My family got to Utah on Friday (August 25th) afternoon. Mollie and I stayed at Erin and Bryce's house in Provo, and my parents stayed with my grandma in Orem. On Monday Erin started law school and Mollie left for a BYU Leadership Conference, so I spent much of my time babysitting Will.
It's okay though, cuz we're buddies. He's just learning to walk and he's getting pretty good at it. The only thing is that he holds his left arm up in the air to keep his balance. It's quite cute. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that.
Will spends his days going around the house emptying out kitchen cabinets and pulling all of the books off of the shelves, turning the TV on and off and changing the channels and volume, except for when you put on Baby Einstein. Then he's perfectly content sitting on the floor glued to the TV.
On Friday morning, I checked into my lovely apartment here at La Jolla in Rexburg, Idaho. I walked in to find one roommate here who had lived here over the summer. She supposedly has a roommate that lived with her who has yet to be seen. While I was unpacking my stuff two girls stuck their heads in to say that they were dropping off some stuff but since they "were from around here" they were going to leave and come back on Saturday night to officially move in. This is a mystery because my mom said that the girls were supposedly from Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and California. Anyways, so I moved in the rest of my stuff and still I had no roommates. So we went to Wal-Mart a total of 3 times, along with every other freshman at BYU-I and then got something to eat. By 9:00 we were back and there were still no other girls in the apartment, and we didn't know when the one girl was going to come back for the night, so I went back to my Aunt Karen's house for the night. She lives in Chubbuck, Idaho, about an hour away. I got up bright and early this morning so I could be on campus at 10:00 for freshmen orientation stuff -- since it didn't look like there were going to be ANY freshmen (besides me) in my apartment of six girls even though I specifically requested freshman roommates. When I came back this morning, someone had moved into my room, so YAY! I have a roommate. She seems nice. I'm sure she is.
At freshmen orientation we mostly played games all day, and then there wasn't enough time for our group to get lunch. I met a girl named Ashley who was in my group. She's upstairs and one over from where I am and she has a whole apartment of freshmen and she didn't even request freshmen. So I plan on bothering them regularly. Then we went to a Ricks Showcase thing or something like that where they show little clips about the school and the history of it and how you can get involved. That seemed to go on FOREVER. And THEN we had a fireside thing where some administrative people talked to us, and then the President of the school talked to us. In one of the clips they showed at this fireside President Hinckley said of the students "It doesn't take geniuses to change the world. You're not geniuses. I know you're not geniuses. But all it takes is someone who applies themselves and tries hard to make a difference." And I'm thinking... well then! Nothing like high expectations.
So we got done with that and I met mom and dad at the bookstore to buy my last books (for a grand total of almost $400 spent on books this semester) and then say goodbye. Then I went back to my apartment and hung around until about 8:00 when the apartment of freshmen upstairs came and got me and we went to "I-Night(s?) Extravaganza" which was a glorified version of our high school's Project Graduation. They had a ton of inflatable games, and then roller skating, rock climbing (I originally typed that "climing" ... I hope it's just because I'm tired and not because Idaho is already eating away at my brain), DDR, laser tag, dancing, free food, and a place to take pictures and e-mail them to yourself or something. We went roller skating where Ashley pushed her roommate Cassie down "by accident". And then we sat around for a while talking. At about 11:00 we headed for our apartments.
Today for dinner I made my first peanut butter and jelly sandwich of college life, of many more yet to come, I'm sure.