Montana

first of all, I cut five inches off of my hair. that's not Montana related at all.

The weekend before last, JayLene, one of my roommates mentioned that she was going home to Montana for the week end since it's only two hours away. She offered to take us with her like she does every time because she's unbelievably hospitable. This time we took her up on her offer. Friday after class we ran away from everything and this small, small, smaaaaall town and drove to Montana. me and Chelsea rocked out to the Newsies while Mallorie and Jaylene awkwardly endured our bad brooklyn accents.

I have never been to Montana before so i took a picture for Jenae.

Then we went to the "Hot Springs". this was no Hiko, guys. It was literally the most SKETCH place I've ever been in my life. drunk creepers (featured below in the background) and all! i felt 100% creeped out for sure. needless to say i'm glad i didn't bring a swimsuit. 

we spent the night at Jay's house, I love how homes feel. It made me miss mine. I also may or may not be in love with Her little brother mitchell. yup, he's fifteen. I'm a creep. 

Also i had pizza for the first time in forever and it was pretty great. I also failed my first college test! even after the curve! I hated everything when i saw that stupid score. sigh.  

Saturday morning Jaylene's horse owning cousins were over and Mallorie's like dang life DREAM was to ride a horse so she got to! I stayed back and snapped a few pictures. i couldn't resist. just look at that sky! impossibly blue! Montana is so beautiful!

Chels and Mal rode horses!

"show me your excited face!"

and Chelsea the goof . love her.

I LOVED Montana! I'm really glad we went, I'd go back in a heartbeat. it was just so open and HUGHE and free and fresh...sigh.

college, dawgs. It's halfway through the semester.

Good Things

I'm gonna post one of these every Sunday, get ready.

This is my favorite Mormon message. Besides the one about my Dad's vineyard, but i'm saving that for Christmas. I watch this every time i feel discouraged. and my bad feelings just go away.

I have the last bit of the talk written on my wall at home. I'm missing it. 

I'll share it with you because I love y'all. and because I love Jesus Christ. I always have, but especially since i came to Idaho, and especially today. 

watch it please.

and write this down to look at when you're havin' a rough day, because I promise, it helps:

"Don't you quit! You keep walking. you keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come till heaven. But for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ - they come. It will be alright in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come."

Sobbin' women.

Sometimes i have the worst days ever. Yesterday i had a billion homework assignments and then i got some bad news that made it necessary to stay up until four in the morning talking next door with Mallorie because she's the only one who can calm me down here since Brandon is states away. and then i still had to finish my homework. so i didn't go to sleep until 6am. and i got up at 8:40, so i had to run back home and brush my teeth, put on deodorant and grab my Icard. and then i RAN to the Kimball to print my essays. and then i RAN to the Taylor for class, only three minutes late thank you very much.

BUT I missed the first half of the pop quiz, and i accidentally turned in my book of Mormon daily outline with my Macbeth essay in Beauty and Creativity. And he told us TODAY that we have a midterm on Friday  cool story, bro. I read the wrong chapters for my family class, and I found out that my Who's Who paper for Book of Mormon isn't due until the last day of the semester. -_- i felt like crying. mostly because i was running on like 2 hours of sleep.
cryin' is something i want to do a lot lately. i don't actually cry, just random things make me want to, which is frustrating. i started writing them down so you can see how ridiculous i am:

Halloween oreos - my family always gets the holiday oreos for family Home Evening treats, so i bought a package, and while i was eating them, i wanted to cry.
cheez-it chicken - I make it when i miss my friend. and i made 3 batches, guys.
Hearing that someone is expecting a baby is always the happiest feeling and i love it, and those ones really do make me cry just because i'm so happy for them!
Looking at my friends' wedding photos, gah they're adorable and it makes me tear up
sometimes while i'm stalking my sisters i just MISS them, like a LOT. especially lately, and I've just been wanting little Natalie to snuggle on the couch with me and talk and talk and talk while i'm falling asleep. I love that little girl, It's been waaaaaay too long since i saw her.
the other day in my beauty and creativity class we were talking about complementary colors, and we were looking at examples from nature. for example, if God wanted to make a deep red rose as beautiful as he could, he'd put it on an emerald green stem. which He did. purple Iris' with delicate yellow centers, the blue and Orange of a colorado sunset. walking to my next class, i saw some pretty flowers and i choked up! I was literally thinking "God wants the world to be beautiful because He loves me and He's thoughtful, so he made the flowers compliment each other." how cheesy is that?!

I'm a wreck guys.

