Mamma update!

Well it's been a few days so I thought I would take a moment and update you all about my mamma. When I got here Monday she was having a bit of a rough morning and was having a hard time. I only saw her for a minute and then they had to run some tests and then visitor hours were closed for 2 hours so all my fam that was there went out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (YUM!). It was SO great to see them all though! There was my dad, my brother Ben, sisters- Emily, Mellisa, Monie, and Annie, bro in law Adam, and sweet, adorable little niece Tani! (Santana). She is SO cute! I played with her the whole day. :) It's been a long time since I've been around babies.

Anyway, we went back to the hospital and got to see her for reals this time. She was doing a little better but it was still really, really, hard to see her in there. She was in the ICU with all these tubes and stuff and things sticking in her and it was just so awful! I think seeing your mom in a condition like that is one of the worst things in the world. I was so upset all weekend, just going between phone calls to hear about her, and it was so good to just see her in person! I've been up there everyday to see her and she is getting better everyday. The first day I got there though she could barely talk and it was just a very emotional and hard day for all of us.

Yesterday Annie, Emily, and I went up and she was doing much, much better than the day before, she could talk this time. They have her on 100% oxygen so she had to wear a mask for that. She has a very severe case of pneumonia and two collapsed lungs and so she's been having difficulties getting oxygen, as you can imagine. They did a ton of tests to see if that was due to something else but so far haven't found anything, which I suppose is good. While we were there though they told us that they had a room for her out of the ICU which was really good cuz it meant she was improving! Yay! Emily is staying up there with her now to take charge and help her out, something Emily is very good at. :) Everybody fasted for her that day though and I know that really helped in her improvement.

Today I went up just with my Daddy and saw her in her new room. She is really doing good today although she is still on 100% oxygen. They said she can't come home until the amount they are giving her is 60% which will be probably be next week sometime. She is NOT very happy about that though. She wanted so bad to come home tomorrow! Unfortunately though she has to stay up there and get a little better. She's quite the crack up though, such a funny lady. She's been a little anxious and such up there though, which is understandable. She's been talking herself through everything to help herself out. She just wants to get out so bad though! She told us before I got there that she wanted everybody to "fast her the hell out" of there. See? Told she was funny... :) I do love her though, she's awesome.

Well, anyway, she's doing so much better than last Friday/Saturday/Sunday. She really scared the crap out of all of us and it really was a close call a couple times. We're just glad she got to the hospital when she did cuz if it was any later who knows what would have happened. But it's all turning out better and she's on her way to recovery. Emily is a big help to her and the rest of us are all praying, fasting and visiting any time we can, which she greatly appreciates. She thanks everyone who's praying for her as well.

It has been hard without her here at home and we are all greatly missing her right now but the important thing is that she gets well and comes home when she's ready and healthy enough. She said this is her wake up call in life and that she's going to do better with her health, etc. So maybe that's the case, maybe this trial is meant to teach us something else, but whatever the case may be, we are all in it together....wow that was so High School Musical..gross...but anyway, it's true. We're all helping each other out and I am so grateful for every member of my family. I am so glad that I was able to come out here and hopefully lighten there burden a little bit by helping them out. I am so happy to be home and I miss it so much when I'm gone! I just wish I had a happier reason to come but oh well. I'm here and happy and happy that my mamma is getting better! I wouldn't know what to do without her and am so grateful for all that she does for me! I love you mamma!

