O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

Ok, so I know that Christmas was two days ago, but I'm still posting this today. :) Today I started my first day of work. it's a temp job, but it's exciting to be working again! Well, they still have their Christmas tree up and it smelled sooo good! I got the cubicle right by the tree, yes, I have a cubicle! Never thought I'd see that day! :) I kinda feel like I can relate better to The Office now! Anyway, all day long I got to smell that beautiful pine tree smell that I've longed for all year! In my house we have a fake tree! I always complain that we need a real one, but since I'm not willing to pay for it right now I'll have to be patient, and wait till next year for my real tree. So, I was really happy to get to sit right by the Christmas tree, and get a good long, and I mean long whiff of that tree! Mmm, it's good!

Well, even though our trees fake at home, it still looks really pretty, and this year I got to decorate it with my decorations! Last year there was a 90% off sale at Beverley's on all the Christmas stuff, and since my sister works there we got an added discount, so I bought a bunch of ornaments! And guess what colors I chose? If you know me, you should be able to guess! Red, brown, and teal, it's kinda my theme. There's also a lot of golds, and burgandy.

All I want for Christmas is...

"It's Christmas time and time for a carol time to sing a lovely little tune..." Carpenters Christmas carol, I love that song and I love this time of year; the feeling in the air, the smells of cinnamon and pine trees, the fun Christmas parties, and the gifts!!! :) It is such a special time, one where we remember family and friends, and most importantly our Savior! It is his love, and his gift that we remember and give praise to during this time of year  and I love it! I'm just truly grateful for my Savior and his atonement; it is that is which allows us to change, progress and return to him. As my Bishop said last night, "if we didn't celebrate Easter, we wouldn't celebrate Christmas!" Meaning, if it weren't for the atonement, we wouldn't be celebrating Christ's birth!
At this Christmas time I implore that we remember why we celebrate Christ, it is because through his atonement we can gain hope; a hope of becoming greater, a hope of progressing, a hope of forgiveness, and that hope will lead to action, to faith, and to repentance. And what is repentance really? It's just change, a change for the better, a returning to penitence for the Lord. If we view repentance simply as change, then it's not so daunting! It can be simple small changes at first that build up to us becoming a more Christ centered people. That's something that has helped me so much in my life, all we have to do is choose today to do those simple things like, pray, read our scriptures, and remember our Savior and his perfect example. Those simple things will lead to change, and to improvement, I've seen it in my life, and although I'm FAR from perfect,... I'm happier, and that's part of what the atonement is about!

So for this Christmas I hope that we will remember our Savior, and his atoning sacrifice, that beautiful gift that he gave for us! I hope that we will strive to make him a bigger part of our lives, and that we will follow his example of perfect love, and reach out to those in need.

Just a thought... :)

Pictures, from various adventures

So I was looking through some of my pictures from Seattle, and I have to say there are a lot of really cool ones, thanks to the hipstamatic app on my iphone. So I wanted to post them, cause what can I say, they're beautiful, and sometimes wacky. :)

Eight Month Delay!!!

So I woke up this morning to this email:



The department can't find the paper for your grade change. I got a new form and need to fill it out. The information I need from you is your BYUID (the number), Full name, local address, and local phone. Please send this to me and I'll turn in a new form for you.
Sorry about the delay


Now, this is December 9th! I first sent an email to this TA regarding my grade last MAY!!!! That was about 8 months ago!!! This makes me so extremely mad that I'm actually writing my first negative blog post!!! So here's the story:


In my Psych stats class I got this email:
I mistakenly deleted your blackboard exam 2 scores. Will you please all email me and let me know your score (if you don't have your test I'll look it up)?
Thanks,
stating that they lost the test scores for 2 of our tests!! 2!!! How does that even happen! So, for some reason I spaced it and didn't think that this email applied to me. So I never replied, I guess I thought he would just look them up. I admit it, I made a mistake. Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking, I blame it on the million other things I had to get done! Then came the grades, and I had a C-!! I was shocked, and immediately emailed my professor and my TA to fill out a grade change form, I mean, this was a 4 credit class that I worked my butt off for to get an A in! Unfortunately I had also just moved to Seattle for the Summer so I couldn't just go to my teacher!


