Long time, No write

Hello people of the world!
It's been a while....
But life is good right now. I'm getting ready for my mission.
And I find out where I'm going this week (hopefully).
I'm also kind of freaking out. If you've never gotten a mission call before... well then you don't really understand the tension and scariness of getting that letter.
It's also super exciting, don't get me wrong.
I'm just dead scared to open that thing. That letter is going to tell me everything about my life for the next year and a half...
It's going to say where I'm going, if I have to learn a language, and when I'm leaving.
Luckily, I'll still have time after I get it to prepare. I put June 1st as my availability date so I still have about 4 months at least.

For those of you that don't know how the calls work, let me explain.
We don't choose where we go. The leaders of the church in Salt Lake City choose for us. They pray about it and call us to the place where we will serve the church and the people best. They call us to the place where we are needed.

So, because of that, I'm incredibly excited. This is going to be an amazing opportunity for me and I can't wait.

And that's the deal with the mission right now.
I'm also taking three online classes (American Foundations, English, and Book of Mormon part 2).
And I'm working whenever I can get work. So yup :) That's life.

Love,
Q

Another Big Decision... My life seems to be full of them these days

Alright alright. So I know the semester's not quite over yet (14 days!) but I haven't written anything in a REALLY long time so I felt that I should let everyone know what's going on.

Life has been really interesting lately. It kind of felt like I was just floating by. I still have good grades and everything but I wasn't really feeling anything, yah know?

Classes are good, I just can't wait to get home. I'm not trunky, I swear. Just impatient I guess.
So anyways, two days ago I think is when I decided that I'm not going to come back here after winter break. It was kind of a huge decision for me.
I fasted about it and prayed a whole bunch. I even took my scriptures to my math class cuz I knew we wouldn't be doing anything but going over excel projects. I talked to a bunch of my friends about it, and my mom, and my dad. A lot were for it and a lot were against it. Ultimately, it was my choice.

If I chose to stay then I would take a bunch of classes and just go along like I'm doing now.
I would have stayed at Carriage House with my amazing roommates that I love and it would have been a bunch of fun. Taken the easy road I guess.

The other day, I was talking to Kayleigh about next semester and how odd I was feeling about it. Something felt off about me staying here and I honestly couldn't see it happening. Now I understand why.
Anyways, I was talking to her and at the end of it I made the statement that staying home would be out of the question. She automatically asked me why I thought that. I didn't have an answer.
This opened up and whole bunch of possibilities for me. It made a lot more sense in my head that I stay home. I would save my parents a bunch of money, be able to get a job, spend a lot of time with my family, help my sister as she grows up and has to deal with high school and that insanity, help Mom with the kids and driving around, prepare for my mission, take classes online, and just be a lot happier.
It didn't take me very long to decide what I should do.
Needless to say, I called Mom and told her what I was going to do and then called Dad and told him. They were both very supportive of me and I'm super grateful for that.

Now, I'm just waiting... I get to go home and stay home. I'm so at peace right now with my decision. It makes me really happy. I know this is what I was supposed to do.

I'm so grateful for my parents and the Gospel that they taught me to live. I'm grateful for an Heavenly Father that can direct me where I should go and tell me what I'm meant to do in my life. I don't know what I'd do without him.

Well, anyways, that's what's been going on in my life recently. That's the big discovery. And I couldn't be happier.

Love,
Q

Foxy and Hottie

Today I miss my best friend.

My mom posted something about her coming over and giving her a Blizzard. It made me realize how much I am missing this amazing girl.
Anna and I have been really good friends since soccer in Middle School. I think we played on the same team for 3 years and it was a lot of fun.
We were also in band together in middle school and we would harass our band teacher. It was the funnest. High school came around and we still stayed really close.
Track and XC and all the adventures involved.

She's always been there for me. We basically grew up together.
This last year was probably the best. Senior year and I had a class with her every trimester. It was always super fun even though the classes sucked. We had all sorts of crazy adventures, like getting to school the day after Valentine's day and realizing that there was candy on sale at Alberton's! And running down the halls at school before it started to jump in her car and go get some :)
We would also ride around in her amazing Mustang with the top down and blasting Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy and singing at the top of our lungs.
Canoeing at Lake Oswego and getting Cold Stone afterwards. Going to see Batman and getting Noodle's and Company and just being crazy.
Stache-attacking Jaclyn's house and getting random Blizzards.
I miss all of our adventures. I miss running around like crazy people with my Foxy. I miss the baking parties and talking to her about boys and all the hilarious drama that comes with being best friends.
I miss having someone that I can talk to about anything and everything and who's always there for me.
She's my best friend and my adopted sister and I'm so grateful for her,

Ranting and Raving

So I'm not the type to rant and spill my guts on the internet (My mom usually does that :))
But something just really "got my panties in a bunch"
I went online to look at my grades because you can do that because of the cool/super annoying thing that BYUI does.
I have pretty good grades if I may say so myself (not including math, which I've never been amazing at). I still have 100% in 3 of my classes and A's in 2 of the others.
The only exceptions are Math and my favorite class, Humanities. I'm not being sarcastic or anything. I really do love that class. It's the one that's like AP European History (which I loved in HS) but with music more incorporated.
In that class, my teacher hasn't had any assignments until this last week when he assigned an essay. I wasn't a hard essay. We just had to compare the story of Orpheus to an opera that was created based on the story.
When my teacher assigned that, on I-Learn (where the grades and assignments are posted) it said that all the kids in the class had 0% because no one had turned in the assignment.
I turned in the assignment online just like we were told to. But because I wasn't using Microsoft Word to make it, the program I was using saved the file in some weird format.
I sent it to my mom before turning it in to have her edit it and I tried to save it in a different format to get it to her. It worked out just fine. She got the essay and we fixed it all up.
I turned it in on Friday. I made the deadline and I thought everything was fine.

Today when I checked my turned in assignments that needed to be graded I saw the essay that I had turned in. Next to it was a big fat 0.... ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

I emailed my prof and asked him if his TA hadn't been able to open it or what was going on. Hopefully he'll get back to me soon... Ugh I'm just so frustrated right now. I wish that I could have just printed it off and turned it in like that. That would have been so much easier.
So anyways. Done with the freaking out. I'll update this when I get a reply... stupid stupid stupid...
-Q

Well... That makes a whole lot more sense...

Okay so I know it's been ages since I've written... so shoot me... College life is busy
General Conference was this weekend (like you didn't know)
The only thing I really remember was President Monson announcing at the beginning of the Saturday morning session that boys can now go on missions at 18 and girls can go at 19.
Blew my mind.
I honestly can't remember anything else very clearly. The first thought in my head after he said that was, "I'm going."
Then there was a moment of sheer panic followed by a moment of intense excitement. And then the rest of conference, my emotions switched back and forth between the two. I felt like Rapunzel in that one scene in Tangled where she's at war with herself.

So, I'm going. Now I know and everything makes a whole ton more sense.
I never really was solid about what I was going to do after this year in college. It didn't feel right to come back for another year and I had no idea why. What was I going to do? Where was I going to be?
Well... Now I know :) I'm going to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I'm so excited. I figure that I'll finish out this year and turn in my papers as soon as I can. I'm going to write June as my availability date to have some time at home and to earn some money (hopefully) and everything will work out :)
I love General Conference. It explains so much and helps me understand everything.
Well, time to finish some homework. Just thought I'd let you know :)
Love you!
Love,
Q

Monday... Where did you go?

Today felt like it raced by... It was so fast.
Went to Math at 7:45 and sat next to my friend, Martin. He's like a college version of Brevin. I like talking to him. After I went back home and ate some food and did a bit of homework.
Humanities was interesting. We learned about the history of Greece and all the cool stuff that happened.
Choir we sang and sang and sang. We're sounding really good and we get to sing the Spirit of God at one of devotionals in the near future. Fun fun :) In choir someone shared a very funny quote. "A singer must have the mind of a poet, the body of an athlete, and the face of an idiot." :)
Group Vocal Lessons was the usual. More and more singing. We learned about expression today.
After I ran home to get my sheet music and then went to voice lab. I'm in a group with three boys. It's a lot of fun. Sister Olsen said I was doing really good and she could pick me out most of the time :) and these boys are loud...
Then Monday's classes were FINALLY over. I went over to Carly's and ate some of her Asian food. It's soooo good. I'm gonna have to get the recipe for it. I went with Carly and Elise to the grocery store and they got some stuff to eat and then we ran over to the Quick Ship N Copy. My humanities professor, Brother Peck, is writing our textbook while we're in class. Apparently none of the other texts he researched were good enough so he decided to write his own. Anyways, every week or so he'll send out an email saying go pick up the next chapter. So that's what I did today.
I came back home and jumped into my Book of Mormon homework. It's mostly just busy work... But it has a bunch of great quotes in it. I liked this one...

