Temple + family + three day weekend = happy Hannah

Whoever invented the 3-day weekend really should get a Nobel prize.  I had such. a stressful. week. before this perfectly-timed long weekend.  I'm starting to think my professors really get a kick out of planning all their major assignments to fall within the same weeks during the semester.  How rude of them.  After class on Friday, nothing sounded better to me than spending three days with my amazing Vegas fam.  Yep, it was down to Sin City for President's Day weekend and my oh my it was soooo relaxing.  Perfect in every way.  The main event was my cousin Danica receiving her temple endowment; so exciting!!  I think it was just last week that we were kids playing Barbies down in my grandparents' basement.  And now she's all garment-afied and whatnot.  My gosh.  She is just the greatest example to me and I was so happy to be with her and the family on that amazing day!

This is Sarah.
Yep. She's a keeper [:

       Sarah, my cousin Nate's fiancé, and I did baptisms while everyone else went through the temple with Dani.  I have to say we both were pretty jealous, but baptisms are always just grand.  Being hit on by the extremely cute conformation & baptizing guys didn't hurt either haha.  But shhh.  No flirting in the temple! [:

But all joking aside, being in the temple was the perfect remedy for a frazzled college student like me.  Nothing is more peaceful and assuring than the Spirit I feel there.  It was just plain wonderful.  Sarah and I finished about two hours before Dani's session got out, so we walked around the grounds and talked about how CRAZY it was that she would be walking out of those same doors, sealed for time and all eternity in just over two months.  I love her and can't wait for her to be a part of our family! It was so peaceful walking the grounds and taking pictures. The Las Vegas temple is absolutely beautiful, especially against the blue Nevada sky we got that day. A pretty easy subject, I have to say!

After Dani's endowment

   

Just look at those lovebirds [:

       The purpose of the rest of the weekend was to just relax and I had no problem with that whatsoever.  We went hot tubbing at the insanely fancy JW Marriott hotel downtown, vegged out on the sofa, me with my Humanities textbook and Sarah and Dani with bridal magazines (I gladly swapped my textbook for a magazine on more than one occasion; what girl wouldn't take the opportunity to drool over those divine wedding dresses and reception plans?!), ate some amazingly delicious home-cooking, stayed up late playing Word On The Street and busted our lungs laughing as we tried to think fast and spell even faster at one o'clock in the morning (It has been decided by us that 'vertical' is clearly an appropriate answer for "A word one would use when giving directions to someone;" I'm most definitely going to incorporate that into my reply next time someone asks me for directions on campus [: ), and just soaked up that family-ness!

 Check out my auto-detailing skills.

       My Grandma and Grandpa Conger had driven down from Seattle for the weekend as well, and I had such a fun time catching up with them.  Along with school, school, and more school, we actually got onto the topic of family history and I found out some pretty amazing things about my ancestors.  And I have decided I need to take road trip to Rexburg! I've always known about the John W. Hart building on BYU Idaho campus being named after my great-great-grandfather, but I never knew that he actually was part of the education board that saved Ricks College from going under during the Great Depression by proposing that students who couldn't pay tuition could work off the payments by doing service and housework for the staff, and that he was also the president of the Rigby stake for 25 years.

I kinda fell in love with some rich
dude's Lotus Elise at the Marriott.
I was fully prepared to beg if he
 came outside! 

I never knew that my Great Grandpa Gene taught accounting at that school.  I never knew that he and Grandma Katheryn (my middle namesake! [: ) had donated generous amounts of money to the school that would become BYU Idaho and that there's currently a scholarship awarded to multiple students each year in their name.  I never knew that the house my Great Grandma Katheryn lived in still stands in Rigby, and that the house my own grandpa grew up in is still alive and well in Rexburg, too.
       Talking about these people, my family members, who had done such amazing things made me so proud.  Not in a superior kind of way, but in that I am so thankful that they were so unselfish and generous to other people.  It makes me want to be better when I know I have that kind of background.  I'm quite inspired!  Family is such an amazing thing.  This summer I am most definitely road trippin to Idaho to find my family's old stompin grounds over there.
       All too soon the weekend was over and Monday night came around.  Time to head back to real life. After lots of hugs and some last minute pictures, we were on our way to Provo with a gorgeous Nevada sunset behind us.  I took advantage of the five-hour drive to catch up on the studying I put off.  The Iliad?  Piece o' cake.  A big fatty one that weighs ten pounds and puts you to sleep before you can say "Agamemnon." Oy.  But regardless of that, this 3-day weekend was absolutely perfect.  Family, temple, what more could a girl ask for?  Only eight weeks left till summer and the time when I finally get to be with the five people who I miss so so SO MUCH. [: It's gonna blow by in no time!

That was really long. I apologize. It was a good weekend.