Closing In

I can see it! I can finally see the end of the semester! Just three more weeks of classes and one week of finals and I will have completed my freshman year! How crazy is that?

This last week has been great (as usual :) filled with more birthday celebrations and homework and studying and friends.

Monday~I made myself sick studying for my Civ. midterm.  Note to self (or anyone else): Sleeping for a few hours followed by studying for a few hours all night is a BAD idea.  Don't do it.  It's not worth it :P

Tuesday~I got my box of birthday presents from my family! I got the cutest jacket and jewelry from my mommy, an adorable scarf from Hannah, Inception from Hunter and Apples to Apples from Bridger.  It was a great day :) I also went out to dinner with my childhood friend, Tyler.  We went to Los Hermanos, one of the restaurants our families went to together when we were younger.  Our birthdays are four days apart, so Tuesday night was the half way point between our two birthdays which is why we went out to eat.  Tyler reminds me so much of my dad it is ridiculous!  It was so great to catch up with him and talk about our futures and what we will be doing in the next few years.  I told him multiple times that night that we are too old for him to be going on a mission.

I opened up my box and it was PINK! It made me really happy :)

Here is a picture for my Mommy so she knows how cute all of the stuff she got me was :)

I LOVE these earrings.  I wore them to dance on Wednesday and while we were doing the cha cha they were really loud and fun :)

Wednesday~I officially finished my Physical Science class.  I locked myself in a reserved study room in the library and studied for two hours before taking the final.  I finished that stupid final at 10:15 pm and was wiped out.  My friend David was kind enough to walk me home from the library that night.  After I got home I passed out and went to bed.

Thursday~I went to lunch with Emily at the Creamery and did homework and laundry.  A very exciting day I know.  I also watched the BYU basketball game.  We lost :( I even busted out the double pom poms and it was no use.  After the game, I ate a bowl of ice cream and life was slightly better.

Friday~I went to a university forum by Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) with my friends Emily, David, and Jordan.  It was so fantastic and very interesting.  He is a pretty chill, down to earth guy.  On our way back to the dorms from the Marriott Center, it was SNOWING really, really hard.  As soon as I got back to my apartment, I blow dried my hair, jeans and feet.  And to think I almost wore sandals that morning...Later that night, I went to a Tri-ward neon dance.  It was a lot of fun.  It was sort of funny because most of the night I was the only girl in our dancing circle which consisted of Jordan, Alec, David and one or two of their various roommates at any given time.  Every once in a while another girl would pop in but wouldn't stay for long.  It was so much fun and I had a blast dancing with my guy friends.  They really are the best :)

This is what my hair looks like after a 7 minute walk in the SNOW :(

Me with Jordan and David at the neon dance.  

(LOOK HOW SHORT I AM!! Isn't if fantastic? ;)

Saturday~I slept in really late.  I must have been really exhausted.  After doing some homework and goofing off, I went to Emily's ward's talent show with David.  It was really funny and very good.  I am amazed with people and their talents.  After the talent show, David, Emily, and Westin came over to watch Inception.  It was so great! After the movie, we talked until curfew with lots of mind blowing questions.

Sunday~Another Open Mic Sunday in the BYU 68th Ward.  For the first time in a while, we didn't go over! After Sacrament meeting, I left to go up to my grandparents' for dinner.  My uncle was there recovering from a surgery he had earlier in the week.  I LOVE talking to my Uncle Russ.  He is so funny and teases me a lot.  But the way he teases me, makes me laugh at myself.  I always end up crying from laughing so hard.  He drove me back to campus and we had a really good talk.  He told me things I needed to hear and really made me think about where my life is currently going and where I actually want it to go.  I love my uncle so much and I am so glad that he is part of my family.  I am so grateful for him and the advice that he gives me.

Birthday Week!

What a wonderful week this has been! I did something fun every night this week, a lot of those things were in connection to my birthday which made them even better :D

Monday~Happy Pi Day! Yes, it is a huge holiday on the BYU campus.  And yes, we are a bunch of nerds.  But that is ok :) Miss Emily came over and we had dinner together followed by the Breakfast Club coming over and help me finish off the cake from Sunday night's birthday party with the fam.  I spent the rest of the night licking rocks...don't even ask.

David brought me a balloon and chocolate as an early birthday present :)

Tuesday~MY LAST DAY OF LICKING ROCKS EVER!!!! I talked to my dad and to my brother for a while.  I got my brother excited (well, as excited as Bridger can get) to come out here for a visit in a few weeks and for him starting school here in the fall.  It was another BEAUTIFUL spring day.  Sunshine is the best medicine :)

Wednesday~Classes, homework, the usual.  I also hung out with Jordan for a bit before going to Jane Austen's Persuasion with Emily and some of her roommates.  I have officially converted to the Jane Austen Fan Club.  I am no longer an Anti-Austen.

