Growing Up

So, last Monday was my birthday. I turned 19 years old. I can't believe how fast time has gone by.  I do but don't want to grow up.  I am thinking that my 20th birthday will be pretty hard for me.  ANYWAY. My birthday was actually great! To begin the day, I went to Denny's with my mom, sister (Angie), and two of my nieces, Kendall and Sadie.  Poor Kylie was in school.  After Denny's, my good friend, Brook Alius, came and brought me a delicious cupcake! She is such a sweetheart! Then, I went with my mom, sister and nieces up the canyon! We went up to deer creek for like a minute.  It was gorgeous, but ridiculously windy and cold, so we went back down to Bridal Veil Falls!! I LOVE waterfalls soo much.  I just love being outside.  I was in heaven.  The weather was beautiful, and the sun came out.  I climbed a little bit up the falls, but not as much as I wanted too.  I will have to do that another day.  We just enjoyed the water, weather, and yummy cupcakes that my sister brought.  It was so much fun.  When we got home, Sylvia and Daniel came up to my house to wish me a happy birthday.  Very nice of them.  But wait, there's more! I was then able to go to my FAVORITE restaurant with my parents, two sisters, one brother in law, three nieces and three nephews.  The WHOLE family couldn't be there, but it was still great!  We went to Teppanyaki! Sooooo yummy. I only get to go on my birthday, so It was so great! It's a Japanese steakhouse where they cook the food in front of you try to catch shrimp in your mouth.  I don't really care for shrimp, but if you are going to make it a challenge, I will accept.  It is so delicious!  Because it was my birthday, they sang song to me, which was like 5 minutes. Holy crap! And they made me dance as they sang "shake your booty, shake shake your booty."  Not to mention, EVERYONE in the restaurant was watching.  But hey, it's my birthday and Imma shake my booty.  We wish we got it on tape, cuz it was just too funny, but alas, we did not.  It was great though!  We came home, opened presents, and ate cake. Malgaby's chocolate cake!!!  I went to spend the night with my sister and while I was there, some of my best friends,  Bryce and Casey, showed up at my sister's door to wish me a happy birthday.  It was such a nice surprise and really ended my birthday with a bang.  I had such a fun birthday and I am so grateful for all they people in my life that love and care for me.  I am extremely blessed.  Here are some pictures of the wonderful day.

 If you look closely, you will spot me.

 My mom got me my favorite kind of flower, Gerber daisy!

 Bryce and Casey brought me Oreos and chopsticks :)

It's GREAT to be EIGHT

My sweet little oldest niece, Kylie turned eight on April 9th and was baptized on this past Saturday.  She was adorable.  She basically planned the whole meeting by deciding who she wanted to speak and say the prayers and sing.  She actually asked me and her mom, (my sister) to sing. Oh boy. How badly did I want to decline? Very much so, but it was her request and I just couldn't say no to her.  Don't get me wrong. I love to sing. Just not in front of people where they can specifically hear my voice. But we practiced hard and it turned out good.  The whole meeting was beautiful and I found myself getting a little emotional and she isn't even my daughter! Crazy.  It was so fun to see how happy she was. Here are some pictures of my beautiful niece. Try not to get too jealous that she isn't your niece. I know it will be hard ;) She got her pictures taken by Brenda (the same lady who toke mine)  These are just a few that I could get off of Facebook.

Welcome, Summer

FINALS ARE OVER!!! I am done with school for what? like three and half months. I am so excited! I have been in school since senior year of high school! It feels so good to be done! I don't know what to do with myself! Time to get a job.....yay...I keep forgetting that I'm done. Hasn't quite hit me yet. I can't even tell you how many times I just start jumping up and down and scream that I"M DONE!! and it's summer time!! Plus, the rainy-ness of this week? I am just LOVING it. Such a great way to end the semester. Definitely putting me in a good mood!

Anyway, since I am done with the semester, I am now officially back onto the book of face aka Facebook.....Yeah. It's really nice to finally reconnect with a lot of people. But I'm still kind of hesitant about being back. Not sure it is a good idea. I will just have to limit myself, but as I pointed out in an earlier post, its much harder to do when you have access then when you don't. We will see how it goes.

So, while I have been studying like CRAZY this week, I found this 6 hour mix of classical music on Youtube that has been great for helping me concentrate! But while I was listening to that, I was reminded of this song that I ADORE, and I looked it up and listened to it over and over again! It's just sooo amazingly beautiful. It just hits home.

