A pretty awesome guy :)

I get married in thirteen days to a guy who will take me to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine and then will come home and watch the A&E Pride & Prejudice that same night. And then go to WalMart to pick me up some Sudafed PE and softer tissues and orange juice. I feel pretty lucky! Perfect? No. But he's pretty flippin' awesome. :)

Oh, the economics of college kids...

I spent nearly $750 on books alone this semester, and, of course, I will only get about $30 back. Half of the problem is that my education classes use several cheap books and then one realy expensive course packet that you can't sell back. One-fourth of the problem is that Purdue bookstores offer so little compensation (for example, my $90 art textbook is selling back for $5). And the last fourth of the problem is that stupid publishing companies come out with a new edition every semester or every year and make everything so specialized that you can't sell it back, period! Add to that the fact that one of my books will be incredibly useful and I WANT to keep it, and...well...you have poor, poor me. Poor, poor, poor....

C'est la vie, hein?

I love to see the temple; I'm going there someday...

I do! Here are the few temples that mean something special to me:

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

This is the first temple I ever went inside, and is still the one I get to go to the most frequently. I'm going there on Saturday!

PROVO, UTAH

Ah, college. 'Nuff said.

NAUVOO, ILLINOISThis is the temple in which I received my endowments...on my 26th birthday...as I was feeling like death. :) But it's a beautiful one! I love it!

WASHINGTON, D.C.This is where I will be getting married in three weeks and one day! The wedding is most definitely still on and life is glorious!

People need to go to the temple. It's an amazing place to be.

Please pray.

Hello, what few blog readers and friends I have here. Paul needs your prayers. Without going into too many details, he has a lot on his plate right now and he's not doing well with any of it. Please pray for him, and if you've got a moment, sneak me into your prayers, too. I'm sure things will be fine, but right now they are about as far from fine as they can be and I have no idea how to bridge the gap. Thanks.

Major Things TO DO in the Next 7 Days!

In mostly chronological order:

• Regional YSA Activity--prepare food, prepare presentation present France, dinner & dance


• Move furniture from a friend's place to mine


• Create entire Art Interdisciplinary Unit (worth 15% of my final grade) & present it, and finish organizing Lesson Plan Box (also 15%)


• Create EAS Website for all my semester's labs, lesson plans, resources, book reviews,and so forth, and finish my 2nd teaching lesson packet.


• Finish up last EAS minicourse and take the exam (this with the website constitutes 35% of my final grade)


• Two final lesson plans for Literacy (and I still don't have books for them yet)


• Two final tutoring reports for Literacy


• Take-Home Test for Literacy


• Email All Literacy lesson plans for the semester, along with artifacts, to Kristin for website


• Do laundry, clean my room, and find a place to stay for two weeks between our wedding receptions and our move-in date!


• Premarital OBGYN visit


• Temple Trip


• Make favors for wedding reception, or whatever else I can do in the next 3 1/2 weeks!

HELP ME!!! :)

It's not really all that bad, it's just awful now. After this week, I have almost nothing to do during "dead week" or finals week, and then it's off to D.C. to get hitched, then off to Vancouver to honeymoon, then back for receptions and a few weeks of bumming off people until we move into our new apartment and I start summer classes!

I'm exhausted already, and I haven't even started yet. :(

I HEART Filipino Food!

Paul took me to a Filipino buffet in Chicago on Saturday night, where I tried many amazing foods, most of which I don't even remember the names of anymore. The picture above is lumpia, which I could eat all day every day and never get tired of! Definitely not the healthiest thing, but SOOOOOO tasty. I also had steak in ginger, soy sauce, and onions; pancit something or other; adobe chicken; and of course Halo Halo as a dessert that was too big for my stomach! I want to learn how to cook! (For real...recipes just don't count!) I'm glad I'm marrying into a Filipino/Lebanese family that has such mad skills and such diverse tastes! I will never want for flavor again in my life!

What the RANDOM? :)

I love it, no one writes for a week and then I go away for two days and suddenly everyone's written and posted pictures two or three times! SO much fun to read everyone else's stories and see pictures of how quickly their families and such are growing up...or just growing, period. Yay!

As for myself, I have three things to say. First of all, I taught a science lesson today that totally sucked. Just about awful, painful, and disastrous, and a dozen other words just like it. I blame the school, though. I prepared, I kept my cool, but if a school is dark and cold and loud and mean then how else are kids supposed to act but like awful, hateful little meanie heads who won't listen even after you yell? *Sigh* I love my job.

