Highlights of the Past Week

On Monday, we had our last FHE activity, and us girls planned a redneck paint-balling fight. Basically, there's a red team and a yellow team... the red team uses ketchup and the yellow team uses mustard. The idea was to squirt a little ketchup or mustard onto a marshmallow, and then throw it at someone... not surprisingly though, we soon forgot about the marshmallows, cause it wasn't getting the other person "good enough". ;) We ended up running all over this grassy field, bottles in our hands, getting each other as messy as possible, hahaaa!!! Good times. That's not where it ends either. We told the guys to walk with us back to our apartment for refreshments (where we had planned a surprise attack). We filled four garbage cans with 300 dye-filled water balloons and stationed them in different spots around the building, so when we got there, some of us went to "get the food" while some of us disappeared into the laundry room and garbage shed. As soon as the guys were all chillin' on the grass, we jumped out and ambushed them! It was great! You should have seen their faces, haha... they were pretty shocked, but it didn't take them long to figure out where these balloons were coming from, and they soon overpowered us. SO... we ruined the clothes that we were wearing, but it was totally worth it :D

Thursday, my schedule was slammed-- went from 10am to 9pm out of my apartment. One of the requirements for my "Fitness For Life" class is to take a Wellness Exam at the Wellness Center at both the beginning of the semester and at the end, and to write a paper comparing the results. I gained 30 pounds. HAHAHAHAA!!!! Juuuust Kidding :D I was actually pretty happy with myself... I got my resting heart rate down, lost 4% of my body fat, am in the 98th percentile for curl-ups and flexibility, and benched 75 pounds! Hahaa... don't laugh too hard at that last part... I've never bench pressed anything in my life. All the guys that were in the weight room there at the gym were HUGE!!! Talk about scary :O

Friday was pretty fun... I went on a big group date, where we played Ultimate Frisbee (Hooray for getting sweaty on a date, LOL) and then watched Stardust. Unfortunately, we had White Glove at 8am on Saturday morning, and I didn't even start my portion of the cleaning. You know me... I just HAVE to procrastinate, haha :) Anyway, I had to clean my bedroom and the Bathroom... don't even ask how I got stuck cleaning the bathroom... I have no idea. Big shout out of love to my roommates who assigned me to that while I was not there to protest. I ended up cleaning through the night, by the time I was done, I had 45 minutes before we got clean checked, so I fell asleep on the couch. By the way, I think I'm permanently scarred from some of the nasty crap in there... I had to HAND SCRUB the toilet INSIDE and out (thank goodness for those long yellow gloves), and the bathroom floor because we didn't have a mop. Also: girls have a lot of hair. One word: Ew.

After pulling the all-nighter, I got invited to have a Lord of The Rings marathon at my FHE brother's house in Blackfoot Idaho. After the hour long drive there, we decided that we'd only have time to watch the 2nd and 3rd movies, because the were the EXTENDED version.... making each movie 4 hours long. Yeah, 8 hours seemed to be a pretty decent chunk of time. :) I was wondering what I had gotten myself into... but it turned out to be awesome. Usually, I feel like if I don't do something productive, then why the heck would I even get out of bed, but Saturday ended up being the perfect day to be lazy. Basically, we would watch a couple hours, let the projector cool off, eat some dinner, watch a couple hours, eat dessert, watch a couple more hours, etc. The best part was that after only 45 minutes of sleep that night, it was easy for my to drift into sleep during the "repetitive" parts of the movies. Hahaaa... I think you would have laughed at me if you saw that on one of these "drifting off into sleep" occasions, I accidentally fell asleep on one of the guys! I woke up up and in my head I was like, "AHHHHH!!! How did this happen?!?! AWKWARD!!!" but in real life, I played it off like it was no big deal... ahhaahaaa.... the worst part is that he didn't seem to mind.... ahhhh.... good thing the end of the semester is in 2 more days!!!! :]

The highlight for Sunday is that I got my Temple Recommend!!! I'm leaving Rexburg late on Thursday night to head down to Utah for a week before going home, so I'm going to the temple with my roomie on Thursday morning. I also finally got released from my Sunday School Teacher calling, so that will be one less thing to worry about as well. 

