Merry Christmas!

What a Christmas it has been so far!  It's been very fun to share it with future sibling-in-laws.  Lindsay already knows quite a bit how crazy we are, but I think Cameron might have been a bit surprised.  Or maybe not. He is engaged to Lisa, after all.  for Christmas Eve, we had our Bethlehem dinner, watched the family Chrismas movies (still as hilarious as ever! I can't believe I agreed to my part!), and got our Chrismas Eve matching pajama shirts, courtesy of Lisa!

They were all greatly appreciated and enjoyed.  The kids also watched Muppet Christmas Carol while falling asleep.

On Christmas, we had to wait for Andrew and Lindsay to get done with Christmas at the Bagley's and come over to our house.  It means that we got to sleep in.  Alyna had the honor and adventure of breaking through the paper….

only to find that the door had been partly closed.

Everyone had fun opening presents and watching others open presents.  I’m very much excited about my new scriptures!  And Andrew got me a big box of Goldfish crackers I’m pretty happy about.  Mindy even joined us via Skype! 

And, to finish off the holiday cheeriness, I’ll post the great videos of Alyna and Lisa “boxing.”  Enjoy!

Finals are conquered!

It's true.  I actually defeated all of my finals in one day - Monday.  All three - first French, then Physical Science, and then Living with Plants (which is my Plant Biology class, for those of you who don't know.)  I did progressively better on each test. This is good, except the fact that French was my first test.  I did a terrible job of trying to write my final essays for my Anthropology class, which resulted in my leaving time on Tuesday to be pushed back from noon, to three, to five, until I finally left at about 6:30, after getting my tire fixed at Big-O.  I owe my wonderful roommates my life, because they did my cleaning for me this month.  I will do the whole apartment next month as penitence!  Now I am home for the holidays!  Actually, I'm still at Grandma and Grandpa Briscoe's, because it'd just be too weird sleeping at the frat house.  

  Oh dear. My last two posts have been so boring.  But my internet is being silly and won't upload pictures.  Excitment will be posted later!

Final Crunch

With finals looming over me, kind of like large, mythical but scary monsters, I have come to a decision.  I will probably not update my blog again until I have vanquished these beasts.  Luckily, I have only three, and only one which I find particularly terrifying.  My goal is to be done by Tuesday afternoon.  Since the dreaded French dragon is scheduled for Monday morning, and the not-so-terrible other tests are in the testing center, I think this is actually a feasible plan.  After I finish testing, I plan to hibernate in my room for several days, reading, watching movies, and sleeping.  It will be beautiful.  

Relative worth of wasting time

Before I get to talk about my weekend of wasted time, I must talk about Thursday.  Thursday was my day of dancing almost nonstop.  I went to French, physical science lab, and then to Social Dance.  We tested the waltz on thursday, after having spent one full day and couple of partial days on it.  I ended dancing with both Jason, and testing with Tim.  Apparently I'm a good dancer!  That was fun.  After class, our instructor Travis gave polka lessons to four couples who were going to be in the competition THAT night!  It took about an hour, and I discovered that the polka is even more fun than I thought!  And an excellent workout, too.  From polka lessons, I ran and took a test at the testing center, and then went to work. I was so tired and stressed out, and a little bit hyper from dancing polka, so I left early.  I watched Mindy make my cookies (Thanks so much Mindy! You're the Best!), and got ready for the Dance Lab and polka competition.  I couldn't find a good polka costume, so I ended up stuffing like, four or five possible costumes into my bag.  Dan had been planning to borrow some lederhosen from a friend, but somehow I couldn't find a European folk-type costume.  Strange.  I ended up wearing my blue polka-dot dress with the red belt. It kind of worked.  Surprisingly, Dan and I made it to the semifinals in the competition.  Considering that we'd learned it that day, and didn't do any of the moves but the basic with any accuracy, I was pretty surprised.  It was fun!  And I saw cousin Mailee, a first since i've moved down here!

On Friday, I came home from school and studying, and Mindy and Kayla were both gone for the weekend.  Though I'd had the best intentions of spending much time doing homework and studying all Friday night and Saturday morning, that's not what happened.  At all.  I watched 'Guys and Dolls' for the first time ever, even though I've had it for at least a couple of months (I don't know how that happened).  I really like it!  Then I had to watch 'Gigi' to see if it was as weird as I had remembered.  It was.  Then I watched my favorite parts from 'State Fair,' all of 'Catch Me If You Can,' and all of 'The Inheritance.'  I had a sleep over with myself in the living room, and I didn't get to sleep until like, 4am.  I woke up around 10am-ish, and promptly put 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' in the DVD player.  At least during this movie I did all the dishes, straightened our apartment, and made a Happy Birthday poster for Kayla.  But then I watched 'Cat Ballou.'  My friend Jerin from next door came to talk to me, so she stayed and watched some of it.  I did get out of the apartment for a little while to go to an Enrichment activity, singing songs at a retirement community.  I talked about musicals pretty much the whole time with Jerin, my vt companion, Clarice, and another girl in our ward, Jamie.  Yay for musicals!  After the activity, Clarice and Jerin came over and we watched 'West Side Story.'   That night (which happened like, half an hour after finishing West side Story), Brad came over and we watched 'Scarlet Pimpernel.'  Brad is Mindy's friend from a bunch of classes, who, as I learned last week, is also in my Book of Mormon class.  who knew?!  Oh yeah - Mindy came home somewhere in the middle of West Side Story, and Brady came over in the middle of Scarlet Pimpernel.  I am an extremely talkative movie watcher. it was fun, for me at least. i don't know about poor Brady, who was watching it for the first time.   So, even though not every movie I watched this weekend was a musical, I was definitely on a musical high!  Such a good place to be!

