Time to Blog Again?

Whelp. Turns out I really am a terrible blogger! Maybe it will get better when I'm done with school and have a little more time to tell about my adventures!

In the meantime, I just felt like exclaiming my excitement that school is almost out for the summer!! I just have two "finals" on Friday morning (but really it's just an in-class essay and a lil powerpoint presentation) and then I'm hitting the road once again to spend the next 5 months in the sweet, sweet land of Kuna! So crazy to think that this semester is pretty much over. It flew by!

So, as I think back on it, here are a few reasons why this semester has ROCKED:

1. AWESOME roommates. Our apartment is designed to have six girls in it, but we only had four in ours'. It was great. It was quiet and clean and fun. I lived with Emily and Melissa in the fall too, but I fell like I got a lot closer with them this semester. I had so much fun hanging out with them. Especially on Tuesday nights. Can you say, Dance Moms? Okay... so now I just made us sound a little loser-ish, but really that show is the best. I've never been one to religiously watch a series every week, but my roommates and I got hooked on this show and had to watch it together every Tuesday night. I can't believe it's over and I have to wait until June to find out what's happenin with Abby Lee Miller! 
2. Homework can be fun? I kind of decided to take a lot of the easy classes then needed to get done this semester. I mean... Children's Literature? We had to read 60 children's books throughout the semester. Oh children's books. I love children's books. Shel Silverstein, Katherine Patterson, Beverly Cleary, Sharon Creech, Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, Jerry Spinelli, so many more. Love them all and was happy to call reading their books homework! Also... Art Methods for the Elementary Teacher? Fingerpainting, watercolors, paper mache masks? Yeah. Even though I am not artsy fartsy at all, it rocked. I would gladly color a bad picture of an elephant and call it homework! I also had an amazing religion class this semester... Teachings of the Living Prophets. The majority of the assignments for that class involved studying recent conference addresses. It was great! I learned so much and my testimony sure was strengthened. HERE is the link to my final project for that class. 
3. Oh the Rexburg Temple! It is such a beautiful place! I've been told that the Rexburg temple was built for the students here. And I believe it. They make it so easy for us, anyone with a recommend can walk in during the day and do proxy baptisms and confirmations without an appointment. I love being able to just find a time that works for me and just take a little time out of my day to go to the temple. I've also come to really love the temple workers there. They're all so sweet and happy to be there! I also recently really got into doing family history. I kind of became addicted to Family Search and loved being able to take family names to the temple with me and be baptized for them. It was kind of one the best feelings I've ever experienced. 
4. And.. THE CRUISE! I got back to Rexburg on Monday morning from one of the best weeks ever... a week in the Caribbean with the best family ever! It gave me something to look forward to all semester long. Whenever I thought I was going to freeze to death in this windy tundra called Rexburg, I'd remind myself that I'd soon be cruisin in the Bahamas. It worked... and it was such a wonderful week! It made for a real stressful week beforehand, but it was so worth it!

And now for a few reasons that I'm excited to be back in the good ole Boise area:

1. Ummm... HOME. That's about enough said. I just love being home. 
2. Mommy and Daddy and Pookie. Again, enough said. I just love them and am so excited to spend more time with them!
3. Kassie and Kyle in Boise! What what!! They're living in Boise for the summer and I am so excited to get to spend time with my best friend again! Before the cruise, I hadn't seen Kassie since Thanksgiving! Ridic! So... it's time to make up for lost time! 
4. Rafting/Kayaking... whoop whoop!! My favorite thing ever... oh how I've missed it and can't wait to spend so much time on the river all summer long! 
5. Four-wheeling! I kind of fell in love with this last summer. I love going four-wheeling and exploring the mountains with my dad.
6. FOOOOOOD. Yeah. The only thing I have in my fridge is a few more sticks of string cheese. I can't wait to be home where we always have food in the pantry and some delicious home-cooked meals. 
7. And last of all... free time. I'm really looking forward to just being able to sit and relax without feeling like I should be doing something. Uhm.. yeah... sitting in front of the T.V. watching Disney Channel, White Collar, NCIS, and Burn Notice. My favorite things! And also... I know I had to take a lot of time to read great books throughout the semester, but I'm excited to have time to do nothing but read books I love. I haven't quite got my summer reading list yet, but I'm sensing some MoFicLit. And finishing the Hunger Games Trilogy. 

