I am indeed pointing my two thumbs at myself, probably not every time someone reads this but when I wrote it I was so it counts!
There's a chance I am super exhausted but can't sleep anymore and you guys are going to get the result of that. Being delusional!
But I need to get back in the habit of posting!
Here's the deal lately:
April 9th:
Ben and I find these amazing moustach glasses
April 27th -30th
My friend Easton invited me on a trip to Zion! Here was the rising at the campsite where we stayed on night one
the campfire
And... here's where we stayed on night 2... A really nice condo of some of the guys we went with!
Me and another girl shared this enormous, soft, comfy bed. It was awesome!
Part of a little Sunday walk we did
A hike called Hidden Canyon
Here's the top of Angel's Landing
And here's Easton filling his water bottle while a wild turkey runs around him...
May 1st:
Caitlan and I go to Salt Lake to see Alex Clare!
He was SO FUNNY! Just the cutest guy. One of my favorite quotes of the night: [after he finished and went off the stage everyone was yelling ENCORE ENCORE] "Oh, you guys don't have to ask, I was going to come back out!"
And then he came back and sang my favorite song "I Won't Let You Down"
May 5th:
Bryan is headed to Chicago for a few weeks so he took me on another motorcycle ride through the canyon. It was beautiful!
May 10th:
Easton and I hike "The Camel"
It was a random hike in Springville and ended up being pretty crazy because there's no actual trail! But the view was amazing, not that you can tell from a picture taken on my crappy phone...
May 11th:
The amazing and incredible Kjirstin Kinman came to town and we took off in her convertible and enjoyed some quality time with the wind blowing through our hair!
So it's finals week... and naturally I feel the need to blog
instead of study...
ANYway...
Another Lesson From Climbing Rocks
I was
climbing the other day and learned another great lesson from a great hobby.
First you
have to understand that climbing is great because climbing is a puzzle. You can
only use certain holds to get up and you have to use them right or it may end
up being unnecessarily hard! As you improve you get better at spotting your
next hold or where to put your feet and you spend less and less time
hesitating.
That's what
I was thinking about last time I was doing a climb. There are times where I get
to a place and then I know how to make next move but once I finish mapping it
out (which can take only half a second) I still hesitate. I don't even know
what I'm waiting for. I know I can get my foot up or my hand over because I've
done it a hundred times on other climbs but for some reason I just sit for
another few seconds and waste my energy gripping to a hold that's not gonna get
me any higher unless I push off of it and MOVE.
So now when
I get in that situation I think "Stopping thinking and MOVE!"
It's not
that I shouldn't think, that will also get me stuck but once I get it figured
out, check out my options and know where to go, it's just a waste of precious
energy to not move.
And then I
realized that that's how I live my life.
I plan SO
carefully. Every option (plausible or not) is found, assessed, anticipated. And
then I hesitate to move. What am I afraid of? Failing? I've failed many times
before and it's never killed me! The proverbial rope always catches and I swing
catching my breath from the latest life lesson learned the hard way.
So I guess
that's my new goal- stop hesitating. Give my decisions the proper amount of
thought and then
So Ben and I decided that it was getting warm enough to hike! And while there was a ton of snow and it got super annoying for the top stretch going up and coming down because every step you took potentially dropped you a foot or two, it was awesome!
I saw this on facebook today and thought it was interesting, especially in light of some big life decisions I've been mulling over lately. Then I wanted to put it somewhere but this seems to be the only place I can put things and not lose them forever!
I just randomly came across this today and wanted to share it.
It's funny because I don't feel like I really get marriage hungry or even baby hungry but when I see things like this is does make me hungry to raise children to become teenagers and then to become adults who think like this.
Every opportunity we take to think of someone else adds something so valuable to the world!
So a few especially awesome things happened in the past 24 hours.
I was at lunch with 2 awesome friends, Sydnee and Easton when Sydnee suddenly said "I have a surprise for you in my room!" So after some great conversation and catching up Sydnee and I went to her place and she gave me this!
The crazy thing is that not two days ago I was at a red light and thought "those little fake pet things were awesome. I wish I could find one."
And then in a mind reading act like I think to think has something to do with Karma. My virtual pet was born. True, I've killed it twice already but... then it came back... so it's like nothing happened.
Like real life right?
