I woke up this morning and as I lay in my bed slowly registering the day, I heard a sound I almost couldnt recognize, this melodic yet strangely obnoxious sound. As I came to I realized it was birds chirping -the sign of a beautiful spring day! Then coming home from church there was a nice white surprise flying through the air. of course we got a crazy blizzard of snow. I cant believe it snowed today, it started off so nice. well at least its still march so that counts as wintertime.

Lets see...not too much is going on, im just super busy with school work. We went up to my fhe brothers cabin a couple weekends ago so that was pretty. I love being in the middle of nowhere seeing the stars so distinctly. I swear there were even more than they have in the planitarium!

My roommates made a little under one thousand cup cakes today and beautifuly frosted each one individually like MK always does. oh, my nail just broke -thats pretty lame. I've been practicing my harmonica a lot so when I get home you'll be blown away by my newly acquired musical abilities.

oh and I appreciate everyone for letting me interview them, it was great to catch up and I can't wait to see you all at eastertime!

karalee teaching for ex/ed

I've been working on setting up my schedule for this next semester and have it figured out so hopefully I will only have 2 semesters left once I get home from my mission, as long as class times dont overlap.

I'll be taking D+C, Anatomy PhysiologyII, Recreational Leadership, Program MGMT, Therapeutic Recreation, and Mountain Biking. I'm pretty excited, i'll be busy but thats a good thing. My classes start at 745 and 8 again everyday but at least next semester will be warm and light out.

My favorite place to go out to eat, Backyard BBQ has started having free bottomless french fries on mondays with any purchase so I have a new monday activity to add to watching 24.

I miss my boy...

i thought this was cute and funny, its dereks dad Bruce, and his youngest brother Caleb.

its play gun obviously but i just thought it was funny cause they're all hunter boys.

The whole family. i took these when i was at their house a couple weeks ago...

ahh im so bored, its saturday and I spent the day in the library and now am doing more hw... well i guess im taking a break.

I love easter season because they have Cadbury mini eggs and they are hands down the best holiday candy.

Last weekend I went down to my favorite spot in rexburg: the train tracks. It was so cold so I didnt stay as long as usual but it was very pretty out...

physiology stuff

you dont have to continue reading, its nothing really of interest about my life...

I just got out of an anat/phys study thing and its boggling my mind, so I figured I would stop by the library and jot what I remember down so I can think about it again sometime once I more fully own the concepts. WARNING: this might not make sense the way I am writing it because I am not using proper terms and just getting thoughts out. and i am strange sometimes. I mean come on, i am a wise :)

We have action potentials occuring constantly through our body. [depolarization from gradients changing and reaching threshold to release different elements] These trigger voltage gated channels oppening and continuing down reaction style through muscles and nerves [mostly] These lead down cell membranes and continue with lots of different channels and nerotransmitters going through and they eventually go out of the nerve and with new parts added go down into t-tuberals and hit sarcolemas which release calcium to move our sacromeres closer together and our muscle contracts because of other details like a meyosin head being attracted to the active sites and then ATP cocking the head back down to be released again. And to the interesting part...haha ok well
our brain controls how many muscle fibers our motor units [a motor neruron and all the muscle cells it connects to] need to connect to which says how much strenght is used for an event. [example picking up a bowling ball] now our muscles exert to their full potential each time they are used but there are just different amounts and sizes of the fibers connected that are told to perform each task. Now applying this: we see a bowling ball and go to pick it up. our mind sends action potentials down our motor units telling certain fibers to fire in order to contract our muscles and pick up the ball. Knowing bowling balls to be on the heavy side we will be using more fibers connected to our motor neruons than if we pick up a sheet of paper. Now as we pick up this bowling ball, it is a trick one [extremely light] and because we already exherted so much strenght to the event our arm shoots up and the ball gets thrown up in the air. So I started thinking, can we trick our brains by telling them to use certain size or amounts of muscle fibers or are they learned already from experience, since we are little. Try to apply too much force to picking up the mouse, you catch yourself and stop it. so that wont work unless you fully devote yourself to it somehow without hesitation, but it would be cool to try and be able to control them. You kind of do that with like hitting a baseball you use as many as you can, but you already know to because of hitting one before.
Now even our thoughts are moved by action potentials, they are shooting through our brains to create the possibility of the thought we hadnt even thought yet. Then I realize that by exersizing we are expanding our motor neurons and fibers right? and keeping small ones too. BUT that means when we are working out to build our muscles we are actually also building our brains by controling the muscle possibilities. Do we use all possible fibers when we try our harderst? do we have to consiously think about it to do so?

