Day 4 of christmas crazy

Day 4

Monday, Dec. 20

The rain has not stopped since my last post. Streets are flooded here in southern California. We were saved from Christmas caroling because of the treacherous rain. Mom at Thanksgiving time that we would be caroling Monday AND Tuesday before Christmas. Today, my brothers refused to go out singing in the rain. I told them that we wouldn't have to really be out in the rain. We were gonna drive from house to house. duh. Still there was no getting these bums off of their bums. My mom and I said that we would carol in the rain. No problem! I guess we all know who the real girls in the family are... my three brothers. (Dad kinda has a real excuse... he is a little bit of a cold. oh... and he is old. love you dad)

P.S. - We had to sign another box of Christmas cards because mom decided we didn't have enough. There were a few too many groans for two more dozen cards. Merry Christmas!

holidays with the sagiao family... my family

Hello everyone!!! Yes... I am alive. I survived finals and am back home in beautiful sunny California... except wait... it has not stopped raining since I got home. Whatever. It still feels great to be home. So with my countdown to Christmas... I will be providing all of you with some fabulous entertainment. Each day til Christmas I will post some crazy holiday adventure we have had. Coming home is always a great adventure. I LOVE my family but we are one crazy family. We often joke that we could be an awesome reality tv show. So here it begins but... I must catch up on a few days.

Day 1 of being home (technically I was not quite here because I was driving but I cannot pass up the opportunity to tell this story)

Friday Dec. 17

My family attended our church Christmas party. They host a dinner for all the families then they have a nice Christmas program with music and Christmas readings. As they start to begin the program, a group of teens comes and sits directly behind my parents. The teenagers were taking and being rude during the program. My mom turned around a few times and asked that they please be quiet and listen. They ignored my mom each time. SO rude! My dad then turns around and said "Hey you all need to shut the HELL up. Did you hear what I said?" Yep. Merry Christmas dad told kids to shut the hell up during the Christmas program. Awesome. There was complete silence from those kids for the rest of the Christmas program and they all lived happily ever after.

Day 2

Saturday Dec. 18

I had officially been home for about one hour and my 16-year-old twin brothers were each suppose two chop two romaine hearts for a salad. I called them down to do their task and then they looked at me as if they had no idea what to do. I said "mom called and asked that you two cut the lettuce for the salad." Hunter was going to start first and then Cody would come and do his. The twins are adolescent teenager boys and can't do anything in the same place at the same time without a brawl. Here is the convo:

Hunter: How do you cut lettuce?

Danielle: With a knife.

H: Well.... I've never done this before. What knife?

D: Use your brain. You're 16.

H: Ok... I guess this green knife that mom uses for the lettuce.

D: Great idea.

H: How much do I throw away from the end?

D: Really... if you ask me one more question about the most simple task in the world I am going to scream. You are so much smarter than this.

H: (Grumble)... 3o seconds pass... What do I put the lettuce in?

D: Scream

It is now Cody's turn to cut his 2 heads of lettuce. Before he even begins I say:

"Please do not ask me any questions on how to cut lettuce, just get to it." He says that he has never cut lettuce before. I tell him that everything that he needs is on the counter and to look at Hunter's finished project for an example. Geez... video games are ruining the minds of America's youth. Yes I admit, I could have had a few more patience but... I had just driven 10 hours all by myself and had taken 6 finals. My patience were running on empty.

Day 3

Sunday, Dec. 19

Christmas cards. This year mom decided that she wanted everyone to sign their own name in the Christmas cards. Cool. No big deal, right? Wrong. Definitely a big deal for our family. I am pretty sure that my twin brothers asked about the following question about 10 times:

"Are we gonna sign all of the cards?"

Umm... no we just want your name on 10 of the cards. Duh. We are are gonna sign all of the cards. The one asked if we could just sign one of the cards and make copies of the signatures and place them on the cards. Really? Then we wanted the names in order from oldest to youngest BUT it became a little too complicated for some of our brains because we were not sitting in order from oldest to youngest as we were passing our cards through the assembly line. Yep. Small little bickering sessions broke out during the Christmas card signing because someone's name was in someone else's place. Oh... we are so joyous this Christmas season.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. my family REALLY does love each other. I promise.

paint party 2010.