I really like watching it be played on the piano. I just wish I could watch someone play it in real life or play it myself :) Here it is. Clair de Lune by Debussy

Enjoy :) - Christine Rachelle Brothers

Roommate for a Week/Blast from the Past

This was one busy week! Classes ended on Wednesday and the rest of the days were "reading days" for studying and reviews for finals week, which is next week. Oh, kill me! I was planning on taking a final today, but I also had a talk to write for tomorrow, so the final will have to wait. This week also happened to be Spring Break for the other schools. Therefore, my dear friend, Brooke Smith's family left for St. George to enjoy their week off. She didn't want to live alone for a week, because let's be honest, that's scary! So, she asked me to come live with her for the week, and try this whole roommate thing out ;) It was a lot of fun! We had late night dance parties, watched my all time favorite TV show, Friends, and ate A LOT of crazy bread from Little Caesar's....sooo bad for us, but oh, sooo good!

So I've been thinking a lot about fun, good memories with my friends and started looking through some old pictures. I think I'm just gonna take you down memory lane with some of my favorite pictures from some of my favorite times, with some of my favorite people. :)

Vanessa and me in Salt Lake on the tracks. Been best friends since fourth grade.

Alexandra and Chris aka Al and Chris aka Chrisex

Apparently we love to laugh at rooftop concerts in the summer dedicated to The Beetles. What's not to enjoy?

This little gal is Mandy-loo. I love her with all my heart. Miss you :)

Chris and Ames (Amy) So glad Dance Company brought us together

Me and Alex are really like Centennial Day, dance dress rehearsal. Can't you tell?

D.co Seniors. Love them to death. Alexandra (Alex/Al), Savannah (Sav) Brooke (Cookie) Me (Chris/Chrissy-tine) Amy (Ames/Amus)

We're goofballs, what can I say? One of my favorite pictures of us.

During the Chris and Ames picture of the day phase Senior year

Syl and I love Ronald McFondler as Sylvia calls him

Supporting our favorite Junior Miss contestant Aubs......"Where are we?"

My bestest friend, my wonderful sister, Angie

Summer term at BYU. Brooke, Brock, and me chillin in the dorm

My wonderful psych group. Love them and miss them so much!

Ames finally came home from Japan. Hadn't seen her in ages!

On our way to Lagoon, Frightmares baby!! It's tradition! Sylvia and me in the front, Tara and Karenna in the back

Syl, Vanessa, and I on our way to The Sounds concert. So much fun.

Brooke and I love us some BYU football

Salt Lake with the girls

Senior graduation night party with Syl and Nessa

Loving the chainsaw dude at Fightmares. If only you could see how bad he scared Sylvia after this picture was taken

Some of my favorite D.Co girls at our very own Mallory's wedding. Love these girls to death.

Hope you enjoyed memory lane as much as I did. Wish I could have just put up every picture that I love, but I restrained myself.

Spring Has Sprung

Well, this week has been a roller coaster. I've had some ups and I've had some downs. But as you can tell, I am still alive ;) Even though I've had a couple rough days where things kept going wrong, I am going to focus on the ups, because after all, they should outweigh those downs. Hmmm, to start off with, Wednesday was a BEAUTIFUL day! It's warm days like Wednesday that make me love having an outdoor campus. Seeing the flowers and enjoying the sun between classes is GLORIOUS. It was also my dad's birthday on Wednesday! Happy 59th daddy. Holy cow! April is the birthday month in my family. It's my dads, my mom's, my niece's, and mine. I went to dinner with my grandparents on Monday to Maglebys and because it is our birthday month, they bought us Magleby's chocolate cake. soooooooooooo sooo good! If you haven't had it.....have it! Pretty sure it's award wining stuff! Thursday was mostly a rough day, but I did help my sister out with my niece's rainbow birthday party. Hey, if you ever need a pro face painter, check me out. I painted some wicked rainbows and hearts on all kinds of cute girls' cheeks. ;) Okay, so I'm not pro, but they still loved their rainbows and hearts. On Friday, I was able to take part in some ceramics. Lemme tell ya, I found my new calling in life.....okay, so maybe not. I didn't end up with anything, because I pretty much destroyed anything I tried to form into a pot. Hey, it's harder than you think! But I had a BLAST doing it! It really was such a fun night. Sunday/Today is of course Easter and we just had most of my family come over. I just love my family so much. It doesn't matter how hard your week has been, family can make everything okay. We did an outdoor Easter egg hunt after dinner and all the eggs were color coordinated for each person. My brother did the honor of hiding the eggs, and well, he took mighty pleasure in making sure my eggs were near impossible to find. It took my FOREVER to find all of my eggs, but it was a fun challenge. So, long week. Next two weeks will be long too, but then it's SUMMER!!!

