6 Months

I can't believe I've been married to the most wonderful man alive for 6 whole months! The time has flown and I have loved every day!

In other news:

I just got a job as a music theory tutor at Chandler Gilbert Community College! Hopefully people will start signing up and I can start helping them!

We should also be closing on our house no later than a week and a half, so the next couple weeks should be crazy, busy, and a blast!

I love my life and I LOVE MY HUSBAND! Thanks to everyone who has supported us!

He's Awesome!

So this is a picture of Craig and I the night before I left.

STAR Recital, Master Class, and Ear Training, but probably not in that order.

So I'll start with masterclass. I step on to the stage: "Hi, my name is Rayla and this is my accompanist Ashley...." I can't believe I forgot my accompanist's last name on stage during a performance. She reminds me of her name and I continue, "and we will be performing Standchen by Franz Schubert." I nod, the accompaniment starts, I open my mouth and nothing comes out but nerves. I sound awful. Well, the show must go on, and on it went, and on, and on, and on. It never got any better. My nervousness made me more nervous and it just kept getting worse until the song finally was over and I got to stand on the stage in tears and wait for the class's comments. Brother Linford comes to the stage, hands me his handkerchief, and calls on a couple people for comments. "Wait," he stops them and turns to me, "Would you explain to us how you think your performance went." I explain that I was very nervous and pretty sure the whole thing was awful. "That's what I thought," he said, "Well, not that you have that out of your system and you've had a good cry, how about trying that first line again." I sing the first line and he tells me that I've got a Harley and my problem is that I'm cruising along on my Harley until I get to the tiniest hill at which point I get off the Harley and walk it over the hill. He has me try putting more "gas" into it to get over the "hill. After a couple times doing that, we are out of time and he asks me to sing for next week's class.


So immediately after that I am scheduled to sing in the STAR Recital (STudent Afternoon Recital). I'm a bit of a wreck and I'm not really sure I can even talk to tell Sister Ashby that I can't sing in the recital, let alone sing. I decide to go through it a couple of times with my accompanist and see how things go. George and Dan are still in the room and they give me a few pointers on how to calm my nerves. I sing it again and it's still not fantastic, but it's better than before so I decide to just have a little faith and go out and perform. I get out there and act as cam as I can. I sing and it is still a rocky performance, but it was WAY better than masterclass, so I feel really grateful for how well it went. I'm holding back tears, but really relieved that it is finally over.


On a happier note, I got my Ear Training Exam back this morning and I only missed three point. One was because I mislabeled a chord as a ii6 instead of a ii65. The other two were because I notated a couple of rhythms with ties instead of as a dotted note, which I didn't know that we had to do for this exam, so I am really happy with the results and I feel like I am doing really well in that class. I also got a 96% on my oral German diction exam and an 89.5% on the written exam, so that is really great too. I hope all of you at home are doing well, and I hope I can hear back from some of you siblings sometime soon. Have a Terrific Tuesday!

The Good News

The good news is that yesterday I got my Theory 2 test back with an A. The better news is that only one for the four points I missed was for mislableing a chord(I labeld a v major "V" instead of minor "v"); the rest I missed were because I didn't know what the names of the I6 4 functions were. I'm not sure where I missed that last year, but I talked to the TA after class and now I know that I could get 100% if I ever had to take that test again. I also took my German Diction midterm yesterday and my second Ear Training exam this morning, and I feel like I did well on both of them.

In other news, as all of you probably know, last Saturday was SAD(Singles Awareness Day) aka. Valentines Day. Katie and I went apartment shopping in the afternoon and Khand helped us get Emily ready for the Sweetheart's Ball that night. So here I will put some long requestd pictues of my roomates.

While I'm posting pictures, here are some really cute ones of them warming thier feet in the tub after the walk home from church.

The murder mystery dinner on Friday went really well, but I feel bad about not getting to know my date better. I think murder mysteries are better reserved for people I actually know, it's hard to get to know someone when both of you are acting like someone else. Well, that's my life in a nutshell for now.

