Graduation!!

It's official!
I am getting some work done on my computer so for now these are the only pictures you can see for now. I will post more later.

The Best Girls' Night EVER!

Have you ever wondered what the best girls' night EVER would include? Well, here you go:

Chinese food


Getting my ears pierced for the first time (I'm all grown up!)


Awesome Roommates


Random Picture taking

 

 

A Chick Flick at the Dollar Theater
with Chocolate Mint Cookies and other Goodies

and a Slurpee for the ride home!

An April Fool... that's me!

Here is the account of the happenings in my apartment on April Fool's Day given by my roommate with permission:

It started with the stroke of genius. Dying Lynnae's milk green. See, Lynnae is a milkaholic, and her milk really means everything to her. It was a near guarantee that she would be having milk for part of her breakfast, because she always does, and lunch, and dinner, and snack. That girl goes through about a gallon and a half a week, all by herself. Anyway, I jumped up and hurried into the kitchen, trying to calm my nervously giggling self with the assurance that I wouldn't get caught, because Lynnae had been up until 3:00 with me, and would still be asleep at 9:30. Well... unfortunately, I forgot that she was meeting a friend and had to shower and do hair and makeup and all that, plus have time to get to wherever she was meeting him. So, she got up like 3 minutes after I had greened her milk. And I mean this was REALLY green. I accidentally put in more than just a couple drops, so it looked like homemade play-dough. Gross! Anyway, I had to leave before she did, so I was disappointed that I would miss her reaction. Lucky for me, she was in too much of a hurry and didn't eat breakfast! So, I came home from school at the same time as her... and I got to witness it. It went something like this.
“Yeah, I was telling my dad that... WHUA??? WHAT IS THIS???”
I had just left the room, and quickly jumped back, looking innocent and curious, and maybe a little confused. “What just happened?”
“Somebody dyed my milk green!!!”
I let my eyes widen and my mouth drop into a wide-open grin. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! That is freaking hilarious! Who did that?!”
“I don't know!” she answered, then yelled, “Michelle! Was it you?”
Michelle came into the room and saw the milk. She half laughed in a, “Wow, that is kinda mean but really funny” sort of way and said, “No, it wasn't me. I swear.”
Lynnae set the milk down, firmly and resolutely. “Oh, I know. It was Angela. It was SO Angela. That is so something Angela would do. Alright, what can I do to get her back?”
And that, my dear brother, is what started it all. Lynnae embarked on a quest to avenge the dying of her milk, and began plotting evil things to do to Angela and Katrine, because I suggested Katrine might have been willing to do it to. She wasn't completely positive which one it was, but had pretty much settled on Angela, yet decided to get Katrine too, just for good measure. We plotted evil things for a while, before she came up with a stroke of genius. She took Katrine's shoes and loaded them into her bed, under her blankets, then slipped pennies beneath her sheets, for a sort of “princess and the pea” effect. Then, we combined efforts against Angela, Katrine and Janelle too, just so my dear engaged roommate wouldn't be left out. We took all the clothes out of Katrine's closet, and put them in Angela's closet, and Angela's clothes in Janelle's closet and Janelle's clothes in Katrine's closet.
Then came my brilliance. Michelle. In the process of loading Katrine's clothes into Angela's closet, (Angela and Michelle share a room), I noticed Michelle's teddy bear, affectionately named Belle, sitting on the edge of her bed. My first thought was to dress Belle in something funky, but I decided that robbing Michelle's underwear directly out of her drawer might make her feel just a little too violated. So, I came up with a much more brilliant idea. Kidnapping. Ransom. I took duct tape, folded it in half, and made hand cuffs, a blind fold and a gag. Then, I had to come up with a villain name for my dark deeds. With a little help from Lynnae, the resident “word nerd,” I became “The Nefarious Lady Death-Moon.” Next was the ransom note. It said, “Mommy Michelle help me! The Nefarious Lady Death-Moon wants a million dollars in quarters by sunrise. Leave it in the dumpster. No cops or I will get it!” Then, I took a picture of poor Belle, bound, gagged, blindfolded and holding the note, printed it out, and placed it upon Michelle's pillow. Then I hid the bear.
