Pre-Valentine Scavenger Hunt!

Hey y'all! (See? I'm gearin' up fer Texas in March!)

So I hope all of your Valentine's Days went well! I know mine did!

My dear sister helped give me ideas for what to do for Trevor and I'm glad to say it was a success!

We decided that Friday would me my day for him and Saturday would be his day for me. So on Friday, my really good friend Richard and I set up a scavenger hunt for Trevor around campus to places we've "made memories" you could say. It was so much fun! Richard and I felt so sneaky, haha! So here's where the hunt sent him:

1. I called him after work and told him to meet me in the engineering building (the farthest building from the first destination haha). Instead of giving him the envelope myself, I had Richard give him the first clue while I peeked out from behind a study area wall haha. After Trev received the envelope and telling Rich where he'd parked, he set off. When he left, Rich and I went to Trevor's car to heart attack it, Trevor having given me the key that morning (which I found felt very good... ;) I liked having him hand me keys.... haha).

2. The first destination of the scavenger hunt was the Hub. For all of ye who aren't familiar with USU's campus, it's an eating area in the TSC, one of the main buildings on campus. On each of the clues, I write down a thought for each letter of L-O-V-E. At the Hub he found the next clue under a table saying, "L is for laughter, because that and your smile were the first things I noticed about you and we laugh easily with each other..."

3. That clue told him, through intimation, to go to the Field House, or the campus gym, basically, that has pool tables and where he's taught me to play pool and we've played with friends. He had to call me about that clue--he couldn't find it, or rather he looked in the right place but it blended in the first time. :) (It was behind the door.) It said, "O is for overlooks and open sky because it was overlooking the valley that I got to know you better and it was under and open sky that we first ... [started to like each other, I guess you could say.]" This clue intimated that the next venue was my apartment, and I included my key.

4. The clue told him to turn on my MP3 player when he arrived and I had preset it to play "L-O-V-E" by Nat King Cole. :) He was surprisingly thorough--as in he looked places that I thought of hiding it but decided against becase I thought he'd get stuck. I also thought of hinting through something in the song and he ended up looking all over the mirrors because it says, "L is for the way you LOOK at me, O is for the only one I SEE..." He turned out to be a lot more intuitive than I'd expected. Good news. :) So now I want to do another scavenger hunt and make it harder and more intuitive because I know he can do it. :)

Anyway, the clue was on the backside of my closet door and said, "V is for very warm..." We lend each other sweatshirts and I thought it tied into the fact that I was giving him a blanket...

5. That clue led him to the institute building, where we have Old Testament together. This is where he spent the most time haha. I hid the next clue under a table in the main lounge, and in fact he looked under the right table twice but missed it because of the lip. But he really covered his bases! He went into the ping pong room, all the lounges, even the teachers' lounge, looked under EVERY table---he said his legs hurt from it and he's a skier who doesn't get sore legs easily! Two of these clues had scrambled passwords on them that he had to decipher in order to get his gifts at the end of the line. This one was obviously "Old Testament". And oh yeah, it said, "E is for eyes..." If you've met or seen him, he has the brightest blue eyes, or at least contend-worthy bright blue haha.

6. That clue oriented him toward his car, which he was supposed to think was the last destination. Here he found the inside of his car covered in hearts, with chocolate truffles, a silhouette of a boy and girl holding hands on his sunroof, and heart-shaped pillows (that usually reside on my bed haha) and another clue. This clue said, "U is for U R NOT DONE YET!!..." It explained that it may have been in a car (up the canyon) that we first hung out outside of studying for calculus and first really got to know each other (and yes, flirt) but it was not the venue of the very beginning and told him to go where we met for the very first time ever and where we spent a vast amount of time last semester working on calc--the library.

7. At the library, on the fourth floor balcony where we first met, I waited for him with his gifts (and my laptop to keep me busy). Richard had been there talking with me the whole time but left right as Trev was walking in the front doors, four floors down. They must've passed in the elevators...

