the only thing standing between me and california is one more final...and nevada.

dude. 994 page views.

1. breakfast with becca
this morning i went to breakfast with becca. it was the last time we're gonna see each other for a long long time because she's going to china to teach english! i'm super excited for her, but sad that she's leaving. we decided that the best place to go would be kneaders because they have this french toast that's basically cinnamon rolls with syrup. magic.

we elves tend to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup. and french toast.

the last hurrah ♡

2. french is done
well, actually this is kinda sad, but really i'm very happy to have only ONE FINAL LEFT. even though i don't really want to take it....it's the only thing standing between me and california! that...and nevada.

3. the law library
very few people know that the lawbrary is a most excellent place to study. i used to be scared of it. last year i would tell heather that i didn't want to go there because it was where all the law students study. in my head it was just a really scary place, ok? now i love it. after going there last year, it's definitely worth the extra 10 minutes of walking time. i was there for like 7 hours today.

4. leftovers
i ate the leftovers of my dinner from last night. it was still delicious.

5. psych and ice cream with brooke
brookeis going to paris! i'm so excited for her (and maybe just a tad bit jealous). she is so fantastic, and i'm glad she was our adopted roommate this semester. she's leaving early tomorrow, so this was our farewell until next time. she even got all of us christmas presents! the little sweetheart! she must know that i love sparkly christmas socks or something.

well goodnight, people! tomorrow night i'll be back in CALIFORNIA in my own BED with my FAMILY and it's CHRISTMAS and i get to see my FRIENDS and i am just so dang HAPPY!!

a bottomless pit of weird + an awesome aunt

1. three finals down, two to go

tomorrow morning i have french, and then thursday morning i will be taking doctrine & covenants. and then off to california with meeee!

2. waking up to french toast and snow falling

jalyn has this AWESOME habit that whenever she is stressed, she bakes. or cooks. she does stuff with food. anyway. this morning i woke up and thought, "huh. smells like french toast." and do you know what? IT WAS FRENCH TOAST. baby j then came and told me that breakfast was ready. she made breakfast for everyone!! awesome! while we ate, we watched the snow fall. it was really pretty. after breakfast i had to stand by the window and sing along to doris day's "snowfall." heather made fun of me. but it was a beautiful moment.

the view from the living room window...not the greatest shot, but you get the idea.

3. lunch with tommy

today after my family processes final, i wandered into the cougareat to get a snack for the library. and do you know who i found? that's right. tommy. i didn't end up getting food (dumb me), but i did watch him eat. and we talked. and then i told him i was superwoman when i broke the tab on my soda can in half. proof:

he told me to take a photo. i thought it was because he was proud. he said it was because no one would believe me. rude.

4. being called "a bottomless pit of weird"

so then tommy was making fun of me for being weird (which is true because i am), and he said, "it's like you're a...bottomless pit of weird!" that was special. he then added, "the more i get to know you the weirder you become." or something to that effect. i don't really know how to take it, but i'm taking it as a compliment, thank you very much.

5. MY AUNT MARYN

OH MY GOSH MY AUNT MARYN IS AMAZING. today she brought me dinner and some other goodies. for dinner she brought me gnocchi and salad from la dolce vita - awesome italian restaurant in provo - as well as hot chocolate mixes, two chocolate oranges, two liters of dr pepper, a box of see's candy, and a mini nerf gun. just look at this! she is the best! if you're reading this, thank you again sooooooooooooo much!!

look at this stash!!

6. being read 'goodnight, moon' in the library by caitlin, emilee, and their friend whose name i don't know

so i was sitting in the library tonight in my puppy pants (yes, they are pajama pants with puppies on them), studying for french, minding my own business, when i saw caitlin from my spanish class! she and emilee (who works with steph) and their friend came to see me in my little cubicle desk and asked if i would like to be read to. of course i said yes, so caitlin stroked my hair while the guy whispered 'goodnight, moon' to me. it was a precious moment and i couldn't stop smiling for a long time.

