Remember Me?

Um…hello! I bet you are relieved to find that I am in fact not dead! (all two of you that read my blog) I’ve had the urge to blog forever but never seem to have enough time, although I don’t feel like my schedule is full of particularly pressing items. Anyway, I don’t have any personal pictures, hopefully I can do some of that over Thanksgiving, but here’s a lil update for you!

Today is kind of a big deal as it marks the first day of the LAST FOUR WEEKS OF CLASS!!!!!!! I’m fairly certain that I will have straight B's this semester, due in part to a complete mental breakdown mid-semester the same week as 2 papers and 2 tests. But B's are nothing to be ashamed of, right? I’m supes ready to get this semester over with, except two of my besties, namely Allyson and Brianna, are leaving me forever and I’m not at all okay with it. So this Christmas will be a little bittersweet. I am also getting two new roommates next semester which freaks me out. I can’t even describe how much I love my living situation right now. I love all my roommates. I love our apartment. I love our friends across the hall with whom we share an open-door policy. I’m beginning to love our ward. We have a great dynamic right now and I’ll be sad to see it go. But, c’est la vie, n’est-ce pas? 

Speaking of beginning to love my ward, we’ve really ramped up our social lives the past few weeks and it’s fabulous. If you made a chart of when my grades began to dip below the 90% mark it would match up perfectly with when I started to play more. This is fine by me. Turns out there are some fun people to be found if you look for them. 

In other news, I have a new niece and nephew named Caitlyn and Ethan! Congrats to my big bros and wives Jeff and Kathy and Steve and Melissa, respectively. And sometime next month Dave and Kristy are expecting twin boys!! I’m dying to see them. By the end of the year there should be FIFTEEN grandkids in my family! This is definitely a perk of being the youngest as I get to really have a fun relationship with my siblings’ kids before I have my own. Downside? Good names are slipping out of my reach every time another one is born.

I got a second calling on Sunday as a compassionate service committee member, which is the calling I had all last school year. I enjoy it, it reminds me how much I love to help people and take a step out of my own world. I get so absorbed in my own life that I forget things are going on around me sometimes (hence no blog post in 3 months). I am also a visiting teacher supervisor which is a fairly low-intensity calling. It was a huge adjustment going from RS Pres to that, and being out of the loop on everything and knowing nobody. I really missed it the first month or so. But we have a great presidency and it’s been good to have a break from the stress. I feel like I am a better person when I have more demanding callings, so I definitely miss that aspect of it, but that just means I need to work harder to be a good person all the time. 

Okay, drive by highlights of the semester so far: 

-Realizing that I’m actually learning things in my classes and might possibly be getting smarter, or at least more knowledgable.

-Some really awesome games of Catchphrase.

-Loooong talks with my roomies.

-Being “by far the funniest person” Ali Fredrickson has ever met. Haha.

-Finding out I love to sew.

-Turning my living room into my personal crafting area (aka disaster zone) for two weeks as I made my Halloween costume (and having amazingly tolerant roommates).

-Having a genuinely fun weekend with my parents and also my brother Matt and his family.

-BYU vs. USU game with Bri: miracle comeback! I’ve never screamed so much in my life. We were so excited, you would have thought BYU had won the Superbowl.

-Being told by my professor that if I work a bit harder I could be one of the best writers in our class.

-Getting the funding I needed to go to school and feeling truly blessed in my endeavors and opportunities by a loving Heavenly Father.

-Knitting parties at my place.

-Making new friends and doing my best to stay in touch with old ones.

-Laughter. Lots and lots of laughter. 

It’s been a pretty good semester so far.

What I’ve currently been…

Reading:       

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Don’t I sound smart?)

Watching:   

TV: Glee, Castle, Modern Family, Psych. Honorable Mentions: Parenthood, Bones.Movies(this last weekend): Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; Water for Elephants (I’m still in love with this movie!)

Doing:        

Work, School, Play (in that exact order every day) 

Eating:        

Tara made to-die-for Tortellini Soup yesterday and I made adorable cupcakes that are decorated like little turkeys. But the usual fare looks something like bagels, poptarts, and granola bars. I heart school.

Loving:      

The fall weather, all the mini-parties we’ve been hosting, the holiday season, learning about literature, being almost done with learning about literature for another semester.

Writing:      

Mini research papers about early Christianity (for my religion class), a research paper about Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and a letter to my cute little missionary penpal who I have chosen to think of as a little brother so I don’t feel weird.   

 Dreading:  

Taking French 201 next semester, yikes! If you can’t find me over Christmas break it’s because I will be locked in a room with my 101/102 textbook trying to relearn verb tenses and basic vocab. But I’m excited to get back into it. Maybe.

     My exciting news before I wrap this up: I don't have any pictures handy, but I would officially categorize my hair as being a bob. I did it! I survived stage one!!!! My name is Emily Hodgen and I have successfully been overcoming a pixie cut for 8 months now. Boom.