Return to the Homeland

Guys... this blog is sad. I don't even remember the last time I updated it. Why do you people put up with this? Or do you even put up with this? Perhaps I'm just writing out there to no one. Either way, a bunch of stuff has gone down since I last wrote so let me just give you the low down of what happened in Idaho, and such.

Thursday the 17th, a week before Thanksgiving, Autumn held an awesome pre-Thanksgiving feast that a bunch of people and I went to. We ate your traditional food, played Apples to Apples, and afterwards Autumn, Aaron, Abby, and I had a study party where they all wrote American Heritage papers and I worked on Astronomy.

Friday the 18th of November Autumn and I took the bus to her hometown in Idaho to stay there for Thanksgiving break. I met her family and hung out with her siblings for a while and that evening we got together with some of her friends at Cold Stone and eventually went to one of her friend's house where we played Just Dance and watched Breakfast of Tiffany's. That movie was interesting, a little slow at the start but I really liked it at the end.

Saturday I spent the majority of the day doing my bio homework and that evening Autumn and I went on a double date with Autumn's cousin and his friend. We went out to eat and then went bowling at ISU. Although I'll admit at first I was a little hesitant since Autumn's cousin is a few years older than I am it was a lot of fun. Later that evening Autumn and I drove up into the mountains where it was clear so that I could do an astronomy project.

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day. We went to the singles ward and then just kind of chilled out for the rest of the day. The singles ward there did church backwards (Relief Society, Sunday School, Sacrament) and it was interesting to go to Sacrament last. That evening we took the dog Roxie on a walk in one of the nearby parks and she kept trying to go faster than we would let her. The result made it look like she was being forced to drag whoever was holding her leash along behind her and so we decided that in her mind, Roxie was a Jewish slave forced to build the pyramids and playing in her mind on a loop was the slave song from The Prince of Egypt.

Monday I went with Autumn and her friend and we hike up a mountain. I was told that there was going to be mounds of snow so I dressed like we were going to be climbing the mountain in the fellowship that they try to go up before going into the mine, but instead we ended up climbing something like the mountains that border mordor. It was incredibly muddy and tiring but fun. That evening, I hung out with Autumn's sibling since she was going on a date and then later she, her brother and I went to go see Contagion at the dollar theater.

Tuesday I don't think we did much during the day, but that evening we had a bon fire with a few of the kids from the area. That night my phone, which had been breaking for a while, finally gave up the ghost and snapped in half.

Wednesday afternoon we picked up Autumn's brother's girlfriend and we all headed down to the farm house where Autumn's aunt and uncle live. This particular aunt and uncle also happened to be the parents of the cousin that I had gone out with on Saturday. We and all of the other relations and friends that were there just spent the rest of the day hanging out. We also played a never ending game of monopoly, or at least I assume that it would have been, had we not given up and called it a draw with the remaining players after more than four hours.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and so after we watched the Macy's day parade we headed over to Autumn's grandma's house. We ate there, conversed with the relations and a few of us walked around the local park or played football. Later in the afternoon we went back to her aunt and uncle's house and rode their horse and watched some movies. It kick off the Christmas season we watched the "new" Miracle on 34th Street. I hadn't seen it before and it was pretty good but I like the old black and white one better. We also watched Zookeeper, which I didn't think was that great and The Fifth Quarter, which was quite possibly the worst movie that I've seen all year. I'm pretty sure it was worse than the metaphorical movie baby that would be created as the spawn of the Twilight series and the Eragon. Words can not describe the horrors of this film. It wasn't even fun to make fun of. We also watched Green lantern. I ended up falling asleep but I had seen it before.

Friday afternoon we headed back to Autumn's house and that evening we went to go see The Forgotten Carols. I hadn't seen it before and it was pretty good but I actually liked the show they did after the show better.

Saturday afternoon Autumn's friend came over, we made homemade pizza and watched Abduction at the dollar theater.

Sunday afternoon we left Idaho, hitching a ride with Autumn's cousins who live in Orem, and got home around 8:00. I went to Aaron's apartment and stole some of his food since I didn't have any and did some homework.

Monday I made rice balls with Aaron, something that we had been trying to do since pretty much the beginning of the semester and did homework.

Tuesday Autumn's friend known as "the guy who needed more friends", came up from Salt Lake and he and Autumn, Seth, and Aaron partied for a while. After I got out of class I joined them. We attempted to go coning, but it didn't really work so we watched I am Legend and then wandered around Wal-Mart for a while.

Wednesday was a Murphy's law type of day. I had to stay on campus until late studying and going to a bio review and such and just a bunch of little things went wrong. I also went to the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu  fight club to write up and out of class experience and spent the rest of the night studying bio.

Thursday I took an Astronomy and Biology test and really that's about it.

