a family trip and "see you soon"

Miss Shannee's wedding was last week and in honor of that my sisters from Colorado came out to visit. it was a glorious week of shopping, eating, late night conversations, and sleep overs. And the wedding shenanigans of course.

 The first night after all of the family had arrived we got to party it up with the Christiansen clan for Shannee and Jorgen's family dinner. it was the first time in probably 10 or so years that ALL of the Christiansen girls and ALL of the Toth girls were together in one place (in case you weren't aware that is a very long time and we thus had to celebrate this).

That night the nieces also got to have a very special spend-the-night at Auntie Em's apartment complete with nail painting, a cereal party, a massive sleepover in the living room, and watching Brave.

Zoey decided she was full of funny faces:

 

 

 The wedding followed the next day; there was much hustle and bustle to make sure everyone was ready (we did have about 10 people, almost all kids, to get to the temple in time to see the lovely couple). There was a lot going on at the temple and so many pictures being taken that i didn't get very many myself. But i did happen to catch Miss Calah, Little Miss Evie, and Miss Shannee cheesing it up super quick (aren't they beautiful?).

That very night my two oldest nephews had the grand opportunity of staying the night in Provo so that they could go to class with me on Friday. Stetson even said that he felt like he was already changing into an adult after he walked on some of the apartment stairs. Ya, it's that cool apparently. We did end up having a blast, me and the two boys. Our morning line up included breakfast at the CougarEat, meandering the book store and campus, and attending my one Friday class (Cognitive Development). Upon our travels we found that this very day the great people of BYU were creating the World's Largest Cardboard Castle. it was still under construction as we left, but they were doing a smashing job of creating the castle.

Now remember when i mentioned the Toth sisters being together finally (minus Miss Amber because they were in the process of moving and i think Tovah still had school, we did miss them terribly. And still do). But since the other four of us were together we celebrated the event with a Sisters' Night. These festivities were grand and all out fab. There was an absolute delish dinner at Chili's complete with chips & queso and dessert, a drink run to the Holiday (no not alcohol you crazies, drink run = fountain drinks aka heavenly elixir), and two whole episodes of The Vampire Diaries. it was pretty freaking awesome because we laughed basically the whole time and talked over each other and we were loud and it was great. Because that's just how we are.

 Easter also came early this last week because everyone had to leave before or on Easter itself. The kids got their Easter baskets and we all went to the park for an Easter egg hunt. it was pretty much the cutest thing because the little girls thought it was just the coolest thing ever, especially after they realized there was candy INSIDE the eggs. The hunt took a turn for being even more awesome when the adults began sliding on the curvy slides and Miss Kierston and Stetson began wrestling. i love my family :)

To top the whole weekend off Miss Calah and i had the grand opportunity of joining the Christiansen family for one last family dinner before Miss Shannee and Jorgen embarked on their next adventure across the Pond to Denmark (our family had already left back to Colorado at this point). One last drink run was made to 7-Eleven. We piled into the truck (literally) and it's one of my favorite adventures.

So as far as our goodbyes went it's "see you soon, Miss Shannee!" because "soon" sounds a lot better than "later" and it really isn't goodbye.

life lately

i had this whole idea in my head about how this post was going to so eloquently describe how my life has been lately. And then i went shopping and i can't bring to mind the eloquence of those thoughts. So, sorry; you're just gonna have to deal with my random ramblings.

Life has been good. Great even. Only four weeks of class left and i still have A's in all of my classes (since when is that even possible any more?)

i registered for a teachers conference that's in Provo next month which sounds absolutely AMAZING: tons of great speakers talking about what's actually going on in schools nowadays. Who could say no to that? Not me.

One of the guys at work also got me an interview with his kids' principal for a possible student-teaching position! Seriously?? Yes. Which means i just have to actually meet with her and then talk to my adviser if it's even possible to pick the school i student-teach at since i've already got a contact there. i'm honestly crossing my fingers (and trying not to squeal) at the possibility of this happening.

Could life be more fab right now? (i do hope you read this in your best Chandler voice). The answer? Yes, yes it can. Recent developments in my dating life tell me i'm actually a pretty fab person to date (which, let's face it, we all knew but now we know that the boys are aware of this too haha).

So life lately? Well it's just fab :)

Saturday mornings

Due to the snow (because it's the first week of spring and that obviously makes sense) i spent my morning watching cartoons and eating Fruity Pebbles.

