Thanksgiving

I'm in San Francisco right now waiting for my flight to Salt Lake. I'm sad to leave Bakersfield! I can't wait to come back for Christmas. I forgot to bring my own sweater with me to Bakersfield, and since the weather was pretty sunny, I really didn't need a sweater. But I know that it's frigid in Utah, so I decided I needed to bring back a sweater with me, but the only sweater left in my closet was my BYU sweater...I feel like a total traitor, especially after the Utah vs. BYU game this last weekend!! I'll have to leave this sweater in the car when I get home so no one sees me in it! :) 

I didn't bring my camera down either, but I'm sure Lauren took enough pictures for us both! But I did get some pictures with sweet Sugar! Here are the photos I took on my camera phone:

Sugar!

Eating a Double Double Animal Style (meaning they grill the onions, and maybe add something else) at In-N-Out. That sure filled me up!

At the movies with Alvin and the Chipmunks :P

(That is NOT a BYU sweater...I swear!! lol)

More AXO Stuff!

Hola! We just had our elections for the upcoming year, and we voted on every position! This means that I will no longer be Vice President of Intellectual Development, but my good friend Katrina is my "successor"! I'm excited for her. However, I did get elected to another Exec position, and so now I'm Vice President Panhellenic Delegate. Panhellenic is the umbrella organization that is in charge of most of the national sororities and sets all the rules and such for them. On campus, Panhellenic organizes Greek-wide events for all the sororities and fraternities to participate in, to better unite everyone, instead of just individual houses. My position means I have to attend a meeting every Monday at 3, where we'll organize events, discuss issues, etc. It's a relatively easy position, and I'm excited for it. I enjoyed being on Exec, so I'm happy to be on it again! 

I also was voted into another position, Sophomore Member at Large. I'm kind of the representative for my Pledge Class (although we're not allowed to use the term 'Pledge' anymore, Nationals considers it a form of hazing!). On top of the Sunday night meetings I have to attend for Exec, I now have to stay an hour longer and go to the CRS meetings. CRS is held downstairs in our chapter room, and if you get in trouble, or are having certain issues, you go into CRS to discuss it. I'm going to be pretty busy with my new AXO positions but I'm glad to do it too! 

This last week, I had to host a sorority-wide Teacher Appreciation Night, where all the girls could invite their teachers to come and have pie and ice cream with the lovely ladies of Greek Row. I was in charge of getting all the sororities involved in it, delegating which house would bring what, making a million copies of invitations (I had my assistant make the flier!), and picking up all the Marie Callender's pies...honestly, the hardest part was getting girls to invite teachers and decorating the house. I should have taken a picture of how I set it up, but everything went so quickly that I didn't have time! I just set up three tables: One had the milk and water and utensils on it, the second table had all the pies (apple, banana cream, razzleberry, peach) and the third table was decorated with pictures, T-shirts, and other knick-knacks the sororites set up to show off their chapter and the events that they do. It was a good way for teachers to get to know what Greek life is all about. We had a turn-out of 7 teachers, which was far better than last year's turn out. Last year, we only had one teacher turn up! Talk about awkward! I'm really happy with how it went. It was a nice event and I think everyone enjoyed it (at least they enjoyed the pie! You can't go wrong with Marie Callender's!). 

School is starting to wrap up....I don't have anymore tests until Finals on December 16th. I only have two finals this year, and can you believe that they're both on the same day??!! Stats and Anatomy on the same day. Not fair. I'm going to get a hard start on Anatomy. That's going to be one crazy final. 

Well, I feel like I've written an essay, here are a couple of pictures for your viewing enjoyment!

This is me with a Kappa Sigma, Steve, at our Philanthropy event, Burgers and Babes. We served hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes and invited all the sororities and fraternities to raise money for our philanthropy, which is Domestic Violence Awareness. We raised $1,000 this night!

This is me with my Little, Katie, in our CUTE AXO sweatshirts! I love the way they turned out! [Thanks, Mom!]

Random Outdoor Adventures

Here are some pictures from some outdoor adventures I've had lately with Andy. On the weekend of General Conference, Andy and I took a hike with his dad inbetween sessions. It was up Big Cottonwood Canyon (before you reach Solitude and Brighton ski resorts) and it was beautiful! It had recently snowed up there, and even though my feet were soaking it was so fun! At the end of the hike you reached this lake, and it was gorgeous! Here are the pictures :

Then, just a few weeks ago, we decided to bike Bobsled, which is a great downhill bike trail that's up in the Avenues (a neighborhood in North Salt Lake...really close to the U). We went on a Saturday that I thought would be one of the last weekends the weather would be nice, but it so happened that this Saturday had the WORST weather! It was raining, hailing, and all of that good stuff while we were biking. Needless to say, I fell down a lot since the trail was so muddy and it was pretty exciting. This trail is awesome-it has old cars on it that you can actually jump over, and other great scenery. If I had my Brodie this trail would have been a lot easier, but the challenge was pretty fun. Here are the pictures from it:

Me at the top of Bobsled

Andy

Part of the trail-notice how high it curves up! It was super muddy so I slid off a lot!

