Surprise Birthday Parties to to Shoving spoons of hot sauce

Count Down....
    I will flying home Tuesday!!! I am beyond excited to see my family, I can hardly stand it.  Landon called me this week to tell me that he had saved up 12 of 14 dollars to take us ice skating-We have a tradition of going out ice skating on a date!  A couple months ago he told me that at our next date though he was going to pay, and he has worked to stay true to his word.  I can't wait to see the rest of my family too.... Oh goodness I am so excited!!!  Luckily, two of my classes got canceled on Monday so I am just kind of coasting out until I leave-yay!!!!

Anyhow, Friday was my lovely room mate Jesse's birthday!!!! She will be serving in Brazil for her mission in April.  I have amazing room mates.  Jesse is one of the kindest people I know.  She is so genuine and giving-she will make you feel so loved and will bake you cookies randomly just to brighten your day.
The other 5 of us decided she need a big spotlight on how awesome she is, so we planned all week for her surprise Party:

Janai took her out to dinner at 5:30, and as soon as she left we cleaned up the kitchen and set to decorating.  Then Jeanice went with her to a latin festival and she was due back at 8.

Decorations!  Although these did not last long...

I started making Sour Cream Apple Pie (her favorite!).  I have never made it before, so I was really worried.  Whitney also made chocolate-peanut butter no bakes (she had never had them until I made them a few weeks ago-now I got her hooked!).  One of our friends Cody brought, Guarana (A soda that Portuguese and Brazilians love!), and we had chips salsa, and our friends Natalie, Courtney, and Laura brought cupcakes.  Our Fhe bros brought ice cream to go with the pie.  Basically we were loaded.

I

Waiting Before....

It was also our friend Jacob's brithday, so we celebrated his too! Happy Birthday Jacob!

Us waiting in anticipation for Jesse

8:00 came around...No Jesse.......8:30.....No Jesse...... and then finally! at 9:00 she came home, and we sprang!

Madi, Capri, Ally, and Kenzi! 

Jared, Jeanice, Cody, and Natalie (Jared was sitting, so we had to take this side ways) 

Natalie and the Birthday Girl!

My piece of pie-I was actually happy with how it turned out!  And no one died from eating it and everyone seemed pretty happy with it-What a relief!

Jesse and Jacob's lovely birthday banner that Leah made!

Welll...After some of the people left there was just a group of us, and somehow or another Whitney challenged me to a hot sauce competition.  Please realize that I have the wimpiest tongue on the planet, and Whitney eats hot sauce almost everyday.  This was the stupidest thing I cold have possibly done.....

This stuff, the Rooster Hot Sauce, it HOT! You should always use it sparingly and with other foods to tone it down-it will still burn you.  We,  however, decided to have 7 spoonfulls, and then see who would be the first to reach for milk.  
Whitney kicked my  butt
I ashamedly reached for the milk.  
We are pretty sure we have chemical burns on our tongues.

Then, after cookies, pie, and hot sauce, we woke up the next morning (5 hours later) to do a 5k!  It was with the Womens Services and Resource Center Club, against abuse.  It  was really fun!

I have no idea what my actual time was, but oh well!
Saturday (last) night we also had our ward thanksgiving party, and played night games.  Then we went over to some friend's dorm to watch spider man.  I decided last night not to set an alarm and just see what time my body woke up naturally, because I kept staying up for a full 22 hours for work, and I haven't really had a chance to catch up on sleep all week long.......
I woke up at 10:48 this morning.....yikes!
I feel good now though!
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, I sure do love ya!

Sunshine to Snow-but just as wonderful!

I am so stinkin blessed to be here at BYU, I love it so much.  My mid term this past week went well, studies are good, work was good, church was good, and all the fun with friends was a hoot!
The weather was crazy though, and changed like night and day!  Wednesday I was walking around campus in a t-shirt.  The sun was out, and there were beautiful leaves all around.  I took a picture of how pretty and golden they are:

People probably thought I was weird, because a couple times I just had this urge I couldn't resist to kick the leaves.  Its a bit strange, but I actually miss yard work.  Raking the leaves is always fun, and relaxing.  I get that from my Dad--mowing the lawn is his favorite.
This picture is of a fiddle group that was playing on campus.  They were really good!  (You can see how sunny it  was).  They started playing while I was on the phone with my friend Marcus.  He is leaving for his mission on Wednesday for Tahiti-I am so excited for him!