It was grand; apart from the depressing fact that Saturday morning cartoons nowadays terribly suck. i ended up on Disney Junior with Jake and the NeverLand Pirates. Now i do love this cartoon because it's in NeverLand and just so dang cute. But seriously. What happened to Sonic the Hedgehog, Recess, Static Shock, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh? We had Pepper Ann, Doug, and the good superheroes. Justice League? Of course! Yet somehow society thought those weren't good enough and now there are about two channels that were even playing cartoons. How depressing.

think a happy thought

imagine you're really upset. You could be mad, sad, whatever; you're just super upset. And someone (maybe you) is telling you "think a happy thought" or "go to your happy place". Turns out that this advice is scientifically sound. Or at least it's been supported through research (the scientific community does NOT like the word 'proven' very much, so watch yourself when you're telling your friends about this awesome information).

According to State Dependent Memory, an event can trigger an emotion and the emotion can trigger other memories associated with that emotion. Let's go back to being upset. You're driving along and someone cuts you off. A small act, yes, but it still upsets you. Feeling upset, you suddenly remember how earlier that day someone at the office ate your lunch. Or you bombed the quiz in class. it's a vicious cycle of upsetting events.

How do you end this cycle, you ask? Well let me tell you!

THINK A HAPPY THOUGHT! 

Peter Pan is singing to you right now to think of a wonderful thought (no you won't fly, so don't attempt it. The happy thought will assist your mood).

if you can break the vicious cycle and come up with something good that happened that day (or maybe even last week) then that happy thought can trigger the happy emotions and a glorious cycle of joy will fill your mind. You'll remember the quiz you aced last week, the time you brought the most delectable left-overs to work, the fact you get to go to Joe Bandido's tomorrow, how you're ahead on your reading for class, there's an extra episode of your fave show on Hulu....it'll just continue. And so will the happy mood.

This is one of the secrets to happiness, folks! You're welcome :)

mondays are for learning

Mondays are generally the most hated day of the week, bringing the beginning of the school and work week. But today i realized that Mondays are actually pretty great. (it helps that my Monday schedule isn't too overwhelming but whatever). Today was a great day full of learning!

We've started the geometry unit in Math Education, come to find out that there are multiple kinds of geometry. Who knew? Imagine this: you start at your house and travel 10 miles south. You then travel 10 miles west and another ten miles north. Have you arrived back at your house? If you said no, you are correct. If you said yes, you are correct. How is this possible, you ask? Well according to Euclidean Geometry, it isn't possible because the plane we work on is 2-dimensional. But should we work with Spherical Geometry (like on the globe) this situation would be true.

Then in Cognitive Development we've been discussing memory and encoding. Always a fascinating subject and my teacher's dry sense of humor just makes it better. Last week he told us about how certain experiences are automatically encoded into our Long Term Memory (LTM). For example, he remembers how to perform heart surgery on a dog because they actually had to do that when he was a grad student. But does he remember what he had for breakfast two months ago? Probably not.

in Literacy we read a few articles about the topic on Monday and discuss them in class on Wednesday. This week was comprehension. The Rosenblatt article? Phenomenal! i actually saved some of the quotes because i love them so much. So here are the key points i found about comprehension

• "In any linguistic event, any process will be affected by the physical and emotional state of the individual"
• "The “meaning” does not reside ready-made or “in” the text or “in” the reader but happens or comes into being during the transaction between reader and text"
• "Writers facing a blank page, like readers approaching a text, have only their individual linguistic capital to draw on"
• "Writing is always an event in time, occurring at a particular moment in the writer’s biography, in particular circumstances, under particular external as well as internal pressures"
• "Because each individual’s experience is unique, differences due to social, ethnic, educational, and personal factors exist"
• "Writing deepens the reader’s understanding of the importance of paying attention to diction, syntactic positions, emphasis, imagery, and conventions of genre"

Subaru: Cut the Cord

No, i am not getting a deal from Subaru or anything. This commercial came on and my heart just melted. Adorable!

AWESOME!

i recently acquired The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha. Who knew a trip to FedEx to get a box would end up in me finding a book? So Calah and i thought it'd be fun to write my own thoughts on the awesome things and maybe add my own.

(The following Awesome Things are a reflection of this past week)

Awesome Thing #1: The smell of frying onion and garlic. Seriously, i don't know about you, but i LOVE that smell. Especially on a Fast Sunday when you walk to a friend's apartment and they're making food that involves onion and garlic for the Break the Fast. You walk in and the heavenly scents serenade you and your knees just about buckle underneath you. Ahhh.....

Awesome Thing #2: Wearing sandals when you shouldn't be wearing sandals. FYI sandals in my case means flip-flops. i will wear flip-flops whenever i possibly can. All the time. Even though it is technically still winter, if there is not snow on the ground (the ground where i am walking) then i will be wearing my flip-flops. Sure i get the occasional comments from people who ask if i'm freezing but don't you worry, i'm just fine. :)