a blizzard ball

my first church dance


and it was amazing.

thanks for all the amazing guys that danced with me and the great conversations. i had the oppurtunity to dance with several of the young men from my ward: tyler, trey, and conner; as well as some that aren't: trey and rand/y. we had a lot of fun and got to talk alot about themselves and whats going on... :)

all in all im soo excited for the next one and am still in a la-la land over it.

the only sad thing is that kelsey was sick and was unable to attend which means that the bet didnt go through. but we are all holding through until the next one. hopefully........

christmas

the christmas loot this year was light but for good purposes. we did a "12 days of christmas"/secret santa to a family that is soo much more in need then we are. i ended up getting a sporting bag, a vest, a new purse, new shirt, candy and some gift money, a new book. the family got some new movies and a NEW LAPTOP! soo excited for it.

i am more grateful for the oppurtunity to celebrate the birth of our Savior and spend such great time to family and friends. some of our friends came over for dinner and we watched one of our new movies: "harry potter and the half-blood prince"!! :)

happy new years and a merry christmas!

one day until christmas

one day until Christmas means that its my dad's birthday!!

yeah!! which also means the agony of waiting for Christmas is almost over. thank goodness.

my parents having been feeling well so I'm glad that he was feeling better for his birthday. who wants to be sick on their birthday? NO ONE!!

my dad got some underwear (apparently "its some times better to get what you need instead of what you want for your birthday". that what they think...), a shirt, a tie, and a new pair of sketchers. not a bad birthday, minus the underwear... lol

I'm excited for the holidays to finally be here because it means my first church dance. and obviously its going to be fun... :)

how did you spend your dash?

ok so this doesnt have anything to do with christmas, but i was looking through my inbox on my email, and this was still there: "the dash means everything". so i looked at it, and it was very touching to read through it again. doesn't hurt anyone to read something touching...

http://www.dashpoemmovie.com/

read it, it doesnt take more than a two minutes

2 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!! :)

YES!!! :)

4 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS

christmas spirit

last winter, our young women's leader gave us an empty quart size jar and a book titled a christmas jar. she told us that throughout the year we needed to fill the jar with spare change and at christmas this year, we would go and buy something for a needy family with the money within. so thats exactly what we did. every girl filled a quart size jar at least half full of change and then one of our leaders collected them and took the heavy bag to the bank to be cashed. over $500 in change and small bills was collected. (fyi, thats a lot of money to spend on clothes and little girl toys).



two weeks ago on Wednesday, we went as a young women group to spend all this money on a less-fortunate family in our ward. a 17 year old boy, a 7 year old girl, a 4 year old girl, and an 18 month old girl, and a mother. we split up and bought gifts for them all. a cute little sweater and shirt dress combo for the little 7 year old with a polly pocket's set; three adorable outfits w/ another polly pocket set for the 4 year old; diapers (a mother's necessity), baby keys, and two cute outfits for the baby; a very modest and slimming sweater dress for the mother, and a huge, heavy jacket for the 17 year old. we had a lot of fun hunting for the perfect gifts within our price range. lots and lots of fun. so much fun, that it is now a tradition within our young women's group... :)

the really cool thing is that we donated the gifts to the family anonymously through our bishop. soo cool. the family was so grateful and i cant wait to hear about the excitement.

the break has begun!! YES!! :)

the break has begun! finally!!!!! i thought it would never come... but now it has. the great thing about christmas break, is no one cares what you look like until like noon. so frankly, i am sitting here in my pjs frankly out of boredom and laziness. thank goodness for holiday breaks.

update

snow has fallen since my last post and i'm rather sad i didnt get to play in it. i was too busy delivering fruit that came in to do anything about it. but the snowman that my dad and siblings built was quite impressive. but we had lots of fun sorting the mixed boxes of fruit out and particapating in the organized chaos.

the school term is almost over (one more "half day" of finals) and then i am free for a couple of weeks! which also means CHRISTMAS IS A WEEK AND TWO DAYS AWAY!!! :) hallielujgh! if it weren't so soon, i think i might hav killed myself. i made cookies for all my friends and there ended up being nine cookies left of four dozen. ten went to two teachers (five each) and the others i handed out to my multitude of friends: like 14 at the final count. and those are just the people at my school. not including my church friends. those come later....

yes i'll miss talking to cameron in the morning with anna and garrett, and yes ill miss mrs. everett and business principles, but i wont miss mrs. ensley and the devil teacher mrs. johnson... >:( but i cant wait to get new classes and hang out with my other friends. :) yeah!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! O:)

Washington, D.C. Here We Come! :)

So for Thanksgiving we rode up to Alexandria, Virginia, a half hour Metro ride into The Mall of DC. Lots of things happened over Thanksgiving break:

I got signed out school early on Tuesday so we could spend all but two hours left in the day, on the interstate driving north to Alexandria. We got lunch at McDonald's, stopped at Wal-Mart for a bathroom break and a splitter for the cigarette lighter, and then hit the road. A half hour stop at Bristol for bathroom breaks and the installment of the movie player and a forty-five minute dinner break at Taco Bell were the only stops we made that entire trip! That was quite the accomplishment for all of us. We got on to the base around 10:30 pm and i felt like a stalker as i crept into the house. Because they have small kids, our cousins were fast asleep when we got there.

Next morning, i was woken up around five am by my brother saying "i hear them! I hear them!" in my ear. I tried to convince him to roll over and go back to sleep and i think he finally did. Everyone was up and running by seven am though. The Maloney's had a half day of school, so we went literally down the street to Mount Vernon:


The family in front of statues of the Washington family

The family in front of Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon

We had a couple of kids fall asleep out of exhaustion and boredom.

The family in front of the Potomac River

Thanksgiving was spent with the cousins and Bob's father, Bob, Sr. we had lots of good food like turkey, stuffing, bean casserole, jello salad, yogurt salad, rolls, and yams (yuk!). We had lots of fun though and we grew a lot closer together through conversation.

Friday and Saturday we went to Washington D.C. and saw all the tourist traps.

Korean War Memorial

Russell sitting on the Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial

President Abraham Lincoln

The family outside of the Capital building

I can't believe I got dragged into this….

Robby Russell Christian

The engineer inside of him is definitely present and totally into this visit

The natural history museum

The freezing family in front of the Vietnam Wall

The military man and one of his exhausted sons

The family in front of the monument

Quick tourist fact: The line in the middle of the Washington Monument is present because that is where the construction was halted during the Civil War. When the War was over, they went back to the same mine to resume building and when they went back, the stone had cured more, hence making the darker color. And that is why there is a line about a third of the way up the Washington Monument.

The tourists are happy… ;)

I wonder if we can push it over…?

The family in front of the Declaration of Independence Memorial Pool and the Washington Monument

Holy toleetoe! That's really high!

These are pretty self explanatory

All in all, it was a lot of fun. Metro Rides were a lot of fun, and they were perfect opportunities for a short cat nap, that is if you were facing the way that the train was going.

Sunday was the day we drove home. Sad day… :( I look forward to seeing them again, but you never know with military families where they will be next year…