A week off.

So this week was pretty much a week off of anything school related for me. Sure, I did all the reading that I had to do and went to class and whatnot. But there were no tests, no papers, not much of anything really. Just a whole lot of free time to chill and get to do some pretty crazy stuff. Monday night started it all off, or course, like it usually does every week. Although, I guess I should accurately start with Sunday and first start by stating my disappointment with the Superbowl and great despair at the loss of the Cardinals. I did convert a few Cardinals fans, however, and had some people who were strongly against me and I ended up being the loser. But oh well. Its not like I could help the team do any better than they did. I did learn that I am one of the only people in my room who watches TV or movies on Sundays. To me, its a great bonding experience, and to them Im not sure what it is. So I was kind and went to a room a couple doors down to watch the Superbowl and enjoy the company of people who didn't think I was the devil for watching it on Sunday. I guess people are just raised differently and I just need to accept that fact, even if it means watching something like a Disney movie on a Sunday can then be taken to be a bad thing. Monday night Kelly Ann and I started building the largest marble shoot I think BYU campus has ever seen. It spanned out from our dorm and down all the stairs into the basement and ended up right near the base of the ping pong table. It had it all: jumps, drops, curves, dominoe tower to knock down at the end, and a three months worth collection of toilet paper and paper towel tubes. It was magnificent. Although, by the end only half the marbles ended up making it all the way down, but still you can't have everything. We spent a grand total of around 2 1/2 hours getting it all constructed and messing around with it. And then just played with it until we were forced to take it down around 11:30. By the end, we had Brad, Courtney, Whitney, Greg, Aaron, Jared, Will, and even some others working on it. I guess I should mention that Regan helped by pointing out all the faults and flaws in the design. He seems to relish taking that job a lot. Tuesday was free grand slam at Denny's day. A truly wonderful invention. My morning class was cancelled which was great because it meant that I could end up waiting in line outside the restaurant for the 45 minutes it took to get in and the same time it took our food to get to the table. But it was free, which was the important thing. Free food is always amazing and worth waiting for. That took up most of the morning, as I am sure anyone could see. Tuesday night was my fabulous night class where I had to lead my group's entire relay set up and get everyone excited and pumped up for it. I was up in front of everyone the whole time and had a blast doing it - and yelling and screaming at the top of my voice and making sure everyone was having fun and so on. I don't think there is a better class anywhere ever invented than that. Simply a blast plus an easy A for three credits. After that, I went to Legends Grille and had a hamburger which turned out to be delicious. They make them in big hunks of meat which tastes just right especially with the homemade toasted buns that they use. Then I came home and watched Batman Begins for fun and to waste some time because I honestly had nothing else to do and not much energy left to do it with. Wednesday turned out to be Psych night because the first and second season finally arrived in the mail on Tuesday. We watched the pilot episode for the series and saw how the whole crazy awesome show started. It was a very long pilot, but it was still awesome and fun to watch. My only problem with the show is swearing. If they could just fix that and take it out, the show would be almost perfect. After that I watched Dark Knight to finish up a Batman two days. The movie still creeps me out to no end and I don't think I should ever watch it again but there is something vaguely addicting to watching the movie and seeing how all the characters can spiral downwards into madness and despair based upon the actions and terrible misdeeds of a single person. A single person can have such a major effect on the entire world around them, its ridiculous. Thursday was laundry day (as usual)! But it gave me the chance to catch up on all my homework (history reading) and to get some napping in on the couch, eat delicious food, and play with Brooke and Bryn and review my Disney movies. Its a time I look forward to every week in order to relax and just get away from the crazy insanity that is college life. Thursday night I felt like being random and so got people to come with me to Walmart and play some pretty intense games of Sardines. Its quite amusing to see how people can hide inside the store and how extraordinarily long it can take to find them or for some people to find them at any rate. Brad, Whitney, Kelly Ann, Kahi, Will, and I played there and had a blast doing it. Friday I had a date night once I survived through all my classes and work and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I took Sherrie so naturally, it was more fun than anything. Best friends usually make for the best dates. We went to Knight Games, which was supposed to be a mini-Renaissance festival but turned out to be somewhat of a fluke. It was still fun though, at least a little bit. After that we played some murderous sardines in the HFAC and Sherrie and I were the first and only ones to hide because no one could ever find us. We were that good at finding the perfect spot. After the building closed, we came home and played Imaginiff and Quelf in the lobby and had some ice cream sundaes to go with it. Sherrie and I lost Imaginiff terribly, but won Quelf by a landslide. So apparently we can't think the same as anyone else, but we can out-random anybody. We finised up the night watching the new episode of Psych. Yesterday was Saturday and it was as busy as the rest of the week. I started off with racquetball at 8 in the morning and managed to roll my ankle pretty bad. I then headed off to a geology lab and then went snowshoeing in the moutains. If you wear shoes that aren't waterproof, snow manages to numb a swollen and throbbing ankle fairly well. Plus the gorgeous scenery and sheer fun of hiking made it a blast. I went with Will, Stephen McNary, Sherrie, and Colten and we ended up hiking all the way to the top of Squaw Peak, which was never the plan to start off with but we ended up doing it and once we started up the peak, we just couldn't stop. The snow was amazing - almost all of it was fresh and powdery and clean. And the view at the top was stunning. We ended up sitting at the top for a full 30 minutes before we felt the need to start thinking about coming down at all. The snowshoes in themselves were just fun too and I have to say I wouldn't mind doing it again. Not in the least. After we finished that (and it took almost all day) I came home and called Adam for his birthday and tried to go see Humor U but it sold out in a ridculous amount of time - all of about ten minutes. So we play Cranium at Courtney's apartment and I went to bed around midnight exhausted and sore but extremely happy and at peace with the world. It was nice to just get a week to do some of the things that I have not had the opportunity to do yet and to go outside my normal comfort range and do something adventurous. This week I plan on starting and sticking to a schedule. Waking up around 7 every morning and then proceeding to get in an hour workout (basketball, volleyball, running, racquetball, etc.), reading the scriptures, showering, indexing, and then whatever time is left for breakfast and some cleaning up. That way I can start feeling like a productive person and not like Im just wasting my life away doing nothing. Also, Wednesday night will be Psych crockpot night. Monday night is FHE. Tuesday night is class and some special dinner set up (whether going out to eat or making something fancy). Friday night will be smoothie/movie night. Im going to need to find movies that are G or PG and perfectly clean in every way, so if you have any suggestions, let me know please! And then Thursday or Saturday Im going to start making a date night, or at least once every other week. So I plan on keeping myself busy and on track for the rest of the semester.