Holi Krishna!

Every year, there is the Holi Krishna festival of colors in Spanish Fork, Utah. I went once two years ago, but by the time we got there, all the colors were sold out and it was basically a bust. I was determined to go when I could take part in the throwing of colors! Last year, I couldn't go because of Dance America, (a dance competition our Dance Company hosted as our fundraiser) so this year was the year it WAS going to happen! I got my gorgeous friend Brook Alius to come with me. We wanted to go to the early throwing at 11 so we left at around 9:30, and with getting Brooke, finding a parking spot, walking to the Krishna temple, and buying our colors, we pretty much got there with about 20 minutes before the throwing, so it was perfect. We were right in the middle of the mob by the stage when the throwing took place. WOW! I was not expecting what happened! Everyone threw their colors in the air after a countdown from TEN. You could not see a THING. You could not breathe! It was nuts! You were just surrounded by a cloud of dust. It was a blast! Then, it happened.....A boy walked by and threw a bid chunk of green chalk RIGHT IN MY EYE. Thanks kid. My eye was killing and Brooke was trying to lead me out of the mob so we could fix things. But it just so happens that everyone decides the best thing to do was to make it impossible to get out by blocking me with crowd surfers. Awesome. So I lost Brooke, and I can't see a thing. I just feel like a stranded little kid. She finds me and leads me out. I work on rubbing the chalk out, and its just a mess of green chalk and black mascara. HOT. Now, my contact falls out and is totally green. Without my contacts or glasses, I am totally blind. Brooke leads me around to find some water to see if we can rinse my contact out. The water cooler was empty and it was chaos. Eventually we find the dude selling water, and I tried rinsing my contact, but it was a goner. So....basically that was a downer, but I just went with it. We had already taken place in the throwing, and we wanted to watch one. So, we killed two hours and watched the one o clock throwing from the temple. It was SOOO beautiful, and colorful. So worth it! One thing I loved was how you could tell who had been there for a while and who just got there. The ones who had just got there were covered by BRIGHT colors. The colors on the people who had been there a while were all faded and mixed together to get a dirty, brownish gray color, which sadly is how we were when we took out pictures. I promise we were bright at some point. :) I have washed and washed my hair, and I still have some orange, pink, and green in there. Now, he comes the sweet part. I have terrible eye-sight, and I drove us out of there, through crazy traffic with people walking in the street, and on the freeway, with a missing contact! May I just say that I am proud of myself there! I was scared, but we did it!! WAHOO!!! Anyway, so all in all, I had fun! I just had to realize that what happened,happened. And I just needed to go out there and have fun anyway!! I just learned for next time to be way more prepared!! And I will be! 2013 Festival of Colors, Be ready for me and my neon pink fanny-pack that will be full of things for "just in case" opportunities!

"I'm Sexy and I Know It" (Only Makes Sense if You Watch The Video at the End)

I keep telling myself to write a blog post, and it looks like I finally found the perfect time to do it (when I should be writing a research paper. Anything to get out of that, right??).

Now for some catching up. Let's go back to Valentine's Day since everyone seems to have a blog post about the day of love. It was a good day for me. And not because I had the best, most romantic date with my perfect boyfriend (what everyone else seems to blog or Facebook about). It seems that Valentine's Day has a reputation to be Single Awareness Day and everyone who doesn't have a significant other claims to hate the holiday and mope about how lonely they are. Well, that sounded like a crappy way to spend the day to me! I decided that Valentine's Day didn't have to be about couples. It could be about the love I have for my family and friends and how grateful I am to have them in my life. So, I woke up, put on a red shirt and decided to have a wonderfully beautiful day with all the flowers and hearts around. After school, my mom and I took my niece to dance class and we went shopping for a super cute shirt for my Valentine's present from my mom (Thanks, Mom!) That night, I watched a movie with a couple of my friends and came home to this wonderful surprise from my amazing friends from my ward. Thanks guys! You really made my day!!

