Mariah

Mariah is one of the members of my good group of friends, but she never wants us to take pictures of her. She isn't a fan of photos or the camera, but today I saw her walking out of the lobby of our apartment building looking very cute! She had an exciting outing planned and FINALLY gave me permission to take her picture and put it on my blog. This ladies and gentlemen, is my friend Mariah :)

The Showcase

Yesterday was the choral showcase! All the BYU choirs performed. I'm in the BYU Womens Choir, and we performed Lift Thine Eyes, Tundra, and Magnificat. It was a lot of fun. We have to wear a lot of makeup when we're performing on stage, and I actually learned how to apply it all myself! I'm so proud. One of the other girls in the choir did my hair, and it looked so nice I slept on it and am wearing it again today. I love being in the choir!

We actually ended up getting a standing ovation, and the directors had to come out and bow three times! BYU Choir is the best!!

We Love to See the Temple

This morning Erin, Gideon, and I woke up early this morning to go to the temple! I went to the Family History Center in the library yesterday, and one of the missionary couples helped me find some names from my family that needed baptisms and confirmations done. I was surprised we were able to find the two that we did because my family is sort of obsessed with geneology, and it seems like everyone has already been done. I was super excited to get to bring two of my own family members with me to the temple today!

After we got out of the temple, we waited for the sun to come up and hit Moroni. It was really pretty.

It's starting to get colder here, and me and Erin were both pretty chilly with our wet hair. The leaves are all falling off of the trees and the mountains are getting snowy in some parts and are changing colors. It's so beautiful here!

I'm so grateful for temples, and for good friends to go visit them with! Thanks Erin & Gideon for the wonderful temple trip this morning!

Studio C

Had a super cool day today!! My friend from Florida, Cris, asked me on Sunday if I wanted to go meet some of the cast members of Studio C since he had won tickets online. Of course I said yes!! So today was the day, and we went to a theater in Vineyard, and we got to watch the season premier episode of Studio C, have a Q&A, and we got to take SELFIES! There were 5 events going on all over Utah, and there were two cast members at every event. The two cast members at the event we were at were...

Stephen&Whitney!

Unfortunately, they said that they didn't have time to do autographs (sorry Kaycie, I tried) but we did get to take a few selfies. It was a lot of fun, and Season 7 looks like it's going to be awesome!!

Me&Cris waiting in line

Cold Weather & Close Friends

There's snow on the mountains!! It's starting to get colder here, and this Florida girl is not appreciative of it. The leaves are all changing colors, and yesterday about half the mountain got covered in snow. Soon it'll be down here, and I'm so not ready. Today I'm more prepared than I was yesterday though, my Aunt Kim and I went shopping for winter apparel yesterday. We had to start from square one and get basics like boots, long sleeve shirts, a coat, and a hat. We got some other cute things too. We had a lot of fun.

I also got my first package from home this week! My family sent me some fun things like fall decorations and candy. Candice was a little hesitant about decorating for Halloween before October started, but once I started she had to agree that she thinks my decorations are cute. They're a lot of fun. My brother Chase even threw in a little keychain with the laughing emoji on it into the package. It hangs above my bed on my flipflops.

Today at church I got my calling. I'm the Ward Prayer Leader. That basically means that I'm in charge of Ward Prayer every Sunday, and I have a committee with two other people in my ward to help me out in planning it. It's basically just a fun/spiritual end to the Sunday. I'm really excited, I think I'll be good at it.

Also on Sundays, my good group of friends and I get together and we usually have a game night. Today we got together at Gideon's apartment and we made baked potatoes, chili, had some soda, and watched the Best Two Years. It was a lot of fun. I really got blessed with such an amazing group of friends.

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*also included in these photos is our friend Mariah, but she's a little camera shy and thus isn't featured.

I'm also in an acapella group. The name is Attention, and so far we haven't done much. I'm the bass part, and it seems like it's going to be a lot of fun! My friend Shayla (picture above holding up peace sign) is also in the group. We're going to have a lot of fun together. I'm excited. :)

Happenings

Tuesdays are my favorite days. I don't have class until 1:00, so I can literally sleep in about as much as I want to and then I have my dance class. Social dance is seriously the most fun class ever. Today we finished learning the moves to the Foxtrot. It's a really fun dance to perform, but something I've learned is that it really does make a difference who your partnered with. If your partner isn't quality, then you aren't quality. It's kind of annoying actually, having to be so dependent on someone else to make you look good.

