Jazz Band

so this semester I sang a song with the Jazz Lab Band and we had our concert last night. I sang a song called "Orange Colored Sky." It was originally Natalie Cole's song. She's Nat King Cole's daughter. No pressure there. HA!
Elise took a video for me and now I get to share it with all of you! The audio isn't too great. A friend of mine made an audio recording of it for archival purposes. I'll see if I can get it from him and share that too.

See you all in just a few days!

This is hilarious

A New Look

so I thought I'd mix it up a little and I made my own template! It was kind of exciting figuring out the html...or following directions on how to do it from another website, but it was still an adventure with many twists and turns. And now I have something to show for it. If you'll notice, I added a link on the right-hand side that will take you directly to my photo site. (I figured out how to do that one all on my own)
Life is going well, just school. I feel kind of boring just saying that, but that is kind of my life. Thanksgiving was really good. I went to a friend's house. His family lives here in Provo so I had a family dinner. It was really fun. We played games and stuff. Yesterday was fun too. I didn't really do that much. Some homework, played some games with friends, OH! and I made dinner for everyone. I had a leftover lasagna from the last time I made dinner group that I hadn't cooked that I had just stuck in the freezer. I pulled it out and invited my friends over and I cooked dinner for everyone. It was pretty good, especially for having been in the freezer for about 3 weeks. I felt very motherly, making dinner for everyone.
After that I went downstairs to a girl's apartment to watch The Fellowship of the Ring with them. THere was a whole group there and one by one, the girls that lived there went to bed, so Patrick, Bryan (his roommate) and I moved the movie to their apartment so they could go to bed and we could turn up the volume so we could actually hear. Then Bryan went to bed so it was just me and Patrick. THEN the DVD player was having a heart attack so we took out the DVD, cleaned it, and put it back in. This happened a couple more times before we gave up and put it in his laptop to watch the rest. THEN his laptop ran out of battery and we had to plug it in and reboot it all. It was quite an adventure, but the movie was pretty good. Kind of intense, but good.
So that's my life. OH! I forgot! I get to play the egg shakers for one of the women's chorus songs. I'm one of two or three girls that get to do it. I'm really excited. AND I get to conduct the opening song at devotional on Tuesday. So this week, Tuesday at 11:00 (Utah time, I think) you all should watch for me. I'll be waving my arm around on national television!
Hope you all had a good thanksgiving, and I'll see you at Christmas.

So it's been a while...

Well, I haven't written in a while, and I'm sorry about that. I guess I've just been really busy. I mean you know, I AM so popular (no. not really) but I have been doing a ton of stuff. School is going well, I took a huge midterm on Friday that actually didn't go very well, but I think it will all even out in the end. (Who knew Music History was so hard?)

Halloween was fun. My roommates and I dressed up like a cast from a TV show my roommate watches and we had a fun time trying to copy their outfits and personalities. All the characters work at a fashion magazine. I was the creative director (ironic?) and our friend Brandon was my assistant that will pretty much do anything for me so that I don't fire him (I'm kind of mean, I guess) so this is how it turned out:

Does he look scared of me? And um…look at my hair! It's huge!!!!

Here's a group shot of all of us:

So from left to right is Jes (the receptionist), Patrick (the editor in chief), Mark (the cute, nerdy accountant), Stephanie (assistant to the editor in chief who knows nothing about fashion), Me (creative director who is conniving to take over the company from Patrick's family), Brandon (my assistant who is just very funny).

So that was Halloween, nothing like you guy's costumes, but I did see some good costumes at the parties we went to. On campus during the day there was a pacman and a ghost (from the game) who were chasing each other all over and they even had a soundtrack with the little beeping. It was very impressive.

