Week number four

This week I went on a Murder Mystery date!! I have ALWAYS wanted to do this so I was so ecstatic when I found out I could go! (I had to leave my cooking lab a bit early to make it there on time...opps). Let me first explain the game. First, we all got assigned characters prior to the date. I was a British secretary, my date was a retired general that just got off a safari, My sister, Cami, and her date were Russian ambassadors. The other couples were a Chinese man and his daughter, geishas, and other funny characters. We all came totally decked out in our costumes. We also had to speak in our characters accent. Thankfully I got a British character because I would not have been able to do Russian or Chinese accent. haha. We sat around the dinner table and all got a little booklet that explained who we were and our secrets. For example, my name was Miss D. Meaner (funny, clever name right?) and I was the secretary of Ivan titcher, but I was also secretly in the British Secret Service but nobody knew it. The game was based on the murder of Mr. Big Job, the bodyguard of the Japanese embarrassed. We all went around and said our lines that we would read from our booklet. What we would read out loud to the others and explain where we were at certain times of the night of the murder. Secrets would unfold and people would figure things out by asking questions and putting together information that each person would share throughout the dinner. HOLD IT…. let me first explain how AMAZING the dinner was! (Shout out to Kristi McArthur for providing the food!) We had a 5-course Chinese meal that was incredibly delicious! Well the mystery unfolded and guess who was the murderer…. Yup, ME! Haha. The funny thing is the murderer doesn’t know they are the murderer until the end either so when I heard the clues I wanted to guess myself. My character was suspicious. The game was super fun and we all had a fun time acting out our characters and eating the fabulous food! We ended the night playing some Dance Central! Haha, SO FUNNY! Man, I was cracking up. Mostly at myself… I’m so uncoordinated it’s embarrassing.If anyone has never gone on a mystery murder date I would highly suggest you buy the game and play it. So worth it.

Here is the description on the internet so that it will make more sense:

The Time: January 1931. The Place: An express train bound for Moscow from Vladivostock on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.The Victim: The Ambassador of Japan's personal bodyguard, the enigmatic Mr Big Job.The Scene: It's a classic locked-room mystery! The victim is found in a cabin that has been bolted from the inside!The Background:The train is on a peace mission. Hosted by the Russians, there are delegations from China and Japan together with a pair of British 'observers'.The Suspects: Eight fellow passengers, each hiding a guilty secret, have been implicated in the murder.Your Mission: Over the course of a dinner party you must unravel the mystery and help Komrade Ivan Inkling to solve this intriguing whodunit!

And here is the link to buy the game if you want to play it!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006Z86L4/creativityunleas

Week number three

Well, another week has gone by and this weeks adventure will, by far, have the longest, most profound effects on my life than any other this semester.

This week I turned in my mission papers.

That's right.

