Oh praise the heavens!

Do you ever sit in your room and just take a huge sigh of relief for no apparent reason. I just did that, so I thought I would write about it...at 12:30 at night...hmmm. Maybe not a smart thing to do. But, no worries, I have NO SCHOOL tomorrow. Maybe that is what started the whole sigh of relief ploy?!? I like that.

So as you can see I finished my classes...fall classes are over and down. And now just the dreaded finals of the black heart and torturous time frames. I have three, count em' three finals. That I hope i will be more than ready for. We will see. I have the whole weekend to study, but the way that i am I will probably end up procrastinating like every other time.

The christmas holiday beings warmth and cheer except for when it is 20 degrees without snow, so there is NO reason that is should be that cold...I think Utah is cursed. It was thinking, "hey I wanna annoy Brianna so I am going to be super freakishly cold even when i have a blue and cloudless sky" oh well, i guess utah just doesn't like me, or i don't like it, i tend to forget which one it is.

So there is my randomness of half asleep joy and rapture, have a wonderful night!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

On monday was my sweet mother's 50th birthday. And seriously she doesn't look a day over 30!

Seeing as this was the big 5-0 i decided to try and take her some place unusual or different. So me being a bit of a fondue fanatic took her to THE MELTING POT! It is up in Salt Lake City.

At the beginning of the evening my mom had no idea where we were going, so that was way fun. Her being in complete guess mode!! HA! And she had no idea. During the night we had 3 courses of fantastic food.

Our first course of fondue was a chesse (spicy!)

Second was a yummy salad, which my mom ended up sending back because her dressing had wine in it.

Third was the meat, and the first time my mom had ever tried lobster! And she liked it (thank goodness)

And fourth was the Dessert...mmm. chocolate fondue, more than you could possibly fit into your mouth it was fantastic.

So, seeing as my mom is 50 I wanted to tell you 50 things I love about her!!(because there are many more than just 5o...she is an incredible woman to say the least!!!)

ODE TO MOTHER

What I love about my Mother is:

1. Her Smile

2. Her Laugh

3. Her Hugs

4. Her kisses

5. I love that her taste in music is basically the same as mine

6. How she loves life

7. How much she loves the savior

8. How strong she is

9. How much love she has in her

10. How she keeps going on in life no matter the trial that is set in front of her

11. The example she is to me

12. Her food

13. Her willingness to help in anyway she can

14. Her eagerness to learn in any new enviornment

15. How much she likes music

16. How much she enjoys going to church

17. How much she had turned to be like her mom

18. How she is willing to let me borrow that extra 5 dollars....every so often

19. How she always says "remember who you are"

20. How cute she is

21. How there is no one on the planet just like her.

22. How she loves movies

23. Loves walking outside.

24. is ALWAYS smiling (even if she is having a bad day)

25. How she can always make a horrible situation into something enjoyable

26. How she invites me to every party or get together

27. How everyday she sends me at least one or two texts asking me how i am

28. How funny she is when she is scared and running away from the smallest bug :)

29. How she encourages me to do better

30. Makes sure i am ok

31. Always tells me she loves me no matter the mistakes i make

32. Always is there to talk

33. Misses me when i am away

34. I such a strong person emotionally

35. How spiritual she is

36. How much she loves her brothers

37. How much she loves her sisters

38 How she can have a random conversation with a random stranger while in a line at the grocery store and by the end of it being friends with person.

39. How I have never heard a single person speak ill of her

40. How she has never spoken ill of anyone

41. How snuggly she is

42. How outspoken and no longer shy she is

43. How each day she wants to do more

44. How she looks far into the future to get prepared for what's to come

45. How she always has a cute idea for anything

46. How she can starting crying from laughing so hard.

47. How she will cry with me, because she feels what I am going through

48. How in tune with the spirit she is

49. How many times she says I love you in a day

50. For being the best mom for me, everyday of my life, she has showed me that even though tribulations come into your life, you can get through them. Move on. and become a better person, if you just trust in the Lord with all your heart. And that not everything is in your control and sometimes you just have to let go and let the Lord take the reigns and put your whole faith in him!

