Chatting, parties, and a date

Alright, so I know so much has happened in the past like 2 weeks. It's crazy! Not only do I have less than 2 weeks of school left, things are just going crazy.

Alana and Derek Funkhouser are officially dating now. They are a couple. Together. Boyfriend/Girlfriend.... lol Still a little weird to think about, but w/e. hehe

Anyways, onto the stories that everyone wants to hear. XD

James has been home for like 3 weeks now. In those three weeks, we've talked on the phone, probably 3 or 4 times. (2 or 3 of them were me calling. XD) I don't call people. At all, so me calling him is pretty big. We mostly would chat about how are days had been, a little bit of mission stuff and whatnot. Just fun friendly stuff. :)

The next step was getting together. So, Alana and I threw a party. We had about 30 people show up. It was pretty fun. ^_^ James and I talked and played the wii and did DDR and talked and ate M&Ms and things. hehe Overall, super fun night! Best part of the night was him asking me on a date. Not the fancy, extravagant way that high schoolers like to ask. It was to the point and to my face. With a somewhat minor interruption by the Soward brothers. XD And of course, I said yes.

Soooooo........... Where is all this leading you may ask? Well, our date was Saturday night. (Last night, technically. ;>) Now, you may be wondering what happened. So I'm gonna tell you. We started off by going to In-N-Out, which I have never eaten at before. It was pretty fun. We ordered, talked some, got our food, talked some more about almost everything: his mission, Hungarian money, the roads in Hungary, life in general, random discussion on fruits vs veggies (which led to me telling him about "flying saucer" squashes), which then led to drawing on some paper I have, and it was super fun. :D After a 2 hour dinner at a fast food restaurant, we went to the temple grounds, to look at the lights. I said that it looked so sparkly because of the lights, and he said "just like you". Which made me giggle. So we walked around, saw Rex and Paige and talked to them, talked to an elder that was serving in my ward at one point, and after we had been all around, we went into the visitor center, because it had been a while since he had gone in it. (About two years. XD) And as we walked around, we saw Daniel Button, so we stopped and talked to him for a while. Then we went to look around some more before the visitor center closed, so we quickly looked at the nativity scenes, which were a mix of cute, cultural, and colorful. I LOVED IT! hehe After that, we headed back to the car and we were thinking about what to do next. "This was as far as I had planned" was what he said. I gave some options that had been suggested by a friend. I suggested going and getting hot chocolate, or going back to my house and getting some. He chose to come back to my house, so that's what we did. We had hot chocolate, watched some Brian Regan videos, and chatted some more (we were always chatting and laughing). We talked with my parents for a bit, and he was leaving just as Alana and Derek were getting back from their date thing. So he left, after we hugged. :) It was honestly one of the best, most simple, least expensive dates ever! :D I LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!

And hopefully he'll come to the institute choir fireside thing tonight. :D I'm so looking forward to singing! :D I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!


Anyways, that's the update for anyone that cares. ;) I'll hopefully update pretty regularly, but we'll see.

I know I know....

I know I need to blog again. It's been FAR too long. And so much happening. But I haven't felt like it's the right time yet. I'm having my little adventures in life. And as soon as I have something more substantial to talk about, I will.



Trust me. ;) Until then.... patience is a virtue. ;D

Fears

I have problems. Big problems for this day and age in time.

I have some of the most stupid fears that I have no idea how I got them or how to help them.

My less important fear is bugs. They leave me alone, I'm fine. They come in my territory, I will take them out (with minimal screaming). They come anywhere near me or startle me in any way, I will have a full blown freak out. (The joys of being a girl. lol)

The next fear is death. I hate thinking about dying. I don't mind the idea of moving on per se, I just don't like the ways of moving on. Death, no big deal. Dying, Scary as all get out. But I'm sure everyone doesn't like that whole thing.

My biggest fear, and the most irrational is calling. I am terrified of calling and terrified of answering calls. More the calling than answering. I'm fine answering as long as the number comes up with a name from my contact list. I will not call. Like, at all. I do what I absolutely have to now, but I still have panic attacks sometimes when I have to call. I don't know why. I do know I want to fix it, but I don't have an idea how to.


Anyways, it bugs me that I can't call. The only thing I can think is that I don't get the visual cues so I have to ask people to repeat it, and I do that several times, so I feel bad and like an idiot.

One of the most amazing weeks EVER!!!

Alright, so I halfway trudged through this past week. (Well, alternating between bouncing off the walls hyper and being super depressed.)

Monday, I helped the LDS institute put up their Christmas decorations, and I had a BLAST!!! :D I was running around being happy and hyper. Then I got to my Monday night class and all heck broke loose. I went from the high on a roller coaster, to the lowest of lows. It honestly stunk. Badly. So I spent the night crying and doing homework.

Tuesday was better. I cried in the morning, but I didn't stay upset for too long, and it all worked out okay.

Wednesday was pretty much AMAZING!!! I had class, and then I had taken off interning so that I could listen to Elder Chesley's talk. I love him and his wife. They are seriously like my own family without being blood related. He's been through a lot, but it's all turned out for good. So Wednesday I was privileged to do that.

Thursday was CRAZY. I got to interning, and there was no teacher, no sub, nothing but me. It was weird. So I got to keep the kids in some semblance of order while I waited to see what was going on. We finally got a sub into the classroom, but in hindsight, I think I would have been better off on my own. She was nice, but I wasn't a big fan, tbh. So, I got to teach a little bit, and I hoped they understood what I tried to teach them. I learned that night that the principal of the school was just going to have me teach the class on my own. (And I would have been happy with that.)

