Merry Christmas

Well I'm home now until the end of April, and then I'll head back up to Rexburg for spring semester. I like being in school, being busy and feeling productive, not sure how the long break will treat me. But hopefully I'll be kept busy with work, I'm in desperate need of money. So, time to go to work!

December went by so fast and most of my time was spent in school, that coming home into a fast approached Christmas Eve, took me by suprise. It didn't feel like Christmas Eve. Weird. But now I'm heading towards New Years Eve.

Christmas this year came with new traditions. We had our christmas candle light dinner as usual but on christmas eve. Mom and Dad put together a program for us kids which consisted of reading stories dealing with Jesus's birth and holiday stories from general conference talks. We also listened to music and had movie clips. It was really cool and I approve of the new tradition.

We had something new this year, we opened one gift the night before and we all got pajamas! So there's the family with our new pajama pants.

I had a great christmas this year! Got a wicked awesome little tripod that can fold its legs around anything really, so you can stick the tripod on a fence per say... but I'm excited to put it to use. I got some games to take up to college, my own skookie pans! Haha yes my apartment is going to be THE place to be spring semester. :) I got a new winter coat, which I love and have needed, some wonderful new eye shadow, some clothes and a gift card! Love my little cousin Moe for that one. You're the best ;) But I love my family, I'm so grateful for them. I love this season and the real meanings behind everything. I'm grateful I could be home for Christmas.

Sledding

So the school has these awesome lunch trays, and somehow... we ended up with 2 of them at our dorm... and they ended up coming with us sledding... and it was awesome.

Rexburg

Well, 2 weeks left for fall semester. Crazy. It's gone by so fast. The roommies and I have decided to make our weekends a little more fun, since we only have two left. There's a little bowling alley in the MC building so we went to try it out! The picture has horrible resolution because it was taken with katie's phone, but no worries. We had a good time. It was the original gang, Katie, Caira, Spencer, Quinton, and me. Felt like the beginning of the semester again.
The song I'm obsessed with right now is Hey, Soul Sister: by Train. Katie and I play it over and over all day long. It's marvelous.
Next weekend we are going to go ice skating. I'm stoked. I haven't been ice skating forever.
It still hasn't started snowing yet... I'll have to check the weather forcast again! It's cold though, dang that wind chill. My favorites are the gaps in actual temperature to "feels like" temperature. Last night it was 15 degrees but felt like 3 degrees. Great to know as you start walking outside. I always thought it was kind of funny having a 'feels like' temperature. Who decides that? Ahh yes I'm going to say it feels approximately 3 degrees outside right now despite the actual temperature of 15.... But I did some research, and yes, there is a scientific way to determine the "feels like" temperature. How heart warming.

Lights on Temple Square

The family went up to Temple Square with my Uncle David's family tonight. I love seeing the lights on temple square. I can't wait for it to snow, awesome pictures.

So at my old work they sell these glasses, they remind me of the paper 3D ones you can find, but they make the lights into shapes. We had snowflakes and stars... the second picture is the stars...

The nativity.

I love this temple.

Meteor Shower

So last night, there was a meteor shower. And I watched it. There was a whole bunch of us, around 15 people, and I only knew the guy who invited me to come. So it was a little like.."oh hey... yeah none of you know me... I'm just tagging along no worries...I'll just sit over here. okay." But his friends were really fun actually. I had a really good time. We went to the fields west of the temple where there was a huge stack of bales of hay. We had to boost people up to the next levels. But we finally got to the top and spread out all our blankets and readied ourselves for a meteor shower. It was dang cold...ha oh my gosh it was bad. I saw a giant meteor and a couple smaller ones, but we didn't stay long. We left at 1, which was when it was supposed to be the most active :( but I had an 8 oclock class this morning, so I was fine leaving early. But it was really fun! Glad I went.

Date

Went on a date last night! Lot's of fun. There were three couples, Quinton and Lauren, Caira and Spencer, and Blake and I. We went bowling, which was a lot of fun. We bowled all these crazy ways, under the legs, opposite hand, with your feet, and my personal favorite, spin around as many times as the number on the bowling ball, and then bowl. Oh my gosh that one is hysterical. If you've never tried bowling that way... try it. It is the funniest thing to watch.
After the bowling we saw the movie 2012, which was pretty intense but sometimes cheesy. That film had a lot of other films in it though. You had a little Titanic in there, and my favorite, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Yes. I haven't seen that movie in so long but if you've seen it... remember the scene with the animals and parachutes... them trying to do the whole 'noah's ark'. Yeah that was in 2012 also. Giant mechanical complex 'ships' with animals being loaded into them... I was like, "hey! that's from sky captain...!" But overall it was a good movie, pretty awesome graphics. I was impressed.
After the movie we came back to the apartment and the guys had bought a pinata... classic Packard tradition. That creepy looking dinasour thing...only lasted 5 hits. That is very non-Packard. You normally have the uncles up there blindfolding you, spinning you in circles, moving the pinata all over the place! And on top of that, they duck tape the dang thing.
But the date was really fun! I was going to hike to R mountain in the morning, at 5 to see the sunrise with some people, but looking at the weather forecast, noooo thank you. Snow. Heck no. Early in the morning before the sun can try to heat anything up?! No way friend. But hey more sleep... not too much though. Making breakfast for the fhe brothers!... in 6 hours. time to sleep.

R.I.P. Mack Daddy

R.I.P. Mack Daddy, our beloved Betta fish who died yesterday morning.....

We decided to hold a funeral for him.

This is what Mack Daddy looked like when we first bought him...