Last night, I went to probably one of the most awesome parties I have been to in Provo. Paint Party 2010 was epic!!! Anna, Alyssa, and I went to the paint party in our white shirts and black leggings and rocked it! There was tons of dancing, prime people watching, bangin' black lights, and loads of paint. We had so much fun and basically I am going to let the pictures tell the story.

Me, Anna, and Alyssa. I love these girls!

All pretty and ready to get our paint on!

Paint squirt guns!

P.S I was not trying to be a slut, but there was a lot of pushing, pulling, shoving hence the stretched out shirt and revealing shoulders.

We had a freaking blast!

black lights + paint + friends = AMAZING

diet coke and kindergarten.

Every Tuesday morning I volunteer in a local kindergarten classroom. I love it! It is so fun to see how excited all these little kids are to learn. This past Tuesday I was getting ready and since school has been rough I have been slacking on my Recovering Diet Coke Addict(RDCA) program. I really have been doing quite well. I have come a long way from having numerous 12-packs under my bed freshman year in the dorms. Hannah was a witness to the madness :) Anyways on Tuesday I really needed a pick me up because I looked so haggard from my lack of sleep. I did not want the teacher to think I was on drugs or hungover because if I saw me that's would be the first thought to pop into my mind. So I went and grabbed my 2-liter of Diet Coke from the fridge. I went to grab a glass, but there were no clean ones. So... I took the 2-liter with me back to my bathroom and continued doing my make-up and hair in my underwear while drinking straight from the 2-liter of Diet Coke. It was quite a sight. My RDCA sponsor would have been so disappointed... except I don't have a sponsor. Maybe I should look into getting one?

I sparkled.

Last week I had 4 midterms, 3 quizzes, a group paper, and a marketing presentation today.

It is ok though because I came out victorious. I got a 100% on my finance test, which was exciting. I felt ok about skipping my ethics class to study for it. It sure did pay off!

*By the way... I am pretty sure that skipping ethics class is probably a very unethical thing to do. My behavior toward my ethics class was slightly reflected in my ethics midterm. I missed 3 of the multiple choice, which may not sound like too many but there were only 15 multiple choice questions work 4 points each. Lame! Oh well I survived and I get to go home to California in a week!!!!!

Today my group gave our marketing presentation. One group has presented each week since the start of the semester, so since we were group 11. There were a lot of previous groups to compare us to... so the pressure was on. I was really blessed to only have to give the introduction and define our topic at the beginning. I get VERY nervous with group presentations. Public speaking does not really scare me. I can get up in front of a group of a million people all by myself and say whatever... no big. I think that the group aspect is what gets my nerves going because the group is counting on you to do well.

Anyways... after each group gives their presentation the other members of the class give positive feedback and then make comments on things the group could work on. So, at the end Professor S. was asking for some positive feedback. After about four comments, Professor S. said "What about the introduction?" I figured this was his transition into what the group could have worked on. He looked right at me and he said "You sparkled." I thought is he serious? He was like you did. I said thank you and was trying not to laugh. I kind of thought that he said "I sparkled" just to boost my self-esteem because I think I was a little shaky. I felt like I really did not do that much nor was it spectacular. A sweet guy from my ward is in my class and when he and I were talking about the "I sparkled" comment tonight at FHE he made me realize that I needed to accept the compliment. The sweet guy from my ward did make a good point that the professor does not give out very many compliments after these presentations. Thank you sweet guy. You are correct and I need to eat some humble pie.

Random moments.

1. I went to Zumba at the gym. The instructor had pieces of her hair fall out while she was teaching. Yes, the plural is correct. She had hair extensions fall out twice. You know you're getting a good work out when hair starts flying.

2. I got a jury duty summons. I swear I get these ALL the time. I know that there are plenty of unemployed people in CA that would love to earn the $15 a day. Can we please send them jury duty?

3. If the government wants to create jobs, then they should not allow people over the age of 60 to drive and provide free taxi service for old people. These old people are becoming a hazard to my health and I am sure many others around me. Today there was this old man driving so awful I was screaming. He was going so slow and not staying in his lane. So, I would speed up to get away from him, but then he would magically reappear. He almost hit me like three times. I could NOT get away from him. This old man needed the government provided free taxi service.

school. school. school.