So then, this morning, I'm sitting in my room studying and Caitlan, my best friend/ roommate texts me
(from her room which is right next to mine, I can basically hear her texting me through the wall.)
Earlier, while she was out of the room I had put a check on her bed for utilities.
Her text inquired as to whether or not I was a ninja (because of my stealth in putting the check on her bed when she was only gone for a few minutes).
I informed her that yes, I am indeed a ninja and have been waiting for someone to acknowledge this great attribute of mine.
She then praised my achievement and informed me that she was currently duct taping her laundry rack if I would like to join her.
I was studying at the time, which I told her but then she told me that the duct tape was zebra stripped.
I wanted her to fully appreciate her choice in pattern and made sure to tell her that her laundry rack would truly be stable with the addition of the tape...
unless it was put in the middle of the serengeti.
Where it would surely be eaten by a lion.
She then came into my room to inform me that no lion could possibly eat this duct tape. It would get stuck in it's teeth.
I then challenged her to create a small zebra that had the capability of standing.
Only moments later she came back with this:
Please admire it's ability to stand, the mane and general zebra pattern.
So yesterday
I was talking to a friend about the way people live their religion, important
points that stick out to different people and how those points are expressed.
He will remain unnamed because that’s what he would want but when he reads this
I hope he sees how much his view changed mine.
I’ll get a
little personal here- after coming back from an 18 month mission for my church
I felt a little lost… for quite a while. Not in what I believed or felt or
thought, I knew those things but I didn’t know what to do about the fact that
one moment my life was happening for others and their progress and the next
moment it was happening for me and my own.
For anyone
who has ever served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, you may be nodding your head saying “Yeah, not a great feeling”.
To keep my
thoughts short I’ll just say that for some reason not having the medium of
another person between me and God was hard. Instead of saying
“I'm here to help this other person who wants
to learn about God”
it
became
“I am here
to learn about God”
and as a
human being, doing something for myself was less rewarding, less enticing and
maybe even frightening. This past year consisted of a lot of strange decisions
because of this and admittedly some mistakes and heartache. So
yesterday, as I’m talking to this friend, he starts telling me about his
favorite gospel topic-
Mercy.
And I’m like
“I already know about mercy.”
And he’s
like “Let’s talk about it a little.”
And then my
mind was blown.
He started
to explain to me what Brad Wilcox explains in the video I attached at the
bottom. The fact that things like mercy and grace are not earned. At first when
my friend said this I thought "That can't be right. We're here to work our
way back to God"
and as it
turns out Brother Wilcox spends 30 minutes pleading with me to see that that's
wrong.
I've done
some pretty dumb things in my life. And I think it's safe to say that I'm not
alone in that. Deep down I always believed that if I work hard, someday I can
be free of those unwise choices I've made and I can become the person I want to
be and therefore become the kind of person that can comfortably live with God. I'm partially right.
I can become
the person I want to be and therefore become the kind of person that can comfortably
live with God.
Now, the
part that I had wrong was the first part- if I work hard I can be free from my
unwise choices. As my friend explained to me- I am free from those unwise
choices. Jesus Christ made it possible for me to progress freely, without owing
a debt for what I've done.
I thought
that that was pretty beautiful and freeing but the next part is just as
incredible and just as beautiful. You still must progress in order to be joined
with God again after this life but you do it without the residual guilt of your
past. If you make a mistake: recognize it, make it right and let it go. Then go
on and become the kind of person that you want to be simply because you can and
want to- not because you owe it to anyone.
I think that
before yesterday I didn't see the difference. I thought that repaying My Savior
for my sins was a perfectly valiant way to go about life not realizing that
Christ does not see me as a debtor,
He sees me
as His sister.
At one point
in our conversation my friend emphasized that someday when I stand before God
to be judged there will once again be someone between me and God and it will be
Christ proclaiming that He has paid the price for me, willingly and without
hesitation and that His grace is sufficient.
Yesterday
the verse in the Book of Mormon about how
"Adam
fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:
27)
came alive
for me. We are here to have fun, explore, challenge ourselves and those around
us freely, doing our best to stay aligned with God so that our joy can continue
from this life to the next!
I
immediately came home and listened to this talk and was really touched by the
Spirit, logic, comparisons and pleadings for us to understand what 'grace' and
'mercy' really mean.
In my efforts to catch up on my blogging I have neglected to post about an Ed Sheeran concert I went to and then just recently went to a Passion Pit concert... so this post will be about concerts!
