Wyview Park.

So many memories flooded my mind tonight while i was driving through Wyview, my old apartments. I lived there for a whole year. Fall, winter, spring, summer. And then I became not a young freshman anymore so i felt obligated to move out. I met a lot of people. I made a lot of friends. I wish i still lived there sometimes. It was so fun and i feel like almost carefree. Everyone was new to being on their own and adjusting together. Here are some random memories i thought of tonight:

• Meeting Zach and Chris at a ward activity the first sunday behind the creamery. We didn't want to play the stupid game they were playing so we talked instead. Then they invited Sharon and I over to play sorry. Not soon after it was just me and Zach. Awkward a bit. Who would have known I was about to spend every day with him.
• During the summer I loved the rain. Lucia, Celeste and I would run out and dance and sing (or scream) in the rain. It was SO much fun. A guy from our ward actually videoed us once to put us in the ward talent show movie. haha embarrassing. 
• For FHE during the summer one time we had a scavenger hunt/ service activity thing. My family was so serious about it. Haha you would have thought we were gonna win a million dollars!
• Zach and Chris wanted to rent a movie and i refused to watch it with them so they rented it from itunes. It took 3 whole days to download. hahaha and then you only have it for like 24 hours before it disappears.
• Travis and I were on a walk around wyview and come to find out my roomies, Celeste and Lucia, were following us hiding in bushes and running through sprinklers. haha i had NO idea. until i came in and saw the evidence. Celeste fell and cut her foot... serves her right. haha
• While walking to the bus one morning I showed Christopher and Sharon my "Jill Schofield" fast walk. get down and low. haha. (listen that thing is genius. People down here have learned not to mess with me while i speed walk.) Anyways, Chris told me I should go to the Olympics for it. Later that day on campus i was on the phone with zach telling him the story and right as i said "Christopher told me I should.." Christopher popped out of NOWHERE and over my shoulder said "I said what?" ha ha he scared the crap out of me, it was so funny. 
• Always staring out the window at the basketball court and yelling cat calls... shirts and skins baby! haha and always getting caught by my roommates cause i would get black nasty stuff on my nose from the screen haha "Melanie.... have you been spying on the boys again?!"
• Zach's roommate David. He is so tender. But he was so funny about curfew. He would literally start reminding us hours in advance. "Just so you guys know, only 1.5 hours til its 12."... " oh hey look, 25 minutes to 12" ha ha it was a riot.
• Angela. oh Angela. This is my roommate, some of you may refer to her as pioneer or Morticha. She has hair down to her butt, and is very molly mormon. Anyways, she was dating this kid and they were so awkward. They would hug for a ridiculous amount of time out on the front porch. Like literally they would just be in an embrace and wouldn't move. 2 of my favorite moments. 1. Zach would ALWAYS spy on them through the peephole. Even if we were watching a movie he would go stand by the door and just watch. and 2. classic moment. My roommate Hannah was about to be engaged so she was taking us to the mall to see her ring. We walked out and they were standing there hugging.. well that was awkward but we just said hi and walked by. Well after the trip to the mall and everything literally 45-50 minutes later, we pulled in and they were STILL there!! they had not moved. Still hugging away. ha ha classic. 
• Watching Christopher watch Brian Regan for the first time.. "P is for pneumonia" probably our favorite line. I've never seen anyone laugh so hard.
• Christopher demolished a bag of popcorn. Like literally started it on fire in the microwave. It gets better. In order to air out our apartment he took the microwave out into the stairwell.. and in the process broke one of Jen's bowls. ooops.. we don't like Jen. ha and the microwave sat outside for quite some time. 
• Girls Preference 2010. Sharon and I asked 2 boys from our FHE family. They are the best! I wish i had pictures of that night but i don't. 1. I got caught while asking... oops. 2. They answered with a nasty concoction that was awful and .. there was no answer inside. 3. we spray painted our hair blue (thing one and thing two). 4. I gave my date, Logan, a huge goose-egg on his forehead cause we had an unfortunate collision. fun, fun night.
• Driving Lucia's car. Gabe Bondoc.
• My roommate's boyfriend coming to building meeting and our RA got TICKED at him for talking.. ha ha funniest moment ever. Thank you Bruce.

That is all i can think of for now, but man I had a lot of good times. I miss it. I miss the people. But glad they are all on missions now. Sorry if you didn't want to hear any of that. It is probably boring to you. But it is so much easier to type than to write in my journal... and it's my blog, not yours :)

my life is complete.

I met the love of my life. Finally.

Christopher Michael Collinsworth.
how can you not love him?

He is on the byu basketball team, he just got back from his mission in Australia (where he was stabbed) and playing with his little brother kyle. Unfortunately he had to have knee surgery and medical red-shirt the season, but hopefully him and Kyle will get to play again after Kyle gets home from his mission.

