Finals Week & Blessings of the Priesthood

This week is crazy! I have soooo much to do before I can go home next Thursday... accounting, economics, business stats, and science tests. A 3-5 page paper for Doctrine and Covenants and oh so much more! Today, I received an email from my friend Matthew who is currently Elder Cielo :) He is serving in the Canada, Vancouver mission. It was great hearing from him! i miss him terribly! So yesterday I got another mystery delivery of Chocolate Covered Strawberries! They are delicious... just like the first box, but this whole creeper secret admirer thing is starting to... well... creep me out! I mean at first it was kinda cute but it has gone from cute to creep lauren out! I have been thinking lately about the power of the priesthood and how different my life would be without it. The more i thought about it the more thankful I was that I know the truth and that I am able to have worthy priesthood holders in my life. The gospel brings so much comfort to my life and that no matter what I am struggling with my Heavenly Father is there for me and knows what struggles i have and He is there to help me though it. I have been struggling with a lot lately and no matter how down life gets I know that if I turn to my Heavenly Father he is always there for me with open arms willing to help me. Im not saying that its easy, but it has definitely been worth it. I cannot honestly tell you that anything that I have had to endure through was a bad thing, I can see the impact that it has had on my life and I am see the positive things that have come from every difficult situation. Looking back i can think of things that I thought were torture at the time but now I cant imagine not having to go through them. I can honestly say that without the Gospel, the Priesthood, and trials that I have gone through I would not be the person I am today.

Home Sweet Home

So I am officially back in Jersey. Well for the next week and a half. It has been a crazy trip so far. So I flew into Jersey about midnight on Wednesday so by the time I got home it was about 1am. My parents were flying out the next day at 6 which meant that they had to leave my house at 3:45am. It was a very short night for them.

As soon as they left on their vacation, I became mom. This was not an easy task. My first motherly duty was to get the kids up, ready, and off to school. This was TERRIBLE! So first off I am used to mountain standard time so getting up at 6:30 EST was terrible! Getting up at 4:30am my time was not cool! I am not a morning person to start with so getting kids ready and cook them breakfast was not easy for me. The first day I was EXHAUSTED! As soon as I got my sister off to school I was headed ba

ck to bed and I got a call from my sisters school. It was my adorable sister who forgot her glasses at home. So I had to drive to the school to deliver the glasses. It wasn't such a terrible ordeal but I looked like death. The office secretary looked at me and laughed and told me to go back to bed. Oh... I DID!! Sleep was my best friend that day.

DAY 2: My brother accidentely hit me in the face today so black eye is the fashion of the day. It was fantastic...not. I went to a ward party and everyone was asking me what happened. It was interesting explaining to them what happened. I sent my parents a picture of it and I immediately got a call from my dad who told me that it looked like someone took a baseball bat to the side of my face. It looked terrible! My brother and sister spent the night at a friends house so I could go see the new Harry Potter movie. It was weird having to find someone to take care of the kids so I could go out for a night.

DAY 3: I slept in and was late picking the kids up from the house that they stayed the night at... whoops :) I woke up in a panic and

freaked out and grabbed the phone and called the family. Luckily it wasn't a big deal. Thank Goodness! It turned out to be a good day :)

DAY 4: SUNDAY! woo... Church and an even meeting were our only obligations. Campbell my brother takes forever to get ready in the morning. Kristen and I were both ready in the time it took him to shower.

DAY 5: Monday. Got up got the kids to school and went back to bed:) best day ever!

DAY 6: Tuesday! MOM AND DAD GET HOME AT MIDNIGHT!!!! My time at mom is almost over!

mystery delivery of chocolate covered strawberries

So today I got a very tasty delivery of a dozen chocolate strawberries! I have no idea who they are from! There was a card included but it just said I Love You. So we have established that the sender is not my mother or father, and i am totally single so that eliminates a boyfriend. I am totally stumped! but THANK YOU MYSTERY SENDER!

I want a baby!

So I am completely and utterly baby hungry! Its insane... yes I know, but they are so cute and so loveable and would be so MINE! In Doctrine and Covenants we learned that women that want to have children are righteous, so wanting a baby is a good thing :) I am in no hurry to find a husband so this is a bad thing because i'm pretty sure my mom and dad would kill me if I had a baby right now. Well obviously they wouldn't kill me but I doubt they would be happy. Being on the BYUI campus and wanting a baby are two things that DO NOT go together. Everywhere you look there are the super cute couples with adorable babies and it makes me want a baby even more! I feel so pathetic craving a baby but it is getting worse and I WANT A BABY! I know having a baby would be a ton of work and require a lot of sacrifices on my part, but I think it would be so fulfilling to have the privilege of raising one of my Heavenly Father's children.

