E - Eeek!

I was talking to Michael last night about what life is like at each of our respective homes. Amidst talk of Christmas traditions, trampolines games, favorite pets, and jean blankets, he told me about scorpion hunting. Yes my friends, in Mesa Arizona there are enough scorpions around that people go out and hunt them to keep them from coming in the house... SO creepy! I wondered how you would find something small that is the same color as the dirt... especially at night like they did. The answer: black lights. As freaky as it sounds, scorpions glow in black light!



Freaky huh?

D - Default Boys

I can honestly say I have never been so excited to write a blog post in my LIFE! How do I sum up my best friends in just one post??

It all began once upon a time (i.e. the first week of school) when there was a spider... Yes my friends, a spider, and being the silly girls that we are, my roommates and I ran to find a boy to kill it. Like I said, it was the first week of school and we honestly knew NO ONE, so we left Emily to watch the creepy thing and Kenzie and I set off in search of a rescuer. Mercifully the Lord sent us... Chris.

Christopher was brave enough to kill the disgustingness that was creeping across our ceiling, declaring, "It's okay, I have three little sisters."

And it went from there! We had their apartment over for dinner two weeks later... and the week after that... and maybe the week after that. They quickly went from being our backup plan if all else fell through to being our only plan no matter what else came up!

Here's a little bit about each of our Default Boys:

Barrett (aka Barritto) is majoring in something interesting (like neuroscience or genetics and biotechnology.) He’s hilarious in his own “quiet” way, can eat more ice cream than anyone I’ve ever met, wears the sweetest snuggie ever, and will beat anyone willing to play at Super Smash Brothers. He listens to the best music, like Jon Schmidt and William Joseph, and is great at whatever he sets his mind to.

Chris is considering a double major in English and Biology... I’m not sure what those have to do with each other, but apparently Hug-hes likes them both. He’s one of those great people who can be both funny and serious, and will go out of his way to make people happy. He’s working on giving “normal” hugs, and while he’s getting there, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. ;)

Daniel may look like your typical math major, but you should see him dance! He’s insanely busy trying to fit everything into his life while trying to make a difference in the world. He often drops by just to say hi and see how we’re doing, or to help us finish off brownies, birthday cake, or whatever other desserts are plaguing us. He also gives some of the most sincere compliments I’ve ever heard.

Jared is hilarious! Affectionately known as Ju-Reed, he’s probably the default boy we see the most of since he’s not in school this semester. He once said it would be funny if we had a whole wall of our apartment dedicated to him… so we decided to make one! It was definitely a conversation starter to say the least. It stayed up for almost a month, until it started to irk us that Jared was always staring at us from the front room wall.

Nathan has the biggest ego of anyone I’ve ever met! He’s got more than enough self-esteem to go around, but likes to share it with others. He gives the funniest dating advice I’ve ever heard, and is a genuinely caring person. His public health major requires him to take many of the same classes I have taken which always fun. While he doesn’t believe in killing bugs, he will escort them from the premises free of charge.

We watch movies together.

We play games.

We go grocery shopping.

And make cookies.

We eat delicious Asian food made by Daniel

We visit each other at work.

We support each other in our hopes and dreams.

We carve pumpkins.

And go trick or treating.

We go get pie on Wednesdays.

And take lots of silly pictures.

Lots and LOTS of silly pictures!

We go out on dates.

Or go to the hot tub.

Or just do nothing at all.

But it's always fun!

We love you guys!!!

101 (or Maybe Just a Lot Of) Things to be Thankful For

Today is Thanksgiving and I thought it fitting to pause my ABC posts to share a few things that I am especially thankful for right now.

