Rapture...

So apparently there was a ton of hype that today was going to be the end of the world or something.  Pretty ridiculous, right?  And I had a non-member friend who said that one day, there would be someone who would predict the end and actually be right about the date, and it just boggles my mind that people don't read the Bible, when it says that no one will know exactly when it will happen, so no, there will never be someone who will correctly predict the day the world will end.

Anyway, worldwide drama aside, life has been pretty chill.  The parental units and my Uncle Jon and Aunt Monica have been on a Baltic Cruise all week, and I am extremely jealous of them because they got to sail into St. Petersburg, which is RUSSIA, people!  I just wish I could get over there.  Maybe I'll get to go over there sometime this summer?  But it looks like we're staying closer to home vacation-wise this summer, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we'll see if I can get over there or not.  My dad said that he was going to try and bring back "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in Russian for me, which would basically make my LIFE, and I'm sure he was successful in his endeavors, so I'm really excited :)  It'll give me something to work on this summer (besides my Independent Study course that I've supposed to have been working on for over a year now...yeah, we'll just not talk about it).  But yes, I am a slacker (as you well know), and still have to finish my Humanities 202 course.  Although my extension lets me have until August 11 to finish it, I want to be done by the end of June.  I feel like that is a very reasonable goal, even with all of the essays and reading.  I mean, it's not like I have a job or anything, and the only thing I really want to be doing is working out (because I've realized that I'm kind of a fatty and want to get down to AT LEAST what I was when I graduated high school, if not skinnier than that) and reading Harry Potter in Russian, so I think I can do it.

So being at home alone has been kind of interesting.  We currently have three dogs and two cats in the house, and needless to say, I never want to get a dog.  Don't get me wrong, I love animals, but the dogs we have (two or which are Jon and Monica's) are SO much work.  A lot of times one or two of them will follow me EVERYWHERE I walk.  It's really annoying.  And then I've had to sleep in my parents' room with them, and one of them sleeps on the bed with them, and she's the biggest dog of all the ones we have. I hate the smell of dog, and sometimes I'll catch her sleeping on my blanket, which makes me mad.  And the most infuriating thing of all is the barking.  THEY BARK AT EVERYTHING.  One of them will sit on top of the couch so she can look out the window, and if she sees someone she goes ballistic, and then the other girl dog will start barking, and now our dog feels like he's allowed to bark, too.  And no matter how much I yell at them, THEY WON'T SHUT UP.  Dogs are just too much freaking work.  I'm definitely a cat person.  They hardly ever want attention, and you only have to make sure they have food, water, and a clean litterbox (and sometimes you don't even need THAT if they're an outdoor cat).  Needless to say, my future [at this moment imaginary] husband will have to do a LOT of convincing if he ever wants to get a dog.

Blah.  I need to go to bed.  I spent waaaay too long trying to get this thing for primary figured out, and I still need to sleep, wake up, shower, and I have to take the bus to church, which will honestly take almost an hour with the bus ride an walking, so yay me!  Then I get to come home and make sure that the house is all nice and clean for when the parents come home.  I cleaned the kitchen a couple of days ago, but then I make cupcakes today, and the kitchen is REALLY hard to keep clean for more than a day, because the dishes pile up really easy, and our dishwasher doesn't work, so we actually have to wash everything and then we just put them in the dishwasher to let them air dry.  It's kind of annoying, but what can you do?

So I realized that my friend Jocelyn and I are the only girls from our high school class in Vacaville that aren't married or engaged.  It's kind of crazy!  People are growing up and getting married and having babies, and I still feel like I'm this 18 year old kid, when in reality I'm 21 and going to graduate from college in less than a year and still don't have a solid plan for my life.  IT'S SCARY!  I mean, I have an idea of what I want to do, but if that doesn't work out?  It's not like I have a great plan B thought out.  I mean, when I was younger I always dreamed that I would get discovered and be famous and yada yada yada, but at this point, let's face it, it's not gonna happen unless a miracle occurs, so I'm just scared.  I read all of these articles about how it's really tough for college grads these days to get a job in the area they majored in, and read an article the other day that said humanities was one of the major whose graduates are least likely to get a job related to their studies.  Talk about discouragement.  But hopefully everything will work out for the best.  I need to suck it up and be an adult now, no matter how much like a kid I feel like, so I guess we'll just see what happens.  One day at a time, right?

Holland!