I made this poster and held it up when he walked through the tunnel. He looked right at it, read it, and smiled. Walked my direction (only cause his family sits on the front row of my section), kept glancing up at it, went and talked to his mom, while i was still jumping up and down holding it up and he kept looking at it... then finally i got the nerve... with much help from Parker... maybe a little bit of pushing went on, but it was worth it! I folded up my poster and booked it down the 7 stairs in between us.

Here's our conversation:

Me:"Chris?............. CHRIS!"
(he turns around)
Me:"Can I get a picture with you??"
Chris:"Sure!"
Me:"Oooh thank you!"
Chris:"That's a nice poster you got there!"
Me:"Thanks"
........(posing for the picture).................................
...........................................................................
............................................................................
then i start getting antsy cause it is getting awkward cause it is taking FOREVER...
Me:"Parker! Hurry!!"
Parker:"Melanie, it's recording, fix it!!"
Chris: "Even better!"
....picture taken...
Me:"Thanks Chris, You're the best!"
Chris: "no problem"

Then i returned to my seat jumping up and down, happy as a lark.

I also was apart of a flash mob. Check that off my bucket list! It was awesome!! the energy inside the MC was amazing. I seriously jumped up and down and screamed for like 5 minutes straight after the dance got done! It was SO loud. Enjoy:

 That day could not have been any better.  The game was amazing. every part of it. and then i got to go to the temple with my family and celebrate mommy's birthday. good, good day!

Today's....

Blog is dedicated to my daddy and my brinzy.

They are there for my when i do stupid things like lock all of my car doors while it is running and i am outside scraping snow off of it.

Even though my dad is forever far away he still takes care of me and does everything he can to help me out. I was stressed and didn't know what to do and he took care of everything! Thank you dad! I love you so much!

Then my brinzel. Without her i would be dead right now. ok maybe not DEAD. but probably fired from my job, have a gasless, dead car, and i would probably have rotted sitting at work for 4 hours waiting for my next shift.  She woke up on her sleep in day to take me to work. Then went to the car place and got me a spare key, came home and turned my car off, and then came and picked me up from work! You truly are my hero! Thank you for everything! I couldn't ask for a better best friend/roomie! Love you!!!

.......even if you do spill sugar all over 

I am...

still alive :)

SDSWHO?

 January 26, 2011

#9 BYU 71
#4 SDSU 58

Best game of my life. Here's my story:

Tuesday
12:00 AM  Parker and I arrive at the Marriott Center to begin our wait in line for wristbands into the game! only about 10 other people there.

2:00-11:00AM we FREEZE our butts off. Miserable? yes. Bored? yes.

11:00 - 12:45 PM we get cut, budged, pushed, smashed, and down right ROBBED of our places in line.
#12 in line say hello to wristband #630 . GRRRRR stupid people

1:00-10:00 PM I take a nap, shower, etc. trying to recover from my still frozen toes and my lack of sleep

sleep time.

Wednesday
7:30 AM wake up

9:00-1:30 PM go to work. Pump my boss up for the game.

2:00-3:00 PM go to class. Organic Chemistry. Yuck.

3:15-6:00 PM wait outside the Marriott in MORE lines. Meet more cutters. GRRRRR I am FURIOUS by now. PEOPLE STOP STEALING MY GOOD SEATS PLEASEEEEEE!

6:30 PM enjoy a nice, special show by the one and only TJ FREDETTE. Yeah boiii

6:45-8:15 PM wait anxiously for the game to start!! Tired. Hungry. Nervous.

8:15-10:15 PM observe a miracle. nuff said.

Thank you Cougars. You never fail me. I'm proud to call you mine! The atmosphere of the game was absolutely amazing. SO SO loud. I was screaming as loud as I could and I could not hear myself. yeah, that loud! Enjoy some highlights from the game!! P.S. Pardon my screechy singing of the school song, all of my screaming, and my unsteady hand... I was a little excited. haha

Our Awesome posters:

 Beautiful score when we started to take the lead

My favorite part!

 Hahaha a kid in my ward found this on Deseret News.. embarrassing.

My face says it all. I wasn't happy.

 I stole the next few from offline

 and this.... would be my lover.

mmmmmmm

And this is the kind of welcome Jimmer gets for warm-ups

                                         

Maybe next time BYU will rethink their stupid line method. Well they better or they WILL be hearing from me. But this game will go down in history. That is for sure. And I was apart of it. Love BYU.

