Winter Has Begun

This post is a little late because it hasn't snowed for a little over a week now, but I'm still so excited that it did snow!

On November 9, I walked out of my door with an umbrella in hand. It was raining. A lot. Being from Portland, I love rain. It is so relaxing! I will say, however, that I do not like walking to class in the rain. Before I got ready that morning, I checked the weather, as I do every morning. It said that it was supposed to snow, but once I saw the rain, I assumed that it was just going to rain.

How wrong I was!

By the end of my last class at 1:00 pm, there was snow on the ground!! I was SO EXCITED!!

There are few things in life that make me happier than snow. What do I love about snow?

• It is beautiful
• When you can see it falling in the light of the streetlights at night
• The sound it makes when you step in it
• White Christmases
• How pure it is before people walk through it

Once the snow started, I don't think it ever really stopped. When we got out of the basketball game (more on that later), there was even more snow than before! It was amazing!!

Throughout the day, there was a song that got stuck in my head from Disney's Twelve Days of Christmas sing-along movie from when I was a kid. It's called "Snow Ho-Ho"! If you know this, I am very proud of you. (In the video, skip to 8:52 for the song. Or watch the whole thing!)

Aside from snow, there's something else that means winter is here: basketball season! That's right, the season has officially begun! The home opener was that same day as the 1st winter storm. It was so fun! And we won!! I love basketball season!!!! The student section still isn't my favorite thing, but maybe it will grow on me... I do like the name that they came up with for it: the ROC (Roar Of Cougars). I like that we have a name, AND they gave us free t-shirts! That's my favorite thing!! Except for winning. :)

Speaking of winning, the basketball team didn't do that this weekend. Neither did the football team. Or the volleyball teams. Or the Oregon Ducks. It was a rough sports weekend. My intramural coed volleyball team won on Friday though! And BYU women's soccer advanced to the Elite Eight! That's pretty excited! I hate to say it, but I would've rather had the soccer team lose in the NCAA tournament than the basketball team lose in a preseason tournament. I just really love basketball!!

How much do I love basketball? Here is our apartment's Christmas tree:

Yup, we decorated our tree with the basketball team. We cut out the players from one of the free posters we got from the home opener! It was Amy Jo's brilliant idea!! I love it so much!!

This week is Thanksgiving, so don't forget to be grateful for everything that you have! Here's a great winter song to get you in the mood for the upcoming Christmas season: 

Don't think it's time for Christmas music yet? Read this article I wrote about the very popular Christmas music debate and let me know what you think. When should we start listening to Christmas music? Have a great week! :)

PS: I don't think I'm going to have enough time to do recaps of all of the BYU games. From here on out, I'll probably just write about the really intense ones.

Remember, Remember

As I reflect on my week, I have come to a common theme: REMEMBER. Obviously I try to remember all of the things that I have to do for school or to remember to go to all of the random events throughout the week, but this week I was reminded of the important things that we should remember.

My 2nd article on Uloop came out this week! It's about my top 5 forgotten Disney movies. Remember these great movies! Maybe watch them again. :)
http://byu.uloop.com/news/view.php/51266/top-5-forgotten-disney-movies

For Halloween I dressed up as Life and handed out lemons (get it??). If you were about to give me props for thinking of it, I didn't. It took an hour of looking up random, easy costumes. Halloween isn't my favorite holiday. But it was fun to watch people as they tried to figure out what I was dressed as. Haha! As I explained my costume each time, it made me really stop and remember what it means to make lemonade out of the lemons that life gives us. We need to take advantage of the opportunities that we are given. Sure, it would be a lot easier if life gave us the powdered lemonade where all we have to do is add water, but that doesn't teach us anything. We can learn from the situations we are put it, and what we learn can help us grow.

I found out when I'm going to graduate! I have two options: I can either do my internship near BYU and take my last few classes at the same time to graduate in April 2014, or I can take my last classes during winter semester 2014 and do my internship over the summer, which would give me the freedom to go wherever I want, and graduate in August 2014. Either way, that's not too far away! Crazy! I just need to remember do the best I can while in my program so that I can be the best intern ever and then get the best job ever! :)

My roommates and I went to the Mt. Timpanogos temple on Saturday. They are both endowed, so they went to do endowments while I did baptisms. While I was waiting to get checked in, a cute old lady was in front of me asking about getting the work done for her family names. The man at the desk turned to me and asked me if I wanted to be baptized for them. Of course I said yes! After I got changed, I got to know her. She is one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met! When it was my turn to do baptisms, I felt her ancestors' presence with me as I went into the water. This experience made me remember that I need to focus on my family more. I need to research and find names in my family that need to be baptized. What must they be thinking when they see me doing names for all of these other families and ignoring them? Of course there is nothing wrong with doing other names, but when there is a chance to save my own family, I need to remember to take advantage of that. I'm so grateful that we have the knowledge in the church to perform these sacred ordinances to be together with our families forever, even members of our family who lived a long time ago.