Yes, all I do is school. I am consumed by school. My second home is the Tanner building (the business school building on campus). Actually... It is probably more like my first home. My second home is my bed where I sit and do my homework because I have been to cheap to buy an ethernet cord that will reach the other side of my bedroom where I can sit at my desk and do my homework like a real person. You would think since I do school 24/7 then a result of my studies would be no run-on sentences in my blog like the previous one... oh well. My social life is kind of lacking but I see plenty of books and quizzes:

Proof of my lacking social life:
1) I learned who won the World Series via my email from WSJ News Alerts
2) Yes, I refer to the Wall Street Journal as WSJ
3) My bedroom floor is covered with WSJ

funny comments in marketing.

Yesterday in my marketing class, my professor was talking about... market research? (I think that's what he was talking) Anyways... My professor put up a powerpoint slide with a list of movie titles. These movie titles were changed before the release of the movie because they did some research and found a title that would be more appealing. For example the original title for Rocky was The Contender. As the original titles were placed on the board people in the class were shouting out there guesses of what the movie was. Well... This is what flashed on the screen:

A Boy's Life

Any creative guesses as to what movie this turned into? Some guy in our class yelled out: Brokeback Mountain! hahahaha everyone in the class was laughing and our professor couldn't help but smile. We were all disappointed when the movie was E.T.

3 months.

The 13th comes each month and I think about you all day Baby Bella. Not a day goes by that I don't think about you, but on the 13th not a minute goes by that I don't think about you.

Love you Bella xoxoxo

women.

"There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity."

~Washington Irving

* Disclaimer: men... i love you too. i am not a crazy feminist. women are better at some things and men are better at some things. both men and women are good at some of the same things. the end.

zumba.

I had a new adventure today. During the summer, I was doing a very good job at consistently going to the gym and since I have been back in Provo I have been found guilty of neglecting the gym. I NEED the gym and not just because my butt is beyond the average size, but it makes me feel happier. The whole endorphin theory is completely true. Have you people heard of ZUMBA??? I have been wanting to try Zumba for months. I usually will never go to a class at the gym without a friend... I can go to the gym by myself and do my own thing but going to a class is a different story. Today I went to Zumba!!! It was fun. I think I have rhythm... ok well I know I have rhythm that is one thing I am confident in saying. During Zumba, I was all over the place and I know I looked like a fool. I was getting a hold of it by the end so hopefully after a few more times I will look like I actually know what I am doing. My quads and bum are killing me, but I feel good. I highly recommend Zumba.

Yesterday a girl got up in church and shared a spiritual thought. She read this scripture:

"My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands."

~ Doctrine and Covenants 121: 7-9

Now read it again but insert your name where it says "My son"

Powerful and I love it.

sweet simple beautiful message.

2 months.

I love this little baby girl! Bella is my angel. I dream about her often and not a day passes by that I do not think about her. Thinking about Bella makes me smile and so does this video (Please excuse my annoying voice). Here is a video I took of her while I was watching her one night in July. She loved strawberries! I cut up about 5 or 6 strawberries. I went to rinse the knife, wipe off the counter, and put away the other strawberries... by the time I got back to start this video she had already eaten most of them. Is she not the cutest ever???

Bella,

I love and miss you!

Love,

Auntie Danielle

It's a new day.

I have been in a really bad mood lately. It is nobody's fault but my own. So... I am going to make a conscious effort to get real and be happy because life is not that bad. Yes, all of my friends are married and I have never been on a date and I am taking 18 credits and school is going to be super crazy this semester, and all the people I love are in California, but I am great and life will be great.

A couple of things I am excited about...

1) I signed up to volunteer in a kindergarten class at a local elementary school once a week.