I found out a couple days ago that I have an interview on Friday. My interview is for going to Spain for winter semester! I'm really nervous for it, and I think I'm going to dress up. The only downside on dressing up, is that I don't have time to go home after my last class to change, so I'll have to be in my nice clothes all day. Oh well. It'll so be worth it though if I end up being one of the lucky few that get to study in Spain for next semester.

I also auditioned for an acapella group today. I'm not sure how it went, the other girls there were very good. My friend Shayla who's already in the group told me about the audition and said that they were looking for a low Alto. I can sing low Alto parts! I'm an Alto II in Womens Choir, and it's a lot of fun. The music we're doing is absolutely beautiful and I can't wait to sing it for Choral Showcase coming up in a week.
                                                
I also went to BYU Dance in Concert on Saturday. It was totally awesome! I loved every second of it. I especially enjoyed the Hoop Dance and a cabaret dance performed to the song Gravity. It really was an amazing performance. I had to go for my social dance class, but I'm glad that it was mandatory because I really liked it and probably wouldn't have gone had it not been required. I even got to sit in the fourth row! My seat was incredible. But there were some really annoying people behind me that were talking and making comments the whole time. Super lame. Other than that, the performance was amazing.

Other than that, I've had a pretty average week so far. Classes, homework, friends, and food. Nothing terribly exciting has happened yet. I am still loving this amazing school! I'm so glad I get to be a part of BYU!

Some chalk art outside the JFSB

Dallin H. Oaks at a Tuesday morning devotional.

The Sunflower

Okay, so I found this sunflower on the floor of the HFAC, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. It had no stem or anything and was basically completely flat on the bottom.

So I decided to try and give it new life, and put in the ground by the library.

I visited it every day to check up on its progress.. and every day it died a little bit more.

Until one day, me and my friend found the sunflower like this.

We thought it was totally gone. So my friend kinda nudged it with his foot, and we realized that it had GROWN A STEM!

The little guy had grown an actual stem that was in the ground! It was so cool, so we covered it back up with dirt and put some water on it. We came back the next day..

BOOM. Healthy, normal looking sunflower. I'm so proud of it.

Anyways, now I go back just about every day and look at it. It's starting to die again, but it is getting closer to winter so I'm not terribly shocked. I'm just so proud that it resurrected even for a short time. Even other people like my sunflower. I've told some people about it, and now there's about 5 or 6 people that know about my sunflowers resurrection and give it some love every time they walk by.

So that's the story of my beautiful sunflower.

My Friends

First, I must start with my roommates.

My roommates are so awesome! Their names are Candice, Rachel, and Abi, and they are the sweetest girls I could hope to have in my dorm with me. I haven't taken a picture with Rachel or Abi yet, but I do have one with Candice.

Aside from my roommates, I have made some other friends that live in my same building and also live in some other buildings. My friend group includes Spencer, Shalya, Gideon, Miranda, Mariah, and Erin. We meet up on Sundays and play games, and we also all have a pretty vibrant group chat. Someone is always sharing something or going somewhere, so we keep pretty busy and pretty informed about each others lives. This is a couple of us playing a game called Mau.

Another good friend I've made here is Joseph. We've hung out a couple times and done some fun things like go see Finding Dory, seeing the first home football game, eating way too much ice cream, watching some Divine Comedy auditions, and making pancakes. (Without eggs.) On one of these group dates that we went on, we even read some of the Book of Mormon since one the girls hadn't finished her reading yet for her class. I had to laugh a little bit since only at BYU would reading the scriptures be something everyone was okay with doing on a group date.

Finally, there's my new family. My Family Home Evening family that is. We all went bowling as a family for our first Monday night activity, and this upcoming activity we've rented a dog to play with. (You can rent dogs! Who knew!?) A group of us from my family got together last Thursday and went to see the Womens Volleyball game vs Univeristy of Utah. It was so close!! But unfortunately, did not quite go our way. We had a lot of fun going though, and I even got a picture with Cozmo, the BYU mascot!

Finally, I have to mention how many people I've ran into here. There are so many people that I've seen here that I've known from other places.

Cheryl Pearcy, Aviano Italy

Johnny Dance, Elder from my home ward who I'm actually related to!

Cris Torres. Tampa, Florida

Alex and Taylor Ostler, Aviano Italy

Anyways, it's a crazy small world. I love being here at BYU and be able to meet all of these amazing, wonderful people!!