sleep?

sleep has become a foreign concept yet a much longed for thing for us the last couple weeks. joe is a full time student and basically working two jobs because he got roped into doing sound for a show and his normal job is master electrician. all of my teachers are suddenly realizing what little time we have left in the semester and trying to catch up by throwing everything on our plates... needless to say we are a couple of very busy sleep deprived people! we will survive.... somehow... right now i am just going to enjoy the lasagna i made (that's right, homemade with mom's spaghetti sauce!)

People of the World

People of the world. Stress for me = weight gain and retention. I am stressed. Not pregnant just stressed and always an emotional person. Not really sure why strangers and even some acquantences feel the need to ask me if I am expecting but no I am stressed and that is the cause of my pudge. I am stressed and being stressed only makes me more stressed. And what may you ask do these questions and implications do for me? Make me more stressed. Consequently no matter what I can manage to do (while keeping in mind that both my husband and I are full time students and do have to eat even when I can't create a 100% healthy meal) the weight stays and creates a pudge that apparently looks to some people like a baby bump. No thank you very much that is not and even if it were (which let me make clear it is not) what do you think gives you the right to ask?! IF i were and wanted to let people know i would! But since I am not pregnant there is nothing to tell other than I am stressed!!!! (which if you know me is nothing new!)
Dear Blog, thank you for letting me rant =) as i sit here writing this i can't help but laughing at it all yet still wondering what goes through some peoples minds to say the things they do...
Have a wonderful day all!

life

So both of us being full time students keeps us pretty busy but add in add in Joe being master electrician for the theatre department and now also doing sound for the upcoming show we have a pretty crazy life! As of this week we are back to eating our dinners out of tuperware- i make it then bring it to joe at the snow so we can eat dinner together. it's an interesting wat to do things but it works for us right now. School is pretty crazy but still going well it's crazy to think that we only have 6 weeks left of school including thanksgiving break! yeah!!!! yet somehow at the same time it feels like an eternity. We registered for classes this last week for next semester and i am going to take english 101 online so that i don't go crazy and bored out of my mind sitting through a class on the basics of how to write.... ummm yeah i know how to do that. but because i haven't taken it yet and they won't waive it i couldn't register for the other english class i need to take since 101 is a prerequisite for it- dumb- anyways i'm pleading with the teacher to just let me take them concurrently, lets cross our fingers that they will let me! If i can get into that class and a cultural diversity class i have to take but is full ( no joke the girl who grew up overseas, went to an international school in thailand and whose graduating class had 38 different nationalities in it has to take a cultural diversity class...) then i will only have two classes left to take after winter semester and then student teaching (one of those two classes is a 6 credit class and the other which is supposed to be taken concurrently is 3 credits so it's not exactly nothing.) I'll still have to work in taking my praxis tests probably end of next semester is what i'm thinking but i don't know. ok so it sounds like alot when i write it all out but it feels like there is finally going to be an end to all this school at some point! We still don't know what we will be doing next summer but we'll let you all know when we have an actual plan. if nothing else pans out i think i will do school. we do know that for thanksgiving we're going to west yellowstone to be with joe's parents and for christmas we're caravaning down to alb. to spend it with my family in our old house- it will be fun to show joe another place that i grew up.
WE love our new ward and have now been called as assistant pack leaders which basically means we help with pack night. We got called two sundays ago and then that wednesday they had us lead all the cheers at pack night which we found out about the night before, it was well interesting. If you know me you know how i like to plan.... i survived. We have also been asked to help the activities committee with the ward Christmas party- we're not actually on the committee but kinda are for this one. Today in our meeting for that we were put in charge of the entertainment for the party. they want it to be fun and funny yet they also want a nativity..... uh... ok yeah sure no problem. well when we got home from church joe and i worked on ideas and i think we have something they might like but we'll have to see, it's a delicate balance. Anyways we'll see!

