On the twelfth day of Christmas...

Hope y'all Have a wonderful Christmas!!

On the eleventh day of Christmas...

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the snow is so delightful! OK, I know, I know, the song doesn't really say that the snow is delightful (the fire is delightful), but this is how I have always sung it and I like my version better! For the past four days we have been dumped on by snow! It has been GREAT! I love the snow! It is pretty rare to get any good snow in the Seattle area. It is even rarer to get snow that lasts more than a few days. Because of this...chaos galore erupts in Seattle when it snows. Schools and business' close down, roads close, people abandon their cars and pretty much all life stops. For many areas of the world a foot of snow would not cause people to be 'snowed in' for days on end... but in Seattle we like our snow days! When I was a kid I would pray and hope for snow. Sadly... we never got much.

Until now! So far we have about a foot of snow... and it is supposed to snow Tuesday night. Woo Hoo! As annoying as it is out on the roads I think that the snow is pretty, and I am hoping that it doesn't melt and we are able to have a white Christmas!

Other than playing in the snow I really haven't been doing too much lately. I have been very lazy the past week. The exact opposite of a year ago. I have been able to get some fun digital scrapbooking done though! Here is a page I did with some pictures of all of the northwest snow! If you click on the picture you can view a larger image.

On the ninth and tenth day of Christmas...

Oops... I missed a day! Here is Monday's ...

On the eighth day of Christmas...

On the seventh day of Christmas...

On the sixth day of Christmas...

On the fifth day of Christmas...

On the fourth day of Christmas...

On the third day of Christmas...

On the second day of Christmas....

October- December Happenings

Wow, I can't believe that it is already the middle of December! Time sure does fly by fast. I feel like it should still be November. The past few weeks have just gone by too fast. I have been pretty busy lately though. My classes this quarter really took a lot of time, and there were also a lot of things going on at the Institute as well. But, I am very glad that fall quarter is done and that I will now have a little break before winter quarter starts. Despite the fact that it was incredibly time consuming, this past quarter was a good one. I finished my last quarter of Spanish, which also happened to be my last general ed class. Now it is all design and art history classes from here on out. WooHoo. I also took a pretty cool art history class this past quarter and finished my first class in the UW design program. Bellow is a drawing of a zipper that I drew for my "drawing for designers" class. It was a pretty interesting class. We were not allowed to draw with pencils.... or rulers. All of our drawings were done with cheapo Bic pens on 11x17 copy paper. This course was geared more towards those who want to go into industrial design rather than graphic design. All in all it was a good class though. We started out drawing a TON of cubes and cuboids and eventually made out way to drawing cameras, kitchen utensils, coffee makers, zippers and finally crazy drafting lamps.
When my classes weren't keeping me busy my calling on the Institute council was. I am the ward rep for institute, as well as the historian and the interim secretary, so I have been pretty busy. It has been fun though. The institute here has some great activities and it has been fun to be a part of them. In October we had our opening social. It was a blast. It had a western theme. Here is a scrapbook page that I did about it:
We also just recently had an opeing social, which was very fun. We had Santa and everything! Here is a scrapbook page I did from that activity:
The institute activity was a great kick off to the holiday season. My ward also had a Christmas party... last night in fact! It was a lot of fun. Each year the ward has different people from the ward decorate and supply dishes for a table. They also have a nice cattered dinner and some sort of musical program. I wasn't originally planning on going to the activity, but they needed someone to decorate a table, and so I decided to go and decorate a table. It ended up being very fun. Some crazy people sat at my table... but it was fun. By the time the party was over it had started to snow! It was great! It doesn't snow very often in Seattle... but man when it does it is beautiful! Here are some pictures of my table and of the snow:

When I got home from the party I decided to make a few miniature snow people. It was fun!

On the first day of Christmas...

This is something that I am doing for the girls I go visiting teaching to... thought I would put it on my blog too.
Here is the first of 12 reading days...

Rock the Vote!

I don't really enjoy talking about politics with people, but this election has been an interesting one. It will be exciting to see who wins! If you haven't voted yet... get to it and go rock the vote!

This is Halloween!

On the 25th I had my 2nd annual Family Halloween Party. I LOVE Halloween. I love the decorations...the fun costumes...and all of the fun and creepy foods. This years part was a blast and I think that the kids had a great time. We had mummies on a stick (hot dogs), salad, smoking purple punch, frog eye salad, bug filled cupcakes and a ton of snack type food. After eating we had a costume contest and then rocked out on Guitar Hero (I love that game!). It was a lot of fun. My nieces and nephews all had really cute costumes. Cadison was a dead football player, Alyssa was the queen of hearts, Tyler was a ninja, Chelsey was Pippi Longstocking (sp??), Peyton was a pig and my sister Monica was a little devil.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from playing guitar hero.

