4th of July Ramblings

Yesterday was Independence Day. A holiday I love because I love my country.

Daniel and I went to IHOP for breakfast and then went to Wal-Mart to pick up some odds and ends. When we got home we watched "The Patriot." It's one of my favorite movies that I only watch every few years. It's the only movie where I actually like Mel Gibson.

Around 5:30pm we headed to Temple Park (Missionary field in front of the Provo Temple.) Daniel and I had volunteered to do some patrolling to make sure people were following the rules. It went smoothly and we had a lot of fun! Especially since we met up with a fellow crew member and his family was super nice. They fed us and we played games. After Daniel and I clocked out we watched the Stadium of Fire fireworks. They were definitely not impressive, but I enjoyed spending time with my husband.

Those fireworks marked an end in a small chapter in my life. That was my last day as a grounds worker......at least for this summer. :) I love working grounds and maybe I will go back in the fall if I can't work enough hours with my research position. But I don't think that will happen.


I just want to say how much I am blessed. I am grateful to be an American citizen. I am thankful for where my life is at this moment. Things are working out well for me....maybe not in the timing I would prefer...but it seems that I am always watched over no matter what. 


I will be graduating in two semesters. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been happier going straight to a University instead of going to Community College, but then I realize that I wouldn't have Daniel. Daniel is worth the extra few years it has taken to get my bachelors. I love my ward. I love my apartment. I love my job. I love my friends. I love my family. I love the Gospel. I am just so incredibly blessed. 

Basic Sarah Facts

Lets do a blog post about facts about me!

Lets see......I am a geology major!!! I am graduating April 2013. I plan on one day having a PhD. I go to BYU.

My favorite birds are Hummingbirds and Cardinals. When I was in Nauvoo I saw lots of Cardinals! We have a Hummingbird feeder in our front tree so I see Hummingbirds all the time in Utah.

My favorite colors are complicated. I love yellow flowers because they are happy. (Sunflowers are by far my favorite flower) Purple flowers are a close second. I like green and purple-- but not together. I love wearing Blue. 

I love to Garden! I can't wait to have my own vegetable garden one day!!! I work on Provo Temple Grounds.

I play the violin, though I haven't played for a couple months due to being very busy. 

Currently, I am obsessed with Christina Perri. 

I am married to Daniel. He and I have the most fun. It's awesome because every single day I am never bored  because he is always making me laugh and smile. 

My deepest desire is to sing well. A talent I do not possess. 

I also really want kids. :) I need to give my sisters kidlets some relatives their age!

I LOVE turtles!

My bookshelf probably has just as many rocks as books.

I love watching shows that scare me, but then I am up all night.

I hate doing the dishes and laundry. Thankfully Daniel always does the laundry and he does the dishes if they get really bad (we take turns).

I am from Michigan. 

I will be leaving to assist with research in the Henry Mountains this weekend!!!!! 

I am almost 23 years old.

I have 2 brothers and 1 sister. 

Daniel has only met my parents, siblings, and sisters children. He has and probably never will meet my extended family. :(

I don't tan at all! Even after working outside all summer. 

My favorite things about night: Thunderstorms, crickets, and fireflies. 

My favorite things about day: Cool weather, Blue skies with some fluffy white clouds, healthy green grass. 

That's about it for now.

My Current Dwellings

My current thoughts:

1. My wonderful sister. She and her baby in her belly are the main things I think about every single day. I think about how much I love her and the baby. I worry about them. I just want to drop everything in my life to be by her side. I wish she had a wonderfully happy pregnancy with no complications. She is my idol and I love her. Thank you for pushing through your own personal hell, Elizabeth.

2. My license. Yes....I never had a good opportunity to get one and it has been weighing on me for years. I am sick of how much it limits me. It's the one thing in my life that keeps coming up in conversation and I am absolutely sick of it. And I would like to thank Utah for being a pain in the butt to get it. If I were in MI I would have it already.

3. Research in July. I am excited about this, but I have lots to do to get ready for it. Plus, I can tell Daniel is going to be lonely and I don't want him to become a hermit while I am gone.

4. Fall semester. Yeah sure, it is a couple months away....but it will go by quickly and I have no vacation time till then. I still need to decide my final schedule.

5. Sleep. At the moment I can't sleep. I am exhausted. My mind is reeling and my head hurts. I blame this on the caffeine I had right before we went to bed....I haven't had caffeine in ages. Of course I know caffeine isn't the only cause.....I just can't shut down my brain......and it is so freaking HOT in my apartment. I am one of those people who can't sleep without being covered and with the heat I just sweat all night. Also, we have fans running...but my hair is so long it gets caught up in the whirlwind and brushes against my face, neck, and arms and creepily feels like I have spiders all over me. It makes it very hard to sleep.