Thank Mom!! You're amazing!

I Love you SOOO MUCH!!!!

Halloween Night

Hal·low·een ---hal-uh-ween, -oh-een:
Noun... "the evening of October 31; the eve of All Saints' Day; Allhallows Eve: observed esp. by children in costumes who solicit treats, often by threatening minor pranks. "

This years Halloween was a blast to say the least. For instance, the first half of the day i was so set on being a sheet ghost. But most of friends didn't like the idea. So for the remainder of the day i was contemplating on what to be. The night before Jason's sister Heather had let me borrow a few various things that could be easily turned into a few costumes. But, it was literally 20 minutes before i was supposed to be at Blue's halloween party that i decided to be a doll.

Blue's Halloween bash/party, was a blast...even though the majority..well more than a fair amount of the majority were under the age of 16 (hahah) but i had fun and Jason (Chuck Norris) seemed to be having fun as well. As you can see Blue was Minnie Mouse or Ms. Mouse. Cody was a Knight...or prince charming...i'm not sure. And David (Blue's dad) was John McCain! Ha ha.


Throughout the night i realized that i really didn't look like a doll ....so i decided to change my costume to a desperate housewife. It fits!!! Doesn't it? Anywho, by the end of Blue's halloween party..and seeing as the majority of people that were there had curfews (HA!) the party ended just shy of 10:30. So me and Jason jumped into his car and headed back to Crestwood. (Some people in our ward were throwing a party)...it wasn't the best in the world. We must have missed the festives or something, because nothing was really happening when we got there so we left.

And thus ends another frightful Halloween's night. Full of fun, underage kids, and a Chuck Norris no one will ever forget.... hmmm.

Color Me Mine

Sometime last week ( I believe it was either Wednesday or Thursday ) Myself and Jason went down to "Color Me Mine" in the riverwoods. It is a place where you pick out a piece of pottery and you paint it and then they fire and gloss it for you! Wha - LA! Amazing piece of art.!!!

First up is Jason's:

As you can see it actually matches what he is wearing I think it really shows how great of a sense of style he has!!!

Next up....

Brianna's!!!

I love mine so much. As you can see though I messed up a bit in the middle and the picture really doesn't give the bowl that much justice. I think it is incredibly attractive in person!!!

So there you go, our little adventure into being an artist for an evening. Color Me Mine is so freaking awesome!!! Hecks yeah!

The death of the Katana....

So, my phone is dead....gone. In the sky of the phone heaven, with no back and a cracked screen. and though it will be missed greatly it has been replaced with with a newer, more awesome, and so freaking cool phone....so here is my new and improved, newer version of my old phone!!! THE KATANA LX!!! I love it!!!!


The picture doesn't give it much credit, but it is awesome!

Longest Day of my Life....almost

Well today is the day before fall break. I haven't had a day that has gone or felt like it was dragging on just a little too slowly. It is horrible. I was sitting in my 8 am class and looked at the clock at least every two minutes or so. It is driving me nuts. And then in math, even my doodling wasn't keeping my attention, i don't know if i can make it through choir, it is just too difficult!!!! why me? I may be acting like a bit of a drama queen, but seriously why couldn't they just give us the WHOLE weeek off, then the school board (or whoever is in charge of the break schedule) wouldnt be tormenting their "grown up" students with anticipation of the break which seems so far off they would rather not go to their remaining classes and just proceed to take their break a few "hours" early. But seeing as i only have enough gas to get to my house from the school, i don't think ti would be much of a success story to leave early...darn my conscience. Bleh!

Halloween-Bread Houses

Me and Jason went over to his sister's house (Heather and Brooks) and we made some awesome Halloween-Bread houses ( like gingerbread houses....only not )

This is mine and Jason's, i like it very much with our little graveyard and spiders...and jellybean walk way. Heather thought it turned out looking like a church more than a haunted house. What do you think?

And this is Heather's and Brooks. By far cuter. But not quite as haunted...except for all the really cute ghosts everywhere!

