life is exciting these days,,,,,

not. school has taken over again.

in other news...... i had previously been doing really good about being careful and not tripping over myself every two seconds. i always had a bruise somewhere, then magically they all disappeared. until we moved (again) and i have to get used to new corners, edges, etc. i currently have four bruises, and i haven't a clue where they came from. also on the clumsy list: i fell down some stairs on campus today. highly embarrassing, but at least it wasnt down the whole thing, just the second to last step. and thankfully it wasnt the even more embarrassing falling UP the stairs, which is a highly developed skill of mine.

we've been a better about being social this semester. i got to see all my old roomies from last year for a birthday lunch! so fun to see them all. i hadnt seen the birthday girl in almost a year because she was in ecuador. anyways.... it was a good time catching up.

hayley, katie, katie, susan, lindsay, and jamie

we are celebrating tonight- lost is on in just a few hours! its a good thing we FINALLY got our cable on monday. not a lot of time to watch it, but for those moments we can, i am stoked! and although i havent previously been a lost fan, i will be starting now! dumb writers strike. luckily, some shows still press foward, namely american idol and the biggest loser. probably the dorkiest shows to watch, but i like them. unluckily, 24 isnt back yet, and who knows when it will? jacks in jail, and they wont show the episodes they already shot. hmmmm.....

guess thats all for now. back to getting on homework.

a proud cougar fan again

last night was the first time we have been to a byu game of any kind since last year! we went to the first men's volleyball game with one of my best friends and her husband last night and it was so fun! men's vball is always so fun- it wasnt the most well attended game, but we had awesome seats almost on the floor and the cougars played really well! they played against another church school which actually had professional players on it, but they beat them 3-0 keeping up their home game winning streak! and of course catching up with friends is great!

love birds

best buds reunited!

drumroll please....

some side notes to this post:

found the charger (my id wasnt with it. see below post) so here are the long-awaited house photos!

please excuse joseph's need to display everything samoan on the windows. we have not gotten around to installing some kind of window covering just yet. so for now we live with lava-lavas tacked over them to keep out the eyes. and yes you can see our glowing windows on the other side of the development.

now for some thoughts:

its just now sinking in that its a new year. i think i have only written 2008 about three times, and its kinda funny. so to celebrate, here are all things NEW about my life:

• new phone! splitting from the parents and doing it all on our own! freedom is exhilarating! its even got a utah phone number. after liscence plates on the car we will be true utahns.

the new cherry chocolate. yum!

• new jeans! i have been on the hunt for quite some time! i even watched the re-run of oprah's show on how to pick the jeans for you. after-christmas shopping did not come to fuition, and i came back to utah with no hopes. by chance, my awesome husband saw lucky brand jeans at costco for forty bucks and mentioned it to me. i didnt think too much about, but checked it out. i thought that it was too good to be true! i didnt try them on, which i didnt want to do but there were no changing rooms, and i came home and immediately slid them up, buttoned, zipped, and breathed a sigh of relief. a perfect fit!
  


• new semester with new classes! maybe not so exciting, but i am really in love with a couple classes im taking. mostly marriage enhancement, i'm leaning WAY more than i thought i would, and i love my professor! even though its at the end of my thirteen hour days at school, i look forward to it!
  


• new hair! yes ladies and gentlemen, the hair has come off! ive been growing it out for nearly six years, and it was time for a change! (a theme around here right now) its being donated to locks of love. i am so excited about it! some lucky little girl who isnt fortunate enough to have beautiful hair will now have that opportunity! AND it was a double good deed because the guy that cut it off said he had always wanted to take off someone's ponytail. i'm not totally sure about the new do, but its been fun to see people's reactions so far.
  
  
  

  thirteen inches from tip to tip.

  
  
• best of all- new house! this is the best part. we have a garage, washer and dryer, HUGE fridge in a HUGE kitchen, three bedrooms and a mini-backyard all to ourselves! and its amazing!

bed is on the floor. we don't have a bed frame yet, but we like it sometimes-

easier to get out of bed.

HUGE master bath!

another angle

office- samoan decorated!

spare room. we will furnish it, one day. for now it holds.... a sign.

guest bath

second floor landing

family room

tv in it
(the tv has on the movie waitress. a new favorite. it makes me want to be good at making pies!)

entrance/front door

kitchen

mini-backyard! with eight inches of snow in it!

half bath

laundry room

garage!

so there it is. a long needed update. and now my homework has been long awaiting me and i must do it. happy mlk jr. day!

hmph

i get the house all ready for pictures (finally) grab the camera and the little battery sign flashes and its dead. no problem, just charge the battery. oh wait. cant find the charger..... i always seem to have it when we don't need it and can never find a place for it. when the time comes to perform its duty, it disappears. typical. oh, and i cant find my byu id. i think they are hiding in the same place.

why????

why am i blogging at 7 in the am? because im at school with nothin' better to do. joseph and i have early classes this semester, and its starting to kill me. yesterday he had one at 8, and today it is at 7, so here i am waiting for my 8 o'clock. oh, and i will be here til 8 tonight. being at school for more than an hour BEFORE the sun rises stinks people. but thats a sacrafice we gotta make this time around. it is a strange thing to be here when the custodians are still vacuuming. and washing the carpets. wish me luck.

