Stars Delight it's Christmas Eve Night!

Tomorrow is CHRISTMAS!!!!! Yay!! For some reason I all of a sudden feel really excited like I did when I was a little kid! Everyone will be here for Christmas Eve dinner in about half an hour but until then I'll just have to find some way to release some of this energy! I love Christmas!!!! :) It's so fun on Christmas morning and I love reenacting Luke II on Christmas Eve and being with all the family, and it's especially wonderful to be able to have the extra reminder to remember the Savior. I am so grateful words could not even begin to descibe how I feel when I think of everything that He did for me and for all of my brothers and sisters! We are so blessed!! Merry Christmas! :)

Winter Wonderland

Now that school is out for a little break it's been fun to have lots of playing time and all the snow has made everything so pretty! Last week Casey and I drove up the mountain to enjoy the beautiful scenery and a picnic in the car where it's warm. It was so gorgeous! We decided the snow makes everything look even more amazing than it usually is. I love the mountains and trees and pretty much everything about nature!!

We ate our lunch and decided that we wanted to hike up to a little pond but the snow was so deep! We didn't make it very far before we decided it was too freezing cold for our legs. The following picture of Casey shows how deep it was. He's standing straight up and it reached the top of his legs. Probably not the best hiking conditions even if only for a very short distance.

Only four more days until Christmas!!! Yipee! :)

Stepping closer to accomplishing dreams!

Last weekend I got to have a little taste of something I've always dreamed of doing...recording in a studio! The 7th and 8th grade choir that I play the piano for recorded their Christmas songs in an actual recording studio! Cool random fact: It was the same studio that recorded the songs for High School Musical 2! The kids thought that was pretty awesome. I was really nervous about messing up but I think I did pretty well actually. It was fun! I decided I'm making a goal to record in a studio...just for fun...myself someday. :) It's so cool. I've always wanted to but never made it a goal because it seemed unattainable and kind of expensive, but I'm going to go for it! I love music!!!

Also on Saturday I went rock climbing again, this time at Moe's Valley near St. George, and I felt like I sort of got it this time! I made a little bit of improvement anyway. My pulling muscles are really sore and the skin is rubbed off my hands in several places but it's worth it because it was fun! At least it was a little glimmer of hope that I may be able to actually climb something someday.

Oh and guess what?..... only 9 DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS!!!!!! :) Finally it has snowed and is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Almost Finished!! Wahoo!!!! :)

I just got done with my second to last final! Yay! Basically I'm done with school because I do have a final tomorrow but it's not a test or anything stressful so no intense thinking will be required. Thank goodness, my brain hurts!...literally, I'm not even joking. Well maybe it's not my brain but my head really is pounding right now, probably due to way too much studying and a math final very early this morning. That and the fact that I never seem to get very much sleep these days. :)

This has been one very eventful semester! I can't believe it's over. It's amazing how time flies. I don't know where it all went! I've made some great memories this semester and I'm looking forward to a lot more. Random side note....I'm taking guitar lessons next semester!!! :) I'm very happy about this in case you couldn't tell. I took a class last Spring and learned so much but I've been feeling the need to progress and it's hard to do that when you only know so much. Anyway, I just thought of that and felt excited for a second so I thought I would share my happy moment!

Another change will be that I am no longer doing student gov. It's been fun and a great learning experience, but as with most things in life it has it's rough points and with classes and work and everything I decided it's just too much. This is a picture of everyone who has been on SUUSA with me this semester.

