Oops...

Well, I wasn't as good at posting what I am thankful for for the ENTIRE month...oops. I guess I will try to be better next year. Starting on December 1st I am going to try and find a Christmas story to post for every day until Christmas. I will try to be better at that too. Right now I am at my grandma's house in Utah. I have been here since Monday. I wasn't able to go home to Washington for Thanksgiving this year but at least I was able to spend it with family. This week was pretty fun. My grandma had to work on Tuesday and Wednesday so I went to my aunt's house during the day. We ran errands and just hung out. Then on Thursday was THANKSGIVING!! Lots of people came to grandma's house for dinner. Unfortunately we missed out on Laura and her family and David and his family. We also missed out on Annie and Kelly because they were at home fixing food for their other relatives. It was fun nonetheless. After dinner we sat around and talked and then played some Scattegories. I had a good time! Then, on Friday we didn't really do much. Grandma, Linda, Cassidy and I went to Walgreens and Costco to look for some deals but we didn't find much. Then, we went back to grandma's house and I worked on homework for hours on end. I'm writing a book report for my history class and the book we have to read is SO boring! It puts me to sleep every time! Grandma works at the temple on Fridays so I stayed home while she went to do that. After a couple of hours, Andy came to pick me up and we went to eat and shop at Ikea. They are finishing their basement so they needed to get some furniture for their basement. Today I've gotten a lot more of my report done and later we are going to go see "The Help" at the cheap theater! It should be fun. All in all, it's bee a good break from school....and Idaho! :)

Month of Thanks- Day 5

Last night my roommates, Megan and Emily, and I went to see the movie Abduction at the cheap theater. It was SO good!! I loved it a lot...and not just because Taylor Lautner is in it. :) It's one of my new favorite movies. However, when we walked out to go get shakes before we headed back home it was snowing. Not my favorite idea. Luckily I was wearing a nice coat. Remember a couple of days ago when I said I was thankful for the nice weather? Well I take it back! Now it's snowing outside. Today I'm thankful for hot chocolate, cozy blankets and Christmas music. Christmas just makes me so happy! I'm sitting her on my laptop drinking hot chocolate, cuddled up in my blanket and listening to my Christmas playlist on Pandora. Gotta love it!! I don't care if it's only the 5th of November. It's never too early for Christmas music. :)

Month of Thanks- Day 4

Well I already missed one day. This not looking good for the rest of the month. In my defense yesterday was crazy. Today I had a take home exam due at 9 in the morning for my special education class. Last night as I was working on it my computer erased what I had been working on (I was about halfway done when it was deleted). Needless to say, I was up ALL night finishing it. Then, this morning I guess I fell asleep but I'm not sure what time that happened. The next thing I know it's 8:45 and I need to be up in the Hinckley building with my papers printed off by 9. How was this supposed to happen? I jumped out of bed, threw on a pair of pants and a coat (I kept my pajama shirt on :)) and ran out the door. I first had to run to the Kimball and print off my papers and I made it there in less than 10 minutes (which is a record for me). The computer was especially fast this morning. Usually it takes a few minutes to login but thankfully it wasn't slow today. I had all of this printed and I was out of the Kimball by 8:59. How was I supposed to get to the Hinckley in just 2 minutes? I wasn't. That's the answer to that question. I raced from the Kimball to the Hinckley building and I got there at 9:01. That is also a record for me. I got to my class in just 16 minutes after I woke up. I have never done that before. Now that you know the premise for my thanks for today I will continue on into that part of my blog. I am so thankful for the fact that I finished my assignment on time and that it is turned in and I never have to think about it ever again! I am also so thankful that I made it to class in the time that I did. I honestly don't think that I did that by myself. I have seriously never done that before and I wasn't even that worn out or out of breath by the time I got to class. Now to celebrate the hardest week of my life being over, my roommates are going to go see the new Taylor Lautner movie at the cheap theater and then we are going to get pie shakes. I needed some motivation to get through this week. :)

Month of Thanks- day 2

Today is a new day which brings a new day of thanks. It is a nice day outside today too! Only by looks though. It's actually about 18 degrees outside....SOOO cold!!! Today I'm thankful for my family. I don't get to see them much right now since I'm at college but they are still always there for me. I talk to them almost every Sunday. I will be back in Washington to spend time with them on December 17th for a couple weeks. It's very exciting! Not only does that mean that I will be home with my family but I will also be done with school!