UGH... Another week of school

College can be an awesome blessing and a heavy burden at the same time. This is exactly how I felt this week. I am so blessed to be able to attend BYUI but everything happening this week made school a burden that I had to pull through. My week started off with a new medication which has made me slightly ill and everything is harder when you aren't feeling your best. I am so grateful for modern medicine so there is no complaint coming from me. This week has been full of tests, group projects and huge assignments. All of these things are part of college life, but its difficult to adjust to when my weeks are full but not topped to the brim. I find group projects stressful anyway due to the fact that there are always those in the group that DO NOTHING! This being said there was no surprise when half of my group failed to show up for meetings and then emailed us at midnight the night before we gave our presentation. AHHHHH. Tests always add stress and of course this week I had 3! Accounting, Economics, and Business Stats tests! How insane is that?! So much stress. I love school but weeks like this make me want to cuddle up in my bed and sleep for weeks! Although, im sure that that solution wouldn't be the best thing for me. Fridays are my favorite part of the week because I have no classes. This Friday on the other hand is a day set apart for studying!

a summer i will never forget

Have you ever had one of those days where you wish time would just freeze and give you time to catch up to what was going on around you? Well, unfortunately that was my day today. Life has been a bit crazy since I left the wonderful town of Rexburg, Id at the end of my freshman year at BYU-I. I made it safely back to my lovely home of Budd Lake, NJ. I was so happy to be there seeing my family. I was home for a whole 14 days before my dad took me to the emergency room at Hackettstown Hospital because I had serious pains in my lower stomach. I really was not excited for the beginning of this adventure and sure enough it was... well... I guess you could call showing up to the ER at 11pm and being in surgery at 7am the next morning to have appendix taken out. This was not the exciting event I wanted to kick off my summer with but whatever...I SURVIVED! So my mom picked me up at the Hospital on Sunday morning ( I went to the ER on Friday) and took me to church so I could be there when my handsome younger brother received the priesthood. I am so proud of him! He has grown into quite the little gentleman. During my stay at the hospital my dad and I were discussing how I always have surgery right before big events in my families life... I had knee surgery on November 14, 2008 which was my little sisters 8th birthday and she was baptized the next day... the baptism I cannot honestly say I remember the whole thing. Anyway my dad was joking around telling me that the next time I would have surgery would be before my college graduation or my wedding. This lovely statement of his would be FALSE! I had surgery a whole 18 days later! wooo... the day I was cleared to start physical activity from my appendectomy was the very day I started physical therapy. Well that went well and was an adventure in and of itself. So my parents left on vacation to see our family the week that I finished physical therapy and we all figured all would be well while they were gone... again this statement would be FALSE... I started having a sharp shooting pain in my abdomen again. Well because my parents were out of town my amazing friend Ashleigh took me to the emergency room. Poor lady she had to sit in the ER with me until 3am. The doctor (who i am not a big fan of) told me that all was ok and he didnt know what was wrong with me. Well i went home with Ashleigh that night because my dad didnt want me home alone on hospital grade pain killers. So the next day I still felt like I had been hit by a semi truck. My parents who were about 2500 miles away were not thrilled about this news. The next morning my dad called my surgeon who took out my appendix to see what we should do. Just a side note Dr. JABUSH is amazing, I absolutely love him! Anywho he asked me to meet him at the ER so Ashleigh jumped in the car and off we were to start part II of our hospital adventure. This time I got more care in the first 10 minutes we were there than the 5 hours we were there the night before. So i had a series of xrays, ultrasounds, ct scans, and a hidascan and the conclusion..... MY GALLBLADDER DIDNT WORK! So a normal gallbladder contracts at above 45% and mine would only contract 3%. Surgery was scheduled for about 3 hours later. So I had surgery with my parents all the way across the country :( Luckily Ashleigh was there for me! So three weeks later I was back on a plane to Rexburg, Id. So you can tell my summer was spent with medical professionals... lucky me?

So I got back to school safely... that has to count for something right?

I live in an apartment with 6 girls in it. My roommates are pretty cool I really like them. I had only known two of them before moving in. Leisa and Lacey are two of my best friends from my freshman year. Jess, Dianna, and Whitney are all amazing, and I cant imagine my college adventure without them!

School is amazing! Hard but fantastic. Business stats, Economics, and Accounting were NOT made to be taken in the same semester. I am liking all of them though. I guess when you are a nerdy accounting major you can like Econ.

I am so very thankful that despite my medical disaster of a summer I was able to make it back to the Lord's campus to attend school!