Pick, chew, or suck - i just can't decide!

Just a few of my favorite pictures of my neices and nephews, ha ha! Good Times!

Moving In!

I've been living in my new house for two weeks now and never realized how much stuff I had until it's time to organize and put it all away! What a mess the house has been. We are hoping to have a party once it's clean and organized for everyone to come see the house - let me know if you would like to come so I can be sure to send you an invitation!

The Whirlwind of Life

December brought graduation - I got my diploma in the mail yesterday and my schedule has definitely filled up without being required to fulfill any more credits. But my life has been just as busy. I started working full time at a craft store as a supervisor - not my dream job but thankfully a job! It's fun being back in the loop of the world of work after taking almost a complete year off of full-time work to be able to finish school. Another bonus is the fact that I'm always on my feet at my job which has helped me lose weight!

January I found out that the house I have lived in for the past three years sold and I am moving away. I am moving with my roommates just down the road on Saturday. It's not far and it is an upgrade that I am looking forward to. The best part is that it is still a house with a yard and a spot for a garden - it will be like a new piece of heaven to enjoy!

The last change is that I am finally taking down the Christmas decorations - part of me still feels like I'm getting ready for Christmas, the time passed by so quickly.

Also, I was tagged by my sister Alycia to show the fourth picture of mine in my fourth picture folder. It is a picture of my niece Kathryn goofing off two Christmases ago. She loves to dress up and steals my bracelets all the time - and she is a crack-up! I am so grateful to be an Aunt to the coolest niece!

Graduation

Today I checked my grades again to see if they had finally been posted and sure enough they were all on there. What this means: I AM DONE!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) Hip Hip Hooray! I am a bachelor now, according to Sherie! I decided not to walk mainly because I would have to do it in the spring and I just really don't care - all I care about it that I am done. I think the most exciting news besides being done is I made it onto the Deans List for my good grades. I had no idea....the funny thing is I had made it on there before last summer and didn't even know it. The semesters I took the most credit hours, the better my grades were. Which means I must have done pretty good this year since the spring I took 18 credits, Summer I took 19 (word of advice: NEVER do this in the summer), and this Fall I took 15 credits. As you can tell, I wanted to be done as fast as possible.

Now it is time to finish patting myself on the back and face the future....which I have no idea what direction to point myself in. I have begun applying to join the Peace Corps and am getting more excited of this being a future possibility as I apply, but even more of a sinking nervous feeling along with it...until today. I was watching TV - something I never do, when a commercial came on for one of the local tiny colleges: Stevens Henniger College. Their ad started off with a person sitting on their couch holding a remote (exactly what I was doing) and the voice of the commercial said: "Do you want to be like this for the rest of your life?" (or something like that) and continued by saying, "Then call this number now to find out how you can earn more money and have better job potential" (Which is a bunch of bologna if you are going to go to school at a place like that). But something about this commercial I am making fun of made me think, "If I don't join the peace corp or do something with my life, I'll be that girl sitting on the couch, bumming around watching TV because I am depressed about my life and not having a job or direction" :) okay so that sounds a little exaggerated, but you get the point. So, feeling all inspired, I got online and read up on the peace corp and that worried, nervous feeling is beginning to go away. Since it takes about a year to apply, I think I will have plenty of time to continue to work on getting rid of that feeling all together.

So after reading this post, now it's your turn to decide: please make a comment and state what you think Serena should do with her life! (really, if this peace corp thing doesn't work out I would like some ideas).

Tuttle, North Dakota

I was blog surfing today and stumbled upon this fancy little website: http://www.tuttlend.com/index.html I couldn't believe my eyes. Here I thought the town I grew up in was turning into a ghost town with it's shrinking size, I'm pretty sure the population is below 100 now. I had no idea that it had a website and was living strong :) It was great to see pictures of home again and hear the latest news from everyone and be reminded of my years of growing up in such a special place. I wouldn't have traded those experiences for something different. I am who I am today partly because of Tuttle and I miss it.

To my friends who have always lived in a big city or who have heard a lot about Tuttle and always wanted to see it, check out the website...at least look at the pictures. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas Everyone! Thank you all so much for your letters and presents and most of all your friendship! I am grateful for my family and miss my Mommy and Daddy and little bro so much and am homesick to have a Christmas like when I was little. I wish I could be with Grandma and all of my relatives tomorrow in North Dakota. Lastly, I am thankful for the Lord and the blessings he has filled my life with and most of all the opportunity to return to him because of his life and sacrafices. I love him! and I love all of you too. Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

10 MILLION bonus points if you guess the movie and who said this:

"Over there in that pigpen, I found a couple of Shoshoni arrowheads."

Impossible Dream - Brian Stokes Mitchell

If any of you ever come out to Utah during the Holiday Season, you will be missing out if you don't go to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert. The concert takes place every year and there is always a special guest singer. Occasionally there is a speacial guest in addition to the singer who has an amazing speaking voice who will read a christmas story accompanied to music. This year the guest singer is Brian Stokes Mitchell and the guest speaker/reader is actor Edward Herrmann. In addition, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings with the Orchestra on Temple Square and lately with the Bells on Temple Square, a new favorite of mine. They are having 80 additional bell ringers joining the Bells on Temple Square this year and i'm dying to go. The music makes the hair on my arms stand up and is so beautiful. I looked up Briam Mitchell to see what his voice sounded like and how it would sound with the choir. I was lucky to stumble across this song, where he is already singing with them. Now I am in love with this song. I never considered how this sing related to Christ - I don't know anything about Man from La Mancha, the story or why they sing this song in the play/movie, but the words are so meaningful to me - if I could pick a theme song for what I wish I could do in my life, this would be it for sure. My favorite line in relation to christmas is, "This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far" - I pray that as the Wise Men followed the star that lead to the baby Jesus, that we will consider how to follow the light of Christ in each day of our lives and to make that our quest!