Friday was my last day of Jiu Jitsu. That night I went to an event at the local ice arena that BYUSA was putting on. It was pretty cool. They had a dance, service project, broom hockey, human curling, ice skating, crepes, and Cosmo the Cougar was running around dressed up like santa.

Saturday through Wed are mainly an indistinguishable blur of staying up late and spending all day studying for my finals, doing my final genealogy project, writing an American Heritage paper. I do remember though that on Tuesday my roommate made cinnamon rolls and had a dance party at our apartment at 3:00 in the morning and Wednesday I went to Denny's and watched a movie that was was really similar to Raising Arizona but instead of trying to steal a baby they were trying to get money so that the guy's niece could go to college.

Thursday was the last day of class and Autumn, Aaron and I celebrated by watching The Office and Coroline.

Friday was a reading day and I'm pretty sure I just studied Astronomy all day. Oh, I also traded Christmas presents with Autumn and cooked sausage and watched Lost with Aaron.

Saturday was another reading day and I spent pretty much all of it studying. That evening though I watched the debates, got pizza, and watched the end of Lost with Aaron. Autumn and Abby also decided that we needed to go krispy Cream "dumpster diving". What you do is go to the store at like 3:00 in the morning and get the doughnuts that they didn't sell during the day that they would have thrown out. We attempted to go to that but Abby's car wouldn't start so we just went home.

Sunday I studied all day and went to ward prayer twice, once with Autumn and once to my own. Over the course of finals week I would study a lot with Autumn/Abby/Aaron since my roommate liked to have "Study" parties.

Monday I took my astronomy final and studied for Book of Mormon and American Heritage. That pretty much consumed my entire day.

Tuesday I took my Book of Mormon and American Heritage finals and studied for my Genealogy final and that pretty much consumed my entire day. I did however go to Macey's at 3:00 in the morning though with Karen and Alexis to take a break from studying.

Wednesday I took my genealogy final and studied for my bio final.

Thursday I took my bio final and finally finished all of my finals! Autumn came over and we watched Guy on a Buffalo and some of the GOP debates. In victory over our finals, Autumn, Aaron, Seth, Ryne, a bunch of Seth and Aaron's friends from home, and I had breakfast for dinner and then all of us but Autumn went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie at midnight. That movie was amazing! I loved everything about it, the story, the cinematography, the music, it was all beyond fantastic! I would recommend anyone with eyes and ears see it as soon as possible. After the movie I went back to Aaron's apartment where we did the dishes and then because we weren't really tired and because you have to stay up all night at least once a semester, went to Macey's. We wandered around there for a while before going to McDonalds where we encountered a very very flatulent old man, who was in no was embarrassed of his predicament. It was... an odd experience.. After this.. wonderful experience we went to the cannon center to get breakfast since they would be serving it soon. We had breakfast and then went home and to bed. I fell asleep some time around 8:00 in the morning.

Friday for our last day Autumn, Aaron, Hannah and I went to Salt Lake to look at the lights at Temple Square. The four of us left around 4:00. We took a bus to Sandy and then a train to Salt Lake. We got there around 6:00 and had dinner before wandering around Temple Square and Abby joined us there around 9:00. We got back to Provo close to 11:00 but since Abby hadn't eaten yet we went to pizza hut where she got a pizza and then headed back to my apartment where we watched this really odd yet somewhat entertain artsy move called Tree of Life. After the movie, Autumn went home to bed and Abby, Aaron and I took the movie back and then took Aaron to his apartment and said goodbye, since we won't get a chance to see him again for at least two years.  It's kind of funny, but as we were saying goodbye and I was thinking about him and all of the other Fallon kids that I met this semester and over the summer that I very realistically may not ever see again, I was reminded of one of the final scenes in The Wizard of Oz, (probably because I had to see and hear it some thousand or so number of times last year) where Dorthy, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man are saying goodbye. The one that goes:
"I know it isn't right Lion, but I'm going to miss the way you used to holler when you got scared"
"I think when you're gone Dorthy, I'll be doing a little more hollering"
"Goodbye Scarecrow, I think I'll miss you most of all"
"Aww Dorthy, having a brain doesn't make parting any easier"
"Goodbye Tin Man, oh don't cry now, you'll rust yourself"
"Now I know the wizard gave me a heart Dorthy, because it's breaking."

...I'm going to miss those kids.

Anyway, my dorky reference aside, Saturday morning I took the shuttle to the airport. I got to Seattle around 12:00 and just spent the rest of the day hanging out with my family.

Sunday I went to church and saw Riley and Halden, and some other people in my ward and Halden became my back up spouse. So now when we're old and my spouse has died and his spouse has died, we're going to marry each other and go feed ducks bread by the pond.

Monday I got some Christmas stuff done and just hung out some more and tomorrow, or today if you want to get really technical, is the annual Christmas break movie marathon, so that should be beyond awesome. The theme this year is super heroes.