I'm a lot more sensitive here. my heart just feels really softened. have I mentioned that i love my school? because i flipping do.

and I hate Macbeth, just so y'all know.
also? half my roommates have already NCMO'd. sigh.
taha.
AND?! I love getting mail, so y'all should mail meh. jus sayin'.

Cantus

before i left, my grandpa gave me this quesadilla/waffle/grilled cheese/omelet/doughnut maker that he got from some catalog. i tried to use it for the first time last week.

It caught on fire.

so i unplugged it and set it outside of  my apartment because it smelled. 

and then it sat there for a week just because i wanted to wake up in the morning and know that it was 30 degrees outside and that devil amchine was freezing it's booty off while i was toasty warm in my knit sweater from DI. and i loved walking home and seeing it sit there, lonely while i walked in to talk to my friends.

I wanted it to suffer, and letting it sit there for a week was torture heh heh heh

that was an adventure.

I got two packages this week, what?! I was ridiculously happy about this one because 'twas as surprise!

I ate all the chewy spree things in about three minutes. this is quite a nice bucket o' loot, though! It's against the law in Rexburg to go trick or treating if you're over 18...and i wasn't planning on trick or treating anyway. so this will probably be all the halloween candy i get...which is fine...Thank you kind surpriser!

I opened my Peanut butter the other day and found this:

I forgot that i did it the day i bought it. i LOVED doing this when i was little. sigh.

Okay, here's the meat and potatoes:

Friday night I went on a date with my friend Jackson! He's Great! we went in a big group to see an acapella opera group, but first we played with clothespins....

This is our mutual friend Jake, he's pretty wild.

Jake can fit 53 clothespins on his face in case you were wondering. and no, it doesn't hurt him. He's cray.

Oh hey Jack-a-sarus!

Then we used the clothespins to do a top secret thing. but it was super fun and we may or may not have created anew trend on campus muhaha

I'll tell ya. since like one of you (Hey Mallorie) lives in Rexsburg. 

On one side of the pin, we wrote a nice saying ie: your hair is great! or, have an awesome day! or, your teeth are perfect! and on the other side we wrote: pass it on!

Then we ran around campus clipping them to people but they couldn't notice that we were clipping them, or else it didn't count. Me and Jackson TOTALLY won. (we clipped all of ours first).

Then we went to the spori and made paper airplanes and launched them from the third story balcony. taha.

It was fun, but it was even funnier because it's the art building and there is a 24/7 art show going on downstairs, so the building is practically silent. so we had to be really quiet, and we all know how everything is ten times funnier when you can't laugh out

loud. I don't know how to make airplanes...so i made a crane. ha.

Don't worry, Colin ran down there to catch them. we weren't littering!

Once it was 7:15, we skipped on over to the Snow building for the concert!!

It's an acapella group called Cantus.

They.

were.

FLAWLESS.

It was SO flipping amazing! every song was incredible and some of them had humor, which was REALLY funny, because they were somber for most of the concert, and then they had a song about a cat and this guy was licking his hands and meowing and it was great. I LOVED it. they were absolutely spectacular  i almost bought their CD last night on amazon, but decided i should spend my money on you know, food...housing... things of that nature. but if i had $15 bucks to spare, i totally would buy their album, they're perfect.

My friend Colin accidentally ruined my phone, which is a whole separate story. But for some reason i thought if i asked him to take a SIMPLE picture of me and Jackson, he wouldn't mess around haha

so I took one myself instead

And after the concert, Jackson and Colin and I were walking back and it was freezing, but i was super happy. It was a pretty dang good day. Ended with a sleepover in the lounge with my next door neighbors. 

The Work

So guys, I'm officially a college student. Wanna know why?

- Midterms are in 2 weeks. MIDTERMS! HALF WAY DONE, what?

- I've stayed up until 3 every weekday for the past week and a half. UGH. i am always tired, which is awful. and i try to sleep in on Saturdays but i feel gross if i sleep in too late. I don't have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays until second block but i wake up at the normal time to go to the temple or work out. and by "work out" i mean put on my BYUI issued PE clothes and walk up and down the stairs. and then I tell my self that i'm going to use the running machine thing in the lounge. haha. that hasn't happened yet. and then i shower. for like forty five minutes because i don't pay extra for water. so I stay in for long periods of time, singing at the top of my lungs because i'm home alone.

- I got asked on my first college date. a REAL one. actually....they didn't call it a date. ha. but we're going to a dang opera so i say that counts. don't freak out mom, no RMs. I ain't thirsty.

