Saying Farewell to Utah State

Friday was my last day of official classes at Utah State. It is bitter sweet. While I am excited for the summer and BYU this fall, leaving USU has its downfalls as well. These last few weeks have been full of studying for final exams which are this week and trying to hang out with my friends as much as possible. Here are some pictures from the last few weeks.


This is Heather, Chelsea, Jake and I at a park off campus.


Chelsea and I are trying to swing like a spider which was something
we did in elementary school. Things have changed since then :)

And lastly, Chelsea and I at the Logan Zoo having fun.

I am going to miss all of this but I am ready to get home and enjoy some fun times with my family and friends back home. I will be home next week!

April Showers Bring May Flowers

I have my fingers crossed that all the rain we've gotten in Utah will only bring sunshine and flowers in May in Wisconsin. I am ready for summer to come in full force.

General Conference was last weekend and I was able to attend Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. It was a really cool opportunity! I loved all of it and can't believe that it has already been six months since the last conference! Here is a picture from the top of the Conference Center after the Sunday morning session let out. The protesters were probably the funniest part!

Otherwise, there is little to report on here in Logan. My sister came out to visit me for 1/2 a week and we enjoyed that. We got the chance to go hiking and just hang out again. Also, I registered for classes at BYU and am looking forward to that this fall! I am taking two classes in my major: Recreation Management and Youth Leadership, which makes me super excited! I have two weeks of classes left and then a week of finals. Then I come home! Three more weeks... HAPPY EASTER to everyone!!!

Spring Break Time

This past week was spring break finally!!! Because I had to work both weekends, I couldn't go too far but I was able to have some fun along the way all starting with Sunday night. Chelsea has some family in Logan and we were invited over for dinner after church on Sunday. Our dining services on campus are closed for the entire week so it was very nice to dig into a home cooked meal. On Monday, Chelsea, Jake and I left to go to Ogden and Salt Lake City for the week. Monday, we hiked Waterfall Canyon, which was about a four hour hike. Then we went to something called Inflatable Zone. It was way fun. Here are some pictures from Monday.

Tuesday, we travelled down to BYU to attend the devotional and then we all headed over to Draper, Utah to go to the Draper Temple open house. It was so amazing to see the inside of the temple and it was absolutely beautiful. I cannot wait for the opportunity to be married in such a beautiful place. Again, here are some pictures from that day.


Wednesday, we spent the entire day in Salt Lake City. Chelsea and I went to do baptisms for the dead at the Salt Lake temple. I took some family names with me finally and it was amazing. Later in the day, we went to the zoo and walked around Temple Square for a while.

Today, Chelsea and I went to do baptisms again at the Ogden temple and then Jake, Chelsea and I went hiking around the Great Salt Lake for the day on Antelope Island. It was absolutely beautiful on the hike!!!

Now I am back at school and have classes again on Monday. Only six more full weeks of the semester left and then it is time to pack it up and head on home!

February Frenzy

So it has been a few weeks since my last post. Sorry! My dad called me and was wondering what was going on since I hadn’t posted for a while. And I also forgot to call him because he sent me yummy cookies (Just for you, Dad. Sorry again!)
Anyways… life in Utah has been pretty low-key so far this semester. My classes are quite a bit more demanding and that equates to many more hours spent in the library studying and reading and less hours doing exciting things. I cannot wait for the day to come when I am completely done with college and the moment comes when I have absolutely no homework. Classes are going okay. I received my first round of tests back over the past week or so and got mostly A’s on them. Many of my classes are simply based on tests so if I fail (or do poorly) on one, it has the potential to ruin my overall grade. My favorite class though is my Family History class (partially because there are no tests). It is really relaxed and is a class that I can take at my own pace.
I started playing indoor soccer for our church once a week. My friend, Heather and I go play for a few hours every week. It is really fun! We now have to take a few weeks off though because Heather was in the hospital this week with a really bad infection. She has MRSA and it is started to really affect her so she ended up in the hospital yesterday. She is recuperating slowly and will be back up to speed soon I hope! I start my university soccer class next week here so I am excited. I am hoping I can improve my soccer skills for those days at camp when we play against the campers. They always seem to kick our butts.
I found out where I am living next year. Here is the link, in case you want to see. http://belmontapts.net/
Spring break is just in less than two weeks here so I am getting anxious for that. I plan on hanging out with a few of my friends down in the Salt Lake City area. Sadly, I have to work both weekends so I can’t go anywhere too far from Logan. Then after break, there are only seven more weeks left of the semester! Yikes! I can’t believe it was Christmas two months ago… where did all the time go?