A good way to spend a friday night

Over the weekend I accompained Jason to a missionary get together up in Salt Lake City, which turned out to be good. Jason seemed to be having a blast talking with old companions and others from his mission. I stole some of the ice cream and people asked us at least 5 times if we were engaged or married. That was...exciting.......:)

But after the get together we decided after that we wanted to walk around temple square. When we arrived there though the gates to the temple grounds were closed so we started walking back towards the car and saw how pretty the conference center was at night. So we ran and grabbed my camera and snapped these photos. I think they are quite cool. We were playing around with his little crazy grab onto anything tripod! Woot at 11 pm. So much fun!!!

After my battery died (resulting in us having to move somewhere) we decided to go and sit on the grass just in front of temple. It was really pretty. We were discussing things about the temple and stories of when it was built and such. I fell asleep for a little bit and then we decided to head home. It was a little bit after 12:30...so as you can tell we didn't get in till about 1:30 - 2 ish. I really need to work on my bed time...

Seussical: The musical

I went to go see Seussical: the musical at the Scera theater last night. Directed by my friend> David Whitlock. It is all of Dr. Seuss' stories crammed into one colorful and delightful world of singing and thinks! oh the things you can think! The actors were chosen so well for their parts that you couldn't take your eyes off what was happening on stage, everyone was engaged into their characters and it could not have been more enjoyable.

I recommend anyone who lives with in a easily accesible distance of the scera theater should go and see this cute show. I believe it runs until the 14th of October. Or somewhere around there!

A pile of dirty dishes...

About 10 minutes ago I just finished cleaning probably the most disgusting and revolting pile of dishes i have ever seen in my life. So being on my period and all was more irritated with the dishes than normal. So what did i do? I jumped right in and started cleaning them...at midnight. The smells that came out of that sink i have only imagined could be associated with something dying..and by heck something had died in our sink. There was moldy milk, 10 day old ramen noodle (never want to smell that again) and various other trinkets i found as i dug my way through it all. And after it I made a spiritual or religious connection...humor me.

The pile of dirty dishes could symbolize us/me of when we slack off.. i.e. (not reading scriptures, skipping church to sleep in, not saying prayers..etc) and as time goes on the pile gets higher and higher and we get more and more discouraged to want to dig our way to Christ. But what i found out is that during the whole process of cleaning your dishes (your sins) they may stink, and the things you may have done may even repulse you they smell so bad. But when you get it all clean and smelling like oranges because you crammed a few into the drain, then you take a step back and tell yourself, that wasn't too hard, or difficult. Why didn't i do it before?

So sometimes when our dishes get to high, don't get too discouraged, because there is always a clean sink under there somewhere, you just have to go digging for it.

God be with you till we meet again...

So, as you all know my grandmother passed away last week. The viewing was on thursday. It was really nice. She looked absolutely gorgeous. With her in her temple clothes and her big smile it looked like she was going to sit up right in the casket. The night was two hours where friends, family, or acquaintances could come and talk to the family and say their last goodbyes. It was a nice experience. Everyone was laughing and joking about things that grandma had done, times they remembered with her and how much they loved her.

On Friday it was the funeral. Before it was to start at 11. The siblings decided to have a small viewing before the closing of the casket, for people who could not make it the night before. Promptly at 11 they closed the doors to the relief society room and had people that worked for the mortuary stand outside to make sure no one came during the blessing of the casket. Darcy, my uncle, said the prayer. It was beautiful. Up until then i was doing a pretty good job at keeping my emotion at bay. Then when Darcy said amen, and they let the family say their last goodbye before they closed it. As i passed grandma i touched her hand one last time... walked over to Ashleigh and waited and watched as the men put the veil over her. I snapped. Tears just started flowing, ones i had kept in since th viewing... i couldn't stop to say the least. Luckily Asheigh had some tissues on hand. We then followed the casket down to the chapel. The family sat in the first 4 rows with everyone else to the side.
The funeral was wonderful. Soni, my aunt, was first with a life sketch. She was crying...and my uncle behind me was crying ...so i continued to cry. My grandma was quite the charmer, and tom boy. I found out she would shoot guns with my grandpa and was just as good as the best. My grandma had 5 brothers all of which grandpa had to go through before winning grandma's heart.
Next was Ashleigh doing a tribute to grandma, saying things that remembered, and loved and things that grandma had done that had helped her in her life and such.