2) I may be getting tickets for general conference (cross my fingers)

3) A guy in my class introduced himself and admitted to having a 1.8 GPA out of high school and worked his butt off to get to BYU... umm... good for him for coming such a long way, but I am really happy I was not in his shoes :)

Jamba Juice

A few weeks ago my mom and I were in San Diego going to the doctors. After the doctor, my mom wanted a Jamba before we headed back to Temecula. The parking lot was a little crazy so she just dropped me off and I ran inside to order her one. A woman in front of me had several children with her, but luckily she was rude and just ordered herself one so I didn't have to wait for her and all of her children to get their orders. I stepped up and ordered my Mom an orange dream machine. After I finished ordering I stepped aside and a nice police officer ordered himself a jamba as well. Now at this point all three of us... the rude lady, myself, and the police officer are all waiting for our smoothies. The jamba boy announces a name of a smoothie which I can barely hear, which I though was mine but the rude lady went up and grabbed it. The rude lady then proceeds to walk away and take a sip of HER jamba. She then turns around and says to the boy "Oh no, sorry this is not mine." The jamba boy then asks her, "Oh ok, did you drink out of it?" The rude lady says "no"... ok she lied. The boy then gives her the correct smoothie and now a jamba girl has the smoothie the rude lady thought was hers and jamba girl looks at the straw and can see lip marks on it and jamba girl asks the lady again "Did you drink out of this smoothie ma'am?" The rudy lady lies AGAIN and says "No" and walks out of the story. The jamba girl then changes the straw and announces "orange dream machine"... oh thats my smoothie... the one the lady just drank out of and now you're gonna give it to me.... they must be joking. I walk over and say "Umm... she drank out of that." The jambe girl says "She said she didn't... wow I don't know why people have to lie." I was like "Yeah, me neither." The jamba girl quickly made me a brand new smoothie and upgraded me to a bigger size and was really nice. Now... I know that the police officer saw everything that went down. I think the cop should have written the lady a citation for something... I don't know what... but something... maybe if i were under the age of 18 she could have been cited for child endangerment. I mean she could have had herpes or HIV or syphilis. But... I must say that the rude lady must know the colors of her jambas extremely well because she was able to tell the difference between a "Citrus Squeeze" and an "Orange Dream Machine" just by looking at them and without tasting them... that's talent! (BTW the main ingredients in these are orange)

Moral of the story: Beware the next time you're at Jamba... :)

love/hate (really really dislike)

I hate using the word hate. It really just sounds plain mean. I am trying to be nicer and be optimistic about life but... I really want to make some complaints. So... I had this idea. Maybe if I write down things that bug me and things that make me happy then there would kind of be a balance. Balance in life is good so here I go.

I really really dislike it when people declare their love for their boyfriend/girlfriend via facebook. If I am ever guilty of this, then I give everyone permission to slap me.

I love the carpool lane and the invention of FASTRAK. Every time I drive home from working in San Diego I am still stunned that more people don't invest in a fastrak. People... time is money!

I really really dislike walking down the pet food aisle. The smell makes me want to vomit. If I go with people to the store and they walk down the pet aisle, I will walk down the neighboring aisle and wait for them at the end. I try to hide my being dramatic, but then they will ask me where I went and I have to tell them what my deal is and then I look like a drama queen. Awesome.

I love California and I don't want to go back to Utah one bit.

I really really dislike middle school. I think middle school ruins children. This is the time when hormones are raging and every kid is a brat. Kids are SO mean in middle school. I often joke with my mom that my kids will be home schooled for middle school... this may not be a joke.

I love seeing people do nice things for other people. Kindness warms my heart and there really is not enough of it in the world.

These are little dumb things, but I guess they are just floating around in my brain. I basically just exposed how truly weird I can be. Oh well... maybe weird can be interpreted as funny?

Beautiful Bella. I LOVE YOU

One month ago I held this precious little girl for the last time in this earthly life. Bella passed away one month ago today. I know that I will see her again and she will wrap her sweet little arms around me and give me kisses. I am so grateful for the love of our Savior Jesus Christ and the knowledge of the gospel because it is the only thing that brings me comfort.

~ This is the last picture I took with Bella over July 4th weekend. ~

Bella brought so much love and joy into the lives of so many and her sweet spirit continues to touch so many lives. She showed us how to love and laugh with her great sense of humor even at her young age. Jessie and I lived together while she was pregnant with Bella and our best friendship was pretty much instant. In our hearts, Jessie and I are sisters and I was Bella's Auntie Danielle. Jessie was and continues to be an amazing mommy to Isabella Rose. Jessie is so devoted to Bella, it is absolutely remarkable. Jessie shows Bella more love than anyone can imagine and Bella knows the love of her mama. I love Jessie and Bella tons and tons. Words cannot express how much the both of them mean to me.