YAY! I CAN'T WAIT FOR FRIDAY TO GET HERE ALREADY!!!!! 

It's About Time I Tell Some More Adventures...

Welp! Looks like I got  more busy with school than I thought I would for that last month of the fall semester! Now I have a bit of time to reflect and think back on some of my adventures I've had since Thanksgiving. Man, that seems so long ago!
Thanksgiving was great! My whole family was there and we had a blast visiting with everyone.
After I took the week off from school for Thanksgiving, I had to get back to SO MUCH work in the three weeks before the semester ended. Seriously, I don't know how my brother-in-law Jon does it... I think I have a lot of school work to do, but then I think about him and how he's at school ALL DAY. By the time finals week came around, I was pretty much burnt out with all my classes. I only had a couple of actual final exams and the rest were final projects I had to do. I did not do very much studying at all, but ended up doing pretty well in all of my classes.
I was so excited when I was all done with those classes and it was Christmas Break time. Yay for going home to real food, my favorite Christmas decorations, my big comfy bed (not the Big Comfy Couch... that girl was weird, but entertaining!), and of course, the best family in the world. I missed having Kassie there so much, but her and Kyle had fun at the Christians and then on their honeymoon. I was so grateful for the time I got to spend with my two adorable nieces. Over the break, I actually never wanted to sleep in too long because I didn't want to miss out on precious time spent with them! Olivia is a little hoot. It was so fun to watch her sing and dance, she's a star! And little Emma is the cutest baby ever. I just loved holding her all day every day. And it was so fun to be able to see her grow; in just that short amount of time we saw her learn how to crawl! Another fun thing was having Nate and his new FIANCE, Mindi there for a couple of days. I love them both so much and am so excited for them!
My sisters and I have this little Christmas time tradition where we take a day to just bake our little hearts out. It usually ends up being just Bre and I. I think everyone else grows impatient with us and our goofiness and our (my) ability to mess up the easiest recipes. This year Malissa came over and stuck with us through all of our craziness. And we made so many delicious goodies that all turned out! Yay!
After Christmas, the fam had planned on going up to my grandparents cabin in McCall for a couple of days, but poor Olivia got sick, and then the rest of us didn't want to go without them so we all stayed home. It was actually pretty nice to just sit at home and relax for a day or two. A couple days after Liv had gotten sick, we thought she was feeling better, and Bre, Allison, and I decided to just get out of the house and treat ourselves (or have mom treat us I guess...) to some Cheesecake Factory. We got there, sat at our table, got our drinks, ordered our food, and just sat there chatting and waiting for our food. Out of the blue Liv started crying and suddenly there was Livi puke all over the table. Breanne rushed her to the bathroom, Allison took her weak stomach and dashed away from the puke scene, and I just sat there with Emma (who seemed very content through all of this), not knowing what to do. Finally, the busboy came and started to clean up the table while I just sat there awkwardly. Then Breanne came out of the restroom, walking towards the door with Livi behind her. Through the whole restaurant, I'm pretty sure everyone could here Liv screaming, "I WANT MY MAC AND CHEESE!" over and over again. Bre finally told  her she couldn't have it right now because she was covered in "spit" as Livi calls it and they just needed to go out to the car. I was finally able to grab our waitress and tell her we wanted our food to go. When we got the food, we went out to the car, where the stripped down Liv was still crying for her mac and cheese. Maybe this is bizarre, but I thought that was pretty funny.
I had such a hard time leaving my family when it was time to come back to Rexburg for the winter semester. I already miss Liv and Em so much! (And of course all of my other family members too!) I bawled my eyes out when I had to drive away!
I am so grateful for a couple of good roommates who make being here and away from home a little bit easier though. When I first got back to my apartment, my roommate Emily called out my name, came running out of her bedroom, and gave me a big hug. And then sypmathized with me when I told her about how my bad day had turned worse when I got my first speeding ticket. Yep, that happened. I was dumb, was speeding, got caught, and bawled my eyes out again (apparently I had put them back in after the first time) when I got slammed with a ticket. They also make it easier to be here because they are so fun and seem to like to turn everything into an adventure too! That first night back, Emily thought she had lost her phone. She was certain that when she had thrown away her trash, she had thrown her phone into the dumpster too. So, I went outside with her (in my Christmas pajamas!) to help her look for it. And then we were going to move our roommate Melissa's car to campus so she could drive herself home when her shuttle got there. Emily climbed the ladder up to the top of the dumpster, leaned over, and yelled at me to hold onto her feet. I'm sure that was quite the sight; seeing me in my jammies, holding onto a pair of legs coming out of the dumpster. After she had been looking for awhile, I heard a mysterious clunk come from the dumpster. And then, "Oh no, my keys!" And then another clunk. "Oh no! Melissa's keys!" Then I thought I heard something hit the ground behind me, but couldn't see anything. Emily couldn't find her phone, so she got down from the dumpster. "Where's Melissa's keys?" she asked me. Uhhhhh.... oh, that's what hit the ground behind me! So then we looked like a couple of fools (we didn't already), crouching down, searching the dark parking lot for the keys that Emily had thrown at me so she wouldn't drop them again. We did a little happy dance when we found them. She gave up on her phone for a second and we went to drop of Melissa's car. When we got back, we went into Emily's room to make sure her phone wasn't in there. I called it, but it was on silent. Then, she lifted up her skirt that was on her bed. WADA! There was her phone! Good thing we made an adventure out of that!
So, after a wonderful Christmas break that went by way too fast, I'm back into the swing of things with school and I kind of feel like I never left! I have all new classes though, and have high hopes for a great semester. Except for maybe my art methods class that I have to take so I know how to teach art in my future classroom. My first assignment was to draw a self-portrait. I have never ever been good at drawing anything. After spending quite some time on this assignment, I have a picture that looks like it came straight from Napolean Dynamite. "It took me three hours to finish the shading on your upper lip." Pictures may or may not be coming soon, for your entertainment and laughing pleasure.