Thought of the week: "I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in." ~George Washington Carver. This is something I rediscovered as I was hiking up the mountain and seeing all that God has created and the beauty and the majest contained therein.

Song of the week: "Superman" by Five for Fighting. It has always been one of my favorite songs and one that always hits me deeply. I listened to it a lot this week.

Pictures of the week:

The Marble Tube
The Date Night
Snowshoeing Extravaganza!

The Good Life....or should we say the Easy Life

Life this week was pretty much learning how to get back into the swing of things again because I had two midterms that I had to take one day after another. It was exciting and moved along fast enough so that it never felt like time was going by too slow or anything. Monday was home teaching day or so Stephen McNary and I decided. Girls are decidedly much different than guys. We ended up home teaching to them for over an hour and a half. I guess most of it was just chatter and talking away trying to get to know each other. But the lesson still took up a pretty decent chunk of time. It was about the first presidency message on missionary work and making sure to live our lives according to the gospel so that we can live the way we teach and set good examples for those who are not memebers of our faith. After that I came home and started studying for my biology test which was going to happen the very next day and decided once again that biology as a freshman in college was much easier than biology as a freshman in high school. Mr. Higbee made us work hard for that class in 9th grade, a lot harder than I ever truly realized until I came to college and saw how honestly slow biology could be taught. We spent a whole freaking month on the scientific method. That is ridiculous. Not only did I learn that back in 5th grade, it is also way too easy to not cover in just one day no matter how you teach it. Unless it is biology 100 at BYU I guess. Then you can take a whole month and bore every single student to tears. But I was more than prepared for the test. I scored a perfect on the multple choice and then am fairly confident I achieved about the same on the free response. Tuesday was take the test day and go to my one class and hit devotional day. The devotional was interesting and convincing. It had to do with an engineering professor who works in the weather explained global warming and how humans have managed to play quite a decent sized role in it. He said things would probably never get to the disasters of the Day After Tomorrow or anything, but that global warming was a real and driving force that was both natural and greatly expidtied by the ways that humans now live their lives. After the test was done I came back to my apartment and started to study for my geology midterm to take place the next day. For some reason, teachers always have to plan their tests to happen on relatively the same block of time leaving a lot of free open days and then crazy insane testing for two or three day straight. Don't ask me how that works or makes sense. My recreation class on Tuesday night turned out to be a blast as we planned our way through leading our set of relays we have to do next week and planning our two outside parties that are necessary to throw in order to get an A for the class. How much more awesome of a class could you get? You HAVE to throw parties in order to get a good grade. I just wish there were more classes like it, enough said. Sherrie, Aaron, and I went to Legends Grill right after that and got some good food that is a bit on the pricey side but adequate. The desserts are simply amazing though. Wathcing Back to the Future came next and I rediscovered that 80's movies got away with an awful lot of questionable material. There was a lot more swearing than I remembered there being. I love the movie, but for a PG it really blew me away. A study party for geology came next and it lasted for a couple hours until the girls had to leave for curfew. I spent a lot of time stressing over and studying for that test and took it the next day and found I had spent time kind of studying the wrong material but had studied enough of everything to still manage to get an A. But I now know better for next time, memorize how to read all the graphs and charts and understand exactly what they mean and how they apply. The format was very similar to the science section on the ACT test. Reading and interpreting graphs, tables, and pictures and then answering a few questions on each one. My hopes for that class have now greatly increased as long as I can continue to study and understand the basic underlying ideas behind everything. Its not too bad that I can only comprehend only half of what I read, I just have to understand the basic definitions and differences between everything and I will do fine. Wednesday was spent at class all day and then taking the geology test which I could not find out my score too right away. Very frustrating. We retake the test again in class on Friday with open book, open note, and open friend. And then she adds the two scores together for our final test grade. Its a brilliant idea and takes a lot of the worrying out of taking the test, but still I really want to know my score after the second I turn the test in like I get to for every other class. But I will get over it. Plus it just proves to me again that AP death at Mt View High School in Mesa, Arizona, was much harder than I ever gave it credit for. The AP classes that I took in high school more than overprepared me for college and I guess that is the reason I don't appear to study or work as hard as I should. It is easy. Which drives my roommates crazy. Greg can never seem to come to grips with the fact that I spend less time on school and schoolwork than him and rarely ever visit the library and yet still get a much higher GPA than him. I owe a great thanks to Snyder, Helsel, Ries, Canaday, Hansen, Temme, Wessel, Higbee, and even Bisanz and Bird and Martin from junior high for that. Plus a few others. People who weren't afraid to push and push hard to get us to achieve our best because they knew we could live up to it and do our best. And it worked, there were a huge number of fours and fives from them on every exam. Canaday even got me to get a four on the physics section. And then I hit college and realized that most school wasn't really that hard like I had been led to believe. Sure, there are days when life gets really difficult and everything seems to get crammed in together, but compared that happening on pretty much a daily basis in high school, college is a breeze. I have heard that once you are finally past all the GEs and in your major classes, then things actually get more difficult, but I will wait and see. So far there has been nothing that hard or aggravating really at all, except for the fact that it is just too easy. And teachers are afraid to push at all. Thursday I went and did my wash at Uncle Karsten's and Aunt Julie's and enjoyed some of the best food I have had since coming back up to Utah made by them. Plus I got all my history reading done and then watched an episode of Psych. I think I have finally managed to get addicted to a TV show like the rest of my friends back at home did long before me. Psych makes me happy when I watch it. Its clean, funny, and still involves the whole murder mystery thing of Law and Order, but parodies it to a very great effect. I ended up ording the whole first and second season online from Walmart and they are supposed to come in sometime next week. Im excited because I like it a lot. Plus I managed to get Aaron, Greg, Will, and Reagan all addicted to it with me. With Sherrie soon to follow suit. We watch the new episode online, projected every Saturday night, or at least all the guys do. After all the girls have already had to leave. Friday night was another smoothie/movie night this time with much better smoothies on my part and watching Enchanted. I have had to resort to finding extremely clean movies because of the people who want to come and watch them. That means all PG-13 are out and most PGs. So we shall see what other movies I can come up with for the rest of the semester. There is always Princess Bride and anything Disney I guess. And that is what I plan to stick to. After the movie, we played Cranium and then some rousing games of Mafia until 1:30 in the morning. Good times. I got up around 8 on Saturday to go play racquetball with Courtney. I have not played in a very long time and I had a blast finally getting to play again yesterday. We plan on playing at least once, if not twice a week for the rest of the semester mixing in other work out stuff throughout the week. Like basketball or running, etc. A geology lab came next followed by going to visit Sherrie's brother and playing a hilarious card game entitled Munschins. It is done as a spoof of Dungeons and Dragons and Magic, but is much simpler and funnier to play. It is awesome, beyond awesome. After that, I went to the Jon Schmidt concert which was truly fantastic. He is an amazing perfomer and so was the cellist Steven Nielson that performs with him. I wish I could play as good as Steven. He makes everything look so easy and fun and plays everything so beautifully. I sound terrible in comparison. Or like I just started playing instead of starting about 8-10 years ago. And Im fairly decent at the college level! But he is thousands of levels past that and I could only just sit there and watch and listen in amazement and pure pleasure as he bowed and plucked and everything else you could imagine in perfect pitch and tone. After that came watching the beginning or Prince Caspian and then Psych night. Now its Sunday morning and I am writing this. This week will be fairly eventful but minus all the tests of last week, which Im good with. So until next week, so long.