OK now that most things are out of my head and I have not come full circle I'm going home....haha maybe one day ill look at this again and try to make sense of it all. Until then, I'll stick to what will be on the exam.

who knew? nothings new.

so not much has been going on lately... I went sledding in the mountains last week with our home teachers. umm I've just been busy with school a lot. I really like what I learn in anatomy but it is totally kicking my butt. I have decided today that I am going to use our free service at the university and get a tutor. Mission prep is fun, I cant wait till I get to put my papers in. Experimental Ed Adv Challenge is still my favorite class. I havent heard from Badger yet but should this week. I'm anxious about that. We went bowling for FHE today. Oh my gums and mouth in general are doing a LOT better. Emma and I bought matching twin shoes for each other for our half birthday, hers came last week and mine arent due here until wednesday which is extremely lame because I have had an outfit planned out to wear them with all week long. Tomorrow I'm going to lunch with Natalie from home and on friday Beth Hansen is doing a photo shoot thing with me for her senior project. she is taking pictures of people looking how their major stereotypes them and as themselves normaly. pretty cool idea. I miss ukraine a lot lately. I wrote a letter to mikki [my freshman year roommate on her mission in arizona] like 2 full pages about ukraine and my experience. I really liked being there. Im sort of just procrastinating my homework right now... I should get on that. It hasnt snowed in Rexburg for almost a week and in fact it rained a little today it was so warm! thats all for now. I cant really think of anything else...

Today is the day Derek is going into the MTC. I am so sad but excited, he already has his first letter written to me and most likely has sent it out by now. I cant wait to read it and finally get his address, haha what a guy. These past two weeks have been amazing. We've hung out almost everyday and have had so much fun. The next two years should fly by 'hopefully'. it makes it easier to know that i'm only waiting for about 6 months and the last 18 ill be active instead. We connect so well and writing each other is going to be so powerful for our relationship. I spent the past weekend down at his house in IF. His family is so much fun. Oldest of 5 boys so theres never a dull moment. And his mom is amazing, we are very similar. im not saying im amazing i didnt mean for it to sound like that but we had a blast together.

School is difficult but now i'm less distracted so that might help me out... go figure.
oh yeah and i got the most beautiful necklace from Derek for a pre-valentine's day gift. it has 6 perodots [sp?] increasing in size in a wave down on a gold chain. Its perfect.
i'm off to mission prep class, its snowing like crazy out today!

...mom requested pictures...

We have a new president!

This weekend has been so much fun! I have a lot of pictures to catch up on as Alexis has so kindly reminded me...

my roommates are awesome, we all get along really well and have a blast together, and the other one in the picture is our pet cat who appeared outside our door one day. honestly it scared the crap out of me, like it was going to suck my soul at night or something... we got rid of it though, traded for some yummy pumpkin cookies to these boys who have disposed of it properly [shooting it of course]

ok so we have Jessie- el salvador, Cheri- CA, Chari-CA, Alexis-CA, Emma-CA, and me-east coast represent!

ok my friend Alyson who I met in ukraine and is at school at UVU came up for the long weekend and we had tons of fun. We went snowmobiling with Derek and Kelly and some relatives... it was amazing. We went to the Palacades (sp?) and they were gorgeous! the actual riding is fun but having to steer and turn on those things i did not really enjoy, my muscles ached like crazy for the next couple of days.

oh and our machine overheated and wasn't running correctly but since Derek is a mechanic, he figured out what was wrong and was able to after a little while of fidgeting, figure out the problem and fix it. I learnt to drive and I did a good job until this one turn i didnt slow down enough and well despite dereks attempt to stablize the machine, we fell off got ran over and it ran off into the deep powder hit a tree and got stuck. It really was fun though. oh yeah and bri came too.

AND as a goodbye for now since I am on a roll, here is a lovely picture of Dad from christmas time... credit to leslie.