I am going to be a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's true, and I cannot wait to be a full-time missionary. I have wanted to serve a mission since I was a little girl. I would talk about it with my parents and friends and say proudly, "one day I am going to serve a mission and I simply cannot wait for that day." Throughout my life the option of serving a mission came and went as I dated, went to college, and made life plans. For a while I really did believe that serving a mission was not going to happen for me. Especially when I switched my major from Humanities to Communication Disorders. My class schedule became very complicated and leaving when I actually turn 21 (may 31 2012) made serving a mission and finishing school in a timely matter very difficult. After figuring things out, it came out that I would graduate a year later on top of the year and a half of serving a mission. So serving a mission would put me two and a half years behind in school. Which isn't the end of the world but it would really set me back since this next winter and the winter I got home I would not be able to take any classes for my major. I felt like those two semesters of being home but not being able to take classes would be such a waste of time. I felt defeated. It seemed like serving a mission was not in Heavenly Father's plan for me and I was devastated because I still felt like I was supposed too. I prayed and even though I was confused, I knew everything would be OK. That's when I heard from a friend that there are some cases where people can get special permission to go on a mission early if they have a really good reason. What is a better reason than my academics? So I made an appointment with the bishop to ask him that very question. I asked him if this little fun fact was true and he had never heard of a sister going early before, but he said he would call the mission office and ask. A week later I heard back with the news that IT WAS possible and the decision whether I could leave early or not was up to my stake president. So what did I do next? I met with my Stake President and I got the special permission I needed to start my papers a couple weeks after that. Going through the process of requesting this special permission to leave early, I don’t think I actually thought it would work. It didn’t seem real. When I got the phone call from my bishop that everything was good to go and I could start my papers, my eyes filled with tears of joy and also with tears of fear. I thought to myself, "Can I really do this?" For weeks I told myself I was going but still felt some doubts in the back of my mind wondering if I would actually go through with it. I knew I wanted too, I just didn't know if I actually could do it. I didn't know if I could leave my amazing, beautiful family for so long. I didn’t know if I could leave my friends, school, and life at BYU behind. I started to doubt if a mission really was the thing for me. I knew that making a decision and taking it before the Lord was the only way to calm and settle my fears and insecurities about serving a full-time mission. The answer didn't come to me easily. In fact I couldn't tell you the day or even the week that I made the decision to actually go on a mission. I never really knew for sure until the night I had my Stake President interview. Even with all of my doubts, I kept moving forward. By the time I submitted my papers I could not have been happier or more sure of anything in my life. My availability date is January 1, 2012. After weeks of praying and preparing I finally submitted my papers and I cannot wait to receive my call in the next few weeks! I will most definitely blog about opening my call. That’s something I’ve definitely never done before. :)

My mission picture

Week Number Two

Well, this week's adventure may end up being my favorite of the whole semester. I guess I'll have to wait and see though.

This weeks journey took us to many different places such as: Riverwoods, Bicentennial Park, and the BYU football stadium. These places are where we created our

PERFECT DAY.

I have always wanted to do this but never actually have. We came up with 10 different categories to fulfill our perfect day.

1. SHOPPING
We started out with a little shopping. My roommates Lauren McFadyen and Erica Hawkins and I (my other roommate Carley Wells was writing a paper. We missed her dearly!) went to the Riverwoods where we shopped a little bit and walked around the cute outdoor mall. Gotta have a little bit of shopping in the perfect day! We all bought a skirt--only $7. What a steal!

2. FOOD

After we met up with our friends Nick Newell, Mike Smith, Nicole Hawkins, and Tyler Allen. So many of my very favorite people together is definitely a recipe for the perfect day! We packed an amazing, wonderful, and delicious lunch and then all headed to bicentennial park. We packed sandwiches, yogurt, chocolate milk, chips, oreos, wheat thins and cream cheese, and some fruit. Can you say perfect?

3. LEARNING/EDUCATION

Then Nick read us all some poems by Robert Frost. Naturally he read them in a British accent. We sat there and soaked in the words of wisdom for a while. Poetry at a picnic. What a joy.

4.EXERCISE

We then ran around and rolled down the hills, played leap frog, soccer, and tag. We climbed trees and of course as soon as we found some mud we put it on our faces like Indians.

5. MUSIC

Nick and I brought our guitars so to fulfill our music portion we all played some songs and sang our hearts out. We even sang some original Blues songs.

6. SPIRITUALITY

We then shared favorite scriptures.

7. NATURE

Let me just tell you this one thing: Bicentennial park is the most AWESOME park I know. They have this amazing jungle/rain forest trail that you can walk through. Tyler and Nick played "I'll follow you through the dark" as we sang along as we walked through the beautiful trail of jungle. I have to go back to Costa Rica. Or maybe actually go to the Amazon.

8. COURAGE

Well, Nick says that putting the mud on our face was courageous because it actually smelt horrible. Also rolling down the hill was courageous since I was sick when I got to the bottom. Maybe even climbing to the top of the tree could count for our courageous act.