Here, he gave me the passwords and I gave him his fleece blanket that I had tied and a picture frame with two pictures of us in it. :)

That was Friday's activity. . . mine for him. . . so stay tuned for the actual Valentine's Day blog entry. :)

The Update

Alrighty, so I realize I've been positively TERRIBLE at updating my blog, but bear with me. Just be satisfied that I've been LIVING the life instead of just trying to record it. And it's been quite fun, I might add!

So to give you an idea of what I've been up to for the past little while, I shall create a list...

-I hung out with Brantley two weeks ago for the last time before he leaves on his mission to Minneapolis. It was a BLAST! We talked about everything, as we always found easy to do, and took fun pictures! Then he called me last night to talk one last time. He leaves on Wednesday, Feb 11th.

-My roommates and I pulled all our beds into the living room (five beds in our tiny living room!) and had a sleepover! We all laid in a circle with our heads in the middle and Lisa and I slept under her warm blanket... mmm...

I had the earliest class the next morning and it was tough climbing over everybody... And then to top it off, our new couch came that day and when the mover guys looked inside they were quite astonished. :)

-I've gone skiing twice now this season!! And I'm pleased to say that I have very good teachers who know skiing and skiing technique backwards and forwards.

-I'm taking ballet again and LOVING it! The muscles are starting to creep back, but aren't quite all here again yet. Obviously. :)

-My twin, Emily Blotter, and I have walked through the house we'll be living in next year and I love it! We'll actually have ROOM! Living in a little apartment gets. . . crampifying! --especially when you went from three people living in 4000 sq ft to 5-6 people living in 900 sq ft! We went to the basketball game on Thursday against New Mexico and the Aggies won! Of course... :)

-Trevor's cute as ever! My roommate, Caitlyn, and her former beloved gave us the idea of having a three-month anniversary and we celebrated it (after we realized ours was THAT DAY) by going to the first place we realized we both liked each other, when we were together for the first time outside of studying for calculus II--up Logan Canyon. . . Too bad I got sick! Dinner did not sit well with me and so we came back early and he held my sick little self while I fell asleep. :) (Haha, he's wearing the same shirt in two instances! ... good shirt ... )

-I love my institute class. The Old Testament was always something I wanted to know more about and then after seminary my senior year, after waiting four years to have it, it became a favorite. I'm in OT 1 Kings - Malachi this semester and it's sooo good.

-Chemistry is a beast! The labs are getting crazy. (I realize that if any of you has taken Organic Chem they are laughing at me right now because O Chem is WAY WORSE than Inorganic Chem.... but still... I have not gotten there yet...) We had our first test last week and I actually did pretty well, ranking 18th out of 163. So not brag-worthy, but not bad.

-I also had my first Stats test and did reasonably well on that too. And hopefully the scores will just go up from here!

-Statistics is . . . . NOT CALCULUS! Which is very good some days. . . and kind of sad others . . .

-Interior Design keeps my right brain on its toes. . . (that's a weird thought...) like it hasn't had for QUITE some time. My creativity is being revisited and it's hard for Emily and I, the biochem majors!

-Philosophy is . . . interesting . . . and SO POINTLESS sometimes!!! I'm just glad we're past Socrates, sheesh. I like Aristotle MUCH better. After all, my favorite quote comes from him: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

-Sleep 101 is . . . a wonderful class that all should take. . . just hard to find time for. ;)

-My roommates and I went to a stake dance last night that took the place of FHE and, as all stake dances, it started out a little slow, but after a while it picked up and we ended up staying for over two hours! Usually I don't like slow dances, but I liked 'em this time because I just turned them into Interpretive Dance Time, which Marhsall and I and Derrick made very interpretive. :)

-I went home to Sandy the last week in January, spent time with my parents (just didn't tell people I was home heehee), and went to the Draper temple open house with two friends, my mom, and a friend's mom, which was amazing. Naturally. I loved being with my parents over the weekend but it was entirely too short!!

-I finally saw Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda!

-I'm excited for Valentine's Day this weekend! I'm glad it's on Saturday, too. My sis, aka the bank of V-Day ideas, and my twin helped me out with what to do for Trev. :)

-Although Spring Break is a month away, everyone's thinking about it and I'm very excited for my trip to Austin!