So last weekend I went to the opera with my friend Chris and we had a good time. We were already planning on going to the BYU Singers concert in two weeks but that night he told me that it should be a real date so I guess we're going on a date in two weeks. I'm excited. He's a good guy :)

Other than that my life is pretty normal. OH! My friend Jordan invited me, my roommate Courtney, and his roommate Nathan (who is dating Courtney) to his grandma's house for Thanksgiving. So I'm going to that, I'm kind of excited. This will be my first Thanksgiving turkey! Kind of a big deal.

Oh, also, my ward is planning a trip to the Salt Lake Temple to do baptisms and stuff. We did it last year too. I'm really excited to go again. I mean, it's the Salt Lake Temple!

So that is my life. I'm sorry I haven't written in a while. I'll try to keep up more often. Also I think I'll be putting pictures up on that site again. Here's the link

A fun weekend

so this week we had our first choir concert. I think it went really well. We had a lot of fun and it was great to be back up on the stage, especially with Women's Chorus.

On Friday night, a group of us went to Walmart and then we went to this park nearby that has these really cool swings. It is kind of a carousel kind of thing. It has three swings that hang from a central beam-y thing that you can spin around. It's really cool. Anyways, we did that, which was way fun and then drove back home, going around the roundabout many many times on the way. I felt slightly sick.

On Saturday, I had a reunion with the girls from home at Stephanie Andreasen's house (used-to-be-Hieb). That was really fun. It was good to see the girls again.

Then came Sunday. We got a new bishop, which was very sad, but I'm excited for our new one. He seems very nice and like a good teacher. Then Chris came over to make cookies. 

Love you all and talk at you next week (or maybe earlier if I'm really on top of things)


PS here is the link to my web album. I added more pictures.

PICTURES

I put up some pictures on my google picasa web albums. Facebook was having a heart attack so I abandoned it. Hopefully I can update these more often.

here's the link.

PS I helped out for the first time in a real school with real kids this morning. I'm going to be a student helper for the elementary school choir at Wasatch Elementary. I'm really excited about it, the only bad part is that it is at 7:30 in the morning on Mondays and Wednesdays. But it was good to get up and going early.

PPS I have a pseudo date set for Sunday. My friend, Chris, is going to come over and make cookies with me. I'm so excited! He's a very nice boy.

Wow, did I do all that this week?

This week has been good, we had a great football game yesterday, (we won 44-0) but I got sunburned on one side of my face from standing in the same place for so long. It looks kind of funny, but it was good. At the game, I had three boys profess their undying love for me and give me quite wonderful hugs after I let them have a drink of my water. It was really hot.

That night, (last night) my roommates and I went country swing dancing. It was us three, plus a girl-friend of theirs from freshman year and four guys from their freshman ward. It was a fun non-date, although two couples emerged out of it and us other 4 kind of just stood around and danced with each other. It was fun, but I always forget how stupid I feel standing around waiting for a guy to ask me to dance and how awkward it is to dance with someone you don't know at all. This was better than usual, though, because we could talk about the dancing because it wasn't just swaying back and forth. Overall, a good experience.

Earlier this week, on Thursday, I had my audition for that jazz band (they need a vocalist and…I'm a vocalist) there were only two people auditioning (it's not a very popular group) but the other girl is a jazz studies major (!!!!!) and so she was obviously really good. We both sang a song that we had prepared. I went first but that morning I had woken up with a really really bad sore throat so after I sang, I realized that I sounded kind of squeaky and was regretting everything. Especially when the other girl started singing - she brought her own microphone and everything. She sang her song and I was melting into the floor when the director surprised us and asked us to each take a turn singing a song with the band. Everyone was sight reading and it was way cool to sing with a whole band. She let me use her microphone too which was really good because the band was so loud, no one would have been able to hear me otherwise. I felt a lot better about this song because it was lower and I was able to do my Broadway big voice - you know the one. So I'm still waiting to hear back about that but really, whatever happens, happens and it will be fine.

