Movies last night!

Last night I was able to go to the movies with my friends McCall, Lisa and Becca. We had a fun time and I didn't want you to feel left out, so I wanted to share a snippet of the movie we saw! :) Hope it makes you laugh! Enjoy!

Not a Terd!

THIS, my friends, is pure happiness! I fell in love with truffles two years ago after seeing them at Smiths Marketplace...they are like magic! You feeling down? Pop one in your mouth, and your happy! You feeling happy? Pop one in your mouth and you are feeling stupendious! Looking for your dream job? Pop one in your mouth and you'll need no dreams, you'll have all the joy you need!

My dear old former Bishop Plaizier came to visit me with his wife on sunday! It was WONDERFUL to see them and have their cheery smiles in my house. Even better to hear their laughs and be uplifted by their insight and happiness! They brought me these truffles, and it made my day!!!!! It should be thanksgiving everyday because there is so much to be thankful for all the time.

Another highlight in my life....my roommate Shauna has been contemplating what to get me for my birthday for months now :) (my birthday was in July....we like to put a lot of thought into our gifts, ha ha), and she gave me THIS:

Lucky for me, I happen to need one of those for this:


Thank you Shauna! I love it!

Saint George, Utah

This last thursday I went down to Saint George with my friends Layla and Sherie. We go to the Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband concert once a year and they happened to be playing in Saint George, so we thought: Why not! Layla's dad John lives down there and likes when we come to visit and we like visiting him. John and Barbara are great cooks, they fed me so much I probably gained about 20 pounds during our visit. We were able to see a road runner during our swimming adventure. You can see Layla and Sherie posing here with the cool swimming gear we found :)


This was friday night at the concert - it was so cold, but it wasn't as cold as the storm we left behind in Bountiful, I'm glad we missed out on that! We had front row seats to the concert at Tuacan, it's a great outdoor theatre and is set in the Saint George Red Rock Canyon, very pretty! I was never a fan of Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band when I first heard their music, I thought it sounded like Sesame Street cheesy music, ha ha...but I was somehow conned into going to one of their concerts and enjoy them as performers, they put on a good show, so I've become a Sort-of-Fan :)


Craig Miner is Layla's favorite performer, if anybody knows him, they need to meet!

Sherie and I were able to take some time on Saturday to visit the Saint George Temple. It is very pretty and was nice to be able to spend some time with Sherie. Afterward we were able to see the Reflections of Christ exhibit by Mark Mabry that was on display in the Visitors Center. I was so glad to be able to see it, i've heard a lot of wonderful things about it. You can view the website here! One of my favorite pictures is of Angels heralding in the birth of Christ. The way he was able to have the angels pose as though they were flying was to take photos of them in costume in the air while jumping on the trampoline. It was pretty interesting to learn the different ways in which he was able to make each photo work.

And of course, no trip to John and Barbaras would be complete unless we played Phase 10! I lost miserably, but it was fun :) John has created a different set of phases that we usually play, but it takes HOURS to finish the game, so we played the normal way this time.

Here is some footage from the concert, it was fun to see the little things they would do in between songs. One of my favorite songs they play is The Devil Went Down to Georgia, but it is too long to post. :(

Pray, Dream, Believe

"God is eagerly waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as he always has. But he can't if you don't pray, and he can't if you don't dream. In short, he can't if you don't believe." - Jeffery R. Holland, July 2007 Ensign

Dresses and Sandwiches

So today I had the most amazing lunch. Sautéed onions and Portobello mushrooms and spinach with olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, Swiss cheese, Dijon mustard and Mayo on toast with a glass of milk! It really made my day – and made me feel cool too – single people don’t normally make such elaborate sandwiches for their lunches, you know! It’s more like what a wife would make for her husband to impress him…I imagined a husband walking in the door while I ate it. It made me smile...and chuckle (I love that word...chuckle).
I went to the D.I. yesterday and got some hottie-with-a-naughty-body dresses that I am in love with, I am so excited to wear them. Do you know how deprived I am of new clothes? Horribly deprived – so it was a fun adventure for me. Oh and by "new" I meant new to me, not brand-new.
Why do I tell you all these things? Because today is just a good day, so was yesterday, and even thought it's nothing big...I like the way I am feeling - just happy and content. My life isn't perfect, nor am I yet living any life-long dreams, but I can definitely say that my belly is happy and I'm going to look forward to doing laundry soon.

