Ich bin neunzehn Jahre alt!

It's my birthday and I am nineteen years old! o how I have grown.

Mom asked me what i wanted for my birthday, and I had really no idea. So the girls in my hall who play the ukulele inspired me to ask for one. So, we went to the mall and bought this little beauty and I named her Layla :)

She also got me the pop-up book of the century! Just look at this baby! This is no child's pop up book. I love it so much. The pages include Diagon Alley, Hogwarts (as you can see here) Hagrid's Hut/Forbidden Forrest, Harry retrieving the egg from the Hungarian Horntail, and Harry and Voldemort in the Graveyard in Great Hangleton!

Jacob got me my very own Bean Game, the most amazing photo book full of pictures of us, and an entire cheesecake! He also went to the fabric store with me and took me to dinner at Cafe Rio! He is too good to me.

Harly and Lauren took me to Zupas for lunch, my cousin Ryan and his friends made me brownies, and my parents are taking me to dinner this weekend! Birthdays are so very wonderful!

Deutschland!

The moment we've all been waiting for! Elder Jacob Brogdon had been called to serve in the Germany, Berlin mission! His departure date is March 2. He has been so anxious to get this call and it's so exciting that it's finally here! He is mostly excited that he doesn't have to go to school this semester :) He's still got a lot to prepare before he leaves (like learn German) but he will definitely be an amazing soldier in God's Army! Congrats Jacob!

College

Well I am now entering my second semester at BYU. I'll admit, before coming to college, I was terrified. I thought that I would have to stay up until 4 am every night studying my brains out. Turns out that's just for the kids who party until 1 am and leave their homework for when they get back. And that is definitely not me.

I'm not gonna lie, I did have a bit more to read and study than I did in high school, but it was nowhere near overwhelming. I am proud to say that I received a 4.0 GPA for my first semester and plan on doing what I can to maintain that. Full tuition scholarship, here I come!

This semester I am taking the following classes:

Book of Mormon (second half)

American Heritage

Sewing (which I am so excited about)

German

Child Development

15 credits in all so not a bad load. I'm really excited to learn some great stuff that will help me throughout my life. I am praying constantly so that hopefully the Lord will help me out. I know I can use all the help I can get! Go Cougars!

Harry Potter World!

After I graduated, I didn't really get to go on a trip to celebrate this great accomplishment. Instead, my mom agreed to schedule a trip to Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure in December. Of course the parks in general were not what interested me. It was the new addition to Islands of Adventure that made me so keen to attend... The Wizarding World of Harry Potter! It was such a magical place. I would have been content to stay there quite a bit longer

On top of that, we got to spend the vacation with the Simmons Family! They were so much fun. I spent half a day just with Jessica and we went on all the water rides because it was raining anyway.

Ellie was also very fun to play with when she wasn't tired:) Her favorite part was Dr. Seuss Land. She rode the Cat in the Hat ride about a million times.

Adam's favorite part was definitely... his grandpa. That little boy could not get enough of this man!

Oklahoma!

Last Wednesday I went to Oklahoma for a week to help my sister, Jasmine, and her family move into their new home. While Jasmine, her husband Taylor, and some of his family members did all the hard work of moving, I got to play with the kids Brayden, Kylee, and McKayla!

We did all sorts of fun things like go swimming, graffiti the beautiful new porch with chalk, go see Madagascar 1 & 2 at the free summer kids' movies, and play at the splash pad (which I had never even heard of before).
Those kids are so silly and it was so fun to spend the week with them! Thanks Jasmine and Taylor for letting me spend a wonderful week in Oklahoma!

Llama Fest!

My friend Katy and I decided it would be loads of fun to go to the Llama Fest! Turns out... We were right!

We ate some

pretty gross food. At first

our goal was to eat it all... but it changed to taste it all.

But we got to meet, and pet, llams, which basically made it worth it.

Not to mention they had llama

races, and llama obstacle courses, and sweet llama t-shirts.

We learned that the llama featured on the shirts is named pistol, and they have to keep him

separated from the other llamas cause he's a bully and will beat them up.

There were also guys in the Krishna temple playing one of their religious chants. The vocalist told us that back in the day, they sold llamas to make money to build their temple, and that is how the great llama fest came to be.

AP Exams

This past year I took two AP classes at school. I was told that the results would show up the third week of July so I was extremely surprised when they came this past Friday. I was a little nervous because I had convinced myself by now that I had definitely failed the Biology test. And so it was with much anticipation that I opened the envelope and the results were (drum roll please...) I passed them both!!! In Biology i scraped by with a 3 (The minimum passing grade) and in Psychology I got a 5 (which is the best score). Good thing Psychology is what I'm going into!