 Anyhow, by Friday, I was incredibly grateful for my big boots (thanks Mom

and Dad!) and my big snowboarding shell-it was cold!  This is the view I woke up to Saturday Morning outside my window to give you an idea:

 The mountains are so beautiful!  The 'Y' is hiding underneath that big blanket of snow-can you find it?

Well Friday night, we went to the opening BYU basketball game of the season-yay! It was a lot of fun, and we won!  
As you can see from the picture, we didn't have the ultimate spot.  Apparently we need to get there a lot earlier, or the nose-bleeds it is.
After the game, we all came back to our dorm for a Nacho Libre Party, with Nachos included.  It was a hoot!  At one point I am pretty sure we had about 25 people stuffed in our little living area.  After the movie, we played winkem, Peter-James-and-John, and Grunt Piggy Grunt.  There were defiantly some good laughs.  Around 12 when dorm curfew hit, we went outside for an ultimate snowball fight.  The snow was perfect!  Not too wet, and made great snowballs.  We were out there for over an hour, and I was soaked by the time we were done though, thanks to some white washing.  At one point one of the RAs was there, and he kept throwing snow at us, so we all grabbed snowballs and charged at him-I don't know that I have ever seen someone run that fast in PJs, it was impressive!

Saturday morning (5 and a half hours after the fight), I got so excited to see more snow that I just had to go on a walk.  I walk everywhere around campus, but I love it.  My favorite place to walk of course is to the temple.  Isn't it beautiful?  Look at all that White :)

 

The rest of Saturday was filled with some productive studying and a group project.  Then at 5 Natalie and I walked over to her sister-Heather's place for a Wenatchee Waffle dinner.  It was fun to see people, and you can never go wrong with Chocolate Chip waffles.  Brandon Edmundson came though, and I haven't seen him since he moved away sophmore year! He is running for UVU, which is just like 15 min away from BYU.  Natalie and set out to find him a football tickets so we could all go to the game.  For the last game, we had the best seats of all season!  We sat 4th row up in the in-zone  right in front of the band.  We only stayed until half because it was so cold, but when we left we were ahead 42-7.  It was a good way to bring to close the football season.

The view from our seats!

Natalie, Brandon, and I!  Haven't seen him since he moved away sophomore year!

Natalie, Brandon, Me, Lee, Jeanice, and Shanna-bravin' the cold!

After the game, we all went back to watch Forest Gump and drink coco.  It was a wonderful close to a great week.  And now I only have one more week, then it's Thanksgiving week!  I am so excited to see my family!    

Hope everyone has a great Veterans day.  I am so thankful for all those who have fought for our country.  I agree with the advice to pray for the leaders of our country, not matter your political beliefs.

Natalie and I started our morning with two of our friends from our ward, Kenny and Elena, walking to the temple at 4:50.  Usually we drive, but Kam, who has the car, was feeling sick.  It was worth it though, and a great start to my week :)

Well, that's all.  Kind of a jumbled post, sorry! Hello from BYU though, sending hugs your way!

Happy Halloween, Tests, Zombies, Majors, and Birthdays!

Our Sunday Night Pre- Halloween Party!  We made a bunh of yummy cookies...then proceeded to eat all the yummy cookies.  SO much fun!

This was certainly a scary week-jammed packed and busy.  (I think I say it's busy every time though, so disregard)

 this was Whitney and I as zombies at the Stake Halloween party

I had two midterms this week-Bio and Book of Mormon.  That in and of it self make a spooky week.  I think I did okay on them though, so that's good.  Each time I go to the testing center I mean to take a picture, but when I get there I am strictly focused on my test, and when I am done I am strictly focused on getting away as soon as possible.  I do love BYU's testing system though.  Instead of doing it in class, students are given a certain amount of days where they can go to the testing center and take the test on their own time.  It makes it way easier to schedule and prepare, and I also think the environment is a lot less stressful and better for tests than it would be in class.

Natalie and I went to the Basketball Jamboree-can't wait for the actual games! We won the scrimmage 100 to like 50!