Okay, this last picture is of my roommate and I being a little nervous about this jello cake we made... it kept falling!


Well, sorry it's been a while since I've posted... I keep meaning to update it, but I get busy with other things. Hope you have an awesome upcoming week!!! Wish me luck on my Finals :P

A Week for Growing

Well, It's been an interesting week! It started out pretty bad, but eventually worked it's way back up. If you want to skip to the fun part, scroll past the first few paragraphs, haha :P

I've had something on my mind for a looooong time, and just haven't had the guts to confront it... I've been pretty darn stupid. I won't go into detail, but basically I did some things last semester with Tanner that I'm not proud of. Anyway, I was reading from "The Miracle of Forgiveness" by Spencer W. Kimball, and I realized that I needed to change... I'd been procrastinating the day of my repentance. After I read until almost 2am, I decided to pray. I haven't prayed in a looong time, because... I knew that Heavenly Father knew what I had done... I just didn't want to talk with Him about it, and I as sure as heck didn't want to ask for any favors!!! Readers...I felt... SOOOO AWFUL. I don't think I've EVER felt that bad. I just laid there on my bed, bawling into my pillow (what do you know, I CAN cry, hahaa ;)). Everything that I had done wrong and hadn't repented for, came back in a flood of memories that I had been trying to suppress. I couldn't go to sleep that night, I maybe got a couple restless hours somewhere in there, but I decided to go talk to my Bishop the next day. I couldn't help but cry while I was confessing to him... It was harder than I thought. It's funny how when you sin, you keep reasoning with yourself that it's not THAT big of a deal... but it is!!! I now know that whenever I see myself starting to do that, I have to stop, backtrack, and figure things out, because that's Satan's doing. Anyway... the Bishop told me to keep reading The Miracle of Forgiveness, read my scriptures everyday, keep fulfilling my calling to the best of my ability, and pray as often as I can... and I've been working on it.

I have a radio that's in the bathroom that is always playing music, but I got home and changed it to the church music station, and it's stayed on that channel ALL WEEK! My roommates have just left it where it is. I also enjoy reading the scriptures more... there's SO much stuff that applies to me (and everyone else too) and I feel like highlighting every verse! I love the scriptures! After that, I decided to go on a run from my place down towards Wal-Mart, but I found a cool bike trail, so took that, which led to an abandoned train on the nearby tracks. Nobody was around, so I climbed up a little ladder on top of one of the train cars (like the cowboys did it) and just sat up there... I prayed again, for about an hour or so... until the Rexburg wind started to get really cold. It was freezing, but I didn't want to leave... for once I was away from the world... couldn't even hear any cars. Then... as I was bowed down, I felt a hand on my back. A warm hand that seemed to sweep away the cold. As tears streamed down from my face, I turned around... no one was there. But I felt our Savior's love. I know he loves me. I know he loves you. It made me want to try to be the best that I can be. Soooo, when I finally got home, I decided that one thing that I could change right then, was my music that I listen to. It has a big impact on my mood, and so I decided to go through all of my songs on iTunes and delete everything that had bad language or that was inappropriate. Guess what?!?! I only have 183 songs left... HA! Time to start collecting music again :P

