Time Flies When Your Havin Fun!

I am sitting here waiting for my last Old Testament class of the semester. Many different things invade my thoughts. Will I bomb my world civ final, will my teacher not read my 25 page paper and just give me a big FAT F, and will I make it through this week of dreaded finals, and where in the world has the past semester gone?!? I look back on the past few months and see so many wonderful things that have happened. I had the privilege to live with some great room buds who I am going to miss terribly next semester. I got accepted to fast grad and am attending school in the wInTEr (let's just hope I don't turn into an ice cube). I am officially going to put my mission papers in, in JAnUarY, yes this is big news and I am SO excited. I went ice blocking for the first time ever, and I took a grand little trip to Utah to visit two of my favorite cousins. Yes this semester has brought me some great experiences! So here is a little poem that I just read that gave me a little bit of hope for my upcoming finals.

'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE FINALS

'Twas the night before finals,
And all through the college,
The students were praying
For last-minute knowledge.

Most were quite sleepy,
But none touched their beds,
While visions of essays
Danced in their heads.

Out in the library,
A few were just sleeping,
And hoping that this
Would loosen their thinking

In my own room,
I had been pacing,
And dreading exams
I soon would be facing.

My roommate was speechless,
Her nose in her book,
And my comments to her
Drew unfriendly looks.

I drained the bowl of chocolate,
And bought some more junk food,
No longer caring
That my nerves were shot.

I stared at my notes,
But my thoughts were all muddy;
My eyes went a blur,
And I just couldn't study.

"Some pizza might help,"
I said with a shiver,
But each place I called
Refused to deliver.

I'd nearly concluded
That life was too cruel,
With futures depending
On grades earned in school.

When all of a sudden
Our door opened wide
And Patron Saint "Put-It-Off"
Ambled inside.

His spirit was careless,
His manner was mellow,
But summoning effort
He started to bellow:

"What kind of student
Would make such a fuss
To toss back at teachers
What they toss at us?

On Cliff Notes! On Crib Notes!
On Last Year's Exams!
On Wingit and Slingit,
And Last-Minute Crams!"

His message delivered,
He vanished from sight,
But we heard him laughing
Outside in the night:

"Your teachers have pegged you,
So just do our best...
Happy Finals to All,
And to All, a good test."

Good luck to all those struggling on exams. GOOD LUCK!!

My Bad Habit

Day 5-A Habit that you Wish You Didn't Have

This post has been something difficult that I have been pondering for quite a while. What is my bad habit?? The problem is that I just to have so many bad habits it is hard to just think of one. Some of these bad habits are that I eat WAY to much, i am a procrastinator, and I waste to much time watching TV. These are just a few of my bad habits but what is the habit that I REALLY want to change?




After much deliberation I have thought of it. My bad habit is that I cry. I am a crier and I have always been a crier. From the time that I was little and giving talks in primary I have always had a problem with turning into a blubbering mess. As I have grown up I have had to confront this habit in many different aspects of my life; like when i have to give presentations in class, when giving a lesson in Relief Society, and especially when giving talks. Now I must make a clarification, this is not a bad habit that I willfully have, I kind of can't control it! As I grow older every time I am asked to do something in front of a large group of people I always get completely freaked out about if I will cry or not. The good thing is I am getting better and I am learning little tricks to help me correct this little habit of mine.

So when you see me get up to give a talk, don't be surprised when I get a bit emotional, but don't judge me because maybe (just maybe) I won't cry, and that will be a BLESSED day!!!

What Is A Friend??

It is a Person with whom you dare to be Yourself!

Day 4-Post a Picture of you and your Friends

Throughout my life I have been given the wonderful opportunity to have had some wonderful people bless my life. These friends of mine are people that I will never forget, people that have touched my life in ways that they will never know.








My friends are wonderful and I just love them!!

Oh the Places You'll Go...

Day 3-A Picture of a place you have been to.

Throughout my life I have had the WONDERFUL opportunity to travel to many a places. In all I have been to five other countries. and A LOT of other states! One of my favorite things to do is count all of the places that I have been to. When I do this I always have to think to myself..."Marianna, you are SO lucky!!" Oh how I wish I could post every picture I have ever taken from these trips but that is just not possible! So here are just a few places that I have traveled to...

England


Germany
(This is a picture of Heidelberg, Yes we actually saw this and visited this place!)


Switzerland
This is a picture of the Zollikofen temple. We actually attended church in a building that is located just to the right of the temple. If you look closely you can actually see it in this picture.