Anyway, they reply and say they'll get the grade change form filled out. And time passes, I keep checking my grade and it hasn't changed! So I emailed again, and again. Nothing. I finally email the TA one more time, on JULY 2nd, and then I call the school, they directed me to the psych department where I find out that no grade change form has been filled out!! Then I'm directed to my teachers office, where I leave a message for her. She emails me back, and says she filled one out! Finally! SO of course now I'm checking my grade everyday to see if it's changed, and it finally does!! Yay!


But then this morning I woke up to that email, a reply to the email I sent back on July 2nd! And I was thinking, are you SERIOUS!!! Oooh it just makes my blood boil! I mean, some people actually DO care about their grade!


Sorry about the DELAY!! The EIGHT month delay!! Are you kidding me!

Catching Up!!!

So, it's been a long time since I've written anything here and a lot has happened! I've moved home to Santa Rosa, California! Sunny California!! Where I've finally gotten some warmth!! Yay! But now it's December so it's pretty cold again. :( Anyway, since I've been home I've been pretty busy, so I've got a lot of catching up to do! Lets see, after leaving Seattle I got to stay with my good friend Jolene Lemmon for a week! She has 2 adorable little boys, who are little angels, well...at least they look like angels, ;) with white blond hair and big blue eyes! They really were so sweet and I had so much fun pretending to be an aunt! :) It was so great to visit with Jolene, one thing I love about her is that you know you will be laughing most of the time your with her! While I was there we went to the Beach, and it was so beautiful! It was so fun to hold their little hands while they went into the ocean, they loved it and were practically squealing with delight! It made me happy.

So after I came back to Santa Rosa I made some goal:

• Take the GRE, just to keep that option open. Check
  
• Get a job...still in progress. :( It's a lot harder these days, but I'm really working on it!
  
• Apply for Graduate Schools. - which is on hold cause I need money, and I want to make sure I really want to put the time and effort into that!
• Work on an online bookbinding business. Check! It's still in progress, but I opened an etsy store called Book By Design, and I just sold my first book! Super exciting for me!
• Paint Nativity Paintings for my mom. Well, I haven't even started that one, but I will soon!

So I took the GRE! I've been looking for a job, ugh! I went to Disneyland with the family last October, pictures to come soon!!! Yay! :) I put on a ward roadshow, also pictures to come. :)! That was a challenge, and a lot of fun, I got to know people in my ward really fast! I become the FHE chair and got to throw the Thanksgiving dinner at the last second, :) and helped this past week with Decorating for this Nativity Festival my stake puts on every year! Oh and I'm also in the choir for that, and it has been so much fun! I also organized a Service Auction for our ward. In our stake each ward sponsors a family for Christmas so to raise money for them we offered services and goods in a ward auction. We raised just over $1000! Can you believe that! In a singles ward too!! It was pretty amazing! And because we raised so much we're gonna sponsor 2 families! That just made my day, it's pretty wonderful that we're gonna be able to help 2 families have a wonderful Christmas!

So back to my goal of starting up a bookbinding business, well, I had my first official customer in October, some guy found me on linkedin, he wanted me to repair his old scriptures. He was given them when he was baptized, and the text had completely separated from the cover, so I fixed the cover for him and added 2 new ribbon bookmarks, the ones he had were completely frayed and faded. It just so happened that I got his scriptures the day before my family and I were leaving to go to Disneyland, and he was on the way, so I actually personally delivered his scriptures to him! I know, crazy right? But it saved him $11 in shipping, so I thought it was worth it.

So after that I decided to open an etsy store, where I sold my first book yesterday! It was so exciting to see that people are interested in what I can do, and I'm trying to think of different ways to get things going with this business! Well, since this post is getting so long I think I'll end it here, but be assured there is more catching up to do!

Seattle Revisited

Well I've had some fun adventures here in Seattle, and here are some more pictures showing some of the fun things I've been doing here.