Thought of the week: From Pysch:

Shawn: “I plead the third.”

Gus: “The third amendment says that a soldier can’t be lodged in your house. You mean the fifth.”

Shawn: “I’ve heard it both ways.”

Song of the week: "Waterfall" or "All of Me" by Jon Schmidt. I wish I could play them on the piano because they sound amazing every time!

Picture of the week: This is Jon Schmidt with the ridiculously hilarious wig he wears for his song about Bumble Tuna. He = amazing. As always, the rest of my picture from the week can be spotted on Facebook under the Freshman Memories albums.

This week was back to the normalcy of craziness. If there ever was such a thing. Without work, a lot more free time than I thought is now available which means I don't have to study all night every night during the week so I can play on the weekend but I can manage to do homework in the afternoons so that I can have fun at night. Which I think is a very good thing. Monday this past week was a holiday which is truly an amazing thing. Having no school for a day really manages to get people relaxed and allows them to do stuff they would normally never take the time to do...in this case a full packed day of fun and energy blowing. I started out with waking up early and cleaning up the apartment and doing my wash. All very much needed things that had to get done and things I take pride and joy in doing. After that, my roommates and I headed over to Kelly Ann's place for a brunch of waffles and homemade syrup and strawberry whipped cream. It was delicious. That led up to an excursion to the thrift stores and to Walmart so that we could find sleds and things to slide down the hills on so that we could have a fun afternoon sledding. We ended up going to Rock Canyon Park which has a pretty sweet set up with some pretty decent hills to go down on. The sled I ended up using was an old gymnastic mat, and it was the best sled that any of us had gotten and worked perfectly. The snow was just icy enough to allow us to get going really fast and then safely coast to a finish at the bottum on the padded mat. Other sledding tools like the green saucer went so fast that almost everyone biffed it at the bottum and managed to injure themselves in one way or another. Mine was my back. I managed to tweak it all out of place or something again and had to deal with the pain I haven't felt for quite a while for the majority of the rest of the week. But I got over it eventually and after not sleeping for the first night started taking IB profen until the pain calmed down again and I could finally do all my normal activities. After sledding, we headed to the Creamery grill to enjoy some dinner and then came to the apartment and projected the new James Bond movie. It was a lot more violent than I remembered in theaters and I don't know if I really want to watch it again. Once that was done, it was time for the ward neon dance party which went from 9 -11 and was full of strobe lights and flashing lights of every color that can be imagined. The dance was interesting because half the songs that were played no one had a clue as to what they were and the other half were standard fare that are usually played at every dance setting up here at BYU. But it was still fun and everyone was dressed up in crazy neon colors. Tuesday and Wednesday were getting work done days but I still managed to hang out with and talk to friends and play games and goof off and all those good things but there was nothing really out of the norm at all. Thursday night we had a cleaning check and so I spent all day after class was done cleaning the apartment getting done all the jobs that I had to do and then some because I read the list wrong and so ended up doing about twice as much work as I had to, but oh well. I got it done and I got it done to the best of my ability. And we passed with flying colors because he didn't really check anything at all so it wasn't that hard. After the cleaning, I managed to squeeze in finishing writing a paper that I had been working on steadily all week for history. It was on Jared Diamons Guns, Germs, and Steel and it was an analysis essay over the theme of the book. It felt like I was back in high school because she gave us all the question she wanted answered in the essay and exactly what format to write them in and everything. I like writing, love it in fact, but I hate the fact that I have to write like I am back in 9th grade and everything has to be in five paragraphs and perfect grammar and almost no individual style. It takes all the fun out of it and makes it so that my usual good writing turns out rather mediocore at best which is very frustrating. Thursday night I also attended an 80's dance club with Kelsey, Greg, Ryan Chapman, Kelly Ann, and Whitney. It was quite an interesting experience. All the music was clean and there was no alcohol or anything because it was an 18 - 21 only club. But still the atmosphere just didn't feel right. It was a lot of fun, but I think Ill just stick with BYU dances from now on. The surprising thing was that I knew most of the music that was played, even though it was all 80's. I guess I have my parents and aunts and uncles to thank for that, they all made sure I was very exposed to the 80s culture and music and movies while growing up and I love them for it haha. After the dancing we headed to Walmart to get some ice cream and then I came home and immediately fell asleep and slept soundly for the first time in ages since coming back up to Utah. Friday I turned in my paper and fixed and polished it up enough that it should garner a good enough grade to make me happy. But still it lacked any of my attitude or usual sentence structure or anything of the matter. Then I went to work, which I find myself enjoying a lot. It escapes all the drama that seems to surround me in college life and just allows me to work with my hands and get stuff done. After work, I had my first smoothie/movie night so far of the semester. A tradition all my friends and I plan on continuing on for the rest of the semester. We start it off at 8 by making all sorts of smoothies form whatever juices, milk, ice cream, yougurt, and fruit we could find all week and then drink and them and chat around and then finish it all off by project some G or PG movie so that everyone can watch and so that it is clean. A lot of people up here insist on having everything that clean and I admire and applaud them for it. It just means I see a whole lot more of Disney than I think I have at any other time of my life. After that we played a lot of big group games where we shouted ourselves hoarse and all those fun things. Saturday I got up and headed over to the science center to do a geology lab that is due Monday and which I completed really quickly with the help of Courtney, Sherrie, and new kid named Lloyd. I think I am going to love geology a lot. The teacher is amazing, the labs are fun and engaging, the homework is not busy work and easy enough to complete in a timely manner, and it is just fascinating work, period. After that we went out to lunch at L&T and then came back to the apartment where I did all the dishes from the smoothie mess the night before and everyone else watch the third Mummy. Then because it was raining fairly heavily, we played all sorts of card games out in the lobby before heading over to Amanda's and Sherrie's to watch Step Up. After all the movie business was over I talked some with all my friends and then watched an episode of Psych and managed to get all my roommates and Will addicted to it with me. It has to be one of my favorite TV shows ever. Its a clean sitcom, which is rare enough. But its also a spoof of Law and Order and CSI and all those shows and that just makes it even funnier. The only problem is that the only way to watch the show is online because BYU cable does not carry the channel we need to watch it. So I pretty much have finished up all the episodes that are free online and now don't have anywhere to go to watch the rest of them and the whole new season that just started last week. But I will find a way, there has to be a way. Because now that I have a lot of people that are addicted it to it with me, someone will find a way to be able to watch more of it, or so I hope. This week is filled with all matter of insanity from more parties and dancing to two midterms (already!) to all the normal school and work hours to writing the first half of another paper. To setting up another smoothie/movie night and I could go on and on. But I am going to have fun and it really makes me happy to be always doing stuff, I hate the feeling of having nothing to do and being bored. So I will write more next week.