Again, I'm sorry that I ramble so much, but now I feel like I kind of got caught up on what's been happening in the exciting-when-I-make-it-exciting life that I have.

The Perfect Day (Sing it with me... nothin's standin in my way!)

Today has been the perf day. And when I say perf I mean perfect. We have church at 8:20. That's not the perf part. That actually stinks. BUT, it does mean that we get to come home and get back into pajamas by 11:30. Except today we had to go to tithing settlement at 1:20, so we all just stayed in our churchy church clothes and watched the tube until then. When we got back, we all hurried to get in our jammies and then my roommates moved their big mattresses downstairs to the living room. We watched the Wedding Planner (well part of it before falling asleep) and had apartment nap time. For about four hours. It was the best day ever. We woke up at like 5:40 when it was already dark. And we haven't really moved much since then. Except to get up to get food.

It's also perfect because I'm going home tomorrow morning for THANKSGIVING! YAHOO!!!! I'm super duper excited. I'm even just skipping all of my classes because I want to get home!

Yesterday, Makayla and I went to our friend's apartment for a little partay. We fingerpainted. Obviously, Mak and I painted a Christmas tree. It's now hanging on our wall. It was fun to act like first graders. (Outside of the first grader classroom.)

Today in sacrament meeting, a girl sang Come Thou  Fount for the musical number. That song has always been one of my favorites. I love it so much. As soon as she started singing, I knew I was in trouble because I remember my cousin singing it at my grandma's funeral. And the girl sang it so beautifully, and even she started crying. I had tears streaming down my face.