-also i failed my first test. well kind of, My professor let everyone retake it because he asked the questions weirdly. and then i got 100%

so now for the meat and potatoes of this post. two things:

1. I have a favorite CD. and i haven't heard it in MONTHS because it mysteriously disappeared after i listened to it nonstop for three weeks. certain siblings hide things that bug him...
anyway, lately I've been cravin' some David Osmond singin' my favorite song ever. and as made obvious by the link, i found it on youtube. but my other favorite songs from that album aren't on youtube!! so i may or may not have splurged and bought the album on amazon. and i cried listening to the CD because gosh...I can just picture rollin on the back roads in Madera to this CD. I was obsessed. still am. anyway, this CD made this already 20 rock day (the first 20 rock day since i started college! woot!) even better, if that's possible. I love the gospel of Christ. which brings me to the second thing.


2. this past weekend was the General Conference of my church. along with some incredible words of prophets and apostles, an announcement was made (3:18) that the age of eligibility for missionaries in our church was changed! The boy's age was lowered from 19 to 18, and For girls it was lowered from 21 to 19! which is CRAZY! when i heard it, i couldn't believe it. and i ran into the living room only to see my roommates freaking out as well so i ran next door where my best friend from home lives and i cried because i was so happy for her! She's wanted to go on a mission forever, but since girls didn't serve until they were atleast 21, that meant that they weren't home until they were 23 or older, which is not old at all. but in mormon culture, it's kind of like: marriage OR mission. But now, it can totally be both! you can leave at 19, be gone for 18 months and be back at 20 before you could have even started previously!and that is HUGE in our tiny little rexburg mormon town haha. literally half of my dorm building either has an interview scheduled for this Sunday to start their mission papers, or will be starting them within the next few months. Two of my roommates are for sure going, and I am so excited for them! three of the girls next door are going, including my very best friend Mallorie, and i could literally go on and on naming all the 18 year old boys who are rushing to turn their papers in, and all the 18 year old girls who are rushing to start. I am SO excited for them! and it is really humbling to see so many of my friends willing to give up two years to serve God.

a LOT of people asked me what i was going to do. and obviously, the question came up in my own mind as soon as i heard the announcement.

and my initial reaction was: heck yes i'm going! but i wasn't about to shout it out on facebook or call all my friends from home. I wasn't 100% sure. I wasn't even 50% sure. i got to thinking, 'am i considering this just because it's exciting and new? just because i can? or am i considering this because it's what i need in my life?'.  I prayed and got a pretty quick answer. and without going into detail, it was that the man upstairs would love for me to serve a mission, but it's up to me. And as long as i'm choosing the right, He'll be fine with whatever i do.

so long story short? As of right now, I'm not serving a mission. maybe by the time my 19th birthday rolls around, I'll have a different answer. But there are other things planned for me i think.
But just because i'm not going on a mission doesn't mean i can't be a missionary. and it doesn't mean you can kick me out of your mission prep class Bo Garland! I was already going before the age change, I'm still going afterward. Regardless of how many bubbly girls crowd in. And i'm super excited for all y'all who are gonna serve! I admire you so much! I'll write ya letters. for sure.


also, on a not serious note:
I've two packages this week, what? I feel so loved! even if one was just my absentee ballot! ha.

Happy Thursday peeps.

Any Takers?

I had to take some pictures for my Beauty and Creativity class this weekend to demonstrate different techniques and whatnot. My brother Jonathan was my helpless model.

I'm not sayin i'm a dang photographer, kay? I just love takin' pictures, as you know. 

and Jonathan is HILARIOUS.

and it's funny trying to make him smile. we all know Jonathan's forced smile. huge eyes, huge smile, never looks at the camera, haha. it's greeeeeeeeeat. 

anyway, He's a handome devil.

He hates taking pictures.

but look at that jaw line. pretty sure he could have full facial hair in like two days.

laughin like a dang hyena.

caught off guard much?

I told him to look concerned...ha...this is what he gave me. 

effortless. He looks like our Father.

This is the one i ended up using for my assignment, his smile is for rizzles :)

 He literally looks like he's weeping. 

he was about to sneeze.

 I like this one because even though it's out of focus, i'm diggin' that curl. what a stud.

He's single, ladies. He's an RM, has a great sense of humor and he's pretty fit. he LOVES kids and he's sensitive but he's strong. He loves sci-fi and he's a kid at heart. did i mention he sings too? yup.

those pictures...

you know those pictures of couples in leaves? they make me super uncomfortable. I don't know if it's because i know when they sit up, the back of their heads will be filthy, or just because everyone looks fat and weird when they're laying down. but they're just not okay at all.

and I've seen 234852 of them lately.

so here ya go, 

a cute little BFF pic

I promised myself i would never put this on the internet. ....

but it happened.

this picture isn't very awkward, but you know what is? When you're doorbell ditching cookies to some guys and anne marie just decides to open the door and put 'em right there in the middle of the living room while the rest of us try to scurry away from the light. 

cool.

needless to say, we were caught. but i'm not going to pretend like getting caught wan't my intention because let's be honest. what girls doorbell ditch cookies to guys and want it to be a secret forever?

this many: ___________

so anyway, I'm lovin the cold. and the freedom. not so much lovin the hills. or the 4 am homework. I love my american foundations class, and I think every young person in the world should hear Elder Holland's talk that i read last night because it is POWERFUL.

