Meet my best friend, Alli:



People think we are so weird because we sing songs about being best friends and we quote Gilmore Girls all the time. We have crazy inside jokes that no one understands, and we laugh at each other just because we both find each other hilarious, even though no one else does. That's why I love her...she understands me. I love my best friend, she's the greatest.

You know those weeks when all you really want is to take a nice, hot shower and then get in your warm, squishy bed and go to sleep? Yeah...that has been all I have wanted for the last two weeks. Instead, I have spent all my time studying math and learning dances. I have learned 7 dances in a week and a half. Psycho. My whole body is sore and tired, and showering is seriously the best feeling in the world. Sleep is rare but that's ok because all of it is worth it. I love dancing on tour team. I love the dances I have learned, and I love progressing. Sometimes I forget how much I love being busy, but I think I feel a sense of accomplishment when I am.

Last night, however, I decided to take a break. Colt and I went to Winger's for dinner and then went to his house to watch A Goofy Movie. I fell asleep in the middle of it, which was around 8:00. He took me home where I passed out on my bed and didn't wake up again until my alarm went off at 5:30 this morning for practice. It was the best sleep I have had in a long time.

Tonight I'm hoping to stay motivated enough to get lots of math homework done, and maybe even some work for my retarded online education class. Thankfully the week is almost over and then I get to go to Colt's cabin with all my best friends. I'm so excited to go to the happiest place on earth!

School has started and is actually better than I expected it to be. My classes are fun and I'm enjoying school again! It's a miracle. I still don't like my abstract algebra class...too much theory...too many proofs. It's just too much for one brain to think about! Someday maybe I'll understand it. My other classes are significantly easier and give me a nice break from math. I love being able to study French, history, and education instead of just math. I'm also taking 2 ballroom classes which are helping me improve a ton. If anyone is trying to work on their abs...do samba, I promise it will give you a six pack.

Speaking of ballroom, we had tryouts last week and I made the tour team. I'm so excited! I miss dancing with Alli though.


Anyway, now I'm just enjoying my day off before I start being crazy busy again. Thank goodness for days off!

I'm finally back. After a long few months full of finals, work, ballroom, family, Christmas, and relaxing, I have finally come back to the blogging world.

I'm not ready to start school tomorrow. I want more time to relax and be with my family and friends. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice. I got to go home for 10 days over Christmas which was wonderful. I love when my whole family is together. We spent all our time playing games, watching movies, reading, eating, and lounging together and I loved every minute of it. Being with my family was the best Christmas present!

Since being back from Colorado I have mostly been working. I've also spent time watching House with Alli and Colt. On Friday night, Colt invited me to go to his cabin with his family. His cabin in snowed in, so you have to take snowmobiles to get there. Considering the horrible accident I was in on a snowmobile in high school, I was not excited for that part. I'm happy to report that I made it there and back with no accidents and I'm now not as scared anymore, although it's still not my favorite thing to do.

I'm going to spend today going to church and then mentally preparing myself to be back in school, classes, and ballroom which will be kind of a shock for my brain that doesn't want to go back to reality.

As a future math teacher I am always looking for real-world example I can give my students when they ask me the question "how will this apply to me in the future?" Personally, I think that is a dumb question. You are in the class so you obviously need to know it. However, this weekend I found a wonderful example.

On Saturday I spent 11 hours (it was my day off Lin's and heaven forbid I actually get a day off) creating patterns to use for our samba dresses. Keep in mind these dresses have to be done by Wednesday and we have to make 12. We didn't have a pattern so I had to create a pattern. I followed the instructions of the costume design major in charge of the project, but once I was done she realized that people have a larger hip measurement in the back than in the front (go figure). After running into many problems with the asymmetrical hem and other things, I spent another few hours designing another pattern. This one was perfect. Perfect in a geometric, math-nerd sort of way. Even though this pattern was very difficult to come up with out of thin air, it would have worked. Then we asked our lovely costume design major/ballroom dancer (Chelsea) how much fabric we had. 13 yards. 13 yards of fabric to make 12 dresses. Is she insane? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

Then Alli and I went home and spent a few hours looking at the old dresses that we were trying to recreate. After measuring and studying them, we came up with a new pattern (Alli did the top and I did the bottom). This pattern is simple, easy to use, doesn't use a lot of fabric, and is also geometrically perfect. Chelsea hates it. Why? Because there is a seam down the back to allow for darts so the dresses will actually fit girls. Heaven forbid we put a seam down the back of the dress right?

I don't care though. I'm proud of myself for being able to create 4 patterns in one day. I think it was the combination of math skills and having my mother's genes. She is great at sewing. She was proud of my pattern-making skills as well. :)

Ok so lately ballroom has been crazy, hectic, and full of drama. I've spent most of my time helping plan events and running the team. While I have been dancing, I forgot for a while why I'm doing ballroom. Then my dear friend the samba came around. My team was supposed to do a west coast swing, a tango, and a night club two step, but due to a change in personnel, we aren't doing the night club two step and we are now doing a samba!!

When I had first found out this year what dances we were doing I was so disappointed because I really just wanted to do a Latin dance. Now, Latin is back! I missed it so much!

This is our samba from last year:


it rocked...

We learned the choreography last night and then had a practice this morning to clean the dance and it felt so good to do an upbeat dance again and move my hips!! If you are ever in a bad mood and just feel like dancing (I don't know why you would unless you are me), I would definitely recommend the samba...it can make everything good. Yay for samba...it reminded me why I love dancing!!

There are lots of things that I need to post about from the last week. It seems like months ago that I went home because so much has gone on since then. Lots of crazy things are happening...but I'll post about those later.

I just wanted to post about Lauren. She is reporting to the MTC tomorrow before going to California for her mission. I'm so proud of her. She is going to be an amazing missionary. I can't believe we have been friends for 15 years!! That seems like so long and I'm so blessed to have such an amazing friend in my life for so long! Even though I'm going to miss her, I'm so glad she gets this opportunity to serve the Lord for 18 months. I love you Lauren!!