Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

I arrived back in Wisconsin on the 13th and was quickly reintroduced to the Wisconsin winters. I soon discovered that I was being spoiled in Utah with temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s because when I returned to Wisconsin, the temperatures plummeted into the negative digits. I am grateful, however, that I did not have to walk to classes in this kind of weather! Before I left school, we got about 6-8 inches of snow surprisingly so I am looking forward to returning in January and being able to enjoy snow for the next few months of school.
Since being home, I have visited a lot of people, which was nice. I went back to my high school on Monday to visit my orchestra teacher who I had since fifth grade. I was able to see the other viola players that I played with the last few years. The high school has changed a lot and I got yelled at for taking my cell phone out in the office. I realized how happy and thankful I am to be in college now.
I drove down to Milwaukee for a few days to visit a good friend of mine, Jackie. She and I worked at the YMCA camp in Wausau for the past few years together and she goes to Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). She plays volleyball and basketball in college so I went down to watch two of her basketball games. The first one was cancelled though because of poor weather conditions but we had a lot of fun instead. The second game was awesome with her team winning over Mt. Mary College with a score of 73 to 45. It was the first time I have seen Jackie play so it was really fun and she was the leading scorer for the game! It was great time to spend with her. Included are some pictures from the visit with her.
Plans for the break include Christmas shopping with my sister, making Christmas cookies, spending time with my family, working at the YMCA camp and hanging out with friends. It is great to be home for another two weeks! It will go fast!

USU Aggies vs. BYU Cougars

Last Saturday, I went down to Salt Lake City to watch the biggest basketball game of the year (at least in my mind). Utah State played instate rival, Brigham Young University. Because the BYU basketball coach did not want to play at our school due to the level of noise and our fans, we met on neutral ground and played at the Energy Solutions Arena. That is home to the Utah Jazz. It was a pretty even game having both teams come in undefeated for the season. Sadly, my Utah State Aggies could not hold up to the BYU Cougars and lost with a final score of 68 to 63. I think we were ahead only a few times throughout the whole game. I am proud that we only lost by five compared to our football match-up earlier this year where we were crushed by BYU. I went to the game with Janet and some of her friends so I was the only USU student among a sea of BYU Cougar fans. It was still an enjoyable game despite that.
After the game, Janet and I went to Temple Square to see the lights. During the holiday season, Temple Square puts up a lot of Christmas lights and also nativity scenes. While it was packed with people, it was really neat to see the lights and all. Here are some pictures from it.

This week is full of studying and finals. I had my first final this morning and it went well. I had to present a final project and I got an A on it. I have four more tests this week but they are all on Tuesday or Wednesday. I come home this Saturday and will be there for three weeks. Even though I just went home I am still super excited to see everyone again!

Back In Utah

After surprising my family for Thanksgiving, I left on Sunday. I was expected to arrive in Salt Lake at 10:10pm and then be home by midnight. I did not get home until close to 5am in the morning. Lesson learned: do not fly to Chicago on a snowy day after Thanksgiving. My flight from Central Wisconsin Airport was delayed due to snow for three hours. When we finally left at 6:45pm, I had already missed my connecting flight. However, since the snowy weather was also occurring in Chicago, my connection was also delayed to 10:30. However, the plane we were supposed to take landed in Chicago with a cracked windshield so the airlines had to find another plane for us. We didn't leave Chicago until 1am central time. By the time we left, all I and the other passengers could do was just laugh. Thankfully I was able to sleep on the 3 hour plane ride and then be alert for the drive home. My first class wasn't until 9:30 this morning so I squeezed in about 3 hours of sleep. I am also thankful that I did not have to spend a night in the airport.

As I promised, here are some pictures from the week home.

This is my neice, Megan. She is trying on her new dress up clothes. She will be three in March.

This is our dog, Tilly. Brandon and Bonnie bought the Santa suit for their dog, Outlaw. Unfortunatly, it was too small for Outlaw so Tilly got it. It lights up around the belt buckle!

This is my sister, Trescha and I trying to be serious but our brother, Brandon kept making us laugh.

