Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas was so much fun! We woke up a little before 8 in the morning ( I didn't care for that too much haha), but we had a great time. Ian is obsessed with trains and snoopy so he got trains and snoopy. Sydney, well since she's only a year, it's obviously difficult to buy for, but she got things like dolls, dolls, and more dolls. After all, what little girl doesn't like dolls? I sure did :) But now, it's clothes and chocolate for me :) The perfect combination...how I am going to get it all back to Idaho is beyond my comprehension! The second picture was our attempt at a Christmas morning picture with Santa (our neighbor from across the street). After bummin; around the house till one-ish, we went to grandma's house to exchange gifts there and then to Uncle Ed's catering center to prepare ourselves for dinner :) We had chicken, roast beef, etc...YUM! And I just forgot until now that Christmas Eve I had a fever and could not get to sleep, so I didn't even feel that well on Christmas which was a bummer, but talk about good timing. It was nice to be home and sick then at school and sick because I don't know about you, but I have found that it's hard to concentrate with a severely runny nose :(

A Night out With Mom and Dad!

My parents and I had a blast a couple of nights ago. We dropped Ian and Sydney off with Grandma for a night of fun. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner! That place is always so delicious! I always get a dish called Chicken Madeira and you can't go wrong with it! Then, for dessert we get a cheesecake called Dulce de Leche.....mmmmm yum!!! Then after that, we went downtown Cleveland to the Playhouse Square to see A Christmas Carol. It was really fun. We used to do it every year, but since Ian and Sydney came around, it's been harder and harder to do. It's really fun though. It's nice to enjoy live entertainment every once in a while, a nice change from TV.

 So, if you ever get the chance, go and see a live play, they are definitely a bunch of fun! :) Hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

Home at Last :) :)

So, for family home evening tonight, we made this gingerbread train. It was so much fun because Ian was so excited because he absolutely LOVES trains. The only difficult part about it though is that there were so many tiny candies that were falling all over the floor..DON'T SLIP! I have had so much fun being back. I opened the fridge and I almost fainted because there was so much food! I'm in heaven! And to top it all off, my mom made me one of my favorite dinners tonight...MEATLOAF! Yum! Tomorrow my parents and I are going out to dinner to The Cheesecake Factory and then to see A Christmas Carol downtown at the Playhouse Square. It is going to be so much fun; I am so excited! It is so good to be home, but I am missing Rexburg a ton! Not schoolwork, I am not missing that, that's for sure. I am missing my friends though...I won't see all of them for a really long time, probably not until next September. :(

Snow Fun!

As I was walking home the other night, I ran into this. Oh how I love seeing snow men. These were so cute though! They were watching TV. You cannot see the TV, but that's what they are all looking at. It's so funny to go to school with a bunch of people who have never seen snow before because they all get really excited and make snowmen, so as you are walking around campus, you tend to see them everywhere :) My roommate Camila, who is from Peru, had never seen snow before this winter, so that was really super neat to see her. Tomorrow is the day. I am going home at 6:50 am and I won't be back in Idaho for 2 weeks. I am really excited to get a break from school and see my family and Michellie!!! :)

White Glove.

Today stinks. Since I live in the dorms, we are required to have our apartment SQUEAKY CLEAN a week before we check out for Christmas break. I think Brooklyn and I seriously cleaned for 200000000 hours...It was that painful. Not that our house was particularly dirty, but when we get checked, they will look at every nook and cranny. This woman above did not do white glove, she still looks decent and clean. I will spare your eyes and NOT take a picture of myself right now, especially since I only got 3 hours of sleep last night. I really wish I looked like this woman, both clean and happy. Alright, I am not mad or anything, but I would just love to go back to bed right about now, but we are waiting for Shannon (our HR) to get here to check out our apartment. Brooklyn and I are the only ones in the apartment because Jessica and Camila are in Utah for the weekend. oh! It's official!! I will be home in ONE week and I am so excited. I miss my family like crazy! Lucky for me, I get to board a plane at 6 in the morning next Saturday! Oh I miss my family, there really are no words to describe how much I miss them.

Well, the HR should be here soon...so I am going to go! Wish me luck!

