Ho Ho Ho and stuff

Merry Christmas!

And Merry Christmas Eve! Literally my favorite day of the year. Archer Christmas Eve's are THE BEST with these people

We miss Liz a lot this year, those people in Williamsburg, VA are lucky to have her. But we are excited to have the Millers join the extravaganza...Thanksgiving AND Christmas together?! perfection.

We are preparing ourselves for

shrimp

smoked oysters (ew...have to eat one every year. tradition, tradition)

sausage and cheese and crackers

rolls

flank steak

baked potatoes

salad

fruit salad

peppermint marshmallow brownies

playing Don't Eat Pete

wearing mom sweaters and Christmas pins

singing The Twelve Days of Christmas

hearing the Father's bear their testimonies

singing Christmas songs around the piano

driving around the neighborhood to see the luminarias

singing Happy Birthday to Jesus

sleeping in the basement with the sibs

but most importantly, celebrating the birth and life of our Savior

I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ and His life and example. He truly is the Savior of the World, our Redeemer, our Advocate with the Father. I love Him and I know He lives.

have a very merry christmas

escuela

I never liked school growing up. In fact, I kind of hated it. I would kick and thrash in my bed and then stomp around my room in the morning just to show my mom how much I did not want to go to school. I was a little out of control. I like learning, but there is just something about school that doesn't jive with me.

That's why I protested becoming a teacher for so long.

Going into college I was set on majoring in dance education. That didn't work out so well, but it took me a year of anxiety and frustration to accept that dance wasn't the right path for me--I was fighting to keep dance my future because that is what I had always planned. I started exploring my options...political science, international relations, nutrition, english, and finally decided on Geography with a minor in International Development. I was going to learn about the world and how to save it. Elementary Education was always prodding me, but I constantly ignored it, because if I hated school so much growing up, why would I want to make it my career?!

Throughout all of this time of searching, no matter what I decided upon I always felt like something was missing. I thought it was just that I missed dance, so I took more dance classes. I thought it was that I missed singing all the time, so I took voice lessons. I thought it was that I missed being super busy, so I joined a club and started searching for jobs or plays to try out for. None of those things filled the gap though...I couldn't figure out what was missing in my life.

In Uganda we were busy with lots of projects, builidng stoves, trying to set up outreaches with HIV/AIDS positive youth, trying to make home visits work, going to lots of meetings...we always had a lot going on. But Stacey, Liz and I were talking one day and we all felt like we needed to do something with a school or a children's home, we felt like something was missing. We looked in our handbook at last year's contacts to see if there were any schools or orphanages they worked with that we had not contacted yet. We found one--Seya Primary School and a connected children's home under the care of Pastor Josiah. We didn't have a phone number, just the name of the school so we jumped on boda's and hoped that they knew where to take us. When we got to the children's home they knew exactly who we were and told us that they had been trying to contact us for a few weeks but did not have the right phone number. They were so excited and so welcoming, and we started teaching at Seya the next week.

We all fell in love. Definitely my favorite place in Uganda. Such incredible people and amazing kids.

When I got home, I knew what I needed to do. I knew what was missing in my life. Teaching. I had ignored it long enough. I had finally taught and realized how much I loved it and how much I wanted to work with kids. It was so much fun and so rewarding and soo hilarious. And bonus point: education is needed everywhere in the world. In fact, education is the solution to many of the worlds problems. Educate your children and you will have a more productive generation, ending a cycle of poverty.

So I'm going to be a teacher. That something missing feeling is gone! You can call me Miss Aly. or Miss Archer. I'm going to be that teacher that makes kids love going to school. I'm SO excited to finally start my classes next semester, this last semester was rough trying to get myself to do anything. Generals and pre-reqs are not my favorite.