On Tuesday I was sitting in Book of Mormon class behind some guy wearing way too much cologne. Then my nasal passage and throat were both feeling really irritated(you know the feeling), and I was having a hard time singing in my later classes. I was still having a hard time 11 hours later at voice lessons and I was a little concerned that the cologne was still bothering me this much later in the day. I went to bed that night hoping the irritation would be gone when I woke up. It wasn't. When I woke up, not only was my throat still raw, but my nose was stuffed and I just felt gross and foggy headed. So I took some DayQuil and then went to classes, but it didn't really do anything for me. So since I was dead tired and feeling gross I went home and went to sleep around five thirty. Katie(my wonderful roommate) woke me at 8:30 and asked me if I was still wanting to be asleep or if I wanted to gt any homework done. I got up and ate dinner and decided that I still wasn't thinking clearly enough to get anything useful done with my homework, so I was going to go back to sleep for just a little longer. Once again, at midnight, Katie woke me and asked me if I really wanted to sleep on the couch all night or if I was coming to bed. I did have class the next morning, so I finished my reading for Book of Mormon and went to bed around 12:30.

So I got up this morning having slept for about 11 of the past 24 hours, and I felt worse than I had the morning before. The pressure in my head is killing me and I can't hear anything because the pressure is affecting my ears too. So I'm in ear training and all of these music classes today and feeling pretty useless, but other than that, life is fantastic!

I'm going to Salt Lake tomorrow for David's farewell, and I'm going to see Kelsey and hopefully Sydnee in Provo on Saturday. Emily and Sean are also coming to Laura's house with me and we're going to go see her at Maggie Moo's where she works.

In other exciting news: the murder mystery came in the mail yesterday! A week from today,no, tomorrow on Friday the thirteenth of February, Perkins 112 and some friends are hosting a murder mystery dinner. There will be 7 couples, so we're in for quite a crowd. I am really excited! Can you tell?

I'm a Lucky Girl

So I just thought I should let you all know that I absolutely LOVE Idaho. The other day I was walking to class at approximately 6:47 AM and there was this very light powdery mist floating through the air(aka weird Idaho snow). Somehow the lighting made it look like there was glitter falling through the sky and lightly dusting the ground. Here I was walking through this world of diamonds in my long, wool, La ReDoute coat and I just couldn't help but grin at how wonderful my life is. Sure things are crazy with my class schedule and everything, but really, I couldn't be anywhere better and I couldn't be doing anything better with my life. Even though things get pretty crazy sometimes, everything feels perfect. I can definitely feel the Lord's hand in my life and I am grateful for the cold, the craziness, the snow, and all the other tender mercies the Lord blesses me with every day.

Speaking of tender mercies, I experienced a miracle today. I am the ward choir director and today was our first practice. There was a HUGE turn out and about a third were men. There were TEN of them! The choir sounds amazing and they are going to do amazingly without me next week when they sing in ward conference. I'll be in Salt Lake with Emily at David's farewell, so I'm a little bummed, but they will still do great and there will be lots of opportunities to sing in sacrament meeting.

Finally

I finally have a moment to breathe, so here is my update. So I am living here in Virginia H. Perkins Hall at Brigham Young University-Idaho. I moved in on Thursday, Sept 4th and I am just starting to settle in. These are some pictures my mom took of moving. The first is my bed and all of the stuff that I brought with me.












This one is the lovely living room.














This one is the spacious kitchen.

Looking at what I had in the back of my car, I thought I had a lot of stuff, but I found out that I actually packed very light. Our dorm has to be just about the emptiest one that I have seen. But, we have rearranged the furniture, so in spite of our lack of decorations, the dorm is looking way better then it did before. I'll post more pictures and info on roommates and that stuff later. (PS, I have amazing roommates)

In other news, I made Women's Choir. Woohoo!

I was a little worried because I've been a bit hoarse for the past few days, so I'm very grateful that I made it.

Hope all of you at home are doing great!