The Life of the Unemployed

So, I graduated from BYU a couple of weeks ago. That was cool :) However, what was not cool was that by doing so, I basically quit my job. My job at the library was a student job and since I am no longer a student, BYU decided to give me the gift of being unemployed along with my diploma. How thoughtful. Don't get me wrong, it will be great fun to get a "real" job, but until the time comes when companies finally realize I am indispensable to their success, I'm out of luck. My job this last little while has been job searching. That's not fun.

Good Day, Sunshine

Finally!!!! I can see the sun and feel a little warmth! I spent part of the day today in my backyard with my cousin painting our beam for our family room and I actually got a little sunburned!!!!! It's not like I was out there for forever either! This is glorious. Sure, I'm not the biggest fan of sunburns in general, but this one is the first of the season plus, it's not too bad--at least I'm not feeling anything but warm yet :) We did a lot of work today and now I'm actually at work, but it's been such a great day!! I had a sleepover with my cousin last night. This morning we went and bought New Moon. Uncle Ken came and installed our new bookshelves and we got them all decorated and looking cute. We dusted the upstairs. We painted the beam. And we saw a lot of sunshine!!!!!!!! I love it.

New Semester, One Month Gone

Basically, I hardly ever post ANYTHING!!! I should be better at that :) You'd think that when something actually happens and/or changes it would give me reason to write, but no. I apparently never write. :) Here's a quick recap:

Kami and Brooke both left for their missions!! Brooke is in Plano, Texas and Kami is still in the MTC in Argentina--in a few weeks she'll head off for Uruguay!! They are both doing great! Things may not have started off all that great for them emotionally, but things have really started to pick up. Brooke has already had one baptism and she has at least one more this month! As for Kami, they send the missionaries in the MTC down there out tracting on Saturdays and her first time out (which also happened to be her birthday) she had a really great experience. She was scared to death and nervous to be in a place she had never been before and have to speak Spanish to them after only having spent about a week studying it at the MTC. They took a bus to the middle of Buenos Aires and the first thing she hears when she gets off the bus is a Dire Straits song playing in English. For anyone who doesn't know, my dad was a HUGE Dire Straits fan so that of course helped her feel a little more at home, but then she says she literally felt my dad grab her hand and heard him say, "Let's get to work, Princess." Yeah, I can't quite read or tell or hear that story without tearing up yet :). Things have gone uphill for Kami since then. She says she felt him with her that whole day and I'm sure he'll be with her for her entire mission--he always talked about how much he loved his mission and how he would love to serve another one! He was so excited for both Kami and Brooke when they got their calls and was also excited they would be speaking Spanish. I'm sure he'll help both of them out on their missions from time to time :)

I finally finished last semester! I know I have written about how awesome all of my classes were--which they were--but they were seriously never-ending! I've never had near as much homework as I did last semester! Good thing I wasn't ever able to add that english class I was trying to get into! I might have had to drop out from stress :) The stress was already enough to make me change my major--I am now majoring in Home and Family Living and I am loving it so far. This semester I am taking: Family Finance, Basic Clothing Construction, Critical Inquiry and Research Methods, and Strengthening Marriage and Family. Surprisingly, I am loving all of them! Even my research class :)!! Who'd have thought? I've never liked doing research, but I'm still really enjoying it!

And finally, the last thing I can think of right now that needs to be updated--I got a new calling! I was a Primary teacher (teaching the 4-5 year olds) and that was fine, but now I am the assistant YW camp director! I'm sooo excited!! I always loved camp when I was in young women's and I think it's going to be so much fun to help with it this summer!

Other than those things, my life has basically just been the usual boring. It's still fun though:)

My Wonderful Father

My dad passed away Sunday night at about 11pm. It was pretty unexpected. He had gone in last Tuesday for Gastric Bypass surgery which went really well according to his surgeon. He came home from the hospital on Thursday. We all knew going into that surgery that there was a chance he could die, but not a very big one--seeing as how his surgeon has done over a thousand of them and never made a mistake. When he came home we all assumed that that meant he would recover and he would be able to live a better life because of it. But on Saturday he started having extra pains and his wound began oozing green stuff. After the convincing of my mom, ex-bishop, and a nurse in my ward he finally agreed to let us take him to the hospital. By the time they got him to the ER he was completely unresponsive. The doctors at the ER were able to bring him around then and they said they had to get him into surgery right then or he would die and he nodded his consent. The repair surgery (to repair a hole in his intestines) went well, but the surgeon said that living through the surgery isn't the hard part. People usually die after this surgery because of pneumonia or heart failure. After the surgery he was given medication to paralyze and sedate him so that he wouldn't cough or anything that could mess up what they had done since they had to leave his wound open. Then it was just a balancing act--giving him different medications to help with blood pressure and other things and pushing fluids and trying to get the right amount of everything going in and out. At one point he was hooked up to twenty-three IVs with a whole lot of things also coming out of him. but eventually he slipped into a non-medication induced coma and then flat-lined. They worked to get his heart going again for twenty minutes but then we told them to stop. That was Sunday night.

