9. Finals

Ohhhh finals.... JOY! I am not going to lie I am very very nervous for finals. It is the first semester of finals in college and I have a feeling they are going to be very difficult. Especially with how hard the tests have been here at BYU. Back in High School, tests were no problem for me! I would study somewhat and do very well. Although here at BYU, I have studied for over 10 hours for tests and still don' t do very well. I am scared to even imagine how hard the finals are going to be for my big classes. Oh well, I guess I will study as hard as I can and see how it goes. That is all I can really do. I just don't like the fact how college makes me feel like I am not smart sometimes. College equals the hardest thing I have done mentally.

8. Christmas Season

It's the most wonderful time of the year! It is so true! I love the christmas season, it is seriously the best and happiest season ever. I know that is cliche to say because everyone says that about the Christmas season but honestly it is!!! Everything about it is so happy, the music, the movies, the christmas light, the christmas decorations, SANTA, gingerbread houses, christmas caroling... the list goes on! During Christmas, I can never be in a bad mood during this season. Everyone is in the mood for giving, all the children seeing Santa Clause, cooking and FAMILY TIME! Especially this year I think that I will appreciate the Christmas season more, especially being away from home. It will be nice to spend time with all of my family and being able to have a wonderful christmas at home! One of my other favorite things is walking around the mall, during christmas time, the mall by my house always goes all out during Christmas season. Everything is decorated, christmas music is playing in every store, the Christmas sales are going on. I don't know what it is about the mall but it is my favorite place to go during the holidays. My family also has a tradition that the week before Christmas, we go drive around town and look at all the Christmas lights. There are so many traditions that my family has for the Christmas holiday and it is always so much fun how long the Christmas season last. I love it so much and I am so happy it is that time of year!!!

7. Personal Narrative- Breaking my leg

Vail, Colorado, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Also, one of my favorite places to travel. I always get so excited to go to there with my dad’s side of my family. My dad is one out of seven children of Grandma and Grandpa Clawson and they have over 40 grand children. With this big of family, we obviously have such a fun time together no matter what type of vacation it is.

Almost everything about Vail is amazing. I love waking up to the smell of camp fire or just beautiful mountain freshness. I also love waking up to either a new fresh coat of snow on the ground or the birds chirping in the nice cool summer daylight. Snowboarding at the Vail Ski resort has the prettiest snow and such fresh powder that it feels like heaven on Earth.

Our family has had so many fond memories at Vail and there are still more to come. There was incident back when I was six years old that was such a scary thing for my family and I that we haven’t forgotten it but now look back on it and just remember it as a crazy event that happened to me when I was a young child.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in summer. Our family just got back from church (A branch up in Vail). It was nice and warm which meant bike time. My cousins and I loved to ride our bikes whenever we got the chance and we weren’t busy with family events. My cousins and I always loved riding our bikes and that’s usually all we did.

“I call yours Tayler!” I yelled. I always wanted to be like my older cousin Tayler. We would always trade each other’s bikes and I always wanted Tayler’s bike. We usually ride our bikes down a “really steep” hill (we thought it was really steep at the time), and then across a bridge and we would do that over and over again until someone told us to stop.

My dad was dating this girl named Melissa at the time and I really liked her. She seemed like such a cool girl. Melissa came out for a little bit to watch all the cousins ride bikes. I really wanted to impress her.

“Melissa! Watch how fast I can go down this hill.” I said excitingly.

“Ok! Just be careful!” She yelled, I was already half way down the hill. I could feel the wind in my hair I knew I was going SUPER fast. I looked back just to make sure Melissa could see my awesome speed that I was catching. She was. Right after I looked at her… BOOM! My front tire hit the pole of the bridge that we cross. All I could see was my self flip over and myself getting closer and closer to these huge boulders by the Colorado River. All I heard was bang and then a crack, and then blackness. The blackness finally went away and I saw my leg just laying there, limp as can be. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, all I did cry, I couldn’t breath because of the pain. Melissa already went to go get my dad, and my cousins ran away, they were scared and didn’t know what to do.

