Sewing Adventures

I made pillow cases! (The blue ones, not the green.)

 I got a sewing machine for Christmas and really wanted to jump right in and make a dress! From a pattern. And I found a really cute pattern that was labeled "easy" and fabric to go with (plus a zipper and buttons and something else that I can't remember, maybe you can see where this is going). But when I got home from Joanns and looked at it I realized I don't really know how to sew! So we took a spur of the moment trip to parents and mom helped me get started on the dress, but it was NOT easy, so we only got halfway done. So no pictures of that for now!

However, when I got back home and finally decided to look at the dress again and maybe make some more progress on it, I got a little depressed because I still didn't know how to get anywhere! So Trevor let me buy some more fabric and I made the pillowcases :)

Even though it's not easy, I am very excited to have a sewing machine!

Meatloaf

I made meatloaf for the first time! It was fun and very easy. Oh and delicious!

Christmas decorations!

Finals Miracles

Well it's finals week and I'm basically done with my finals without taking hardly any tests! It's a miracle!

First of all, two of my classes had final papers instead of tests. I finished the first one last week and the second one on Sunday and handed them both in yesterday. I knew that I needed to get them done early (plus they were both due on Monday) because I had a final on Monday and Wednesday, plus an online final that I wanted to get done as soon as I could. So I would need plenty of time to study.

Well the first miracle came last week. At the beginning of one of my classes the teacher called some of our names (mine included) and asked us to talk to him after class. He said it wasn't a bad thing, and I was thinking that my grade was pretty good in that class so it really wouldn't be a bad thing! After class he explained that we had done well enough that there was almost no way that we would get a grade worse than an A in the class, so he excused us from taking the final and posted our grades! So then I only had to study for two tests!

Yesterday, first day of finals, I go to my final test feeling a little anxious. I had studied but wasn't sure how well I would do. My teacher passed out the tests and from briefly glancing over it I knew that I was in trouble! The essay portion was hypothetical questions about historical figures, like "If they were here now what would they think?" And I had no idea what to answer! Well, my teacher started talking, saying that he doesn't like tests and they don't measure how you've done in class. So he would call us each up and show us our grade, if we were happy with it we didn't have to take the final and just accept the grade that we already had in the class! This made me sooo happy and relieved! When he called me up he showed me that I already had an A in the class, so I didn't take the final! Miracle number two!

Now today I only have one more final to take, my online final. This class has two parts to the final, if you do good on part one then you don't have to take part two. Well, yesterday I studied for and took part one and it did not go well! But luckily, I can still take part two today. And hopefully get an A or a B out of the class.

So excited that finals are almost over and that everything has gone so well this semester! Yay school!

Trevor's Bday

For Trevor's birthday he had to work on a lab project almost all day! He didn't get home until 6pm! This is partially because he missed the last bus that would have taken him from campus to his car at the Space Dynamics lab and had to walk/jog almost the whole way! So sad :(

When he got home we ate dinner (homemade cafe rio-esque salad) and then went to vote! The mayor, city council members, and two tax-propositions were up for a vote. My mayoral candidate lost, Trevor's won. It was fun and close by, so we just walked over. When we got back Trevor's dad was at our apartment to drop off birthday cards on his way home from work. We chatted for a few minutes and then he left.

I had decorated a tiny bit (some blue streamers on the front door and on Trevor's nightstand and one pink balloon that I wrote "Happy Birthday" on) and had ordered presents from Walmart, which hadn't arrived yet (and still haven't by the way), so I gave Trevor the order confirmation paper that showed what he was getting: Pokemon Indigo League Part One (TV show on DVD) and a wooden bed desk thing.

We ate leftover Halloween candy and Trevor complained about not having a birthday cake (even though I asked him what he wanted and he said "Nothing").

Overall it was a kinda sad birthday, sorry honey! But Happy Birthday again! Hope it turned out okay and that you like your presents when they come.

Family History Miracle

This semester I'm taking a Beginner's Family History Class in Institute.  It's pretty fun because our teacher will share an easy tip and then set us loose to do whatever family history work we want.  I was able to do a few things, but then was stuck.  I've been looking at Mom's side because Dad's is almost totally done (though I did find a whole line of Pidds that hadn't had their work done) and I can't really find my way back further than what was already in there.

Well, when I went to Idaho Falls for Labor Day I snagged my pedigree chart and a few stories that were in my mission stuff.  The mission list said I needed to bring some family history stories and I never used them, but hung on to them.  So I've had these few things the whole month of September, kept in my school folder with my syllabuses etc in case I needed them for my family history class.

Last Tuesday when I was almost done with work I was looking through my folder and started reading one of the stories.  It's a news article about George Hicks (mom's great-great-grandfather) and how he helped settle a place in Illinois.  If you can believe it, this article has the names of his wife, all of his children, who his children married, some of the names of their children, where they lived, it has the name of his second wife who he married after his first wife died, who was also widowed and has the name of her first spouse and kids.  All together it has the names of at least 35 people.  And MOST of those are not already in family search.

It's a miracle!  So I've been going crazy the past few days, in a family history frenzy, just trying to add all of these people and trying to find their kids' kids, locating the censuses and marriage documents in family search, finding their headstones in findagrave.com (my new favorite website).  It has been really cool!  And it's a lot easier to find information coming forward from George Hicks than it was trying to go backwards.  So much to do!

Neighborhood Council Meeting

Trevor and I went to a neighborhood council meeting a few weeks ago.  Basically I had been thinking about local politics because the teacher for my Intro to Political Science class has been talking about how uninformed and ignorant most* Americans are. And I thought to myself, I don't know who the mayor of Logan is. I don't vote in non-presidential elections. Thinking about this, on some Sunday our Bishopric made an announcement encouraging people to participate in politics and in fact there was a neighborhood meeting that Tuesday at the elementary school. So I told Trevor, I want to go to that.

At work the day of the meeting I did some research and found who my state House representative is, who Utah's Senators are, the mayor of Logan and all of that. (I felt like I really needed to look up the Mayor because I would feel really stupid at the meeting if he was talking and I didn't know who he was.) And I felt all ready to go to the meeting.

We went and at first it was fantastic!  They gave everybody some green dot stickers and there was a line of posters that we could put a sticker on and share our opinion on Property Maintenance standards (which was the topic of the meeting). It was a lot of fun and I felt politically empowered!  Then we all sat down in the gym and they opened the meeting up to discussion.  This is where it got disappointing.  Everybody was complaining about their sidewalks and their neighbors' yards.  Everybody wanted the City people to fix it.  They wanted to know why the extra money from the water budget was being put into the general City budget because it was indirect taxation. Lalala.

This experience made me realize why nobody wants to participate in government!  The meeting was over an hour long, Trevor and I couldn't find a good point to make our exit until we had been bored for at least half an hour, and there wasn't even good discussion on the topic of the meeting.  It was just a bunch of (generalization) old people who wanted to complain and it ended up being very frustrating.

Will we go to another meeting? Probably. I feel a little obligated since I'm majoring in political science and it is a good thing to participate in local politics.  I hope that future meetings will be a better experience!

*Which is an opinion. It could only be half of Americans are uninformed, etc.