On Saturday I got to watch the 2 boys that I nannied two summers ago. The 6 year old told me that he learned how to play a new song on the piano: "Road to Joy". I asked him if he meant "Ode to Joy" and he insisted for several minutes that no, it was indeed "Road to Joy". He didn't believe me that it wasn't until he saw the name of the song in his piano book. It was hilarious. Kids are so funny and I can't wait to work with them...hopefully teaching will be my Road to Joy

beef time

last night we had an archer cousin party and played a wild game of catch phrase. we learned some really valuable lessons:

no one knows what lurid means but you sound really smart if you use it in a sentence. so use it as much as possible.

Saskatchewan is a province in Canada, not a species of humans like Neanderthals

there are easier ways of describing gum than saying "something you chew, but not tobacco" marijuana? no, gum

no one knows what inky means either. probably used as "it was an inky night"

beef time does not exist. prime time does.

when you are guessing "glue" and the catch phrase holder is shouting NO! NOO! IT'S NOT GLUE! you should probably stop guessing "glue"

hoot'nanny.

I love my extended family. They are so hilarious and so fun to be around. We had dinner with my mom's side tonight and they are also so so great. Naturally, we played a little catch phrase with them too. And Tanner may have drooled on innocent Kaydee's head from the second floor.

15 more days until my whole family is together for Christmas in Colorado. the plan of happiness makes me happy because I get to be with my family forever

we shout for the advice, what shall we do?

Yesterday was World AIDS Day. And I actually knew about it, without my public health sister or brother-in-law telling me. I meant to post this yesterday but got distracted, but better late than never.

In Uganda it was so crazy to me that I knew people with AIDS. You always hear about it but it never hit me how huge of a tragedy it is until I met some really amazing people who have the virus. I remember meeting with the HIV/AIDS positive group, called Live Positively, and being so incredibly inspired by them. Every single person in the group has HIV or AIDS, and their objective is to give support to each other, spread awareness about the virus, and teach people that they can still live positive, fulfilling lives even if they are HIV positive. They were so optimistic, so grateful for everyday they have to live, and so welcoming of new people. In Africa there is a stigma attached to AIDS, that if you have it you are a bad, wicked person. But that is so wrong. Many people are innocent victims of this disease--who got it from an unfaithful partner, or from mother-to-child-transmission.

In my International Health class we were learning about AIDS and our teacher asked if we thought AIDS was really the tragedy that it is talked up to be. One girl said it wasn't because the disease is preventable, and that typhoid is more of a tragedy because you can get it just from people coughing near you. But I disagree. I think that makes it more of a tragedy. AIDS is so preventable, but yet millions of people are still infected and millions are dying.

This summer in Uganda we had an AIDS Extravaganza...or rather a Mega-Youth Festival as they called it. Sidenote, Kristie gave me the idea..she's a legend. We wanted to remove the stigma of AIDS, to inspire and show the people of Lugazi that they need to help each other fight this disease. It was a huge success. We had tons of schools perform, women's group's performed, and even the HIV/AIDS group I talked about earlier did a dance to "We're All In This Together" with some of our volunteers. Not gonna lie, I got emotional watching it haha. It was so great. We had free HIV testing and then 3 of us got to tell people their results and do counseling with them. I even got tested...and I'm negative. It was an amazing experience to talk to the people individually and ask them how they would feel if they found out they were HIV positive. Or if their test came out negative, what they would do to keep it negative. They were all SO relieved and SO happy when we told them their results were negative. And some of these were 12 and 13 year olds. I definitely was not concerned with getting infected with HIV when I was 12. I probably didn't even know what it was.

My dad told me last week that one of his best friends from high school died of AIDS a few years ago. That seriously blows my mind. You never hear of that happening in the US these days. AIDS is such a devastating disease and I wish we could just make people change their behavior so that slowly, this disease could start going away.

Anyways, I wanted to share a video from Uganda. These girls are all orphans whose parents died of AIDS. There are more parts to the song, where they describe the disease and the symptoms and act it out a little bit, this is just the chorus. The first time they sang this song for us the two girls on the right started crying and could not finish the song. It was heartbreaking.