my little obsession

i have a confession about my passion: i LOVE to read, more than most other things in the world. this last semester, and any other semester, i have to put aside this passion for reading to focus on school work. if i dont force myself to do this, i would never get anything done sometimes, and if i do read a novel, i go through a real guilt trip for not reading a textbook. so, during this break, i have allowed myself to fall into the twilight series. everyone and their mothers have read it, raved about it, and blogged about it, and i am disapointed in myself for not reading it until now. i read the first one on our cruise, but had zero time and didnt get the other ones until now. and they have been haunting me. my poor husband has had to put up with me for a few days while i read though the first and second one, and i cant read the third one until the plane ride home :( its been torture i tell you. i think about the books, and try and guess what the next one will bring. i am excited about the movie, and for the other books that follow. anyways. thats my little venting, and i have just two more days til i get sucked into them for a few more hours!

our first new years...

... was kinda lame. we stayed up to watch the ball drop, but we did it alone. we watched some guy jump a football field on a motorcycle, and bummed around til midnight. chris was in california already, marshall and sarah were at a party, lindsay had crashed, and mom and dad didnt make it either. so it was just the two of us, drinking a whole thing of martinellis, by ourselves by the fire.


oreo was so excited to have her family back home again last week. but shes getting on in her years, and we have taken a toll on the old lady. this was how she fell aslepp the other night:

pretty wiped out.

getting ready to head back to p town and our house! i dont think that i am ready for more school just yet, but i am excited for some of my classes this semester!

im a slacker

but heres an update:

we last left the saga of the brewers in utah in our new house. we moved out of our apartment the day before we left for st.louis and dumped everything we had in the garage and started to unpack and put away the things that had been dumped inside the house. we had been expecting the builder to get a washer/dryer set put in earlier in the week, and had put off doing laundry in the coin laundry for a little too long. the day before left we had negative clean clothes, and in the hope of not having to do it in the laundro-mat we made a last-ditch effort to get them. connections = amazing: made a SINGLE phone call, received maybe five in return, and they got put in literally twenty minutes later by a miracle and we stayed up until two in the a.m. getting some done (still left in piles around the house) and packing. we took a three hour nap, got up at 530, left at six thirty a.m., and got to st.louis that afternoon, and have been watching football ever since. seriously. byu played in the pioneer bowl game that night (AMAZING ending to the game bytheway!) and we've watched pretty much any other college ball game thats been on tv. currently the patriots are playing new york and penn state is playing texas a&m simultaneously as i type. we keep flipping back and forth. but dont worry- we did some other things. and have some other things planned.

highlights so far:

randomly our neighboor was having a christmas party and hired a horse drawn carriage for the night to go around out neighborhood. our dog oreo was slightly intriguied- she had never met a horse, and we dont think she really understood- pretty sure it smelled funny, but she recently went mostly blind and couldnt see it. she turned twleve this year, and we worry how much longer she will be with us.

my dad had the brilliant idea to make us do karaoke on christmas eve. we taped the whole thing. one of the funniest things to do. here is joe singing to n'sync

chirs and joe singing/dancing to "at the hop"

marshall and i to "mocking bird"

the traditional pajamas on chirstmas eve. joe and chris have a special way of wearing them

our first chirstmas together!

we are all just too silly.....

there is no way i am putting pictures of me on christmas day up- but here is marshall thoroughly enjoying himself!

santa "suprised" us with tickets in our stockings! pretty sure i am in love. better than i imagined. and my roommates in the dorm can testify ive been imagining for quite some time. it took a lot of restraint not to jump up and sing with elpheaba and glinda the whole time. i knew every word of every song. and i would see it again in a heartbeat!

it really was amazing. we had the stand in for elpheaba, but the people around us afterward said that she was better than the usual one. i was pretty pleased.

just funny. lindsay and i really enjoyed ourselves.

we have another week here in little edwardsville before we head back to our new home and another semester at byu. we are having sooo much fun and have finally caught up on our lack of sleep. not sure what the rest of the break will bring, but we have new years and plenty more games to watch!

pics of house

i know i said i would get these up ealier, but here they are.... click the link
http://byu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154440&id=17824998&saved
i will get more up after we actually move in and have a little decor.

i need a heart

because apparently, i dont have one! reason being: i dont cry during movies. i just don't. i have no idea why. it doesnt matter how sappy the chick flick, they never get to me. my dear husband has a heart as big as it gets i guess because he cries for them all. he cries for chick flicks, any kind of sports movie ('specially football and baseball) and ones that remind him of samoa where he served his mission. a couple classic examples:

1-we saw "martian child" in the dollar theater friday night (HIGHLY recommend it!) and i didnt notice but at the end he was bawling when the kid and dad are on top of the telescope. not really even a chick flick but just has some good morals or something in it.
2- tonight we put on "the other side of heaven" which is set in tonga, and is almost identical to samoa in culture, setting, language, people, etc. the opening credits started and he was tearing up and trying to hold back.

its highly probable that he cried during lord of the rings- actually im pretty sure. i usually (ok, every time) sleep through most of them, but it wouldn't surprise me.

which reminds me. we are going to see the play "wicked" over christmas break. i'll ask the wizard for a heart while i am there.