P.S.- just to reassure you all, I have not forgotten about my husband in our brief separation :) I miss him a lot and know that he misses me too! Although I'm sure he's feeling it a bit more than me since he's been mostly just at work and home all alone. I've been busy, busy, busy since I got here and will keep being busy til I leave! Luckily though he is at his sister's tonight and is going to be with cousins and other family tomorrow so he won't be alone anymore. I love you honey! :)

"A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take." -- Cardinal Mermillod

So this blog has a bit of good and a bit of bad in it. The good side is that I'm going home on Monday!!!!!!!!! I am so utterly thrilled and excited and can't wait for Monday to come. The downside though is the main reason I'm going, my poor Mamma went into the hospital yesterday and she's still there. She's been sick since last Saturday and she went to the doctor and they said she had bronchitis and then she went to the hospital yesterday and they said she had pneumonia. She was having trouble breathing though and they had to put her on oxygen and then they took her to a hospital in Kansas City and that's where she is right now. Needless to say, I've been a little worried and stressed! I miss her probably the most and call her ALL the time, as I'm sure she could tell you. :) Anytime I'm walking home or going to class or whatever, she's the first one I call! I love her so much!

So my sisters thought I should come home and I really, really wanted to so there you go! I'm on my way! Apparently Mellisa needs me to come home: 1) to help her with the little ones (no problem there! They are SO cute!) and 2) cuz she said she's "depending on me" to help with Thanksgiving dinner...ha! That's funny... I'm not a bad cook but neither are they but I appreciate the compliment in there and the faith she has in me. I can do pretty much anything, not to brag of course, I just do NOT want to do the turkey :) I don't trust myself with that one yet! Someday, when I'm feeling especially lucky...anyway...I thought she was pretty funny. I do want to help though while I'm there, in any way I can, so if the trade off for going home is babysitting and cooking, I'm not gonna complain! :) I miss it so much!

The only other sad part about this whole business is that I'm going to be leaving Mark for 4 days! I know, I know, how sappy and pathetic, but deal with it! I'm going to miss him. :) But this will be good practice for when he gets in the Navy and has to leave me for 12 weeks. That is NOT going to be fun! We'll manage though...hopefully... It was funny though cuz he was like, what am I going to do if you go home? So his only stipulation was that he got to buy a video game to play to keep him entertained and I could go home. Meh! No problem there! Well as the saying goes though: Absence makes the heart grow fonder! :) haha...

Well that's all for now, I'm sure I'll have more to say after tomorrow! (we're going to Mark's aunt Janet's for a pre-Thanksgivng dinner, yum!). Love to all and prayers to my mamma!

Oh, and just so you know, BYU and Utah are in the 3rd quarter- 24-27...eek! It's been going back and forth and it's sure going to be an awful close game! Go COUGARS!!!!! See me friend Amanda's blog for a deligtful parody of Oh, Holy Night. It's pretty darn funny.....

Oh again! I saw Twilight today!!! Good movie! loved it. Love the books, love the author...love it all!!! Very much recommended I say.

Let the "Holy War" begin!

So I was walking to class the other day and happened to walk past one of the many statues on campus. For any visitors this week they might see something strange though... ALL the statues are completely covered in Saran wrap. Why, you might ask, would we do this??? Seems pretty strange don't you think? Well it is but we have good reason for it. This Saturday just so happens to be the final game of the BYU football season and it is against our biggest rival, the University of Utah. Every year we cover these statues to prevent any "vandalizing" or anything the Utes might want to do to them. I guess one year something must have happened and someone came up with the idea of covering them with Saran wrap...that's really going to stop them! :) haha...right.... anyway, it looks pretty funny to me. Since I've been here though I haven't heard of anything happening against either school but the Saran wrap is kind of tradition now I guess.

(This is a statue of a mother and father holding hands with their child, as if you couldn't tell for yourself! It's so apparent right? with all that Saran wrap? I wonder how much they spend in Saran wrap every year......hmm.... :)

I'm really kind of excited for the game except that I have to work during it and won't get to watch it. I didn't get to watch any of the games this year which kind sucks, last year I went to all the home ones and it was SO much fun! The game against Utah was especially awesome, well the last 4 minutes of the last quarter was anyway :) Well, BYU has won against Utah the past two years and the Utes are definitely not too happy about that fact. They're just going to have to deal with it cuz it's just going to happen again! :) haha...I don't know really, but I'm hoping for a Cougar win, of course! Both teams have done really good this year, Utah is 10-0 and BYU is 10-1. So it should be a very interesting and awesome game! It's also going to make an interesting Sunday dinner for Mark and I, we are going up to his aunt's house for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner and Amy and Calvin are both going to be there, who are both Utes fans. Luckily they aren't the extremely gung-ho fanatics so I think we'll be safe, but it'll be a good, lively discussion for whatever the outcome :)