Thought of the week: "A hug is worth a thousand words. A friend is worth more." Jasmine Fitzwilliam. And I have discovered the truth of this statement over and over again both in Mesa and in Provo as I realize how truly blessed I am in the friends that I have and how they bring me up and inspire me to do good.

Song of the week: "Leaving" by Jesse McCartney. It is so hard to find clean R&B songs and this is one of the few that is 100% clean and still fun to dance to and sing along with. Amazing.

Picture of the week:This is Kelly Ann, Kelsey, and I getting ready to head out to go sledding on MLK Day. It was a blast!

I like life busy

Alright, I am back now. Sorry I kind of skipped a week there, but life has gotten really hectic already for only being the beginning of the semester. This semester is going to be a heck of a lot different from last semester, in almost every way imaginable. But it is still going to be awesome, at least as far as I can tell. The classes I have this time are are Biology 100, Geology 101, University Chorale, Symphony Orchestra, History 201 (World Civilizations through 1500), Book of Mormon 122 (the second half), and Social Recreational Leadership (which is a leadership class where we just learn how to lead large groups, lead games, and host fantastic parties - sounds like the perfect class, huh? and guess what it is!). My work schedule is now that I only work on Friday nights and every other Sunday, but for only doing that I still find myself crazy busy all the time. I guess I should give the laydown of how every night of the week goes. Monday night is FHE which so far I have been planning because our mother has been absent as of late. We never see her and she never tries to plan anything - so I made myself kind of substitue father because no one else was going to ever plan anything. Which makes life interesting. This week I planned a movie night for the sake of the fact that I was trying to plan an activity only a few hours in advance. It worked out great though and we watched the old Swiss Family Robinson and talked and got to get comfortable with each other again. Tuesday night is my rec class night and it goes from 4 - 6:30. From the moment we get there the class is go, go, go! We start out with some kind of preopener or ice breaker activity and then move onto playing group games and then watch a powerpoint about what activity we will learn next how to plan (the main point of each being keeping it fun and safe for everyone - which means we have discovered the evil of having elimination games). For homework all we have to do is write up the rules to our favorite game or write up the construction behind a a massive three part relay or some other such fun thing. The class itself is divided into four groups which means that each group for the semester is responsible for planning a preopener, the huge relay, two mega parties (with at least 20 other people in attendance), and for the final - lead a party for everyone in the class that can only last 30 minutes long. Individually we have to plan our favorite game, two individual parties (where I only am the host unlike the group parties), and all sorts of other things like some service here and there and just making sure we get enough leadership time in over the semester through various activities. Sherrie, Aaron, and Jared are all in the class with me which means that its pretty much a blast and everyone else there is there for the sole purpose of having fun. After class, the four of us usually hit up Legends Grille for dinner and then get back to life as regular around 8. Wednesday night is now officially temple night, and I go with Courtney around 5ish to do some baptisms. The fact that I now actually have time set aside to go visit the temple makes me really, really happy. I need to balance out school with a lot of more of the spiritual side of life this semester. Which means I also try to do 2 batches of indexing for my calling a week - which should hopefully work out. Thursday night is going to be the night still where I go visit my aunt and uncle. That is definitely needed to control my sanity levels as I rush from class to class and event to event throughout the week and that will be my one period of slowdown to sit back and get some studying in and eat somewhat healthily and see some family. Friday night I have work from 4:30 - 7:30 which is awesome again. I can't even begin to describe how much I enjoy having a job and working. For some reason, work just makes me happy. Its really intense and physically exhausting usually, but it makes me really happy to be doing it. Friday night we also hit up the planetarium this week where the presentation was on the creation stories of all the different people all over the world. I found it fascinating....but I was one of the select few who did. Not many others enjoyed it that much at all. I guess that just goes to show what a nerd I am by the fact that I love learning so much. Learning new things is one of the most exciting things about college for me and it happens for almsot every class and every hour of my college experience. Saturday should start being my one huge playday of the week starting this week - where I can plan big fun things for my group of friends to do and then we go out and do them - whatever that may be. However for the past two Saturdays I have been detained by my music classes. We had to play for a conductor's seminar last Saturday in orchestra and I was there all morning. Yesterday was a chorale retreat where we spent six hours working on singing skills and learning the correct posture, mouth position, and almost everything else that has to be done by your body to sing the best way possible. I finally figured out what head voice is and I will agree that it sounds much better than chest voice in singing. The surprising thing is that I have actually learned how to sing though. I can actually sing and sing fairly decently - not amazing mind you - but decent enough. And they are sticking it to us hard this semester to learn some pretty hard pieces from Aaron Copland and Eric Whitecare. Things I heard my amazing choir friends sing throughout high school and now that I just barely started singning I have to catch up on. And catch up fast. But choir is making me happy too. I have always wanted to do it and never had the time to take to learn. High school was always too busy doing orchestra, MUN, and all the APs. Last semester was intense working a lot, getting GEs done and out of the way, and figuring out how college actually works. I can finally squeeze it in now this semester and it is amazing. After the choir retreat, Kahi called and invited me over to play some Rockband and I agreed to it. The game is still my favorite video game I have every played and I am able to play at a least a medium level for each of the components and a hard or expert level for the bass or guitar. A lot of people ended up calling me or texting me and heading over there too - there was Aaron, Courtney, Rachelle, April, Whitney, Kelly Ann, Kelsey, Kahi, and me by the end of it. And we rocked hard. By the end of the night, my ankle hurt from trying to figure out how to use the foot pedal on the drum set and my voice was shot from singing all day for choir and then singing at night for Rockband. But I think everyone had a blast. Which is saying something because when we got back from break - the semester started out with so much ridiculous drama where people didn't like people anymore. It just showed me how much the group dynamics can change by the abscene of two people - namely Joe and Samuel. With Samuel gone, old tensions rose up and people started hating other people again and I think last night it finally resolved itself. People finally learned how to get along with each other again and I can tell you it is going to make life so much better this semester. The other thing about it is that the group keeps growing kind of exponentially - this semester so far Sir William, Regan, Stephen, Tayler, Kahi's new roommates, Brad, and few others have been added to the mix with the result being that usually our apartment has people in it. And it ranges from a few to being stuffed. Its great fun, but the problem is that study time is getting more and more compressed and I have to study in my room now, the kitchen is just too distracting. The other problem is that therer is no way I can keep up with the cleaning, Im just too busy to spend an hour or two every day doing the dishes, mopping and sweeping, vacuuming, and toilet scrubbing. I try to at least get the dished done, but no one else ever does anything. Ever. They just go about their lives and make the place look like a pigsty and it is really kind of starting to get on my nerves. I am only one person, and everyone else should be able to pick up the slack too. Greg has Fridays and Saturdays completely off but all he ever does in snowboard and sleep. Aaron will spend his time watching movies or playing video games. And Jared is always on the phone for work or sleeping. Brad is simply never home that much at all which means that he doesn't really contribute to the messy problem so you can't really expect him to clean it up. There has to be a way to get everyone else to work though. I just have no idea what that is yet. They could care less how dirty everything is and that really bothers me. A lot. Im also the only one that ever does any cooking and they devour it like ravenous wolves no matter if it is Neiman Marcus cookies or banana bread. But Ill figure it out somehow. There has to be a way to get it to work. Well, with all the stuff I have written down, hopefully you got the sense of how full my life is. And Im going to try to make it fuller by working out in the mornings with Courtney, Amanda, Sherrie, and Tayler with basketball, racquetball, and running. I also have gotten more sleep this semester than I think at any other point in my life. And I intend to keep it that way as long as I possibly can because I feel fantastic. There are no more headaches for one and that feeling is one of the greatest in the world for me, no joke. I think that pretty much covers what I wanted to get written down today, so Ill write again next week!

Thought of the week: "Learning is a kind of natural food for the mind" - Cicero. This quote goes well with what I have been feeling for the first two weeks of the semester thus far.

Song of the week: "Love Lockdown" - Kanye West. The song has a really great beat and the message is great for a premissionary at least by stating that we must keep our love locked down until we find the one who we are really meant for.

Picture of the week: So I have been a slacker and have as yet not really gotten out my camera at all this semester...but I am going to change that this week and I will be posting the picture of the week for sure next week.