And finally a nice picture. My brother is on the left, Bonnie, his wife, is next. Then comes me and my sister Trescha. Kevin, Trescha's husband was not with us. I would like to point out that it seems like I am slightly taller than Trescha! That is a big accomplishment for me!

The Big Surprise!

Finally, I am able to let my surprise out to my family. I came home to Wisconsin on Tuesday to surprise my entire family. My sister was the only person to know that I was coming home because I needed someone to pick me up from the airport. Some friends knew but that was it. It was a great surprise and my mom was in tears when she found out. Last weekend, she found out that my brother, who is in the army in Kansas, and his wife were not able to make it home for the holiday because the army was making him work. She was really upset and saddened over that and even more because she knew I couldn't come home at all. Brandon, my brother called Monday night informing my mom that he was able to come home and would be in Wisconsin by Thursday. That made my mom really happy but then to get a call from me when I was in Chicago informing her that I was coming home was a very nice surprise for her. I came home and had a home-cooked meal and then went and surprised more of my family. Everyone was blown away that Trescha and I could keep it a secret for over two months about me coming home.
It is nice being home. I spent Wednesday at the camp I worked at during the summer and played with the children again. It was a nice day and reminded me how much I love the camp and the campers. Then that night, I went out with Pearl and Boomer who worked with me as Program Directors this past summer (Their real names are not Pearl and Boomer. Those are our camp names. Mine is Pebbles!). They both go to school in state so it was a nice treat to go out with them. Unfortunately, we also had to say goodbye again that night until we get together over Christmas break again. It won't be long.
Other plans for the week here include hanging out with my friends from high school (wow, that still sounds scary!), go to Festival of Trees, go to church at the ward in Wausau again, play games and maybe squeeze in some sleep.
Now it is time to go eat a lot and enjoy the few days I have in Wisconsin until I return to Logan Sunday night! I will put up pictures later I promise!

First Time to Idaho

Another few weeks have passed by in a hurry. It is hard to believe that it is Mid-November already. I drove past a house today with Christmas lights up already and it dawned on me that Christmas isn't too far away! That means I come home soon; less than a month!

I went to Idaho this weekend to visit a friend from Wisconsin, Jodi. She attends BYU-Idaho located in Rexburg, Idaho. We had a lot of fun. Rexburg is a place where you must find and/or create your own fun so we did pretty well at that. We played Ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of people, played at a park, went to a deserted barn, watched movies and had a scruptious, homemade Sunday dinner. Here are some pictures from the weekend. The first one is Jodi and I when we were walking around campus. The second one is some of Jodi's friends and I at the park Saturday night.

I discovered a few fun facts in my physics class last week. We had a "Microwave Day" where the students could bring anything to class and we would put it in a microwave and heat them up. So the highlights included a lightbulb and cheeto bag. If you put a lightbulb in the microwave, it lights up! It was really cool. A cheeto bag, when empty, starts on fire for a few seconds and then shrinks down majorly. I have included a picture of me holding the cheeto bag after my roommates and I did it outside our room. (In case the microwave exploded, we didn't want our apartment to catch on fire!) No worries, the microwave survived and it was super cool. The picture of me is bad; I wasn't looking so sorry!

And finally the other news of the week is I registered for next semester for classes. I am enrolled in 16 credits plus 4 credits of religion classes. My classes include: Statistics 2000, History 1110, Introduction to Parks and Recreation, Political Science 1100, Soccer, and Physical Science. For religion courses, I am taking Book of Mormon Part 2 and Family History. I only have one class on Tuesdays and have Thursdays completely off, which I am excited for!

Well, that is all the news for this week! I hope and pray that things are going great back inWisconsin! Less than 30 days and I will be home!

C'est Novembre!