BYU...

I will now have to give up my love and adoration for the Utah State Aggies at the end of the semester and switch over to our rival, BYU and cheer for the Cougars. I found out Friday night that I was accepted into BYU starting Fall of 2009. Despite our basketball team's domination this year (20-1, they are tied for the most wins with Oklahoma), I have decided to leave the wonderful Aggies and soon call myself a Cougar.

Random-ness

Some friends asked me to do this on Facebook (the wonderful website that uses up all my free time and then some). And then I thought I would add it here for the enjoyment of my family and friends!

Some Random things about me…

1) I always sleep on the left side of the bed if I have a choice.
2) When I was younger, my sister convinced me that I only had 99 “feelings” and one day she hurt my last one so I cried because I thought I could never feel any emotions for the rest of my life. (I was/am still really gullible.)
3) I love camp and can’t wait to start my own camp one day.
4) I LOVE countdowns…and just to let you all know, 94 days until I come home!
5) I would do anything for my bestest friends. Even beat up creepy people if they asked me.
6) When I run, I have a unique breathing pattern. I inhale twice on steps 1 and 2 and exhale once on steps 3 and 4.
7) When given the choice, I hate being touched.
8) I want to run another marathon in Madagascar or South Africa.
9) When I was young, I played school with my older siblings and I was the teacher. I wrote quizzes and everything for them. Every time, they would yell “RECESS” and run up the stairs. I just cried.
10) I really love looking at the stars.
11) I want to marry someone with two tall alleles/genes so my kids actually have a chance at being tall. (The short life is not that grand.)
12) When mail comes, my roommate and I sing the Blue’s Clues song!
13) With a passion, I hate the movie Aladdin.
14) My favorite memory is when my brother got hit with a birdhouse after going sledding with my dog. It was a marvelous time.
15) Ice cream is the best food group in the world. I have a bottomless stomach for ice cream.
16) Running is the best thing in the world no matter what the weather is like.
17) I dream of going to Europe (with Jackie from Wisconsin!) South Africa, Morocco and the national parks in Canada.
18) When I was little, I wanted to become a meteorologist. I literally watched the WeatherChannel for hours at a time!
19) Sarcasm is the best and worst parts of my personality.
20) I have blown up a cheetos bag in the microwave. You should try it some time! It is the coolest thing in the world!

Exciting Weekends in Utah!

Classes have been in session for over two weeks now and yet it feels like I never left school. I like most of my classes but can tell that this semester will be far more challenging than last. Each of my classes has more reading assignments and more scheduled tests and exams. Plus, many of the classes give essay exams in addition to multiple choice tests, which I haven’t had since my senior year in high school. I am hoping I did not lose much in my writing abilities since then. One of my classes, Parks and Recreation, is very interesting. The professor used to live in Wisconsin and actually was the previous camp director at the camp I work at. It was very fun to meet him finally and talk about camp and how it is progressing. I am taking another statistics class this semester that is extremely boring since it is a review from junior year. The professor is from Germany and has a very rich accent and that is probably the best part of the class. We spent the last few days learning about how to find the mean… and it is a 2000 level (at most universities, that would be a 200 level) class.
Last weekend on the 11th, I had the opportunity to go listen to President Monson speak in Provo, Utah. He spoke at BYU so some of my friends from USU drove down for it. It was a long day but well worth it. It was absolutely amazing to hear him speak again. We also got to have a homemade dinner at Heather (my roommate’s) house in Highland, which is located about 30 minutes outside of Provo.
This last weekend, we had the delight of having a three day weekend. I had to work most of last week and put in almost 30 hours within four days. But then Sunday and Monday, I was able to rest and relax. On Monday, some friends and I decided to go hiking in the mountains. We left too late though and ended up walking back down the mountain in the dark. But we arrived home safely, no worries. I included some pictures of the hike for some enjoyment.

this is in the Wind Caves up in the Logan Canyon.
Yep, they're pretty much the coolest thing in the world!