noun, a feeling of happiness, confidence, or well-being sometimes exaggerated in pathological states as mania.
My Sophomore year at Utah State is quickly coming to an end. I am suddenly realizing that I only have a few more weeks left with my wonderful roommates and to share with you the fun things that we have done this year. These are just a few memories that I have made with my family and friends. I am very blessed to have these wonderful people in my life!
The Sunday before school started we were all moved into our new apartment and we headed down to say goodbye to our friend Troy Tongish. He is serving as a full-time missionary in Canada. It was a fun reunion at the beginning of the year but we were definitely missing the rest of the boys that had already left to serve the Lord.
The next day was the first day of school and as Alyssa and I were leaving our apartment we were talking about how our moms always took a picture of us as we walked out the door. We decided that we would take that tradition and continue it for ourselves.
Not too many weeks into the semester it was time for the Idaho State Fair so I made a quick trip to Blackfoot and spent the day with David, Torie, John and Zak. I LOVE walking through the animal barns and it just so happened that the work horses were out getting a quick little bath as we walked. It was lovely!!!
The same weekend as the fair was my 20th birthday. I had a good time and we had a LOT of food. Plus, Grandma Murdoch made that delicious cake you can see. Banana Cake, my favorite!!
One nice thing about not living at home is that you get to have two parties for your birthday! All my roommates and some of our neighbors loaded up and we headed to Angie's to clean the sink. It was also Hillary's birthday later that week so we had a joint party.
We ordered our own Bountiful Basket and we were up way earlier than either of us wanted to be on a Saturday morning. The bonus was that we just immediately went home and back to bed.
We attended quite a few of the Aggie football games. All dressed in blue so that we could show our Aggie Pride!
Before the game started Hillary and I wanted a picture with the field in the background. Heather, Mollie, and Kelsey just couldn't find the urge to weasel their way into our photo.
We were absolutely overjoyed when the sun finally went down enough that we weren't afraid that we were going to be fried to our seats. It was probably the hottest game of the year but we stayed for the whole thing. Yup, we're troopers!!
To start off the year we wanted everyone to know that we were an apartment of extremely dateable, available women. We felt the best way was to make an announcement to the world through a bright blue road sign.
Torie and I went to Smith and Edwards with David and Julie when we found these epic hats!!
In honor of fall we decided that we should probably make some carmel apples so we invited the neighborhood and had a little party.
We headed down to West Jordan once again to say goodbye to another one of our missionaries. Our group is slowly getting smaller and smaller. All three of these young men are now gone and we are loving hearing from them as they are out being God's messengers.
Josh Hall is in Spain and they are extremely blessed to have him!! I am already looking forward to him coming home and he still has over a year and a half left of his mission. I may have to take a summer vacation to Spain...
Michelle and Alyssa showed me around their hometown of South Jordan. We made a quick stop outside of the temple. Sure do love these girls!!
Sadly, most nights this is what we can be found doing. Yes, you guessed it.... HOMEWORK! There seems to be an endless supply of it.
Every fall the town of Logan puts on an event called the Pumpkin Walk. There are many groups of people that put together a display using pumpkins and whatever else they can think of. This one was of the movie Madagascar. We loved it and spent quite a while in front of this one.
Hillary and I share a childhood love for the Smurfs. When we saw this display we couldn't walk past without jumping into for the perfect picture!
This was our whole group as we left. We were all getting ready with our best smiles when I heard my name coming from the distance then suddenly Megan was in our picture. A great addition I would say!
One weekday night with nothing to do but homework we turned to our dressup trunk and then headed to visit Heather at work.
Halloween! Utah State holds one of the biggest dances the weekend of Halloween. None of us had been so we got all dressed up and headed to dance the night away. My personal favorite is Steve Erwin on the right.