The view of Salt Lake from the upper Avenues

Me, all super muddy...

Mud and blood...cute :-P

Andy, and a cool old car in the background

The Faint

I went to Provo to visit Lauren in June 2007 and to see the Faint perform in Salt Lake City. The Faint was definitely, and still is, one of my favorite bands. They have an eclectic electronic sound that's super catchy. Mom and Grayson both like them, or at least one of their songs (Agenda Suicide). In July of 2008 I went and saw them in Salt Lake again, but they didn't come back this last summer :( I was very disappointed! They put on one of the best live shows, second to Green Day. 

I just found an old video I posted on YouTube two years ago of their 2007 performance that I recorded with my phone. I'll post the link on here just so you can see them...they have cool robotic dance moves and the lights and videos they have going on stage is awesome! Enjoy :)

PS- You probably want to turn your sound down...it's pretty scratchy to listen to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx9wfFtqP-I

The song is called "I Disappear" and here's a link to the music video for the whole song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f7tgprbjtg

Big and Little Week!

Last week (or, 2 weeks ago, technically..) was my Fall Break and I miss it so much! It was so great to be in Bakersfield and see everyone. This past week was Big and Little week for AXO. It's when a new member chooses an active member to be her "Big", and this is just a good way for new members to connect with active members and to have someone to go to. During Big and Little week, the Bigs put out little gifts in the house and the Littles come and get them each day. They're not told who their big is until Friday, so throughout the week they're guessing about who it is. It's fun, and then during Initiation Week the Bigs give their Littles lots of candy and food and other things for when they have to sleep over at the house that week. 

My Little is Katie Christensen and she's awesome! She's a pre-nursing major like me and is so easy to talk to!

Here are some pictures of us from Friday:

This is the blanket I made for her! It was super comfy. I wanted to keep it :)

I really struggled with decorating this board...oh well!

Anyway, I'll be posting up other things this week! Stay tuned! :)

  

Moab!

Hey! AXO has its own blog, if you want to check it out, it's www.axouofu.blogspot.com. There's a few more pictures of me on there than I post here...and you can get more of an update of what we're doing! 

I don't really have much to do say, but I finally got some pictures from my weekend in Moab to put up!

In July I went to Moab to visit my friend Nate and his family over a weekend. Moab is such a great place! I absolutely love it. While I was there, we went to Arches, went biking, and went 4-wheeling in Nate's Jeep! It was such a fun weekend and Nate's family is so nice! I had a great time.

Driving to Moab, I kinda got lost...big surprise, right? :) I took the long route to Moab by going through Fairview and Ephraim and places like that, but it was totally worth it. It was raining and kind of storming when I left, and as I went through central Utah it was GORGEOUS!! Central (probably more like East-Central) Utah is lots and lots of farmland, so the view of the countryside after the rain was breathtaking. I'm so glad I got lost. I took this picture from my camera phone of a rainbow I saw off in the distance. I can't say enough how beautiful it was! Sometimes I'm just tempted to take a mini-roadtrip and drive through those places again :)

Here we all are at Arches...from right to left it's me, Nate's dad, Nate, Nate's mom, his brother Ian and Ian's girlfriend. 

Here's Delicate Arch, and me right underneath it!

This is Nate in his Jeep, 4-wheeling in Moab!

All 3 of us decided to bike down this one hill, and all 3 of us fell and got pretty scraped up!

This is me...in a crack in the mountain...it was pretty claustrophobic!

The view from the inside

By my bike!

All of us biking

Recruitment!

Hola! Long time no talk...Recruitment for AXO pretty much took over my life the second week of school! Recruitment pretty much went on for a whole week and every day, girls would come to our house and we'd rotate in groups talking to different girls and getting to know them...it was so tiring!! 250 girls registered to go through Recruitment, so on the first day we pretty much had 250 girls in our house throughout the whole day. Every day, the less and less girls came until we got our 32 new Alpha Chi pledges! They're really cute and fun and it's really great to have new faces in AXO! I'm just glad it's over though! Here are some pictures from the week and Bid Day (the day we got our official new pledges):