Anyway, that's pretty much all I really have to say, I'm not the biggest football fan out there so I'm not really that into it, mainly just for the Cougs! Games are just so fun to go to! But yeah, that's all for now....except for a few pics of last year for your enjoyment :)
(this is a record for me though! Shortest blog! ha! :)

Cosmo is my hero!!!

This is the final score from the BYU vs. Utah game last year.

And this is all the BYU fans rushing the field after our victory! This won't happen this year when we win, Cougar fans will want to get out of there as quick as they can! :)

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. -Bernard Meltzer-

First of all I'm sorry for taking so long in putting up a new post! Some of my friends say they have a hard time keeping up (I really don't do them too often, maybe once a week sometimes or whatever), but then I'm sure there are others that say I need to do more... I guess I just can't please everybody!!!

This has been a great week for meeting up with good friends for me. First, on Wednesday, Whit and I went up to SLC to pick up our friend Amanda from the airport. We met her here at BYU but she's taking this semester off so she's been at home in CA and decided to come visit for the weekend. We had a good time though together that night, we went to "The Pie" in SLC up by the University of Utah, which was pretty darn good pizza. It was a little more scandalous than our campus' pizza place though (which is called "The Brick Oven" and is way yummy), being by the UofU and all :) It was kinda funny though cuz right when we were getting up to leave some drunk guy came over and started hitting on Whit...it was the highlight of my evening. :) The pizza was pretty good though, although probably not the absolute best I've ever had...still trying to find that one.... :) Other than that we just had a fun time talking and such...it's always interesting being with those two cuz the most random things will come up, especially with Amanda, she is the most random person I've ever met in my life and I love it.. She's awesome.

The other great friend I saw this weekend was my friend Shauna. We've known each other since our first year at Girl's Camp when we were 12 years old...a LONG time ago it seems. :) I didn't like her much at first for some reason but the next year we were in the same group and became good friends. We didn't see each other too much though cuz we lived 50 miles apart and then after high school we lost touch a bit which was sad. But then I found out she was up at college in Logan and I FiNaLlY found her on Facebook and ever since it's been great! Mostly she comes to visit me down here (I'm a slacker friend and have never visited her up in Logan...sorry!) but she has lots of friends down here and this area is just funner than Logan. :) Anyway, she stays with me mostly and we have lots of fun whenever she visits. We have our traditional things we like to do, like we always end up going out to eat and our main place is Red Robin, although sometimes when we're feeling wealthy or something we head over to Outback Steakhouse, but usually it's Red Robin- towering stack of onion rings, big burgers, and Mile high mud pie! Yum!!! It's great...
So this time Shauna came down Friday night and we did end up going to Red Robin but just for desert. She mainly came down cuz Saturday night there was a concert she wanted to go to up in SLC with her favorite band, Ingram Hill. I thought she was going to go with a friend of ours but she got sick so she was going to end up going by herself, which of course I couldn't let her go up there by herself and this just gave me a real excuse for not doing homework :) I really need to work on that...anyway, the concert was in a really small little place, there wasn't more than 35 people there so it was kinda laid back and relaxed which was kinda fun. The band, Ingram Hill, was pretty darn good...I've heard of them before but never really listened to them but I really liked there music. They're a little band from Tennessee and are starting to get a bit more popular now. I'm actually listening to there new cd right now as I'm typing this :) But yeah, we got there a little late so we only got to listen to them for an hour or so but afterwards we got to meet them and Shauna bought their new CD and poster and had them sign it and then she had her pic taken with the lead singer, shown below :)