I love this school.

I don't love that my phone is inaccessible, that my favorite DArth Vader water Bottle was stolen from me on Monday (what the heck is with my bad luck lately?! just sayin.) but i am flipping happy as heck that i pretty much killed my classical art & music quiz this morning. ask me who painted The Birth of Venus. I dare ya. do you know how many symphonies Beethoven composed? I do. nine. and the ninth was while he was DEAF, guys. deaf. and it's flipping beautiful. I'm also pretty grateful that my science class was cancelled today, even if i didn't know and i went anyway. because then i just went to the Taylor building and studied the constitution for an extra 45 minutes. aaaaaaand then i aced my constitution test. BOOYAH. can you describe the contents of all 27 amendments? I can. Do you know the outline of the constitution? I do. 

can YOU make pizza? I can't, my mom can. and i kinda wanna ask her for the recipe ...but i know i don't have the time, money or patience to actually make it...

only 3 more weeks until Wreck-It Ralph, y'all.

If you take me to go see it, I will definitely love you forever.

I don't know if you read that right....FOREVER.

I mean it.

The time i was robbed and REALLY angry about it.

 Two summers ago I was given a pair of Dr.Dre Beiber Beats by one of my best friends. I love them like the flowers love the sun. 

On Saturday night they were STOLEN FROM RIGHT UNDER MY NOSE.

Saturday night one of my Friends got his mission Call. So we had all our friends - and a few other boys from Chapman Hall who know Grant - (the thieves) over to watch the joyous event.

When our FHE boys got to our apartment, my things were moved to the floor to make more room on the couch. Which i can understand. people need to sit. but you might have the thought to put expensive headphones on the bookcase or the tv or kitchen table or something. Or ask, 'hey, are these someone's headphones on the floor? they look nice and i would hate for them to be stepped on or stolen by strangers.'

but that's not what happened.

after everyone left and i needed headphones to listen to something for homework, i scoured the entire house looking for them, only to be left empty handed. i checked EVERYWHERE i could think of. but i KNEW that i had used them right before the boys came over and that they should have been right there next to my laptop and charger.

they weren't lost, they were stolen.

but noooo, melissa is crazy, melissa is cynical, melissa wants to believe that the whole world is out to get her.

no one listened to me. Everyone stood up for the strangers, "why would they do that? you probably just lost them!"

well guess what, i have PHOTO PROOF that my headphones were THERE when the strangers came, and GONE after they left. THIEVES i tell you! thieves!

Here is a picture that Meredith took on her iphone when our FHE boys and sam arrived. you can see my purple headphones at Jake's feet.

Here is a picture taken about seven minutes later, once the strangers arrived and grant was setting up skype with his family.

You can still see them. It's hard to tell, but I can see the silver part on the headphones where you can turn the volume up and down (and if i had a compatible phone i could use that piece as the little thing you speak into when you're on the phone. but i only have one apple product and it's an ipod from 2008. anyway.)

they are there.

 and then the horror.

this picture was taken about five minutes later, after Grant had ended skype and right after the strangers left.

WHERE ARE THEY?!!!!

When I noticed that the headphones were gone, I freaked out. because i usually don't leave them just lying around. but my roommates assured me that i probably just misplaced them, and that i would find them eventually once i clean up. 

well Wednesday was a cleaning check. 

You know, where you have to clean THE ENTIRE APARTMENT.

and guess what didn't show up?!

guess who's not crazy after all?

I would never accuse my FHE brothers or sam of this atrocity. 

It had to be one of the strangers.

well guess what strangers?! You're pretty stupid if you stole them! because You told me all your names! (except for creepy moises who refused to give me his name, too bad i asked someone the next day at church.) I'm a professional creeper, but these guys just made it too easy. YOU'RE ALL IN MY WARD! I know where you all live, ya toss pots! right next door to my FHE boys! 

You are so dumb! you are really dumb! 

fo' real.

YOU DONT HAVE TO COME AN CONFESS.

WE LOOKIN FO YOU

WE GONE FINE YOU

SO RUN AN TELL THAT,

HOMEBOY(s).