Secondly, today I mysteriously won a bridal gift package, and after I go to the meeting on Thursday I can tell you more, but basically it looks like I have a three-day, two-night vacation for two and a $1,000 grocery gift card! Pay that tithing, people! Seriously!

Lastly, my little brother's 7th birthday is this Saturday, and I have a super-fun and super-cheap present idea to pass along to those with young children (or who are kids at heart yourselves!). In small, microwave-safe cups, melt crayons. Get out an old muffin tin, and pour some of the melted colors into the tins in a variety of combinations--like yellow & blue, pink & purple, that sort of thing. Swirl the crayon around a little to make fun designs. Let the crayons cool and harden into disks, and pop 'em out of the tins. Tada! You have crazy crayons of your own design! If you want, use a straw or some other large and hollow thing to make a hole in the middle and use yarn or ribbon to tie them up onto something...I'm using push-pins in the cork board so he'll have an easy way to hang 'em, but of course he's 7, not 3, so that's okay for him. It's super fun and less that $2 to make, and for a little artist like Lukey it's a memorable gift!

Some Engagement Pics!

We FINALLY got around to taking our engagement pics, and I'm quite pleased with them. It was a rainy Saturday, late afternoon, which was perfect for the lighting! Here's a sampling of some of my favorites:

My Angels

When I was a youngster, I used to have this thing about angels. Call it a hobby, collection, obsession, or whatever you will. I used to snatch up anything and everything I could that related in any way to angels, from figurines to TV shows to books (oh, the books!) to pictures and posters...there was an angel in every corner of my room, on every shelf, just in case...

Today, I've completely lost any desire to seek out those "angelic" things by name, although I do love Willowtree angels and I still have a few leftovers from yesteryear. But I still seek after things that are so good and so pure that they can only be called angelic. :) Today's lesson in relief society focused on the recent conference talk by Elder Holland, "The Ministry of Angels," and talked about the angels in our lives. The following is a shout-out to the three most memorable angels that came to mind today:

(1) My JAG angels. Many, many years ago, when I was having financial problems and all-around stressed out by things going on at home (which was then 1500 miles away from where I went to school), I got addicted to the TV show JAG, as well as an online discussion forum full of middle-aged women who also loved it. Not only were these women, only one of whom ever exchanged real names with me, consoling, comforting, guiding, and heavily into prayer, but twice they found out my address and sent me a money gram to pay for my rent. They insisted that they remain anonymous, and that the only debt I owed was to be payed forward. I no longer visit that discussion board, but every once in a while I remember my JAG angels who reminded me how good people can be.

(2) My young women's president. She was just one of those women, as were all of my young women's leaders, really, that you can only describe by comparing to an angel. It's not that she did any one particularly grand thing. She just fulfilled her calling with everything she had and was genuinely in love with all of us. Because of her, many of us are still good friends today, still active in the church, and have someone to look up to and remember her advice when things go awry elsewhere in our lives.

(3) The temple workers at the Nauvoo temple this past week. I took out my own endowment on Wednesday, and it was the most awesome thing ever. I want to go back, and back, and back! But the temple workers really outdid themselves with their caring, hugging, speaking kindness to calm my anxieties, and all around sweetness. It wasn't even just the temple workers! Everyone in that room played some part in helping me when I had no idea what to do or say next, and I felt like a celebrity in the halls after it was over for how many people came up to shake my hand and congratulate me and thank ME for letting them be a part of my special day!

There are more, of course. I have had and I have seen some extraordinarily angelic people who have been teachers, visiting/home teachers, mothers, and friends. I realized something during our lesson today. For the most part, the people who I would describe as angelic are people who magnify their callings. Really MAGNIFY them, make them bigger and clearer, pay attention to the details, go the extra mile. The opportunities to serve in meaningful ways come only when we're already serving where we are asked, and I haven't been very good at that myself lately. It really makes me want to be better in my calling so that I can be an angel to someone else someday.

Dinner for Two, thanks to Earth Space Sciences

I got an email from my EAS (Earth/Atmospheric Sciences) professor today congratulating me on getting a 100% on my latest exam. Considering I got a B- with the curve on the first one, I had studied extra hard and made sure that I understood this material way better than the first. These tests are tough and apparently no one does very well on them, even though they are worth 60% of our final grades. So a 100% is a big deal--big enough that it won me a dinner for two at a restaurant of my choosing! :) Hmm...where should I go? Suggestions, anyone?