Semester Over!

(I don't feel like I can blog about the wedding, seeing as all of you were there and have already created your blogs about it! But I would say it was glorious and triumphant and wonderful!)
All last week during finals, I kept having memories of Charina's blog she did two years ago about finals week. So I looked it up and laughed so hard becuase nearly everything she said was something I had likewise experienced! So I thought I'd copy it in here (Thanks, Char) to attest to the craziness of finals I never knew could exist. And as a bonus, there's a few extra of my own at the end I'm sure she and everyone else has experienced.

Free Jamba Juice 9-11, Sleeping in a few more minutes than normal, having something in common with everyone, conversations with random girls while standing in line to meet our doom, late night studying with my roommates, Toffee Ice cream bars, using finals as an excuse of why I haven't worked out, RA's begging for help on Stats, checking out guys in the library, Christmas trees in Brigham Square, watching people use their brains, drooling and/or snoring people in the library, white boards in the Wyview MPB, using a flashlight to study, Christmas music as background music for studying, getting a seat on the bus, snowball fights in the house, an excuse to not clean, mechanical pencils, the Dark Knight movie trailer as a break from studying, sisters lending her baking plate as a white board, eating dinner with Co-workers in the cougareat, new study spots because your old ones are taken, seeing old friends in the testing center, coughing while testing just to break the silence, looking back on how fast time goes, taking my BYU water bottle everywhere, calculating and predicting grades, ginormous snowmen on campus, craving cinnamon bears (not to be confused with teddy grams, these are the little gummy red guys), waking up early to read a textbook curled up on the couch, eating cereal for dinner, watching math professors grade like crazy, eating as much of your food as possible so it won't go bad over break, hoping for snow...just for the heck of it, wearing fake glasses to feel smarter, free hot chocolate, sweats, makeup free, 12 AM showers, seeing people pray in line...or during the test, personal e-mails with TA's, glaring at your professor (sometimes it just feels better), light weight backpacks, vending machine cheddar chex mix, day dreaming, resolutions, excitement TO GO HOME!!!!!!

Also, running out of toilet paper but just mooching off your neighbors becuase you don't have time/don't want to go to the store, walking home in the snow from the library at 2 AM, not taking any showers, sleeping in the living room all week, bonding with the missionaries about to leave, anticipating the new people about to move in, getting in trouble for caroling becuase of the 24 hour queit zone rule no one knew existed, reading the entire physical science barf text book, only getting 10 dollars for text book sellback, but at least getting a frozen baby ruth from the text book people, trying to keep track of 5 huge stacks of notes from the entire semester, barfing out 2 papers in 3 hours, getting permission to break into the TA office to turn in papers, cramming in 3 different review sessions in one day, submitting to studying in the armchairs becuase there are no tables open, also submitting to sitting next to someone when there is a table open, wearing the same shirt 2 days in a row and the same pants all week, sweating in the JSB as you climb over testing souls becuase of course people only sit on the edges, actually getting lunch from the cougareat becuase you didn't have time or supplies to make lunch, getting only 3 hours of sleep before getting up for packing, miserably failing the cleaning check you tried to finish at 2 in the morning, but leaving all the leftover chores to your stalwart roommate, excitement for the WEDDING!

Thanksgiving!

I slipped into the depths of Charina blogdom, but I'm back! Don't worry, you probably won't get another till after Christmas. Here's a brief glimpse of all most of you saw in real life. And don't worry, it's all backwards.
Took a trip to Santa Monica Pier while we were in LA, and the weather was so nice and the water was so cold but so refreshing to be in the ocean!

Ally was just absolutely precious and entertained us to no end and could say "Krista is my favorite aunt" with perfection by the end of the week. (haha, that's a joke, she didn't really even like me that much. Especially at first)

A traditional me&bum picture! Seat belt, Krista/Summer face, and self-taken and all!

And Colorado was splendid in every way! I shniked Bum so good, and here's mom doing what she usually can be found doing! I remember the first time that CJ shniked us, mom "went shopping" then came back and said, "You guys! I found a turkey and it's still got it's head on!!" And there was CJ on the doorstep, but I was worried that there have been so many sister shnikes since that time that Summer already knew I was coming, but nope, totally got her! It was a joyous reunion.

