The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I love this time of year!! Not because it's winter and gets cold (my least favorite thing), but because it's such a joyful time. This season has been especially wonderful. I've spent more time with friends than I have pretty much any year previous, I spent time with family (like every year), and it's just been amazing!

I was very pleased with myself for actually getting presents for my friends this year. I've never really done it before, but this year, it just felt right. Most of my best friends (I have 3) are leaving (most = 2/3) for anywhere from a few to several months. I understand why and I'm happy for them, but it still leaves me a bit melancholy, to be honest. One friend is going to work at Disneyland (YAY ALI!!!), and my other friend is going up to BYU for school. My third best friend (Yes, that's you, Kara! ;D ) is student teaching, so I probably won't see much of her, either. :( (We need to watch Pushing Daisies sometimes. ;) Especially since I got season 2 now. hehehehe)

Christmas was amazing this year! I'll just go through from Wednesday to today, because most of the time I work. Wednesday I got to go see Princess and the Frog again with Ali and James. It was amazing! You know a movie is good when I don't talk at all during it. XD And I didn't talk at all. Usually I make comments left and right throughout the movie. So that was fun. :) I then went to work for a while and then came home, and prepped (kind of) for Kara to come over, so we could watch PD, Season 1. (We watched episodes 6 & 7.)

Thursday, I went to work in the morning, until about noon, and was counting pills for most of that. XD Not so fun, but whatever. That afternoon, I picked up a copy of my book from Americopy, where I had had it bound for James, since he wanted to read it. I then proceeded to head over to his house for a gift exchange, and a look at some mission stuff. 2 1/2 hours of chatting, laughing, and looking at pics and things, it was amazing. I had soooo much fun! He's a neat guy!

Thursday night was our traditional family Christmas Eve gathering, where we eat dinner and have a program. It's really neat to have a musical family. Four of the six of my family performed a song called Baby in a Manger by Sally DeFord. Here you can listen to it. It's a wonderful song. One of the joys is our Christmas Carol time, where my Uncle Brent (Brent Jorgensen, LDS music composer and arranger extraordinaire) plays the tunes to different songs and we all sing along. :) This year, he wrote his own song, and it's AMAZING. I wish I could have recorded it or something, it was absolutely beautiful. After our program is over, we head back home and read the Christmas story from the scriptures, and then open our 1 present, or in this case 2, because my mom made us all pajamas, so we got to open that one and then another. It was awesome. :)

Christmas morning was amazing. It started out like any normal Christmas, with the gift opening and whatnot. At about 9am, we were told to go outside, and in the driveway was our next Christmas present. Mary Martin and her sister, Marilyn Crosby, had ridden down, on our very own horses. It was AMAZING!!! I was shocked!! Their names are Mack and Seinfeld, and a thoroughbred and purebred Arabian, respectively. They are so awesome! It's exciting! Kristen and I spent a lot of the day with them (she more than I), and Saturday we spent most of the day riding. It's awesome. There are still some things we need to get, but it's just awesome. :)


Anyways, that was my week. It's been intense and crazy and fun, but I love it! :D I can't wait to see what happens next in my life!!! It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Alright....

So I got begged to do another post. ;) hehe

Sorry it's been so long. =/ Just been taking things one day at a time and trying to survive the semester. And.... now the semester is over, and I'm that much closer to finishing my college degree!!!

The past few weeks have been amazing, challenging, wonderful, hard, fun, and stressful. All those emotions mashed up together, varying on the different days and such. I finished the semester, and I didn't have any finals during final week, which was AMAZING!!!! Our institute choir performed 5 times in one week, and we rocked!!! ;> James even went to see a couple of them, which made me happy, and by now he's pretty much met all my friends that I've made since he's been gone. At least, all my close friends. :)

On Wednesday, I had a Muppet Christmas Carol watching party, and there was me, Josh Arbizu, Kara Morris, and James. Alana and Derek showed up not too far into the movie, so they joined us for a little bit, and definitely joined in when we started playing Curses. XD Awesome game! We got some pretty funny things going. lol I put some videos up on Facebook that I got on my phone. It was pretty awesome!

James and I have hung out a few times randomly. He got to come with me and my sisters to an American Idol Christmas show at the MAC, which was awesome, even if we were a little bit too close. XD We were in the orchestra pit seating. It was awesome, though! James a pretty cool guy. :) I'm kinda bummed that he's leaving to go to BYU this next semester, but like I said, I'm just taking things one day at a time. It's better that way. :)


Christmas is coming up!!!! :D I'm done Christmas shopping, so now I just get to sit back and wait. ;) Not long after Christmas is New Years, and then my BIRTHDAY!!!! I cannot believe I'm almost 21! It's crazy! :D But it'll be interesting.

We had some drill performances this weekend which rocked, even if it was really pretty stressful. =/ Anyways, hope everything goes smoothly the next few weeks as the holidays really start happening. ;)

BEST WISHES!!!!!!

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.