I've been singing this the past two days. And everyday in Uganda after we heard it, it gets stuck in your head



So, Happy World AIDS Day. Maybe this year they will discover a vaccine to combat AIDS

i should be studying

I've been sick for the past 3 days so I have been watching a lot of Arrested Development, recommendation by liz setterberg. Hilarious. The family is so dysfunctional but it makes for a great laugh. Tobias gets me everytime, and Gob. If you haven't seen it, watch season 1 on Hulu...you'll love it.

Watching it has made me grateful for my family, though. Grateful that we can be hilarious without being dysfunctional. At least I think they are all hilarious...but I'm easily amused. Let me prove the hilarity to you:
Paul- the other day I was skyping with kristie-na and my dad suddenly appeared in the background, his head horizontal to the ground, staring at me. Then he grabbed the skype mic and put it right up to his mouth, kind of like a little kid using a microphone for the first time. It was hilarious

Carol- Mom always does little funny things, but the one that still kills me happened when I was a Senior in high school. I was the only child still at home, so mom and I spent a lot of time together, and ate a lot of salads together. One night I asked her for the Wasabi dressing and she responded with "Wassuup, b?!" kinda like "wasabi". It was hilarious

Doug- On Halloween Doug and Dana gutted a pumpkin and carved two holes in it. They placed their 11 month old son Wesley in the pumpkin with his little legs poking out of the holes. They bribed him to stay in the pumpkin by feeding him marshmallows. Sara and Eli showed me their skype sesh from that night, and it was hilarious.

Dana- The other day when I went to Sara and Eli's house, Sara was skyping with Dana (do you think our family likes skype?). Sara left the room so I was talking to Dana, and all of the sudden her face was surrounded by beautiful hearts and glitter, twinkling stars, fish, and roller coasters. She was playing around with the video settings, and without warning had beautiful frames around her beautiful face. It was hilarious

Wesley- Wesley is the sweetest kid with the cutest smile. In August the whole fam was together for a few days and the baby boys got to play together and we all got to interact with them. Sara discovered that whenever she made this obnoxious, high-pitched sound, Wesley would stop whatever he was doing, put his shoulder up to his ear, and crack THE biggest dimpley smile. We made him do it all weekend long. It was hilarious.

Andy- Andy man loves to do the football shuffle, arms out and on his toes. He will always unexpectedly block you from passing by doing his little shuffle, or head-butting you. Biting is also a personal favorite of his. He always says "GET TO THE CHOPPA" in his best Arnold voice, and Doug reaaaally loves it when he does. Its hilarious

Paige- Paige has some really funny one liners. For example, when Kristie and I visited them in Georgia in August we went to a park that had a lot of little baby frogs. She was asking Andy if frogs were crustaceans, but instead asked "are frogs Croatian?" Andy responded with "no, I think they're Serbian." It was hilarious
Eli- Eli always does random things that make me laugh. The other day I was with Sara and Tanner at their house and Eli thought we were at the park. So when I got on g-chat and he started talking to me, he asked how my new iPhone was. I didn't understand, but he explained to me that obviously I must have been using my new iPhone's wifi at the park since I was online. It was hilarious.

Sara- Sara always makes us laugh in our family. A few weeks ago there was a huge spider in their house and she thought it was a black widow, so she obviously couldn't kill it herself (in case she hit it and missed and it landed on Tanner). She called the home teachers to come kill it, but he sent his wife instead who informed her that it was not actually a black widow and killed it by merely spraying insecticide stuff on it--no whacking involved. I was not there when it happened, but Sara wrote the family a play-by-play of the incident, and it was hilarious.