She was so excited to go though and I'm glad I got to go with her. I've been getting a little restless with my music selection lately so this new stuff was exactly what I needed to spice it up. I love music and constantly have it on at home or work or in between classes, I don't know what I'd do without music. It's kind of ironically funny because I had little distraction noises around me but I also hate dead silence, I have to have music on or something to cover that or it drives me crazy. I really have a ton of music too so I shouldn't be tired of it but sometimes you just need something new. While we were there though, they sang a song that they said they were going to put on there upcoming album, called "Hey Girl" which was such a good song!!! Shauna got a bit of it on video and I tried all night to upload it on to here but it didn't work...lame!!! Oh well I guess...

It's really good song though and I'm quickly becoming a big fan of these guys. The lead singer was really good and really nice. It's so nice to see musicians who appreciate there fans and everything, I think sometimes that famous people get too cocky and stuck up and treat there fans badly when they should do the entire opposite and be grateful for those fans. Actors/musicians, etc aren't anything without their fans...they couldn't get anywhere without them so they should show that appreciation a little more I think. :) Me and Shauna talked about this while we were driving home so I just thought I'd share that little tirade with you.
Well I think that pretty much sums everything up. Overall I had a pretty great weekend, although not very productive schoolwise AT ALL! Oops! Oh well...I'll deal with that all tomorrow....I'm just excited for this week to get over because the week after is Thanksgiving! I don't have class from this Friday until the next Tuesday after Thanksgiving...which equals a whole ELEVEN days without any classes, it's going to be fabulous! Don't worry though, I have plenty of papers and tests and such that I have to do in that time :( :( :( It will all be over soon though, thank goodness! I'm ready for this semester to be done already! Anyway, I really am done now...I promise I'll be back soon with pics of our new place! I promise I haven't forgotten about that...

"Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble." -William Shakespeare-

I can't believe that Halloween is already over and it's now November! Seems crazy...but I'm glad because that means it's getting closer to the end of the semester and that means I get to go home and then celebrate Christmas! yay! But I guess I'll focus on the here and now :)

So Halloween was pretty fun, the only drawback was that poor Mark is still sick...He stayed home from work today (we stayed out a little bit too late last night, probably wasn't wise) and slept for like 4 1/2 hours this afternoon. He said he felt better after that, well I would hope so! Geez...anyway, yesterday we both worked in the morning and then went up to Salt Lake City to Amy's apartment and me, Mark, Amy, and Calvin celebrated the holiday! We carved pumpkins, ate caramel apples, and watched the Poltergeist (it was on ABC Family of all channels...kinda creepy for a family channel...). It was a lot of fun though!

Me, Mark, and Amy just chose designs out of the pumpkin carving kit and did those. I did a spider and a spider-web, Mark did one with wolves, and Amy did a skull and cross bone. Calvin (who I'm told is a master pumpkin carver) drew out his own. He had a guy standing behind a stack of sandbags and there was a gun on top of the sandbags and the guy is throwing a grenade and on the other side of the pumpkin there is an explosion. So pretty cool idea but it didn't out the way he wanted cuz he didn't want to spend hours on it. They all turned out really good though, especially Mark's. He took the longest of us, such a perfectionist :)

We ordered some pizza while we carved and then during the movie we ate our caramel apples. Amy, Calvin, and Mark put crushed up Kit-Kat bars on top of theirs but I kept mine just caramel...yummy... Then we all settled back and watched "The Poltergeist." Pretty creepy movie if you ask me and way old school graphics. Pretty funny actually. We ended up getting home at about 1am so we were pretty beat. But it was a lot of fun and so nice to get out of Provo, even for just a couple of hours! The only places I go anymore are work, school, home, and church. It was great seeing Amy and Calvin though, we always have a lot of fun together. It was nice though cuz on Monday when Mark and I went up to SLC for his interview, we met Amy and Calvin and had dinner at Chili's so we got to see them twice in one week, which was awesome.

Fun times!Next holiday...... Thanksgiving! Yay!