"O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above."

I wish all of life could be like a first grade classroom.

Whelp... I've been reading 1984 for the past few hours (because I procrastinated homework major... I just sounded like Zenon... pancaked!), and now I'm taking a break from homework. Woohoo for Friday night? Makayla's gone, so this is what I do with myself. We had a friend tell us it's like we're married. Makayla said, "No... we ARE married." Haha

I wanted to write about my adorable first graders. I'm in an early practicum class, which currently has me working in a first grade classroom 2 hours a day, 3 days a week. It's funny how I've only been in this classroom for a few weeks now, but I feel like they are MY first graders (hence me calling them my adorable first graders). They are CARAZY. But I love them! Here's just a few touching stories I have from them.
1. The teacher asked me to turn the outside of the door to the classroom into a tree so that the students' "thankful leaves" could be falling from it. This entailed me taping branches made out of crumpled up brown construction paper onto the wall, above the door. Everyone in that classroom seems to think I'm a giant or something, but I was certainly not tall enough to do this. Even with a chair. Everyone in that classroom also needs to realize that scotch tape is not an adequate resource for a job such as this was. I think I was standing on that chair (in my heels) for an hour. I'd finally get a few branches to stay on that darn wall, and then they would come down on me. Literally... on me (good thing those things were made of paper!). I'd start trying to get the fallen branch back up, and then all of them would fall down again. I was getting so frustrated. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of hiding my frustration when I moved the chair out of the way so the class could go to recess. But when one little girl came out, she wrapped her arms around my legs and gave me a big ole hug. Yes. I love my first graders.
2. As I was making that tree, the whole class had come out of the room to go to recess, so I moved the chair back and got back to work. Another little girl stayed behind to talk to me about what I was doing, and then realized she couldn't get her coat zipped up and needed to go back in the classroom for help. Without giving me a second to think about it, she pulled the door open. It obviously hit the chair I was standing on. I have never felt so close to death! My arms some how turned into windmills and for about 30 seconds I had to fight to get my balance back. I think I may have let out a little scream too. Dear little first grade Preslie just stared at me with amazement for this whole 30 seconds until I finally gained my balance. Then she let out a little chuckle and turned around to go in the classroom to get her coat zipped up. Yep. So many fun things happen.
3.The class was making scarecrows to write a short story about and then to hang on the wall in the classroom. There was one little boy hadn't finished yet, so it was my job to "supervise" him and help him finish. So, I sat next to him while he colored his scarecrow and told me about it. I realized pretty quickly that this little boy likes to get a reaction out of me. (I realized this my first day in the classroom when they had to draw pictures of things that they could count in the woods. He drew these strange circles with lines down the middle. When I asked me what he counted three of in the woods, he said, "Buttcracks" with a smirk on his face. Pleasant. I don't want to go to those woods!)  Anyways, as soon as sat down he grabbed the red marker and started putting red dots all over the scarecrow. He looked at me, and said, "He's a bloody scarecrow!" Oh. Pleasant again. And then he grabbed the yellow marker and colored his scarecrow's eyes. "He's a zombie scarecrow!" I just raised my eyebrows and said, "Oh... it's a scary scarecrow!" I couldn't think of anything more clever than that. Lame. And then he started telling me about his scarecrow... "It's a scary zombie. He stays in the cornfield and scares people and he's like 'Ahhggghhhh!'" He said this as he acted it out, with his arms straight out in front of him. "And he tries to scare me, but I'm not scared. I have my rifle. And I just go [as he uses his hand as a rifle] Pow! Pow! Pow!" Then he puts his hands down and matter-of-factly says, "Terminated." I couldn't even do anything but laugh at the fact that a first grader was saying this to me. Yes, touching.
I really do just love being in that classroom. It's so amazing to me to be able to see how these students can improve so much so quickly on different things. I love seeing the kids who just a couple weeks ago would ask me to read every word of anything to them, now being able to sound out the words and figure a lot out on their own. Now I know why I've always wanted to be a teacher. It's so rewarding to see the kids improve like that! And I'm not even a teacher yet!

