ninenineohnine

I've had an awesome at school for the past week and a half! So far its been crazy..but great. I honestly find my classes interesting and think that I can handle the amount of work it will take to do well. Also, I just love being here. The campus is beautiful and I love the social atmosphere and how friendly everyone is. I'm getting to know my way around pretty well, although something pretty funny happened the other day in regards to that. I was walking out of my biology class and exited the building through what I thought was the right door. I just kind of kept walking, assuming I'd eventually find something I recognized. I was probably wandering for about 4 or 5 minutes when a guy stepped up beside me and said, "you don't have any idea where you're going do you?". A little embarrassed, I admitted that I was a little lost and asked if he could point out which direction i should head to get to the wilkinson center. (student center building) To my surprise, he just laughed and said "don't ask me..I was following you!"

I thought it was pretty funny :) We found our way just a minute or two later but it just goes to show how big and confusing the BYU campus can seem to a newbie like me.

Holly Morris is the Best!

I just want to give a huge thank you to Holly Morris for making my blog all pretty and cute. She's my brother's awesome girlfriend and another person I'm really lucky to have out at BYU with me. Thank you Holly!

A crazy weekend leading to a crazy week

Hello again:) I've made my way out to Utah finally! I'm staying at my aunts house spending time with the family before I start school. Short recap of the last few days?

Thursday: Had my last workout at Fitness First. This was actually really sad..I've spent so much time there, especially in the past few months and i've grown to love that place and the people that work there. I'm looking forward to checking out BYU's gym but it'll never quite be the same. After that, I spent some quality time with my awesome little sister, Taylor, while I was finishing up my packing. I really love her so much and am going to miss being around her :( We discovered that the word 'crisps' is really fun to say...as weird as that sounds. It seemed pretty funny at the time:) After I was all packed and ready to go, I went with Tay and my parents to the Cheesecake Factory (my personal favorite). So basically that was awesome..I got some crusted chicken romano which was delicious (its kinda what I get every time..its that good and it reminds me of my brother). We also had shared two types of cheesecake..both of which i highly reccomend. The first one was a chocolate coconut cheesecake (yum) and the second was a pinneapple upside down cake layered with traditional cheesecake (double yum). After lunch, we walked around the mall for a minute and then headed out to the airport. I was very happy to find a 'virginia is for lovers' t-shirt (which i've been wanting) right there in dulles airport. I said my last goodbyes to my awesome family..went through security and headed to my flight. It felt weird walking to the gate by myself...it just made it that much more real to me. I cried most of my first flight..mostly just thinking about good times i've had with my family and the look on taylor's face as I was leaving. I think the lady sitting next to me thought I was really strange though..I was trying really hard to stop crying, but you know how that goes. Slightly embarrassing, but its not like I'm ever going to see her again. On my second flight I was sandwiched between two guys in their mid-twenties. The flight was delayed an hour, plus it was a 3 hour flight so we actually got to know eachother pretty well. The guy to my left, Brad, was flying out to University of Utah from michigan to go back to school for his third year. He told me about living on lake michigan and the people there and the differences between that and utah. He seemed like a pretty interesting person. The guy to my right had just graduated from Utah State and had gone home to philadelphia for a while but was now returning to Utah to propose to his girlfriend. He never told me his name, but I hope all goes well for him in that! Once the flight was over, I parted ways with my new friends and went to my aunts house where i quickly fell asleep. ( it was about 2 a.m. eastern time)

Friday: My poor cousin, Aaron, is suffering from some sort of flu and I woke up friday morning to the sound of him throwing up. Not super pleasant, but I felt really bad for him. It sounded pretty miserable. Anyways, I went shopping for my dorm stuff at target wtth my grandma:) I ended up getting everything i needed except for the cute stuff which i'm waiting to go shopping with emma for. After shopping, my grandma had everyone on that side of the family over to hang out/eat food/play on this huge inflatable waterslide she has. It was a lot of fun to see my cousins and catch up with my aunts and uncles. In the evening, we saw Julie and Julia which I thought was a great movie. It inspired me to try cooking more except now I can't really do that anymore, seeing as i'm going to be living in a dorm with no kitchen. Still, I reccommend the movie:)

Saturday: Worked on the family cabin up in the mountains all day. I have to say..by the end of the day I was pretty worn out, but I had a lot of fun using the nail gun and other various tools to put pannelling up on the exterior of the cabin. It's gonna look great when its finnished..though that could be several years from now;) its a huge project building a cabin..and even when you have a lot of people working on it, that can cause its own problems. Its a little thing we learned about in AP goverment called 'gridlock'. It occurres when you have 'too many cooks in the kitchen' (yes mrs. bria I remember!) and progress slows. A lot of people trying to make important decisions with differing opinions can get a little messy. As for me, I just do what they tell me to do with a smile on my face...and i'm secretly glad that that is my role. After the cabin, I went to dinner with a friend who lives in salt lake. Its great to have people like him looking out for me. I don't know quite how i'd feel if I didn't have any family or friends out here to have my back:) After dinner I came down to Springville to stay with my other set of grandparents before the big conference.