The last BYU basketball exhibition game was on Saturday, and it even found a way to relate to my theme of the week. We dominated, of course. This one was at least more exciting than last week's. Craig Cusick was dominating from downtown! Anyway, Brandon Davies did something this game that made me respect him more than I normally do. He didn't forget one of his best friends. Davies wore the #41 at the game in honor of Chris Collinsworth, an old BYU basketball player who had to leave the team because of injuries. Davies and Chris played together at Provo High School and for a short time here at BYU. I was very impressed with Davies for donning Chris's old jersey to show everyone that we should remember what an amazing athlete Chris is. He will be missed on the team!


Davies wearing Chris's jersey

Church today was so great! This morning wasn't the best, and it was Fast Sunday, so I was starving. But I had very important things to fast about today. As the meetings went on, everything that people talked about was so amazing. I was definitely spiritually fed today. In Relief Society, especially. Recently, I've been throwing myself pity parties. It is the worst! I always feel lonely, unloved, and forgotten. Today, I felt the Spirit testify to me that Heavenly Father loves me. Whenever I feel down, I just need to remember that even if I don't feel loved by my roommates or my friends, Heavenly Father loves me, and my Savior died for me. I am LOVED! And guess what? So are YOU!


One last thought to leave you guys with: Brandon Davies (@0BrandonDavies) tweeted this scripture today in Helaman 5:
12 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.
Remember Christ. Build your foundation on Christ, and you will not fall. :)

PS: With this theme, how could I not put in the most obvious clip from my favorite movie of all time? Remember who you are!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No, I'm not talking about Christmas (but that is fantastic as well).

BYU basketball season started this week!! As much as I love football, I thrive during basketball season. I got to every game hours early, sometimes even camping out if it's a huge matchup. The reason that I love it so much is because of Jimmer. "Jimmermania" happened during my freshman year here at BYU, and in case you forgot, here's some great highlights. I would have been invested in basketball anyway, but because of the excitement of Jimmer, I became the biggest BYU basketball fan. Now, I go to every home game(exhibition, preseason, all of it) , I know all of the players' names, I sit close to the front, and I cheer my heart out. Yay for basketball season!!!

My new wallpaper on my laptop :)

On Wednesday, we got our first glimpse of BYU's team this season in the annual Cougar Tip off. It is a scrimmage within the team so that we can see all of the players play. We also got to sit in the new blue chairs, which, although comfortable, I hate because those chairs are the reason the student section is in a different place (more on that later). I love Cougar Tip off because it gives me a chance to learn the names and faces of the new guys before the first real game. I also get to decide who my team crush is. Haha! In case you are wondering, this season I love Tyler Haws and Agustin Ambrosino (or Auggie, as he goes by). I used to love Matt Carlino, or Matty as I call him, but then he shaved his head. I can't handle that. Anyway, aside from attractiveness, the team really impressed me! Especially Tyler Haws' first game in front of people after his mission. It got me really excited for the season! The Blue team won 84-70. Also, apparently Josh Sharp got really good. His dunk is SICK!

Katie and me at the exhibition game

On Friday, the Cougars welcomed the first Marriott Center guests of the season: Southeastern Oklahoma State. Unfortunately for them, they got crushed. We won 103-57. I'm kind of disappointed that we didn't double their points, but I guess winning by 46 is acceptable. Haha but in all seriousness, it was great to be at a basketball game again, cheering my heart out! Once again, I was impressed by our team. Brandon Davies is such a beast! I'm so excited for him, Craig Cusick, and Brock Zylstra (my best friend) to dominate their senior year! I'm really sad that Steven Rogers and Chris Collinsworth aren't playing anymore because of their injuries not healing properly. They were both so good and brought so much to the team. It's ok though! Our team is so good! We have a great season ahead of us.