Thanksgiving :)

I had an entire week off of school for Thanksgiving Break and it was a lot of fun. I went to Utah to spend time with my family (my Father's side). Everyone was there which was so neat because I haven't seen them for a very long time. My grandparents reside in a little town called Richfield about 2 hours away from Salt Lake. When I was there I got to ride their four wheeler, spend time with family, and eat some great food. Above are my cousins Mikenzi and Parker. They were eating whipped cream (I think). We had a lot of fun and we ate a lot of really yummy food. We had Ham, Turkey, Potatoes (both sweet and regular), we had a fruit tray, vegetables, and my very favorite part...Stuffing!! It was excellent. I tend to not care very much for stuffing with meat in it, so I was pretty happy that my grandma did not put any meat in there :) My grandma gave me this really yummy recipe for an orange sauce that goes really well with Ham.

Orange Sauce

1 cup Sugar
1/4 Teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoon Cornstarch
1 Tablespoon Flour
Stir in 1 1/4 cups Orange Juice
Add
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup water
Cook over low heat, cook until boils
Cook 3 min.
Remove from heat add:
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Teaspoon grated orange rind
1 Teaspoon grated lemon rind
(works well without rind as well)
ENJOY!

And then there was a GREAT Saturday morning :)

My friend LaKesha and I met in math class and hit it off from the first day of class. It was really exciting to know that I made a friend! We are really really good talkers and we have a ton of fun :) This past Saturday we woke up at 6 o'clock and we went to the Rexburg temple that's right here on campus (maybe....or just right off campus) and we did baptisms for the dead and it was so neat. After we did that we went to a place called Cocoa Bean where they have gourmet hot chocolate with a ton of flavors and they also have the best looking  cupcakes in the whole world. It was so so much fun! And to top it off, I got a nap after wards!

 The Cupcakes from Cocoa Bean (Below)

Click Here for Cocoa Bean

 Rexburg Temple (Below)

Oh jEsSiCa....

 

Jessica accidentally made the mistake of putting the wrong type of soap in the dishwasher and this was the outcome. We began cleaning up the bubbles and water that was sitting at the bottom of the dishwasher, but it was taking forever, so we took a break and made bubble beards!

 

This is what happened when we attempted to run our dishwasher. It stank! Because we had to wash all of our dishes by hand. I now know how much I appreciate dishwashers :)

 

The view from the inside!

This is what I used to scoop out all of the bubbles. It was fun....not. And when it got too low, I began using a spoon. This was fun.
 Jessica is great though and we had a ton of fun with bubbles. It was just a good old fashioned bubble bath all over our kitchen floor :)

Stuart the Squirrel

Being in the small city of Rexburg, there is not very many things to do sometimes unless you have a car. Sitting so often in the living room in my dorm, I met a friend. This friend is definitely no ordinary friend, mostly because he can't talk, can't walk on two feet, and his diet pretty much consists entirely of nuts (of every kind). Stuart is what I named him and he is a squirrel. I decided that I would be nice and occasionally feed him pistachios that my mom sent me in the mail. I figured he would need them for the winter time. I am pretty sure he enjoyed them very much because I found the remnants of the pistachios all over the sidewalk outside our dorm. It was fun doing this! So, the other day my roommate Brooklyn left for her class and attempted to shut the door behind her, but wasn't very successful because our door is a little bit stubborn at times and in stead of it shutting, it stayed open about a foot to a foot and a half. About 2 minutes or so after she left I walked out of our room to get something in the kitchen and I see the door open. I stare at it for a second until something else caught my eye. A movement under our kitchen table. STUART! Stuart was under our kitchen table nibbling on a cracker. I thought to myself  "Who do you think you are?" or as Camila would say it, "What the heck in the whole world" haha So I stood right there so scared. I didn't know what to do, but I think it was as scared as I was because it left less than a minute later. I slammed the door behind him and that was the END of our friendship!

My Roomie.....Brooklyn Whitney!

So, my roommate for this semester is Brooklyn Whitney. I think that it is really funny that her last name is Whitney and my first name is Whitley. It's really funny because when we label things in our fridge, her things are "BW" and mine "WB". I just think that is really funny! We get along so great! We often have great heart to heart discussions. We love each other. It's also way funny because we will take turns having "messy days". We rotate on and off who is messy and we don't even plan it. One of us will say to the other, "Sorry, I'm the messy one today". haha and we just laugh and say "that's alright". I think she's great. We are really alike. When it gets to a certain degree of messy.... we can't handle it. We go crazy if things get too messy.

This is Brooklyn and I last night. We wanted to be silly. We are silly! Brooklyn had 80's hair and me....me? I just looked like the biggest weirdo on the planet. We like to have fun. Sometimes when we are having great chats, we lose track of time and often go to bed at around 1-2ish in the morning, which believe it or not, is very typical for the BYU-I student! I love her! She's a great roommate and I will miss her during the winter semester because she will be off track. :(

Arepas with Camila!