So I am officially back in the Netherlands now!  It was weird, because I consider California as home and would NEVER call Holland home, but driving back to the house, it felt like I was coming home.  I guess it's because it's where my family is, and we're finally all together again :)

I flew in early on Thursday morning, and Mom and Dad picked me up from Schipol and drove me home.  Then the Elders and Harry came over from dinner that night.  It's been forever since I've had missionaries over!  You don't really get that in college, which kind of stinks, but oh well, I'll get to do it this summer.  It looks like they come over every Thursday night, which is nice for them, because they get yummy American food ;-)  This week is steak, so it's good for everyone haha.

So my family has been letting this German kid, Robin, from my brothers' school live with them, because he used to have to wake up REALLY early to take the train to school because his family lives so far away.  He's a sweet kid, he fits in pretty well with the family, which is nice, since he's here from Monday afternoon to Friday morning, then he goes home for the weekend.  But he'd been living in my room, and we had to switch everything out, so now he and Chris are sharing a room, and I get one all to myself :-)

So Mom and Dad are supposed to go on a Baltic cruise next week.  The big stop on this trip is St. Petersburg, which makes me SO jealous, because you can't imagine how badly I want to go to Russia haha.  But my Mom just says that someday we'll get to go on our own cruise, and it took her how long to be able to?  So I get no sympathy from her in my plight haha.  But it's all good, I'll get over to Russian someday, I guess.

So my best friend from freshman year, Trevor, is going to be coming home from his mission in about 6 weeks!  I'm super excited to get to hang out with him again next year.  A lot of guys from my freshman year have started coming home, so it's a really exciting time.  I remember when they were all leaving, and how I thought it would be forever, but two years really isn't that long at all.  It amazes me how fast the time has flown.  I mean, I'm graduating from college in less than a year!  That's a very bizarre thought to me.  You always think it's going to last forever, but college really doesn't last that long at all.

So this summer is going to be pretty busy.  I have an online class I need to get done, and Chris is supposed to be flying out in a little over a month to go back to the States to work and save up money for his mission. He'll be over there until he has to come back for his mission farewell, which will probably be at the end of this year.  I can't believe my brother is going to be leaving on a mission at the end of this year!  It's crazy.  And then my tia, Kathy, will be coming over here to vacation with us for about a month, which should be a  lot of fun.  She'll be here for pretty much all of July, and then I'll be leaving in the middle of August or so to go back to Utah.  I don't even think I'll be able to move into my house at that time, I'll probably have to kick at my Uncle Ivan and Aunt Lori's place again, or maybe with Kathy's sister and brother-in-law, so we'll see what happens.  I didn't want to have to come back until the 22nd, but there's a chance I'll have to get my wisdom teeth out at the end of the summer back in Utah if I can't get it done here, so my parents decided to send me back a week earlier just in case we had to do that.  But I didn't need to be back until August 22nd (which is the move-in day on my contract), and then I have new-student orientation training on the 23rd, and then the actual NSO from the 25th-27th.  I'm actually excited to by a Y group leader for NSO this year.  I think it will be fun to welcome the incoming freshman my senior year of college, and give them a nice intro to the campus and BYU life.  I hope they like me ;-)  But then orientation will end on Saturday, and the Monday after I'll start school!  I'm excited for next year, because I get to take a lot of ballroom classes since I decided to make ballroom my minor (more or less.  I'm not doing the actual ballroom minor, because I would have to extend my graduation date in order to do that, but I have to have 8-9 hours of non-humanities coursework, and since I already had 2.5 for ballroom, I just decided to make things fun and continue on with that).  Needless to say, I'm really excited for all of my ballroom stuff :-)  I'm really hoping I'll make it onto team next year some time, but we'll see how things go, I guess.  It would really be a dream come true if I could make that happen.

So I'm kind of an old lady, and I've been going to bed really early since I got back.  I sleep for almost 12 hours, but because I'm going to bed so early it's not making me wake up very late in the afternoon, so that's good :-)  Tomorrow I have to go to a doctor's appointment with D.J. and Mom, because D.J. needs more meds and Mom wants him to get his lungs tested, and then she also wants to get me in so we can talk to a doctor about my skin.  For those of you who see me on a regular basis, you know I have pretty bad acne on my face, and nothing topical I've been given has worked, so we're hoping the doctors will actually listen to me this summer and give me a pill of some sort to get rid of my acne.  I can't tell you how much I want to get it gone; it's only gotten worse since I've come to college, and I hate having it.  I get the really gross cystic acne, too, so it's even painful to have.  Needless to say, once I can get it gone, life will be AMAZING.  So here's hoping :-)

Bah...

...still a slacker haha.  But whatever, this is WAY more than I usually write on here.  See, I'm getting better!

Anyway, it's been almost a week since I've gotten to my aunt and uncle's place, and we STILL don't have a flight for me all figured out.  Mom flies back to Brussels tomorrow, and hopefully I can get mine by tomorrow.  Not that I don't love my relatives, but I hate being in limbo and just want to be back home and not living out of suitcases.  But the guys that take care of my flights were out of town, and Mom said they thought that I was going to be done with school NEXT month, so they didn't know they'd be needing to get mine done.  Unfortunately it takes a couple of days for them to get from D.C. back to Germany, so we'll see how soon I'll fly out of here.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm kind of looking forward to the 8 hour or so flight.  I really do enjoy flying, and that means I'm on my way home to my family :)

So I'm really lucky, because at this moment the power cord (I almost spelled that "chords," and then had to spell check it.  Music nerd much?) to my laptop is actually working!  It's basically dying, but I'm able to get these spells where I don't even have to hold it in to my laptop to get it to work.  I'm just going to have to buy a new one once I get back to Holland.  I've been lucky that my laptop has lasted me all of college so far.  I still think I'm going to need to find a way to back up all of my files, though, just in case I have to get a new one sometime.  Anybody know of any online websites that will do it for free?  I know it's a long shot, but I really don't want to have to pay for it, and if my laptop crashes again like it did my freshman year (worst month and a half of my LIFE) I really don't want to be without them.  So if you have any suggestions, let me know!

So I know some of you probably don't care, but I am TOTALLY stoked for the royal wedding in the morning.  I'm excited for the dress, the ceremony, their kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace...I just think they are such a cute couple!  I'm really happy for both of them.  Kate gets her prince, and William finally gets to protect the woman he loves, which he couldn't do for his mom.  Okay, I'm super lame.  But I can't help it ;)

Gah...

...so much for me writing on here everyday. My whole entire weekend was very relaxing, needless to say. It's nice being out of school for the most part. I still have to finish up my independent study class, but other than that I am freaking done :)

It's been difficult trying to get me a flight back to Holland, so we still don't know when I'll be getting back yet. I'll hopefully be back by the end of this week, but we just don't know right now. I'm anxious to be back with my family one last time before Chris leaves on his mission at the end of this year. I can't believe so many people I know will be coming home from their missions this summer!!! I'm excited to see all of them next year when I'm back at school. It makes me hope that this summer will go by kind of quick ;)

So for my grateful thing for today, I'm grateful for children. I've been getting to play wi my cousin's son Grey while I've been here, and he is the cutesy little kid! I love how willing he is to love me even though he barely knows me, and I love how kids never make anything boring.

Anyway, that's all for tonight. I hope everyone had a happy Easter Sunday :)

Reflection time...

So today was the last and final day of the semester.  I seriously cannot believe how fast this winter semester flew by!  Winter semesters usually seem to last FOREVER to me.  But everything is packed, much has been stored, and now I'm just waiting to get a flight to Holland so the summer can really begin!  I decided to go back because Christian will leave on his mission at the end of the year, so this is our last summer together as a family before we all split up for real.

So I've decided that I really need to be better at blogging, because this is basically my journal, and we've been instructed to keep a journal, but I am just AWFUL at that.  And what really kills me is that we're told to do it everyday, but sometimes I just don't feel like I have something interesting to write, you know?  So what would I have to write about?  Well, when Nathalie and I were visiting teaching on Sunday, Nathalie said that a friend of hers said that when he was on his mission, he would always right something the Lord did to bless him that day, and he would recognize this blessing and write it down in his journal.  I thought that was such a marvelous idea!  Because honestly, we get blessed by the Lord everyday, so it shouldn't be hard, right?

So today, I was blessed because I got all of my essay stuff for English turned in on time, and was still able to go home, finish packing, and get my entire apartment cleaned.  The Lord really blessed me with the presence of my mother, because it would not have been possible without her.  She cleaned almost the entire kitchen for me while I worked on making my room spotless, and I am so grateful for that.  I don't know what I would have done without her.  Having her here during finals has been such a blessing, because she's been able to help me get my things put into storage for the summer, and she's been so sweet, buying me food and treats and goodies, and basically just spoiling me ;)  Of course I don't mind, but she doesn't have to do that, and I really know she loves me :)

I'm also grateful for Sue, my tia's sister, who was willing to store all of my stuff in her house for the entire summer.  She's never even met me, but just on Kathy's word she was willing to take all of my crap, and let me tell you, there is a lot of it.  It's no small favor, what she's doing, and I'm so grateful for her, she is a lifesaver.

I'm also grateful for my Uncle Ivan and Aunt Lori, whose house I'm at right now as I type this.  They just let my mom and I come tonight, and had everything set up for us to be comfortable.  And I might end up having to be here until the end of next week, and they are willing to let me stay for that entire time.  I mean, I know they're family, but still, they are so kind for letting this happen.

Basically, the Lord has just blessed me with so many great people in my life.  I don't know how I would get through this world without all of the amazing people I'm surrounded by.

He even blesses me in seemingly insignificant ways.  For instance, last night my mom and I got back from Fruit Heights really really late at night, and we had to try and find parking, which if you know where I live, is almost IMPOSSIBLE.  However, not far from my complex there was a huge spot open big enough for us to park our ginormous truck there.  At 11:00 at night.  You may not understand how big of a deal that is, but that is HUGE.  We didn't have to drive around looking for parking, and we didn't have to walk very far to get back to the apartment.  It was really such a huge blessing for us.

Anyway, it's late, and I'm exhausted after finals and all of the cleaning we did today, so it is time for me to hit the hay.  I hope you all can recognize the blessings the Lord has given you, especially at this Easter time as we remember His ultimate sacrifice for us.  Goodnight, everyone.

What the what?!

Soooooo...DID YOU GUYS KNOW THAT YOU CAN MAKE MONEY BLOGGING?!  And I mean a TON of money.  A girl in my English class today gave a presentation on Mormon Mommy Blogging, and this one lady makes so much from advertising on her blog that her husband was able to quit his job.  THAT IS INSANE.  You guys, I NEED TO GET IN ON THIS.  How do I make my blog awesome enough to make money off of it?

Also, did you know blogging is a GREAT way to procrastinate writing an eight-page paper?  Because it is!

Oh man...

...it's been a LONG while since I've written on here.  I can't believe it's April already.  There's only a week and a half of classes left, and then 2 reading days and then finals.  This has been the fastest winter semester I've ever had, which isn't a bad thing at all.  I honestly think it's because of all of my ballroom classes, they've kept me going all semester long :)  It's been really nice, needless to say.

So a lot has happened since I last wrote on here.  I quit/got fired from my custodial job, which has been super sweet.  It's been nice not having to leave my apartment by 4 AM haha.  I had DanceSport in February, and I did pretty well this semester.  I got to the quarter finals in Rumba and Waltz (competing a level up) and got to the finals for Quickstep and Triple Swing :)  And then I got a 92 on my Medals Exam for Latin, and a 95 for Triple Swing and Standard, which is basically like getting a 100, so I was pretty proud of myself.  I've made ballroom kind of like my minor; I'm not actually doing the ballroom dance minor, but I have to have 8-9 credit hours of classes outside of history and the humanities for my major, so I just decided to make them ballroom classes.  So I'll have three ballroom classes a semester for the rest of college, and I'm way excited about that idea :)  I'll actually be taking a class where I'll learn how to teach social dance in the fall, and hopefully I'll get to be a TA for a 180 or 280 class in the winter!  I'm really hoping that works out, and I'm REALLY hoping I'll be able to get onto one of the teams next year.  I think I'll just have to practice stuff over the summer and make sure I get into pretty good shape so I'm ready to go when I come back to school in August.

So yesterday during Conference my grandma passed away.  She was 96 years old and had been dying for years, basically.  We're glad she's no longer in pain and that she can once again be with my grandpa.  We know she's a lot happier where she is now.  I got permission to miss class from my teachers, so I'll get to go to the funeral on Saturday, which will be kind of nice, I'll get to see my parents and my two younger brothers, and I'll get to be in Arizona, which is MUCH warmer than Utah is right now, I'm sure.  We'll probably get to see some old family friends, too, which should be fun.

Anyway, that's about all for now.  I think I've pretty much summed the last couple of months up pretty well.  Basically, I'll finish out the semester, and then I'll fly out to Holland for the summer.  I wasn't sure if I would go there right away or if I would go to California and work for a couple of months, but then I realized that Christian graduates next month and he comes to the States right after to save up for his mission at the end of the year, so if I waited our family wouldn't be all together at all this summer, so I decided we should all have one last summer together before he leaves on his mission :)  On that final note, ta-ta for now!