Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year to all!!! This New Year's was so much fun! I have never really been one to get into celebrating the New Year (don't get me wrong, I like to stay up past midnight and have some snacks and perhaps play a game or two but nothing too crazy) and this year was no different. I didn't even care to start thinking about what I was going to do for New Year's until the day before. All I wanted to do was get together with a small group of friends, play games and eat good food, just kind of relax. Well...somehow my wanting to have a quiet evening at home (or at one of my neighbor's houses, just as long as I could wear sweats and didn't have to plan anything) turned into me being in charge of a big New Year's party to be held at my house (I didn't even know half the people who came). Don't get me wrong, it was way fun but my New Year's eve was EXHAUSTING! Here is how my day went:

6:00 a.m. - Arrived at work
12:40 p.m. - Back home
12:45 p.m. - Start making my guacamole
1:30 p.m. - Guacamole done, start cleaning house (and I cleaned EVERYTHING)
4:45 p.m. - Went to Macey's with Danny because I was too tired to drive myself
5:30 p.m. - Start making seven layer dip (it's not New Year's without it)
6:45 p.m. - Finally shower and get dressed for the day
7:45 p.m. - First guests arrive (I'll admit I was perturbed because they were early and I wasn't ready but then I opened the door and to my surprise...it was Tiffany!)
8:00 p.m. - 11:59 p.m. - Perhaps the least intense game of NERTS I've ever played as well as some other games
12:00 a.m. - NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION
1:20 a.m. - Someone decided we needed to watch a movie
3:30 a.m. - Last guest leaves and I can go to bed after being up for 22 hours straight

All in all it was a wonderful New Year's and I would do it again...as long as I have time to sleep the next day.

Families Can Be Together Forever

I am writing a new post. Not because I want to or because I have anything exciting to say but mostly because I was giving Nat/Joe a hard time about not updating their blog and they pointed out to me that I'm the one who needs to be updating my blog.

WARNING: It's sappy.

I feel like for the last few weeks any church meeting/activity I've gone to one of the songs being sung was "Families Can Be Together Forever". This has caused me to think a lot about families and how grateful I am to have such a wonderful family. These last couple of weeks I've spent a lot of time talking to and hanging out with my family both in Colorado and my extended family here in Utah. I don't know how I would have been able to make it through these last couple of weeks without my family. Just the little things like going out to dinner, spending the day hanging out, talking on the phone and knowing I always have somewhere to go when I need to talk have meant so much to me. I've really gotten to know more of my family through all of this and have come to realize how wonderful they all are. I'm so grateful for the family I have been given and the opportunity I have to be with them forever. I love you guys!

(This is the only picture I have of my family all together...and it's not even mine, I stole it off of Joe's Picasa. P.S. I have no idea what Sean is doing.)

School's Out for Summer

I finished up finals last week and I'm SO glad that's over with! The last two weeks of school about killed me, sure it's my fault for being such a procrastinator but I really think I do my best work under pressure. Anyway, now that I'm out of school I have a lot of free time, and boy do I mean a lot. I'm not going home for the summer because I have to stay here and work besides that, I like it here enough to stay. However, I don't think I realized how much free time I was going to have once school got out. It hasn't been too bad thus far but there are times when I'm quite bored. Yesterday I did have the wonderful opportunity to spend the day with my friend Gabriella who is from Sweden. Gabriella has been out here going to school at BYU and since she goes back to Sweden tomorrow we decided we would go do something fun before she heads back home. We were originally going to go to Park City but when I checked the weather it was raining and cold there so we decided against it. Instead we went up to Salt Lake where we ate at The Garden restaurant, walked around Temple Square and went to Gateway Mall. It was so much fun to get to spend the day with Gabriella, I will miss her when she goes back to Sweden. Here are just a few of the pictures I took while we were up there.

Oh, for Cute!

I want a puppy and this is the one I want. I told my mom I want this dog and she reminded of how I am with pets, I always want one and then when I get one I change my mind and want nothing to do with it. She's right, it happened with that stupid cat, Samantha, that I begged and begged and begged my parents to let me have and it happened with Scooter, the dumb dog. I told my mom that it would be different if it was a dog of my own because with those other animals I didn't feel bad disliking them because there were other people around to love them (especially Scooter, bless his heart, I don't like him but my mom loves him enough for all of us). However, if I were the only one that little dog had to love it, I would love it. Just look at its little face, who wouldn't love that?

Awkward...

So last Tuesday at about 5:00 p.m. I remembered that I had a Psychology test the next day at 9:00 a.m. that I hadn't studied for at all (this is what happens when you take 18 credit hours and have no time for sleep). Anyway, when I got home that night at about 9:30 p.m. I started to hurry and go over everything I needed to for the test the following morning. I started feeling extremely overwhelmed and I started to convince myself that I was going to fail this test. I did what I could that night and went to bed at about 11:30 so I would be able to get up at 7:00 to start my day. I got to school a little earlier than usual and used that extra time I had to review notes and read through my book. Then came time to take the test. I felt horrible about it as I was taking it. The multiple choice wasn't bad because I usually do pretty well with those but the labeling of the diagrams and the essay questions were stressing me out. With one of the essay questions I didn't even know what the terms in the question meant so I had no idea what I was being asked to do. I made my way through the diagrams just fine and I just wrote down stuff that sounded good to me for the essay questions.
Well, today we got back our tests. Before handing them back the professor wrote on the board the number of people who scored in the 90s, the 80s, the 70s and so on. She put that 13 people scored below 50 and I was certain that I was one of those 13. She started handing back the test and told us she was going to hand back the tests to the 3 people who scored in the 90s first and have each of them share with the class what they did to study. She handed back the first two and when she was getting ready to say the name of the last one I just kept thinking how funny it would be if it were mine and I had to explain to the class my study habits. Well, it was mine. I had no idea what to say to everyone. What was I supposed to say? "I studied for about an hour and a half last night and then hurried and memorized the diagrams five minutes before class". No way. So when it was my turn to share with everyone my "study habits" I just said that I take really good notes in class and went over them, a lot. I mean, that's what I did. I do take really good notes, that's why the multiple choice was so easy for me, I tend to remember things I write down. As far as the essay questions go, after rereading them I understood them a lot better than I thought I did.