December Love List

• Christmas time
• graduation
• Rexburg
• seeing the lights in Salt Lake
• spontaneously bursting out into song with Bailey
• Christmas shopping; finding excellent gifts
• walking around Barnes and Noble
• family Parties
• Christmas music 
• having breakfast
• hot showers
• sleeping in my own bed
• soup
• good grades
• the red and white lights on our fence
• holding hands
• sledding
• snow storms (when I don't have to drive in them)
• milk steamers
• preparing for Africa
• To Kill A Mockingbird (I got the DVD for Christmas! but I love the book as well)
• a clean room
• no homework
• oranges
• fires in the fireplace
• skiing
• slippers
• watching Lyv on Christmas 
• my amazing family
• getting mail
• sending mail
• the smell of Christmas trees
• seeing cousins
• sleeping in
• my light up globe

I love how potatoes are such a big deal

• I love the way the faucets in our bathtub and in our kitchen sink are backwards, so cold is hot and hot is cold. (And sometimes I forget to tell people so they end up washing their hair or their dishes in freezing cold water).  
• I love the way President Clark never fails to say, "It's another great day at BYU-Idaho."  
  
• I love making friends with people at the library because they have about 473.29 pages printing and they are standing in line ahead of you.  
  
• I love tutoring students and hearing about their lives amidst the grammar and the reading skills.  
  
• I love walking through the Spori and sometimes seeing Laura's art on the wall.  
  
• I love praying before class and sometimes singing hymns; it makes having Relief Society in a classroom not seem so strange.  
  
• I love "Photosynthesis Friday" and when the print-making and pottery students sell stuff in the MC.  
• I love the walk to the Hinckley building.  
  
• I love seeing Rexburg sunsets from the Taylor quad, and every time saying to myself, "Idaho is pretty."
  
• I love coming home to supportive roommates who are crazy and brilliant and like me the way I am.  
  
• I love being able to do projects in the media lab on the 3rd floor of the library because they have gluesticks.  
  
• I love the 57th ward and when the bishop uses hand motions to teach gospel principles.  I love sitting in meetings in which I laugh until my sides hurt, and where I still feel like I can help people.  
• I love visiting the Snowview apartments and the Sunrise apartments to find friends and scintillating conversation.  
  
• I love the math lab, where people like you--even if you struggle with every single problem.  
  
• I love how it is okay to eat peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner.  
  
• I love having room to invite people over.  
  
• I love how FHE is always awkward.  Every time.  
  
• I love making ice cream runs on Thursday nights, and that we now know that Arctic Circle has the best twist cones (and McDonald's are nasty).  
  
• I love when I'm at the library late and I hear music play over the loud speaker, along with "The McKay Library will be closing in 5 minutes" in a plethora of languages.  
  
• I love sitting in the "heater corner" to warm up.
• I love Broulims because it feels like a neighborhood grocery store.  Actually it is.  
• I love driving around and seeing stars and fields everywhere.  
• I love sitting downstairs and moving around because the non-existent wireless connection is touchy.
• I love listening to music with Lars in the morning while we get ready.  
• I love wondering if it's just "cold" or if it is "frigid" outside.  
• I love BYU-Idaho.  I have had so many good times/life experiences/hard times/learning experiences here.  I have felt comfortable here.  I have felt at home.  

Tomorrow is graduation!  I just picked up my cap and gown so I can iron it before tomorrow.  My parents are driving up, and we will get to hear President Clark and President Uchtdorf speak.  It's exciting and melancholy, as I have said before.  I like it here.  

Long live Idaho.  

and I say, God bless it

I was still lying in bed when my dad called this morning.  While I was talking to him, I got up and walked around my room.  I couldn't help but look out the window, and to my happiness I found SNOW!  It's late this year in Rexburg, but it has finally arrived, and with it, some real Christmas cheer.  Now it feels like Christmas time.  I think it's a way of helping me through this hard week.  

But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round-- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that-- as good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!  -From Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I held so many people in my suitcase heart

 Finals week has already taken on an entire new meaning this semester; it is a little more final than 

usual.  Final devotional.  Final days at the RC.  Final relief society lesson.  Final day in third grade.  Final weeks with laurakayciamyandeveryoneelseintheworld.  

It is such a contradiction: hurry quick! do this and this and this and this.  fast!  before it is all over!  but slow down!  slow. slow. slow.  don't end yet.

I'll miss these people, this place, this life. this part of life. 

 I don't know if it's the right 

time to be nostalgic, but I am anyway.  

Isn't it funny how there are always so many "lasts" before there are innumerable "firsts"?

 I'm student teaching!  In January.  In sixth grade.  I'm going to Africa!  In 

May.  First time.  I'm living at home!  With Bay.  First time (in a while).  Lots of new things.  new ward, new school, new people.  

It is really thrilling! 

But still, I'm just blue right now. 

thanks to you

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  

I know that I've said this before, but I feel lucky to have such wonderful people in my life--you are my greatest blessings.  

We are off to Arizona today!  It has been excellent to be home for a few days, but I am excited for this little vacation.  I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday full of turkey, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, family, naps, pie, and shopping.  

we'll put on the day and we'll wear it till the night comes

This week in life: 

Finished my 13 Colonies unit.  Gave a post-assessment today.  My students learned!  I'm not sure why I am surprised, because that was the whole point of teaching and becoming a teacher and the basis of my philosophy of education-- right?  But it was rewarding to see them be enthused and do well on the summative assessment.  I'm a teacher (almost)!  

I get to go home not tomorrow but the next day.  I'm thrilled to see my niece, watch Bay swim, solve the world's problems over dinner with Bryttin, hang out and discuss life with my parents, and not do homework for a few days.  And then we are going to Arizona for the holiday, so I'll get to see Bret and Erica, bake pie, party with the grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins, and enjoy some desert sunshine.

Homework is taking over my life.  Yes oh yes.  I have many things due very soon.  Plus, I have to quickly teach myself to play the recorder so I can take a performance final on Friday morning.  I need to do lots of reading.  And writing.  I need to post my resume.  I need to start/finish writing my Teacher Work Sample.  I need to get ahead (if that is even possible?!).  

I'll be graduating soon.  Need to make the announcements and send them.  

Tomorrow is my Grandpa's birthday!  He is the greatest. grandpa. ever.  

Wish I had more time to play the guitar.  By the way, come to my holiday benefit concert!  See here for details.  

Lots of things and people to be thankful for.  Need to seriously write some thank you notes.  

Today, I am grateful for: apple juice, third graders, cars, my computer, my parents, prayer, blankets, sunshine, socks, phone calls.  

I'm bushed.

Just took my second praxis test: "Principles of Learning and Teaching."  

Now I feel like this: