We Will Never Forget

"We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We've seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers -- in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own. My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union -- and it is strong....

...We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, life will return almost to normal.  We'll go back to our lives and routines, and that is good.  Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We'll remember the moment the news came -- where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a story of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever."

-President George W. Bush

September 20, 2011

I Love Adventures!

I love weekends sooo much! I don't have very much homework this weekend (I know, I was shocked too) so I have been trying to find ways to entertain myself. After class yesterday, I went to Wal Mart and then worked on homework for the afternoon. Last night the school was showing Pirates of the Caribbean 4, and I was running the popcorn machine so I had to be there 30 minutes early. About 20 minutes before I had to leave, I decided to watch TV for a minute. Guess what was on! Hitch! My all time favorite movie. I was so upset that I had to leave just as it was starting, but I went anyway. Imari, Camille, and I were the popcorn girls all night. SVU has a popcorn machine that we get out at all of our movie nights, and some other random activities. It's free so EVERYONE wants some. I never realized how stressful it was to be working the popcorn machine. You can only pop so much at one time, so you end up filling 6 ish bags and then having to wait for a while for more to pop. Kids have to wait in line for a long time, and the line is sooo long! Also, kids like to send up one friend to get popcorn for the whole group. That's frustrating when you think there are 10 people in line, but it's really more like 20. One girl wanted 5 bags! 5! I don't think the people behind her loved that. Also, there was this 12-year-old kid there (not a student, a sibling.....I was concerned at first) who just kept coming back for more. I think by the end of the movie he had 3 or 4 bags....and he didn't even go to our school! Also, I burned my hand on the hot popper part. That hurt super bad and there is a big red mark on the back of my hand now....almost exactly where my other burn just recently healed from. Appreciate your popcorn people! It's not an easy job. We had fun though. We didn't get to watch any of the movie, but luckily I had seen it before. Imari and I decided that being popcorn girls could be a good way to make new friends. We introduced ourselves and chatted with everyone that got popcorn from us. Some loved that....some didn't seem to as much. Ha! Best part of the night? After we got done at Pirates, we went back to my house. Imari turned on the TV hopeful that we would be able to see the end of Hitch and guess what.....it had started over! It was at almost the exact spot that we had left it. I was soooo happy!

This morning I got up early to go on an adventure! (we decided that we want to go on an adventure every weekend) Imari's friend Melody had invited us to go to Foam Henge with her and a group of people. For those of you who don't know this area very well, there is absolutely nothing in BV, but drive 10 minutes and there's all kinds of crazy, ghetto, fun stuff. We are planning on seeing more of those things on other days, but today was Foam Henge: a life size model of Stone Henge made out of styrofoam! I know what you're thinking, I thought the same thing. You just have to see it. It's super funny.

Then we went to the volleyball game at W&L. Our girls were playing really well, but we didn't stay to see how it turned out. Hopefully they did great. My hopes are high. Mostly watching them made me wish that I could go home and watch Lexi play. I'm sure she's doing great.

I don't know what the rest of the evening will hold, but hopefully it's lots of fun!

Pretty legit huh?

Imari and I with Merlin....apparently he created Stone Henge

This is me trying to show you that it's styrofoam

Also we found this snake skin. It was huge. That made me suuuuuper nervous! Luckily we didn't find its owner.

Also we went to the zoo. We decided that we would save the actual zoo-going for another day, so we just took a picture with the elephant outside.

P.S. I finally figured out how to change the background on this thing. So, annoying as it may be, I will probably change it all the time.

Slightly Scatterbrained

Well, life hasn't been anything too new and exciting. I don't have any super cool stories to tell. So, here is one of Cassie's lists of random happenings and thoughts:

1. My professor quoted "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" in class today, and was very upset by the one person in the class who hadn't seen it.

2. I went to Institute...and loved it. Elder and Sister Crowther are just the best. He was on one today too! So funny!

3. I pulled my guitar out for the first time in 4 months. I've forgotten everything. My guitar teacher is going to hate me. Nuts.

4. I sat outside, ate pizza, and chatted with some pretty great people. We weren't even trying to do homework while we talked, we were just taking it easy.

5. I tried to figure out my class schedule for the next two years so that I can graduate on time. I am now regretting how easy I am taking it this semester. I am already stressing about how hard the next three semesters will be because of how easy this one is.

6. I may have decided to do a minor in Business. I have recently decided that I feel like a slacker for only having one major and no minor. If I don't care about people judging me for being lazy, graduating in May of 2013 will be cake. I feel like I should push myself a little bit though.

7. I burned 525 calories in a 45 minute work-out tonight. Whooo! And Imari and I are definitely sore from the work-out videos we have done the last two nights. They are pretty entertaining though.

8. For those of you who have been losing sleep over this, I decided that zebra print is the shower curtain that would go nicely with my cactus wallpaper. Okay, not really. I do however love zebra print, and it was calling my name so I bought it. It looks terrible with the cactus wallpaper. Melissa and I decided that we would hang our "less-than-professional" paintings in that bathroom too, just to give it a little more.....tackiness, ugliness, clashiness, character....take your pick. 