Let's see, any other random news?..... Oh I don't think I mentioned that last weekend I went to Bluffdale with Casey for his sister's baby's blessing. We drove up Saturday morning and stayed with his family until Monday morning. It was so fun. :) On Saturday night we went to a cool park and played in "the dome" for a while then went to a Thai food restauraunt and played couples Monopoly with some of his friends. The Thai food was so yummy and the rest was fun but we both got really tired after 2 hours of playing Monopoly so we sold everything we had for a dollar. We were going to go to the Planetarium because we put some really cool glow-in-the-dark constellations on my ceiling, but it was closed for a special event. We have such terrible luck with things like that. It seems like every time we have a great idea of something we want to do it is closed or we can't find it, etc. For example, we wanted to go try the public water slide and it was closed for a water polo tournament (oh I forgot to tell my water slide story! it's a good one...I'll tell it in a minute) so we went to the university pool and it was closed for cleaning or something and we went to rent Jaws but it had disappeared. The clerk said it was there but it wasn't. I know becuase we looked through every single video in Hollywood Video...no joke, every single video. We have an inside joke that it's really because the Jazz announcers listen to our conversations and try to sabotage all of Casey's plans to impress me. ha ha. Sorry I just realized that I got very sidetracked! I seem to lose focus very easily when I'm tired. So anyway, Saturday was fun! Sundays are always wonderful. I love Sundays! Ours this week consisted of watching Anastasia, going to church, dinner at Casey's sisters house after the blessing, a hike up Ferguson Canyon (I think that's what it was called anyway) in our church clothes :), and then relaxing and hanging out at Casey's house with his family. Then on Monday morning we drove home! It really was a fun, relaxing weekend! It made me very happy.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for...the Waterslide Story!! (sorry I am really tired) As I mentioned before, Casey and I really wanted to go play at the city pool and waterslide. I couldn't find a very good picture of the slide, but you can see the tower and part of the slide in this one.

Finally last Tuesday evening we got our chance! There was nobody at the pool or the slide but it was open so we asked if the slide was on and they said it could be for us. They turned it on just for us! It was freezing cold in the tower and kind of dark in the slide but it was so much fun!!! It is actually a really fun waterslide! You ride down on mats and there is so much water flowing out of it that makes you go really fast! We discovered that if you ride two per mat (not suggested for reasons you will soon find out) you can go even faster! So there we were at the waterslide with it all to ourselves and we decided that it would be more exciting if we tried new things every time we went down. Looking back on it now, I realize that some of our ideas really weren't very intelligent but we were having so much fun! Usually I consider myself a somewhat logical person but every once in a while my mind comes up with ideas that....aren't. Yes, this was one of those times. For some reason at that particular time, going down on one mat with our eyes closed seemed like a brilliant plan. It was really fast and exciting and great until we got to the part of the slide where it suddenly turns in the opposite direction and Sheralee's head forgot to. Basically I ended up with a slight concussion. It didn't hurt too bad that night but the next day I definitely felt it! I think it scared Casey really bad when I hit my head but it was kind of nice enjoying the treatment I got when I was sick the next day. :) So that's the waterslide story in a nutshell.

And that's a short summary the exciting happenings in my life these last couple of weeks! Sorry for all of the random tangents and sidenotes.... :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it's a day late but Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! We drove to Kanab yesterday to celebrate the holiday with Grandma LeFevre and some of our other aunts, uncles and cousins. It was so fun to visit with family, it seems like I'm so busy these days that I don't get to see them as often as I would like to. And the food was great of course! Especially compared to my typical college on-the-go meals. I was thinking about it yesterday, being Thanksgiving and all, and I realized that I have so much to be thankful for! I honestly couldn't ask for more than I have been blessed with. I am surrounded by the best family and friends anyone could possibly hope for, I get to live my dreams going to school and eventually becoming a teacher (hopefully....my professors have been stressing me out with all their worry about the block, student teaching, and graduation. I'm kind of scared!), I never have to worry about having enough food or a warm place to stay, I live in the greatest country, Gas prices are only $1.55 here now (yay!!), I have the knowledge and my own personal testimony of the Gospel, I only live 45 minutes from a temple, etc. etc. etc. The list could go on and on. I'm so happy! :) Thank you to everyone who has been an influence in making my life so wonderful! I hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving!

Oh yeah, this is a picture of Casey and I going to the institute formal dance last Saturday. There was delicious cheesecake and a chocolate fountain and I had the cutest date! :) Aubree let me borrow her pretty dress that is so sparkly and pretty! It was really fun.

Bouldering at Ibex

Last weekend I got to go to Delta with Casey and a bunch of friends to go bouldering. Casey loves rock climbing so I decided to try it out. It's so hard! If you've never seen bouldering you should check it out on YouTube, it's pretty cool. It's like rock climbing only you don't use ropes or anything so you fall a lot on crash pads. I am amazed by what people can do sometimes. The people we went with were really good so I kind of felt silly because I couldn't even make it up the "easy" boulder problems. Oh well, Casey said practice will help. I think what it's going to take is a lot more hours in the weight room. I realized I am kind of a wimp. :) Casey gets very excited and he's really good so it was fun to watch. These pictures are of him climbing "Ju," which nobody topped out but he came the closest to.