I was also recently able to go on a trip Back East.
If you would like to see a PLETHORA of pics from this trip just scroll down!


Disneyland, Mount Rushmore, and many a church sight in Illinois!

Disneyland really IS the most magical place on earth!

As crazy as this might be our trip to Mount Rushmore when I was young is one of the last trips I remember our whole family going on. I might be way off but it seems like after this there was always someone missing! I don't remember a lot from the trip but I do remember seeing this massive mountain and being totally amazed. I also remember the sweet hotel my parents got us. It had a huge water slide!


Nauvoo Illinois was a trip I took with my just my mom and dad. It was so much fun and I loved it! I loved going to all of the church history sites and learning more about Joseph Smith.



These are not the only places that I have been and I sure hope that I will be able to travel much more throughout my life. I have so many great memories in all of these places but it seems sometimes that you don't have to travel to some far off place to have an adventure or to make memories. Sometimes all you have to do is just step right outside your front door in order to travel somewhere and to have another adventure!

What's in a Name?

Day 2-The Meaning of your Blog Name

When I started college in the Fall of 2008 I was put into an apartment with 4 girls that I had never met. Little did I know how much my life would be impacted by their example. As a little freshman I was nervous to be at a new school and I really had no friends other than these roommates. As the semester progressed we decorated our apartment a little and using wooden blocks we placed the words "Love Life" in a prominent place in our apartment. These words greeted me every morning as I went to eat breakfast in the kitchen and they were there every day when I returned home from school.
I learned to love this saying because it is so simple yet so inspirational. "Love Life" two simple words that mean so much. No matter what life throws at you, you can always find something that you are grateful for and that you love about your life!
I LOVE my life!! Here are just a couple of things I love about my life-
I love that I have wonderful roommates that make me laugh every day
I love that I get to attend a wonderful University where not only does my knowledge grow about the secular world but also about the gospel.
I love that I have a wonderful family that supports me in all of my decisions
I love that I have so many wonderful friends!
I love that I have had so many good examples in my life
I simply...LOVE MY LIFE!!!

15 Things About ME!

One of my new favorite hobbies, a.k.a. the best way to procrastinate my homework is blog hopping! The other day I was looking at one of my Jr. Miss friends blog and I got new motivation for some fun new posts. It is a series of 30 posts that are so cute and fun, so I decided to copy cat her. So here it goes!

Post Number 1: Write 15 Things About Yourself and a Recent Photo

1. I have a secret love of doing hair. In fact, if I didn't want to be a teacher so bad I would probably go to beauty school. I think the love comes from never having hair to do when I was younger. So now that I have a little hair I enjoy doing it, and when someone else asks me to do theres I will GLADLY do theirs!!

2. One thing that I like to do when I get nervous is play the piano. Whenever I sit down at the piano bench and play all nerves seem to vanish because all my focus is on the piano piece. I have always enjoyed playing the piano and I'm so grateful for a mother who pushed me to keep going to piano lessons and Especially for PRACTICING!

3. Black Friday could possibly my most favorite day of the year, other than Christmas and Thanksgiving of course! The tradition started a few years ago when Bethany, my mom, and I decided to go down to Idaho Falls and fight the crowds. I will never forget the rush of the first sale. Pretty sure we went to Fred Meyer for socks. Ever since this experience I have been HOOKED! There is nothing like the rush of getting the last item on the shelf, and getting that great deal. Plus it is always a time for me and my mom to bond which is just another plus to this glorious day.


4. I have a boisterous laugh. Sometimes I am in a quite place or in a class and I will just let a boisterous laugh out without even thinking. Often times this leads to some awkward gazes from everyone in the room that heard. I have even been made fun of a time or two for my life. However, I love my laugh. I think that laughter is one of the greatest things that you can do for yourself. If you ever have a bad day...just let out a nice loud laugh. I guarantee that this will make your day a little bit brighter.

5. My biggest pet peeve is when people touch my head. I think this stems from when I was little my mom never did my hair, well she did sometimes, but mostly I was just a little scraggle muffin. The only person that I would let do my hair was Bethany and whenever she did it they were special days! Now I don't like people to touch my head at all. It is a weird quark but it is probably the one thing that bugs me the most.



6. I say BOOK SACK...It wasn't until I cam to college that it was brought to my attention that Book Sack, a.k.a. a Back Pack, is not a normal word to say. The reason why I say this is because my mother said it. There have been many a times when I was subbing and I sent the students out to get their "book sacks" and I would get some very confused looks. I understand that most people don't use this word, but I will not be taking it out of my vocabulary any time soon.