A wonderfully heart-attacked door filled with stickers and quotes from Disney movies!!!

So, in other news, I actually deactivated my Facebook account. Crazy, huh? Oh, but it feels so wonderful. It is really hard sometimes not knowing what is going on with everyone, but I think it is all for the best. I deactivated it just because I spent too much time on it, and for other reasons. I will most likely reactivate it at the end of the semester, but we will see. I have discovered that it is so much easier to just cut it out cold turkey, than to just limit myself for how often I can get on it. It's much easier to bend the rules when you have access to it. It's just like chocolate and sweets. So much easier not to eat it when you don't have it around than to just say "I'm only going to eat one cookie..." Are you kidding me? Yeah right. We all know that isn't going to happen. Some people just have more self-control than others. So, even though it has some down sides, the up sides of not having Facebook right now are incredible! You should try it!! Or just limit yourself if you have the self-control.

Now, to close, I will leave you with one of the best things you will EVER see! This was a super bowl commercial this year, and it doesn't matter how many times I have seen it, it makes me BUST UP laughing EVERY time. I just can't handle it. I die laughing. Stick around for the end of the video,because that is the best part, and sadly when they show it on TV now, they have been cutting that part out. So...just watch the whole thing because there isn't a boring part.

Okay, so it won't load, and it's making me mad, but here is the link. It's amazing. Watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q33drZUXSzY

Music is My Medicine

College is rough. And there are times where you are just at the lowest of lows, but no matter what, music can pull me out of whatever slump I am at the time and just raise my spirits. It must be the dancer in me, but music just moves my soul. It means soo much to me. When I am having a bad day, I put in my ear phones, crank up the music so I can not hear anything in the world, and dance around my house. Wow, how much that helps. Music can carry me away into a whole other world of pure....bliss? I would say bliss, but it can help address any emotion I am feeling. But by the end of my music listening, I feel so much happier. Music was put on this earth for a reason. I miss dance though. I miss dancing everyday. I miss my dance company sisters. I miss learning and coming up with choreography. Mmmm...I just miss it all. Anyway, the point was to dedicate this entire post to my favorite band, but as you can see, I got a little carried away.

So now, without further ado.

The band whose music touches my soul the most is.....Coldplay. Man, I am so in love with their music. New and old. It just amazes me how I love every one of their songs and how they are so so grand. Their music just lifts me up. Vanessa was a doll and gave me the new Coldplay CD for Christmas and I have adored it!! On New Years Eve, my mother was watching TV, flipping through the channels and behold, she found that Coldplay was doing this New Years concert where they were playing some old and some new songs. It was like a legit live concert that someone was also recording and putting on TV. My mom, knowing my complete adoration for this band, went to record it on our lovely DVR. Thank you mom, thank you mom. The next day, I was in the living room talking to my mom and she mentions that she recorded a surprise for me. I was not expecting anything big, probably just a special episode of Say Yes to the Dress (which I love), but lo and behold, she shows me this Coldplay concert. OH. EM. GEE. wow...I was SOOOO excited. She wasn't able to record the whole thing, because she missed the beginning, but still.... a whole hour and nine minutes of pure, pure ecstasy. We started watching it, and man, I was loving it so much, I was getting EMOTIONAL. I had tears! Crazy, right? But really, it was THAT amazing! I have refused to delete it. It will stay on my DVR until I am forced to delete it. I have decided to create a bucket list and the first thing on that list is to go to a Coldplay concert, preferably many. They are just so into their music and so fun to watch. That would sure be an experience that I could NEVER forget. Hmmm....Well, I just thought I would share my absolute love for Coldplay and their music. I know they always a few really popular songs that get played on the radio, but their other ones are amazing and I challenge everyone to try them out! I just feel like everyone is missing out! If you need any recommendations, hit me up! I'll try to not just suggest every song ;)

Christmas Vacation

I know it is so hard for you all to keep up with how fast I update my blog ;) My bad....I will work on updating it more often! So, to catch up from the last post, I did get all the pictures back, but I'm not going to post them. They are on Facebook which is good enough. ANYWAY, this Christmas vaca has been pretty great. I spent so much time with my family and I loved it! Alright, let's discuss the major holidays and highlights of the break.

First off....Christmas Eve.