Thought I would throw in some French! It’s November and that is super exciting! That means only one more month until I come home (40 days to be exact)! Halloween was great. We carved pumpkins the other night. Mine is Tigger because it is sort of hard to see! It was quite a mess since we didn’t have the right “tools” to carve pumpkins.
We won our football game on Saturday against University of Hawai’i! Utah State is now 2-7 for the season. It was my last football game this year, which was sort of sad! Basketball season started this week so our hopes for winning games have increased astronomically. Our basketball team is pretty decent so that is fun! The first few games were crazy. The Spectrum, which is where the games are, is rated as one of the 10 worst places to play for the opposing team. At first, I just thought it was because of the noise levels. That is part of it but it is also because of the student sections. The students are pretty rude at times to the opposing teams. Sometimes, it is humorous like the other night when a person from Northwest Nazarene fouled out of the game, the students would chant his steps. So as he walked to the benches, the students chanted “Right, Left, Right, Left, Right…” And then when the player finally sat down, the entire student section erupted in cheers. It was quite hilarious. But other times, I am sort of disgusted at the things they say. I guess in the past, the students have been warned and even penalized for their cheering and all.
Classes are still going well. I have A’s in everything so far so that is great! On a side note, my knee is doing better finally. It has been too long since I have enjoyed a good, long run so this past week I tested it out. My knee is better if I remember not to run on it every day.

Hope all is well with family and friends! I love and miss you all!

Homecoming Week

Homecoming was this past week, which was fun and exciting. My friends and I went paint dancing Monday night. We basically got in a paint fight and then danced for a while. While it was extremely gross at the beginning, believe it or not, I got used to it. It was not cool when I had to take two showers and scrub like mad to get all the paint off me. In the pictures are my friends: Heather, Chelsea and Alyssa.Friday night was the homecoming dance so my friends and I went and it was pretty sweet. Here are some pictures before the dance.Saturday was the game and the Utah State Aggies came super close to winning. We were ahead, 28-27 until the last two seconds when Fresno State kicked a 58 yard field goal and made it. So we lost with the final score being 28-30. It was sort of depressing since it was homecoming. We only have two more home games, which is weird. I still can’t believe that it is almost November!

Fall Break

The highlight of the past week or so has been the wonderful snowfall here on campus. As you can see, it snowed a little and some of it even stayed overnight. I only got pictures when it was dark out. About three days later, the snow had melted and now the temperatures sit back up in the 60’s. Thank goodness! I went down to Salt Lake City on Friday for fall break. I went to Temple Square again and also met up with some girls from USU who live in the same building I do. Then that evening, I met up with some people from BYU and we went to Nightmare on 13th, a haunted house in Salt Lake. The big sign outside it says it is rated #1 in America. I didn’t scream but I jumped a few times. The scariest room was the chain-saw room. All the walls are padded in white and there is no sign saying “EXIT” so we didn’t know how to get out. The chain-saw man, who freaked me out the most, had to show us. There was another part that reminded me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Bellevue Hospital. It was an insane asylum and was sort of creepy. Every now and then people jumped out at you or things fell from the ceilings.
My roommates and I had a great excursion to Wal-Mart the other night. I received a gnome for my birthday from Sami Kordonowy, a friend from back home. We took the gnome with us to Wal-Mart and had some fun.

Gnomes are important to me because at the camp I work at, we go on gnome hikes and the children (most of them) believe that gnomes exist. It is great fun!
Homecoming is this week so there are a lot of interesting activities going on. The major events include the dance and the game this weekend, both of which I am going to. My friends convinced me to go to the dance so I might as well. Only about a month until Thanksgiving break, which is scary because then the semester is pretty much over by then. I am sad that I won’t be able to come home for Thanksgiving but less than two months and I will be home for Christmas break. We only have about seven weeks left of classes. Woo Hoo!

Birthday Weekend!

This past weekend was probably the best one here in Utah! It was filled with fun times and good memories. My friend, Janet come up from BYU for the weekend. BYU played USU Friday night in football. BYU of course beat USU but only with a score of 34 to 14. I thought we would lose by about 63 points so the game actually went pretty well for USU.
Saturday morning, Janet and I went hiking in the Wind caves up in the Logan Canyon. It was only about two and a half miles because we didn’t have much time. But it was cool! Here are some pictures of the Wind Caves.