9. Speaking of painting: we had painting yesterday and we had to show the whole class what we had done and then Professor Crawford talked about it. She didn't have much to say about my actual painting, except that the tape that I used to make a border looked really nice (that has nothing to do with painting skill whatsoever). Our other assignment was to try a bunch of different techniques and just play with the paint a little bit. After she talked about mine she said, "Have you ever water-colored before?" I said, "Not even a little." She said, "Huh, could have fooled me!" That gave me a little ray of hope.

10. This is a super weird list since each number is pretty much a paragraph. Oh well, I like numbers better. I have always hated dividing things up into paragraphs and making them run smoothly together.

11. I don't know if I told you this, but my mattress is suuuuper squeaky! Like ridiculously so. All of my housemates can hear every time I even touch my bed. That makes me super self-conscious for some reason so I mostly never use my bed except to sleep. I also try to get in and out super quickly and quietly (impossible) and once I'm in, I don't move around. I told my RA about this problem. He laughed and said, "Welcome to SVU." Great.

12. The blinds in my room have a creeper hole. Literally at eye-level one of the blinds is missing so you can creep right out. Unfortunately, there is a tree right outside my window, so I can't see much.

13. Yesterday morning, I discovered a HUGE spiderweb on my back porch. Like really huge. It was all sparkly because of the dew and looked kind of beautiful, in a disgusting way. I took lots of pictures of it. Then I looked at my neighbors' porches on either side of me, they both had giant spiderwebs too! Crazy!

14. It hasn't rained since I complained about the rain two days ago. I'm so powerful. I'm sure it will come tomorrow now that I've said this though.

15. I hate when it is 1:00 in the morning and I am going to bed and I can hear people talking and laughing outside. A) Why is there never anything fun going on outside my window during the day? B) Why are you out so late? C) Why are you so loud? D) Why didn't you invite me to come play with you??!!

Well, again with knowing that I have more things that I was planning on writing about, and not being able to remember them now. Sorry. 

Pretty cool, huh?

I know, I'm artistic

I also found the creator himself, but I couldn't get a very good picture of him.  Plus he was a creep.

Rain, Rain Go Away

I don't have much to say today. I think of things sometimes that make me think, "Oh! I should put that in my blog!" Then I forget what they are. Oops. I mostly just went to class today and then did homework. I'm a pretty boring college student. I got a nap in today though. Those are kind of a rare thing for me, but I decided that I had time today. It was nice. I find that as soon as I open a textbook, it is suddenly nap time. Problem. I also took a break from homework to do an ab work-out video with Imari. It was pretty fun. Also pretty exhausting. We felt very awkward and uncoordinated, so we closed all of the blinds and covered the window on our door with some paper. Melissa was in the room doing homework so we told her she wasn't allowed to turn around. I felt dumb, but it was fun. We are excited to be sore tomorrow. Our plan is to do it at least every other day. Eventually we will have a 6-pack like the girl on the video. I'm excited for that part! After our workout, I made us a delicious raspberry smoothie! (Thank you Walmart for the delicious bag of frozen raspberries and thank you Grandma for the Magic Bullet!)

I got a card in the mail today from my momma! (And talked to her on the phone) That pretty much made my day. It wasn't very long and it didn't say too much, but it definitely made me smile. Especially because it was completely unexpected. Thanks Mom!

Also, it's raining. It has been raining for the last few days, and it will continue to rain for at least the rest of this week (that's as far in advance as I can see the weather). I used to love rain. Living in Virginia has made me hate it. All I wanted to do today was sit in my house, in my sweats, snuggled in a blanket with some hot chocolate and a chick flick. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a "rain day" so I had to go to class. I don't know if I can handle a week (or more) of this. Weather-related depression here I come. Maybe I can find someone to puddle jump with me this week. That would make the rain a little more enjoyable.

P.S. It was brought to my attention that I put my address on here wrong. Oops. It was also brought to my attention that maybe putting my address on here isn't a great idea (creepers, etc.). So, if you aren't a creeper, tell me if you want my real address so that you can send me a present....I sure do love those!

P.S. Again: No this isn't a "P.S. Again" because I completely spaced it when I was writing this originally. Why would you think that? Anyway, today is my best friend Taylor's Birthday!!! She's still a little kid, but now she is an older little kid. Happy Birthday TG! Love you lots!!

Labor Day Weekend

Hey kids. So here I am at the end of my Labor Day Weekend. I don't love that. Is it bad that I've only had a week of classes and I already am wanting to be done? Yes, yes it is. We tried to come up with some super fun plans to do this weekend, but we didn't end up doing anything too thrilling. It was a good weekend though. On Saturday night, we had a barbecue with all of the people that live in our little housing complex. That was fun. I love barbecues. We met some people and ended up sitting in a big circle and talking for a really long time. Sometimes that's my favorite thing to do. Then we went to Imari's and watched Legally Blonde 1&2 (which I got for $6!) while Imari and I painted pictures. Mine were really funny looking, but it was fun.