I LOVE the Gospel!!!! :)

I should be working on homework right now but I am so happy so I just had to share my special little moment that I just had. :) I'm such a nerd! It made my whole day....probably my whole week!....so I just had to share it!!! I was just doing some stuff for student gov and decided to check my facebook. One of my girls from EFY when I was at Ephraim was on and sent me a little message saying how her life is amazing now because of changes she made this summer. I was feeling pretty insignificant and overwhelmed and just kind of small today, but I guess the Lord really does use small and simple things to make a difference. I'm so glad that despite my weaknesses I can be an influence for good even if it's just in very small ways. I love feeling the light and happiness and peace that comes from the Spirit!
Well anyway, I suppose I better get to work on that homework. I'll post later about my exciting weekend Bouldering by Delta!

The Howl - Happy Halloween!

This year my Halloween was spent putting on The Howl Halloween party at SUU. I'm not going to lie, I've been kind of dreading this activity since I started working on the student activities board, but it turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would. We had a concert with two bands, a dance, a mentalist, wax hands, a photo booth, and cartoon artists doing caricatures of people. We had about 1700 people show up so we made a good profit and we didn't have any major security incidences or innapropriate encounters. I guess last year was pretty bad, but we took a lot of precautions and everything went really smooth. I was so relieved! Prayers really are answered. :) We weren't able to dress up because we were supposed to work the whole night and we needed Security to be able to identify who we were, but we did get to wear some lovely bright orange tshirts ha ha. The other girls on STAB (student activities board) and I decided to at least do our make up like zombies so we wouldn't feel completely left out of the festivities. It was fun bonding while we "beautified" ourselves :) and we made great use of the photo booth props before the crowds came.

This picture below pretty much perfectly describes how I felt when I saw

some of the costumes people showed up in. ha ha
I've made some really cute friends this year through student gov!

After 13 hours at the school decorating, preparing, managing crowds, and
cleaning up this is literally how we felt. I have never been more
grateful for warm showers and a squishy mattress. :)

...More Fall Fun!

Although Halloween hasn't always been one of my fondest holidays, I have always enjoyed the pumpkin carving part! This years carving lived up to all my expectations and then some. :) I should have taken a close up picture of the pumpkin that Casey and I carved, it's pretty cool! We made our pumpkin Holiday themed featuring Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, St Patricks Day, and Valentines. Pretty creative right?

Gotta love our kitchen :)

After finishing our pumpkins we got to play with some Sparklers that Libby had left over! Sydney (my roommate) took these cool pictures. Good times :)

Homecoming and Harvest Holiday (a.k.a the Hunt!!)

Aubree was the only one who drew out for the deer hunt this year but we all got to have a fun weekend hunting with her! We stayed in Hatch with Grammy, Gramps, and Mike and Connies family for the Harvest Holiday break. Friday night we had a fire and got to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, then early Saturday morning we headed out for the hunt.

We look like pretty intimidating hunter women don't you think? If I was a deer I sure would be scared! :)

It wasn't quite as cold as last year but I was still freezing! We only spotted a few deer and Aubree didn't get a good shot at one... until we were driving home on Monday! It ran into the trees after she shot it and we had a hard time finding it but we were really excited when we did! It's a 4x3 with a 27" spread and it's pretty big! (I just realized I've used exclamation marks at the end of every sentence in this paragraph :) ha ha. It was obviously quite an exciting adventure!) It was a long drag back to the road but it was worth it. Yay for Aubree's hunting skills and for her big deer!!

Aubree let me do her hair for her Homecoming dance and it turned out really pretty! She looked beautiful and said that all the girls at the dance thought she looked like Cinderella. It's so fun having a little sister.

80's dance party and other fun stuff

Friday night we had an 80's dance at the institute and it was a BLAST!!! Seriously, the funnest dance I've been to for..... probably my whole college career. Dressing up was sooo fun. I'm pretty much fully converted to the fashion trends of the 80's now. It's no wonder they liked to dress like that! And my hair was totally made for the 80's. I've got the whole curly poof idea down to an art form now :) ha ha. These pictures are actually after taming it down a bit. It's pretty much amazing! And the music!!! loved it. My roommates and I even watched 80's music videos to learn some sweet moves which we gracefully utlitized on the dance floor. Have you ever seen the music video for "Love is a Battlefield"? Yeah...it was a great time. Afterwards Jessica, Winston and I made a late night Denny's run which was delicious!