Unfortunately, not everything is perfect in the Marriott Center anymore. They moved the student section behind one of the hoops! We used to have the best seats in the house, but they decided to kick us to the curb and give our amazing seats to people to buy. Those new blue seats are ruining everything! Besides a sub par angle of the court, there is a tunnel entrance right in the middle of our sections, so we are disconnected. The worst part by far is the new way we are behaving during free throw shots. When our team is shooting, we put up one finger. No joke. It is so awkward! I hate it! I miss spirit fingers. The first reason I heard for the change was now that we are behind the hoop, we would have been distracting our own team with spirit fingers. Uhhhhh oh. I'll just go along with it and pretend that spirit fingers are distracting. The second and more annoying reason is because the team doesn't like spirit fingers. Excuse me? Until I hear it come from Brandon Davies' mouth, I will not accept that. We have been doing spirit fingers ever since I've been here, probably longer! So which reason is it: distracting or dislike?

As frustrating as the new student section is, I am overjoyed that basketball season is finally back! I'm at every game, so if you want to come with me, let me know! Go Cougars!! :)

Aside from basketball, there was a BYU football game on Saturday! Guess what!?!? WE WON!!!!! We beat Georgia Tech in their homecoming game 41-17! Oh my gosh I'm so excited that we finally won!!! Except for Georgia Tech, in our last 3 away games we have lost by a total of 7 points. That's so frustrating! So it was nice to dominate for once. And Riley Nelson didn't suck! Sure, he had one interception, but for the most part he was playing pretty well, I thought. Can we give it up for J-Money (Jamaal Williams) for a second?? He is fantastic!! Every game I am more grateful that he chose BYU. He's only 17 years old, by the way. I thought I'd throw that in there in case you didn't hear the announcers say it every time that he touched the ball. Haha!

My favorite part of the game was when Riley threw it out of bounds to avoid a sack (smart decision), and Cosmo caught it! That was hilarious!! Cosmo is seriously the best mascot ever. Speaking of things that are the best, I love that there were so many BYU fans there to support the team! No matter where we go, there are always BYU fans there to cheer the team on. Georgia Tech fans, however, were very disappointing. The stadium was basically empty by the time the game was over. I'm not saying that BYU doesn't have a bunch of fairweather fans, because we do and I hate it. But seeing the Georgia Tech fans flake out early like that made me realize how much I wish we didn't have fairweather fans. It's embarrassing to show an empty stadium on TV!

I don't have a highlight video for you, but here is a recap.

In other news, my first article on Uloop was published earlier this past week! It's an article about how to be a good football fan. If you go to BYU and you or your friends don't follow these 5 guidelines, I suggest changing that before the final home game on November 10. My next article will come out sometime this week. It's about my top 5 forgotten Disney movies!

Tweets of the week:
@mattknisely: I'm confused? They haven't shown what number I should text to vote. #debate2012
@RebekahArnesen: The sooner coach mendenhall realizes that my love life and the football scores are connected the happier we all will be #byu #datingprobs
@kimberpower: "A Gryffindor letting his mom carry his Quidditch broom? How Hufflepuff is that?" #ModernFamily #harrypotter #hilarious
@MrStephenJones: Sitting courtside at the BYU bball game and just deflected a loose ball into a small child's face. #BYUBasketball
@BYUfootblog: DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW OLD JAMAAL WILLIAMS IS??? #BYU

Well, that's all I have for this week. Check back here next week for my review of BYU basketball vs. Findlay on November 3rd. Feel free to leave your thoughts on any of the games I talked about, I would love to hear from you! :)

<3

Fighting the Fighting Irish

This is my first sports review blog post!

I'm not going to go through the game play-by-play, but I am going to go over my highlights and what I thought about certain players and situations. I am NOT a sports expert, so if you want technical terms and deep analysis of the plays, this might not be the place for you to read a recap. But if you want to read the thoughts of a BYU fan or you care what I think, this is the place to be! I wish the first post was happier, but that's the life of a hardcore sports fan. We aren't always happy.

(Normally I will have a highlights video in the post, but the only one that I could find for this game only has Notre Dame highlights. If I find one, I will update this post.)

BYU traveled to South Bend, Indiana to play Notre Dame, the 5th ranked team in the nation, on Saturday. Going into this game, I was pretty nervous. Even if Notre Dame wasn't ranked so high, their football history is so impressive that I still would have been anxious. Also, their stadium that fits 80, 795 was sold out for the 229th straight time. That is insane! If that doesn't tell you how powerful Notre Dame is, I don't know what else can. Besides how well they play, of course.