And Colorad was just lovely, lovely, reminiscent, nostalgic, and tender! I must have taken 12000 pictures of Pikes Peak! And all is well back here at... home.....!!!!

Halloween!

Halloween was a joyous experience! Our stake had a dance and of course it was a costume dance and we racked our brains to think of a set of four somethings we could be together and we couldn't think of anything and then Elise got pharyngitis so she couldn't even come with us but we adopted Chay but then we still were in trouble, but we went to DI to see if we could find some good stuff and we were casually passing by a huge rack of hideous and ginormous denim dresses with one boy when Rach had the brilliant idea.... Let's be POLYGAMISTS!!!!
HAHA! She has a high strung concsience but most of the good ideas that set off consciences like hers, so of course we then had to convince her that it wasn't offensive and rather actually quite hilarious then went right to town!!

This is just a wonderful picture becuase the twins have neer looked so similar, and in such an angry way!

Can't you just not wait till this moment is real for any set of sisters in the world?

I was inspired to use my moshi pillow as my belly like Jamie did when she was Kevin. Hahaha. "Training was AWFUL!" I definitely had the biggest and most lopsided belly. But I was also wearing a circus tent, so that was fine.

Our happy family. Hahha! The boy's name is even Brigham, so that just seems too perfect. Other highlights of this story not displayed fully in the pictures; my hair has never been so high!!! We were wearing braids which you can't see in the back. Dancing with a pregnant belly offers both the most sweat i've ever experienced on my midriff and an extended Book of Mormon space between my dance partner and I. A billion random people wanted to take our picture, though the stake presidency member seemed only slightly amused. Some girl told us we looked like she could see us in the Wal-Mart in St. George! We all gave birth at the dance once the heat became unbearable. And towards the end they announced the winners of the costume contest and Bo Peep won cutest and the chicken won most original and the Joker won the scariest and every time they announced something and we didn't win, the people around us were like.. "what about the polygamists!" And then they announced the Best Overall, and we were so sad when it the Three Amigos and not us, but then I saw the girl had one more sheet and it was us! And we won best costume overall, but she saved us for last, so does that make us better? That's the joyous Halloween story, thanks for listening!

Homecoming and Life!

Life continues to be joyous!! And CRAZY! This weekend was homecoming, which, who even knew you actually went to that, but we did, and it was so so so fun! We went with our dates to Savers and got some crazy outfits then went to a dance that was all glow, so everyone was wearing glowy stuff and there were black lights and such and it was so hot and so good! (Side note, between going from savers to our house to eat dinner, we got rear ended!!! First car mishap i've ever been in, and it was an adventure, but all is well. If you want the full details, i'll talk to you later) It was nostalgic to wear overalls!!!
Life is also still wonderful in other ways! We had our first co-ed volleyball game in which I was elected to be a setter- weird rotation, but we won, then our wonderful-not-on-the-team roommate made a steak dinner for all of us! (by the way, second boy up on the right in this picture is 6'4" and BEASTLY, so there you go. success)

There's still plenty of work going on- this is us studying for our first american heritage midterm. botched. but above average!

And whatever running I can do I do, even though life is so crazy, it sometimes doesn't happen. But Char and I ran a costume race and she beat a punk rocker (who was not friends with the honor code) and she sprinted into the finish with her little hat a twirlin'! I dressed up as a Spartan.

And I'm still dodging swine flu and eating rather nicely! look at that!

So all is well, I just finished surviving the absolute hardest weeks of my entire life, but I feel all the ready for the harder ones comin!

And BYU did not do so good in the game, but maybe if anyone wants to come watch with me, we will beat Air Force!!!!!!

Ode to the Aquarium!

Buy Low, the market from which I purchase my substance, offers a very large variety of very cheap produce! (haha... I've been writing a paper, so that sentence was very full of gratuitous words. Sorry) So I go to Buy Low and get cheap fruits and vegetables, and because I love it so much, I always get a stalk of celery.