New year, new semester, new roommates, new everything

So it has been quite awhile since I last wrote...which can be attributed to quite a lot of different factors. But surmise it to say, I survived finals...did better than survived too. I managed to cram and multiple guess my way to almost all A's with the exception of an A- in dance and a B+ in economics which kept my GPA at a solid 3.89 so that I don't have to worry about losing my scholarship or anything. At least not yet. Finals week was full of friends, study, moving Samuel out to get him to Jerusalem, messing around in the snow, cleaning, etc. I finished them all by Wednesday but was unable to finally head home until Friday. But I got home Saturday and was immediately swept away by my family and later my friends. Being home over break for a week was a blast and a half. My time was spent crammed with family, friends, wrapping presents, unwrapping presents, parties, sleeping, driving (amazing!), and shopping. I was just ridiculously busy the entire time, but loving it as well. Christmas was amazing - I got the eclectic collection of gifts anyone could ever have thought to ask for that range from a Lion King hat to a crockpot and a miniature scarecrow to a new cell phone. Oh, plus I got an M&M dispenser which I am looking forward to using all semester. There was also a party that I ended up throwing which was only supposed to be a "few friends" but ended up over 50 people according to my mom's count and 75 according to my brother's. Suffice it to say there were a lot of people at my house and my mom decided the theme was "missions". Everyone was talking about their call and when they were leaving and such and Jerem actually opened his call that night. It just reminded me that mine is still so far off and not seeming to approach any faster while I my friends are already leaving around me. My last night I was able to spend with friends was Saturday night and the amazing Leilani took me, Sarah, Aubrey, Rachel, and herself out to Cheesecake Factory for Christmas. It was astoundingly delicious. The food was amazing, the cheesecake was even better and just talking about anything and everything between us felt like home again. These are the people who know me far too well probably to their liking but they still love me and even hang out with me and I thank and appreciate them for that. They are all my best friends and people I can go to whenever I have trouble and I know they will do their best to help me find a solution to the problem. That to me is simply amazing. Well, after one week down in Mesa it was time to head back up to the frozen northland of Utah and crash there with all sorts of family just playing around for the entire week. And now I have to start getting ready for everything new. My new classes should be all set up already or so my hope is. Im excited for all of them, even though history looks like it is going to be a killer, a big killer. But I love history...so I hope to make it through. My new roommate Robert seems fairly cool as far as any of us can tell so far. He is a lifeguard anyway, so that automatically makes him awesome. I have a new work schedule and might have to get another new one if this one doesn't work out. Truth is, Im thinking about quitting but Im just not sure yet. Life is going to be extremely hectic this semester and work gives me a good break from studying or partying to just work with my hands and clear my head of everything. But with dance, orchestra, choir, geology, biology, world history, and social recreational leadership - my time is going to be fairly constricted as it is. Fun, but very busy and always on the go. Plus there is an ice skating class everyone wants me to add and that I would just audit. I think that would be an ultimate epic fail if I did go, but I would really like to learn how to at the same time. The good thing is that I have at least one friend in each of my classes and can always make new ones in every one. It makes the year a much more fun experience to get to know more people. So I think that covers everything for right now. Except that I am getting sick...but that is hardly new. It seems to happen to me everytime I come up here. Must be something different in the air or something that sets off my allergies because I clear up rapidly when I am at my Mesa home. Hopefully, my next post will be from my house next Sunday so that I got to hear Joe's and Samuel's farewell. But I will just have to see.

Thought of the week: "It didn't come wrapped up in packages, boxes, or bags...maybe Christmas perhaps was a little bit more" and the whole entrie rest of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas book by Dr. Seuss. One of the most amazing morals from the Christmas season to be cherished and examplified throughout the entire year.

Song of the week: "Let It Rock" by Kevin Rudolf has been stuck running through my head for the entire break. It has a good beat even if all the words really don't make sense.

Picture of the week:

To party or study? That is the question...