~My family loves me.
~I have amazing roommates who are there be it rain or shine.
~I get to go to BYU where I have amazing classes with some pretty phenomenal professors.
~I have enough food to eat and clean water to drink.
~My extended family lives nearby and are there for me when I need them.
~Cars and airplanes allow me to go home occasionally.
~Cell phones let me talk to my family when I can't go home.
~Good music: on my phone, on the computer, on a CD, on a movie, you name it.
~Beds, especially mine! Jean blankets, clean sheets, feather pillows... it's the best!
~Chick flicks. Don't laugh, I love them!
~Any uplifting media really: books, movies, songs. I just love that feeling from inside that spreads out to my fingertips and up to my head and makes me feel all sparkly inside!
~I'm an American Citizen.
~I have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to persue happiness.
~My ancestors took the time and the trouble to move somewhere where I would be able to enjoy all those freedoms.
~Family Search Indexing... the best computer addiction ever! Do your family history and have fun all at the same time!
~CrossFit, which goes back to being thankful for water!
~Ibuprophen... especially the day after CrossFit.
~The internet: seriously, how amazing is it that I can type something on my computer at my apartment and then access it anywhere in the world? That is AWESOME!
~Facebook. As obnoxiously addicting as it, it really has changed the world.
~My digital camera: perfect for taking pictures to upload onto facebook.
~Space heaters. Just ask Ariella.
~Friends: Chris, Nathan, Barrett, Daniel, Jared, Michael, Jake, Sadie, Sarah, Esther, and Kas... just to name a few. =)
~Time to have fun, like tonight when Sadie, Sarah, Elizabeth, and I put on old wedding dresses and took pictures. I just love that!
~My vet class. The best 6 hours of the week!
~Make-up... maybe I'm just a vain girl, but I love it!
~Curly hair. I love it, on me and on anyone else. It reminds me I'm an individual.
~Hugs... they're my favorite!
~I'm healthy, safe, and loved.
~I have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life.
~The scriptures and the Church Magazines, which have real life examples of people who made it through bigger trials than the ones I'm facing.
~The Gift of the Holy Ghost. How wonderful to have a member of the God-Head with me at all times if I'm just worthy of His presence.
~Most of all I'm thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ who came to this earth as a tiny baby in Bethlehem, to live for us, to be an example of perfection, and then to suffer for the sins of all that we might not suffer if we would repent, and then to die for us and rise again on the third day, having unlocked the gates of death and hell. If we will follow Him, He will take our burdens and make them light, and help us succeed along the path to eternal life and becoming like Him. That is what I am most thankful for this holiday season, and all year round. May God bless you every one! =)

Compliments

My roommates and I were watching some silly YouTube videos tonight instead of going to bed, and it made me think about my favorite YouTube video of all time: Validation. If you have not seen this delightful 16 minutes and 24 seconds of smiles I suggest you do so now. There's just nothing quite like those few words, "You are Great." This started me thinking about some of the best compliments I've gotten. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Seth once told me my family reminded him of the Murrys in A Wrinkle in Time... he was worried I might take it as an insult. He shouldn't have been.

Jake was looking through pictures on my phone last night and found one of just my eye (I was bored one day.)
"That is one good-looking eye! ... I'm just saying."
How can you not smile at that?

By far the most unique compliment ever came from the cardiologist I saw over the summer. "You have beautiful arteries!"
"Um... thank you?" I wasn't sure how to respond to that one, but hey, I'll take compliments where I can get them!

So go brighten someone else's day. Pay them a compliment and watch it change their mood, their day, or maybe their life! Always remember, You are Great!

C - ...?

I can not think of anything to write about for C and I don't like being stuck, so here's a list of things that start with C that make me oh-so happy!

Cookies: We make a LOT of cookies in my apartment: cookies for boys who kill spiders, cookies for missionaries, cookies for fun... Kenzie's mom sent her a recipie for some delightful ghost cookies that we made for Halloween. We love to make cookies!

College: As much as I hate the hours of homework and the stressful tests that make me doubt my eternal worth, I LOVE going to school and learning!

Costumes: Halloween was this past weekend, and I must say, we had some pretty awesome costumes at my apartment! Here are just a few of the many great ones I saw that night:

Pixar's "Up" anyone?
Notice he's even missing his "Assisting the Elderly" badge

The Mimes were amazing!

Michael went as his red-head roommate with broken ankle...
which was my idea. =)

Aren't we cute??

Cell phones: Seriously, I don't know how people survived before they were invented!

Country Music: I didn't even know there was other music until I got into high school... there was just normal music (country) and weird music (anything else.) I'm definitley a fan!

Calendars: I just LOVE them! Pictures. Planning. Marking the days off with little hearts in the corners... It's just so good!

Chris: I think the pictures speak for themselves... =)

They have the same smile!

Carving Pumpkins and just being ridiculous.

Pie Night... no additional info needed.

Just being silly

He thinks it's HILARIOUS to take pictures of himself pretending
to be asleep... a little odd, but whatever!

My personal favorite... =)

The "do whatever boys do" pose.

And of course... Christ: I just love my Savior! And since my name means "little lamb" I think this picture is especially appropriate. =)

B - Brekka

I had a hard time deciding what to write about for the letter "B" "Boys" was just NOT going to work... Backpacks? Breakfast? Bread? My sister Bethany? I finally settled on... Brekka!