Me and James then read off Grandma Joy's joy. Basically the things the grandchildren loved about grandma:

Grandma’s Greatest Joys!

BRIANNA: I loved whenever you were telling her about your day, and even though half the time she couldn't hear you, she would smile and nod her head as if she could.

JAMES: She always smiled when I came over, and all the jokes she would make even though sometimes they would not make sense, but I would still laugh to make her happy.

KIRI: I remember whenever we would visit Grandma she would always give us Tootsie Pop suckers, which she kept in her top cupboard, and we would always get a cup of water to dip our suckers in.

SHELBY: Well, there is too much to say, but here are a couple...whenever our family would be in need she would always be there for us and willing to do anything to help out and make things better. Whenever I was around her there would always be a sense of love and never contention. She was sooooo loveable to everyone, especially her family. One time when we went over to visit her a couple of weeks ago, we were laughing and she said something about us laughing. We thought we were bugging her with our loud laughing, so we said to her, "Is our laughing bugging you?" She just smiled the biggest smile in the world. That made my day. To make a long story short, she was the best Grandma in the world.

ANDREW: Grandma was always a friend and a loving person. She always cared for everyone and everything. Also, her sense of humor was the best.

GRACIE: I loved her sense of humor. Whenever I would come over she'd say, "Hi Gracie-gray!" Once, a couple of weeks ago, my dad said to her, "What ya doin'?" and she said, "Trying to get better." Then my dad said, "Is it working?" and she said, "No." That made me laugh so much!

EMMA: I love when we would go to Grandma's house and she would always give us candy.

WILLIAM: I loved when Grandma would give me Happy Meal toys.Darcy’s Kids

KADEN: I like the stories Grandma would make up and tell to us and I remember how funny she was. Before I would leave the house, I always tried to give her a hug and tell her “Bye, Grandma - love you.”

ZACH: I remember she’d always offer us “Kids Meal” toys when we’d visit her. And, when she was living with us and she had to go somewhere, I’d help my parents by carrying the walker down the stairs. I loved her nickname for me – “Zackie”.

ERIKA: When Grandma would go to bed at our house, I would carry her Sunny D and crackers to her room and turn on her lamp for her. And I love her and I miss her already! Shaun’s Kids

ASHLEY: I always felt very welcomed in Grandma’s home and my favorite memory of her was sitting down and watching The Brave Little Toaster every time I went to visit.BO: I remember her sense of humor. I always looked forward to her comeback to what my dad had said.

SAVANNAH: I’ve always liked her hugs. I can’t wait to see her in heaven cuz now she’s a pretty fairy. (Meaning angel) Soni’s Kids

BRAXTON: I remember Grandma was famous for remembering your birthday. She would call first thing in the morning of your special day and sing the whole birthday song to you. Sometimes it was in tune. I will miss that about Grandma.



SHANIYA: She was always happy, and had a welcoming smile on her face. I never saw her feeling down.



SHANDI: I always remember going to Grandma’s house and eating key lime pie or orange cream yogurt. She had the best yogurt! And, she wouldn’t let us leave without giving us a piece of watermelon bubble gum and a Tootsie Pop for the drive home.

Next up Myself, Shelby, and Ashleigh sang "Be still my soul" The whole you could feel that maybe grandma was listening, i had strength to sing and didn't break down crying. It was wonderful

My mom and the Eddie both gave tributes after which were both beautiful and described their mother to a T.

We then all headed over the grave site, there the grandchildren got to take a few roses off the top of the (pink) casket. Mine our drying in my closet at home at the moment. We took pictures with her brothers ( the three that were alive, were all there) and then headed back to the church building for a lunch in.