The week that Bella passed away was probably the most difficult week of my life and so i can only imagine how unbelievably difficult it was for Jessie as Bella's mother. I cried a lot, but I also smiled when I thought about all the moments that Bella made me smile. Bella will be missed by so many, but we know that she is in heaven and is a celestial daughter of our Heavenly Father. Bella is in a place that is suited for an angel because she is too beautiful to have to play in the mud with the rest of us in this world.

I love you Bella xoxoxo

In Loving Memory of Isabella Rose Brunson

March 7, 2009 - July 13, 2010

Fun with my cousins!

I went and had dinner with my cousins last night and then we had a little entertainment. My cousins, Max and Felecia, each sang us some songs. It was fun. Here are a couple videos I took of them singing some beautiful songs. I love my family!

By the way... poor Felecia got interrupted a couple times by the phone and the dogs :)

Still great!

P.S. I had another crazy, funny dream that I will be saving for my next post.

Mom knows best.

Today I really wanted to make some chocolate chip cookies. I just wanted to make a couple dozen. My mom has the BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe. I am sure we all think this of our mom's chocolate chip cookies. My mom's recipe uses shortening and I didn't have any. SO... I thought I will just make the recipe on the back of the bag of the Nestle chocolate chips. Bad idea! They were nothing like mom's and I hate them. Waste of chocolate chips and waste of calories, not eating them. I thought that the Nestle Tollhouse recipe was Phoebe's (from Friends) Grandma's "famous recipe" so I thought they would be semi-yummy. Probably shouldn't use a TV sitcom as a reason behind my logic. If you have not seen that episode from Friends it is hilarious. It is called "The One With Phoebe's Cookies" look it up.

Moral of the story: STICK TO MAMA'S RECIPE. THE END.

Dreams

Dreams are very strange. I hardly ever remember my dreams. On the rare occasion that I do remember my dreams, the details are often blurry and I remember specific parts and bits. Sometimes I wake up from my dreams and I have a smile on my face, I may be laughing, feel as if I may cry, or even feel somewhat confused. Today I woke up with a big smile on my face because my dream was about this sweet little face...

Some may call me pathetic, but I had a great day and it may have been attributed to this little fairytale dream I had last night. It was a very sweet innocent dream. The dream mainly consisted of him and I riding around in his nice car while drinking Diet Coke and talking for hours. In my dream Taylor also loved Diet Coke. I mean a manly man that loves Diet Coke as much as I do, really... what more could a girl ask for?

for kassandra

i am pretty sure that kassandra has said to me, "let's change our blog backgrounds" about 15 times in the last couple months. now she has just started saying, "danielle sign in to your blog so i can change your background for you" i know it has been like probably about a year since i have changed it, but the fact is i don't really care BUT since i want kassandra to be happy i did it. now don't expect it to be changed for another year. don't get mad.

and yes kassandra i say "don't get mad" a lot. don't get mad.

here are also the highlights from my last week of life...

1. i spent almost every night in the library this past week.

2. was on campus for over 10 hours on monday, tuesday, wednesday, & thursday.

3. spent 1 hour and 10 minutes waiting in the testing center line on thursday evening.

4. took my accounting test, walked out of the testing center and saw the phrase "Perfect Score" next to my student number.

5. went to lunch with holli, anna, & alyssa. we had a lovely time :)

6. cooked dinner for my grandparents with jen and hopefully made their day.

7. went and saw Dear John with kassandra on saturday evening and cried periodically for about a hour and got a huge headache. highly recommend it... the movie not the headache

8. went to church today and got a new calling: co-chair for the family history council

9. watched the super bowl. GO SAINTS!!!

10. used absolute horrible grammar and punctuation in this post. don't get mad.

life is crazy happy

Hi friends, family, everyone lovely that I love!

I have neglected my blog for a very long time. Christmas was wonderful. I miss California every day. Lots of pictures to post at a later time.

I am happy.

School is crazy but I am still happy even if I don't seem to be.

I mean... today I was watching Jeopardy! while making a study guide of course because school work is coming out of my ears, mouth, nose, everywhere... I think you get the picture.

... anyways back to Jeopardy! The category was "Brian Wilson songs" and... I got every answer correct. Yes! I know my Beach Boys! I am a true Californian! Hooray!

So... come on... what's not to be happy about???