I almost blew it with the note. Michelle saw it and said, “Savannah, this sounds just like something you would do.”
I should have known that note was too much like my sense of humor. Lynnae saved me on that one, though. Our reactions to seeing the note were convincing enough that she wasn't sure, so she actually asked, “Did you guys do it?” Lynnae, who had nothing to do with it other than helping me figure out a name said, “No, I promise we didn't do it.” Because we didn't. I did it. Mua ha ha!
She is currently texting James, because I asked him to tell her he knows who did it, then pin it on our friend, Jonny Weiss. James is brilliant, because he played with her through text, answering all of her questions honestly but still not revealing anything. Well, all but one. I put her up to asking if the perpetrator's name started with J. He answered that yes, it did, which wasn't exactly honest because my name just doesn't start with J...
We are evil, no?
It gets better.
So, Lynnae decided, to further her vengeance against Angela for the milk thing, to ceran wrap her bed. Unfortunately, we had no saran wrap. So, it was off to the dollar store. We got ceran wrap... and silly string... and girls' underwear to dress Janelle's teddy bear with. See, she has this cute baseball bear wearing a flannel shirt and white shorts. I covered the shorts with pink underwear, then put the young teenager's bra under the shirt, which I left open.
Anyway, we came home with our saran wrap, then attacked Angela's bed. It was the funniest thing to watch Lynnae try to fit herself beneath that mattress as we wrapped it three times. But, we couldn't do it on our own... so we got Janelle to help. The three of us girls were in the process of wrapping her bed, when the door opened. We freaked out, because we thought it was Angela. You should have seen Lynnae, stuck beneath the mattress on the top bunk, launch herself out and over the side. Then Michelle walked in, and we realized we were okay. The look on her face, as she opened the door to discover three girls surrounding her bed, all of which had wide, guilty eyes, clearly said, “Oh no. What are they doing???” Followed by, “Phew! Angela, not me.”
Well, we're still waiting for Angela and Katrine to get home, and Janelle to get back home.
James just revealed to Michelle that the culprit behind the abduction of her darling Belle was the nefarious Jonny Weiss. She's plotting revenge now. I truly wonder how tangled this web of deception will become.
There was one more thing. James came over after sending some very suspicious texts. We knew he was up to something, but we got to him first. As soon as he walked through the door, we bombarded him with silly string. We quickly learned that we were right. He was up to something. He was bringing over a surprise loaf of caramel apple bread to thank Lynnae for her help editing his paper.
Oops. : )
This is a little bit later. Angela just came home. Actually, back up a little. Before she came home, James got his hands on my bottle of silly string. I mauled him. He won. : ( Dang guy dumped me over his head when I tried to tackle him. I got a rug burn on my elbow and skewered myself with my own fingernail.
Anyway, Angela came in. She went in her room. She came back out. She went back in. Next we heard, “I hate you guys.” Unfortunately, she'd had a bad day, so while she kinda laughed and said that any other day she would have been laughing her butt off, it didn't quite have the desired effect.
Katrine was really funny, though. She came in and saw what we did to Angela, then got wide eyes and said, “What did you do to me???” It took her a while to discover her clothes, and I never did see what happened when she found her bed loaded with shoes, but she had a good laugh.
Anyway, so Jonny came over later, and Michelle cornered him. I had sent him a text, warning him that I'd blamed him for a prank I'd played on Michelle, and the poor guy was like, “I didn't do it! I swear! I didn't!” Lynnae goes and gets the ransom note, so he can see what the prank was, and thrusts it at him with an accusatory, “Does this look familiar to you?” He read it and started laughing, but still insisting he was innocent. I started busting up. That was about the point Michelle figured everything out, that I'd set Jonny up. She was like, “I knew it was you! I knew it! That note was just like something you would do!” Yeah... I blew it with the note. Dang! Next time I pull something like that, I'll have to have somebody else write the note. Anyway, after that she made me take pictures with the kidnapped bear, and it was awesome. : )
So, that was my April Fool's day.
Oh, and just so you can get a visual, here are some pictures:

 

  

This would be the Nefarious Lady Death-Moon

 

I paid the random by finding a picture of a million dollar bill and cutting it in quarters. Then I stuck it in a mini dumpster.

 

Now, that just looks gross.

 

Janelle's baseball teddy bear

Graduation Announcement

Whoa! Michelle's Clogging!!

Watch this video of me clogging in my ward talent show! I said, "Whoa!" because most of you know that I am not a very good dancer. This was a dance that I learned for a test in my class a couple of weeks ago. I didn't do so hot on the test, but I can proudly say that this video is the best I've performed it, so I am happy about my progress. Clogging is hard at times, but overall it's fun and good exercise! I received a lot of compliments after the show and people thought I have been clogging for a lot longer than I have, so that's good, right? I tried to post the video directly on here, but it's giving me problems, so just go to this page:

http://gallery.me.com/shell_belle/100272

Mid-Semester Madness!

     This week I ordered my cap and gown for graduation!! I also had an ingenious idea! I decided that I want to start scrapbooking again! I haven't scrapbooked since my freshman year in college and so I decided to scrapbook college highlights and put my diploma at the end of it. I didn't realize how hard it would be to narrow down the pictures. There are so many good things that have happened each year. It has been a lot of fun looking through pictures and revisiting things that have happened, though.
     Good news!! I am hired to work for APX Alarms! Because there are so many people getting hired, for now I will have to take only 20 hours a week, but I am on a waiting list for full-time. I was just told that I am the next person on the list should someone drop. I have been hired to do data entry for them. I probably won't stay there forever, but it is a good job for now. It's something at least!! I plan to start the week after I graduate and I have training on April 13th. I am also considering volunteering as a mentor at the residential treatment center which is right next door to APX.
     Last Friday I went on a date to BYU's Hunger Banquet. It's purpose is to increase people's awareness of the poverty in the world and encourage people to help. The theme for the night was literacy, so they told us facts about education as well as telling us about what is going on. Basically, everyone buys a ticket for the same price, but they are randomly put into three classes, lower, middle, and upper--just as we are when we are born. When we came to the event, those with lower class tickets are seated on the floor that is covered with cardboard and newspaper. They are fed last and have to eat a bowl of rice, beans, and chips shared between five people. Sixty percent of those who bought tickets were placed in this class. This is the percentage of those in this class in the world. Middle class was 25 % of the guests and we (I was in this class) sat in chairs with no table and really close to one another. Middle class is living on the edge (anything bad happening could take them down to poverty) and they have only a little bit of education (we could read one sentence in a paragraph they gave us). We were fed second and we ate a slice of pizza and a hot dog (a really, really good one from a place called J-Dawgs). High class was fed first, a three course meal, including pulled pork, spaghetti, salad, mash potatoes, and ice cream. They were seated at tables and had servers. They were 15 % of the guests and educated. We, at BYU are a part of this 15 %. Before people were served, they asked those with stars on the back of their tickets to stand up and move over to the high class tables. These were all from lower class and they represented the few who manage to do something great to get themselves out of poverty. In addition to this, there were two people who went around named "greed" and "corruption" that did different things throughout the night, mostly showing off their food and stealing food. There were also two really funny people acting as tourists do in third world countries. It was interesting, funny, but kind of sad, too. As we were eating they had a bunch of performances and then a speaker who talked about a local program to help adults who are illiterate.
      Last Wednesday I went with my ward to the Draper Temple open house. It was amazing! It was so beautiful! The last open house I went to I was a junior in high school, so this time it meant so much more to me. I felt the spirit greatly while I was there. Going to the open house made my desire to go to the temple to receive my own endowments (and be sealed for eternity) increase tenfold. I could feel the power that was there and sensed how that power and the blessings could effect my life. The rooms that impressed me the most were the Celestial room and the Sealing room. The first thing you do when you walk into the Celestial room is look up at the huge, beautiful chandelier that hangs in there. It causes you look up at the really high ceiling that is decorated really nice, too. If you don't look up, you miss so much. The room looks kind of plain, but if you follow the light of the chandelier and look up, you take in everything.  It made me think about how it is important for us to "look to God and live" and to "look up" like it says in the scriptures. If you don't, you miss seeing the beauty and blessings that God has to give. The tour ended at the sealing room. This temple has the largest sealing room of all the temples in the church--it can seat 85 people. In a couple of weeks, I will have the opportunity to watch the temple dedication at my stake center. I am very excited to see another one.
     One last thing. A group of friends and I have a new tradition of going tunnel singing every Sunday night in the tunnel by the Marriot Center. I hadn't done tunnel singing since I was in Nauvoo. I think it may be a freshman thing to do because it seems like it's mostly freshman that go, but it has been a lot of fun. Afterwards, everyone comes to my apartment for hot chocolate.

 

Draper Temple

 

Adam and I eating middle class pizza.

Here you can see the lower class on the floor, high class at the tables, and middle class in chairs.

 

Jared, Stephanie, Lynnae, James, Me, Savannah, Janelle, and Jon.

SAD Day!

 

 