Grandma Joy was a wondeful woman, who the opitomy of charity, love, and devotion to family. The funeral was beautiful and was a wonderful thing for the family. Hopefully Eddie won't go to timeout FOREVER when he dies and sees grandma...hahah just kidding. :)

Grandma LaJoy Dove Simmons

December 26, 1934 - September 8, 2008

Grandma Joy...the one who invented the silent laugh

So as most of you know my Grandma Joy is within her last days on this earth. Which for some reason seems so impossible to me. I always told her since I was little that she was going to live till 116! Apparently I was off by a couple years...

I'm not going to say that this is a hard thing that myself and my whole family is going through but at the same time i'm depressingly sad that she will passing soon. I will probably cry buckets and buckets of tears when she leaves but after I have had my cry I will ok. Ok, in a sense that I i know I will be seeing her again. Not for awhile, but i will see her again. And while our family wants her to stay so badly, it is keeping her from others that love her just as much. The other day when Ashleigh, Shelby, and myself went to go visit grandma we saw something peculiar. The room that we were in was lit very dimmly so that she could get to sleep easy. And every so often her eyes would shoot open and she would be staring diagnol to the ceiling. And when we went to look at her eyes her pupils were completely undialated. As if there was a huge amount of light in the room (which the wasn't)... so all three of us made an assumption that maybe she was seeing someone who was encompased in light.

Another thing that interesting was one time we asked her if grandpa Jim was here, (and at this time she could only respond with a little nod or shake of the head) and she almost instantly nodded her head. It was quite eye opening. So grandpa had come to see her, i'm sure many others have to. There is this book that the hospis nurse gave the family to help through the dying process and at one point of the book it said that the person dying could and most likely had one foot on each side. One in the living world, and one in the spiritual.

So even though our family will miss her dearly her other loved ones are waiting for her on the other side. She is just going on a long vacation. And we just have to get tickets in a couple decades.

Grandma Joy is someone who always would be laughing no matter if she heard your joke or not. Who would smile and act like she was listening when her hearing aids just weren't working that day. Who was the start of the Simmons "silent" laugh. Who always had a piece of gum or lollipop just for you. Who would always be willing to help in anyway she could. Who would tell you if you were doing something she didn't approve of, but love you still the same. Who made the most fantastic food, especially that chip dip! Who would always try to make it to every grandchilds event depending on how much energy she had that day. Who would always wait up at the airport terminal with my mom itching to see one of coming home. Grandma Joy is the epidimy of Joy. That's why her name fits so well. I will love her, and deeply treasure every moment I got to spend with her.

You will always be in my heart grandma.
Love you

First post on this new Blog!

Ok, so here we go again. I'm hopefully going to stay more dedicated to writing on here, so that you can follow my life...that is if you want to. Which i hope you do. Because i'm not that boring anyway. Haha. So this is the first entry in this new world of blog. Yay! Be happy for me. Or not. That's ok too. So basically let me bring you up to date with somethings that are going on in my life.



First off, I moved into my new apartment just a few short week or weeks ago. It is 2 levels down from where i previously lived. So far my new roommates are fantastic. One of which is Laurie Hite. Basically my life long friend. 15 years this last July. Crazy huh. And then a girl from Virgina named Katie. Who fits right in with our personalities. So it's pretty fun. Except for the 330 dollar a month rent. But i'm not complaining when i get my own room and sink! Booya!



Second, I started my sophomore in college at UVU in Orem, UT. I don't know what i am studying so I am basically working on generals right now. My schedule basically looks like this:

Monday,Wednesday, Friday
- Humanities 8
- Math 1000 9
- BREAK 10
- Choir 11
- Biology 12

Tuesday, Thursday
- Math 1000 9
- Institute 10
- Choir 11
- BREAK 12
- History 1

So that is my schedule and i'm enjoying it alot so far. I am surprised at how much i am enjoying humanities. Anywho.

Right now i don't have a job, but i'm actually going to start working for my dad, helping sell antiques on line for his buisness. so that should be fun.