Enduring to the end...

I'm completely done with four of my seven classes! This blog, which I procrastinated a bit, will finish one of the others up. I did try working on it before, but our computer died a tragic death a few weeks ago and finally today I figured out how I could get pictures from our camera unto the school computers. They're difficult for some reason. I feel technologically challenged when I work on this thing. Everybody told me how easy blogspot is to use, but it's taken me a while to figure it all out. Tomorrow I have family history and get to take my sociology final. I get to study for that when I go home tonight.

Thursday I have nothing to do!! I am soo looking forward to it. I'll get to spend the day at home for once. It will be a day full of laundry (it's been neglected lately), but our apartment is clean and I'll get to bake cookies so it's all good. Sunday I realized that I missed spending time at home. We've practically moved into the library. We come to school when I have class every morning and pretty much stay until the library closes. We even were at the library until it closed on Friday and Saturday last weekend. :(
But we've gotten so much done!

I had tons of stuff due today for two of my classes. I did start it all early and worked on it beforehand, but somehow there was still a lot for me to do yesterday. I made it to bed by 2:30 which is pretty good considering how late I had to stay up for midterms in those classes.

Friday I have a final at 7 am. Yuck! I don't know how my teacher got so unlucky, making all of his students unlucky too. He has finals at 7 am on Thursday and Friday. Thankfully I'm not taking his other class until next semester and hopefully they'll be nicer to him then. I'll finish studying for that final tomorrow and after 8 am on Friday morning I'll be free!

Right now though all I care about is sleep. At work today I kept yawning ridiculously between calls. I finally got up to grab some wordsearches to possibly make me more alert. Oddly enough the wordsearch on top when I sat down again was full of words like sleep, catnap, siesta. I looked at the title of it and it was called "Take a Nap". Now if that's not a sign I don't know what is. ;) I get to go to bed in two hours! We're so close to being done. Today was the big day. I can make it until Friday. I can make it until Friday. I just have to keep telling myself that.

Christmas is coming!

Winter must have been confused. We had a very white Thanksgiving. Wrong holiday, but we still enjoyed it. We've pretty much had snow on the ground since then and some days I like it more than others. I like when it's snowing and that just means it's warm enough to snow. And I like when it gets played in.


We have some Christmas decorations I was super excited to pull out, but now our problem is that we have nowhere to put them. There are some randomly on the kitchen counter, table, and our desk. Just having them out makes me happy.

One of the best parts of Christmas is the food!! I can't wait to bake cookies later this week. And Dairy Queen candy cane blizzards are to die for. Peppermint ice cream is my favorite, but we haven't gotten any yet besides that blizzard. After we go grocery shopping next time there will have to be a few cartons in our freezer. Tried the candy cane Oreo's - not impressed. At least now we know not to buy them again. WinCo had red and green gumdrops in their bulk candy. We got a little bag and it's swell. Spearmint and cinnamon without all the other weird flavors.

Joshua wanted me to mention hot chocolate. That boy loves hot chocolate!! He makes it for us all the time. It's our regular drink at home. It's breakfast in the morning, goes well with dinner, and a bedtime snack. I'm glad I'm not the only one obsessed with hot chocolate.

And we found the Christmas music station on the radio!!! Self-explanatory.

Feeding Duckies

We first visited the nature park in August. Back then there were cute little baby duckies. As we were walking toward the pond, we stopped and watched while one of the mommy ducks herded her little ones across the street. It was too cute. She reminded me of a school crossing guard. At that moment I knew I need to have a duck pond one day. More likely, I'll just dream about owning a duck pond. The ducks were so fun to watch and I felt a little attached to them.

Some of our baby ducks.

We visited them in October again, but it was harder to pick our baby ducks out from the rest. This time we brought bread to feed them. We quickly realized it was not nearly enough.

The first Sunday of Thanksgiving break we headed over to the duck pond with more bread. We figured the poor things got neglected when it was snowing outside. As Joshua, our friend Katie, and I approached the duck pond, they were nowhere in sight. We continued talking normally and then I started hollering to them. It was the neatest experience! The majority of the pond was frozen over with a thin layer of ice. The ducks were all on their little island thing across the ice from us. When they heard us they headed over, but they were swimming in a weaving line through water and the duck in front was breaking the ice for all the others. This huge line of ducks reached us and climbed out of the pond to swarm us. Again, we did not have enough bread. Those ducks would eat multiple loaves if we brought them. They were so close to us and were letting us pet them. They'd never gotten that close before! One duck in particular was hanging out by us and not even trying to steal the bread out of our hands. It followed us around. While all of the other ducks swam back across to their island thing, this duck stayed behind. He sat on the ground near us until we were leaving.

Shavonne and Katie petting our duck friend.

He tried following us home. If we had a place for him, he would have been invited. Notice all the duck prints on the ground. The snow was untouched when we got there.

Joshua and I went to feed the ducks again later in the week on Wednesday. This time they swam across most of the pond before having to climb up and walk on the ice to us. Again they swarmed us. I made enemies with a duck. Most of them were just friendly and wanting food, except for one; one of the ducks was mean, unfriendly and wanting food. We had a loaf of bread so you'd think there was plenty to go around, but this one duck kept coming right up to us. He would steal bread from the other ducks and nip at our knees the second we weren't paying special attention to him. I was getting really annoyed and would move away since they'll follow the food wherever we take it. He always worked his way to the front again though. We went again that Friday morning. Joshua knew I didn't like that specific duck and said he'd try to keep it away from me. That duck came right on up to me again the next day though. He kept right on nipping at my knee and stepping on my feet as I stood there and shook my finger at it and kept saying "no, no duck". At that point I realized I was being a little ridiculous. That duck wasn't going to listen to me. I still don't like him. But I do miss all the other ducks. They're nice ones and most of them will let us pet them now.

Hurrying to us.

Joshua with most of the ducks.

The Smells of Autumn

Living in Rexburg we actually experience all four seasons. Autumn and spring are my favorites. I always love the crunch of leaves as I walk from class to class and can't resist building leaf piles to jump in occasionally, but this year it was the smells that got me. There was this stairwell I walked through every day where the leaves would pile up and it became my favorite place on campus. You'd just catch a whiff of fallen leaves and there was something about the leaves which always managed to be damp that would cause me to stop. I had to stop and take it all in. I'm not sure I've ever appreciated autumn this much before. I've never been one to enjoy rain (though I do love puddle jumping after it rains) but I was glad that it rained enough to keep those leaves wet and smelling good. I found myself saddened as it got colder and all the leaves had fallen. My leaf piles in that stairwell got cleaned out, but now I know where to go looking for that wonderful autumn smell next year.

Joshua and I did enjoy playing in the leaves some this year too. It wasn't all about the smells. We headed over to the nature park one Sunday to feed the ducks and I couldn't resist running through the leaves.

Just some pretty pictures.

Running through the crunchy leaves!!