Moving on to a "lighter" topic (haha), this weekend was a blast!!! Have you ever played Fugitive? Awesome way to blow some time on a Friday night when curfew isn't until 1am!!! Anyway, we got about 35-40 people to meet up at the Stake Center (right next to the Temple) to play. Four of those people had cars. Our mission: To get from the Stake Center to Broulim's as fast as possible without getting caught by the people in the cars. I got caught. Next: To get from Broulim's to Craigo's Pizza. I got caught. Third and final mission: To get from Craigo's back up to the Stake Center. Mind you, it's pitch black, and uphill. I decided to team up with my FHE brothers this time since my roommates proved to not be very fast, or very sneaky the previous two rounds. HAHAHAHAAA :) So, we take the long way to get there... the long LOOOONG way!!! We ran though residential areas (including backyards in order to avoid all possible roads), jumped FOUR chain-link fences, hopped into countless bushes to hide as cars drove by, sprinted from shady spot to shady spot, army crawled across grassy fields, UNTIL 45 minutes later made it. Turns out, it was a good thing I went with the guys... only 8 people made it... to which I was the only girl. But I was exhausted!!! Boys run fast!!! HAhaaaaa :D

I went Mini-golfing on Saturday night, as well as playing some Foosball and Pool. Church was really good too. So there you have it... my week in a nutshell!

(Said like Colonel Klink) Dis-smissed!!! -Carolyn

Catching Up...

Okie Dokie. I'm not sure where to start. Haha... umm, so the week of Finals was interesting! NOT. It sucked, but fortunately, I didn't have a test in like, two of my classes, so that was a party :) My final grades ended up being two A's, two B's, and two C's... not awesome, but better than I expected. So, I left Rexburg on a Thursday morning... I drove down to Provo, and was there until the following Monday. I spent most of my time that weekend with my sister Katie and her kids... that was awesome! We went to a park and also to Thanksgiving Point, where we saw lots and lots of farm animals. Also, I got some instruction from Matt as how to cook more dinner foods... he's taken it upon himself to show me how to cook every time I come to visit, and how to purchase certain foods... I've learned quite a lot!!!

The left one is my mom and Megan checking out the draft horses and all their gear. The right one was taken riiiight after Brax decided to spill all the little food cards all over, haha.
 

 The left one is a pregnant cow named Millie. The right one is Megan and Brax pettin' a little pony.




 


 

After the people working there milked Millie, Tristan wanted to try it out himself.










It gets better though: Wendy's parents bought her a plane ticket to return to Hawaii for school, but she decided that she's not going back to Hawaii... she's going to BYU-I instead. So she had to use this plane ticket before the end of the year, and convinced her parents that she should check out campus here (and maybe just come a week early to hang out with me, haha). Therefore, on monday, I drove back to Idaho Falls to pick wendy up at the airport there, and then we drove back down to North Ogden to stay with her brother, Lane. We stayed with him and his wife for 3 days, then in Sandy with her brother, Mike for 2 days, and finally 2 more days at my Mom's house back in Provo. That was pretty much an awesome week!!! We went to an Airforce Base museum, the Zoo, hiked the "Y", rode some Go-karts, played Miniature Golf, went to Temple Square, played some Arcade Games, went shopping at REAL MALLS, hung out with family, and got LOST ALL OVER UTAH! Hahaha... we had some sketchy vehicles that we drove as well. All I have to say is that I-15 and I have some good and bad memories.

The left one is me letting Wendy get ahead so I could take a picture... really, she had the suckiest car ever, hahaa!!! the right one is Wendy again... goofing off at the Zoo's gift shop.

 



 

The one above is Chan goofing off... looking Asian. The one to the right is the three of us :)














We met up with our friend Chantilli while we were in Utah, so she ended up coming to the zoo with us, and also came to Temple Square. Holy cow, we took a full tour of the Conference Center... it's amazing!!! The sun was setting over the Salt Lake valley while we were on the roof of the conference center, and it was so peaceful. We did a lot of fun things that week, but that was definitely one of my favorites. It's amazing how simple spiritual experiences in your life can really help you to re-focus on what's really important! Oh, to finish that off, we went to IHOP... I don't care if some people think that that place is trashy, that's pretty much my favorite place to eat, haha... among others.

