him back in. Over and over and over. So, even though I know they caught him, I couldn't help thinking that maybe one day he would come back. Even though I am at another store now, I couldn't help wondering if he would remember that he got away the first time, so why not do it again? I kept thinking what would happen if he came in again.

A cop called me when they were determining his sentence. He wondered if there was anything I wanted the judge to know about how he had effected my life. He had listened to my 911 call and said that I had sounded really upset. Thinking back, I remember how I could barley stop crying to tell them what had happened and how I couldn't stop shaking. I remember the text message from my dad asking if the police knew who he needed to kill and how angry my brother Wesley got.

So, hearing the news that he is dead, is actually a really relieving thing for me. I feel a little bad about it, but maybe now somewhere in the back of my mind, I will stop stressing about it. Some people think I am crazy for being so effected by this. And I guess to some degree, I didn't even quite realize how much it bothered me before the threat was gone. It just seems like now that I don't have to worry about it, I really notice how much I was worried about it.

Sarah and Jerome

Weight Loss

Abut three years ago, I decided I really needed to lose some weight. I wasn't comfortable with how I looked, and it was actually pictures of me that helped me make the decision to do it. The worst of them have already been deleted, but to get an idea of how far I have come, here are some pictures of what I looked like back in 2008/2009.

My older sister, Allison, is a doctor and has always been really weight-conscious, so I asked her how much I was supposed to weigh. For someone my age and my height, she informed me that I was a little over 50 pounds overweight. She tried to help me by giving me a book with how many calories were in everything and telling me to try to eat around 1200 calories a day. That seemed like way too much work for me, and was frustrating and hard, so I started by getting a gym pass with my friend, Kennedy.

I started going to the gym between 3 to 5 times a week, mostly working out on the elliptical for about 30 minutes a day. A year later, I had lost 30 pounds, but I had plateaued. I felt better about myself, but I wasn't where I wanted to be yet. 30 is good, but I was supposed to lose 50. People kept telling me that I also needed to learn how to eat better, but I really thought I was eating pretty well. I hate hamburgers and hot dogs, so I mostly eat turkey sandwiches. Sandwiches are better for you than hamburgers, so I eat healthy, right?





About a year and a half ago, I got conned into getting a personal trainer. I love that I got one, and overall, I really don't regret it. I won't turn this post into a rant against Gold's Gym. I'm sure you all know the story anyways, but the point is I got a personal trainer. They told me that cardio (the type of workouts I had been doing for the last year) was only 10% of weight loss. In the back of my head though, I was thinking, "Well, I've already lost 30 pounds, so what do you know?" They said that 40% of weight loss was muscle building/weight training and that 50% is diet. I did a free consult training with Carlos (the manager that conned me) and I couldn't move for two days after, even though my workout was only 30 minutes long!

So, I still did some cardio workouts, but I had one session with my personal trainer once a week, and he wrote me other workouts to come in and do on my own. So I started alternating between muscle training and cardio. Preston, my personal trainer, also talked me into starting to keep a food journal. He didn't give me a calorie limit, he just wanted me to start realizing how many calories I took in. The other random fact that also really just helps me with my workouts is that my boss also goes to Gold's Gym and he works out at the same time I do. So, I feel like someone is keeping track of whether I go to the gym or not. If he doesn't see me, he will ask why I didn't go. It used to bug me, but now I like it. He also has been trying to give me eating tips for years now. My friend Jennifer was also trying to lose weight too. Her and Justin really were the ones that helped me switch up my diet. She told me that Justin had commented on the weight I had lost, and asked her if she thought I could keep it up, or if I was going to be one of those people that loses weight and then gains it all back. So, I just felt like I had something to prove to people that see me everyday. If that makes sense. It was a good push.

Anyways, I found my e-mail from Allison telling me I should try to be eating 1200 calories a day to try and lose weight. So, when I started writing down everything I was eating and finding out how many calories were in things, I really was shocked. Remember how good I'm eating because I just like turkey sandwiches? An Arby's Market Fresh sandwich has 800 calories in it! So I thought I was eating so healthy, when really if I eat that sandwich that takes up 2/3 of my calories for the day. My beloved Chai that I was drinking everyday, that I thought was healthy because I got it with soy milk instead of real milk, had 340 calories in it! That is enough for one of my entire meals! So, I still get these sometimes, but it was really good for me to start to realize how many calories were really in my "healthy" choices. So, to get going in the right direction, I just started with little changes. I always order my sandwiches on wheat bread now. I started leaving off cheese of my sandwiches. I don't even notice that it is gone anymore. It was a little easier for me too, because I normally go to Subway and they don't carry my favorite cheese anyway. (Swiss Cheese.)

So, a few months after working out with my personal trainer, and writing down everything I eat, I put everything on hold for a very important surgery. At the end of September, I gave Wesley a kidney. Apart from being really scared to be cut open, I was also really interested to see how my body would react to no longer having two kidneys.




