Don't cry because its over, smile because it happened.

Welp. Its official! I made it through my first semester of college! Hooray! But with this exciting time of Christmas and seeing family and presents and holiday cheer, for this BYUI student, there is also sad that goes along with it. Some of my best friends are going on missions for 2 years, won't be living in the same place, or just won't be returning next semester. I had a great semester and I have met so many great people and it is hard to imagine that things will be different when I return to school in 2 weeks. But alas, so is life. The only thing that is constant is change, but I guess thats one of my hardest life lessons. But anyways, the last 2 weeks have been full of projects, the temple, pranks, secret santas, parties, cleaning, and of course just messing around. So here are a bunch of pictures of my last 2 weeks.

The following are 2 of my roommates and I taking pictures in the snow on our walk home from church. We loved the look of the snow and ice on the trees and couldn't help but start taking pictures.

One saturday, we went to the temple in the morning, then the guys we were with invited us to their complex's pancake breakfast. Josh had to leave early and we had a lot of extra pancakes so my other friend and I decided to put a bunch of them all over his desk. This was his reaction when he collected them all.

The evidence of the murder of my roommate jennifer....

 Just kidding... its kool-aid..

Crazy christmas photos.... 

Saying goodbye to my good friend and fhe brother Bobby. He will be serving in Ghana for 2 years

 Ya know, just some crazy roommate pictures.

Jennifer may be just a little bit ridiculous...

 This one perfectly describes our personalities: Ellen: Jen, what the heck are you doing?! Geez jennifer.; Shaeli: Jennifer is crazy... Im secretly plotting to murder someone..; Jennifer: Well hello there. I don't care what everyone else thinks I'm going to act like my crazy self and be ridiculous.; Me: Baha. You guys are all crazy and insane. Im going to sit in my corner and laugh at you all.

 Jennifer saying goodbye to Daniel. He has been called to serve in the Colorado Springs Mission

 Ellen, Shaeli and I at 5 am after we said goodbye to Bobby and a few others. We were just a little sad.

Playing the "How many people can we fit in the closet" game with my fhe brothers

Well, that has been a very short summary of my last two weeks of the semester, to those of my friends who are going on missions: God be with you 'til we meet again. I can't wait to see you again in 2 years. You will all be great missionaries. Thanks for being such great friends. And for those of you who have endured to the end of this post, thanks! And as a reward here is some information about what has happened with me recently: so I came back to california for less than 48 hours. Yes that is a little bit crazy, but it was for a good reason. I got my papers submitted to my stake president and they should be officially submitted to Salt Lake on the day after christmas! That means that I should have a mission call in hand in about 2 weeks or so! Hooray! If you have any guesses to where I'm going I'd love to know them! Thanks for reading! I should be posting again pretty soon about Christmas and my trip back to Utah! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow

I'm back! Sorry it took me a month to post again, but I have been soo busy. Thanksgiving was amazing. I loved having my family up here with me and being able to go to Grand Targhee with them to go skiing and show them a little bit of my life. After they left I had a great time with some of my good friends who also stayed in town for the break, and during that time, boy was the complex quiet. Oh it was so nice and peaceful. But then on sunday everyone came back and no one wanted to be here with only 3 weeks left in the semester. Especially once it started snowing. AND HOLY COW DOES IT GET FLIPPING COLD UP HERE. I'm lucky that today is in the double digits (positive double digits thank the heavens). But for over a week the forecast high has not been above 9 degrees and is usually 0 or below.... HELP!  So when Matt (http://kupfererinkennewick.blogspot.com) says in his emails that he's freezing at 20 degrees, I don't even want hear it. Especially when today when its about 19 degrees, coming home from the temple, after being outside for a minute my semi-damp hair freezes. It is fantastic. Not really. It also has snowed at least half of the days in the past week. Also, no one told me that when it gets this cold, you can't breathe outside and your nose hairs freeze because the air is so cold. Lets just say that I am extremely excited to go home to California in a week. That and FOOD! And I guess friends and family too :P But really though, I am so excited to see all of my friends and family :D I can't even.

A message left in our complex after the first snow

A view from the grid in the theatre. I got to tie things off from there

The following are videos from my saturday night. We wanted to go sledding but couldn't find a hill so we decided to go shoe-skating on the frozen pond on campus instead. 

My roommates are the best

My friend's car windows froze on the inside. We decided to write this message while driving

 Sunday night was really cold so I bundled up to go to stadium singing. I felt like a marshmallow. At least I was warm

The Beginning of Having No Life

So basically not much has happened recently... At least as far as I can remember. Well minus the fact that it's progressively getting colder and colder. Ummm yeah. Haha I guess what I can tell you is that I'm about to start my first show here in college! :D I am the light board operator for the drama department's production of It's a Wonderful Life (the radio version) and its looking like it will be a really cool show. Its basically a play within a play where the characters are doing a radio cast of It's a Wonderful Life and all of the sound effects are done onstage right in front of you and the 5 actors/characters play the 30+ characters in the story. It's pretty cool.

Here's part of our light plot for the show and a pile of cabling that we cut the ends off of. For some reason the department had over half of its cable yellow... which is annoying cause everything should be BLACK. Like the theatre. It makes no sense. But we recently got a heck of a lot of new black cable so we cut off the ends of these (cause we can use the plug in parts) and we end up recycling the wire in the cable. (yay saving the earth!) Anyways, last week I got to go up to the grid (the very top of the theatre) because we had these booms (big metal poles that you can hang lights from) that are top heavy so we have to tie the top of them off at the grid (its made of steel and isn't going anywhere) yay knowing how to tie knots... anyways that was one of my jobs last week but it was crazy cause its about 5-6 stories above the ground with a metal grate holding you up (i promise its sturdy and actually i feel more safe on it than northwood's... not that I've been up there... psh. ok maybe i have) but anyways it feels sketchy. so i go up there and tie off a rope to the grid while someone in a genie ties off the other end to the boom and then i tighten it (which is a pain working against gravity and creating as much tension as possible) and tie it off again. The major annoyance is that there is literally a 20 degree difference between the deck and the grid so i was sweating bullets. holy cow. i was gonna die. and its super dry up here and its dusty beyond belief up there (because there aren't very many reasons for people to go up there so no one had been there in a while) so it made it even worse. needless to say my hands were basically black with dust. it was gross but really fun at the same time. 

Also another really fun thing that I'm involved in is an inter mural volleyball team with my friends. We are 1-1 currently and now because of the show I won't be playing much but its fun anyways but here's a picture of me and team

Last week was also our first snow that stayed for a while (it snowed early one night and stayed the morning but was melted by that afternoon) but it was fun none the less. The first picture is me walking to the temple when its snowing and the second is our complex the morning after it snowed.

Next is misc. The first and second are when my roommates and I decided to have dinner together one night. We had steak which was pretty good. Needless to say we don't like taking pictures. The second is jen who isn't in the first drinking her apple juice cause she was too lazy to grab a cup. The third picture is my breakfast one morning. I had gotten them the day before and put them in my bag and forgot about them and i was in a rush that morning and was like hey food! So yeah. IT HAS ONLY HAPPENED ONE TIME. i promise. i think...

Last but not least, Shalei's (my roommate) aunt (i think) sent all of us matching sock slipper things for halloween and they're super cute! We all took a picture together. 

ANyways, hope you have enjoyed this post! Have a great day! I'll try to post something soon about how the play is going but no promises. Haha