Thursday~Only ONE CLASS!!! Woohoo!! I spent the rest of my morning doing dishes, laundry and homework.  Then Jordan came over to say good-bye before he left to go back to San Jose for the weekend to see his brother who just got off his mission last week.  I watched the BYU basketball game. We won!!! That made me happy :D After the game I went to my last dance lab.  It was even better than the first one! I mostly danced with Jason and Ramon.  We waltzed and cha cha-ed and it was fantastic.  They are both such amazing dancers and are very strong leaders which is good because they are both a level ahead of me and I was able to follow them into more advanced steps!

Friday~More homework and nothing too exciting.  I was quite the party animal and kicked off my Friday night by taking a Doctrine and Covenants midterm.  The rest of the night was spent watching Cinderella, painting my fingernails and catching up on some TV shows with Heather.

Saturday~Probably one of my favorite days of the week :) I woke up and went to a midterm review session for my civ. class (THE most boring class in the history of the world) After that, Emily took me out for lunch and ice cream as a birthday present.  We went to Olive Garden and it was DELICIOUS!! Cold Stone was our next stop.  Good thing we walked home...we were able to burn off some of what we ate ;) Once I got home, I was in a food coma for a few hours but pushed through and went to another review session for my civ. class with a guy from my ward and another girl from my class.  I came home and worked on my Relief Society lesson (only one more to teach!) and watched the BYU game.  We are headed to the Sweet Sixteen Baby! It was a fantastic game. So much fun to watch :) After the game, Miss Sydney came over and we had a princess party.  We watched The Princess and the Frog and The Swan Princess, made paper crowns and ate ice cream.  It was a wonderful night.

Ah, Cold Stone :-d

I swear, Sydney and I really are twins.  See? We matched without even planning it!

Pretty, Pretty Princesses :)

Sunday~ Today I am 19! Wow.  I'm getting old.  It was a very chill birthday which I quite enjoyed.  My dad was in town so he picked me up after church and took me to my grandparents' where he cooked me dinner (steak and baked potatoes: one of my favorites!) We then Skyped with the rest of the family in Michigan for a while before he drove me back to the Bubble.  I got bombarded with cake so I am declaring another cake eating party tomorrow night.

Heaven

Another AMAZINGLY fantastic week (with only one mishap).  I am SO in love with life right now! They say that your college years are the best years of your life. I can totally see why! I am having so much fun and am enjoying every minute of my BYU experience.  So many great things have happened this week!

I re-discovered this weekend just how amazing my friends are and how much they love me.  I had a girls night with Alex and Sydney on Saturday night.  We ate pizza, talked about boys, saw Tangled (third time for me!), got ice cream and I ended up sleeping over in their dorm with them.  I was having a rough day and they were so loving to me.  I don't see them as often as I should, I mean we only live MAYBE a ten minute walk apart.  Even though it is half way through the semester, I guess it is never too late to change things :)

This is Sydney.  She is my long lost twin sister.  Seriously, we are so similar in so many ways we SWEAR we were separated at birth.  

This is Alex.  She was the first friend I had at BYU.  She is one of the sweetest, nicest, kindest, most loving people you will ever meet.  She always makes me feel loved :) (plus her hair is FANTASTIC! ;)

No girls night is complete without Creamery ice cream :-d

Sleepover! We squashed their beds together and slept.  It was actually pretty comfy.  Jordan suggested we sleep perpendicular to the way you would usually sleep in a bed until he realized that we are all really tall and that wouldn't work out so well....

Jordan was also extra sweet this week.  He let me tag along with him to various events and didn't seem to mind (at least I hope not!) I went with him and Alec to our stake musical fireside on Wednesday night.  Friday night, I went to the A Cappella Jam to support him and Alec (who was able to do percussion!) and David who sang in the A Cappella Club Choir.  After that we all went to go get ice cream and it was great.  And Jordan also let me tag along with him and a few of his roommates to Stake Conference Sunday morning.  He also randomly, unexpectedly stopped by on Thursday to give me a hug because he knew that I had two mid-terms that I was pretty stressed about.  

Alec was a great friend this week too.  He helped me study for my Spanish midterm.  It took me 20 minutes to learn the words for peach.  But, Alec had SOOOO much patience with me.  Let's just say learning Spanish vocab is not one of my strongest abilities. ..but Alec was kind enough to work with me for almost an hour on it.  And I think my exam  went pretty well!