That's it for now!

Geology

So, most people know that I am a geology major (and it's kind of obvious from my blog and trip pictures) but I wanted to say why I am what I am.

1. First off, I enjoy the people in my major. They know how to have fun. Plus, we spend days together without showering! If that isn't bonding.....I don't know what is.

I didn't have many friends until I changed my major to geology. I debated taking my first field course, GEOL 210, when I didn't have all the prerequisites, but I decided to take the leap. I made a good handful of friends those two weeks. It made the first day of fall 2011 semester very easy since I recognized nearly every ones faces. Over that semester I gained the best of friends!

2. Field trips: Ok.....so I have a love hate relationship with field trips. Normally I love them. But there is a point in the day after being outside on your feet for what seems like forever when you just want to go home. So far I have been to little cottonwood canyon and to a handful of national parks on 210, death valley for geomorphology, green river for strat/sed, and all around Utah for igneous and metamorphic petrology. I could be in Hawaii right now for geology as well, but I feel like the best thing for me right now is to stay home and make money instead of dropping  money on a small trip. I hear my structure class is basically like one big field trip. Also, next spring I will take GEOL 410-- my ultimate 6 week field course!

3. Research: One of my future trips involves going to the ice cave in Idaho I am studying for my research. Today I was talking to Dr. Nelson after weeks of trying to find good tritium data for Idaho. I had an idea, but I thought he had already thought of it so I didn't tell him for weeks. Today he was going on and on about making a trip to Idaho and finally I asked if we could put equipment up to measure the precipitation and tritium in our research area. He looked shocked and said it was a very good idea and he felt sheepish that he hadn't already thought about it. It's those moments that I realize that I love research.

I also will go down to Hanksville, Utah to assist in a PhD student's research on laccolithic intrusions. I loved my petrology class and now I get to put what I learned to some use! This will probably be in mid-July to mid-August. I don't know much about this research yet, but I know it will be fun and interesting from what I learned from Dr. Nelson. Camping for an entire month....I think yes! Plus, the student I am assisting is from Britain and I hear she is a lot of fun, so I am hoping this experience will be great. I am grateful for Dr. Nelson for asking me to do this. He always makes me feel....smart is the best way to put it. He said he wanted Penelope to have a bright assistant for her research and he immediately thought about me. :) Makes me happy.

4. Experience: Geology makes it so easy to get experience. At the end of may and beginning of June I will be in Nauvoo, Illinois gaining experience in Ground Penetrating Radar and excavating some historical sites. It's going to be fun. :)  It is an all expenses paid trip. The only downside is I won't be making any money during that week and a half. :(  But I just have to think about my colorful resume.

In class we gain experience writing research papers and using microscopes with thin sections. Our exams are all essay questions. Some exams I have taken are specifically meant to enhance our learning. Though those exams I am not too fond of because the questions may be asked in a way you never thought before.

Our trips are the ultimate learning experiences.

 5. I just love geology!!!! Everywhere I go I love looking out the window. I was told when I moved to Utah that I would get sick of the mountains really quick....well....I have been all over Utah and had it's geologic history pounded into my head and I don't think I could EVER be sick of it. I always tell Daniel that I love Utah only for it's geology.

There is so much more, but I know my posts are always like a novella to read. So I will leave it at that. I love having a major that is fun and intense. I love going anywhere in the world and always having something to say about the landscape. I don't know exactly what I want to specialize in yet, but I have a year to decide. It's just hard when you love everything you are studying!

A vacation well deserved!

We finally got one... a nice relaxing vacation!!!!!

We decided to go to SLC for Tucanos on Friday night. The Tucanos in Provo was completely full because of graduation. The one in SLC was also busy because of prom, but we made a reservation. Even though we made  a reservation and came early, they forgot to call us so Daniel went up a half hour after our reservation time and asked what was going on. We got free lemonades for our longer wait (I love their lemonades).  : )

We got to Tucanos early and spent our time people watching, and boy are there interesting people around! We watched as girls tripped on their own stilettos, there was a guy wearing gym shorts with his hands in his pockets (making him look really funny..perhaps for this one you had to be there), and a group of guys with very bright long hair (blue and green hair). There were even more interesting people, but I can't remember at the moment. Daniel and I had fun giving them nicknames and pointing them out.

We then drove to Park City and stayed two nights at a hotel. On Saturday we slept in and watched Legend of Korra (new avatar). We also drove around and looked at the cabins and houses. We ate at kneaders and decided to splurge on deserts! They were so good! We got a German chocolate brownie and a fruit tart. We checked out the outlet mall, but decided we had no interest in it, so we went back to the hotel and enjoyed some time in the sauna and hot tub. I also checked my grades once (I couldn't help myself) and I was pleased to see I got an A in a class I was totally expecting a B. So my vacation continued to be amazing.

