As of late.

Sometimes life can be a very surreal experience.
I can have a serious conversation with someone I hardly know. And the next moment I will have nothing to say to a good friend.
Maybe it's just me.
It's probably just me.
But life is weird.
Somedays your brother is a normal human being, and then the next he is a missionary in Provo, and the next day after that he is on a plane to England. Yeah, this is real life.
True that. My brother became a missionary last Tuesday night and it was amazing experience. I know that the gospel that he will be teaching is the truth and I'm so stoked for him to teach it. Then on Wednesday, due to the lack of visa-arrival, we dropped him off at the Provo MTC (missionary training center). It was sad, but it would have been way more sad had my family not been the most ridiculous and hilarious individuals in all of Provo. Then, blessings of the Lord, his visa arrived Wednesday afternoon and they threw him on a plane and shipped him off to the Preston, England MTC on Thursday
He leads quite a life. And because he is the luckiest person in the world, things just tend to work out for him.

So that's been an interesting adjustment without him. Thus far, I'm not a fan. Though I am a fan of him being abroad. Missioning and things.

Also exciting in my life: Spontaneous road trip to St. George this past weekend to the the solar eclipse. Yeah, it was sweet. My fabulous roommate, Jenna, and I were just sitting in our apartment on Saturday afternoon and within a matter of 30 seconds, we went from having no weekend plans to deciding to go on the 3.5 hour trip down to St George. SO FUN. We also went with some fabulous human beings. This is us looking at the eclipse (as stolen from Josh's fb album):

This is all 8 of us (Josh is in the picture via shadow). We were a little short on astro-glasses, so some of us went blind. Also, our names were a treat to list off: Jake, Jenna, Jennie, Jared, Josh, Kaylee, Halie, and Spencer. Someone stands out like a sore thumb...
Basically, it was an excellent 24 hour trip filled with laughter, games, banana stranglings, accent speaking, piano playing, singing, mission call opening, sun staring, driving, accent to apple inventing, and other shenanigans. I have good friends.

I'm a fan of the summer in Provo; people are always outside doing fun things, and craziness is always right on the brink of occurring. I don't even mind that I am taking a class right now. Though studying outside isn't nearly as productive as one would think.

Also, I love my job. We get some crazies up in there.

Pictures of Elder Lever departing are forthcoming. Prepare yourself.

This post was a random culmination of thoughts and events. Jumbled, it may be, but that's what my brain is like right now, so you're just experiencing my real life via blog.

Elder Lever.

I have a brother. Well, actually I have a lot of those. But this particular brother of whom I speak is the eldest of the five and he is going on a mission. Well, hopefully all of them are going to be going on a mission, but his mission is actually here upon us. And by that, I mean he leaves in ONE WEEK.
And to decode this message for you: Ryan is out. To Scotland/Ireland. To share the truth and help bring eternal life to these great people. He will be a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,  the Mormons, if you will. He's going to be amazing.

So, Ryan and I are two years apart in both age and school. But age has never really separated us. Maybe I'm just remember the good times, but honestly, I feel like we've been best friends for a solid 19 years - his entire life. Especially through high school. We are friends with each others friends. We hang out. We used to attack each other in the hallway of the high school. Basically, he is wonderful. This is us back in the day...

But lets get real, obviously there is no way that we've always gotten along.. true, we fight sometimes. Actually, he's probably the one of my brothers that I fight with the most, but in the end, we stop the madness and end up just laughing our heads off at some ridiculous bit of humor.
We have the same sense of humor. All of my brothers do. Apparently our humor is unique and most don't understand it, but we do and we have WAY too much fun laughing at our jokes. Ryan and I can just sit there going back and forth, beating the same jokes to death for hours. It never gets old.
We even look alike. Lets get real, anyone that has ever seen us thinks we're twins. We are the same person. Check this pic, we even laugh the same:

Ryan is the best. I don't know what I would do without him in my life. He listens to my ridiculous stories; rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but listens nonetheless. He has always been my shoulder to cry on, my bodyguard, my source of advice, my own personal comedian, my best friend. He is adventurous and kind and would never admit it, but is just adorably sensitive as our dad. Ryan has a testimony that is obvious through everything he does in his life. He is an example to me and inspires me to be a better person. I just love him with all of my heart.
I can't even put into words how much I'm going to miss this boy. But I also can't express how proud I am of him. He is going to touch so many lives. I can't wait to write to him all of the time about the craziness that is my life.
When I look at him, I still see this cheesy, adorable little kid:

But really though, he's like a man and I'm so excited to see him grow even more spiritually and emotionally these next two years. Not going to lie, it's going to be sad when Ryan leaves and I'm not going to know what to do with myself, but I wouldn't have him doing anything else with his life right now. Go get 'em tiger.

One more picture, just because I love this one:

Volleyball

Volleyball is life.
Seriously, if I could play volleyball every minute of every day for the rest of my life, I would do it for sure.
You know what volleyball-oriented thing I especially love at this time of year? BYU Men's Volleyball. Really though, it is exhilarating and fun and just all around excellent.
The season is now over, which saddens me. But I will certainly be watching reruns on BYUtv, because they have those quite often. And let's get real, I'm already looking forward to next volleyball season! The games really are that much fun. Cheering, dancing, laughing, and watching some AMAZING volleyball - all of my favorite things.

So for now, I will just content myself with playing volleyball every chance I get. It truly is the best sport in the world. So if anyone ever wants to play, I'm all over that. Seriously.

The joys of reading days.

Hello world. I'm alive. Mostly.

Yesterday was the last day of classes for the semester. Celebration.

Today was one of the reading days; those blessed days when you're supposed to have nothing to do except sit and study your head off for finals. Finals start on Saturday.

Here's how today was supposed to go: go to work, be productive, work on some take home finals, do a decent amount of studying, go to a ward party, and then chill for the rest of the night.

This was a great plan. It wasn't overly busy, just the right amount of school work. Sadly, this is not how today actually went.

Let me just give you a little look at what I did today:

Worked all morning. Success. This is the only thing that went as planned. 

At noon I settled onto a computer to start my paper, but then got a craving for Chinese food.

I proceeded to drag my roommate to Rice King to watch me eat said chinese food. She had already eaten, so she sat there studying Spanish while I ate. It was delicious. Definitely satisfied that craving.

By now it was 2:30 in the afternoon and I was back in my apartment, ready for action. Then what was supposed to be a 30 minute pre-studying nap turned into an hour and a half sleep-fest. Don't ask how that happened. My day was quickly slipping away from me. I couldn't handle anymore distractions. I REALLY needed to get working on these things.

So naturally from 4 to 6 I sat and watched my roommate cook chicken and I plotted and chatted and did other generally unproductive things.

Needless to say, it is now 11 at night and I have no idea where my day went or how I possibly came up with so many ridiculous ways to procrastinate my studying. And naturally I am writing this blog post instead of attempting to get a little bit of headway on my work. 

Such is the life of me, your typical, procrastinating college student. I know I will end up studying my butt off and I'm pretty sure I will do decently well on my finals, but I just like causing myself more stress by procrastinating things until the last minute. Yeah, how fun.

Wish me luck on finals. I'm going to kill them.

Jennie out.