most spontaneous trip of my life

So Sunday evening i bought a ticket to Nauvoo, Illinois.

When i heard about it a month ago in my Book of Mormon class with Curtis, i thought, "i can't afford that". Then Sunday as my roommate Jaylene was signing up, i was happy for her, but really jealous. And sunday evening i remembered a forgotten check from a local scholarship that was $500. and the Nauvoo trip is only 375. so i called my mom to see if it was okay, and bought my ticket.

All my teachers are very strict, so i was a little worried about telling them last minute. miracles happen though, let me tell ya. Prof. Peterson just got really excited and told me a bunch of stories about nauvoo for twenty minutes and then said, "oh, did you have a class right now?" ha. luckily i didn't today. Then he told me I could just do the online prep work and he would count me as present. My children's lit teacher was upset, because i'm missing a group presentation but she said i could videotape myself. hallelujah.

So i have honestly a mountain of homework to do before Wednesday at 5:00 when i leave Idaho, but I am STOKED, you guys.
I've never been any farther east than Delta, Colorado so this is definitely going to be an adventure. We're going to visit Independence, MO; Liberty Jail; the Kansas City Area temple! the Far West temple site, Carthiage Jail, then Nauvoo, including the temple! Then we get to walk on the trail of tears to the Mississippi River; Winter Quarters, Martin's cove and Independence Rock.

So no yeah I'm going to have a blast.

Also, tonight we're climbing "R Mountain" for Family Home Evening and then having another Ultimate Frisbee tournament and two friends are having a mission call opening. And tomorrow is Madison's rec volleyball team's second game. i made signs for all the players. hard core fan, guys.

So really, this week is going to be incredible. It's like a huge long Birthday celebration, which is great.

Oh yeah and I got Windows 8 for free today as a little present from BYU-Idaho cause we're best friends with Microsoft. yeah. hook ups.

just all kinds of happys goin around. blessings blessings blessings!

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. 

In September

This month has FLOWN by. the first couple weeks were pretty standard. nothing too exciting. but once i got into the swing of things it picked up. a little. 

as i mentioned before...I went to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert.

It was absolutely incredible.

On Wednesday our ward FHE brothers took us out for swing dancing and ice cream! they are the sweetest! 

randomly, that same night one of my friends was in town. So he tagged along! He's a goof.

Thursday afternoon my room mate and I went to the temple with our next door neighbors and some other friends. I LOVE the Rexburg Temple, it's gorgeous! I love that I can walk out my front door and see it on the hill. I love that i can walk there twice a week so easily. It is blessing my life SO much right now.

Thursday night i got some devastating news, and i was just....a wreck. I was so angry and sad and confused and i wanted to go home, but i knew i was being selfish and irrational by thinking those things.

But when Brandon answers you WAY too late at night, just to give you the perfect advice, it makes things a lot easier. i love that boy, he is my best friend. I miss him SO flipping much.

also, I've been praying REALLY hard to be at peace with everything that's going on. 

You know those times when you're so stressed you think you'll scream at a moments notice?

Yeah that's been me the past few days. 

But thankfully, I have a heavenly Father who knows exactly what i need to take my mind off of things.

It will be better.

Friday Night we threw a super fun Surprise birthday party for our roommate Donna, It was stressful to put on haha but once it was started, it was worth all the tedious planning. She's such a sweetheart!

This morning i went with some friends to the sand dunes to clean up trash! haha weird service project, i know, but it was really really really fun. And we got almost a whole bag of trash!! (there was almost 400 kids, so the trash was hard to find. )

My shoes - well, Mallorie's shoes - were TOTALLY full of sand after like ten minutes. haha

Mallorie, her room mate Anne, our friend Sam and I had a dang blast quoting movies and dancing around and running up the dunes and posing like we're in Egypt all morning.

When we were done cleaning, we met at a park for lunch. there was a play ground and we may or may not have indulged. we're all 18.

the lunch was great, sam had 6 sandwiches. and we rode back in a random guy's truck. But he as cool. and I'm safe, haha so we're good.

After we were back, Mallorie helped me trek ALL over campus (literally) several times to find art work for my media hunt for Beauty and Creativity class. All my pictures are a bout as attractive as this one. I was imitating a cartoon. My teacher is going to be a little scared.

He prolly should be.

Sam came over for midafternoon gossip and then all us girls went down to the I center for the General Relief Society broadcast!

SO.

FLIPPING.

GOOD.

but really. I feel like so much of it was just for me. I needed it. and it made me ridiculously excited for General Conference. You should watch it with me!

After that, My room mates and I went grocery shopping and i spent the most money i have ever spent on food in my life and i almost cried on the way home because college is so expensive.

and 

THEN!!!!!!!!!

One of our FHE brothers (they're not actually our brothers, they're just boys we were assigned to meet with for Family Home evenings on monday nights and we call them our brothers as a nickname.) got his mission call! Grant will serve a mission for our church in  Nashville, Tennesee!! He leaves January 2, 2013 and I am SO excited for him! 

He's such a great guy. He's going on a date with my Roommate Meredith on Friday ;)

teeheehee...

There were a ton of people there! my roommates, our numbers, Sam, our FHE boys and some other friends from the ward all huddled in our living room to watch grant read his call.

I love my school, guys.

And i love this whole experience.

And tomorrow is Sunday, which is always amazing. 

Things are good.

Even when there are hard things, there 10 times as many good things.

we just have to look.

Leaf Monsters

Donny's home!

how do you say that?

because "Donny's home" sounds like: the home belongs to Donny

Donnys' home sounds there are multiple Donny's that own the home...

anyway, Donny is home!

Monday morning Donny did some leaf raking

then Donny and Jenae did some leaf jumping.

I just took pictures because i never have, nor will i ever jump in a leaf pile.

don't ask haha

They landed

throwing leaves transforms teenagers into little kids again:

Then... Donny had an idea

put him in the leaves

wait for mom to drive up, and scare her.

hehehe

so we hatched our devious plan and then just waited patiently for mom to come home.

And this is what happened:

feel free to watch this several times, because my mom's face is priceless.

goodbye fall, hello winter!

p.s. my mom would kill me if she knew this video was on here...shhhh hahaha