Marisa- Sept 23

September 23, 2012

What did Marisa do this week? Nothing too exciting really… On Monday our FHE went up the canyon and had a little barbeque, which was really fun. On Tuesday Missy and Clark and family came down from Salt Lake to take Jared and me to dinner, which was really fun. It was great to see them. Also, on Tuesday I tried one of Jamba Juice’s secret flavors for the first time: white gummy bear. It was really, really good and actually tasted like a white gummy bear! If you haven’t tried any secret flavors, you should look up the secret menu online and try some. It’s pretty cool :)

Wednesday I got to meet up with my Spanish “study buddy” for the first time. She’s from Bolivia, and basically we just get together and practice speaking each other’s languages, so I get practice speaking Spanish and she gets practice with English. It’s pretty cool. Thursday was just a hectic day of homework-doing, which wasn’t really fun :P Friday was also pretty busy, and I got to go to BYU’s International Cinema to see a movie about Mexican and Central American immigrants trying to get to the United States. It was really sad but it was great to watch a movie in Spanish!

Yesterday my roommates and I were busy cleaning and catching up on homework and sleep. 4 of my roommates had dates last night and I, this must be surprising, didn’t haha. I know this will happen eventually. I can’t go the whole year without getting a single date, right? Right? Haha oh well. This morning I was able to be part of the Brigham City Temple Dedication, which was really cool.

It’s been pretty interesting to see people I know from back home. For a lot of my roommates it’s totally normal to see people to know because they’re from Provo, but not many of us Iowan’s make the trek all the way out here for school. This week though, I met up with Spencer Mitchell for the first time in several years and got to kind of catch up with him, which was cool. I also saw (elder) Cody Bringham this morning but didn’t get to talk to him. I’ve also seen quite a few kids from our stake on campus, which is always fun.

(Marisa studying and roomate on netflix)

I’m sad to report our football team isn’t doing so hot right now, but I’ll be there to support them next week against Hawaii! We should hopefully win that one… fingers crossed…Anyway, life is good and I’m really enjoying college. I feel like this University was made for me. It’s everything I want and need all in one fun little Mormon bubble. I’m kind of craving chocolate covered cinnamon bears right now…if any of you come through Provo, make sure to stop by the BYU bookstore and try some of those. They are so good…I hope all is going well back home and with all my family! :)

Sweet Rolls, Practicum, and the busyness of it all!

The week: I made more sweet rolls, because I love them. Odd that no one in my house does.

Tyler was busy practicing OPUS, showchoir choreography camp, and school work. Kayla worked (and had to miss a fun stake activity because she couldn’t find anyone to cover for her) and had tons of homework.

Alayna had OPUS practice, running club, STOMP, and homework. She also made a really cool painting at Activity Days this week. They had to paint their testimony and she did the beautiful painting of the stable where Jesus was born.

We got our AMAZING family pictures by Brandi which are posted on facebook and I will post here soon. They turned out great!

Saturday: We did a family bike ride around the neighborhood. Trying to get in shape before the Color Run. We cleaned the house, made 9 jars of homemade salsa, picked a gallon of raspberries, did the laundry, etc. It was a long day but we got tons done. Bob even fixed the dying dryer with a $7 part. Its nice to have it up and running.

Practicum: Well, I survived my 3 days of Practicum at Linn Grove. I worked with 2 great women in their library and I had an AMAZING time. I realized how much I actually liked the elementary school.

My integration lesson was slightly short of a massive disaster. Teaching 2^nd graders technology when the computers are wigging is like herding cats. I completed the lesson, they liked me and the marshmallow snowmen I made them, but that was it. I’m pretty sure it scared the teacher that I am actually in a Masters program because I don’t think she was too impressed. At least its done.

We are praying VERY hard that a position will open for me in the coming year!!

Then, I had to head back to normal work Thursday. Since I cant find the words to describe how I feel about work the past month, I shall share a meme that sums it up beautifully!

