New Year - New Life

I don't even know how to adequately express how fantastic these last few weeks have been for me.

On December 20, 2012 I married my best friend in the Salt Lake City Temple

On December 22, 2012 we spent the night with lots of supportive friends and family and had a great time.

....and had quite a bit of fun with the cake :)

.....and danced the night away.

 Our brothers had a little fun too. Jayde and Cole will one day forgive me for making them wear red all night. Maybe :)

One Week

My fantastic finance surprised me with flowers today. :) He was really worried that I wouldn't like them. But he is amazing and I love daisies. Spencer has never given me flowers before and it sure meant a lot to me. One of the sweetest things he has ever done. I am so looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him. I really appreciate the way he treats me and hope I can be a good wife for him.

Top Things I Am Thankful For

Giving that it is Thanksgiving, (ha) I am going to list some of the things I am very most thankful for:

1. Spencer! I sure love him :)
2. My family. They are the greatest. (I learned tonight that my siblings pray for me to "be safe at college" every day.) ((tender!))
3. My parents specifically. I owe them... everything.
4. My In-Laws to be. Thank you for raising the man of my dreams.
5. For the testimony I have of Christ.
6. That I have been able to obtain an education. (and am still going)
7. For the love and support of so many friends and extended family members.
8. My awesome student-friendly job. (Thank you Kevin!)
9. Music. I read somewhere that "music is what emotions sound like".
10. .......did I mention Spencer? :)

Loving My Classic Smooth Jazz

For my wedding reception, I have been looking for good old classic jazz music. Like Michael Buble (number one!), Frank Sinatra, Harry Connick Jr., Nat King Cole and the like. Isaac suggested I check out some Mel Torme too. So... I took a trip to the Marriott Library to find as much of this music as I could. Well guess what. I found tons! It sure took a while, because apparently no one looks for this music on a regular basis, but I got it. Actually, I found 5 cds of Frank Sinatra (between all there are 6 song duplicates), 1 Nat King Cole, 1 Harry Connick (that I liked), 1 Dean Martin (that I liked), and 6 Mel Torme cds to go through. So I think I will have plenty of music for my reception. It will be awesome.

Here is the type of stuff I'm looking at:

Totally classy! :) Love it!

Taking 5 for a Music Nerd Moment

Ok! :) I just got done with my practicing a few minutes ago and I'm feeling really good about that one. I felt like I made a lot of improvement and made some really great progress on the pieces I'm playing. Since I took my clarinet to Bob Joffs (highly recommend! He's amazing!) it has been playing a lot smoother for me. And I think I sound pretty good. Now.... I realize that my ears suck... and I'm probably hearing what I want to hear, but I was happy with it. (.....still would love to have a Buffet R13... just saying)

I reeally like my jury piece for this semester. It is a Brahms concerto. Brahms Clarinet Sonata #2 In E Flat, Op 120/2 - 2 Allegro Appassionato to be precise. It's so pretty! I love it. And it's starting to come together for me too.

I know I still have a lot to work on but I am impressed with myself and the point I am at now.

So I've been listening to it for the last few.... months. ha. But now I really really like it. A lot. 

I've also been doing quite a bit of reading on Brahms himself. (Mostly because I have a Music History assignment where I need to write two pages of concert notes on my above jury piece.) I really like this one biography that I'm reading. The author does a great job of telling the story without being completely boring and textbook like. It's more story like and I have really enjoyed learning about Brahms. He lived a very simple life and was on his own for a lot of it. And of course he has several tragic love stories because he lives a I'm-a-musician-and-have-to-establish-myself-off-on-my-own kind of lifestyle. I decided I could never lead the life of a musician like that. But he obviously did well with it. ha.

Now.... to just write those two pages on it.... Oh I mean:

"Yes Dr. Rorke, I'm almost done and have already given my paper to a peer for review today!" ................

Princess Bently

I got to hang out with Princess Bently at Karson's wedding yesterday and now we're like best friends :) So we took a bunch of pictures.

Home for the Weekend

Just watching conference with my bros. And I love that President Monson just said how he wished he had stuck with the piano :) Awesome!

I love conference weekend. The leaders of the church always have great messages for us.

Last night was pretty fun. I got to hang out with Koli Poki. We watched Union play against Judge. Jayde had to sit the bench because of a recent football injury. (The poor kid plays quarterback and it's his senior year.. and he broke his left hand.) It was a cold game, but Koli Poki kept be ..sorta.. warm. haha. Cole and I both just slept the whole way home though.

When I got home last night all of the little people were gone because they stayed at grandma's. But Brynne had her bed all set up for me, with an extra blanket and everything. (Cause she knew I would need it) :)

It's exciting being home too. I haven't seen my family in a long time! So the little people were crazy loud and excited this morning. But they're great. Cache really wanted to show me everything he could play on the piano. And that little kid read to me this morning too. He read a verse from Alma. Pretty awesome.

Being around family is pretty great.