And these pictures are of the awesome fort that Casey and I built in my room. It was so fun. :) We used to do that all the time when we were little kids so it was a great little blast from the past. Unfortunately I only got to leave it up to sleep in for two days because my roommates wanted the table benches back in our kitchen and our house was freezing cold so I needed my blankets. It was great while it lasted though!

Moral of the story... if you're ever having a bad day, all you need to do is dress up 80's style and build a fort out of quilts :)

Fall Fun

The weather is starting to change and with that comes my favorite part of Fall (well one of my favorite parts...there are several) and that is the leaves!! Last weekend we drove over Cedar Mountain to Kanab for a baby blessing and the leaves were so incredibly beautiful! I wish I had a nicer camera to show how pretty it really was, mine just doesn't really do it justice. We couldn't pass up the opportunity for some pictures though so Libby, Cameron and I stopped by a really pretty grove of trees and found some great Kodak moment opportunities. It was well worth the trek across the mountain meadow and through the gopher holes in high heels and my Sunday dress :) ha ha. Too bad we didn't capture that part of the adventure!

The week before last was Homecoming at SUU and it turned out to be a lot of fun! Working on the activities committee makes for a very busy Homecoming week but we had a lot of great activities and a lot of people came out to support the school so it was great! We had a luau, a comedian, a pep rally, a movie night, and a few other activities during the week then on Saturday we had a parade, a street fair, and of course the Homecoming game. We lost the game unfortunately but to tell the truth I was too worn out to care all that much. Even though it was exhausting it was probably the funnest Homecoming week I've had since starting college! I've really learned a lot this semester and have enjoyed being involved with the school, even though I'm not sure I would ever do it again if I had the choice :) And that's about it for the exciting news in my life lately :) ha ha. It's been busy but good. Oh I did get a new calling! I am now the ward choir director for my singles ward. I guess music is just my blessing that I'm supposed to share with people! I'm kind of intimidated by the whole conducting part but I love the music. Right now we're doing an arrangement of Lead Kindly Light that is so pretty! That's one of my favorite hymns so I was excited when I found out we had an arrangement of it.
Well I'm off to Hatch for the weekend. Yay for Hatch! and yay for General Conference!!

Our Happy Home :)

I am so lucky because I live in the cutest house with the best roommates possible! I've always loved cute little old houses and now I get to live in one! complete with arched doorways, a laundry chute, a mail slot that comes into a little nook in our house, and leaky bathrooms! :) I love it. My roommates are so wonderful as well. Our house is so peaceful and they are all really good girls. It's so nice to be able to go home to great friends.

We also have a really nice back yard complete with a little porch (modeled by Libby) that has a swing and a picnic table! We even have an apple tree and our very own clothesline and a greenhouse! which I'm sure will be very useful to us in so many ways :)

I have to admit I even love our tacky kitchen wallpaper that is orange and sage green and involves random things like watering pots and chickens (fully feathered and beaked!) in pans. Thanks to Grammy Marilyn for the cute curtains and flower arrangement on the table. It makes it so cozy. :) Oh p.s. we have an ironing board that folds down out of the wall on the end of the table not shown in the picture. I'm definitely going to have to make use of the oppurtunity for a candlelight dinner inspired by Little Rascals.

I'll have to take some pictures of my room so I can show my cute ribbon/picture wall that I created. Decorating is so fun!

School this semester so far has been fun just so busy! I started my practicum in a sixth grade class at the middle school, so between that and working as a piano accompanist in the morning I'm there pretty much all the time! My life seems to revolve around that age group a lot these days.... It's fun though. Student government is going alright although I do feel a teeny bit burned out. There are so many activities and we're even busy on the weekends. It would be nice if we could just insert a week long vacation with absolutely nothing to think about so my brain could have a rest. If I wasn't such a worry wart and perfectionist it would probably be better so I'm working on that. I have met lots of people and made so many new friends though! That's the fun part. :)

Well I better run because we're putting on a memorial tonight for September 11th. I can't believe it's been 7 years already. I am so grateful to be in this country! I am so blessed.