Valentine's Day around here is often called Single Awareness Day (SAD). I had the best Valentine's Day ever. For this Valentine's Day I decided that I would make myself up and look nice just because I could. Lynnae, Savannah and I were going to take "glamour" shots", but things happened (which I will explain next) that prevented it. So here is what happened. It truly has been a SAD day. Our plan was to go to Walmart to get groceries and stuff to celebrate V-Day. We got into the car and it wouldn't start, so we asked a friend to jump it for us. We did that and started on our way. Not even half way there, we hear a thumping noise and realize that we got a flat tire! So we pull over as fast as we could. Because of how bad the tire was and how the street was, we couldn't pull completely off the road. The battery was still weak, so we couldn't put our hazard lights on. We got out of the car and saw how bad it was--bad. We checked to see if we had a spare, and fortunately we did and it was a full-sized tire. Meanwhile cars are trying to avoid hitting us as they want to turn. A man pulled up besides us (with his wife) and asked if we could use some help and we told him yes. Thank goodness!! He changed the tire for us. Oh, an important detail I forgot to mention is that it was snowing and really cold. It snowed about four inches while we were there. Anyway, as he was changing the tire, I stood at the back of the car to try to direct the cars so they would not hit us. They came so close to me and car sometimes that it was really scary. We had a few others ask if we were okay, but we also had some others yell at us to move or turn on our hazard lights... impossible. After the tire was fixed and the man left, we were about to leave when Savannah said she couldn't find her keys. Even before this happened, I was laughing. I thought the whole thing was a bit funny and thought, "Bring it on!!" Savannah and Lynnae did pretty well to keep their cool, although Savannah did swear at a couple drivers who were really rude to us. We looked all over for the keys but couldn't find them. We each were saying silent prayers to find them. Keep in mind that every 2 minutes or so a large flow of traffic would come and have to slow down for us for seemingly no reason. Finally, Savannah called her brother, whose car it is, and asked him if he had a spare key, and fortunately he did. As we were waiting we had a lot of both positive and negative people talk to us. It was not so fun especially since we were freezing. I decided that I would go into the car because I was cold and knew that the keys had to be in there. I looked around and decided to look in Savannah's purse although both Lynnae and Savannah had looked in it. And I found the keys!!! Just before I found them, one of our other roommates drove by and stopped in front of us because she recognized us. When we got in the car, the other drivers were being horrible, but fortunately nothing happened and we were able to leave. This is not the end to the tale though. The spare tire was going flat, too, so we had to find a gas station. The first station we went to had a air pump, but it was out of order, so we had to drive further to another one. At first it wasn't working, but then one of the gas station workers came out and helped us. As we were driving to the gas station Savannah noticed that the emergency break wouldn't come off, so we were driving with that on, too. The engine light kept coming on and we could tell the the battery was still weak because other parts of the car that are electrically run were going really slow or not working. Scary! We decided that we would change our plans and go to Macey's instead. Lynnae and I went inside to get food while Savannah drove the car around for half and hour. It seemed to work and everything went well from then on. I was still tense from it all, but we got home safe. I was only tense after we left the side of the road because I was so sure that worst possible thing that could happen next is to hit another car or be hit by another car. Luckily that didn't happen.

A couple of weeks ago my roommates Savannah, Lynnae, and Monique made Valentine's Day predictions for everyone in the aparment. Mine were the following (neither of which came true): Michelle:  Will get a job interview and effectively forget it's Valentine's Day until 9:17 p.m.  She will then come out into the front room to discover that a secret admirer has left her a bouquet of lilies and white rosebuds. 

Michelle:  Will head to the Library for some dedicated studying around brunch-time.  While there, she'll turn a corner and crash into somebody.  Her books will fly everywhere, and her stranger will help her pick them up.  In a romantic gesture never before seen in the Harold B. Lee, they'll reach for the same book and their hands will meet.  Eyes will follow, and for the first time, Michelle will see the handsome, glowing young man with whom she collided.  He'll introduce himself as a BYU grad student and grandson of a general authority – an apostle.  They'll talk for a while, which will turn into a date.  By the end of the night they'll know they are meant to be, and Michelle will have a ring on her finger before I go into the MTC.

However, one of the prediction made for Monique, who will be leaving for her mission to Nauvoo in a couple of weeks, came true (with the help of her roommates and some good humored guys). Here is what hers was:

Monique:  Seventeen guys, whom she may or may not know, will propose marriage, presenting a real quandary.  How can she possibly have gotten seventeen marriage proposals!?! O_O  She's going on a mission for Pete's sake!  How can she tell seventeen guys that no, she can't marry them?!  She will politely refuse each one, then tell her brother about it, who will follow her around with a shotgun, just waiting for someone else to try it.  No, make that an AK-47.

They managed to get 17 guys to do it!! It was really funny to see how the guys did it. Our close friends did it in person. We recorded two of them. James proposed to Monique by giving her a rose made of foil and had music playing in the background. She said yes and hugged him, thinking that he didn't expect that, which he didn't. But she didn't expect what came next, either. Loud music came on and Lafe, a really funny guy in the ward who is in my fhe group, came out of a closet with a stick to duel James over Monique. James was defeated and Lafe proposed to Monique with other music playing in the background. Later Jared proposed to her with two rings. He left us when we went back to the apartment, but later came back with a letter written to Monique professing his love and explaining to her why he had to leave her right then. It was so funny. Later we all listened in on a phone proposal. This guy was so long winded and wouldn't let Monique talk. He was saying so many funny things. The the phone disconnected right when he proposed! She called him back and said yes. Then he actually set a date for two years from now, since she is going on a mission in a couple of weeks. He is the only one who did that. To see the video, look at my photo gallery by clicking on the recent pictures link.

After that we went to the tumbling gym that I went to on my birthday (where I sumo wrestled for the first time) and then ended the fantastic day with a toast (non-alcoholic Sparkling Wild Berry) to being single on Valentine's Day. We also enjoyed some tasty strawberries dipped in chocolate. Once again, if you want to see more pictures, click on the link.