ib english

oh why oh why can things not go right? so my petition got approved and then the signature got voided because the office that was supposed to substitute it said that i didn't have any ib records at byu-i so i got the registrars office to find my records and then i got the academic advising office to reverse the void and then i went back to the registrar with my petition to get them to do the substitution and what happens? they say that they can't accept the ib credit... uh yeah i know the english department doesn't like ib, wasn't that the point of the petition? so basically the dean who signed my petition approved the decision to substitute ib english for english 250 which is an intro to lit course and give me credit but because the english dept chair has said that their policy is not to accept it all they can do is waive the course for me but i don't get the credit.... dumb. so after discussing it with the manager of the registrar (and everyone else under the sun) i helped him understand the current situation since he has tried to get the english dept to change their decision several times. but this is a course that hasn't really been appealed or presented to them before so he was going to go before the dean and the chair and present the case to them. so we'll see if i can get credit for it or just stick with it being waived and then having to take fluff courses just to get to my credit requirement.... soooo silly.

week in review

Well it's the end of another busy stressful and interesting week. Monday i took a test on law for my sped class and passed the first time! hooray for me! that was a major load off for the rest of the week since it was a proficiency test so i would have had to keep taking it until i got a score the instructor was happy with. tuesday i did some more battle with the english department trying to get my ib english to count for something- any of you who knew me when i went through ib english in high school understand how much work and how hard it was for me, and i'm a good student! needless to say i should get some credit for it but it's been a two year battle with the school so we'll see if this new way of presenting it i came up with will work- we somehow figured out a way to bipass the english department head and go to the dean- we'll see. tuesday was also devo by Elder Oaks, it's always fun for me to hear him speak since i have spoken in the same meeting as him i am also intrigued to see what he is going to talk about. he talked about religous freedom and our constitution and the need to protect it. it was very powerful. wednesday... honestly i can't remember wednesday.... that's probably not a good thing.... ummmm...... nope. still not coming to me. oh wait wednesday joe went down to IF to the social security office and officially made me a bidwell, i sent him with every document they could need since they made such a tizzy last time. i also tried to get my flu shot wednesday since the health center wouldn't give me one when i went before since they were saving them for the health fair. i went right when i got done with class and they were out! i was so mad because they were the ones that had made me wait and they were out! they only ordered 400- for a campus of like 15,000.... i don't see the logic.... but anyways they're not going to order anymore in and apparently pretty much the entire state is out.... slight problem for someone that inevitably catches everything.... we'll see if i survive the semester without missing too much school (which in a 12 week semester missing any time will hurt you big time). thursday... i had just started to warm up to science thanks to my physical science class a while ago and now my science methods class.. thursday changed that.... she had us disect an owl pellet.... goodbye any hope of me liking science again... i got one glove on and determined that i couldn't do it so i took it back off and just tried to look at the ones at my table doing it as little as possible. i managed to not throw up or even have to leave the room- major improvement on 6th grade and the worm... class could not end soon enough, consequently i was quezy the rest of the day. friday was a very interesting day, i became orthopedically impaired for four hours and was wheelchair bound- ok not really but i had to pretend to be for a class. let me just tell you, i have very little upper body strength. it was funny to see how people reacted to me being in a wheel chair and how some people would see me struggling and try not to look at me like that solved the problem. i now have a much greater appreciation for people in wheelchairs... especially on the hill of the byu-idaho campus... i literally could not push myself up the hill joe had to do it, i kept trying and it would take me like 10 minutes to get 5 feet. also the bathrooms... so dumb! so do you know how public restrooms often have a little lip at the door in case of flooding? well in the hinckley building they have that lip and there is no little ramp part to it, just an inch tall obsticle for me to get the wheelchair completely stuck on- bless that girl who got over being scared of helping a complete stranger get into the bathroom because i was stuck and by the end of the four hours had very little upper body strength left, my left arm still feels kinda weird. and then there's saturday.... grocery shopping... you wouldn't think that it would be a painful thing now would you, well it was for me this week. so i know i have gained alot of weight in the last year and i have been working on changing that, joe and i were grocery shopping and had the cart full of veggies i was feeling good about trying to stick to my healthy list of grocery items when we run into someone joe knows and what do they ask looking straight at me and my table muscle? "are you expecting?" i think it was a mixture of not being sure if i had heard her and wondering if someone would actually ask that that made joe and i ask at the same time "what?" and it must have been my shocked face that made her say nevermind and walk away..... ouch.... big time ouch.... no i am not expecting but apparently i look that way, thanks. i know she didn't mean to be rude but, ouch. needless to say i will not be wearing that shirt unless i am expecting and i have a stronger desire to lose weight, yet part of me just wants to crawl into bed and stay there. I now remember something that was said many times in our household growing up... if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all... saturday night joe and i went to the temple which helped make saturday not a complete disaster. today was the primary program in church which was absolutely wonderful, the shy kids as always stole the show. joe and i have also been asked to help out with the ward Christmas party so although it's not a calling we are kinda part of the activity committee for this one- they found out that we are theatre people. so that was my week, joe has had school and work and nothing terribly exciting that i can think of other than having to push me around campus on friday when i just couldn't do it anymore. we love our ward and everyone is so wonderful and inviting- major contrast to last year! we love our apartment and having the extra space, a washer and dryer and not a hallway kitchen! and school is going pretty well as crazy as it is. we went into the academic advising office last week to check that we really are on schedule and figure out where we were out. we explored the option of going to school next summer and student teaching next fall but soon discovered that joe has classes that wouldn't be offered and even when they are they conflict so long story short it would be pointless for joe to go to school next summer. i could still go and then student teach next fall but a local placement is between ashton and pocatello so that would be no fun. so we'll see what we do. i think right now we are thinking to take the summer off and work- we know where we would like to work and have expressed our desire but it isn't up to us so we'll see what happens! sorry no pictures to entertain you all of me struggling in the wheelchair- i wish i had taken some.. oh well!!!