7. my puppy pants

as aforementioned, i wore my puppy pants to the library. they are pretty great. though not entirely socially acceptable, they are entirely comfortable and wonderful. and, good news, i didn't have to change when i got home!

good luck with finals everyone, keep up the good work! we're almost done! :)

oh, ps, this photo really sums up finals week. sometimes we have a negative attitude because of all the stress (ok, maybe that's just me), but this is so true. when i think of all the things i'm grateful for, i suddenly don't feel as stressed.

thank you, pinterest, for not only being an effective time waster, but for providing me with inspirational quotes that are designed so well. (yes. i am the daughter of two graphic designers. can you tell?)

angels + clean laundry

1. diet coke

yes...i drank diet coke this morning before my final. it woke me up. i in no way feel guilty about this.

2. dr hallen

even though i complain about my linguistics class a lot, i really do love dr hallen. she is such a sweetheart. on our final today, she gave us 1.5 points extra credit because she didn't get all of our names right. then she gave us 20 more points extra credit (if we answered the questions correctly). FANTASTIC. and i wrote my own language. which i guess is pretty cool.

3. angel presents

so the humanities advisement center was doing this thing called angel presents, where students were able to pick names of kids from the provo/orem area and buy christmas presents for them. these kids probably won't be getting a whole lot for christmas, so it was really important to me to do this! after my final, i went to target and got some super sweet spiderman light-up shoes for a little boy named ethan, some flat stanley books for a girl named (crumbs, i can't remember, i feel horrible...), and then i went to barnes & noble to get a tinkerbell book for a little girl named nathaly. there weren't any tinkerbell books at target, so i was thinking about just getting some disney princess books for her, but it suddenly occurred to me: nathaly had not asked for anything else. she just wanted a tinkerbell book. so i had to get one for her. i actually was able to find an entire disney fairy story book with silver-edged pages. it was so perfect. i don't even know these kids, but i loved them so much. i hope they have the best christmases ever :)

4. the best of friends

steph and i decided that our song is the song from the fox and the hound. the best of friends. we were trying to decide who was copper and who was todd, but we decided we were both copper. we're both too shy and obedient to be todd. our new motivational phrase is, "what would todd do?" haha. we decided this while we were doing yoga.

5. our bishopric

tonight, our bishopric came around to each apartment in our ward and gave us all pizza! they ordered each apartment an entire pizza. how sweet is that?! i am so grateful for leaders who care enough about us to take the time and money to personally bring each of us a pizza and carol at our doorstep. that pizza was the perfect dinner. that and reese's pieces.

our pizza with a little note, and some of my reese's in the corner haha

6. a fixed dresser drawer

so for like a month...or so...i've had a broken dresser drawer. i opened it one day, and it wouldn't open any further or close. distressing, i know. i finally talked to maintenance about it today and they fixed it for me. brilliant. now i have a fully functioning dresser and access to my pants again.

7. laundry machines that only stole 50 cents from me

the laundry at liberty square sometimes steals your money. or wastes your money when the dryers don't actually do what they're supposed to. today they only stole 50 of my cents as opposed to $1.00 or more. i'm so happy i have clean clothes. i was getting a little desperate there, people.

so this is steph's awesome cat shirt i found at walmart. i mentioned it in my post yesterday, if you missed that.

i made this sign today for our door so everyone would know that our apartment was "the quiet zone" ha.

too bad i have a 7 am final...

ok so i'm keeping this short because i have a 7 am final...

1. visiting teaching
today i got visit taught and i got to visit teach! it was awesome.

2. brownies
today for relief society, i made brownies for everyone. i made a batch of regular and a batch that had candy cane pieces in it. yeahhh. super good.

3. fhe family
tonight we had an fhe family dinner. we had pasta, homemade bread, jello, and jim made crêpes! deeeeelish.

4. steph's birthday
tonight we celebrated steph's birthday because it's on christmas eve and we won't be here to celebrate with her! so we got her this awesome shirt from walmart with kittens and butterflies on it. (i found it. i was so stoked.) happy birthday steph!