We then went up to Downtown Park City and enjoyed our dinner of ribs and steak. We also ordered onion rings but the waiter forgot to place that order. When he found out that he made a mistake he surprised us by charging us the price of one meal instead of two. I was very happy and it made our day even more relaxing. Everywhere we went we met very friendly people.

Except once. On our way back to the hotel after picking up some groceries (we had a kitchen in the hotel) we were following a car out of the parking lot, but it stopped and let out two teenage girls. Ok, so I wouldn't have cared if they were just dropped off and went their way, but they lingered and lingered. Cars piled up behind us and the people just kept talking in front of us. At this time I was also not feeling good and wanted to make it back at the hotel ASAP, so I leaned over to the steering wheel and honked the horn. I got the meanest glares!! haha. I was ok with it though, because the girls went their way and the car in front of us moved on. If they wanted to chat, they should have parked in the lot, for goodness sakes there were TONS of parking spaces! So, maybe I was a little rude, but I gave them time to get out of the car and talk for a little to solidify plans, but they pushed it a little too far.

So we went back to the hotel and relaxed some more. We slept in again and Daniel made breakfast...and the fire alarm went off. He burnt the bagels only a little, still definitely edible, but the alarms were extremely sensitive. The alarms turned off quickly, but it gave us a scare.

On our drive home we stopped at Sqaw Peak and just sat and chatted as we enjoyed the view of the valley.

So our trip wasn't full of awesome thrills and site seeing, it was all about relaxing, good food, and amazing sleep. And we loved it!

A new semester begins in 3 days and now we are both working full time, but we got a wonderful mini vacation. : )

Completeness

So, I won't bore everyone with the details, but this past week has been terrible for me. Mostly just the stress of finals and the lack of sleep I've gotten. But through this time I also had good moments....like realizing 2 of my tests were really easy. The third would have been easier if I had gotten some sleep beforehand.

I also learned that I hate 7am finals. I had two in a row and they nearly killed me. If it weren't for Rose-the-most-amazing-friend-in-the-world I wouldn't have made it through the last 24 hours. So thank you, Rose!

This has made me grateful and appreciative of the people in my life. I tend to be a loner, but this experience has shown me that I am not alone and that help is always there. I think the best help I got this week was the comforting words from my close friends and dearest husband. Thanks guys!

I was worried about two things all semester-- my strat/sed presentation and the corresponding paper. My presentation I did really really well on. It was stressful, but I felt like I learned a lot and I feel more comfortable in front of large groups presenting. I actually kind of enjoyed it.

I didn't want to see the grade on my paper because I thought I did poorly. I pulled a few all-nighters for that paper. I worked hard. But I still felt like I fell short. Though I was torn because I wanted to see it before the final because I wanted to see how much the final would mean to my grade. So the day of the final came and the TA had the papers out on the front table and said that some people will be very happy, but others will not. So I grudgingly grabbed my paper and had a very...very pleasant surprise. I got full points, plus extra credit on the paper. I didn't know there was extra credit on the paper!!! I am not saying this to brag. Mostly just in response to my post a week or two ago when I said nothing was going right in my life. Finally, something went right. That made my day...and probably my week. :)

So there is light at the end of the tunnel. Good things will eventually happen. I am sure that my own earnest prayers for help and those who were praying for me made a huge impact. To those who prayed for me or kept me in your thoughts, thank you.


I want to give a special shout out just for Daniel. He has been there every step of this finals week. (of course he has haha). Everyday he would do things to make my life just that much easier. If I looked extra stressed (by the last 3 days) he would ask if he could do something more. He was patient and loving. He took care of me through my breakdowns...and there were many this week. He is an amazing man.

So all I need now is a full 8 hours of sleep to fill in my 6-10 hours of sleep I have gotten in 72 hours. This blessing of sleep will come after 4 hours of work. I am eagerly awaiting it. :)

Life is good peeps!!!

This semester sucks

The title of the post says it all. It seems like this semester is just one big failure after another and I can't handle it anymore. As hard as I've been trying, nothing wants to work out. Yes, that's life.....but nothing has gone even a little right this semester. I am sick of school. Sick of everything in general. I need a vacation. A nice long one where I don't have to be around anyone.

Just thinking about finals is freaking me out because I just know I won't do as well as I want to. I will study so hard for them and still come out short. How do I know? I know because that is the pattern that is happening this semester. It's not even a hard semester for goodness sakes! I think the material is easy, and actually a little boring.

Anyways....I guess I should just keep trying. Maybe a miracle will happen. The funny thing is, my grades aren't even bad, they are just not where I want them to be. So sometimes I feel embarrassed complaining about my grades and life in general.