But I know that it was the right time for him to go. I've felt really peaceful through this whole thing and through all the tears. He left on probably the greatest spiritual high of his life. In the past few weeks he has been through the temple with my two sisters who are going on missions, seen my brother married in the temple, and had the peace of knowing that my oldest sister is finally married to a very great guy. I don't think he'd ever been so happy. He was excited for the surgery too. He went into it knowing that if he was supposed to live, a drunk could do the surgery and it would be fine, or if he was supposed to die, he could have the best surgeon in the world do it and die. He wasn't able to do too much in his state of health prior to the surgery and he knew that if all went well he would be able to have a much better life and be a better father (not that he wasn't already awesome) and if it didn't he would be better in the spirit world where he could still help us--where he could go on the missions with my sisters and help all of the rest of us through life.

My classes rock. I get to read a lot of kids books, do little kid dances, and create a picture book based off of a kid's song. Basically, I like homework. Everyone should be jealous :)

Update on my family: Zach is married and on his honeymoon, Brooke is leaving on Oct. 7th on her way to her mission in Dallas, Texas, and Kami received her call to Montevideo, Uruguay and will be leaving on January 7th and going to the Argentina MTC! I am still doing nothing, but at least I am having fun in the process.

Tonight wasn't the best night ever since I went to the football game and we lost 58-24 to Florida State, but attending the game in and of itself was still fun. And it's bound to get better tonight since I get to go home in 35 minutes and watch Wednesday's episode of So You Think You Can Dance, which I am completely addicted to. Yes, it's that bad. It's just like Kayla and Kupono's Mia Michaels dance last season :)

1st Day of School

So here I am at school--sitting in the library on my computer. I always get really enthusiastic at the beginning of a new school year and this year has been no different. I got up on time, got ready, and left for school planning on being an hour early in order to get everything situated (such as my locker and creating pages to take notes on for each of my classes). I got to the library at about 8:00 and expected to have to hurry to get everything done before my 9:00 PE class only to find that I'm much quicker at getting things in order than I anticipated. To fill the extra time I decided to check my schedule online to make sure I have the right room number written down on my paper schedule and discover that my 9:00 PE class doesn't start until the second block--that is, it doesn't begin until October 21st and here I am at 9:00am on August 31st with nothing to do until I have to work at noon. I don't have any homework to work on since I haven't actually been to any classes yet and I can't even look at what I have coming up because I don't have a syllabus for any of my classes. Maybe I'll go watch Arrested Development in the LRC :)

Reset

I've decided that the reset button can fix almost anything: the computer, the internet, my cell phone, etc. Summer is like a reset button. I get completely stressed out and tired during the school year, but I'm ready to go again. Even with the stress of paying tuition and buying books I'm excited!! My classes for this upcoming semester sound like so much fun for the most part! They are: PE (where I actually get to go to an elementary school and teach PE), Children's Literature (which is the one I'm most excited for!!!!), Math (which I could do without, but it's okay because it's basically my only really academic class and it's even just teaching you how to teach math to elementary school kids), Rhythm and Dance, Art, Music, and Drama in the Elementary Classroom. Yep, I know, my schedule rocks. I'm also trying to add the advanced writing class for El Ed majors but so far I'm not having much luck. If I am able to add it, it will bring my credit hours up to 18. I'm a little nervous about that seeing as how the university won't even let you go above 18 credit hours. But I think I should be able to cope since my classes should at least be interesting. And if I'm not able to register for the writing class, I won't have any classes on Friday!!! Plus, I only work on Mon, Wed, Thurs, and Sat so I would have Fridays completely free!! The only problem I have with my work schedule is on the Saturdays when there are home football games. I bought my all-sports pass! and working on Saturdays makes it hard to go to the games. I'm crossing my fingers that someone I work with will be willing to cover for me so I can go!!!! It's going to be an amazing year! Or at least that's the way I'm thinking right now! We'll see how I feel in a month or so. :)