The Institute put together a 1000 member choir and we were privileged to be a part of it. Unfortunately this was the only picture that we took and it was a VERY windy day. We met in the Stadium parking lot and then loaded on to 21 yellow school buses. We then traveled to Provo and sang our hearts out. It was a great experience to be a member of that choir and to see how many people were willing to come out and sing their beliefs.
We love us some Jumba Juice!
A weekend spent home, well some of it was spent in Rexburg. We went out for breakfast and we all looked ravishing if I do say so myself.
This was the Harry Potter premiere. Naturally we all knew that we couldn't miss it but we failed to purchase tickets for the midnight showing so we went for the next best and bought 2 a.m. This was before the movie so we were all still thinking that it was a good idea.
After the movie and on the drive home we were a little less enthused when we realized that we had classes in less than 4 hours.
I spent Thanksgiving break at home and we all got together to spend the weekend out at the cabin. What you can't see in this picture is that we had woken up to 2 feet of snow and we really weren't sure if we were going to make it out that morning. However we decided that before we left we might as well eat breakfast.
We did make it out that day with the help of the Grube family and we continued our weekend at Marianna's house and ate dinner at Big Jud's.
My very favorite tradition of Thanksgiving doesn't take place on Thanksgiving day but rather the day before. I have named this day, Pie Day. As you can probably guess from the name all day is focused on the making of pie. The boys aren't allowed to participate unless they are as cute as Orrin then somehow they can sneak in. It is a tradition that I have come to cherish.
In December there was a group of us that decided that it would be fun to go to the local nursing home and sing to the residents there. We sang 10 songs and were blessed to have those people share their evening with us.
This was taken as my family and I headed to go and watch Despicable Me. We snuck A LOT of candy into the theater!!
For F.H.E we had a snowman building contest that quickly turned into a snowball fight. We were all smiles before...
and smiles after just a lot wetter and soooo much colder!
Occasionally we have late night trips to Wal-Mart that end like this. They are usually my favorite trips because we never leave with the things that we needed but some pretty entertaining purchases.
We all went out to Jessica's house to have our roommate Christmas party. This is all of us with our new presents. It was a fun night well spent!
We went out to lunch at the Bluebird and ate way too much. The rest of the afternoon was spent in sweatpants and sleeping on the couch.
Over Christmas break I went to Christina's reception and we had a great time hiding out in the back by the refreshment table.
This was our attempts to try to vacate the birds that had taken up residence in our bathroom fan.
We had a movie night and ate Grasshopper Shots before hand. It was a COLD night!!
Jessica was privileged to get to experience the joys of Ashton. I brought her home with me and surprisingly enough her favorite part of the trip was going to the annual Dog Derby. She thought that it was one of the greatest things in the world.
She fit in really well and acted like a natural on the sleigh!
We were lucky enough to have friends that came over to read us a quick bedtime story to help us fall asleep. Miles read us 'More Spaghetti'
Naturally we had to wear our jammies. We pulled out all the stops and went straight for the feeties!
The weather is finally getting warmer so we all went up to the Quad and played some Ultimate Frisbee.
Jessica is taking a social dance class so we all headed up to campus to watch the performance that they had put together.
The next night was spent Disco Skating.
This was the nice group that we showed up with. We were definitely the best dressed there.
This was Conference weekend spent at the cabin. Here we were both trying our first oyster....
this is our feelings about it! It was one of the nastiest textures that I have ever been unlucky enough to have in my mouth.
I am very blessed to have these and many more people in my life!! My roommates have made this year bearable and listened to my endless complaints about school. My family is awesome whenever I come home! They are always willing to rearrange their schedules so that we can make everything fit in, and Rhet is the best to let me steal his bed for the weekend. I love them all so much!! Marianna is never more than a phone call away and full of endless entertainment. I am going to miss our crazy times while she is off in California. But I am getting a pretty long list on missionaries and by the time she leaves I will be a pro at writing letters. I couldn't be more proud of the decision that she has made and I know that she is going to be a fabulous missionary. She has always been a tremendous example to me and I am sure that that is something that will continue throughout the rest of my life.