After church yesterday, we had our first family dinner! We decided that we will take turns every Sunday cooking dinner for the house after church. Jauphlynn cooked yesterday.....it was delicious! Melissa and I decided that it would be fine if she just cooked every week.....I don't think my PB&J is going to measure up.

Today, we drove to Roanoke to pick up a friend's luggage from the Greyhound bus station that they had lost on her way out here. She went over a week without any of her stuff! Luckily we got it today so all is well again. After that we went to Chik-fil-a for lunch. After eating our chicken nuggets, Imari and I decided we needed to try one of their new peach milkshakes. Imari had made friends with the manager (she likes old people) so she asked him if they were any good. He assured us that if we really liked peaches then we would really like their milkshakes. He also said that if we didn't, he would give us our money back. He was right. They were DELICIOUS! We plan on driving to Roanoke often for peach milkshakes.

After we got back, it was time for FHE. We were having FHE with the whole ward, because they haven't divided us up into our families yet. We had it at our bishop's house which is about 20 minutes away from campus. It was worth the drive. His house is GORGEOUS! It's ridiculously huge and fancy and has just about everything you could need for entertaining a group of 18-25 year-olds. It was awesome! The favorite room was this home-theater type room that was completely sports themed. The walls were completely covered with autographed jerseys, baseballs, pictures, and plaques. I have no idea how he got all of that, but it was sooo cool! They also had a really nice deck/sun room. I want one of those so bad. It was super nice. He told us that this was now the ward house. I'm okay with that. I want to be best friends with them so that I can go hang out at their house all the time.

Well that's it for now. I'm not excited to go to school tomorrow, but that's kind of what I'm here for.

TGIF!

Friday! I love that day. I only had one class today and it didn't start until 10. I loved that. I had leftover mac n' cheese for lunch, and then Melissa and I worked on our homework for painting. We were supposed to copy a painting by a professional. I sure hope I learn a lot from this class. At this point, I don't think painting is my calling. It's fun though.

This is the original....what it is supposed to look like.

Here is my version. Give me some time. Maybe by the end of the semester it will have a better resemblance....hopefully.

After painting, Imari, Melissa, and I went to Goodwill to get stuff for the 90's themed dance tonight. That was fun. Goodwill is a pretty wonderful place...especially if you are trying to dress crazy for a dance. The place is always packed with SVU students on the day of a themed dance. I'm pretty sure the people love us for coming and buying what no one else ever would. We find some gems. Then we went to the dance. It was pretty great. They mostly played 90's music (Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Spice Girls, N'Sync, Aaron Carter, etc). Mostly that stuff is my favorite so that made it really fun. Also, my outfit made me want to dance like crazy. So much fun! The whole thing was great until just as I was leaving. Every dance they have drawings for prizes. Usually the prizes are pretty great. They had already done the drawing before we left....and, of course, I didn't win. I NEVER win. As I was walking out the door, Joe (Dean of Students/Advisor for Student Government/A zillion other things/the greatest guy I've ever met) informed me that after they had done the drawing he had the bucket of tickets, and decided to randomly pull one out. Guess whose name was on it. Yeah.....mine. My name would get drawn when it doesn't count! I was sooo mad! Why couldn't he have pulled that one out two minutes earlier?? I told him he was welcome to get me a prize anyway. I'm sure I will get my prize next week sometime.....yeah.

We decided that the 90's were a fashion faux pas in and of themselves.

Also, HAPPY 20th EMILY!!!!! Love you!

P.S. I have been craving a Fenway Frank for the last few days. It's killing me. I want to go to Boston sooo bad!

Ducks and Dancing!

Well, today wasn't anything too thrilling. It was good though. My Art History class got cancelled. I like when that happens. Only, it was cancelled because my professor had to take her husband to the hospital. That makes me feel bad. Also, I got a very precious present in the mail today! I loved that. For those of you who didn't send that, my address is 330 E 30th Street Apt 313 Buena Vista, VA 24416. Feel free to send me presents. I even have a mailbox! (it's a little lonely right now though...hint hint) I tried to go for a run today for the first time in weeks. I don't know if you knew, but Virginia is soooo steamy hot! I tried to push through it but it was not super fun and refreshing like I like it to be. Also, there is literally nowhere to run in this town! BV isn't even a mile long! And for someone who isn't interested in running up hills...yeah, there's no hope. I will keep trying though. Probably I will have to start going later so it's not so hot though. After my run...if you can call it that....I went to an activities committee meeting. We have a 90's themed dance tomorrow so we are getting ready for that. We didn't accomplish much but it was a super fun meeting. Branden (the in-charge kid) left to get some paintbrushes for our poster. While he was gone, we worked on figuring out what 90's songs we wanted to play at the dance.....aka we had a dance party. We were dancing a singing to Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears very crazily and very loudly. When Branden got back, he informed us that he could hear us long before he got to the building. Ha! He also brought a bag of chocolate with him. That made the "meeting" even more fun. Also, we fed the baby ducks and I got a T-shirt! The joys of being involved. Now I am just chilling like I didn't get to last night. Try to give me homework right now professor! I'm not doing it! Ha okay I'm done. Goodnight.