"Obedient as Nephi was, his obedience did not shield him from afflictions.  The Book of Mormon teaches that opposition is a necessary part of life's test.  Nephi's bow broke in the wilderness, even though his family needed food.  Today righteous Saints lose their jobs even though they have paid their tithing and magnified their Church callings.  The test of the 'broken bow' isn't only for the one who breaks the bow but also for those affected by the break....Yet Nephi found solution to his dilemma in one simple act: 'I, Nephi, did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick, an arrow' (1 Ne. 16:23)  Instead of murmuring, Nephi simply went to work and made another bow.  Murmuring wastes time, lengthens one's journey, and hardens one's heart....God may not always stop bows from breaking, but he does help in the construction of new ones." -Dennis L. Largey

After I finished the homework, we went to FHE. It was at the boys apartment this week and it was a lot of fun. We played feather volleyball. Paige and I were on a team first and we crushed Trevor and Jared. Basically you have a feather and you try to blow it over the net... and you can't let it touch the ground. 

After FHE, we all came home and now we're all just sitting here doing homework, making food, or getting ready for tomorrow. Ok... gotta get off the computer now. Goodnight!

Love,

Q

Week #3

This week was fun.
If you want to read about the beginning of the week then go look at my old posts :)
The last day I talked about was Wednesday. So Thursday was fairly uneventful. I went to class and did some homework. Thursdays are really nice because I only have 2 one-hour classes :) I actually get a lot done on these days.
Friday was a lot of fun. I went to class and afterwards, my mom's friend came over to pick me up. She wanted me to babysit her little boy. His name is Isaiah and he's four months old. He has down syndrome and he's the sweetest little man ever. I watched him for 3-ish hours.
After that I came home and did some more homework. My friend, Carly, came over and we went to Porter Park. It was at least 80 degrees outside and we decided to go play in the fountain. We were the only ones there and everyone that walked by gave us funny looks but we didn't care. We were being all giddy and acting like little kids :)
Afterwards we came back home and Carly went to her apartment and I went to mine. I ate some food and then decided to watch a movie. A couple minutes after I started it Carly texted me that there were about a billion people in her apartment and she came over to watch with me.
We watched it and it was really funny because it was a thriller and we were both like "This is the perfect movie to watch with boys... Why are we not watching it with boys?!" It was hilarious.
After the movie, Julie texted me asking if we were still gonna go see Spider man. Of course the answer was yes. So Julie, Carly and I had a girls night out and went and saw The Amazing Spider man for $3 :)
Julie decided to go home after and so Carly and I went back to my place and ate oreos and watched another movie. Around midnight we decided to turn it off and she went home.
Saturday I did almost all of my homework. I did some laundry and Carly and I went grocery shopping. I got everything I needed and then we decided to watch another movie (shocker...)
We watched Miss Congeniality and The Lucky One. It was a lot of fun.
Sunday was today. We woke up to the power being halfway out! It was crazy! And then around 11:15, the rest of the power went out... What. The. Heck.
It was funny because when it went out we heard the girls next door who were showering scream :) hehehe
We went to church with the hopes that when we got back it would be back on. No such luck.
It didn't turn completely back on until 5:30-ish... But that was ok because when we got home it was halfway back on.
So now I'm sitting here writing this. I did my nails today haha that's how bored I was. They are now light blue (kinda minty) and I tried out the silver crackle stuff... It's pretty cool looking actually :)
ok gotta go eat dinner now. Love you!
Love,
Q