This week was highly eventful with a pleathora of crazy random adventures, people, studying, decorating, cleaning, and the list could go on and on. Sleep wasn't a very major part of it though...there just wasn't enough time to sleep, too much to do, too much to see, just too much. But I enjoyed every minute of it. I am one of those people who is most happy when busy doing something, sitting around doing nothing is pointless and doesn't get anything accomplished or solved, no fun or work had, it's a waste of time that really bothers me. So this week was pretty much close to perfect for the main part. Ok, I guess Ill start out with Monday since that is when the week usually seems to start (one time I might just mix it up and pick Thursday instead, it deserves its fair chance to be first, right?). Monday was FHE, like always which is always tons of fun and way worth it to give up a few hours of studying to go and play and learn and serve. This week we went as an entire ward to go see the Salt Lake Temple lights and watch the Joseph Smith movie. We, meaning my "family" up here, played word games and "I have never..." all the way out there and back on the bus. Learned quite a few things about the people that I thought I had come to know really well after months of living with them and hanging out with them. Once there, the Joseph Smith movie is just the most amazing experience, no matter how many times you watch it. The spirit is so strong and overwhelming that I don't think there is a single dry eye left in the room by the end of the movie. Not one. That and The Testaments give pretty immediate spiritual highs that provide good pick-me-ups no matter how hard life is or what all you still have to get done. After that we had to run around to go see any of the lights because the bus was leaving in only a few very short minutes. We caught the Nativity and a lot of the random lights around in the trees. The most beautiful sight by far though was the Salt Lake Temple outline out against the dark sky. A true testament and symbol to its being a place of God put in the middle of an ungodly world shining out as a beacon of truth and light. You can catch a glimpse of it at the end in the pictures (yes, I couldn't pick just one this time) of the week. Tuesday was a good day because I got a lot of studying and work done. That is until my brain just crashed fried and so I did cleaning for our cleaning check that night. Which after that I watched The Great Mouse Detective and then headed out to the chamber orchestra concert for humanities. Man, I miss playing in a chamber orchestra. Symphonies are fun and big and loud and a complete blast. But chamber orchestras are just so....musical. Everyone there is at the top of their game and they all work together to create the most beautiful sounding music. Everyone is on a team and works as such without trying to outplay their standpartner or the section next to them. They played Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Haydn's "Surprise Symphony, and another piece tha was from the Romantic era. The cleaning check itself came next, which was the very first one I have ever actually been home for. Im always busy out doing something else. But I made it this time until I got a call to go on a quest to find the Museum of Peoples and Cultures for Sherrie's friend Jen. I couldn't say no (and I didn't feel like sticking around to have to explain how our theater room/kitchen works to our RA Benjamin). We found the building in a matter of seconds, it was right where Google said it would be. Jen was just blind and hadn't been able to find it after searching for hours all around it. After that we decided we were not yet ready to go back to BYU so we took a journey to go look at the light displays in the richer section of Provo and admire the view from offered by the mountainside that all these house are on. A midnight trip to IHOP was in order so that we could get some hot chocolate and thaw out for walking around the moutainside admiring the view. I tried one of their crepes and it was delicious, I would highly reccomend it to any one who likes IHOP food. Still not as good as the stuffed french toast though, that is by far the best thing offered at the restaurant. After that it was high past bedtime. Wednesday was the day of my first final for dance! I retested on the cha cha and had a blast dancing with the girl that I danced with at Dancesport before. One of my better grades for that class. She convinced me to add 280 with her next semester so my dancing career will continue for another semester at least. After that comes the mission and probably that will be the end of dance for me. Wednesday night was just a study night pretty much. Catching up on all the stuff I had to catch up on and getting stuff done. Thursday was the last day of classes for fall semester 2008 at BYU! Oh happy day! After they finally ended I had to head off to work and then I went to a Christmas chorus concert that Amanda, Greg, and Samuel all sang in. Plus it was free, can't get much better than that. After that was just a bunch of chatting and talking. Friday was the first reading day and I studied fairly hard. I threw myself at psychology and economics trying to understand and master all the crazy, weird, insane concepts. I think it actually did a lot of good and helped me to remember