In addition to my friends being so wonderful this week, I also got to see my amazingly wonderful, crazy family :)  We had my birthday dinner (even though my birthday is next Sunday, my grandparents are going to be out of town so we had it tonight.)  My birthday week-and-a-half party has officially begun! I love my family so much.  I always seem to think, when I get back to my dorm after spending time with them, "That is what Heaven is going to be like."  All of us around.  Laughing.  Loving. And just being so happy it is ridiculous.  

Marley and Mitchell were hiding in the pantry, behind the potatoes.  Why? I have no idea.  My only explanation is that they are 5 and 2...

Miss Marley put the candles on my cake.  She was able to count all of the way up to 19 (I know! I'm getting old!) all by herself.  

Didn't she do a wonderful job?

Mitchell had to help me with those last two candles. ;)

  Three generations: My Gooma, My Aunt MaryAnn and me :)

Yup, I'm pretty sure the feelings and experiences I have had this week are as close as I will get to Heaven while I'm still here on Earth.  :)

How Can I Be So Lucky?

Another week that has just flown by! Hard to believe that I am officially one week into the second half of the semester! Sometimes I wish that time would just slow down.  I wish there was more time to enjoy life.  While I do try to enjoy life as much as I can, it still seems like it isn't enough.  Somedays I just take a step back and look at my life and think "Wow.  I am really here.  I am really at BYU having the time of my life.  Life can't be this good.  It really can't.  How can I be so lucky?"

Sunshine: This has been another gorgeous week in the Bubble.  So much sunshine! You can't not smile :) I started running again this week and it really helped to have the sunshine be out.  It made me not so miserable on my runs ;) Well, I actually don't get too miserable while running.  It is hard but I alway feel fantastic afterwards that it is totally worth it.  I like the quote from Legally Blonde "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy."

Devotional: The devotional was exceptionally good this week.  On the way out of the Marriott Center I heard a guy say to his friend, "Dude! That was such a bomb devo!" And that it was ;) It was all about how we chose to come to BYU for a reason.  How BYU is very different because every class, no matter what the subject is, is taught with the Spirit.  It is so true! Almost all of my classes start with a prayer and it isn't unusual for a professor to pull a scripture into our lecture for the day.  I mean, where else in the world would you diagram sentences in Spanish from the Book of Mormon? The speaker also talked about one of the aims of BYU, "Become a lifelong learner." He used a quote from James E. Faust that I really liked, "Learning is more than cramming for tests.  Education is more than bulimia at exam time." It really made me think about how I am treating my education.  Am I a student or am I a learner?

Basketball: The last two games of the season were this week, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday.  Wednesday night was so depressing.  After the whole Brandon Davies fiasco, we fell apart.  New Mexico KILLED us.  It took a long time of me yelling at the TV before Coach Rose finally listened to me and went to a man-to-man defense instead of a zone.  We also started to take less threes and go for buckets in the paint.  Emily and I made a goal for the Cougars to get within 20 points by the end of the game.  We did. New Mexico 82- Cougars 64. Saturday's game I was much more impressed with.  We played Wyoming and won 102-78.  We actually played as a team! It was really nice to see everyone step up and to have a lot of other people scoring, not just having a Jimmer show.  I was very happy with Charles Abouo and  Kyle Collinsworth.  They were AMAZING and really stepped up their game.  And of course you can't forget my favorite, Jackson Emery, finishing his last home game with 18 points.  Now onto the Mountain West Conference Championships!!

Temple: I went to the Temple by myself this week and it was great! It was a lovely walk both there and back.  And it was not overly crowded like it is some Friday nights.  I took my journal this time and wrote for most of the time I was waiting.  I filled many pages and it was such a good feeling.  I wrote my testimony.  I have never really done that before.  It was so peaceful, just writing what I know to be true and how I feel about the Gospel.

Date Night: After getting out of the Temple, I checked my phone to see that I had a missed call from my friend Jason.  So I called him back to see what he needed and he asked me on a date :) We went to go see Tangled in 3D with Jason's roommate Carlos and his girlfriend.  The movie was so cute! It was the second time I had seen it and I love it even more now :) There was a miscommunication about the time so Jason ended up picking me up early so we just played Nertz at his apartment.  I was quite proud of myself, I held my own and didn't lose horribly like I usually do. (Thank you FHE!) But I think my favorite part of the night was when we were going to the movie.  Jason opened the car door for me, something that has never happened to me before, ever.  When we got to the theater, I started to open the door but he pulled it shut and told me to wait.  He then came around and opened the door for me again! I really didn't think guys did that anymore.  It was a very nice surprise.  :)

Fireside: This week there was another fireside after church.  This week I was lucky enough to hear from Elder L. Tom Perry! The main theme of his talk was us stepping up and becoming the greatest generation.  It was very, very good.