5. going to bed early
i'm going to bed early! even though it means i have a 7 am final...it means i get to go to bed early, which is rare.

ok, night everyone! wish me luck! and good luck to everyone else, too! :)

no time to explain! grab a cactus!

holy guacamole! so on blogger, there is this app where you can see how many times your blog has been viewed. and do you know what number i'm up to? guess. okay, i'll tell you. 873. eight hundred and seventy-three. that is a lot of times since i started this. cool. well, here's my day!

1. easy spanish final
my spanish final, believe it or not, was only 50 questions that were matching and true or false about 'la dama del alba' (that play i mentioned a few posts back). i was done in 20 minutes! but then i got nervous and checked the whole thing over 4 times (maybe i'm a little ocd?) so i was actually in the testing center for like 45 minutes total. it was a beautiful thing.

2. walmart
walmart in provo is a wonderful place. in california...not so much. but here, we love it. they have everything - they fix karen's car, they have the food i like for cheap, they have awesome birthday presents for steph...what?

3. the chocolate
ok. so there is this place in orem called the chocolate. i don't know how to explain it except pure bliss. heather and i shared a kazookie (yeah, i know, i want to call it a pazookie, too) that was half peanut butter cookie, half chocolate chip cookie, with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. karen and chelsey (karen's roommate from last year) shared a chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia nut kazookie. we were all very very happy.

holy kazookie

we were happy

4. memes
background: heather and i were on a date with harold. (this would be a night at the harold b. lee library.) story: so on the internet, there are these photo/image based jokes with captions...and they are hilarious. this one i accidentally found on facebook while i was supposed to be studying in the library. i may or may not have snorted. and then cried. and then squeaked. and then been annoying to all those around me. heather laughed just as hard. it was great.

this meme...

made me cry. notice the mascara, people.

5. reenacting the greatest library moment ever
so last year, my roommates, david, and i were all at the library together one night. we saw this guy completely passed out in his text book, and we thought it was the best thing ever. i was clever enough to take a picture on my phone. we later saw him using the tiniest laptop we have ever seen (we're talking like a 7 inch screen here, people), so we decided to tell him we thought it was the cutest laptop ever. heather wrote him a note. she passed it to him. he looked at us like we were idiots. he whispered, "it's a translator." we all laughed. he then sent the note back to us, with his comments back to us. it simply said, "you guys are weird." so today in the library, heather and i decided to be "weird."

the guy on the right is our best friend. heather and i are "weird." i'm cool and made this on my phone.

oh, and ps, when heather speed walks, i have to jog to keep up with her. it's kinda funny. but also kinda sad.

have a happy sunday tomorrow! :)

a sock bun + eighty-four love + a kitten

finals...go away...i hate you...but there are some good things that i was able to find.

1. sitting in the jkb listening to people whistle christmas songs
in the middle of a reading day...this is a happy thing. it made me smile. and then got the song stuck in my head.

2. i found my id card yesterday
so i temporarily lost my id card for 3 days...and i couldn't find it anywhere. it was quite distressing. then yesterday, before class, i decided to check in the pocket of some jeans that i never wear. and do you know what? it was a christmas miracle!! i found my id card!!

3. going to dinner with the penrose 84 girls
because becca is going to china to teach english, we decided that we should all go to dinner tonight. as per tradition, we went to costa vida. it's gonna be sad to not have regular roommate dinners next semester with all 6 of us...but becca is gonna have an amazing time in china! we took pictures...and the guy who took them for us had a name tag that said "mr. awesome." these are the results:

i'm being abducted by aliens

uhhh...

he told us to make frowny faces...

so we laughed...

and then this happened. thank you, mr. awesome.

4. having a reading day to study
today was good for studying. i did a lot of reading and a lot of reviewing and a lot of killing my brain. that wasn't so fun, but i'm grateful for the time the university gives us to study before we get thrown into tests.

5. my super fuzzy wonderful brown blanket made of love
so two years ago for christmas, i got the best and most fuzzy wonderful brown blanket made of love. i have recently remembered that it was stored in my closet (silly me) and i've been using for studying and as another layer on my bed. it's a beautiful thing. it's currently keeping me very happy.

6. my sock bun worked out!!
it's totally awesome!! look!

the all-powerful sock bun master. thank you, rylie for teaching me your ways.