Hope everyone's month is going wonderfully!

Hi y'all. Just letting you know I did not die. I just have a severe case of blog-slacker-syndrome. :) Sorry! I'll update soon.

DONE!!

I MADE IT!

I SURVIVED THE HARDEST CLASS IN MY ACADEMIC LIFE THUS FAR!!!

I took my Calculus II final this morning and... didn't DIE!! And what's more, I think I just might pull a decent score on my final and therefore hopefully a decent score for the overall class. *crosses fingers*

I've spent by far the most time on this class (in class and outside of class) than any other so ... :)

Thank you, Ryan and Trevor and Levi!!

Finals Week!

'Nuff said.

Brant

Some exciting news came to Brant last Thursday in the form of a large, white package in the mail. :)
Yes, that's right, he received his mission call and will be serving in the Minneapolis, Minnesota mission, including parts of Canada.
He was pretty mad about not being able to prove me wrong and the fact that I was right. . . once again! I always told him he was going state-side even though he wanted so badly to go to Germany. I just couldn't see him in Europe, though. . .
But he's very happy and excited about it. He'll be pretty close to Tanner, who leaves on his mission for Wisconsin in ten days. Brant leaves for the MTC on Feb. 11th, 2009.

I went over to his apartment yesterday to catch up with him. It was actually really fun to hang out with him again and he showed me his call, told me about the day he opened it, showed me his new Blackberry and told me about his new camera (of which I am SO jealous--it's the EXACT camera I want!! Nikon Coolpix, 10 MP, 5x zoom... grr...) and showed me the picture he sent in with his papers (featured above), as well as some other pictures they took in the spree of photo-taking (featured below). Now y'all know how I always harrassed him about being a model. . . Well, I'm pleased to say that I was not only right about him going state-side, but I am also right about him being a model. :)

If any of you have the opportunity to see or talk to or IM him, tell him congratulations. :)

My Best Friend's . . . A Missionary!

My best friend Zach left on his mission this morning--reported to the MTC at 11:30 a.m.
I'm so glad I had Thanksgiving weekend to hang out with him.
We had fun quoting all our movies and favorite characters, making even more inside jokes, bouncing our senses of humor off one another, giving lots of hugs, taking pictures, laughing hysterically, crying, filling each other in on the details of what has gone on since we last saw each other, talking about the early Christmas his family had, talking about Sweden, etc.

His farewell talk was very good. And when he came down off of the podium after sacrament and hugged me, it hit me harder than I ever expected. I won't see my best friend for a very long time. In my opinion. Lucky for me, college makes time fly. But still! I buried my face and. . . well, let out an emotion I seldom unleash. Tears. Having never had a close member of my family nor a close friend go on a mission before, the shock of him my closest friend leaving was new and quite hard to swallow.

After sacrament, Rachel, Ashley Holmes, and I went to his house and got about one to two more hours with him. I left at around 1:45 p.m. and kept myself composed for the next four long hugs. When we finally reached my car--after a lot of prolonging--and after the final hug, I looked up and... well, all I could say was, "See you in two years." :)

Then I got home and realized that I will most likely leave on my mission before he gets home from his. Three and a half years without seeing my best friend. Eeek! Thank heavens for letters. :)

I'm very exited to get his letters and to share some small part his ups and downs, his ebbs and flows. The missionaries I've written so far have been far from best friends--more like I've barely known them at all--and so they naturally don't/didn't go into great detail. Sure they're tell me about the families they were teaching, etc. But I'm excited to hear about it all. It was frustrating to have missionaries come home and tell me about the hard parts of their mission when I heard nothing of the sort in their letters. I can understand why they left that out, but . . . I want to know when Zach is a bit discouraged, when he's on cloud nine, and all the in betweens as well. Heck, what's the good of having all these guys go on missions before me if I can't hear all about their experiences and have some small preparation for what's down the road??

I wish him well with all of my heart and love him dearly.