Wednesday we had a little Halloween Party with our FHE group.  I made pumpkin cookies and baked apple pumpkin bread (with my last two apples from Wenatchee that Mom sent me!  She sent me a whole box, and I was eating apples all the time-so good!), and one of my FHE brothers, Michael, made chicken casserole thingy that was delicious.  Originally we were going to watch a classic Alfred Hitchock, but then somebody (Whitney) made the suggestion to watch Insidious.  I, being a stupid and not wanting to be chicken, agreed to watch it.  Worst. Idea. Ever.  At first I was on the floor, squeezing by FHE bro Brad's leg.  Jeanice was on the couch squeezing the stuffing out of my pillow pet-Nutty.  Eventually, I moved to the couch, and I think I broke my FHE bro James' Hand-poor guy! I never want to watch a scary movie again.  Jeanice and I were so terrified we wouldn't leave eachother alone the rest of the night.  I talked to her while she was in the shower so she wouldn't get scared-we are great room mates :)



(This is the three of us after the movie.  Jeanice and I aren't purposefully making this face)

Thursday I went on  date!  It was completely blind, but he was great and it was a lot of fun.  It's a really funny story though, and it was a very eventful night.  It ended with a parking boot on the car, lovely right?

Saturday was the Zombie Run 5k!  We were actually chased by people dressed up in gory goo that looked like legit, disgusting zombie crap.    It was my roommates Jeanice, Jesse, and Whitney, Jesse's Mom, Natalie, our FHE brother John, and two of our guy friends Cody and Dillon.  I ran with Natalie and John.  The Zombies "killed" you by grabbing a flag that was attached to your hip by your back.  Natalie and I set it up so that all we needed to do was turn and then the Zombie's wouldn't be able to reach our flags.  I had so much adrenaline.  We started 5 minutes ahead of the zombies, but some of them still caught up even though we were booking it.  We ran a 23 minutes and 40 sec time.  With our stopping and dodging people, it was a pretty decent time.  Natalie and I were reminded that even though we can run a marathon, we are not very good at running fast...
I won a t-shirt though!  The other shirts were covered in red blobs of "blood" and said infected.  The came, we ran, I survived!

This is the shirt we won!  Will post other pictures of our group soon!

I had to take a break from blogging to have a dorm dance party-it was pretty epic.  Taylor Swift, Beibs, and One Direction make excellent dance parties, and spatulas make excellent microphones.

This week I only have one mid term-American Heritage.  I signed up for all the classes I want next semester:
      Social Dance (Yay!)
      Writing 150
       Physical Science
      Book of Mormon
     New Testament
      Spanish 105
      Adolescent Development

Currently my major is declared as teaching Social Science--but I need to change it.  Unfortunately, social studies and history teaching is not very hirable or competitive.  Math and Science are, but after taking Bio this semester, and Calc last year, I really don't want to teach that (and that's an understatement!).  English is also not very hirable because there are so many people.
My end goal is to work with students in Leadership.  I want to be at schools to help make a difference in students lives that so many teachers made for me.  I want to help show students their potential.  I feel like one of the best ways to do that is in the classroom.  I was considering getting experience in the classroom, and then changing to Administration.  I still am keeping that as an option, but the best way to go about that seems to be to get a degree or minor in business.  The more I think about it though the more I'd like to get my minor in psychology, or something that would help me to better work with my students if that makes sense, rather than be an administrator.  The only reason I would want to be an administrator is to better help students, but I am not sure thats the best way to go about it.  Ok, can you tell I am not really sure about much?
So as of right now I am considering switching to Spanish Teaching.  I think I could really enjoy teaching Spanish, and then I would be in the classroom.  I would love some feedback and thoughts on what others thought (especially teachers and friends from home that I miss so much!)

And a special shout out to my Mom.  I skyped with her this morning.  I can't count the many times I have thought in my head since being here: "well, she's right-again".  I could never put in a post or words how grateful I am for my Mom. Through all the ups and downs, she remains a wonderful example to me.  Right now she is going back to school, and I am so proud of her.  Work, keeping up with the boys, church, school, and everything else keeps her so busy.  I pray for her often because I know its tough, but I also know that she can do it.  She is a wonderful example of strength and charity for me.  I am so grateful for my mom, and one of my best friends.  Sure do love ya Mom.

Well, that's all folks!  I love reading everyone's elses blogs and facebook posts.  I am so blessed to have so many friends and family members!