My "I'm a teenage girl" obsession

The new Twilight trailer just came out tonight. It looks like it is going to be good. I really enjoyed (aka obsessed over like a 14 year old girl) the books, even though I consider them to be a 'guilty pleasure' type of book. Vampire books are not my thing...but these books were great, and so addictive. If you haven't read them, you should. In fact, I may need to reread the first one before November 21st. I just hope that the movie lives up to the books.

Check Out the newest Twilight trailer!

Tres Cosas

3 Joys

• A good book with a cup of herbal tea and a comfy blanket on a rainy day.
• Camping with the family in Oregon.
• Getting 8 hours of sleep ... I wish that happened more often!
  

3 Fears

• Spiders...eek!
• Failure/ Not reaching my full potential.
• Making a fool of myself in public...I am a pretty clumsy person...so the probability of falling and making a fool of myself is pretty high :)

3 Obsessions/ Collections

• I collect shot glasses. I have one for every state that I have been to.
  
• Blog stalking and obsessively checking my e-mail (Like a good 15-30 times a day)
  
• I am obsessed with Boggle and other word games...I could spend hours playing them
  

3 Surprising Facts

• I am a major germaphobe
• I have never been kissed
• I have really bad road rage... especially in the mornings on the way to the bus stop.
  

Got Milk?

I do!!! Well, I did! Mmmm....I love Milk! And guess what...on the first day of classes at the UW they were handing out free milk at red square! Yep, you heard that right, FREE milk!!! That's not all though... they were handing out tons of stuff...it was like being at the fair! There were stands with people giving out free bagels, free coffee, free cookies, free juice, and of course, free milk. Now this free milk wasn't some wimpy sample...it was 16 ounces of pure calcium goodness. In fact it was the same thing as the picture above. It was great...it made the first day of classes super!

Wow, I still can't believe that classes have already started. It is nice to be back at school though. It will be an interesting and challenging quarter. I am taking Spanish 103...after this class I will be 100% done with my generals and all I will have left are design and art history classes! Woo Hoo. So I am a little nervous about my Spanish class....it has been a long time since I have taken 101 and 102...and I have forgotten a lot! I am going to have to study a lot for this class in order to get a good grade.

I am also taking a design drawing class. It is fun so far... of course so far we have only drawn a bunch of lines and squares! In this class we are not allowed to use pencils and erasers ... we are only to use cheap black paper mate pens. Yikes! We will see how that goes....I like my eraser and drawing pencils....I will miss them!

And last, but not least I am taking an awesome art history class. The class focuses on Northwest coastal Salish art. So far, I love it! There is a lot of reading and a lot of memorizing, but I have a feeling that it will be my favorite class of the quarter. The other day we went over the pronunciation of the different coastal tribes...wow, tough stuff! I am really excited to learn more about the history and culture of the beautiful Northwest Natives. In honor of my excitement for this class I made the following collage...I seem to be in a major picture collage mood lately....

When the student is ready, the master appears. ~Buddhist Proverb

Well, I don't know that I am ready for school to start quite yet, and I am not sure that all of my professors will be "masters", but it is school time again. Fall quarter starts on Wednesday and I am actually pretty excited for classes to start. With the exception of one Spanish class I have all of my generals done...so all of my classes are either design classes or art history classes! Let the fun begin! As much as I would love to be done with school already, I really do enjoy learning and going to school. I love walking into the Library and feeling the collegiate atmosphere. I know I am crazy!

In anticipation of school starting I decided to look on Flickr and see what pictures I could find of the UW campus. I found a ton of amazing photos and decided to make a little collage of some of my favorite ones. I think that I attend college at a University with one of the most beautiful campus'. For proof, just click on the above picture and take a closer look at some of the pictures. I am proud to be a HUSKY!

Goodbye summer...hello fall!

Well, another summer is over. I can't believe how fast summer went by. It was a good summer though. In July I went camping in Oregon with my family and had a great time, as always. Then in August Alison, Monica and I went 'Twilight' crazy. I had read the Twilight books back in March, but Alison and Monica did not read them until the end of July. Of course we had to go get the fourth and final book at midnight when it was released. We had a fun time reading it...even if we were a little obsessed! I have also done a lot of quilting this summer. It is nice to be able to do a few projects before the craziness of school starts. At the beginning of September Melanie, Monica, Alison, Peyton, Cadison and I went to the family fun center. We went miniature golfing, go-carting and had a great time. It was a lot of fun. We also went to the Puyallup fair this year. My Mom and I went twice. We went on opening day and the day after that. We had a lot of fun. My mom and I were able to see my nephew Tyler do Muttin' Bustin'. The next day we mostly looked at the animals. We all had a great time petting all the sheep and some of the cows...but Cadison, she had to pet every single one! All in all it was a good way to end the summer.