On Friday, my roommate and I decided to make cookies and watch a wonderful movie called "Love Actually" (I think it's rated R, but don't worry, we had a clean flicks version so it was very…clean) It was a GREAT movie and I would recommend it to anyone. The cookies we made was a recipe from her friend that called for two devil's food cake mixes and one brownie mix, so it made a lot of cookies. We also put Andes mints on top when they came out of the oven and let them melt on the cookies. It was splendid. It made about 70 cookies so we made some friends out in the fishbowl that night. I think a few more boys expressed their love and gave me hugs. I should share more often...

Today I got my calling for the ward. I am on the ward music committee (fitting, huh?) and my assignments on the committee are special music coordinator (where I coordinate the special musical numbers for sacrament meetings) and choir president (which is different from choir director. I just help out Jordan [the guy who is choir director] and ask people to say opening and closing prayers for choir). So…yeah that's what I'm going to be doing in the ward. Woo Hoo!

So, I guess that's my life right now, that was long. I didn't know there was that much in my life. I think I'm going to put up more pictures on Facebook so you can browse through those if you want. Here's the link again if you want to see them. I tried to take more of myself (without being overly "look at me, look at me!") and I'll try to work on more captions.

Love you all!

Back to the grindstone...kind of

So this has been a great start of the semester. I started out by knowing a ton of the people in my classes, just because the school of music is so small that most of them have already been in classes with me. But some weren't and I've made some good new friends (that's later). Then I was able to test out of one of my classes, so that is another 2 hours per week of my life that I get back. Hallelujah! Then, the first Friday back to school I went out on a date:

His name was Brian, and we went on a double date with his roommate and another girl in the ward. We went to the duck pond area by our apartments and played Chinese Checkers (thanks for teaching me all those years ago, Grandma Eileen, it was a great advantage) and after a long and gruesome battle of strategy and leaping...I won. (That never happened when we played, Grandma, I guess it was my turn). So then they had bought a box of fortune cookies and we all ate them and read each other our fortunes. Everyone else's talked about what they would do in their lives and mine just said something about keeping your hopes young...um...okay, I'll do that.

Then we went to the dollar theatre (the greatest invention of this century) and saw Kung Fu Panda, which if you don't know, is a cartoon about a panda that tries to do kung fu (that makes sense) but he has some trouble because...well..pandas are large...-r than the other animals and they just aren't built for kung fu. Anyways, the movie was hillarious and I had a good time. Then the guys took us back to our respective doorsteps and that was it. It was a really fun date, very creative, and just a great way to start out the semester.

More recently, I finally went to Walmart to pick up my camera that I had gotten for my birthday and have been going slightly camera-happy since. I love being able to have that with me and not have to rely on others to take pictures. I kind of feel like my first two years of college were undocumented and somewhat lost, but not this year! I already have a ton of pictures. In fact, I think you all can look at the ones I've already posted. Hold on...okay, if you go to this link that should take you to them and you can view them to your hearts content.

Well, I should probably get back to my homework (oops) but there will be more to come later (hopefully). Love you all!

my family is crazy

yep. I guess that pretty much sums it all up. I love them and all, but we really might all be nuts. We have been spending all day and night building a huge 10 foot tall carboard birthday cake that is mounted onto our trailer which will be pulled tomorrow by our bright red tractor through the West Linn Old Fashioned Fair Parade. Crazy, huh? I'll post pictures soon.

PS I love Calvin and Hobbes.

PPS I'm really glad Brittni could come and visit me this week. I had fun. It was really nice to see her. It was an interesting mixing of atmospheres. She comes from my life where I am a whole person all on my own, and we're with my family, where I am one of a group. It was interesting how it worked out. I hope she had a good time.