 7. kitten
so...becca's friend picked up a free kitten at walmart and asked her and her roommates to watch it for the evening. around 10:20 i got a text from her that said, "I HAZ KITTEN" so of course i dropped all my studying to go see said kitten. and then we played with it. and then it went crazy. it decided that it was fun to fling itself off the couch and then catch itself at the last possible second. it was awesome.

wish me luck, i'm taking my first final tomorrow! good luck to all students everywhere!!

rate my professors by yours truly

today was our last day of classes. it was kind of bittersweet, actually. here. i'll tell you about it.

1. french
this was by far my favorite class all semester. i love madame burgon to death and would HIGHLY recommend her to anyone taking a 100 level french class at byu. honestly, i can't tell you how much i adore her. i really did learn so much. today during one of my breaks, i ran into my french teacher from last semester. we talked in french and she told me she was so impressed with the progress i have made. it was so fun for me to see just how much i can say compared to last january when i literally knew nothing. anyway, today in class we had chocolate mousse (thanks to char), i made a card that we all signed that said 'merci mille fois' (thank you a thousand times), and at the end of class, we made the classic soccer tunnel that madame burgon ran through. we all cheered. we were all just a little bit sad. but it was a good sad.

2. my french friends
i have loved the people in my french class so much. tommy, kara, char, kaitlyn and kaitlin...everyone. i love that i have french with some of them again next semester. i love that we spend time together outside of class. i love weekly speaking and the time we get to talk not only in french, but in english about life. i love how much we laugh together and discuss together and struggle through french together. and i love that tommy sings barbara ann all the time, even though i tell him i don't. (um, in the video, you don't have to watch the actual video. it's kinda lame.)

2. spanish
today we didn't exactly have spanish class...but we did have some things that we needed to do. we had to watch a showing of 'la dama del alba,' (the woman of the dawn) a play set in asturias, spain, about a family who is recovering from the death of their daughter angelica and the mysterious arrival of both adela and la peregrina (the pilgrim). it's actually very interesting, if anyone is up for some foreign reading. ha. anyways, so we had to watch that. it wasn't all that great of a movie...but it was fun to sit with people from my class and make fun of the bad acting.

3. spanish villancicos (vee-ahn-see-kos)
this evening we had all of the spanish classes get together for a special performance of some traditional christmas villancicos (christmas carols). we sang 'velo que bonito' and it was actually really fun. we even won some awards!! we practiced for all of 20 minutes before the performance and we got most spirit (we weren't entirely sure whether it was most spiritual or most christmas sprit...), and then we won 2nd place out of everyone! whoo hoo!! we won a big box of european cookies, which adam decided to call 'gutke cookies' (pronunciation: goot-key koo-keys). we all died a little bit. um, and did i mention that i got 25 extra credit points for singing? not bad, if you ask me. oh, and ps, i would recommend profe gutke. he's hilarious, cares about the students, and knows what he's doing. cool.

4. spanish class friends
tonight after our performance, sarah, adam, alisha, brittney, ian and i talked for like 40 minutes. not about anything particular, but just because we wanted to and it was fun. it was kind of sad, once again, to end the class, but it was such a perfect way to end after winning all those awards. we're kind of a big deal. i think someone is making a facebook group for us to all keep in contact. ha. but they really are fun people.

5. cammie
tonight i got to talk to cammie mutz wears bootz. i love that girl and i get to see her in...uhh...let's see. i'm bad at math. THIRTEEN DAYS. no, i'm not excited at all, why do you ask? :)

6. rylie
i visit teach a wonderful girl named rylie. she is such an amazing person! i love talking to her and getting to know her better. tonight, she came over and brought me this amazing peanut butter cheerio sugar deliciousness that she made as a thank you and good luck with finals gift! how nice was that? right? she also taught me how to do a sock bun in my hair, which is super cool. i'm going to attempt to rock it tomorrow. i'll let you know how it goes.

wellll.....tomorrow is a reading day....so my post will probably be pretty boring. as will the next few, since it is finals and all. anyway, have a wonderful day!