Month of Thanks- day 1

Thanksgiving is just around the corner! To celebrate, I am going to post a picture and a short note about something that I am thankful for. I will try to post something new everyday. I am pretty busy but I will try my hardest to remember to post. :) I am thankful for many things. It's hard to pick just one to talk about today. Um....today I'm thankful for the sun that is shining. Although it's 39 degrees outside today in Rexburg, Idaho, it's still sunny out! The cold and the snow will roll in soon enough so I better be thankful while the sun is still shining. It looks really nice outside as I sit on the couch. I know that as I walk up the hill to go to class in the Hinckley building it won't feel as nice but it's great as I just sit here! :)

Catch up time!

Wow, it's been a LONG time since I've written last. I could use the excuse of work or school or homework but 6 months is just way too long. Since I wrote last I turned 20. I also started a new semester at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho and I got another job as a custodian.

This semester has actually been pretty good. My roommates are Katie Weaver, Courtney Davis, and Patrice Kuta. Patrice and Katie really drive me nuts sometimes but Courtney and I have lived together for 2 1/2 semesters so we already know each other pretty well. Courtney and I share a room and Patrice and Katie have their own rooms. Patrice watching TV seriously like 24/7. It drives us nuts. On Saturdays she gets up before I get up and she goes to bed around 11:00 pm. The TV is on the ENTIRE day! She doesn't move, only to get the remote or some food or something. Katie is annoying in other ways. First of all, she never shuts up. She is always talking. I'm convinced that she is in love with her own voice. lol. We have also had a lot of dishes problems with her. It's gotten better lately because we put up a sheet with the kitchen rules which includes rinsing and putting your dishes in the dishwasher. Before we did that she would always leave her dishes on the counter. She would leave her milk in it so it would get hard and the counter would be covered in dishes even if the sink was empty. I don't understand why she can't put her dish 3 inches farther into the sink. I just don't understand. It has gotten a lot better though which takes the stress off of all of us. Courtney and I would have to do the dishes at least once a day. Sometimes we would decide to leave it and see if it would ever get done...it didn't.

I have made some pretty good friends this semester too. My FHE (family home evening) sisters are AWESOME! I go over there a lot of the time when I don't want to be in my apartment (which is most of the time). Their names are: Kaylynn Lloyd, Kim Lukens, Sadie Wheeler, Chelsea Johnson, and Allison Christensen.

This semester I am taking 5 classes this semester and they aren't too difficult. I have literacy 1, math 205, art methods, integrated science and family foundations. I like all of them except for math 205. I currently have 99% in my family foundations class. That class is SO easy! I'm not a fan of math 205 but it's not horribly difficult. It's just not my favorite class.

It is June 13th and summer still isn't here in Rexburg, ID. I am SO ready for it to get warm. We have really good days (on ocassion) and then it goes back to raining. I'm ready for it to actually be nice outside for once. The summer was really nice last year here but it's not the same this year. It's been a LONG winter!! That's basically all for the "catch up". I will hopefully write more frequently now. :)

The Second day of December

I found this story on the web and I thought it was very good.

The Christmas Truce
By: David G. Stratman

It was December 25, 1914, only 5 months into World War I. German, British and French soldiers, already sick and tired of senseless killing, disobeyed their superiors and fraternized with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Wester Front (a crim punishable by death in times of war). German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry Christmas."

"You no shoot, we no shoot." Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man's land strew with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and aim high.

A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was a disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals on both sides declared this spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial. By March 1915 the fraternization movement had been eradicated and the killing machine put back in full operation. By the time of the armistice in 1918, fifteen million would be slaughtered.

Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce. On Christmas Day, 1988, a story in the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played "Christmas in the Trenches," a ballad about the Christmas Truce, several times and was startled by the effect. The song became the most requested recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM stations. "Even more startling than the number of requests I get is the reaction to the ballad afterward by callers who hadn't heard it before," said the radio host. "They telephone me deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, 'What the hell did I just hear?' "

I think I know why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It gives us a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, "This really happened once." It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, out of range of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial and mean human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really could be different.

I found this story and I really liked it. I hope you like it too and that it puts you in the Christmas spirit!!