Wendy Darling

Wow, two posts in one day. I guess I have a lot of pent up creative/journalling juices inside. So I just came inside from sitting on the trampoline with my little sisters and brother and it kind of felt weird. I found myself almost scolding them for bouncing too much and I wasn't really enjoying being out there. After a while, I started to get up to leave. Christine, number 4 in the lineup, looked up at me and asked me, shocked, where I was going. I told her simply, I was going inside, jumped off the trampoline and walked away. As I looked back, she looked confused and disappointed. I don't know why, but I felt really old just then. I feel like Wendy when Peter Pan came back for her years after their original adventure. When Wendy told Peter that she couldn't come with him because she was too old. I imagine Peter looked confused and sad like my sister did.
I don't know why this popped into my head, but it did. I think I'm being torn between being a kid at home and college student - an adult. I kind of want to be both, but I guess I'm just growing up. Wow, never thought that would happen. That's kind of a bummer.

So that was a really depressing post. Hopefully I'll think of something happy soon and post that.

Home

So I'm back in Oregon and my allergies are freaking out. Things actually grow here in Oregon so I've been sneezing more now than I have my entire life. Other than that, though, life is alright. I have drama camp starting tomorrow (PS I'm teaching drama camp this summer) and I haven't exactly finished the script for it. I'm not going to lie, I'm not really looking forward to drama camp. It is so stressful and exhausting. But the kids are fun to watch and it is kind of rewarding watching them put on their little play for their parents. Darn those happy, warm feelings.

One reason I really really really like being home is that church is at 11:30. WONDERFUL!!!! That 8:30 stuff at school was taking a toll on me. I never got a day to sleep in.

It's weird being home. Am I a child? Am I an adult? Am I a visitor? Do my parents have jurisdiction over me still? (I think the answers are: yes, yes, maybe, YES) It's just a different dynamic.

Anyways, I should probably go start getting ready for church. Haha, you Monticello kids are just starting Relief Society and stuff right now.







PS I really like this.

I love this ward!!!!

So here I am just sitting outside on the steps writing my paper and appreciating the beauty of the world and everyone in the ward just comes alive. It is so neat to watch the dynamics in this ward. Everyone loves each other and everyone is just so fun. I'm really glad I'm staying.

General Conference

I GOT TO SING IN GENERAL CONFERENCE ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON!!!!!

so, yeah, it was pretty cool...:)

Okay, it was awesome! it was just so neat to see ALL the people all filling in all those 21,000 seats. and the prophet was there, and all the members of the seventy that were in the upper seats gave up all thumbs up after we sang, and I met Elaine S. Dalton and she gave me a big hug. It was just a really neat experience. oh! and I guess I was on tv too. that's always cool.

I should be really tired, and I should go to bed - I have an early class tomorrow, but I'm not that tired.

PS happy birthday church!

PPS I never know what to write on my blog, so usually I don't. Is it a journal? is it an outlet for all the philosophical ideas I always have floating around in my brain? (oh wait...) no one probably reads this, so it probably doesn't even matter.

Elise is Here!

So Elise got here yesterday and she's going to be staying until Monday. She's just hanging out and seeing what it's like to be a college student. I'm really excited for her to actually get here to go to school. She's going to have the hardest time. She has been sleeping so much. Right now I'm sitting in the library with her sitting next to me sound asleep. :)

I'm really stressed about this paper I have to write for my child development class. It's due on Tuesday and I haven't started it yet. I just don't know how to write it. I guess I just better buckle down and do it.

A Lazy, Sunny, Saturday

So today I got up and went to an extra choir practice we had for a couple hours, practiced for about 15 minutes before I gave up, went to the library and worked on some homework - ran into Teri Ann Bennett - and went home. Then Brittni, Courtney and I went to the creamery for lunch and the ice cream scooper guy that was obviously a freshman hit on Courtney (funny). Then we came home and have just been hanging out, singing and dancing to the Enchanted soundtrack (SO GOOD!!!) and stuff. It's kind of a bummer that we haven't done really anything this weekend. We're quickly running out of weekends to do anything before finals.

Ooh! After finals and before spring term starts we are going to go to Portland!!! We as in me and Brittni! I am so excited we are going to have so much fun and it will be so cool to be able to show her around my home and where I grew up and stuff. My family is also really excited for me to come home, even just for a weekend.