More random amazingness and Turkey day

So, beginning last Thursday..... The day was fairly average. That night I went to our ward Enrichment meeting, where they gave us food, and then I left early to work on my paper. Thursday night I pretty much worked on my philosophy paper all night. It was a little bit ridiculous, because I was researching, reading, taking notes, writing, etc. and it just took forever! I finally finished on Friday morning and went to class. Then I went home and crashed for a while before getting up and deciding to watch a movie and eat ice cream rather than doing anything productive. It was fun :)

Saturday I went to a pancake fundraiser with Robert before coming home and working some more. Story of my life... Madi and I had an appointment with our Home Teachers at 10:30 but they didn't come. How lame. But that night I went with the Kindt cousins - all three girls - to see New Moon. It was way better than the original Twilight movie, probably due largely to the scant screen presence of Robert Pattinson, who is not a very good actor, and his replacement with Taylor Lautner, who is. Unfortunately Kristen Stewart was still playing Bella, and the only thing she does well is breathe pathetically. Oh well. :) After seeing the movie I felt like I needed to read the books again to regain my perspective on the whole Edward v. Jacob debate, because Taylor Lautner is amazing. Anyways, that was super-fun. There were a lot of couples there on dates, so more guys there than I had expected. It was really funny because the first time newly-buffed werewolf Jacob takes his shirt off (which he does frequently) a bunch of the guys wolf-whistled (hahaha pun:). But it was great to see my wonderful cousins, and the movie was just another perk.

On Sunday I got up, went to all my morning meetings, and went to church. After church, our dorm had tithing settlement, so I went to that. I found out that I can't ever drift off in sacrament meeting because Bishop Campbell always watches me, because apparently my face is really expressive. I laughed when he told me that. Anyways, after that I went home, and went to the rest of my meetings. I went over to Heidi's, where we made chicken casserole for dinner, and while I was there my visiting teachers showed up to visit their other teachee. They had not showed up at our appointment earlier, so we arranged a new one. Our ward prayer was vastly entertaining because the FHE group that was introducing its members had each of them say what movie they would live in if they had a choice. I high-fived one of the guys in my Sunday school class who said Lord of the Rings.

Monday I got up and went to my classes as usual. We didn't have FHE that night, so Kirsi, Amy, and I went to the library. It made me realize that I'm way more productive when someone knows that I'm supposed to be working and I feel like I need to actually be getting things done. But anyways... That was fun, but it was freezing outside, and Amy and I almost died walking home (because Amy is from Nevada and I'm from CA, we're not really used to the cold).

Tuesday we had our Friday classes. Most of my roommates were gone by noon, when I had to be at class. In Calculus, Professor Chamberlain had made us chocolate chip pumpkin bread, and it was delicious. In English/Philosophy, one of the guys in my class told us that he'd had to use up some of his dining card money by Thanksgiving, so he'd gone to Sugar and Spice (a pastry/sweets shop in the Cougareat) and bought up all their brownies. He gave them to us and it was amazing. Politics was the only class that we didn't get food in, but we learned a lot about demographics. That's still cool, right??... I got home and took a nap because I was tired and depressed that none of my family members were answering their phones. By the time I woke up everybody had left and I was the only one in the apartment. I decided to go grocery shopping, and had a wonderful time.

On Wednesday I had a couple of the girls on my floor over for brunch, for a Compassionate Service Committee Project. One of them was allergic to gluten, and that was the primary reason for grocery shopping on Tuesday night. I got some gluten-free waffle mix and we had waffles with frozen berries, juice, and syrup. It was rather delicious, and I believe that it helped those of us who were still in the dorms rather than with family feel a little less abandoned. That afternoon/evening I finished up my philosophy paper, but it took a long time, especially since I kept on getting distracted and procrastinating because it was a holiday. I did some math homework and other stuff, but it took all day, and I didn't get to the Woodwards' that night. And that morning I discovered that Amy and Kirsi had both left their alarm clocks on, and their door locked. Luckily they're not loud enough to wake me up, but once I was awake the beeping kind of frayed my nerves.

Thursday morning I woke up early and drove to Herriman. I ran in the turkey trot, and got a hoarse throat because it was so cold while I ran. Aidan's turkey costume was pretty amazing. When we got back to their house we ate these broccoli puff things that were delicious, along with cinnamon rolls. Yum. I discovered that my job was cleanup and pie-serving, so I didn't really have anything to do with the prep process. Instead I watched Confessions of a Shopaholic with Suzannah, Kemper, and occasionally Kelsey and Jared. We ate at 3, and it was quite delicious. I really missed Mom's cranberry sauce, though. Also, Aunt Geniel made these frozen cranberry salad things that were really yummy. We should try them. It was fun but it just wasn't the same as being at home. (Cory is not on my good list right now for not telling me he was going) However, I really appreciated being around even extended family. After dinner I helped with cleanup and then we just sat around talking for a while. I held Jared for a long time (he is super-cute, btw) and had a great time talking with cousins. Then we watched UP, and Ruth and the Rosses left. Mom called just after the movie ended and talked to Uncle Steven and Aunt Geniel but didn't even ask to talk to me! Then Aunt Geniel and Uncle Steven watched Confessions of a Shopaholic (which they hadn't seen earlier) while I did my laundry and talked to you guys on the phone. After that was done, Suz and I had a sleepover. We watched Mulan 2, and I went to bed thoroughly recompensed for a few months with not very many movies.