As I sat down to watch the game in my apartment, which I was happy to finally be able to do because it was on NBC, I wasn't as nervous anymore. The announcers seemed to expect an upset. I always believe in my Cougars, but I am also realistic. So when they said that we had a chance because of their fall break just ending and their starting quarterback was out, I had more hope for us. I thought that maybe we could pull off the biggest victory in a while for BYU.

But of course, Riley Nelson let me down.

Again.

I might as well get my frustration out about Riley now. Very few BYU fans root for Riley like I do. I really, REALLY want him to do well. Obviously I want him to lead us to victory, but aside from that he is a senior, he is a fierce competitor, and he has been through so much to finally be the starting quarterback. I respect him a lot. But by the amount of interceptions he throws, I think he enjoys making us lose (no, I don't really think that). In his last 3 starts, he has had 8 interceptions. I wish I was making that up. He is not good enough. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about the team's quarterback situation because the only other quarterback that can play is worse than Riley.

Even though all of us BYU fans are beyond frustrated, we need to support Riley. Are we frustrated with him? Absolutely. However, he is the leader of our beloved football team. If he doesn't have our support, how can we expect him to improve? If I were him and everyone hated me, it would be really hard to play well knowing that my own school was not behind me. At least he loves high-fives like me.

Moving on.....

Jamaal Williams is a beast! I can't believe that he is only 17! The announcers were talking about how he turned down a bunch of other schools to come to BYU, including Oregon! The strangest part is that he isn't LDS. Obviously non-LDS athletes come here a lot, but to chose BYU over Oregon when you're not a member? That's so cool for us! He chose BYU because of the good values here, and he wanted to keep out of trouble. He is such a smart kid. I'm really impressed with him, besides his playing abilities. I'm loving J-Money (that's my nickname for him).

What was up with the tipped interceptions? First it happened to us, then it happened to Notre Dame. What are the chances? I kind of had bad deja vu when it happened to us because I remembered when Oregon State scored a touchdown last week after a tipped pass. Just our luck, I guess.

I don't even want to talk about when Cody Hoffman was wide open. But if you really want to read about what went wrong with the play that could've won the game for us, the Daily Herald wrote a great review about it.

By the millionth interception (exaggeration) in the 4th quarter, I was getting so sad. Towards the end of the game, I drew a picture of us getting an interception and running it all the way for a touchdown to win. That kind of stuff never happens to our team, but I thought that if I drew it, maybe it would work! It didn't.

 My amazing artwork.

For the most part, our defense was impressive, as always. Ziggy is a beast! It is so amazing that this is only his 3rd season playing football. EVER. If you don't know his story, read this. I'm so amazed by his natural ability!

Overall, it was a good game. We fought with those Fighting Irish with all that we had. We just fell short in the 2nd half. I was amazed when we were up at halftime 14-10! We were so close! I guess it makes more sense for them to continue their magical season than for us to win. We have nothing left to gain out of this season. We've already blown it. Maybe next year when they come to our turf and Taysom Hill is better, things will be different.

Best Tweets about the game:

• @emostler: "It might be time to let our defense play both sides. This is ridiculous. #byufootball"
• @gregwrubell: "First touchdown allowed by Notre Dame defense since the Purdue game on September 8th."
• @HarkTheFranchuck: "In warm-ups, Riley is throwing more balls in the dirt than a pitcher with the advantage of an 0-2 count."
• @gregwrubell: "Riley just told us that throwing behind Hoffman 'will haunt me for the rest of my life.'"

Next game? BYU @ Georgia Tech. October 27, 2012 at 3:00 pm EDT.

And that's the end of my first BYU football game personal recap! Keep in mind this is not a recap for a newspaper. This is my blog, so it's a casual recap. Personally, I enjoy reading things like this to see how other people felt about a game. It's interesting to read what was going on through their minds. If you have any comments about my recap or maybe you have something you would like to see me add to them, feel free to comment below. Also, if you have thoughts about the game that you would like to share, please post in the comment section! I would love to hear what you thought of this game and any game in the future!

Also, I was thinking that for basketball games, I might just do one post a week about the 2 or so games they have in that week.

Be on the lookout for BYU men's basketball coming up!! I seriously can't wait! I live for BYU basketball! Cougar Tipoff is this Wednesday at 7:00 pm in the Marriott Center!