A softball team was walking by and they saw me in pain and balling my eyes out. The carefully brought me up from the river, my father was already there, as well as the ambulance. Every minute that passed got more and more painful. All I heard was “hospital,” “broken,” and “give her oxygen.”

“Am I going to die daddy?” That’s all I could ask because I had no idea what was going on.

“Oh honey you aren’t going to die I promise, I’m right here.” My dad said as he was crying.

The put an oxygen mask on my face and all I started to fall asleep, I woke up and I was in an ambulance. I kept wanting to go back to sleep to get myself away from the pain but they wouldn’t let me. All I could see was my leg cushioned with a huge temporary cast. And all I felt was piercing pains and I would start balling every time that happened.

“ You are such a strong little girl!” the paramedic kept saying. “We are going to need to take her into surgery once we get to the hospital in Denver.” She whispered to my dad. I was so scared. When I got to the hospital, they put me right into the operation room. They gave me some medicine and then I started to just talk to the doctor. The next thing I knew I had 4 metal rods sticking out of my femur. It felt so weird, especially that I couldn’t walk or bend my left leg.

“The Surgery went great!” The doctor was telling my parents. “She broke the hardest bone to break in her body, the Femur. She is very lucky she didn’t hurt her head and she was wearing a helmet, this could have turned out a lot worst!” My mom just prayed right then and there to thank Heavenly father that everything is ok.

This was probably the scariest thing I have ever had to go through for my family and I. It made me realize how lucky I was to not have any other complications and also how I was being watched over. It also made me realize what handicap children have to go through with being in a wheel chair. It made me have a different perspective in life.

6. BYU going to Cali!

This week the BYU swim team went to California for a swim meet (Nike Cup). It turned out to be a really fun. It also made me realize how much people notice our standards everywhere we go. At the beginning of the year everyone kept telling us athletes that we represent BYU wherever we go, we therefore represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. When we came to the meet, people could tell that we had different beliefs unlike other churches and colleges. We could all just tell by the atmosphere that people thought of us differently. Swimmers tend to have pretty bad language especially at intense meets like this. Many of the swimmers would look at us when we would just be nice to people and say good job to our competitors. At the end of the meet we had so many coaches come up to us and tell us how much they appreciate our humbleness and how we were good sports and how well we represented our university. I just thought it was really cool how as BYU we send out such a good message to everyone we come in contact with. I also think it was sweet how other people noticed our good example and how we care about our beliefs and how we know that we need to respect our University.

5. Facebook Addiction

Everyone has a facebook, I honestly haven't met one person that doesn't have a facebook. I am not going to lie, I love facebook. But I think it is getting to the point where I am kind of becoming addicted.... I don't know if that is the right word to call it but I know that I am for sure on it way too much. Every single time I am on my computer I need to have facebook up. Sometimes while I am doing my homework, I get distracted and start facebooking and get caught up in the "facebook world" and then I finally realize that I wasted an hour or more on facebook when I should actually be doing my homework. I really need to figure out how to stop looking at facebook so much. Especially with finals coming up and important papers to do. I honestly don't even know why it is so addicting but it just is. I don't think I am the only one that is in this situation.... or at least I hope not. I was just thinking about that today while I was doing some homework and realized that I really need to get better about not checking my facebook all of the time.

4. Going Home

I didn't realize how much I miss home until about a month into college. I realized that I need my parents more than I thought and how much I miss my family and my friends, home cooked meals, my car, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love college! It is so much fun and I love living on my own. I am just really looking forward to going home for a couple days just to be back with my family and in my own bed. You really don't realize what you are missing until you have been away from it for a while. I am also very excited to see my coach and my swim team. My swim team was like my family. I saw them more than my family on hard training weeks. It will be really fun to go back to the old times. Hopefully college hasn't changed me too much! :) I love being at BYU, just sometimes, the dorm rooms and the Cannon Center food doesn't feel as homey as I would like. I also realized how much a mother does for you. With me being sick in the past couple weeks, I realized how my mom took such good care of me when I was sick. Now, at college, I actually have to get the medicine for myself, and figure out ways to make me feel better. I really missed my mom just comforting me and also just knowing exactly what to to with every sickness. I guess this just comes with the price of growing up.