Friday started out okay. I had my class, and then I had work, and was kept pretty busy. I told myself that I would call James after work when I got home. And of course, because of my fear, I kept putting it off. I went to Melodie Stapley's wedding reception, and then went home and Ali convinced me to call. Well, convinced my head to call. XD My finger wouldn't hit the "call" button, though. Until I hit it accidently. So we got the hello's over with, and the next thing he said was "I was just getting ready to call you." My thought was "AWWWWWWW". hehe Anyways, we chatted for a while.... which doesn't happen very often on the phone for me. (For those that want to know, we talked for over an hour. XD) So that was Friday. :)

Saturday, I went to drill team in the morning, because we have our parade thing on Wednesday. :D I'm sooooo super excited! :D We did pretty well. After that, I wanted to sleep, but I ended up not sleeping. XD I got on Facebook and Ali seemed sad, so I asked what I could do, and we ended up setting up a plan to go to lunch so we could get out of our houses. I went to the ward service project for a bit, and then met up with Ali for lunch at Logan's Roadhouse, where I had some of the best rolls and best salad ever. (What could be missing from a salad that has steak in it? I mean, seriously, I doubt there is nothing better. XD) And we chatted and had fun, and then we split up, after a delicious lunch. I went to our ward potluck dinner thing, and then our family went to William Joseph's concert at the MAC. He is an AMAZING pianist. Very talented.

Today, was amazing as well. I got to go to James' homecoming talk thing, and Ali was there along with a few other people I knew. James gave a wonderful talk, and then we spent all of Sunday School chatting out in the foyer. XD It was awesome. And we got hugs! hehe I'd forgotten how awesome he is to be around. It'll be interesting to see what will happen with everything. I then went to my own ward, and now I'm at home, wanting to take a nap, but can't cuz we have choir at the very odd hour of 3pm.... BAD TIME. It's in the middle of my nap time. I've signed up for my classes, so hopefully that'll all work out.

And that's been the past week. Looking back, it really was mostly just an up and awesome week, even though I had that one day of depression. Hurray for happy things! :D

Anyways, that's the week. Hope you enjoyed the novel. XD

Dedication

Soooo... I said I would write this yesterday, but I didn't, so here it is today. :)

Our stake center, the one that burned down. It was almost 2 years ago that an arsonist entered the building and lit it on fire. In those two years, we have had wards in different buildings in different stakes, meetings at the Red Mountain Institute building, and so many tender mercies of the Lord.

A little over a year ago, in September, we had the ground breaking ceremony for our new stake center, and in that year, there have been continued miracles, and building.

And it has all culminated in this. I was a part of the choir that sang at the dedication. We sang a special number, and then Pres. Ahlstrom, our stake president, talked. He talked about when the call came, he talked about the miracles that happened, and told a couple of stories of objects from the original building that had been checked out from the library, other hymn books sent to be rebound, the building being as clean as it could be, and a page from Preach my Gospel that hadn't been completely destroyed in the fire. It was an amazing talk. Sadly, it was accentuated by a boy being carried out by his dad, who then puked, all over the brand new carpet.

Following Pres. Ahlstrom, the speaker, and general authority to dedicate the building, was Elder. David Lesuer. He did a wonderful job, and it was a sweet experience. The closing song was Hymn #2, The Spirit of God. Usually the Hosanna chorus is reserved for temple dedications, but our choir was privileged to sing it, and we sounded awesome.

It was a wonderful experience. I only wish that James could have been there to attend it. But he will be home soon enough. :) (9 days today)

Oh how the Lord blesses us, and I believe that with all my heart.

A musing of a marvelous (somewhat lazy) me

I have homework to do, so naturally I'm putting it off to post and facebook and do all sorts of things that probably aren't that important.

Life is pretty crazy. The semester is half over, I have sooooo much to do that I've put off.... so much. And yet... I feel mostly at peace right now. I don't know if it's from going to the dedication of our brand new stake center, or I'm just feeling close to the Lord, but I like this.

I finally had a revelation about my BLE class. Not necessarily spiritual, but it was a revelation for me, because it brings things into perspective about the class, and my schooling in general.


For those of you that don't know, my BLE class is my torture class. I don't pay much attention, and only do what I have to. Here is the concluding paragraph of my BLE midterm paper that I had to write.

As I think about what I have learned, I can't say specifically that I learned this in this class and that in that class. It all blends together creating my own knowledge of what is truth and what I am able to, or what I desperately want to use in my own class in the future. That's really what learning is all about. We learn all sorts of different things, but connect it to everything we have learned, everything we are learning, and at some point, everything we will learn. That's what makes teachers "good". They understand that learning isn't just something linear, we make connections to everything. What's in math doesn't stay in math, and what's literature and reading doesn't stay there. It branches out and connects to as many things that we know as we let it. So while I can't say I learned anything specifically from the readings, or from the class, what I have learned, whether how little or how much, has become so entwined with the knowledge I have, that I'm just storing it until I can use it when I need to.

That just made me so happy. Something for that just kinda clicked in my head. It's not about being the best, it's just about doing the best you can, because that's really all anyone can do, and that doesn't just apply to school or learning. It can be applied to anything, and I think that's what's so amazing.

(Tomorrow I will blog about our Stake center dedication. :) It was pretty cool.)

2 WEEKS!!!!!

So um.... I really have nothing to say.... The title says it all. XD James gets home 2 weeks from today! :D