Year in Review

Marci’s Highlights from 2008!

I decided that since I've been living on my own for the last... more than a year, it was time for me to write my own Christmas letter-ish thing. It turns out that I don't remember a lot that has happened in the last year, so I resorted to pulling favorite blog posts. For more details on any of these events (minus December, and a few other choice memories), see the posts from that month. This has been a pretty crazy year for me... I've lived in three different places, with different people, and have done a bunch of crazy things. I've realized that for me, life happens in 4 month chunks, winter semester, spring/summer, fall semester. These are three totally different times in my life, and it's been really intense. Here are the highlights from my months, although I'm pretty sure that January-April were a lot cooler than I blogged about... we always had crazy things going on in good 'ole 215. Also, my summer all kind of blended together, and for some reason I didn't blog much.

January: I was living the freshman dream at BYU, living in Heritage, apartment 215 with my 5 favorite people: Christie, Kelli, Sarah, Jenny, and Allison. I attempted to eat healthier than I had been the previous semester, and in my first attempt, I burned both of my thumbs in the oven. Thankfully it was snowing, so I just went and put my hands in the snow (following the advice of Brother Parent from my bishopric). I also interviewed in January for the position of Resident Assistant. Also. Troy and I broke up (not necessarily a highlight, but it happened).

February: Looking through my blog and pictures, I’m thinking that the exciting thing from February was… Aerobics Night. Kelli and I got all dressed up (I was in neons) and went to a crazy Aerobics night. Our apartment also attempted to make a human pyramid and take a picture of it. Our self-timer was great, but Jenny struggled getting her whole body in the picture (she was the top of our pyramid). It was a great struggle, and I believe it took about 35 pictures before we got one that we decided was good enough. At the end of the month I got my letter from Housing with a job offer! I was going to become an RA!

March: With the semester halfway over, my apartment started compiling lists of our favorite memories of the year. This was a sad thing to do. More exciting, Brendan and Nickolai from 204 got their mission calls! Nickolai was the first person I ever watched open their mission call, and Brendan was a close second, like an hour later. Christie, Kelli, Sarah and I trained for and ran in the Rex Lee Run, a 5K run to raise money for cancer research. I won the “60 and older” category, since they incorrectly entered my age as 99 years old, instead of 19. That was exciting!

April: The amazing DT prank happened… someone put flyers all over campus that DT was going to be imploded (they were tearing it down, so it could’ve been legit). Christie, Kelli and I went up to General Conference, on a bus. It was amazing, and we got to watch Sarah (our roommate) and Nickolai (basically our roommate) sing in the combined BYU choir. AMAZING! Tyler got his mission call—that was a crazy/emotional day. Finals happened, and so did saying goodbye to pretty much everyone. I helped mom move into her dorm for Spring Term, that was really funny, then I headed back up to Seattle to work at Napa Auto Parts

May: I was living in Seattle, working at Napa, and hanging out with Paul’s family all the time. I bought my favorite North Face jacket, The Denali. It’s proven to be one of the best purchase of my life… right up there with my North Face backpack, The Recon II, that I bought before my freshman year. Thank you The North Face! I met Evan in May, and hung out with him and Jenna all summer, that was crazy.

June: Paige and Katie had piano recitals, and I went to those. Ryan graduated from preschool (but maybe that was in May?) and I attended that as well. I continued hanging out with Evan and Jenna all throughout June. Tyler, Nickolai, and Brendan went into the MTC. Oh, that means that I had my last date with Tyler, which involved Dairy Queen, Teriyaki, Cribbage, MASH, Frog and Toad, and a lot of talking. It was ridiculously hard to say goodbye to him, but since we have been friends for oh… 15 years or so, it was slightly understandable.

July: I was told that I am “The Best Aunt in the Universe” by Ryan, only to have him take it back like two minutes later. For whatever reason (I think he had skinned his knee while riding his scooter at the park) I was helping him with something (I think I got him juice or something) and he told me that. He’s a funny kid. Maybe July was when I babysat the kids for a weekend (apparently that event didn’t make my blog, so I don’t know when it happened).

August: The OLYMPICS HAPPENED and I set my new goal: marrying Michael Phelps. That goal hasn’t been reached yet, but I’ve kind of given up on it. Also in August… I packed up my things and came back to school. I had two weeks of RA training, chilled with some of the other RAs, set up my apartment, and bought my textbooks. Residents started moving in at the end of August, and then the rest of my life began

September: Highlight of September was DEFINITELY flying home to Seattle for the BYU vs UW football game! Well, the flight wasn’t the highlight, although the cheerleaders were on my flight and did cool things in the airport. The highlight was being home and going to the game. I ate breakfast with Batman, and had an overall fabulous time being back with the people I love! School also started… we had our CRAZY ward prayer incident, with our cool dance and girls being mad at us.

October: Other BYU football games happened, and if they were at home, I was there. I saw High School Musical 3, definitely a highlight to the month of October. I enjoyed nightly Homework Parties with my roommates and our FHE brothers, and spending a bunch of time with those 7 other people in general.

November: I turned 20 and went on the one date I went on all semester (minus the one I went on with Bryan when we were home for Thanksgiving). I went out to eat meals at two different restaurants in Orem, Olive Garden with Aaron (my birthday date) and Zupas with Megan, my best friend. Jenna came up to Provo and cut my hair, and I still LOVE it! I went HOME for Thanksgiving and Katie's baptism. I got to sing with Paige, Katie and Aunt Rachel, which was awesome. We forgot to have a sing-along of Christmas songs/our songs... which was sad, but a lot was happening. I saw Quantum of Solace with Bryan at Lincoln Square and freak, that theatre is nice! My birthday as a whole was pretty good (you can just go back to my November posts to read about it if you don't remember).

December: I found out I am a useful engine, I went to Temple Square twice, and did a lot more. Cleaning checks were extra not fun this month, and some of my girls had attitudes. Finals happened again (and are still happening) and I got to do check outs for everyone before they could go home. We (my apartment) had Premie Paul’s apartment over for breakfast, and went to our boys place for Brick Oven for lunch one day. It started snowing, and I realized I was so sick of snow after day one. I started learning some good snow shoveling tricks, well… tricks for my front stairs at least. I got to say goodbye to Mike (one of the RAs I work with really closely) because he is leaving us to go serve his mission. After planning Back to School Week (a Heritage weeklong activity that will be in January) I talked with Dustin (another RA) for like an hour about all sorts of random things, found out he had a car, and we went to Wendy’s with Allison. Getting off-campus has never seemed so fun… being with three RAs who all just needed a break from constant check-out questions made the trip “off” campus so much better. Wendy’s is only across the street from campus, so it wasn’t too far… but it was far enough! OH! How could I forget… three apartments in my building let me know that they had mice in their kitchens, and all three are on my floor. That leaves my apartment as the one that doesn’t have mice. I spent about 3 hours cleaning our kitchen cupboards and vacuuming under the stove and fridge, trying to get rid of any crumbs that could attract animals. So far it has proven to be successful!

That was the highlights of 2008 in a nutshell. I’m sure I missed some things, my blogging hasn’t been very good throughout 2008. I have a ton of goals for 2009…

-Increased blogging (I want to really remember what happens)
-Hang out with more RAs
-Go on more dates than I went on this semester
-Do even better in school than I did this semester (even though I got 4 A’s and 2 grades I don’t know yet)
-Procrastinate less
-Open my building BY 8:00 each morning
-Shovel the snow in front of my building before someone else does…

Hopefully 2009 proves to be a slightly better year than 2008, although some pretty dang awesome stuff happened in 2008.

Much Love,
Marci