Every Christmas Eve, we have a party at my sister's house in Saratoga. It includes all my siblings (well those who are able to make it) and their children of course. We have all kinds of homemade soup (homemade chicken noodle being my favorite) and many wonderful deserts. We used to have a huge Christmas party with all the cousins and grandparents where we would read the story of the nativity from the scriptures and the grandchildren would do a play to go along with the story. This traditional party has sadly come to an end, so my mom read the story of the nativity to the kids during our Christmas Eve party. After the story, who should come to visit but SANTA!! Wooo...sadly some of the children have the frights for Santa, but they were swayed to go see Santa because he had candy for them. We played games and had tons of laughs, as always! There is never a family gathering without the majority of it being accompanied with laughter. Finally, we opened Pajamas and were able to get ready for the night! On our way home, my dad, mom, and I went to look at Christmas lights (you know the famous houses that are amazing every year!) I got to end the night watching Christmas movies with my mom, which was very fun!

Christmas

This was the first Christmas where it was just me. It was a little sad. Either my other siblings and their families couldn't make it, or they have reached the point where they do Christmas morning on their own and their own house. Since Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, we went to church. It was actually really good. We had wonderful musical numbers and "remarks." Even though my siblings had Christmas on their own, they all came over (Except for Emily who spent Christmas with her in-laws) for Christmas dinner. We got "Just Dance" for the Wii and we all had a ball playing it! Even my brother was pro and the kids we best of all. There was no age limit! Whoever wanted to dance, did! It was great having all of them over. I really love getting together with my family. It's the BEST thing about the holidays. Even though Emily wasn't able to be here for Christmas, she came later in the week. It was great, because it brought the family together AGAIN!

New Years

I haven't really done anything fun for New Years before. Growing up at my house, it usually consisted of watching the ball drop and going outside to beat pots and pans and giving my mom a kiss, and then it was bed time. yup. Pretty exciting, I know. This year was a BLAST. The Provo mall was throwing this countdown party shindig. It was pretty cool. The problem was that the lines to do all the fun things were super long so we ended up just walking around looking at all the fun things. At one point the line for rock climbing was pretty short and Kyle suggested we do that. Now, for some odd reason, I turned him down. I was worried that I couldn't do it and I didn't want to embarrass myself. Looking back, I totally should have just gone for it. Who cares if I make a fool out myself. I do that everyday! Anyway, we were able to watch some comedy sports, which was pretty funny, and watch some dancing and singing. Anyway, the best part was that at midnight, they were going to lower a ball and have fireworks. Well, I LOVE fireworks. They just amaze me! So, we met up with Vanessa, Sylvia and Daniel and went out to the parking lot. They had music blasting, so naturally we had a dance party. So fun. Nothing I love more than dancing. They were giving out free little blower thing. It was crazy. There were so many people, all blowing their horns. Music was blasting. Suspended by a firetruck was a wonderfully lit ball that was going to be dropped when we did the countdown. Then it was time. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! Wooo.. and then FIREWORKS. Amazing fireworks! And they were RIGHT above us! They were sooo cool. Man, it just made it amazing. It was almost, dare I say, magical! To top it off, Vanessa, Sylvia and I went to a beautiful look out point and drank a bottle of Martinelli while toasting to a wonderful new year to come.

Kickoff to Back to School

Okay, so I realize this isn't a Holiday, but hey, close enough. So, to celebrate the last day before the start of Winter semester, Vanessa and I did some fun stuff. We started out celebration by going out to dinner to Noodles & Company. YUM! It was so good, and for some reason, it's just extra fun to go out to eat, right? Bonus: I got left overs, which I have already begun to enjoy :) Anyway, after our lovely dinner, we went to my house to give me a purple hair streak. We have tried this before, but it didn't work very well last time. Vanessa washed it out too soon so it lasted like a couple washes and was very very dim. This time, she only rinsed it and it looks great, but we will see how many washes it last. Cross your fingers because I love it. After dying part of my hair, we put on temporary tattoos. We just think we are "bad a" with our colored hair and temp. tats. ;) During all of our fun, we watched the original Footloose, because Vanessa had never seen it! CRAZY! It is just soo good. and well, ladies and gents, she LOVED it. Success. Just like that old saying goes, "If it aint broke, don't fix it." Yes, and that is why I refuse to see the new Footloose. Maybe I will cave someday, but it just won't compare.

My purple streak

Well, I think that was a great amount to write about. I will try to be better about updating in the future and then they won't be so long. Until then, much love.

Christine Rachelle Brothers