some more summer pics

we are alive... so i've been told =)

well folks it has been a very insane ride these last couple months. our last show of the summer season at the pinecone playhouse was sept. 5th but oh no that was not the end of our adventures there, joe and i played the leads in their september extension show of barefoot in the park. so for the next three weekends of thrusday, friday and saturdays we traveled back and forth from rexburg to perfrom up in west yellowstone at night while going to school during the day. what made us think that we would be just fine opening a show in west yellowstone with limited rehearsals on our first day of school in rexburg i don't know but none the less we did it. opening night was... well we'll just call it a final dress but then we bounced back figured out technical difficulties and spent tons more time on lines and then the show got to be kinda fun. it really is a funny script and it was funny because the roles that joe and i played were so opposite to us in real life. it was a very very crazy and stressful time but we survived! once the shows were over we of course had to buckle down on school which is good that the show ended when it did because it was about time that school got some more attention. school is pretty wild and crazy for me this semester, i am in four methods classes, new testament and a sped class where currently i am studying law... not so much fun and very confusing, oh and next friday i get to spend the day in a wheelchair.... it should be interesting. joe is pretty busy with school too but he doesn't have as much in class time as i do because he is taking one less class and one of his classes is an online class but it still keeps him busy, oh and did i mention that since the beginning of the semester he has been the master electrician on campus for the theatre department? yeah we are just full of free time ;) -full of sarcasm. Joe's birthday was on sept. 8th and so i threw him a birthday party with our friends in rexburg and thanks to the dollar store it was lots of fun... i love the dollar store, it's my friend. i also made him a snickers cake this year instead of just buying one from albertsons because well, i like to bake =) so pretty much that is what we have been up to lately, here's some pictures for your viewing pleasure! ( i can never get pictures to cooperate so here they are in random order)