And becuase my life consists of running around like crazy and definitely not putting forth enough effort to get the celery out of the fridge, take the celery out of the bag, break off a couple sticks, move dirty dishes over so I have enough room to stick them under the sink to wash them, dig under all the dirty dishes to find my cutting board, clean a knife which has undoubtedly sunk to the very bottom of all the dirty dishes, then cut the celery up to eat it, there were sadly a couple celery sticks that went to waste becuase they sat in my fridge too long. I would not tolerate this.

And then bliss befell my very self and I discovered that my bottom feeding habits of long ago turned out to be very bottom feeding since I now use a makeshift aquarium in my very own fridge and find it is much easier to obtain the desired snack!


(Even though I still have to open the fridge, take the lid off of the aquarium, stick my hand all the way down into the water since it doesn't have a handle thing like at home and then eat it, at least I don't have to put forth all that work like before when we would have to take it out of the fridge, pull up the handle, then grab the celery, since the handle ran into the shelf above, because who has that kind of time or dedication? not the Bottom Feeders at topaz. I mean widgeon. Or both. Not them.) So anyway, this is an ode to the aquarium, which turned out to be not so bad and I now urge bottom feeders everywhere to be grateful you don't at least have to battle a pile of dirty dishes every time you want some celery. I guess either way, people are right when they say you burn more calories eating celery than you gain by consuming it.

Mas! I hope this is entertaining....

My posts don't really have any exciting value because they are just one continual round of college adventures, but here are some more, I guess, and they even involve some of you. And also, I still don't know the most efficient or effective way of loading the pictures, so here they are, out of order.
Ally!! What could be better! Monroe was SO FUN and SO RELIEVING!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

More Family!!!! Driving to Monroe with Char and Bum was so fun, and a lot more successful than last time. LaDon, Jamie, Brooke and everyone else who isn't in this picture, it was great, great, great to see you all at the same time! And remember how great Christmas was, too!?

Bum and I had so much goodness at the football game, it was way better cheering with her than anyone else becuase she actually knows what's going on. And Sarahho stopped by to see us, which was joyous. Jamba afterwards!

These are pictures from True Blue Football, we look sick! But it was so much like nothing you've ever experienced!

Look in the background; all that blueness is all foam that mixed with the dirt as we swam in it and then we came out looking more green and barf than true blue. And those huge slides really are huge slides that were so fun!

But don't worry, all the fun I have isn't solely crazy things like Monroe visits and true blue and the likes; I wrote my first research paper and loved it, I took my first test in the testing center and LOVED it!!! (Who knew that when you go down to the screen to see your score, multiple people leave notes for long lost friends they glimpse in the room, but obviously can't talk to in the room! BYU only!) and I did my laundry for the first time (as manly... or ... womanly, i guess, as I tried to be , I had NO idea what I was doing. hahaha. I had to ask the boy next to me in the laundromat to help me! Bottom feeder!) and I'm experiencing my first shortage of substantial food. Honey bunches of oats and spaghetti, all the time. (Buy Low, here I come!) (At least I got peaches from the fruit stand before they left!)

And that's all! Thanks for viewing, I'll try to accomplish something more great so these posts can hold some substantial value!

You might not care, but here it is!

Here's some updates in random order because I still can't figure out blogging to perfection. But you will probably like all these stories and pictures anyways!
The game... was... miserable.
But so fuN!! We had AWESOME seats so it was kind of sad that it was such a bummer of a game becuase we were in the front row of the end zone! So fun! And Cosmo saw me try and take this picture for Bum and then started acting seductive and play flirty with us and we were weirded out and then he just hopped up right in front of us and wanted us to kiss his cheek, so Rachel did! I wish I had, oh well, I still chomped on a pig heart. (Secret; we think Cosmo's black!)

Chels and Rach and I at the game! It was joyous until it wasn't and then it stunk. Next time, though.

I'm a real live Y student now because I hiked it! We did it for FHE and it was so fun and I really am going to run up it in 14 minutes, so... hiya. It was great! And I did feel pretty good about my lungs becasue even local utah family members were huffing, but I was fond of Pikes Peak, so that was good.

