Christmas!!

First of all, I officially survived my first semester of college!! Woohoo!! It ended not too horribly and as soon as finals were over I got myself out of Provo and into Arizona! Here are the highlights of my break and life at the moment:

I spent most of the break just hanging out with family and watching movies. One day I made sugar and gingerbread cookies for Santa with Mataya and her friend Sienna. I hadn't made sugar cookies in FOREVER! It was fun to decorate them and Mataya absolutely loved it. Christmas Eve was the traditional Rogers party this year at Sharon and Trey's. We had lots of fun and good food! We played this one that was a race between all of the families and this was the outcome of it:

The four brothers got to wear balloon antlers and sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" to all of us! It was probably one of the funniest things I have watched in a long time! Mataya put on the antlers too - they were bigger than her!

We also acted out the Nativity with what few kids were there - we were missing tons of the kids this year! :( Mataya was so excited to be Mary, and Noah complained about having to be Noah but the whole time he was up there he was posing for everyone!



The night ended with a visit from Santa. It wouldn't be Christmas Eve party if Emily and I didn't sit on his lap, so we got our traditional picture together!

Christmas Eve, the five of us kids all watched A Christmas Story in Kaitlyn's room and had a sleepover in there - Mataya claims it is tradition although this was only our second year doing it. Christmas morning came nice and early! I got an enV3 from Santa, some books and movies, and my grandparents got some of my quilts quilted and bound for me! The rest of Christmas was spent watching movies at my grandparents with all of the Hatch family.

Also over break, Noah turned 8 years old! How crazy is that?! He was baptized the day after his birthday and so many friends and family came to support him. My mom wanted a picture of him to put on the table at his baptism so me and Noah had a little photo shoot in our backyard. I think this boy is going to be a model! He was coming up with all sorts of poses and ideas of places to take pictures because he "liked the colors of the plants"! Here is a taste of his GQ photoshoot :)

It was so nice to be home and be able to relax, have my laundry done, and food provided for me! The semester has started again and I think it will be a bit harder than last semester, but I am excited for just about all of the classes I am taking and actually want to take them!

Hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! :D

Winter Wonderland

Sunday morning, I looked out my window after waking up and lo and behold it was a winter wonderland outside! We went from zero snow to this overnight!

The first thing Alix said when she saw it was, "I didn't know it could do this over night!!" It made me laugh, but truthfully sums up my feelings as well! So basically over the past three days I have learned how to wear multiple jackets at once (a completely foreign concept before this week), converse are some of the worst shoes to wear in the snow (my roommates told me this after we were standing out in the middle of snow and my feet were freezing), if you start to fishtail while driving turn into the fishtail (thankfully this tidbit of knowledge has not been needed yet), scarves really do help keep you so much warmer (thanks for the scarves mom!), and it is possible for it to be too cold to snow (take today for example - it was 7 degrees when I walked to work and kept getting colder!!)! Three days of snow down and who knows how many left to go! Thankfully I will be back in warm AZ in about a week :]


Also this last Sunday, my roommates and I decided to take some roommate pics! We were also invited to eat dinner and watch the Christmas Devotional at Kacie's familes house. So after church we headed down to Springville, picked up Kacie's friend Ryan, and drove over to the canyon to take some pics! They turned out really cute and it was lots of fun. Alix's mom had made us Christmas scarves so we were all festive and matching for our pics.

We had planned on wearing black shirts, jeans, and the scarves. But that was the first day it had snowed. So it was REALLY cold. We had to wear jackets for most of the pics, BUT every now and then we would brave the cold to show off our matchingness.

Good news for the day: One week from today I will be all done with finals!! Woohoo!! Time to hit the books hard this week! :]

Thanksgiving in AZ :D

I got to go home this past weekend for Thanksgiving! It was so much fun to spend time with my family and see both sides of my extended family - Rogers on Thanksgiving and Hatchs on Saturday for family pictures. It was so warm in Arizona!! I missed that warmness the minute I stepped off the plane in Utah! Now I just have to survive 19 days of finals and cold and then I will be home again for two weeks!

Katie and Quinn!