Sweat Lodge

This is a picture of a place similar to where I was on saturday morning. Working with juveniledelinquents, we participate in a lot of activities that allow the kids to release anger, gain coping skills and properly communicate. We take them to a sweat lodge once a month. This was my first time being able to go. I was a little nervous since I didn't know what to expect. I imagined my contacts melting to my eyeballs, my skin dripping off my body and having some weird experience. Knowing it would probably last for about 2 hours didn't help either - I thought for sure it was impossible to spend so much time in a room that was so short you couldn't even stand, crammed in there with about 30 other people and glowing red hot rocks.

We started by meeting in a teepe and talking about what to expect and stating our purpose for entering the sweat lodge. Many stated things like peace, happiness, understanding, comfort, and why we wanted these things. We entered the sweat lodge and the ceremony began. I was amazed by the things I was able to hear the kids express - kids who struggle in communicating without a fight beginning and swear words involved - being able to express in clarity the emotions they were dealing with, where they were coming from and find peace and forgiveness. There were four stages to the ceremony with different topics. The first topic was about women, second about men, then ancestors, and last was forgiveness.

While inside, it is completely dark inside - the only thing you can see are the red hot rocks. As the water is put on them the whole room is filled with steam. Black licorice, cedar, bear root and other things were used on the stones as part of the ceremony and represented different things. One of the greatest parts of the "sweat" was while discussing the last topic, forgiveness. I laid down for most of the "sweat", since heat rises, it was cooler on the floor. I had my leg bent so my toes wouldn't end up resting and burning themselves on the rocks and had one leg crossed over the other. During this last part the leader intensified the heat to the point where I couldn't stand having my leg crossed anymore since my big toe (the part of my body the was highest up in the air) felt like it was about to melt off my body. He had all of us sit up so that we could feel the intensity of the heat. As we felt the heat - and believe me, we felt it! - he told the kids: now when you are out on the street and one of your friends says to you, "here, do this..." (drugs, bad things, etc...) remind yourself of the intense heat you are feeling right now - don't put yourself in those situations again. So.....typing that out it doesn't really seem to make sense, but it makes sense to me - I guess if you want to understand, you can go to a sweat lodge yourself, which I would recommend. Preferrably go to a clothed sweat (not all of them will let you wear your clothes).

Crystal Gayle

So I realize that some of you are offended that it's been a while since i've blogged. Well, the reason is because.....i'm so amazed by this video! So I posted it for you, so you have some entertainment to turn to until I make a real post! :)

Cozumel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a long drive to Ft.Collins, Colorado, then to the Denver Airport, with no sleep at all, my friend Rachel Bomsta and I arrived safe and sound in Cozumel, Mexico!!!! This has now become one of my favorite places on earth. We stayed at a place called the Iberostar on the southwest part of the island for five days (it was not long enough). I had a lot of fun before leaving for the trip spending hours on the internet finding out as much as I could about the island and how to do things for a good deal (or at least a reasonable price). After doing that we realized that there were incredibly cheap ways to enjoy the area and see the sites. Upon arriving, we attended a required meeting that was basically a sales pitch to get us to go on the most rediculiously expensive trips to the different sites, we just had to laugh knowing that the trip could actually be done for three times less than what they were offering. If anybody wants some very informative travel information check out tripadvisor.com - I found so many details on things to do, what to bring, what not to do, etc...there are a lot of things we would have missed out on or wasted our time with had we not realized it beforehand. The resort was amazing and had the best desserts - I was in heaven. It was right along the ocean and the staff was amazing, they would do a backflip for you if you asked them to.

This is the view of the resort from the dock.
The rooms were great, with a bungalow style to them. They gave us a room on a second level, which allowed us to have a deck, patio chairs and a hammock.
If you were there to be a beach bum, you had pleanty of opportunities to do it at the resort (we never gave ourselves time to bum around though since we wanted to see the sites more).
A view from the pool.

Each day we had a new towel animal waiting for us, from the swan, to a rabbit or even an elephant. The swan was my favorite. I was very impressed with how clean everything was, at the resort, on the coast, or in the city - Cozumel is very well taken care of. I read that on the island there is only a 1% crime rate, which was nice knowing that I didn't have to worry about watching my back while on vacation and the people were amazing.

Emergency First Aid

This past week I took a 4 credit Emergency First Aid class. It was Monday through Saturday from 8:00 to 5:00. It was a lot of fun and I am grateful to know the things I learned. The most important information was CPR training and knowing exactly (for the most part) what to do and how to handle an emergency until an ambulance arrives. My last assignment is to turn in a First Aid kit loaded with all of the essentials. What would you recommend as a "must" in a first aid kit, or something that you have found handy for yours?

No, a NEW one!!!!!!!!!!

My prayers were answered and the insurance company totaled out my car! I was so worried that I would have to spend millions of dollars to repair the damage done from the deer (yes, it does cost millions to repair a car if you were wondering). So I got a new car and of course, it's another Toyota Corolla! I guess I like them a lot! They get amazing gas mileage and cover all my needs. I thought about getting a natural gas vehicle since gas is getting so expensive, but couldn't find a dual-tank, which is what I wanted. I also decided against a hybrid since they will just end up being a big dead battery when they stop running and it sort of defeats the purpose of trying to be nice to the planet.

More Pictures of Stuart coming home!

Welcome Home Stuart!!!!!

My brother Stuart (Elder Danielson) returned home last night at 11:30 from his two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Carlsbad, California. It is great to see him and see the changes in him as well. He seems so different, but he is still the same old Stuart. Thank you, Stuart, for the dedicated service you have given in these past two years to the Lord, and his work!



Notice his home-made camouflage tie!