everything that I had struggled to learn all semester. Friday night was time to start preparing for the grand Christmas party that I had been planning for the past two weeks. We went down to DI and sorted through all the junk there to find the perfect decorations and ideas. We found a Christmas tree! How cool is that? And it was only $5 was the best part. DI is just simply amazing. It has the answers to most of life's questions and problems and for very, very cheap. That night was talked some more and played around. The next day was party day! We started out with going to Kneaders which is a little bread shop not far from campus. It offers a $4.99 homemade french toast (meaning that the bread, maple syrup, and whipped cream is all made from scratch) all you can eat special for breakfast. What better way to start you day? After that I came home and started putting up the tree and all the lights and getting all the cleaning done and made sure all the food was taken care of (dinner was potluck style). So my parents don't worry I didn't just do that, I managed to squeeze in an econ study party for my econ final on Monday. I am as ready for that test now as I am ever going to be and we will just have to see what happens. Then I had to run off to work and then I came home and changed and it was party time! And it was awesome! The girls had voted a long time ago that it was all going to be semi-formal/formal. So that meant girls in prom dresses, guys in tuxes, and at the very least everyone in Sunday clothes (although since Sterling was visiting from Idaho we cut him some slack). For dinner there was more food than I think have seen on one table since I have started college, we even ended up having to go get another table just to hold it all. There was chicken, pork chops, vegetable platter, corn, honeydew, pineapple, pomegranate, grapes, mashed potatoes, Martinelli's, lemomade, water, gingerbread cookies, homemade ice cream, hot chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, candy canes, rolls, chips and salsa, and lemon poppyseed muffins. A true feast. And everyone helped out, everyone brought something and helped get it all ready and cooked and made and wonderful. The turnout was pretty crazy too...20 people in humongous dresses or tuxes for dinner stuffed into our tiny kitchen which was even more crammed with the addition of the Christmas tree and at closer to 25 for all the games and the white elephant gift exchange we did later that night. I met quite a fair few of new people, but I also already knew most of everyone there. After dinner, we played the adverb game and then did desserts and dancing while waiting for the last few people to arrive so we could do the white elephant. The adverb game turned out to be a smashing success, everyone was laughing like crazy and had the biggest smiles and most fun. We played it for probably at least around an hour which is quite a long time for that game. the white elephant gift exchange took the party to a whole new level though. There was almost everything you could imagine there and probably quite a bit more. People were beyond creative to say the least. There was a reindeer lawn ornament, card games, a giant calculator, chocolate milk, the endless zipper purse, boomerangs, Saltine crackers, our peephole that Kelly Ann had stolen, pictures, and much, much more. It was a blast! Seriously, one of the most fun nights of my entire college career. I had forgotten how much I liked to plan things, get them all set up and then just relax and enjoy the result of all my hard work and planning. I got so many compliments, it was ridiculous. But I did not do that much except plan it out. Most of the work was done by everyone else and I just directed making sure that everything was ready and as perfect as could be. I think Im going to have to plan more fun things, because I like doing it. I like doing it a lot. Well, after that this week is going to seem pretty dull as finals hit me and crush me until Thursday afternoon. After that I am home free and and in fact am coming home of Friday the 19th with Joe. I am so excited! I can't wait to be home again even if I was just there a few weeks ago. Nothing quite compares. Dorothy had it right with her ruby slippers on this one. Well...its time for me to head back to work now, break time is over. I shall write of my hopeful triumphs over tests next Sunday and the great times I have starting at home on Saturday. also, I hope to go caroling this week with the BYU folk, but I will just have to see what time permits.

Thought of the week: It comes from my sister Lora quite a long time ago actually but I discovered the truth of it this week. I can't remember the exact quote but it had to do with the fact that I always had fun because I put work and effort into making sure whatever I was planning for fun would get pulled off and that everyone else would have fun too. That statment is so true. We get out what we put in. For work, life, parties, dates, and the list goes on and on. Just remember that the more work and effort and thought you put into something, the more you will get out of it and the more enjoyable it will be for you.

Song of the week: "Ill Be Home for Christmas" - true statement! I will be there in 5 days! :)

Pictures of the week:

Crunch time has officially started, but life is still ridiculously fun!