This weekend was the BYU vs. USAFA football game. Normally I would have been like cool, whatever another football game. But this one was different because my friend Quinn from high school goes to USAFA and he is on the Drum and Bugle Team or line or whatever it is called so he was coming to the game. My friend Katie Fruehan was also coming up this weekend from AZ to hang out with us. Both of them got into Utah Friday afternoon/evening; Quinn at Hills Air Force Base around 5:30 and Katie at SLC around 7. So me and Kenzie took off Friday afternoon to head up to the base to pick up Quinn to give him a night of fun after 5 months of Air Force Academy.

aren't we oh so attractive :]

So we picked up this awesome guy at the base and headed down to the Salt Lake Airport. On the way to the airport, Quinn made some posters for Katie, because she had NO idea that he was going to be with us! She thought that we would only be able to see him for a few minutes at the football game, so it was a very pleasant surprise for her!

he got a juice box at McDonald's that he was very attached to!

After we had picked up our two friends we hadn't seen in forever, we went to dinner at Macaroni Grill in Salt Lake City. It was DELICIOUS!! And they kind of messed up our order a little bit so they gave was free chocolate cake which was to die for! Sooo yummy! Our waiter was also pretty funny....he looked a little out of it and when we asked him to take a picture of the four of us at dinner, his hands were shaking like crazy! He claimed that he had had one too many lattes, but I am not so convinced... :]

love this girl! i have missed her so much!

After dinner, Quinn wanted to put off going back to the base as long as possible, so we toured Salt Lake City and went to Temple Square! It was so much fun to spend some time with Quinn. USAFA has definately changed Quinn. In high school he was super goofy and always laughing, but when we first picked him up he was pretty quiet. As the night went on though he started going back to his old self, and for a little bit it felt just like high school again! When we did take him back to the base, I was allowed to drive onto the base because we had Quinn with us, so he got us on with his military id. Most nerve racking thing though driving on the base!! I drove like 20 mph the whole time and was super careful cause Quinn freaked me out about getting pulled over. It was so good to spend Friday night with him though!

the four gilbert kids!

Saturday was the day of the big game! We went to Magelby's Fresh with some other Mesquite friends for breakfast (all you can eat french toast + $5 = YUM!) As soon as we were done with breakfast we were able to go over to the Air Force tail gate party to see Quinn again. We hung out there for about an hour with him then it was off to the game!

katie, me, and alix at the freezing cold game!

i also got a cougartail at the game - biggest maple long john of my life!!

At half time we went over to see Quinn again with all of our friends from Mesquite and ended up standing over there most of the third quarter talking to him and some of his Air Force friends. This weekend has been amazing! Katie Fruehan is one of my bestest friends and I lov having her here with me for the weekend! Seeing Quinn was awesome too! I love seeing friends again and am so excited for this next week cause I get to go home for Thanksgiving and see everyone! I am so excited!
FRIENDS! :]

Homecoming and Halloween!!

I haven't posted in awhile cause I have been so busy with life and keeping up with school! I have at least one test every week untill Thanksgiving and it's been like that for the last several weeks...which is nice to have them spread out but it also just prolongs all of them! Anyways a couple of fun things have happened lately. About a week and a half ago, I was asleep in bed and at like midnight my roommates started screaming and giggling and all that fun stuff girls do when they get excited. It woke me up and I was kinda like what in the world is going on, but then just rolled over and went back to sleep cause I had to get up at 3:30am for work! When I got home from work the next morning, my roomie Alix asked if I had used the front door for work. I was like no....and she just said go look at it. So I did and this was what I saw!

A guy in my ward, John, had covered my door in sticky notes asking me to one of the Homecoming dances! My roommates had seen him doing it and gotten all excited and that's what I had woken up to! He also left me this:


Cause he knows I work super early! It was way cute and creative and thus I had to respond to him all cute too! So my roommates helped me out and we decided to cover the pooltable in the basement of his building in sticky notes that said "Yes" and have a trail of sticky notes from his door down the stairs to the pool table.

And since he left me an early morning breakfast, I left him a late night snack cause I bet he sees 12 am just as much as I see 3am!!

We went to the Homecoming Dance at the Loft with two people from our ward. When we got to the Loft they had glow in the dark paint that you could paint yourself with so inside everyone was glowing in neon colors. It was way cool and so much fun!!