Saturday night, since there was nothing better to do in Logan, we decided to go to the Logan Temple. Here are some pictures of it. Then Sunday, MY BIRTHDAY, Janet and I drove down to Salt Lake City for the Church’s General Conference. My friend who goes to school in Idaho, Jodi, met us there as well. It was really cool to be able to go to the Conference in Salt Lake instead of watching it on television, especially as my first General Conference. It was near the Salt Lake Temple so we took some pictures there too.

This is the conference center, where the Conference was.

Conference occurs twice a year for the Church and it is where the leaders of our Church speak to all the members throughout the world. It was really cool and was a great way to spend my birthday. I still can’t believe I am 19. It feels super old but I know it is just the beginning.

Conquered My First Marathon

I hope all is well back home. I can’t wait until I can come home and see everyone again. Only three months until then! And it will go by super fast, I’m sure. It has been a few weeks since I last updated so sorry. To tell the truth though, nothing really exciting happened since this past weekend so I knew my blog would just bore people (not saying that this won’t be boring too).

Saturday the 13th was our first home football game. On top of working 14 hours that day, I enjoyed watching the game, even though we lost miserably. We played the University of Utah and the final score was 58 to 10. That is terrible! But it was fun watching the game. With my job, we are not allowed to cheer during sporting events so a few times (when the Aggies actually did something right), I found it very hard to resist from cheering. It is a good thing that there were only a few moments that were worth cheering for. Then we played Idaho on the 20th and we won with a score of 35 to 17 I believe. Once again, I had to work but it was okay. Our record is 7-32 over the past THREE years! We stink so much!

The big news of this blog is to let the world know about my marathon. I ran my very first marathon on the 20th and enjoyed it. Well I loved it more when it was done. It ended up raining for about five to seven miles of the whole race: at the beginning and at the end. My time was 4 hours and 25 minutes. I placed 10th for my age division of 15-19 female runners. Overall, I placed 966 out of 2129 runners. Once I was done running my marathon, I had to work for seven hours, go to a play for class and then we had my roommate’s birthday party at night so it was a busy and tiring day but well worth it. My legs feel like they are about to fall off. It is terrible. I can’t walk up or down stairs without having piercing pains shoot through my legs. I am hoping that over the next week, they will recover. Because of my nervousness and excitement for the race, I only slept about 3 hours the night before so I ended up running longer than I slept, which is sort of sad.
This is me sprinting to the finish line. I was very relieved to see it!





You can barely see me in this picture. I am the one in the grey shirt right before the white finish line sign.





These are two of my roommates who came to watch and cheer me on. The other two roommates had to leave before taking the picture. Chelsea is on my left and Heather is on my right. I am proudly wearing my medal for finishing.



This is me after running. I finished about five minutes prior to this picture. I felt completely gross and could not wait until I showered.

I am getting laughed at a lot in regard to my accent. Supposedly we say our “a” differently. And the most common question I have gotten asked is “do you like cheese?” People think it is so cool to be from Wisconsin. I don’t see the glory of it all but whatever. Someone asked me the other day if it snowed in Wisconsin. I laughed hysterically and I think the person who asked the question felt stupid. I told her that it snowed more in Wisconsin than it did in Logan, Utah. They were amazed at that. I can’t believe I have been here over a month already. Time goes by when you're having fun!

Blah Week

Another week of classes has passed and I am glad to say that I survived. Nothing too eventful happened this week, which is sort of depressing.
We had our first Family Home Evening with our entire ward (church congregation) on Monday night. I am so excited to be in a community where I am able to attend those types of activities. It was a lot of fun and a great way to meet people in my ward. Pretty soon, we get assigned to our “families” and learn who our “parents” are. I’m excited for activities and lessons that we’ll have. For those who don’t know what Family Home Evenings are, they are a time set aside every week (traditionally on Monday evenings) for families to spend time together. Often, there is a scripture study/lesson, family prayer and then an activity that brings the family together. In college, since all of us are away from our families, the Church organizes the students into small “families.” There are “moms” and “dads” who organize the evenings.
On Friday night, I went to the Institute (this is a place/organization for college-aged students to take religion classes. They also host activities for students pretty much every week.) They had a Jello slide on Friday afternoon. Then at night, they had a mechanical bull and another dance and stuff. It was pretty sweet. Here are some pictures from the night. It had a big “Giddy Up/Western” theme.

