Finals...

So I probably should be studying right now but instead I find myself blogging...something that I struggle doing on a consistent basis. Apparently I am really stalling the whole studying thing. I will make this blog short. As you may know finals are next week. Six of them. Yes, six finals in the space of five days. The testing center is open 14 hours a day for five days. That's seventy hours that I have to take those finals. That means I need to be taking a final approximately every eleven hours and forty minutes that the testing center is open or, if you include the ten hours a day that the testing center is closed I need to take a final every twenty hours. Hmmmm...I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about this week. I guess I'll let you know come Friday night. Hopefully I'm still alive, breathing, and sane. To be continued...

Seven, Eight, Lay Them Straight

I've been tagged. In sets of eight. I don't know if my brain can think that much, but we'll see how it goes.

8 favorite tv shows

1. Hannah Montana
2. Leave it to Beaver
3. Arthur
4. Saved by the Bell
5. Flintstones
6. That's So Raven
7. Boy Meets World
8. Full House

8 favorite restaurants

1. Cafe Rio
2. Applebee's
3. Red Robin
4. Chili's
5. IHOP
6. I've developed this new love for Chipotle, but I've only been there twice
7. Wendy's
8. Arctic Circle

8 books I'd recommend

1. The Book of Mormon
2. All Around the Town (the first Mary Higgins Clark book that I read)
3. The Giver
5. Matilda
6. Holes
7. Harry Potter
8. Silly Sally (my favorite book in kindergarten and the first one I read to my teacher)

8 things that happened yesterday

1. I spent two hours shopping for pants and got nothing. Why don't they make pants for people over 5'6"?
2. I went to work - I LOVE my job - the kids make me so happy and help me forget about my own problems and focus on just enjoying life.
3. I got to hear Carol Westby, a famous speech language pathologist, give a lecture.
4. Nichelle made delicious sugar cookies with my Texas/cowboy cookie cutters. YUM!
5. I did two online quizzes for my ComD 133 class - early!
6. I finished my family history assignment.
7. I went to bed way later than I should have.
8. I cleaned out my dresser and cleaned my room.

8 things to look forward to

1. Spending Thanksgiving with my family.
2. Not having school for almost a whole week.
3. My scholarship money coming.
4. Payday.
5. Getting more free stuff in the mail.
6. Christmas.
7. Snow.
8. Being able to play Christmas music publicly.

8 things on my wish list

1. My scholarship money.
2. My own car.
3. Volunteer in Mexico teaching kids English.
4. Snow - real snow that stays on the ground for more than a few hours.
5. Disneyland.
6. New shoes.
7. New ipod earphones since I broke mine.
8. Super powers.

8 things I love about fall

1. Cold nights and cool days.
2. The mountains.
3. Football.
4. Fall clothes.
5. It means snow will be coming soon.
6. It means it's getting close to Christmas.
7. It's a chance to start a fresh new semester.
8. Apples.

8 people I tag

Um...I don't have eight friends...
1. Courtney
2. Nichelle
3. Mary
4. Emmilie
5.
6.
7.
8.

Pumpkins, Candy, and the Modern Stone Age Family...

Wow - I can't believe it's already November. It seems like time just flies! Halloween was awesome last night! We started out the night carving pumpkins (finally...they've been sitting in our apartment for quite some time now!) Unfortunately we only had about a half hour to carve because we had to get our costumes ready.

Jeff and Brian came over and about an hour later we finally had our costumes all ready and we were ready to go!

Yes - that is me, Courtney and Nichelle. :)

The whole gang - From Fred right on down to Dino. It was so much fun with all of us. It took a little to talk Jeff and Brian into it, but I'm so glad they did. I can't remember the last time that I actually got to spend Halloween with my brothers and it wouldn't have been the same without them. We got quite a few comments from people who saw us all together. And if I do say so myself we did a pretty good job with the costumes. My mom made Fred, Barney, and Dino, but we put the others together all by ourselves. It was a great group effort and definitely a Halloween I won't forget.

Back in Business!

So I've now been back in Provo for almost three weeks and I am loving it here. I love everything about being here. I'm starting into my major this semester and I can't wait to really get going. My two big classes are Language Development and Human Anatomy. Language Development is going to be way cool. I'm still not so sure about Anatomy, but I may or may not be getting a little bit excited for that class as well...but I won't admit to that later.

I love being back here at BYU. I love the atmosphere, the classes, the people, and, of course, BYU football 2008! I've been to both games this year and they were both awesome! I loved being back in the student section cheering the Cougars on to victory. What made it even better was being able to be there with both of my brothers. My family also went to Seattle to go to the Washington game. This is what my brothers looked like:

29 days and counting!