This was walking around downtown Seattle, there are so many old and beautiful buildings, thought this one was really beautiful and captured that old historic feeling around that part of town.
This is outside of the Seattle Art Museum, this statue just sneaks up on you! He's so thin from the side you don't notice him till you stand in front.
This was a beautiful fountain that's on the pier near the Seattle Aquarium, which I haven't gone to yet, but hope to make a trip to soon. The fountain was really unique and there were tons of people gathered around it, it was good I got this shot of it.
So they had these crazy sunglasses at some the stands around downtown, they weren't really sunglasses at all, but completely plastic with horizontal slits where the lens would be, they had them in all sorts of colors, I asked the vender, "what's the point?" they don't actually protect your eyes at all. He said they're just to look cool. I think I pulled that off pretty well. :)
This is the famous Seattle gum wall! I added my own contribution. :) It was so gross, but also really cool. people wrote they're names and all sorts of designs, I saw a few different countries flags and some hearts. It was pretty neat, I took a few more pictures.
Look at the gum just dripping from the window sill, pretty gross, but pretty neat too.
A detail of the thousands of pieces of gum contributing to the gum wall! Can you believe how much gum is there! I thought Seattle was all about recycling, I guess in a way, you could call this recycling, I mean, it now has another purpose! Entertaining.
There's a heart! How romantic.
After walking around downtown we went to a Mariners baseball game, my first ever! It was pretty fun, I tried my first garlic fries too, and wow, they were pungent! Lets just say I definitely did not need to worry about any vampires! I won't make that mistake again, but it was fun being there and I got some great pictures of the stadium and there was an amazing sunset that night!


Here's the group that went, they're tons of fun.
Here's me at Gas Works park, this is the park in 10 Things I Hate About You, where they have a paint ball fight. It had a nice hill so you got a great view of the city and the sunset, it was beautiful, but freezing that night, hopefully it will get warmer soon. :) We got a few pics, but as you see it was getting dark.
Well, those are some of the fun things I've been up to here, I've also been hard at work. :) well, sort of... I'm doing my job, and playing as much as possible.

Hello Seattle!

Hello Seattle! I'm here in Seattle for the Summer on an internship with the Flourishing Families! I took these pictures on our little tour of Seattle, where we got to stop at the beach, and then went to Pike market, and a little park at Queen Annes, where I took the picture above of the Seattle cityscape. It is a beautiful place, full of green trees and rolling hills! I love it!
This pic was our walk to the mall, we got to walk there with this beautiful view, even the sidewalks are pretty here!
This is another pic I took at the Queen Anne's viewpoint.
Here's the beach of the Puget Sound, there aren't many waves, but there is a ton of beautiful driftwood, and the view looking away from the ocean is gorgeous, green trees everywhere! I'll post a picture of that next time.
So far I've been having a great time here, we haven't really started working yet, so this week has been a lot of going and seeing places. I still need to go back to Pike Market and get some pictures there, I forgot my camera, but it's a really fun place, and I'll get more pics up soon. Last night we went to a U-dub football game, it was pretty fun, they had a hot dog eating contest which was pretty funny to watch. Anyway, I'll be posting more about my adventures here!

Random :)

This is a Man, wearing a red, silky girly shirt! Now this might not be that surprising to everyone, but in Provo, Utah, it's pretty weird! It made us laugh, and we tried to sneak some pictures!

The Graduation!

So I graduated!! Well, I walked, anyway, I acually won't be completely done until August, because of my internship in Seattle this Summer, but I was very excited to be almost done! This was the first picture taken of me after Convocation, where I officially walked!
This is the traditional Svedi intellectual pose, we are all trying to look smart, and Scott's doing the thinking pose. :) I love my family. This started when Shara graduated and she and Shaina took a picture like this. Scott said, Shara looked like an intellectual, and Shaina looked like a model, modeling being smart! :)
This is my amazing family, minus Steve and Rachel, they couldn't make it, and Craig who took the picture.
Us again, being rediculous.

Here's me and Shara and Craig. They just moved to North Carolina. So far away! :(
Me and my amazing sisters!
Me in my cap n' gown, with my amazing diploma cover! :) I get the official diploma in August!