Here they are in all their glory!!! The most wonderful roommates, and look, Rach is even doing Chelsea's nails! See, they don't really look that much alike, do they?

Haha! Thespian date! But World of Dance was AWESOME, I literally almost cried tears of joy because the tap dancers were SO SO Good and I was reinspired to fulfill the life dream that seems to be coming not so naturally to me.

Also another good story for your enjoyment; I had a date on which we were going to play frisbee golf and I wanted to go running before it, and on the run I wanted to wear my butt eccentuating pants that I wouldn't wear forever in public becuase they eccentuate my butt, but then I just wore them and loved it, and I was timid to wear them here, but I did and was just planning on running, then coming right home and jumping in the shower then going on my date. WELL, when I got home, already pushing the time when my date was coming to get me, our door was broken and we couldn't get it and the maintenance guy had to come, but before he did, my date did and my butt was just eccentuated!! AA! hahha, so I stood against the wall and tried not to make any sudden movements and then just ran inside and then went on the date with free flowing shorts. Don't wear butt eccentuating pants if you are going on a date becuase you might get caught.

And I saw the prophet and I visited the Bean Museum and I slept in and I went to the temple and I checked out my first books from Harold and I went grocery shopping and I did my laundry and it's officially and immediately fall here and I love that campus is a free flowing place where you can sit wherever the heck you want and not a soul will care so I randomly pick a building and find a nook and study my little head off!

And that's all, nothing really too interesting, but I can't wait for this weekend!!! bEcuase remember how purely wonderful Christmas was!!! So joyous, it will be so fun!

Hooray for 5k!

Hooray hooray! First 5k as a college student today, and keeping with my tradition I only had about 5 hours of sleep! It was a free race for Abuse Prevention and I got a free shirt and free fun and happiness all around! Before we ran I said to the boys that did it with me YOU CAN WIN IT!!!

They didn't. But I did.
Thanks, Dad! They also handed out free rape whistles (that's what's in my mouth) and the course wasn't exactly the right length, but it was SO FUN! I love races and they even had the oranges afterward, and I got to feel the feeling of already having run a race and coming home to an apartment full of sleeping people! Hooray hooray!

Here I Am!

Because I really did cherish CJ's great college advice, I have started a blog since that was her #4 piece of advice. It will probably be updated about as often and consistently as Charina's! But, here, at least, is a brief synopsis of my BYU life thus far; certainly not all inclusive, but at least highlighting some good parts!

My roommate Elise! I got 3 GREAT roommates and I didn't have a picture of the Rachel and Chelsea, but know they are wonderful and squeal a lot! We are loud, authentic girls, all of us together!


The lighting is really poor on this picture, but here are about 90 name tags of mine from all the ward things I've attended. We even wear nametags to church! It's really helpful, but also just funny to me that everywhere I go I need a nametag!

Two lessons I've already learned: 1) The parking lots in Wyview are all very much downhill

2) When you buy a bag of peaches from the fruit stand, don't keep it in the paper bag and expect to carry it home on your bike. When you go over the Wyview parking lot speed bumps, they will spill everywhere and quickly roll down the downhill Wyview parking lots. If you are lucky, the car driving buy will charitably give you a BYU bookstore bag to put your asphalt impaled peaches in so you can go the extra 5 feet you had left till you go to your apartment!

This is a nice lanyard. I once had a whole trashload of keys on their at home, but since I only had a house key out here, the lanyard was just extraneous baggage when i ran out the door to go to the OU football game. (WE WON BY THE WAY!) Don't take your key off your lanyard and out it in your pocket if you are expecting to jump up and down University Ave all the way home from such a victory. You will not be in possession of your key much longer. Or thirty dollars much longer after that.

My tap dance shoes! Can you say life dream fulfilled?

I can't!!! I'm the worst tap dancer in the whole class and i really struggle with the moves and my teacher goes really fast and it is hard, hard, hard. But it's really fun, and it's a life dream; if I can pray around a flag pole, wear a skirt to school, stick some gum under a desk, and run up Pikes Peak, I can learn how to tap dance!

So there you have it! Who knows what's to come, but I hope you can enjoy whatever does on this blog!