If you think things are busy and crazy now..just wait for this coming week. I'd say it definitely competes for biggest week of my life. I am so looking forward to it.

I hope my family knows that I miss them..and I hope my friends from A-town know I miss them too and wish them the best of luck in their own college experiences. Well, I'm gonna roll out. Until next time:)

Awake at 3:45

Some nights..i just can't sleep. So even though I already posted a blog today..I'll just share a few more thoughts and pictures before I fall asleep.

I tried creating a song with Garage Band just a few moments ago. For the most part it was easy to understand but I still have a lot to learn. I had a lot of great background stuff but I wanted to add in a violin solo and didn't really know how to go about doing that when I don't play violin. I was pretty sure they had them on garage band...i just don't know how to access it. Once i'm done with the song I'll attempt to put it up here.

Tomorrow I'm going waterskiing/tubing/wakeboarding with a guy from our ward. Should be exciting. It definitely fits in with the squeeze-in-all-fun-before-i-leave plan. I've been waterskiing/tubing tons of times before and its something I enjoy a lot. I doubt it will live up to its full fun potential though because I can't fall asleep! BTW..the flowers I'm posting pictures of are all ones I found in my grandma's garden while I was out there in May. She has lots and lots of beautiful flowers..I couldn't help but take a few pictures. I wonder if any of them will still be alive when I get out there in a few days.
Speaking of pictures, I'm trying to take lots more than usual in these last few days before I'm off. So far since I set that goal i've been pretty pathetic, but hopefully I'll step it up tomorrow on the boat, tuesday when i go on a bike ride, and wednesday when I babysit the Semlers for the last time. I mean, its my last chance to take these pictures! You'd think i'd be more motivated. I know for sure that I'll be taking lots during the foundations of leadership conference as well as freshman orientation at BYU.

Well...pointless ramblings or not, I believe this blog entry has done its job. Its now 4:00 a.m. and I'm going to sleep. Until next time:)

The first of many

Where to start? My name is Kelly and I figured I'd start a blog to record memories and thoughts as I go through my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I currently have 4 days left until I leave safe little Ashburn Virginia and step out into the big old world on my own. (i know that sounds a little dramatic) Still, I am quite excited :). No i haven't started packing because I don't really know where to start.
So I figured I'd begin with recapping some highlights from my summer. As you'll soon learn about me, I absolutely love lists so here is lovely list number one:

Highlights/memories--summer '09

• Graduation- Officially my last day of being a student at Stone Bridge High School and first day of a whole new chapter of my life. No, I didn't cry but I did feel pretty sentimental about leaving all my great friends from high school. The actual graduation ceremony was average (I've been to all of them since freshman year for choir) but still super exciting. I'm not even really sure if its hit me that I'm done with high school yet. Maybe the first day of classes at BYU?
• Beach Trip With Brittany and Shannon- kay so technically this occurred before graduation but I didn't realize this until just now. oh well :) This was a really fun beach trip with my girlies to Virginia Beach. We scored great deals on our hotel room and our food and basically spent three great days on the beach getting FRIED. seriously. we were all burnt soo badly. I think i was the worst tho...my back and stomach were bright red and blistery. Anyways, besides all that it was great fun talking like new yorkers, jumping in the waves, boogie boarding, failing miserably with the umbrellas, walking on the boardwalk, searching for sonic, listening to great music and so much more. Never gonna forget this.
• First Attempt at dying my hair...ever- can't say this was an entirely positive experience. It all started the night of graduation when I decided to lighten my dirty blonde hair myself with a little store bought dye. Poor choice. It looked pretty unnatural and I was unhappy with it. SO I decided to go in and let the professionals fix it for me. Also a very poor choice. I ended up with even worse and more unnatural hair. It was seriously a strange bright yellowy color. Embarrassing! Lastly, I went to a different solon to have them give it a try. Hours and several colors later, I ended up with dark brownish reddish hair that I actuay kinda liked. Its faded a bit since then but i'm still pretty happy with it over all. It was a stressful experience but hey, I figure everyone needs a dramatic hair story and I learned my lesson: don't attempt to dye your hair yourself! I just want to thank my parents for putting up with this particular dilemma and paying for me to get my hair dyed a bunch of different times. I'm grateful they understand how important it its to me.
• The Intense Job Search of Summer 09- I'm sure plenty of people can relate to me on this one. I spent WEEKS searching and searching for a job for this summer! My two main problems were that 1. Im 17 and most places require their employees to be at least 18...2. I could only work for about 2 months because I'm leaving. Given that, it was very difficult to find places that would work. I applied everywhere from cydes to express to the lansdowne resort. All of them had issues. I eventually found a 2 week job as a counselor at a cheerleading camp. Although this job didn't seem ideal (its only 2 weeks and i don't have all that much cheerleading experience) I took it and decided to make the best of it and do other random things as well (mainly babysitting). Overall, the job search was stressful but I was happy in the end and hopefully next summer will be much more successful!
• Spontaneous Trip to Canada- So randomly one sunday afternoon, my parents announced to my sister and I that the following weekend we'd be taking a spontaneous road trip to niagra falls and palmyra, New York. Can I just say that its really fun to be random like that? I hope that when I'm older and have a more stable life (aka money) I'll be able to do things like that. It was really fun driving up there with everyone in the car, listening to music. Tay, my mom and dad helped me with my lists of overrated and underrated people and things. Thanks to them, those are both quite long:) We saw some beautiful scenery along the way and even got a little lost thanks to someone deciding that they knew better than the GPS (love you Dad). Still, we got to Canada and had time to walk around Niagra falls a little before going to bed. It surprised all of us that the city of Niagra falls is so Vegas-y. They had bright lights and casinos and a big ferris wheel. I definitely expected it to be all nature-y and woodsy. nope. The next day we had some issues with the rain but luckily that only lasted an hour or so. We got to see niagra falls from multiple angles, the CRAZY rapids that are close by, a cool movie about crazy people and stunts they do off of/around Niagra falls, and walked around the city some more. On the way home that evening, we went to the Pageant in Palmyra to support our good friends Andie Schindler, Rob Swasey, and the Lewis famiy. It was awesome for the first half, but unfortunately, a huge thunderstorm came in and they had to cancell the rest of it. I still enjoyed what I got to see. All in all, the trip to Niagara was super fun. I got to spend time with my awesome family, ate far too many mints, and tried to say 'eh' as much as possible. I'd call that a success:)
• Cheer Camp- Soon enough, it came time to do the cheerleading camp. This camp was located in Lansdowne at the conference center with DMB sports group. It was composed of about 30 little girls, ages 6-10. The first day I was pretty nervous because there was only the Camp director, one other counselor and me to entertain these girls all day for two weeks! It took a LOT of patience but I think I started to get the hang of it. Unfortunately, there was an incident that occurred the first week I was working there. During pool time, a little boy from another camp almost drown in the pool. It was a very scary experience for everyone involved and really showed me how fragile life is. I don't want to get too deep but it really affected me. The rest of camp after that went smoothly along with the girls' final performance. Honestly, I was happy when it was over, but I do miss my cheer girls now.
• 
• Since Cheer camp I've been doing very random things, and none of them quite deserve their own paragraph so here are the random little things i've been doing since then:
• bike rides on the W&OD
• got my wisdom teeeth out (ouch!)
• saw 500 days of summer (great movie)
  
• hangin with my churchy friends at our awesome all-night party
• babysitting Joey and Grace Semler (my little cutie pies) lots!
  
• shark week!
• lots of Skype/ichat with Braydon as well as other friends
• moving into scott's room so that Tay can move into mine (bigger project than it sounds!)
• Getting ready for school in general

(My future Roommate, Emma Fuller and I)

So now as my summer is winding down, I'm both getting super excited and getting sad that I'm finally leaving. I know so many great times await me in Provo, Utah but I can't help but be a little sentimental about the past 11 years I've lived in Ashburn and the past 17.5 years I've lived every day with my parents. There are plenty of things I'm going to miss. Sunsets on Hay road, kickboxing at fitness first, farmers markets in leesburg, jumping on the trampoline with friends late at night, going to church with my family every week, driving Willa (my jeep) around blasting random loud music, costco with my mom on lazy summer days, acai energizer smoothies from robeks, watching cake boss with Brittany and Shannon and so much more will always be fond memories to me. However, I'm okay with the fact that its time to move on to brand new things. Its an opportunity to start fresh..and thats exactly what I need right now. This blog will follow me and my many adventures as I begin my 'new life'. Should be interesting ;)