Marisa 9-16-12

September 16, 2012

All my classes are really enjoyable and I’m learning so much. I have great teachers that really know what they’re talking about. I’m starting to make friends in my classes and I’m somehow keeping on top of all the work. The only bad thing right now is that I have no idea what any of my grades are in any of my classes. The University is beta testing a new online grade book program thing, which in theory is really cool, but it won’t allow us to see our grades at all. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to see how I’m actually doing! We turned in our first essay for American Heritage (outer darkness) last week and got them back this week. Turns out I did better than the average! But the average score was 5/10…I’m happy though. I’m going to survive this class. I had to write a paper last night completely in French, so we’ll see how that one turns out.

On Wednesday night for my guitar class I got to go out to dinner to this place called Guru’s where my guitar teacher and his band was performing (this place has amazing sweet potato fries for anyone who comes through Provo), and we get extra credit for going. It was awesome!

On Friday we had an adult session of Stake Conference, which is weird because we’re all adults and we all have to go, but it went for 2 hours straight on a Friday night and it was a little hard to get through. The talks were great but I was falling asleep a little bit. It’s actually kind of amazing how I’m pretty much sleeping in every day compared to high school, but I’m still soooo tired. Oh well. I guess I’m not as young as I used to be ;) We have regional conference, though, today and Dallin H. Oaks is going to be presiding, which I’m really excited about. It may not be a big deal for all these Utahns, but it’s kind of really awesome for me :D

Yesterday our stake took a huge trip to Brigham City (about 2 hours away) to go to the open house of the new temple. It was a really long trip both ways in a really stuffy bus, but it was worth it. When we got there, the line was huge and part of the time we were stuck out in the hot sun, but once we got inside it was really nice. It was beautiful. Next Sunday they are going to broadcast the dedication in our Marriott so we can all kind of attend. I already have my ticket, but I still need to find a white handkerchief…I might just end up using a tissue or something haha.

I’ve had a lot of creamery ice cream this week, so hopefully I won’t get that freshman 15 haha. Oh I also went shopping this week with a roommate and it was super stressful! None of us have a car, so we had to rent a car from hertz, which we only get for an hour, and we didn’t think about how much traffic there would be around the time we reserved, so we had to rush there, run around the store, and then rush back. I got a bunch of stuff I needed, though, so it’s all good haha.

I didn’t get to watch the game last night against Utah, but I heard all about it. Very very sad indeed :( Still no dates yet, but I think we are inviting a room of guys over for a Sunday dinner tonight, so maybe soon…? As you can see, this will be the most important part of my update every week haha. I love you all!

Angels Among Us

Angels Among Us

I think sometimes the phrase, “When it rains, it pours”, really is a true statement. Sometimes it seems to pour, and pour, and pour and you find yourself praying for a drought. The thing I learned this week was that there really, truly, are angels among us.

I’ve had a couple of super tough weeks due to the harshness of others as well as other things that combined to make it “pour”. Alayna must have picked up on the fact that I was going through a tough time, because every night she has set up a “personal station” for me where we watch favorite shows together while she rubs my back and shoulders and rubs my feet with a special lotion she has created. How sweet that she not only noticed, but realized she could help in some small way, which was HUGE for me.

Today, she and Tyler ran to Aldi’s to grab something for lunch and she bought me flowers with the money she earned this week. I was so incredibly touched!

This week at work was brutal in more ways than one. We have no AC and of course, they wouldn’t cancel school (like Des Moines did). The library has no cross breeze. It felt like an oven and the air was so heavy. I spent every day literally dripping wet and trust me, on days like that, don’t wear clothes that show sweat! The worst day it was about 90 degrees in the actual library and I felt like I was literally melting. A kid who is a regular during 2^nd period, came in and had bought me 2 ice cold root beers!! I wanted to break down crying. I was so grateful! (He asked me last week as a joke what my favorite soda was. He is sneaky). Then, that afternoon, another boy came in and said, “Do you like Dark Chocolate?” Duh! “Have you heard of a candy called Reisens?” Heck, yes! “Well, I went to Wal-Mart this morning and got some for you.” Again, I got all misty-eyed. How did those 2 boys know I needed that so much?