9. SPORTS

Let's not forget the funnest and saddest football game I've ever gone too... Yeah, BYU lost to the U tonight. How tragically horrible. But we had the best time together and screamed and cheered for our beloved BYU team.

Goodness I just love my Number 10 on the list:

10. FRIENDS
I have the best friends in the whole wide world!! I simply adore them.

For those of you who are my friends on facebook you can see some awesome footage we took of our day.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=2019956012187&ref=notif&notif_t=video_comment_tagged

Week number one

Okay, so I know it's only the first week, but I'm already going to cheat. You see, I floated down the Provo River on Saturday and I REALLY want to write about that. So can that count as my weekly adventure for this week? Shh. Just don't tell anyone. Saturday is at the end of the week anyway, right? :)

Let me just start off by saying that I have wanted to do this for 2 years now! I heard about it my freshman year and for some crazy reason I never actually did it until now. Why? I'll never know because it was absolutely wonderful!
To get there you drive up the Canyon until you see a sign that says, "Rent tubes" on your right (Just before Vivian park). It's $15 per person, which includes: parking, tube, life-jacket, and shuttle up the canyon to the starting point. So not too bad of a price, especially for how much fun it is. I say it's totally worth it! You can pay with a card or cash and you leave your keys with them. Then you grab your life-jacket (super old school jackets that are totally awesome!) and your tube and you take the shuttle 10-15 or so minutes up the canyon.

Note to all new floaters: Don't try and hold on to your partners and their tubes.

Especially when you first start off. It doesn't work. Why? Because you float to the side and into old trees and branches that might as well be knives. Yes, this happened to me and the 7 or so girls that tried to link together. We went straight for dagger-branch lane and we were all screaming not knowing how to push ourselves from going that way (TIP: you let go and maneuver yourself with your hands... duh.) So that is how I got the cut on the side of my face. opps. Now I know, I guess. We let go and laughed off the fear that overtook us for about 5 seconds. haha. Later down the river you can link up and it works just fine. It is true, however, that you can't lay back and close your eyes the entire time because there are times where you need to push yourself to one side to avoid a tree or a rock...etc... but let me tell you I wouldn't close my eyes if someone paid me! It was SO BEAUTIFUL! The whole way down I thought I was in another country floating through forests and jungles. Normally I would blame that on my imagination, but I know for a fact this was real. Utah is so amazing to me. Every mountain looks different. While you drive up the canyon notice how on your left there is a rocky, gray mountain and on your right it's lush green and then all of the sudden it's a desert. Seriously so cool. I couldn't take my eyes off the incredible mountains the whole float down--which was probably about 2 or so hours. If you want to try something fun lay on your stomach and use your hands to push yourself in circles. You can get going really fast! Just be careful you don't get too dizzy! The river is pretty consistent but there are spots that take you pretty fast or pretty slow. It's never scary though, so don't be afraid. All in all we had a fantastic time and I will totally do it again in the future.

Floating down the Provo River was a total success!

I loved every second of the ride!

Pre-Week introductoin

Well, here I am folks. To start off, I am going to explain how this blog came to be. I am in a business writing class (M COM320) this semester at Brigham Young University and for one of our weekly homework assignments we have to write in a blog. I already have a couple blogs, such as my personal journal and my travel blog, but I decided I wanted to try something new. Our assignment is to write in a blog once a week about whatever we want. I thought about what topics I might want to write about when this idea popped in my head and now this HW assignment is going to be so much more fun than any I've had before. I am going to take this opportunity to do one thing a week that I have never done before and then write about it. I will write down my experiences whether they be a weekend trip to a state I've never been or to bake homemade bread for the first time. Maybe I'll even give tutorials on some of my projects. Here I go, world.
This will be my new adventures journal....

The 1-a-week adventures of Maddie.

Starting NOW I will begin this new endeavor and I can't wait to share it with you all.