This is me riding a mechanical bull!

Saturday I went to the USU women’s soccer game. I miss being able to watch athletic events and knowing the athletes. At college games/matches, I don’t know anyone so it changes how much I pay attention to the game. It would be more fun if I actually knew the people playing. But the good news is that we won! We played a team from Colorado and we won 3-0! But the sad news of the weekend is that our football team lost AGAIN. The score was 24 to 66. It is really depressing to come here and have a team that stinks at football. I honestly think the Everest Evergreens could dominate the Aggies.
And here are some more pictures of my campus, as I promised.

This is the Quad that is on campus. The University declared that they will never build upon this grassy area. It is quite nice. Often, there are people playing ultimate frisbee and other sports. And there seems to always be something interesting going on here too.

This is the institute building where I have religion class twice a week. It is also where our meetings/church service are on Sundays.

This is Old Main Building. I have one class in there. The A on top signifies Aggies. When the light is white, that means we lost at a sporting event, however when it is blue, that means we won. It is rarely blue. It will be more when Basketball starts though, I guarantee that!

Some kids on campus tried to break a world record this week. I don’t know if they broke it but I have a hunch that they did. These two kids had to teeter-totter for 100 straight hours. They had their set up (with a tent, food and all) outside one of my classes so I got to see it up front and personal. It was pretty exciting!
For those of you concerned, my ulcers are better. This week, I was able to eat a little more. And I run my marathon on September 20th (yikes, in less than two weeks!) so I am training like crazy for that. This week includes our first football game and we play University of Utah! Even though we’re guaranteed to lose, it will still be fun!

Stress, School and September

Hello to my family and friends!

The first week of college classes breezed on by and I found enjoyment in the majority of the classes I am taking this semester. My Creative Arts class, which is basically a class to learn how to appreciate the arts, is okay. We listen to a lot of classical music so I enjoy it. I have seven performances to attend over the semester, including High School Musical- the play, an opera, a string quartet and a ballet. I am looking forward to a few of the performances (not the opera!). I absolutely love sociology. It is so engaging and relative to the world I live in. I love learning about the society and seeing how different parts interact. My Biology class is super easy, at least right now. And my physics, well, I knew I would hate it going into it so nothing has changed. My only education class is good too. Our first night, we had to write a song. It's nice to be with people who share the same passion of children as I do.

Other than classes this week, I did a lot of other stuff too. I went to the doctor on Saturday. I found out that I may have ulcers or at least the start of one. So now I am on two different medications and I have this nasty green liquid to drink every day as well. The doctor assumes it is a result of stress. Wow, our family just never gets the hang of handling stress, do they? At least I am not having panic attacks or hives like other members of our family. I haven't really been able to eat a whole lot because of stress. I am lucky if I eat twice a day. But with that, I have lost five pounds over two weeks. So hopefully the medication I am on will allow me to get back to eating more! The doctor asked me how much I ate before coming out to Utah and I said "A lot. I love to eat!" So I am excited when I will be back to normal again.

This weekend was exciting because I went to Salt Lake City and Brigham Young University. My best friend from Wisconsin, Janet, goes to school at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. So for Labor Day, instead of water-skiing, I went down to Provo and Salt Lake City. We mainly went to Temple Square in Salt Lake. Jodi came with us and her grandma provided us with a home-cooked meal Sunday night. I stayed at BYU and I got to see the campus and all. Here are some pictures from the weekend. We had a blast for sure!

And some of you asked so I delivered. Ask, and you shall receive! Here are some pictures of my dorm room as well as campus.