Brekka is my drop-dead gorgeous roommate from Pocatello, Idaho. Her pre-nursing class schedule combined with working 20 hours a week means that we don't see much of Brekka's loveliness, in fact, it took me a good 3-4 seconds to figure out who she was when I walked into the apartment the other day!

But when she's not at work, at school, or in her room studying, Brekka is HILARIOUS! As the only freshman in the apartment, and a recently retired high school cheerleader, Brekka bounces around the apartment, laughing and telling the rest of us how OLD we are.

Here are just a few of my favorite memories with Brekka:

The "Old Lady" and "Dinosaur" Rooms -- So, one night we were all talking about our ages and the ages of our siblings, parents, previous roommates, guys in the ward, etc. and Brekka just started laughing... she does that a lot, especially late at night! "You guys are so OLD!" she declared between giggles, "Like old ladies! And Rachel, you're like a DINOSAUR!" Now, I have to say, I've heard people called pretty old things before; pioneer, for example, like my mom asking my grandma what it was like to cross the plains for instance... =) But dinosaur definitely trumped them all. It didn't end at that though. She jumped up off the couch and dashed to her room for paper and markers. A few minutes and several giggles later, there was a sign taped to each of the three bedroom doors in our tiny apartment: "The Old Lady Room" "The Dinosaur Room" and last, but certainly not least, taped up with an extra giggle and a smirk, "The Beautiful Princess Room" Brekka was delighted with her creations, and continues to show them to everyone who comes over.

The sock in her hair -- You know how if you want your hands to be really soft, you put lots of lotion or maybe even vaseline on them right before bed and then sleep with socks on your hands? Well, Brekka decided that if it would work for your hands, it would work for your hair. Since she didn't have any hair lotion, she settled on conditioner (it's basically the same thing, right?) So, in went the conditioner, hair up in a ponytail, and over top of it all went a big black sock. And it stayed like that, conditioner, ponytail, sock for several hours until Kenzie, or maybe it was Ariella, declared that her hair MUST be soft by now!

Late-night talks, being scared of the dark, hearing "I'm finally done!" after hours of studying... all in all, I love our silly Brekka!

A - Animal Anatomy

Fall semester of last year I found myself entering room 492 of the Widtsoe Building for the first time. Had I known then the inordinate amount of time and mental capacity that room would tax from me, I might very well have left right then, never to return. Thankfully I was oblivious, and happily took my seat.
Animal Anatomy is believed, among the very few students who have taken it, to be the hardest class taught at Brigham Young University. The curriculum is as rigorous as a human anatomy course put together with a tissue dissection lab... but the students learn the information not for one species, but for up to 10 very different animal species! Students taking the class spend 4 hours each week in class, and approximately three to four times that outside of class studying their brains out trying to remember such terms as "gastrocnemius" zygomatic arch" and "tragus." The kids in that class became my best friends since we spent nearly every waking moment together, helping each other do our best.
I became very well acquainted with Dr. Roeder, the veterinarian who teaches nearly all of the animal-related classes taught at BYU, during my time in animal anatomy. She would stay after class with me to answer all of my many questions, most of which were not directly related to the class, but just to topics she had mentioned in passing, or things I had just always wondered about. I learned enough from talking to Dr. Roeder outside of class to rival what I was learning in class.

Due to my insatiable curiosity, Dr. Roeder suggested I apply for a research grant. That lead to a semester of many adventures, including, but definitely not limited to, chasing pregnant cows around fields of 6" deep mud, cleaning rat hair with powerful carcinogens, and riding in the vet truck as it literally fell to pieces around me. The full story will have to wait for a different post.

After completing the course, (quite successfully I might add!) I figured my time in 492 WIDB was up and that Animal Anatomy had done all it could for me.

Then became the TA for the next batch of students who would come to study their brains out.

And the best part is...

I LOVE IT!

Four days every week, I go back and sit at that same desk with the same professor and new "best friends" around me, and I get to learn. I get to learn everything I missed the first time around without the stress of needing to regurgitate it for a test the next week. I get to explain concepts to the 22 students who depend on me to help them get an A in the class. I get to pull skeletons out of closets, put vertebrae in the right order, make sure the students feed their birds and rats, and I LOVE IT!

I have also continued on to take other classes, ones I didn't know existed until I spent a semester with Dr. Roeder. Thus I am currently getting credit to work in the vet's office on campus... and am loving every minute of it!