On various occasions, I have walked in to our dorm kitchen from being out and have been immediately surrounded by smells that are not common to grace the walls of American homes. Because Camila is Peruvian, she enjoys making food from her native culture. The other night she did something that people do in Peru...she deep fried her frozen french fries in vegetable oil and when she finished, she dumped the oil out in order to make eggs. She then proceeded to put her eggs on top of her heaping pile of french fries--She was HUNGRY! Tonight I walked in to find her making one of my favorites that she prepares. They are called arepas (they originate from Colombia, where she served her mission) and below is a picture of the finished product:

 The basic ingredients for these yummy creations:

 As it's being made, it turns into a ball of dough basically and you pull it apart and flatten it into thin circles and drop it into a pan of boiling vegetable oil. Camila, having experience with these in their native country, best knows how to whip up a tasty snack. Yes, that's cheese and ham on top!

Me? I just stick with nutella to savor it as a sweet treat!

I LOVE CAMILA!!!!!!

Family Pictures!!! :)

I love my family so much. I am biased but my family is just the best most cutest family ever!!! I love and miss them so so much!! But I cannot wait to go back home during Christmas break to spend time with them!

My Best Friend. :)

So here's the scoop...My best friend in the whole world is Michelle Nelson. I just call her Michellie though. We met freshman year of high school when we both aided for the office. We would basically walk around the school to deliver passes and notes to students from the office. It was really fun. I have to be honest, at first I thought Michelle was weird. I cannot exactly remember why, but I just know that I thought she was peculiar. I am really not even sure if I told her this before. Oops! Ha When we were sophomores in High School, we both took conditioning together, but not on purpose. It was so much fun hanging out with her struggling to push the bar of weights above my head. It truly was a difficult class and I was always relieved when it was over. As best as I can remember, I cannot recall seeing Michelle very much junior year. We were not close yet, that didn't happen until our Senior year. It was my best year because I had finally and truly made a best friend. We began hanging out all the time with our other friend Kelsey. We had a ton of fun, but things with prom really changed things. When Michelle discussed prom with Kelsey. Kelsey didn't talk to us much after that, which was a really big bummer. Michelle and I stayed so close though! I love her like a sister, she's the best! Since I have been here at school in Idaho, she wrote me this 4 page front and back letter, it made my entire week :) So I wrote her back , but I couldn't make it as long as hers unfortunately....I just love her, she's so great and I cannot wait to go back to Ohio to see her during Christmas break!!!!

Below: We were playing with one of my Ian's toys....I am sure we enjoyed it more than he ever did, which is pretty funny :) We are still little kids at heart <3

 To the right  is a picture of us at the mall in one of those jumpy things, it was really fun to jump around like a little kid even when people were staring as they walked past....LOVE HER!

College Life!!!

It's the first time that I have been living on my own. And the crazier part about it is that I am halfway across the country from my family. I came to Rexburg, Idaho all the way from Mentor, Ohio to attend school at Brigham Young University- Idaho. I am majoring in Elementary Education and I am so excited. I am taking some classes right now that are required for my major, so it's nice that I am not only taking generals. I am taking Child Development and History and Philosophy of Education. I really enjoy child development, I think that it is probably my favorite class out of all the classes I am taking. MY ROOMIES; Jessica (from Boise, Idaho), Camila (from Peru, 23, served a mission in Colombia), and Brooklyn (some funny sounding city in Washington state). They are so great! I am so blessed to have such great rommies my very first semester! :) I cannot forget Katherine (from the place Brooklyn came from) and Kylee (from where Jessica is from)...they are basically our roommates too because they are always in our living room or rooms just hanging out and talking about life. 

 This is us except Camila (from the left); Jessica, Kylee, Katherine, me, and Brooklyn. They are so much fun to be around and it's so awesome because we feel so comfortable with each other. If you were to walk into our place, you would often hear things like "Shut Up" or "I Hate You". I love it! <3 Even though I am having a ton of fun here, I get homesick and cry. I miss my family so much, but we skype often, which is great because I will enjoy Head-Shoulders-Knees and Toes from my nearly 3 year old brother, Ian. And when I don't get that, I get my sister Sydney smiling so big back at me with what looks like a wig on top of her head, but really isn't. The doctor says that she has the hair of a 3 year old...she will be 1 later this month.

Sydney and I

Ian

Sydney's Adoption

From Left; Our adoption caseworker: Spencer, Dad, Ian, Me, Judge, Mom, and Sydney