So that was last weekend and then this weekend was Halloween! Friday night me and two of my roommates went to a Haunted House that some guys in our ward were putting on in their dorm. We were expecting it to be kinda lame, cause seriously how scary can you make one of these buildings?? But it was way good! My roommates were screaming like crazy and I did scream a couple times too, but I was mainly laughing at my roommates cause they were like petrified! We had met up with some guys in our ward at the Haunted house, so after it a group of us went and saw The Stepfather. It was way good and intense....untill the end. The ending was way lame and could have been much better, but other than that I thought it was a good scary movie!

Saturday - actual Halloween - Alix and I decided what we were going to be like an hour before we left for our stake Halloween dance and I think we made cute hippies!

Our Halloween night adventures included the stake party, then a friend from Arizona's Halloween party, followed by a Haunted House in the Clyde building, and then the movie The Uninvited. It was way fun Halloween weekend! Now only three weeks and two days untill I get to go home for Thanksgiving! And my friend Katie comes up to visit in two and a half weeks! YAY!! :)

Fall Leaves!

So Kaitlyn, Alix and I decided to go on an adventure today! I told the people I work with that I think the leaves are so pretty here and they told me I needed to go up Provo Canyon and see the leaves there! So off the three of us went up Provo Canyon. We went not really knowing what we were gonna due, but then we saw signs for Bridal Veil Park and Falls. We had all heard that this was way pretty, so we decided to turn off there. When we got out of the car, this is what we saw:

And this was on the other side of the path:

After about ten minutes of walking through this gorgeous park we came to the falls which were sooo pretty too!I love that Utah has waterfalls! And they are all so close to us too! This was only like a fifteen minute drive from us! Heres me and Alix posin in front of the falls. We actually went and hike up closer to the falls....like close to the base of the big one. It was even prettier up there and the view was amazing! But I left my camera down with Kaitlyn so didn't get any pics of it....sad day...

Walking back to the car, there were lots of park benches so we sat down and talked for a little bit and took some pics!



And then Kaitlyn decided to play in the leaves! :)

Honestly though, these pictures do not do this place justice! I officially LOVE living in a place where we have seasons, the leaves change colors, and it is just nice to be outside! Today was a wonderful day and I can't wait for more amazing Utah adventures! (except for snow cause I am a little worried bout that one and apparently it will probably snow before Halloween which is in like two weeks!)

Come Listen To A Prophet's Voice

This weekend was General Conference and since I live in Utah now, I was able to actually go to Conference for the first time! Kaitlyn and I went to the Saturday morning session with her roommate Jessica. We got those tickets from Kaitlyn and Jessica's Bishop who got the tickets from a friend that works at the Conference Center, and thus our seats were amazing. We were sitting on the ground floor and were like twenty five rows back or so, but we were right by the entrance that President Monson and the apostles use which was really cool. That first session was so good! I was so grateful to be able to be in the presence of the prophet and to be able to feel the spirit so strongly. At the end of the session when President Monson and the apostles left, they all met up with their wives and every single one of them took their wife's hand and walked with her. I loved to see that tenderness and love coming from the Prophet of the Lord.

After that session, Kaitlyn, Jessica, and I walked around Temple Square and took some pictures in front of the Temple. Walking over to the Temple from the Conference Center we had to walk through some protestors, but the minute we stepped onto the Temple Grounds there was an obvious different feel to the atmosphere. The Spirit was immediately present. It was amazing to feel that difference on the grounds. It really testified to me that the Temple is the House of the Lord.

This is Kaitlyn's roommate Jessica with us in front of the Temple. It was a self portrait and a pretty good one of all three of us and the Temple if I do say so myself!

Sunday, I had tickets with Alix and her Grandparents to the Sunday Afternoon session and Kaitlyn had a ticket as well. This time our tickets were up in the balcony, so our seats were not quite as good but it was still an amazing experience. At this session, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland bore his testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon for his talk. Usually the apostles speak softly and in loving tones, but Elder Holland spoke with such conviction and intensity (it was still loving though) that I knew without a doubt that he was indeed speaking and testifying of truths. It was amazing to feel the spirit throughout this weekend and to recognize so many things that I need to be working on in my life.

Sunday was much colder in Salt Lake and it was raining! Luckily we took pictures before conference, because after it was pouring and even colder than before conference had started!