This is what he looked like yesterday morning upon finding him dead... :(

So Katie really wanted to do a program, the whole legitimate deal with this fish funeral. So we let her. I don't know if you can see the quote that Katie found for our program but this is what it says, "Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling."

Mack Daddy had finally floated to the top, belly upward by this time, so we stuck paper over his vase, at least until the viewing... haha we had the table all decorated for him! It was a shrine really.

Aubrey, with her mad rap/poetry skills whipped up a poem for Macker so we could read it during the program. This is how it went down....

Mack Daddy was a fish of class

He swam around proudly in the vase of glass.

To everyone who saw him, he was a friend

Sadly he didn't know his days would end.

We're not sure how he died but we have some thoughts

So we're reading this poem as his body rots.

Maybe it was the whirlpool we made in his tank

He seemed to enjoy it, and the next day he sank.

Or maybe it was the waffle maker that gave too much heat

It cooked all his insides, now his heart won't beat another beat.

Or maybe we fed him so much that we was loaded

And he got so fat that his stomach exploded.
Either way Mack Daddy died and gone is his soul
We bless him a good trip as he travels down the toilet bowl.

This is Quin trying to show remorse for our dead fish, but secretly he was planning on murdering the fish anyways, he just died before Quin could kill the fish himself!

We had cake, popcorn, Rollo's, and punch afterwards :)

Our good ole FHE brothers who came to support!

We're still not sure how Macker died, but he have some ideas...

Idea #1: Over fed by Katie

Idea #2: Cooked by my waffle iron

Idea #3: Freak accident with Katie's whirlpool 'game'

Idea #4: Heart attack from always flaring up at himself with his reflection
Idea #5: Suicide because Katie called him 'baby'

Forts

So last night we decided to build a fort....

In the back you have a couch flipped upside down and placed on top of our kitchen chairs...

in the front you have the 2 couch/chairs holding up another flipped over couch.

The cushions from the couches are inside as the 'mattress'

We fit all four of us in there... ridiculous.

The only way to get in or out, is crawling...army style. Yup, flat on the floor and crawl!

I slept in the fort last night and I'll tell you...it was wonderful. It was nice and dark, muffled noise. I was out and slept heavenly.

Testing

I just want a 100%. Please. I'm tired of only missing one or two questions. I know that's still good, but for me, it's almost like an obsession to get the full points. It's hard though when my math test is only out of 30 questions... I miss 2 and get a 93%. Ouch. My last 5 tests have been 93, 93, 96, 96, and another 93. I'm getting extremely frustrated! The test I just took today, felt really good until I got to the last few questions. He threw in a word problem exactly like the one I missed on the test before. My heart sunk when I hit that problem. And my guessing skills are atrocious. I was destined to miss that question. Grr

Some Things

So... I read the wrong time to cook the cookies... and I thought they turned out to be a lovely color!

And here's my pumpkin!

Fishy

This is our fish, Mack Daddy. He's a beauty isn't he! They had these other AWESOME glo fish... pink, orange, and yellow. Can you just imagine the greatness? But they needed a filter and all that mechanical fluff, so we went cheap with a betta!

In my communications class we were shown this video that talks about how mens brains are different then womens brains. I loved it. So, here's the link! Enjoy :)

Let's Dance

So my roommies and I were going through my videos I've taken last night, because they're all untitled... so we needed to fix that. I came across this one. Story: I was sitting at the kitchen table, and I happened to look up and out through the blinds. This guy was out there dancing his little heart out like crazy. I couldn't help but record him. Except it took me forever to find my camera so I missed most of the good dancing :( But I thought the video included some of his excellent moves.

My favorite thing in the morning is seeing katie's various sleeping positions. They kill me.

So I have this roommate....who is still learning about the dishwasher. She thought it was full so she washed and stacked a mountain of dishes..... The dishwasher was stark empty. I had to laugh at the scene.

Sand Dunes

I had a couple friends from my Europe trip come up and visit me this weekend :) I love those girls. They made my weekend. But we decided to head to the sand dunes. We've been having great weather this week so the sand dunes sounded perfect.

Brianna and Angel!

The roommies :) gorgeous sunset by the way

Okay so the story about this heart. While we were playing around this cat and dog found us. Cute pets, they were hyper active and extremely friendly. But we were all writing giant words in the sand and I decided I wanted to do a heart. So I get my outline done and this cat pounces over to edge, digs a hole and takes a crap in my heart outline!!! DAH I was mad. So I chased the cat across the dunes until it found a bush. And plus by that time I was dead tired. Running in sand is a killer.

Patience

Patience is a virtue.
That I'm learning.
Through a certain roommate.
23 and in the freshman dorms?
Don't worry just give me a minute.
I'm almost halfway through this semester.

Oh yeah and our leaves we played in the other day... got mowed up.
They're gone.
Just grass now :(

Idaho's Fall

So Idaho doesn't really have fall, they jump right into winter. But we got a little taste of fall today. And I was ecstatic. Some wonderful leaves just dropped last night, so we went and played. Notice that the leaves are still green, and not crunchy. Lame. But hey, I guess that's all I'm going to get out here. But we had fun! We gathered up as many leaves as we could into a lovely pile I must say. It felt like fall for the first time.

Gifts

I sleep in between my morning classes. That one hour nap saves me.

Woke up this morning to find this outside our door. The little star in the middle says 'dave'. Okay none of us know a dave. And it says 'we' love you. But only one name? But inside this tin foil wrapped suprise was.... mashed up lemon bars? Yeah weird.