Well...just like the title states the craziness of finals and the end of the semester and Christmas shopping and cleaning and find a ride home and everything like that has finally started and in fact kicked into pretty high gear this week. It will probably approach levels of insanity this week and who know what will happen finals but that everything just explodes because of running around trying to finish up everything (and there is an infinite amount of things to be completed before leaving for home, the list just keeps growing and growing with no signs of stopping). After catching up during all last weekend from partying at home all during Thanksgiving, we went back to having a Sunday dinner where Sherrie and Amanda come over and they brought along Adam Herring too. We had waffles and then opened up my new Cranium game to just mess around and have fun. The game is simply amazing. Group party games are still my ultimate favorite by far and this has strengthened my addiction and bias towards them. Monday was time to take the waltz test in dance, which so far is my favorite dance because it is just so eloquent and graceful and smooth and beautiful. I got an A on the test which is a miracle because I hadn't practiced in a good solid week and half, but it was great fun. Monday night was FHE, one of the best parts of the week because we get to hang out with cool, fun people on a school night and we are commanded to do so by the Lord. If the Lord commands you to hang out, you do it. This week it was my week to teach everyone how to index and I can honestly say that it was a blast and everyone had fun doing service for about an hour's length of time at least. Indexing is amazing is what I have decided because even though it is impossible to read the handwriting or understand exactly what you are doing, the people up there appreciate it and are looking forward to their names finally being able to be found by family members in order for them to do baptism for them. Its service with a bang. Tuesday was a day of study or in other words I can't remember exactly what I was up to...but you can bet it had Ryan written all over it and was random enough for anyone you could think of. Wednesday was my final orchestra concert for the semester and to my great surprise we actually pulled it off. I thought it was going to crash and burn and end with the audience throwing rotten food at us like they did in the old days, but nope, we sounded great somehow. After sounding terrible in all the rehearsals and practices leading up to it. We played a very long concert with the following pieces and forgive my terrible spelling...there was Bizet's Carmen, Vaughn-Williams' tuba concerto, Leroy Anderson's Bugler's Holiday, Tchailkowsky's Roccoco Variations, and Aaron Copland's El Salon Mexico (just imagine there being accents over all the right letters in that title). The most amazing thing was the Roccoco because the bass soloist in it was one of the best in the world. He is the bass professor at ASU, and when he played...he made everyone feel like we were back in fourth grade just barely picking up an instrument for the very first time. That is how insane he was...people studying music at the college level just astounded by the pure, raw talent of the bassist. Who sounded like a cello or violin or bass depending upon what the music called for. Someone who can be that dedicated to the study of music is someone who I greatly admire. I just could never push myself that hard to do it, to practice hours upon hours upon hours a day, slowly taking apart each and every note and rhythm in order to be able to play it all and play it the very best anyone has ever heard. I think there only a very few select people that are able to do that and I had the pleasure of being able to play with one at this concert and it was one the best musical experiences of my life and probably will be for eternity. After that everyone who had come to watch my concert - Samuel, Aaron, Joe, Amanda, Sherrie, Kelly Ann, and Adam - came back to my apartment with me and we talked and hung out and ate the puppy chow that Kelly Ann had made. I taught Christine a few steps in the waltz later that night and got schooled by Kelly Ann in what the correct posture and frame is. But I don't know what to do there because holding my frame like that really kills my shoulders a lot. However, I also learned the polka earlier that day and I can totally do that dance, it is by far the most fun and energetic dance known to man. But maybe someday I will get use to it and I can be able to hold it the correct way. Thursday was a fun day where I started off with some hard core studying at Julie and Karsten's and then headed to the dance lab. The dance lab was not as good as the one before had been (probably something to do with them refusing to play anything but Christmas music), but it was still a blast. I got there right when the floor shows were starting and watched the amazingness of all the people in the upper classes dance away for us and decided that I am still quite very poor at dancing. Very much so. After the dance lab, I watched the Muppet Christmas Carol at the Varsity Theater which I have not seen in a very long time. It was a blast and much funnier than I remember. I love the music too, but then I always love the music so I don't know if that is saying very much. After that it was back to my apartment to hang out (it seems to be the place to go everytime...I don't know or understand why but everyone just congregates to our apartment and it is almost always packed every single night of the week with people). I guess we do have all the games and the projector and the Wii and the Playstation 2 and its relatively clean most of the time if I could get around to cleaing it that day (somedays I am just too busy and cannot get to it). I guess that is a good thing but it makes life very hard to study sometimes. Although according to my roommates I have the unique ability to tune everything and everyone out and just study for hours and hours and get done what I need to get done so I can be able to have fun later and also get enough sleep to sustain life (a concept the rest of my roommates struggle with). Friday night we were invited to a dinner and movie night by Kelly Ann. My two cents here: I provided dessert. We had the most amazing taco salad and then proceeded to watch Charade which is the cheesiest old movie I have ever seen, but also one of the funniest. After that was over we had the pie and ice cream that I had made (the pie being made by the fabulous Marie Calendar and the ice cream being homemade by me. It took forever to convince Whitney that I had made the ice cream though, she refused to believe that it was homemade for the longest time). Saturday was back to working and studying day...although I didn't get much done of either. Whitney came over and made us her famous bannana whole wheat pancakes (which are pretty much to die for by the way when topped with my berry ice cream, just saying). After that we went over to Kelly Ann's and finished watching Speed Racer, which is one the most trippy and random movies ever made, but it was still very, very good. I came home and worked on an hour of economics then and then headed out to Savers with Whitney in order to start getting everything prepared for the Christmas party we are planning for this upcoming Saturday. It should be a blast as long as we can convince anyone to show up. That is always the trick is getting people to come...for some reason they never do but then when they do show up they have a blast. Have fun trying to figure that one out. Saturday night was the freeze fest extravaganze thrown and paid for by BYU. There was ice skating, dancing, broom hockey, icing cookies, hot chocolate, friends, fun, and extreme exhaustion by the end of the night. Although that one is probably my fault because my roommate and I started jumping up and down during the dance and had a contest to see how could endure the longest and we eneded up having to call it a draw so we could go ice skating, or I should say they could go ice skating while I watched them enjoy themselves and have a good time. But I had a blast last night, it was awesome to just get to see everyone together and enjoying themselves without a care in the world. Well if last week was busy, its nothing compared with this week. Its going to be insanity but fun with temple lights trip, chamber orchestra concert, RHA party, work, study, classes, room date night, and Christmas party that I still have to finish planning and setting up for. So stayed tune next week for I survive and how I make it through, ciao!

Thought of the week: "Good, Better, Best" the conference talk. I think about it almost every day in my life and I am really applying it and how is the best possible way to use my time for every circumstance. It means that life comes at you hard and fast and busy, but you get a lot more stuff done.

Song of the week: "Gotta Be Somebody" by Nickelback. Its one of their brand new songs that just really means a lot for me. It is about no matter who you are or what you do, that there is somebody out there in the world who will love you and accept you. You will never be alone, and that message just means a lot to me. Not to mention I just love Nickelback in general, but hey that is just an added bonus.

Picture of the week: My roommates and I goofing off at the dance...this picture is just us. All the rest of my pics from the week can be viewed on Facebook like always