I went to take a nap one day, when I woke up, Bob had done all the dishes! He also took me on a fun date for dinner.

I have a tough week ahead. Mon/Tues/Wed are my practicum as full days at Linn Grove Elementary. I am SOOOOO excited and I even get to eat lunch with Alayna every day! It also means I can knock out 2 of the 5 modules for my Master’s class, which has been a nightmare.

Also, our dryer broke. Figures right? Had to jump on along with everything else. Bob spent some time on it and thinks he figured out the problem, so he ordered a part and hopefully it’ll work.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I thought going down to 3 kids would make life less busy. It didn’t work.

Marisa! We miss you!!

Alayna: She started the school running club this week. I am excited to have a new running buddy. We are doing the Color Run the 1^st weekend of October and possibly doing the Turkey Trot in November. She has had OPUS and orchestra rehearsals and then joined the Art club as well. She loves being so involved and I think its great.   She also lost 2 teeth on the same day at school.

Tyler: Tyler has been very busy with showchoir. Last week it was 10 hours of rehearsal. Although he complains about how tired and sore he is, he seems to really enjoy it! He also joined SODA club. His new obsession is the Nook I am piloting. He has been like a reading machine. Its funny, because I keep trying the Nook, but I would so much rather have an actual book in my hands. I guess I am still a little old school.

Kayla: She has been busy working quite a bit, and has tons of homework. She has been preparing for the ACT too. She LOVES her graphic design class and thinks this could be a possible career path. She went on a fun backyard campout with friends last night and had a lot of fun.

I have also been very impressed with something she has done so quietly that I am not sure anyone has noticed. She has a friend who recently joined the church and other than her older sister who is going on a mission, she is the only member in her family. She is also too young to drive. Kayla picks her up every Sunday, she sits with our family, and she takes her home. She takes her home from seminary each day too. Talk about an angel….

Blankets: We also started making the receiving blankets for my parents to take on their humanitarian mission to Ghana in January!  We hope to make enough to fill a suitcase we can send with them.  It’s not every day our family gets a cool opportunity like this so we are very excited!

Well, I guess that’s it for the week at the Hart household. I’ll sum it all up by this quote I saw on Pinterest this week: “Don’t forget in the dark what you learned in the light”.

Marisa- 9-8-12

September 8, 2012

Well school has been really good this week. I dropped one of my French classes, which was causing me a lot of stress, so I feel very relieved. I’ve of course had a lot of homework this week, but I’ve somehow been able to stay on top of it all and do pretty well in my classes so far. I really enjoy my classes though and I feel like I’m starting to get into kind of a rhythm and feel really comfortable here.

This week some of my roommates and I were able to walk over to the Provo temple and do a session. It’s SO nice to be within walking distance of a temple. It’s such a blessing that I really don’t think Utah members appreciate at all. I can just go to the temple when I’m done with classes, where before I had to take a day off of work on the weekend to take the long trip. It was pretty interesting to see how different the Provo temple is from the Nauvoo one. I’ll hopefully be able to go every week. For my Book of Mormon class I have to choose a “self-directed” project for the semester that I do for at least an hour every week, so I’m going to try to do a temple session every week along with some family history indexing online.

I found kind of a job for the semester. Basically all I have to wear a pedometer and accelerometer for the semester and check in to this office every couple weeks so they can download the data and they will pay me $150. Easy money! And since I don’t have a job right now this is great!

This week Jared and I were able to meet up with Chris and Wendy to go to dinner with them and attend the LA chapter lunch party with them. It was fun to see them as we haven’t seen them for a while. It’s great to see family and have visitors come through BYU, so if any of you are ever in the area… ;)

Last night Jared and I tried to go to a humor u performance (one of the comedy groups on campus), but it ended up being sold out, so we wandered over to another part of campus where we heard a band playing and ran into a comedy show by a group called “Comedy Sports” which was really hilarious and free! So we got pretty lucky. Then we went to a dance for a little while, which was actually really fun. Unlike our stake dances back home, they actually play good dance music here. Today Jared and I went to the football game against Weber State together. It was really fun, but super hot outside. I definitely like the nighttime games a lot better so far…it’s a lot of fun though being a crazy fan!