The first really noticeable change for me was that my body no longer knew when it was hungry. I could tell when I was empty, but I didn't get hungry. I never knew what I wanted to eat, unless I smelled food. Then I would crave things that I smelled. I think there were two days I was going to school that I didn't eat once all day. It was only at the end of the day when I felt really empty and sick that I remembered that I hadn't eaten. MY calorie counting went completely out the window, along with my exercising. I figured my body would know better than me what it wanted, so I wanted to give it anything it wanted to recover from surgery. After doing that for about two months, and not really having any desire for food coming back, Justin suggested that instead of just eating anything, I start eating healthy things. I didn't know what I wanted anyways, and he said I should use that opportunity to train my body to want healthier food. I started eating Chicken Mango Salad for lunch (something Allie got me hooked on) and pasta shells in Organic Tomato Sauce. Bam! Lost ten pounds.

I feel really guilty whenever people ask what my secret to losing weight is. Honestly, even though I've been working on it for years, my secret is that I gave up a kidney and don't like food anymore.... It made changing my habits of what I ate a lot easier than other people that still actually crave food or chocolate or whatever. Another advantage I have is that my body really doesn't handle a lot of sugar very well. If I eat too much it wants back out pretty quick. (If you know what I mean.)

After being back from surgery for a month or so, I started trying to go back to the gym. (Since I was freaking paying for it anyway.) I did one of my workouts from my personal trainer and killed myself. It didn't really hurt when I was doing it, but I knew I had overdone it for days afterwards. I started going back to just doing the elliptical to still get my workouts in and I ran into Preston at the gym. He told me to work on my cardio, not do any weight training for a while, or if I did, start with my legs, not my abs. He said most people after surgery try to work that area but it needed time to heal, so just do cardio that I felt up for. This is when I started my Zumba class and started doing some Step Aerobics too. After six months of that, Preston told me to start personal training again. He said, "I'm not going to kill you." He has been great. He has know how to help me work on things without pushing me too hard, but pushing me enough to make some progress.

I should mention also that I weigh myself every day, first thing in the morning. It helps me know what progress I've made and hold myself more accountable for the things I ate the day before. If I gained weight, I try to be more aware of what I eat during the day. If I have lost weight, it makes me feel good. I usually lose some weight, then I plateau again. Usually during these times though, people comment on how much weight I've lost. That really confused me, until I realized I was losing inches. I recommend that everyone get their measurements too, that are trying to lose weight. I think it helps so you have another scale of telling how much progress you are making than just how much you weigh.

I am happy to report that I am now only 5 pounds away from my goal weight! Preston is helping me focus even more on my diet. Justin has been telling me for years that not all calories are created equal, and Preston says even though some people are skinny, they can still be fat. We are working on changing up my diet so I can finish losing this weight I carry in my stomach and see how well toned I actually am. If you eat less than you take in, you will lose weight, but if you actually eat better than you lose more body fat. With all of this weight I have lost, I have only lost 2% of my body fat. So, we are working on getting my ratio of carbs to protein to fat better. It is a lot of work, but I am loving my results. I keep track of what I eat on myfitnesspal.com. That also helps me keep track of all my carbs and protein etc. Oh, and instead of just trying to give up my caffeine habit, I have been trying to switch it to sugar-free energy drinks. Some of them actually taste okay.

Anyways, here are some more recent pictures of myself:


















47 pounds later, I've dropped from being a size 14 in pants to a size 8. I went from buying large shirts to buying small ones. I am feeling a lot more confident about the way I look.

Heart Walk/Run 2011

On September 17th, I donated my time as a photographer to the American Heart Association for their annual Heart Walk/Run in Sugarhouse Park. The organizer was a friend of Liz's, and they had a photographer cancel last minute, so Liz asked me if I would help. I would be in charge of the Kid Zone, taking picture of all of the activities and the banners of the sponsors. I agreed to do it. I haven't turn in my pictures yet, but I think they turned out pretty well.

The Kid's Zone was mostly sponsored by Zion's Bank. That was the big advertisement I had to get. They are also the ones that are going to be using my pictures for advertising purposes.





We had three blow up toys from GooseJumps. Here is the first one:









The second one was a giant slide:









The third one was an obstacle course:










There was one more blow up toy, sponsored by REAL Salt Lake, along with their mascot: Leo the Lion.

Next, they had these to play with:

Then they had a station for Jump Rope:

There was a card making station, and then they would hang them along the outside fence.

And Face Painting:

And Balloon animals!

Other Sponsors that I had to get pictures of were the Girl Scouts:

(Nothing against Girl Scouts, but this was the most ridiculous booth to have in the Kid's Zone. They brought this lego demonstration to show off, but freaked out if any of the kids tried to play with the legos because it was part of their competition. So put legos in a kid zone and not let kids play with it? Smart move.)

The last sponsor was the Sweet Tomato Tomato:




The only part of the entire day where I really felt like I dropped the ball was that I was supposed to take pictures of the Kid's Race. However, the Kid's Race was not announced or in the Kid's Zone... so I completely missed it. I did, however, try to make up for it by taking pictures of kids with their ribbons from the race... Oops.

So, kids, remember in order to keep your heart healthy, eat healthy and exercise. ;) And everyone let me know if you see any of my pictures used in ads for Zion's Bank! They should give me credit for donating my time. I think I did a good job of covering the Kids Zone.