Adventures! (Some Beach!)

So... I decided to join the blogging world! Woohoo for me! We'll see how this goes!

Anywho... I realized today that Makayla and I seem to turn everything into an adventure. We're just such adventurous girls I guess! We do crazy things like climbing down from a fault scarp on the wrong (VERY STEEP) trail when we're on a field trip with our Natural Disasters class. We impressed everyone in our class with our ability to find these hidden shortcuts and then run down them without even falling. (Basically... that was pretty lucky for me... our whole class was watching me, and for once in my life I didn't fall on my face. Or bum.) That's just one example of our great adventurousness. That is definitely a word.
Another example happened yesterday. This really shouldn't have been an adventure, but we turned it into one. We both have class in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and then we both come home for a couple of hours before going to our Natural Disasters class together. We drive to campus because we live far away. Not at all because we are lazy! The problem is, we both have parking permits that are only for the parking lots furthest away from where our Natural Disasters class is. It's cold. And, okay... our laziness has gotten to us a little bit... We always have to try to get as close a parking spot as we can. So... yesterday, Makayla drove us both to class, and we drove around all of the streets that our permit allows us to park on. We could not find a satisfying parking spot. So, I told her to just drive around again. Maybe we were too early, and people would get out of class and open up parking spots. So, we drove around again. Still, we saw no satisfying parking spots. We were still a little bit early, so I said again, "Drive around one more time!" So, Makayla drove around again. And again... we found no spot close enough to satisfy us. We almost gave up and parked somewhere far away, when we saw a closer spot! We hooted and hollered and shouted for joy! Makayla drove up to the spot and were so excited to get it, but then we saw an even closer spot! So we started cheering again! I'm sure we got some pretty strange looks from people on campus because were dancing and cheering with excitement. As soon as Mak started driving up to this spot, a car came out of no where and whipped right in! And I thought to myself, "What are we, in a Blake Shelton song?!" We were deflated. No more cheering. We actually started yelling at them. So then we looked behind us just in time to see another car taking the spot we just passed up. Blah. More cursing that car (No, no swear words were involved). Welp... we decided we had no other choice but to make another loop around the streets and try again. At the end of our loop (do loops have ends?... I don't think that's correct to say, but you know what I mean!) We finally found another spot. It wasn't very close at all, but we decided it would do. But, right as Mak was getting ready to turn into this spot, some stupid white Ford SUV was coming up the road. So she had to stop and wait for him to pass (rather than making this an even bigger adventure by cutting him off). Welp.. it turned out he wasn't just driving by. HE STOLE OUR FREAKING PARKING SPOT. Another Blake Shelton moment. Right before he got to the spot, he turned on his blinker, smiled his pretty boy smile at us, and slowly turned into the spot as he busted up laughing. What a jerk. I was so upset, I just kept yelling at him, but he of course couldn't hear me because we were both in different cars. Now, once again, we had no other choice but to drive around in hopes of finding another parking spot. We made another complete loop before finding a spot, just three parking spots further than the stupid Ford. That boy better hope I don't see his car again. I might... I don't know what I'd do. But I was not happy with him. Not happy Bob!
Anyways... this is just a small taste of some of our adventurousness. Again, I'm insisting that that is a word. We also like to find coupons or deals that get us free, or close to free, stuff. Today we got free hot chocolate. From the cocoa bean. Delish. On Saturday we're getting buy one get one free at jamba. This is our life. Love it.

I'm sorry I'm such a rambler. You probably just read through all of that looking for some significance to anything... and found none. But, I just like to tell stories... And I've been told all my life that I give way too much detail to stories that could probably be summed up in just one sentence. So, I'm sorry. I hope you got some kind of enjoyment out of this!
Until next time!!