This is our "square" room. All it has is a bunch of shelves and a big mirror.
This is our living room! Recognize the refrigerator! It has gone through about 5 college students over the past 15 years and still works!

My side of the door room. My bed is the tallest possible!
Here are some outside photos of the college:

This is Block A. The story with this is that in order to become a “True Aggie,” you must kiss someone on the block on a full moon at midnight. The school sponsors these nights every few months.

This is my dorm hall, Richards Hall. It is pretty sweet! I like it a lot!

I have more pictures but this is enough for this blog update. You will just have to come back later (bribery, perhaps?). But I miss you all and hope you all are enjoying life back home!

Address Change

So the post office here is getting annoyed with me. when they emailed me my address over the summer, they said, Richards Hall apt. 113. they don't want that anymore.

It is...
113 Richards Hall
Logan, UT 84321
I have gotten a notice from them saying this so sorry!

And Now I'm A College Student

Yikes, that still sounds weird to say. I remember back to my freshman year in high school, thinking that college would NEVER come and now it is here right before me. It feels so strange to sit in my dorm room and know that I won't come home for four months. It still feels like a vacation or a camp that lasts just a few weeks.
This past week has been tougher than I anticipated. I arrived Monday and got settled in. My main goals for the week was to meet people, find a job and get the hang of the campus. I can successfully say I accomplished two of my three goals. I found a job. I am one of six people who work at the events held on campus. Basically, I help set up, maintain and clean the sporting facilities here on campus. I had my first day on the job on Saturday and met my co-workers. They are very sarcastic, so I have a feeling that I will fit in great with them once I get warmed up. I get to work all the sporting events: football, soccer, basketball, volleyball, etc and get to watch the games for FREE! I think I will appreciate that.
I got the hang of campus for the most part. I know where all the buildings are that I have classes in so that is good. I've spent every day so far taking a run around campus. After the first week, I'm sure I will be much more confident in my ways.
I haven't met a lot of people; that is the one goal that I think I failed at. Quite honestly, there haven't been a lot of opportunities. I think everyone is in the same boat of being away from home and missing it a lot. Hopefully, once classes get under way, things will get better. My roommates are great, which helps a lot. During the week, it has been the people back home that have made the week possible to get through. I got mail, which highlighted my week and was able to talk to a few close friends and family members, which made it feel like I was back at home.
Church was today and to be honest, it was the one thing that I couldn't wait to do when I got here. It was however, quite interesting. They had us do a combined worship service with another housing community and then finally seperated us from there into two different wards. It was a lot of "Welcome and prepare to receive a calling soon." I am excited for church meetings and our bishopric seems very lively and energetic, which is great.
Well that's it for now. I don't have any pictures yet; I haven't really taken the time to do so, my bad. But next week I will definitely post some pictures of campus and all. Next weekend, I am headed off to BYU and Salt Lake City so I look forward to that and being able to see friends from Wisconsin!

The Trek Out West

So I am finally in my new home: Richards Hall 113 at Utah State University

It is so cool. The mountains are breath-taking and I don't know if they'll ever get old.

On Saturday we started the three day journey from Wausau, Wisconsin. Leaving at five am sounded fine a few weeks earlier but the morning of, and I was a little annoyed with the time.

I had to look happy so we could get started. Good thing that is the earliest morning I will have for a LONG time!

Then we headed out. Our first stop was the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. Here are some pictures from those things.

We also got to go caving near Mt. Rushmore. It was the highlight of my trip. And through this, I finally found the good in being short. Let me tell you, no one over 5 feet, 6 inches could make it through that cave. Perhaps instead of being a camp director, I should go into caving and become a professional caver (if there is such a thing). It was super cool and I learned a lot, even though I don't remember any of it anymore! Once again, here are some pictures.

And then, we finally arrived in Logan, Utah on Monday. While it was a LONG trip, it was definitely worth it. I have my dorm room somewhat set up and will continuously be organizing it throughout the semester. Classes start next Monday so I am excited for that. Other than that, I am busy cruising around Logan and trying to find my way around campus the best I can. I will see you all at Christmas!