Our Burdens will be Light

Today was the first time I have been to my singles ward in about a month and let me just say it was the PERFECT sunday to return to. Church today was AMAZING. I felt the spirit so strongly through all of the meeting.
During sacrament the speakers talked about the words of the prophet. The speakers were 3 recently returned missionaries. All good looking by the way :) ha but all of the talks were so good! A few words stuck out to me.

• Life is hard. It isn't going to be easy. That's just how it is. BUT, if we do what is right, follow the commandments, and listen and obey the prophet, life will be doable. Our burdens will be made light and life will be a lot easier than if we didn't do those things. 
• Faith. We need to have faith. Just like Moses with his serpent. All the people had to do to be healed was LOOK at the serpent. How simple is that? It is too simple. Our Father in Heaven can see the big picture. He knows what we need in life and when we need it. We need to have faith in him and do his will and we will be blessed.
• Our rest hymn was We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet. The congregation stood and as I played the piano I was overwhelmed with the spirit. How grateful I am for a living prophet. Thomas S. Monson. I KNOW with all of my heart that he is called of God. Currently I am reading his biography and it is so amazing to see just how normal of a child he was. During his youth i'm sure noone knew that one day he would be the prophet. He is a normal person just like you and I.  But he was called of God. He is truly amazing. 
• Today it hit me how grateful for the sacrament I am. With my calling, I have to sit at the piano kind of out of the way from people. I can't tell you how many times I freak out that they won't come to me. My heart starts racing and I am in panic mode. Praying that they will remember to come to me. Luckily I always have that moment when one of the passers will look at me and wink and then I know they have my back. And then I am finally at peace. I have thought to myself what i would do if they skipped me. Would I stand up?  Wave my arms around? Or since the sacrament table is next to me just nudge one of them and say umm you forgot me? I don't know how retarded I will look at that moment, but let's just hope it never happens.

In sunday school we are now in the New Testament. YAY! no offense old testament but you just aren't the same. Today we talked about the 3 temptations of Christ. Recently I had my New Testament class so all of this stuff was fresh in my mind. Pride, Passion, Power. How simple those three things seem to overcome but EVERY temptation and sin we face falls into one of those three categories. 

And last but not least in Relief Society we talked about fasting. It made me reflect on some of my memories of fasting. The first time I remember really fasting was for Kallie Keele when she was diagnosed with cancer, or for Chris Eyres when we found out about his brain tumor. I remember Justin Pack and I were fasting for Chris in the 6th grade. It was Ryan Graves' birthday and he brought treats. I was sitting next to Justin and we kind of looked at each other like "dang, that looks delicious" but we had a plan. We took our treats. Instead of giving them up and passing. We then went up to Mrs. Hogge and told her the situation. She put them in her drawer and saved them for us until the next day. I remember my ward being "HIT" with multiple occasions in the same year with opportunities to fast. But one experience that I will never forget was my senior year. My ward did a 40 day fast for Josh Pack. Each family signed up for a different day that covered a 40 day period. I remember thinking how cool that was. But then about 2 weeks ago while I was in my home ward we had this same lesson on fasting and Lisa Pack told how that fast 2 and a half years ago still blesses their family. The power of fasting is huge. 

So grateful I went to church today! And grateful for a relaxing sunday. AND.... STOKED for the byu game this wednesday! #6 SDSU @#9 BYU. Biggest game of the year. the game is sold out to the public and for student seating I am going extremely early tuesday morning to get in line for a wristband to get into the game. Sad they are doing away with camping out... but this makes it so I can still carry on with my normal life and not miss things like my tuesday temple day! Happy sunday! Thanks for reading.

Change is a good thing

Yesterday I realized a simple concept. I love change. I got in the mood to rearrange my bedroom and it is like a completely different place. i absolutely love it. Every time I open my door it makes me so happy to realize the change and the difference. Also I put a blanket over my window cause there is a stupid light in the stairwell that shines through my window.. Now my room is so dark I'm pretty sure I could sleep for days.  Here are some pics. I guess you won't know that it is different if you didn't see my bedroom in the first place, but here it is!

Secondly... you've gotta love these gems. These were a gift from Parker for my birthday and so I wake up to our beautiful faces daily.

(Yes, they are magnets ha ha)

 To my mom and dad: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!! Big 22 years! Thank you for being in love. I love you guys so much and I'm so grateful for you. Thanks for all that you do for me! I have the best parents in the world. I hope you are having a blast in Puerto Rico!

And last item of business for the day... most of you may know about my byu basketball obsession. And if not... I am obsessed. I will admit it. But this season I was a little heartbroken because my favorite player is serving a mission now. Tyler Haws. My love. But a new mormon message features this beaut... so please enjoy! (mormon message down below)

 Please watch this and try not to cry cause I can't help but cry everytime. ;)

Can't wait for your return to the Marriott Center Elder Haws! You are missed!