So we are now under a month until I move back down to BYU. Because there is only 29 days I thought I'd list 29 things that I'm looking forward to about BYU this semester:

1. Always having someone to play with.
2. Starting class with a prayer.
3. Being surrounded by the gospel.
4. Going to football games at Lavell Edward's Stadium.
5. Coming home to visit for Sunday dinners.
6. Staying up past midnight having fun with my roommates.
7. Kicking boys out of the apartment at midnight.
8. Dessert nights.
9. Sharing a bathroom with girls instead of my brothers. (I HATE the little hairs everywhere!)
10. BYU student ward (not that I don't like the single's ward here...)
11. Starting my major.
12. Courtney.
13. Nichelle - by the way these names were in no particular order. I miss them both a LOT!
14. Mystery roommate.
15. Roommate dinners.
16. Not knowing what the world looks like at six AM.
17. Knowing what the world looks like at three in the morning.
18. Saturday morning breakfasts.
19. Trying to make things taste the way our mom makes them taste.
20. Being on BYU campus again.
21. Three words: All-Sport Pass (or is that two...?)
22. Not worrying about waking someone up when I get home after midnight.
23. Theme nights.
24. Playing games on the kitchen table of our apartment.
25. Apartment life.
26. Having professors that frequently end class with an "Amen."
27. Tuesday morning devotionals.
28. Getting ready in the mornings with someone else.
29. Basically the whole college experience - social, academic, spiritual, emotional.

Oops...

My how time flies when you're having fun...or something like that. I can't believe it's been since March that I've blogged. So much has happened in that time, yet it doesn't seem like long ago at all. The Splash n' Dash came and went, and well, we finished. :) Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Emmilie came and visited - she was our official lap counter. Thanks Em! :)

The triumphant finish...

Finals week also came and went and I've now been living at home for about three months. I miss our apartment a lot, but it is nice to be with my family again. Brian got home on the twentieth of June and it's been exciting to have him home...and to realize that he's still the same annoying older brother that we dropped off at the MTC two years ago. But it's fun to have the whole family together. And I do like being able to drive down to Provo every day with Jeff and Brian. It will be awesome to have all three of us down at BYU together.

But for right now I'm just working, trying to save money. I work at Provo Early Education Program down in Provo during the day. PEEP is an Early Intervention program that serves kids from birth to three with developmental delays. I was hired as an aide in the toddler and pre-todd classes and I love that. For the summer, however, I'm working fully time in the office sort of temporarily taking over the job that Brandi usually does. She's in San Francisco for the summer for her husband's internship. It worked out nicely because she'll be back close to the time that school starts, so I'll go part time after that. I love working there and I love the people I work with - it makes it so much better coming to work every morning.

I'm also working nights at Artic Circle in Riverton. And I actually enjoy that quite a bit as well. A lot of the people there are really fun to work with and you get to meet a lot of interesting people who come in too.

I can't wait to be back down in Provo though. I'm excited to jump into my major (oh yeah - I changed that too). It's now Communication Disorders (Audiology and Speech Language Pathology). Which means that my job at PEEP is giving me a lot of good experience. I'm excited to always have someone to play with, and I'm just excited to be in the college scene again. I love it at BYU and I can't wait to jump back in.

Two in one week!

So I decided to go out on a limb here and throw all of you off (all two of you that read this) and actually blog two times within the space of one week. Impressive, I know. The problem, however, is that I have a serious lack of pictures. Last night was an adventure in and of itself. Kathryn got the idea on Sunday to make a green dinner for us all. So our menu consisted of green mashed potatoes, green salad, green kiwis, green beans, green milk, and chicken (unfortuately - or fortunately for us - Kathryn couldn't figure out how to get the chicken green).

This is a picture of our plate, courtesy of Nichelle. And her phone. It's actually her plate, not ours. That is one thing that we in fact do not all share at 124. Sorry it's kinda pixely. Yes, I'm SURE that's spelled correctly. So anyway, there was much joy and happiness in apartment 124 last night.

On a different note, I am now in training for a biathlon. Yes, this may shock some of you, in fact, it still shocks me on occasion, many occasions. Last Thursday Nichelle and Courtney and I were walking around campus when we spotted a large banner that read "SPLASH AND DASH." Now, you can clearly see how this would catch our attention. We thought, "What is this splash and dash?" Well, our curiosity got the better of us. We walked over to investigate. It all seemed to go downhill from there. Once we got the idea in our head and let it simmer, there was no turning back (numerous gospel analogies can be made). So in just under two weeks the three of us will find ourselves wet and tired. A quarter mile may not seem very far, however, everything seems ten times longer in a pool. That's 18 lengths of the pool! It's a lot! We began our training with a trip to the pool last night. I don't think we even did the whole quarter mile...unless you're pooling (no pun intended) all of our laps together. If you'd like to come cheer us on and/or mock us, please feel free. March 29, 2008 @ 11:30 AM at BYU. Thank you.

4 freshman roommates + 2 pairs of pants = hours of fun!