The next Monday was when my mom drove us back up to Rexburg to go back to school, where Wendy stayed at our apartment until Thursday morning, when she had to catch a ride back to the airport. My roommates and I decided to sneak her into this semester's iNight... we sumo wrestled... we tied. Hard to believe, right?!?! Hahaa... i was proud of myself :) We also did a little rock climbing, aaaaand SPEED DATING!!! Yeah, that was a little awkward at times... haha... Wendy did NOT like it. Pansy. :D

Then there's this past week. It hasn't been super eventful, but there's been a few highlights. We went to our ward's opening social... which was going bowling at the REX... AGAIN. Anyway, we met our new FHE brothers, who really are awesome guys. I don't know how we've lucked out for two semesters in a row. We got along so well right off the bat, and we were laughing and having loads of fun, and soon people from other groups came over to our table just to chill. It's cool :) We invited them over to dinner last night... I made fajitas! That's right... I can cook if I try! Aaaanyway, did I tell you guys what classes I'm taking? I can't remember, but I scheduled all of my classes for T,Th... which means I have NO classes on M,W,F. Sweet? Heck Yes! There is one catch though, in order to get all the credits I need, I have to take two online courses. Poopie. OH! I almost forgot to tell you all... I got re-called as a Gospel Doctrine teacher... I wasn't super excited, but I think I'm a little more comfortable with it now. I must be doing something right, because I've had a completely full classroom for several weeks running :) Yesterday, I used a baseball bat and some bubble wrap as part of an object lesson... that was a good time. Oh, and I LOVE STADIUM SINGING... it's gonna be our Sunday tradition... Traditiooooooon! Tradition! Tradition! (That last part was me singing a Fiddler on the Roof song).

 That is all.

What the?

Okay... I have had lots of people tell me recently (this past semester) that I kinda have red hair. What is that all about?? To get to the bottom of this, I compared my hair with a redheaded friend of mine two doors down. To my dismay, it wasn't far off... at least the tips weren't. This is not a satisfactory discovery, so although my mom would be pleased, I tried my darndest to take a picture in which my hair didn't look red. I think I was successful! :)

Also, I tried on the coconuts that Wendy gave me as a joke, and just walked around our apartment complex, stopping in on some people to say hi. In my defense, I'm completely modest... it was just to get a reaction... which was awesome from pretty much everyone :D

April Fools Day

So... even though I try not to get too carried away with April Fools Day, it really is like Christmas to me! I love to plan little jokes, but even more, I love to get a reaction (whether that be large or small) out of people. Now, some people I've run into can "dish it out" but can't "take it"... and I've tried to be the kind of person that's a good sport, because I've had my fair share of friends getting even with me :)

This year turned out being pretty successful! My roommates and I decided that our target for this year would be our FHE brothers. Aubrei and I taped a garbage bag to their front door and filled it with popcorn, so that when they opened it in the morning, it would all spill in. Also... this is regular attire for the two of us "Bandits" when we're doing something naughty.

We also gathered a bunch of bridal magazines, took out the staples, and taped the pages together to make long strips... which we used to cover two of the guy's vehicles.We did this at 5am... which wasn't difficult to wake up for, because we never went to sleep! By the way, all-nighters are okay as long as you don't try to take a nap... well, as long as you don't have to wake up by a certain time the next day, haha. I learned that already... and, it's also easier if you have things to keep you busy, like, running a mile and a half with your roommate for one of her classes that morning.

Anyway, as expected, our FHE brothers got us back by filling nearly our ENTIRE apartment with 3 feet of crinkled up newspaper. HAHAHAAAAA... oh man, you should have been there...
An all-together awesome day!

On Friday, my roommate, Bethany and I went hookie-bobbing with one of our friends, Nick. That was a new experience! We also found a big cave, and since we had a flashlight, decided to explore that as well. We walked in until the end of the cave (or maybe it was just a cave-in) and turned around, but it took us well over a half hour to get in and back out. Then came the inter-tube tied to the back of his truck... that was awesome... until i got dragged though a ginormous icy, muddy puddle (good thing inter-tubes float)! Nah, that was actually pretty fun too :D