I woke up early and drove to Salt Lake to pick up a mini-fridge that I'd found on craigslist. It's pretty awesome, and the price was amazing. I was excited about that. When I got back to the Woodwards', they were getting ready to go to Soldier Hollow to go sledding. I realized that I needed to get back to school and write some of the papers due this week (three research papers and a take-home essay test). So I got ready, finished up my laundry, talked with you guys some more, put together some leftovers that Aunt Geniel gave me (she also gave me one of those little wonderbread sandwich holders!) and went back to the dorm. However, the dorm was completely uninspiring. I had writer's block all afternoon and didn't get much done. At 6 I went to the gym to do some make-up for missing my weight-training class, and then I went out on the town to return some stuff I'd bought earlier and buy some groceries. I am very proud to announce that although I went through Kohl's and Target, I didn't buy a single item of clothing. I got a mini Christmas tree, some fruit, yogurt, and sticky hooks (to put lights up with) at Target, and that's all. I actually made money from returning things. :) And then I video-chatted with you guys, which was amazing. It was so nice just to see everybody's faces again.

Saturday morning I got up and made cookies and pies. Here is the recipe for the cookies, from Kelsey:

1 cup flour

3 oz. cream cheese

1/2 cup (1 cube) butter or margarine

jam

Mix the first three ingredients and roll the dough into small balls. Put them on a cookie sheet and press down with your thumb to make an indent in the middle. Bake them at 350 for 10-15 minutes - they stay white, so just bake them until they are cooked through. Take them out and immediately fill the thumbprints with jam, but not too full or they will overflow. Eat them at will, and it's probably a good idea to refrigerate them if you think they'll last more than about 2 days.

Anyways, the cookies were delish. I filled them with Sister Spangler's strawberry-apricot jam. So I made banana cream pie and pumpkin pie after that (with the traditional cinnamon-sugar pie crust cookies, of course!). The banana cream pie turned out perfectly, but the pumpkin pie was so-so. I followed the directions in my cookbook, and I think next time I'm going to use the ones on the can. However, I now have some leftover pumpkin to make amazing pumpkin spice muffins with! Yay. So after I was done baking I did a little bit of homework and then I went to Ken and Kelsey's to watch the game. We were playing Utah, so it was a high-stress rivalry game. But about an hour into it, we went to in-n-out, which just opened in Provo about two weeks ago. It felt like going home, which tells you a bit about how much I went there for swim team and water polo... By the time we got back, BYU was up by 11. So we pretty much just talked/surfed the internet during the rest of the game. I had my laptop, but I didn't really get much actual work done. For those of you who don't know (shame on you!) we went into overtime scored 20-20. In their possession, Utah got a field goal, but in ours we got a touchdown, so we won 27-23! It was pretty awesome. So then I stayed at the Ross household until traffic had died down a bit, talking about China, Honduras, and Utah drivers, among other topics. Kelsey kindly drove me home (I had walked) and I did some homework/video-chatted. Then I walked over to the library to check out a book I need for one of my research papers, and it was closed! Fortunately I was talking with Marta on the phone so I just got to continue the discussion. However, walking to and from the library in just a sweatshirt and jeans when it's 30 outside is a little bit chilly. I was super-excited when Marta got a facebook, and so I had fun chatting with her on there, although I still haven't convinced her to watch a clip on youtube about a scene in New Moon that she'd asked about...

This morning I got up and got ready to go to church. We had a stakewide sacrament meeting for those of us who weren't at home. I was actually surprised at how many people were there. We didn't have enough seats, so they asked all the guys to give up their seats for the girls. I was there early, so I didn't take some guy's seat, but they were very sweet about it. We brought in a bunch of chairs and almost everybody got seated, in the end. The sacrament meeting was actually really good. One of the talks I liked most was about believing Christ, not just believing in Christ. The example the speaker used was about how he'd been interning, and roomed with a bunch of Jewish guys. They had believed in Christ, in that he'd lived and he'd been a good person, but they didn't believe Christ - they didn't realize the truth of the Atonement. So that was a really good talk. But it was kind of interesting - they had four talks and two musical presentations. Cool, but different. Anyways, walked home from Church, and since then I've been writing this and decorating my room. It's fun, as always! I'm not sure whether I'm going to be glad or not to have to share the dorm again when my roommates get home tonight. It will be less lonely-feeling, but then again I won't be able to blast my music (although some of them do that regularly anyways, I won't descend to that level...) or have a clean sink. Sigh. But what I really need to worry about is whether or not I'll be able to survive the coming week! It'll be exciting.

I love you!!! Have your phones ready late at night because I will probably be walking to and from the library a lot in the coming weeks :)

Love,

Elize