Spring so far...

Well, I have successfully completed two full weeks of Spring semester 2010! And so far, I am basically loving it! At first I was really nervous about my schedule. I'm taking 17 credits, and my schedule is different every single day, which is REALLY unusual for BYU-Idaho. I didn't know what I was actually getting myself into- thus, I was very very nervous. But so far, I'm having a blast! I have a nice balance of hard and fun classes, and it feels amazing to get back into the swing of college life. My favorite classes thus far are Home Decor Sewing, Intro to Foods, choir, and New Testament. I have a great feeling about the first one. I get to make curtains and quilts and table linens and pillows, but the greatest part is that I can make things that I like. In Clothing Construction, she made us make what she wanted, and I didn't always necessarily think they were the cutest things. I'm really excited to be able to sew something that I will actually want to put to use someday. My Intro to Foods class is equally amazing. It's only once a week, but I get to spend  a huge part of that day learning how to make new things and learning a lot of cool cooking techniques. Our lab manual is full of really delicious recipes including this quiche and fruit pizza:

...which, may I say, were delicious!!! I have never been the biggest fan of quiche, but this recipe is really yummy. If you want the recipes let me know.  Anyway, this semester's great!

Back in the Burg...

First of all, I would just like to note that it has officially been over a year since I have seen this...

Or this...

Or this...

                                                                                                        Or this!!!   

And I have only seen TWO of my amazing Disney friends within this past year (yay Abby and Eleisha!), but it was literally only for a couple minutes with each of them! So so so sad. And I have yet to see my amazing roommate/buddy Chelsea since we parted ways in the Orlando airport one year ago. LAME! I miss my Disney buds so much! Somebody needs to take me back to Disney, as I have been over the past few months going through HUGE withdrawals. I couldn't care less if it's Disneyland or Disney World... just take me! Anyway... end Disney rant...

Now I am finally back in Rexburg!!! Yes! I moved back in the to the good ole Pines this past Thursday, April 15. I wish I had something more interesting to report so far... but to be honest this has honestly been one of the most boring weekends of my entire life. But it has had its good points! Like the fact that I'm already completely unpacked and ready to jump right back in to school. I have eliminated any possible distractions. And on Friday night I went to a wedding reception... Gracie Lou's!!! It was really really really weird... but it was also beautiful and Grace looked absolutely amazing! I'm so happy for her. Later that night Steve, Rachel, and Hallie visited me for a couple minutes, which I loved! I miss my brother and sis-in-law so much! I'm glad I had a chance to see them before the reunion in July. Can I just say though, that all four of my nieces are the most adorable, lovable, most genius little girls in the entire world?! I feel really lucky to have seen all of them (and my amazing sisters Tiff and Taralyn and bro-in-law Bryan, whom I also love, by the way) before school starts on Tuesday. Just look at these girls! ADORABLE!!!

I have also met two of my five roommates, Caitlin and Melissa, and reunited with two old ones! These lovely ladies...

                                                      
                                                         ...and I met up last night and had great fun! Charlotte and I went on a nice walk and discovered a super cute new boutique on Main Street that sells cute shirts and accessories and baby hair bows and stuff for pretty decent prices. It's adorable. Then Charlotte, Marina, their roommate Devi, and I went up to Nauvoo to visit our old friend Jeremy and ended up staying there until about 11:30. The boys in that apartment are HILARIOUS and we had great fun. I think it was a good way to kick off the semester. So now today is Sunday and I went to church in the BYU-ID 83rd ward once again. We have a new bishopric, which was interesting, but further than that it was rather uneventful. Singles wards at school tend to be kind of boring the first couple weeks. We had a couple of really good lessons though! Hmmmm... now that I think about it, I guess this weekend could have been a lot worse! Yeah- I've had a great weekend! I guess that's all for now. I would post pics of the apartment, but it's exactly the same as my other two apartments, so... most of you know what it looks like! I'll let you know how my classes go! My first one is my cooking class! Woohoo!

Spirit of Elijah!!!

Ok, so as most of you know, this weekend has been LDS General Conference, which is one of the best weekends of the entire year! I loved every second of it. But I have a confession to make... my mom and I really enjoyed Elder Russell M. Nelson's address (the one on family heritage) in the Sunday afternoon session, that we sort of... got distracted and ignored the rest of the session. I guess you could say that we were inspired. Anyway, following his address, we both immediately got on familysearch.org, the church's genealogy site, and started randomly looking up family lines. It honestly was one of the coolest experiences of my life! We learned so much about our family that we never knew about before. Most of our amazing discoveries began with my great great grandmother, Julia Ann Crandall (born 1841), who is my Grandpa Boyer's grandmother. First, we followed her family line back to the 17th century to John and Priscilla (Mullens) Alden, my twelve great grandparents. We started to do a little bit of internet research on this couple, and it was like opening a treasure chest! It didn't take long for us to discover that John and Priscilla were not only on the Mayflower, but John Alden was supposedly the first person to step off the Mayflower onto Plymouth Rock in 1620. He was also the roommate of Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth. We thought this by itself was amazing, but then we kept finding more and more AMAZING facts about these ancestors. It turns out that John and Priscilla Alden were involved in the first, and one of the most famous, love triangles in the New World. Priscilla had two suitors once they reached Plymouth- John Alden and Miles Standish. Miles had sent John to Pricilla to tell her that Miles wanted to marry her. But Priscilla saw that John loved her too, and she said what is considered to be one of the most famous lines in history, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" He left, but came back to tell her that he loved her. He obviously won, and here I am twelve generations and nearly 400 years later! Another descendent of John and Priscilla is the famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who happened to write an epic poem about their courtship, "The Courtship of Miles Standish." John Alden also went on to  become the assistant to the governor of Plymouth and served on the jury of one of the two witch trials held in Plymouth. Incidentally, their son, John Jr. was one accused in the witch trials, but he escaped days before his execution. So basically... my family is awesome! Anyway, my mom and I actually went on to find 9, possibly 10, direct ancestors who rode over on the Mayflower's first trip to the New World. We also discovered a LOT of different nationalities that are in my blood that we hadn't known before. I'm mostly English and Norwegian, but we also found a lot of German, IRISH (on both sides! I've always wanted to be Irish), French, etc. But it's when my family line goes REALLY far back, say... to the first century... that you find the really good stuff! It turns out, if you look back far enough from Julia Ann Crandall's line, I am directly descended from royalty! Scottish royalty, English kings, Italian kings, A king, queen, and princess from Spain, LOUIS I ('The Pious')- Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 799, Louis VIII ('The Lion') of France, Louis VIII, CHARLEMAGNE of the Holy Roman Empire (who is known as not only the father of all French and German monarchies, but all monarchies of Europe), and "Ole King Coel" (you know from the song?). It literally goes all the way back to the year 6 AD. Anyway, a lot of you probably won't care, but I am really really excited. It's so cool and fun to find out that you are directly descended from people who played important roles in not only American history, but world history! So you all better start treating us Clark and Boyer people better, cause we're direct descendants of some of the most famous royals in World History!!! I'm a princess! And don't you forget it!!!