Lifes Lessons

Sometimes the Lord must bring us low in order to lift us higher.

That's all

I just needed to remember that...

That is all....

The end!

Mother I Love You

Mom,
I hope you know that I love you and wish I could spend the day with you, bring you flowers and go on a walk with you.
Be happy today knowing that there are six kids, who are pretty awesome, because you are such a wonderful Mother.
Love, your daughter,
Serena
Happy Mothers Day

Dinner Conversation

We were sitting at the dinner table, eating "Cream of Everything" soup (i couldn't figure out what to make for dinner, so I made everything). The topic of movies came up and my roommates and I all looked at my brother. We've all been unimpressed by his movie collection. It was suggested to him that he make a goal to improve it. He committed to this goal and even to do it by the end of the month!

Good job Stuart, I know you hated that we brought it up, but you are awesome for putting up with us and for making the goal.

Want some motivation to work on your goals? Click Here!

Sunday Happenings

I love being home on Sundays, spending time after church enjoying the weather and being with my brothers and roommates. This is what our afternoon was:

Stuart helping with the meal - he makes the best chocolate pudding


Chelsey spent the entire afternoon like this, and enjoyed every minute of it

Gotta make that rice

Our basement dweller #1 - on the phone with family i think?

(I'm basement dweller #2)

Eating - notice the goblets. Mom never really liked me to set the table growing up because I always used the fancy plates and goblets. They just make me happy. My local thrift store supplies me with many of them :)

After a great fireside given by Bronco Mendenhal, BYU's Football coach, we came home and had some ice-cream with chopped up strawberries, chopped with my handy-chopper (we'll call it Barb).

I laugh every time I use this, to think that I've had this since I was sixteen. I dreamt my whole childhood that grandma would get me a barbie doll like she gave all the other granddaughters. I was the youngest granddaughter and apparently was never mature enough to handle a barbie, so I got stuffed animals....I hated stuffed animals. Then one Christmas my dreams finally came unexpectedly true - grandma got me a barbie (the Malibu barbie). Except it was no longer my dream to get a barbie, I was sixteen years old that year and was pretty embarrassed to have gotten a barbie, so I hid it under the couch. Lots of people told me I should keep it, but I was too embarrassed, so I took it back to the store and traded if for my handy-chopper, which has been a faithful sidekick for 11 years now. Unfortunately my sixteen year old embarrassment has turned into a family joke, especially with grandma, who gives me nothing but Barbie related items for birthdays and Christmas now. Even when I left the country for 18 months, she kept a plastic storage bin to store each Christmas and birthday present in. My return home was spent opening up what would be a little girls barbie dream. I keep it in storage for future kids to use.

Saturday is a special day

Today I was Supposed to do the following:
Wash clothes
Fold clothes
Clean room
Plant garden
Go for a run

The sad thing about my lists is that I rarely follow them. This is what I did instead:

Make my favorite breakfast smoothie! You want one? Click here.

Then I went to watch a Rugby game

With my friend Chelsea

Secretly I wish I were a boy and had amazing rugby skills - I would change the world!

Then I went to work, I would have taken pictures but they don't let me. Especially today, it was shaving day. It's the one day a week the juvies are allowed to have a razor blade to shave with. Lets just say I've never seen a bunch of girls so thankful for freshly shaved armpits and legs. And lets just say too that you wouldn't want a picture of it either, they have no privacy and have to be closely supervised, especially while armed with a razor. All went well and I returned home to these:

I've been trying to stop using these for years, but instead I've been using earplugs for years....nightly.....consistently. I'm addicted. You could promise me that my night would be sound free and I still wouldn't be able to fall asleep without them. Tonight, I tried to sleep without them, but I kept hearing my roommate talking in her sleep - it was a bad night to make such an attempt. I popped these babies in and I was off to dream land.