Tanner- Tanman is a funny kid. And smart too. He LOVES playing with the buttons on my phone because they make a cool clicky sound. A few days ago he was playing with my phone and when I took it back, he had changed the background on my phone to a picture of him I had in my phone's photo album, and saved a Quick Text draft to my mom that said "Wanna meet up?" It was hilarious.Tan was sick on Halloween and this is what he looked like trick-or-treating at the mall. Way sad, I know. But way funny

Kristie- Krispy poo is very witty. Our family always sends video messages to each other, and on Halloween the videos were comin strong of the little guys' first Halloween. I decided to join the video fun and sent a video of my roommates and I driving to Zumba. Kristie also joined in, and sent a picture of our cat Ashley with the caption "My totally cool cat costume. I look just like ashley" It was hilarious.

And that is why laughing is my favorite. I have these crazy people around to make me laugh, and make me laugh hard. No one makes me laugh harder than my family...and when I start I can't stop. I can't wait for Christmas when we will ALL be together again and I will have even more hilarious stories



ohh fatherhaha this one makes me laugh everytime I see it

I love them...to eternity and BEYOND!

gleek

i'm obsessed

kaleidoscopes

I was given a book (no, more like a pamphlet) when I graduated called As A Man Thinketh from a family in my ward. I thought it was thoughtful, but definitely not my type of reading so I put it in a box and forgot about it. Over Christmas Break I was going through my boxes of old stuff and I found the pamphlet/mini book I was given two years earlier. Being the older and wiser person that I am, I decided to bring it back to school with me. Well, I didn't actually read it until last week when I got freaked out about going to Uganda and having no wisdom to impart to the people there. Naturally, I turned to a smart sounding book for my source of wisdom, As A Man Thinketh. Roommate aka bod laughed at me for my attempts, mostly because I decided to gain wisdom at 2 am. Then the next day in church someone randomly brought it up in sunday school, so random. BUT I really have learned a lot from this little book, there are some really really great thoughts in it...my favorite so far is this one:

The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts (pg 37)

Isn't that AWESOME? I LOVE it. The book is all about how your thoughts affect and create your circumstances and the importance of perspective and a good attitude. I love the idea that you have the ability to adjust your own kaleidoscope of the world. If you want the world to be gentle and pleasent, gentle and pleasant thoughts have to turn your kaleidoscope.

I could quote so many parts of the book, but I will just add one more that relates to the above mentioned attitude/perspective chat. "A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances..."

We choose our thoughts to shape our circumstances...the world is our kaleidoscope and we can always make it beautiful under our control

LF 26

These are the weirdies I put up with. We are roommates. We live together...in Lafayette 26 hence the name of this post. We eat together...sometimes. We laugh together...lots. We facebook together. We take pictures together. We talk together. We put up maps together. We eat cake together. We make waffles together. We clean together on occasion. We cry together when we watch Charly and Hotel Rwanda. We study together. Basically we are together a lot. They are great and I love them a lot. BE MY FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am sitting here wanting bod to teach me

Bod is a great teacher. Who knew?! But really, she has taught me so much. Exhibit A: you can drink milk even if you do not like it. Exhibit B: you can paint your nails while you read. Exhibit C: you can point your moral compass north and still have fun. Exhibit D: You can get on your bed in creative ways such as putting one leg up...now that is novel. Exhibit E: You can talk in your sleep and sometimes remember it. Exhibit F: You can kindly decline an invitation to do something...and sometimes they don't even realize it is a NEGATIVE ghostrider. Exhibit G: You can put up with a roommate who uses a certain printer everyday and still be her friend (shout out to bod--LOVE YA THANKS GIRL MMM) Exhibit H: You can read a book in two days and then remember every single detail, even write the deets on a white board. Exhibit I: You can be funny AND normal...who knew? Exhibit J: You can be artistic but not weirdie. Exhibit K: BIG K FOREVER rip kenny g Exhibit L: You can forgive a lame roommate for being lame one semester and still be her friend even if she is lame. Exhibit M: You can wear cute aprons but not be an obsessive betty crocker cooker. Exhibit N: NO