7. I love to do crafts. Recently I have realized this about myself. I LOVE to create things. It doesn't matter what I am making whether it is a piece of jewelry, painting something, flower headbands, or modge podgeing I just love to do it! Some of my favorite crafts have been during cousin craft day, a wonderful tradition started by Liz, Olivia, and Bethany, now a days Kera and I have made our way into this fun little tradition! Not only do we have fun making things but we have such a fun time together.

8. I have lived in Idaho my entire life (with the exception of the few months that I lived with Bret and Bethany:) There are many things that I love about Idaho. I love that I was able to grow up in a small community where I knew everyone and was able to participate in a wide range of activities. I love that I made lasting friendships that are extending to today and will last a lifetime. I love the weather...yes you heard me right the WeaThER!!! Crazy I know but I don't think that I could live without looking forward to that first snow fall and also to the summers that warm me up just enough to get me through the next winter. I also love that it is so beautiful. It wasn't until Bethany told us how much she missed the mountains that I really started to notice them. This area is beautiful and I must work on not taking advantage of this beauty.

9. I enjoy reenacting random sounds. My roommates phones go off and I just have to try to see if I can make the exact sound that I heard. Usually my sounds are nothing like the actual sounds but it sure is fun trying!

10. I love to Travel! I think this stems from when I was little and we would go on fun little trips. The trips that stick the most out in my mind was when we went to pick my brother's up off there missions. Now that I am older I have had many more experiences in the traveling aspect of life. This is greatly to do my wonderful mother that goes along with my crazy ideas! Throughout my life I have traveled to 5 other countries and A LOT of different states. I am so grateful for these opportunities because the experiences I have had were once in a lifetime!

11. My favorite season is the fall. I absolutely love it when the leaves start to turn red and fall from the trees the crunch of them under my feet and the crisp air just makes me feel so HAPPY!


12. One of my favorite things to do is cook! Ever since I was little I loved to cook. My favorite thing back then was definitely eggs with salsa:), which by the way is still one of my favorites! As I have come to college me and my roommates love to go through cookbooks and come up with new things to make. I think this love stems from watching my mom cook when I was little, especially in the baking area! I associate good times with good food so if I can provide the good food and a little tid-bit of the good times I think I am doing good!

13. I love jewelry! This fetish started in high school with earrings. My favorite thing to do when I enter a store is go straight to the earring section and nothing makes me happeir then when I can find that perfect new pair to add to my collection. I also love shoes. Isn't it just the greatest thing when you find that perfect pair that you can just imagine the outfit you are going to put them with?? OK maybe this is really odd but it's something that I LOVE. (This is a secret confession, I really love that I have small feet so most people aren't able to wear them:) Is that Bad? I sure hope not!


14. I am NOT a morning person and my roommates can attest to this. Each morning I force myself to awaken and I walk into the bathroom…usually with some pretty crazy hair that makes me look like I have been electrocuted, and I walk into the bathroom. Each morning, Kayla and Arleigh greet me with a chipper smile and cheerfully declare, “GOOD MORNING MARIANNA!” To this my response is usually a grunt. Needless to say, my roommates love this morning routine!


15. I am DEATHLY afraid of skunks. When I was in Junior High a skunk got under my house and sprayed. Our house stunk for months. After this happened TWICE…my dad set out a trap. He caught so many skunks I forgot the number. Ever since this experience I have always been so afraid of them.

Back East

This post has been a long time coming but now I am getting around to it!
One place I have always wanted to go is New York and Washington DC. So me and my mom were talking one day and decided that it was time to take a trip back east because I have never been. So we started to plan and decided that we wanted Bethany to come with us. When she was here her and my mom planned our trip, what we were going to do each day. The plan was to fly into Louisville where we would be picked up and go to Bethany's. From Bethany's place we would drive clear to Pennsylvania. Each day there was a plan to do some driving and some sight seeing, eventually making it clear to New York City, and Washington DC. They planned a wonderful trip and the knowledge of it is what gave me a little bit of umph to finish out my summer semester successfully. We did so many wonderful things! So me, my mom, Bethany, Porter, and Liddy, loaded up the minivan and were off on a trip that I will NEVER in all my years forget. Here are some pictures of my favorite pictures from the trip.
First stop was Gettysburg. This picture of Porter is probably my favorite from the whole trip!


Next stop HERSHEY, PENNSYLVANIA!!! It even smelled like chocolate:)


We also went to valley forge.