Other than those few things, nothing too exciting has happened. And no, no dates yet haha. But I love BYU and I feel so blessed to be here!

Good News Minute

1.  Bob played football this morning with the elder’s quorum.  He still has it- threw 2 touchdowns as a quarterback and ran 3 in  as a receiver.  Way to go!

2.  Tyler was approached after class one day by the choir director.  He told Tyler that he wants him to come to morning rehearsals and audition for OPUS which is a state honor choir.  He said if Tyler couldnt make it at the set time, he would change the rehearsals to make sure he could attend because he REALLY wants him to do that.  How cool is that?  Did 10 hours of show choir this week too.  He can barely move.

3.  We were contacted by Alayna’s choir teacher as well.  She was chosen as 1 of 4 kids out of the whole school to attend auditions for OPUS!  She was so excited!

Marisa 9/2/12

I just finished my first week of classes at BYU and it was so overwhelming that I ended up pretty sick this weekend. Because I have Monday off for Labor day, I’m spending the weekend in Logan with some of mom’s family (staying with Jonathan and Diana). Tonight we’re having a big family dinner and I can’t wait to see a bunch of my adorable cousins and awesome aunts and uncles.

Back to this week, I ended up dropping the first class I went to: Contemporary Dance. I knew it might be weird, but it was just too weird for me :) I really like all my other classes though. I’m taking 16.5 credits, and 9 of those are foreign language (French and Spanish), which is a little confusing. I’m also taking American Heritage, which so far isn’t as bad as everyone has made it sound. I’m taking a Book of Mormon class which is AMAZING. My teacher is at John Bytheway’s level and I’ve already gotten so much out of the class, even though we haven’t gotten into 1 Nephi yet. I think that’s my favorite class. I’m also doing a world dance class, which is mostly like European folk dancing. It’s really fun and interesting, and it’s a great morning class because it wakes me up for the rest of the day.

Then I have 2 french classes and a spanish class. I really like them, but it’s definitely at a much more difficult level than I’m used to, so I have to do a lot of work to try to keep up. There are several RM’s and people that have lived in French- or Spanish-speaking countries, so I feel kind of disadvantaged – thanks mom and dad for being so white ;) But one of my French teachers said something funny that helped me feel a little better. He said that missionaries are a very weird subgroup of foreign language speakers: they know a lot of street slang, and a lot of very religious words, and not much in between, so they’re really not a lot better off than the rest of us, they are just more comfortable speaking.

Overall, I have a lot of homework and work to do to catch up already, but I really enjoy my classes and I know I’m in the right place right now. I also met with my new ward for the first time last week. The bishopric is really cool, but our ward is definitely lacking males…our FHE group has 4 guys and 8 girls…but it sounds like this year will be fun. I think they said they’re going to bus us to Brigham City for the temple open house, which would be really cool.

Oh, also I don’t know how many of you watched the first BYU football game of the season, but we creamed Washington State! You might have seen me in the crowd, I was wearing white ;) The only bad part about the game is that I was supposed to go with my cousin, Jared, but our cell phone reception wasn’t working or something so we couldn’t find eachother. He ended up finding me on his way out because he had to leave early for a choir audition. Next time we’ll meet BEFORE going to the stadium so we can just walk together. They didn’t put the words to the fight song up, but luckily I have almost all of them down!

The whole game was really fun – it’s so much easier to get into football in person! Unfortunately I was up late that night for the game so I accidentally slept through my American Heritage class the next day, but they didn’t take attendance and I didn’t miss much.

Well that’s my week. Hopefully I didn’t bore you all to tears. Haha but this week I’m really excited for our first devotional with BYU’s President Samuelson and his wife. We also have another football game on Saturday against Weber State. It should be fun! I hope all is well with everyone!