post dead week, pre finals week.

what can be more draining than dead week? finals week of course. it's weeks like these that make it difficult to remember how much i appreciate the opportunity to be getting a higher education, and value my time at apu. 


last weekend was good though. i had some of my high schoolers from home come visit me. we stayed up late, played monopoly, ate an excessive amount of tortilla chips and gummy bears (strange combination, huh?), and they caught me up on their lives. saturday morning we went for a hike that was a little more tedious than they'd bargained for. but they made it, and sang miley's "the climb" on the way up. it was worth it! they are such sweet girls, and i really loved our 24 hours together!

love my katie, jen, emmy and lizzy! and our clear, beautiful view!

then it was back to real life though. however, i heard a little question a while ago that's been stuck in my head since, and today feels like a good time to share it. so, here you go..
how does it feel to be escorted through life by the king of the universe?
i obviously don't have time to do this question justice. i mean, i have 19 pages of writing due tomorrow at noon. but it makes my heart happy to acknowledge that thought. especially in this crazy, stressful time of finals, and friends coming home, and a wonderful holiday season that we're nearly in the middle of. i wanted to share it with you too though, so you can remember who's walking by your side in the midst of craziness! 


and so, after 4 more papers, 4 exams, and 5 days, i will be done with yet another semester, more than halfway done with my undergraduate career, and onto colder winter activities, like oklahoma and idaho.
my prayer for you this week is that you rest much more than i will, and are aware that the king of the entire universe (seriously. the whole thing.) is walking with you!

november pictures

the promised pictures from november!

one night we just decided to build a sweet fort in our room. a little study break. it was legit.

my friends. are the best. we loved our fort.

it's a long story, but we also caught a pillow on fire in our room. it was such a process to get it out. like a three hour one. and our house smelled horrible, like burning memory foam. for days. it was rough. we slept on the floor in the living room with all doors and windows open.

we also had to do homework outside..

pillow leftovers. after it burned for hours, was doused with a lot of water, and we used basically an entire fire extinguisher on it.

we went out to glendora one night too. it was my friend maria's birthday, so we took her to celebrate. we just happened to go on the annual christmas extravaganza, which was kinda cool to see. 

i kinda did a bad job capturing this, but the trees were magical. 

thanksgiving was good too. i already wrote about it though, so here are the pictures!

early morning huntington beach run!

clearly i'm not really a fan of the cold fog at like 8am on thanksgiving..

all of the cousins!

celebrating hanni's birthday!

it's dead week this week. so you can probably expect a post or two. they're good procrastination activities!