Time is a limiting resource

I've really been meaning to update my blog, since I haven't done that in about a week, but there never seems to be enough time.  Especially now, with the last two weeks of school and finals coming up, I really shouldn't be on the internet at all right now.  I should be doing homework and studying.  But for the sake of those who want to know what's going on in my life, I am procrastinating what really should be done.  

  

 Thanksgiving break was AWESOME!  It was so much fun seeing my long lost family (or at least my long distance family).  I don't know that I really caught up on much sleep or homework, but then realistically, I never expected to.  As for the rest of the trip that i have not yet written about, I can only remember two things worth talking about.  On friday night, Alyna and I taught Mom and Dad how to play Settlers of Catan while watching Scarlet Pimpernel.

 Alyna had a ridiculously good luck streak.  

On Saturday we went to this sweet music store (in some city I don't know the name of).  Of course, Alyna and I had much fun with the camera.

I flew home on Sunday, Nov 30.  I flew from Dusseldorf to Paris.  What an insane airport Charles De-Gaulle Paris airport is!  I had no idea what was going on and where to go, even though I could read the signs.  But everything worked out and I found my way around eventually.  The Paris-Salt Lake flight was 11h25m long!  Forever!  I watched Journey to the Center of the Earth, Mamma Mia!, an office episode, studied for my class, read some Book of Mormon, slept for a couple of hours, and I have no idea what else.  I really liked Mamma Mia! and i've had ABBA songs stuck in my head ever since.  

  

Now I have to try to make use of the limited time that I have and get some homework done. Yikes.

Hanging in Elst

For the last three days or so, I've just been hanging out with my family, mostly in Elst, although Mom and I did take a trip to Westervoort to run some errands on Tuesday. I loved driving though the Dutch countryside. It's so pretty here! Even if the trees have no leaves, and there's a thin skiff of snow - it's still pretty. For Thanksgiving, Mom invited many neighbors and church friends. The house was pretty packed. It was fun, except I didn't really know anyone, and that was just kind of awkward. The food was delicious, but it didn't quite feel like Thanksgiving because it was missing the whole big "Briscoe" get together. No bizarre dinner conversations this year. Instead, I think I explained at least three times to different people that I was going to college at BYU, not living at home, and majoring in Landscaping. It was fun to see some of the different foods that people eat here. I had to laugh when I got the whipped cream out of the fridge - it was in this huge metal canister and weighed two pounds or something.
My favorite food to eat was the stuffing. I haven't had stuffing in so long!!! And even if the sausage wasn't spicey, it was still excellent stuffing and made me happy to eat it. The rest of the food was pretty good, too.

Wandering around Nijmegen...or something like that

Today was quite entertaining, if not very adventurous. Mom, Alyna, and I took a bus to Nijmegen (sp?) around 11 am. Mom transferred buses and went to a doctors appointment, but Alyna and I got to go explore/wander around the city. I'd say our experience was less historically cultural than mother's previous visit, but permayhaps more currently cultural, and most likely much more entertaining. It was chilly and snowy in the morning, but cleared up later in the day. We started by walking through Kronenburger Park and taking many pictures. After growing bored of this activity (which took a while), we went into the shopping center area. We quickly put the city map into Alyna's purse and just wandered withersoever we felt like. Of all amazingly good fortune, it was Market Day! So we wandered around the shops and stalls for someting like 3 or 4 hours while waiting for Madre. My favorites were: my 5euro watch, and a fresh stroppe wafels (so much better warm and fresh than packaged!). Then Alyna and i made our way back to the park to meet mother. We were sidetracked by the deer and fat little goats in a pen. We fed the goats many leaves from the sidewalk, which entertained us for a ridiculously long time. We even named some of them. In this picture we can see Grandfather, Daphne, Rambo, and Great Uncle Aldo. Can you guess which one is Great Uncle Aldo? He's one of our favorites. Being bored is SO much more fun with a camera!

We don't have a daughter that's not Lisa!

First of all, I pity those of you who have not seen Oscar. That being said, this is my new blog. It's so people know what's happening in mine life. Plus, I felt compelled to create a blog, because everyone else in my family seems to have one now - even Mom! She even updates it sometimes. More than Andrew, at least. Lisa, your turn!
At this moment in time, being 2:38am, I am in Holland, and there is snow on the ground outside. So far it's been a fun trip, which I will write more exhaustively about at a later time. Like, tomorrow or something.