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.