So once upon a time there were two young girls who had just graduated from high school. These two girls just so happened to be cousins only three weeks apart. They decided to celebrate the closing of one stage and the beginning of the next with a weekend trip to Park City. During their short stay, these two girls had many adventures. They laughed, they played, they shopped, they stayed up late, and they even had some fun with the local law enforcement. In the midst of their exploit, they made an unsuspecting jaunt to the nearby Walmart. There they discovered more than they ever hoped for. They left with enough fabric to make matching VeggieTales quilts and pajama pants. Fast forwarding about nine months, we find the two girls immersed in their second semester at none other than Brigham Young University. The quilts lay on the girls' beds in their shared room, however, the pants were a mere memory; the fabric lay nearly forgotten in the basement of one girl's home. However, luckily for the girls one of their mothers remembered the fabric and took it upon herself to make the pants for them. Okay, so you've probably guessed by now that this is no ordinary story. And yes, indeed, the two girls are in fact me and Courtney. My mom finally made our pants for us; however, my sister told her to make them big because we like big pajama pants. Well, my mom definitely accomplished that one. Courtney and I were putting them on for the first time and we started to get ideas...here's what the result was about ten minutes later.

This is me and Kathryn - Courtney and I decided that we wouldn't be able to fit into the pants together but one of us with either Kathyrn or Nichelle would be able to.

Please keep in mind that these pictures are all at about one in the morning, after we had started getting ready for bed.

Oh cute!

The girls from 124 felt a special bond this night that never has been felt before...

One Semester Down, Only Seven More to Go!

Wow - it has indeed been a very long time since I last blogged. But with a new semester comes a chance to start new again! I quite like the beginning of semesters actually. I can make of the next few months whatever I want to. So let's see...what have I been up to? Well maybe I should start way back where my last blog left off...last November.

This was Nichelle beating me up after taking her yellow belt
test for jiu jitsu. She's a real ninja now...

The most important thing that month happened during the third week of the month...yes, you guessed it - RIVALRY WEEK. Wow. It was so amazing to be here on campus as a student. I still sometimes find myself in the dazed freshman stage, hardly believing that this is all real. Afterall, BYU is what my focus has been on my whole life - it's what I've always wanted to do with my life. Now the future seems so open, so uncertain. Anyway, back to rivalry week. I think that pictures are all that will suffice at a time like this. Words just can't explain...

YAY! Rivalry Week! Nichelle and I
may or may not have matched all week...
Look we are friends!
The fans storming the field after the game...there's no better feeling.

I tried to offer comfort to my very sad ute friend.

Sigh...good times. That game was one of the funnest games I have been to at Lavell Edward's Stadium. Moving quickly along to December. As December drew near I was torn between my excitement for Christmas break and my anxiety for finals week. The fear of the unknown was what really got me. As it turns out, however, the anxiety was worse than the actual event. Finals week turned out to be not too bad. My roommates and I pulled mattresses into our living room and had a week-long sleepover. My days were composed of studying, playing with roommates, studying, eating, sleeping, studying, and taking tests. Sure the studying and taking tests thing wasn't my favorite, but overall not too bad of a week.

Christmas break...Christmas break was amazing. Two weeks with absolutely no obligations, expectations, or stress. Of course by the end I was ready to go back to my life at college, but it was great while it lasted. I loved being with my family again and seeing friends I haven't seen for a while.

Richard, Courtney, Nichelle, and Me skiing over the break...

Nichelle and I on the ski lift.

Spending a day with Mary and Em and Steph was the highlight of my break. It felt so...right to be back with them. I had almost forgotten how much fun it was to have all four of us in the same place just having fun. I've been so lucky to have such amazing friends come into my life. Being with them again made me realize how much they really meant to me and how much I really did miss them. It was so cool. It also reminded me of how easy it is for me to laugh when we are together. It doesn't seem to matter what we are doing - it just makes me happy to be with them again.

It did surprised me how much I really missed being here at BYU. I realized that in just one semester BYU really has become a home for me. I love the people I've met, the friendships I've gained, and the memories I've already made. It made me grateful for the circumstances that allowed me to come here. I know it's where I'm supposed to be and I'm ready to make the most of my time here. I can't believe I really have one semester of college behind me - I'm officially a college student now.

With winter semester comes another exciting stage in my life - attending BYU basketball games, sitting in the student section, as a real live student. This is Nichelle and Courtney and me at one of Nichelle's first college basketball games...


So far this semester has been going well. Some think I'm crazy when they hear that my schedule involves Math 343, CS 124, CS 235, and Physics 121 all in the same semester. But I am loving it. I'm starting to get more specific in my studies and it's awesome. No English or geography or history or art classes to get in the way! Don't worry though - I still am well rounded. One of my favorite classes is my self defense class that I'm taking with Nichelle. Now I know how to defend against her... :) Maybe someday I'll decide on a major....But for now I'm just trying to make the most of here and now.