Pick, chew, or suck - i just can't decide!

Just a few of my favorite pictures of my neices and nephews, ha ha! Good Times!

Moving In!

I've been living in my new house for two weeks now and never realized how much stuff I had until it's time to organize and put it all away! What a mess the house has been. We are hoping to have a party once it's clean and organized for everyone to come see the house - let me know if you would like to come so I can be sure to send you an invitation!

The Whirlwind of Life

December brought graduation - I got my diploma in the mail yesterday and my schedule has definitely filled up without being required to fulfill any more credits. But my life has been just as busy. I started working full time at a craft store as a supervisor - not my dream job but thankfully a job! It's fun being back in the loop of the world of work after taking almost a complete year off of full-time work to be able to finish school. Another bonus is the fact that I'm always on my feet at my job which has helped me lose weight!

January I found out that the house I have lived in for the past three years sold and I am moving away. I am moving with my roommates just down the road on Saturday. It's not far and it is an upgrade that I am looking forward to. The best part is that it is still a house with a yard and a spot for a garden - it will be like a new piece of heaven to enjoy!

The last change is that I am finally taking down the Christmas decorations - part of me still feels like I'm getting ready for Christmas, the time passed by so quickly.

Also, I was tagged by my sister Alycia to show the fourth picture of mine in my fourth picture folder. It is a picture of my niece Kathryn goofing off two Christmases ago. She loves to dress up and steals my bracelets all the time - and she is a crack-up! I am so grateful to be an Aunt to the coolest niece!

Graduation

Today I checked my grades again to see if they had finally been posted and sure enough they were all on there. What this means: I AM DONE!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) Hip Hip Hooray! I am a bachelor now, according to Sherie! I decided not to walk mainly because I would have to do it in the spring and I just really don't care - all I care about it that I am done. I think the most exciting news besides being done is I made it onto the Deans List for my good grades. I had no idea....the funny thing is I had made it on there before last summer and didn't even know it. The semesters I took the most credit hours, the better my grades were. Which means I must have done pretty good this year since the spring I took 18 credits, Summer I took 19 (word of advice: NEVER do this in the summer), and this Fall I took 15 credits. As you can tell, I wanted to be done as fast as possible.

Now it is time to finish patting myself on the back and face the future....which I have no idea what direction to point myself in. I have begun applying to join the Peace Corps and am getting more excited of this being a future possibility as I apply, but even more of a sinking nervous feeling along with it...until today. I was watching TV - something I never do, when a commercial came on for one of the local tiny colleges: Stevens Henniger College. Their ad started off with a person sitting on their couch holding a remote (exactly what I was doing) and the voice of the commercial said: "Do you want to be like this for the rest of your life?" (or something like that) and continued by saying, "Then call this number now to find out how you can earn more money and have better job potential" (Which is a bunch of bologna if you are going to go to school at a place like that). But something about this commercial I am making fun of made me think, "If I don't join the peace corp or do something with my life, I'll be that girl sitting on the couch, bumming around watching TV because I am depressed about my life and not having a job or direction" :) okay so that sounds a little exaggerated, but you get the point. So, feeling all inspired, I got online and read up on the peace corp and that worried, nervous feeling is beginning to go away. Since it takes about a year to apply, I think I will have plenty of time to continue to work on getting rid of that feeling all together.

So after reading this post, now it's your turn to decide: please make a comment and state what you think Serena should do with her life! (really, if this peace corp thing doesn't work out I would like some ideas).

Tuttle, North Dakota

I was blog surfing today and stumbled upon this fancy little website: http://www.tuttlend.com/index.html I couldn't believe my eyes. Here I thought the town I grew up in was turning into a ghost town with it's shrinking size, I'm pretty sure the population is below 100 now. I had no idea that it had a website and was living strong :) It was great to see pictures of home again and hear the latest news from everyone and be reminded of my years of growing up in such a special place. I wouldn't have traded those experiences for something different. I am who I am today partly because of Tuttle and I miss it.

To my friends who have always lived in a big city or who have heard a lot about Tuttle and always wanted to see it, check out the website...at least look at the pictures. Enjoy!