Then we were off to New York! I loved the feel of the big city and we saw so many cool things. The funny thing was is that we would always find something and say why did we need to see this? Most of the time we just came up with the fact that it was a cool building. Central Park was one of the coolest things because you have this beautiful lush park in the mids of this giant city. My question is who was the person that thought to themselves. We need to preserve this park so these city goers can have little retreat from all of the cement, whoever it was they must have been pretty smart! We of course were true tourists and had our fair share of asking directions, and everyone was very nice to us. I think it was mostly because we had two ADORABLE kids with us so they had to be nice to us:)











After all of our adventures in the "Big Apple" We were on our way to Washington DC. this part of the trip turned out to be my favorite part. It is a wonderful city full of so much history. We went to a few of the Smithsonian museums including the Holocaust, Air and Space, and American History. We walked all around the mall and then ended our trip with Mount Vernon. I think that we tired the little children right out but they were SO good!!











Like I said before this trip was an unforgettable. I was able to strengthen my relationship with my Mom and my sister. We made so many wonderful memories and had some good laughs along the way.

Fast GRAD!!!!

Well I have some sort of big news. During the break I decided that I was going to fast track it. For two reasons really. One was so that I didn't have to spend another long winter at home doing really nothing. The other reason was so that I can get my schooling done faster. So about a week after this fall semester started I went into the advising office and basically planned out my life and applied for fast grad. I discovered that I have a total of four semesters left after this one. I thought it was going to take a while to be contacted but today I found out that I got ACCEPTED!!!!! So I will officially be attending school in the winter time! I really am not sure how I feel about it because it means that I will have to trudge through the blizzarding snow mound that is Rexburg, Idaho but I am going to get in some more schooling!!!

Temple to Temple Relay

At the end of the Summer semester my old roommate Alex contacted me and asked if I would run in the temple to temple relay. I had wanted to and gladly took a place on her team. She got did ALL of the organizing and I even got Kayla on the team. We ran with a couple of people from my old ward and some new people that I didn't know. The race started at the Rexburg Temple and was to end at the Idaho Falls temple. I'm not sure how far it was but it was something like thirty six miles? Thank Goodness it was a relay!! There were eight legs. I thankfully got one of the shorter ones, four miles, and was the second to last runner. It was possibly the most windy day possible. There was actually one point where I am pretty sure the wind actually blew me backwards! I just new that I had to finish, this was pretty hard considering the fact that I hadn't ran for a couple of weeks. My team stopped halfway through to give me a little cheer and then they were there as I was passing the baton off to Kayla to run the last leg. We met Kayla about 100 yards from the finish and ran in with her. It was SOOO much fun! All in all it took us 5 hours and 33 minutes! Yes that is a long time but hey we finished and we were not last, this is all that matters:) So who wants to be on my relay team for next year??

Fun and Excitement

Well I just realized that I haven't put pictures or an update on here for MONTHS! So I decided that I fill everyone in on my life an all of it's funness.
I have started my fourth semester here at BYU Idaho and I am continually blown away at how lucky I am and how blessed I am to come to this school. I have already had so many great experiences here and every day a have more. This semester I am the oldest in my apartment which is really weird! I do love my new roommates though. I am rooming with Kayla and Arleigh who are both from Ashton, carolyn clark who I roomed with in the fall and Amber and Tiffany who are both from Elko, Nevada. They are all really fun and we grow closer every day. It has been a little weird not having Christina here as my roombud but I do count down the days until she comes back!:) Ok now for the pictures:
Last saturday our apartment was ATTACKED!! We walked in and it was full of newspaper and our couch had been.. It looked bad when we walked in but little did we know it was even worse than we thought! Our dishwasher, refrigerator, freezer, and bathrooms were FULL of NEWSPAPER!!! All in all we had about eight garbage bags full of newspaper. We have yet to find out who the culprit is but when we do they better watch out!!!


Sometimes our dishwasher gets really full!

We have a beautiful campus here so last Sunday me and Kayla took a little stroll to the gardens.

For FHE last week we hiked to R mountain. I had never done it so I was really excited. Little did I know that R mountain is REALLY STEEP!!!! Yep more steep than hiking to the Y in Provo. Once we got to the top we had alot of fun snapping pictures.



I coached a Volleyball team over the break. The girls were 10 and it
was alot of fun! I really enjoyed coaching them and I hope that they learned alot and had tons of fun.

Well this has been about my life the past little while. I am having a great college experience.