Who would have guessed that clicking that tiny little "add course" button would have led to so much knowledge and fun!

~Rachel =)

ABC Blog Posts

Once upon a time, or maybe it was last week, my lovely roommate Kenzie gave me the brilliant idea of doing a string of thankful ABC blog posts. Everyday, or close there unto, Kenzie posts about something she is thankful for... in alphabetical order. C was Country Music, E was Eggs, Elephants, and Esther, and the list goes on and on.

I was intrigued by the idea, and started thinking of what I'd post about... until finally, here I am, writing about writing about it! Hopefully over the course of the semester I will manage to get through all 26 letters, and come up with plenty of things I'm thankful for!

~Rachel =)

What's in a Name?

I've been thinking about my name a lot lately... maybe just names in general, and how they can be one thing but mean another. I've always known the basic idea of what my first name meant, but tonight I decided to look up ALL of my name... Here's what I found:

Rachel: Little lamb; one with purity

Amanda: Love; Precious thing worthy of love

Watson: Son of a powerful warrior/ ruler of an army

All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about my name right now! A pure and precious, little lamb, worthy of love, child of a great warrior... Sounds pretty amazing to me!! :)

Easter and Spring... it just doesn't get much better than that!

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and I am smiling! Easter morning is definitely one of the happiest times of the year: everything around you is coming to life at the same time as we celebrate our Savior's Resurrection and the knowledge that we too will live again! I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior, that He lived a perfect life, suffered for the sins of the world, died and was gloriously resurrected! Through Him we can all return to live with our Father in Heaven. May the love of Christ be in each of our hearts and homes this Easter season and throughout our lives.

:)

What Makes me Me?

Ever since I came to college, I've thought a lot about the question of what defines me as me. I've decided that there is no simple answer to that. There is no one word that sums Me up, at least not really. But as I sat and talked with my roommates this evening about everything from dating to Christmas lights, I realized that I am definitely an individual. Different. Unique. I don't know if my apartment of three could be called a fair sampling of the people in Provo... probably not, but I was honestly surprised at how different my thoughts were from my roommates'. I realized that those differences are the things that define who I am.

I believe in order. Everything has a place, and it belongs in its place. Beds belong made. Dishes belong washed and put away. Organization is key to my brain functioning. I stack my colored cups in ROY-G-BIV order, and put my zip-up hoodies and pullover hoodies in two separate stacks in the top of my closet. President Uchtdorf (of the First Presidency of the Church of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) asked everyone to find a space and make it beautiful. I may not be allowed to paint the cinder-block walls or my bedroom or replace my molding window, but I can make my own little space as neat and clean as possible so that my room is as close to Beautiful as it ever can be. Some call it OCD, I call it doing my best to follow a Prophet of God.

I smile! If you have the chance, why not do it? It makes you and everyone else around you that much happier. :)

Music has a very strong influence over my emotions, and can make me cry more easily than almost anything else. Beautiful music makes me tingle inside no matter how many times I hear the song. Playing musical instruments/singing is as close to speaking in the tongue of angels as I can imagine. At the same time, I believe that there is such a thing as evil music, not only that with violent or suggestive lyrics, but music that brings fear and despair into the minds of those who partake of it. It is spiritually destructive and is inappropriate in any and all circumstances.

Once I've made up my mind about something, there are very few things that can alter that decision. Maybe it's because I have such a hard time making up my mind, so once I do, I'm rather reluctant to change it. I do my best to make this a good thing: I have made up my mind that I am graduating from college, I am getting married in the temple to a returned missionary who is a faithful member of the Church, and I am living the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the best of my abilities... and there's really nothing anyone can say or do to persuade me otherwise!

And finally, I love people. My mom once told me that I was given different kinds of talents from most people: some people are good at sports, or art, or writing, or getting straight A's... I'm good at loving people. My family has a cat who can always tell when someone is upset and will go sit by them. She doesn't ask to be pet, or even to be acknowledged, she just wants to be there with you and let you know she cares. Just like that small, gray cat, I can tell when something is wrong, when those around me are sad, or angry, or losing patience. And just like the cat, I quietly do what I can to calm the storm, whether big or small. I want to help you to be happy, because I love you.

I guess that's why I do everything I do, why I am the way I am. I want to help people be happy, to help them see how much they are loved. Everything else I do helps me to accomplish that one big, ultimate goal: to love you.

All-in-all, I guess that's what makes me Me. :)