So first was Ed Sheeran at the beginning of February and it was awesome!
Ed was such a fun performer. He's just little guy and was bouncing all over stage it was hilarious.
He even snuck a little Macklemore in there and in the middle of one of his songs just stopped and was like "Got $20 in my pocket... this is [eff]ing awesome."
He was a very passionate and entertaining performer, in my opinion.
A 15 minute crazy and riveting version of "You Need Me, I Don't Need You" really blew my mind.
Also of note, these guys opened for him and they were hilarious!
We did have a little debate about if they were saying
"Down With the Crumpets",
"Down With the Trumpets"
"Down With the Strumpets"
or another one I can't remember... the accent was a little hard for us I guess but it is officially
"Get Down With the Trumpets"
So personally I was very pleased with this concert!
Not to mention the fact that Ben got me a ticket for my birthday
(This was months before we started dating so he didn't even HAVE to, what a sweetheart!)
and I love Ed Sheeran's music so it was pretty fantastic.
Then a little bit ago there was the Passion Pit concert! I have to admit after listening to Passion Pit for a while it all starts to sound the same to me but I thought "It's Passion Pit, they'll put on a good concert" and while it was fun, it wasn't my favorite concert ever. They just didn't really do anything different... didn't really have fun with it. Matt and Freakin' Kim had a good old time but Kim is completely outside her mind!
Seriously I don't know what her deal is but it was pretty obvious her brain has been fried.
The smile on her face was a little unnatural and unwavering... but Matt was cool and I love his voice.
And then Passion Pit came on and just kind of did their thing. I mean it was good and there were flashing lights and bubble machines and stuff but after a while it was like
"ok... I get that you can sing high... so if you're not gonna say anything funny I can just go home and listen to your cd... and blow some bubbles..."
but for the most part it was a good show.
Next on the agenda is Alex Clare who I am expecting big things from! May 1st at The Depot!
...is to online book shop! And sometimes I find some funny things! I think I'll start keeping track:
When I was looking for "Confessions" by St. Augustine I found that the BYU library has it! I also found that they are equipped to supply the student body with Usher's confessions as well...
And it's available!
When looking on Amazon.com for a tracking number these suggestions came up and I was interested to find that Buddha beat out God by half a star! Confucius sadly came in 3rd with 3 and a half stars :/
But setting the comparisons aside
can I just point out that the Bible got 4 out of 5 stars?
1) Wake
up at 6 and do your reading for your 8 o'clock class so you can fool the
professor into thinking you're smart.
2)
Successfully fool your professor into thinking you're smart.
3) Find
out that the test that was scheduled for 8 o'clock Thursday has now been made a
take-home test and isn't due until midnight on Thursday.
4) Hike
the 'Y' at lunch with your cute and funny boyfriend and philosophize about what
'success' really means.
5) Go to
your internship that has been overwhelming you and have the case worker that
you're following around tell you you are doing a really great job and he wants
you to stay on in the summer.
6) Go
climb with one of your best friends that just moved to town and finish a 5.11a
(even if you got stuck at one part).
7) Come
home and find out an assignment you thought was due tomorrow at 5 isn't due
until Friday at 5.
I have been super crappy at blogging this semester! But I really need to work on it because this is where I'm trying to keep fun things that I can look back on!
Well now I can blog something that happened a few months ago so I'm looking back on it as I'm blogging it but, hey, better late than never!
I apologize for the cookie dough we had obviously been eating but after coming across googly eyes in the store we really had no choice but to make our mouths into little people!
But i just took a test and while I do have another one tomorrow that will be harder I feel like I can celebrate the good grade I got on this one by letting myself blog a bit!
Today's blog will have another P!nk music video
I love P!nk
So when I found this new song she did with Nate Ruess I was all excited!
And then I watched it and was like "Oh man. They made a bad song" (Fantastic Mr. Fox reference)
And then I listened again because even if I thought some of the lyrics were kind of dumb,
it is catchy, and there's no denying that.
And then I did this thing that I've gotten in the habit of doing with love songs
where I pretend that they're not about love
(because yeah love songs are fun but there are so many of them and after a while,
dissecting every song to mean
"I love you and will do anything for you"
even in variation, gets pretty boring.).
So go ahead and listen once just for the experience:
Catchy but not really anything new, right?
Now I'll give you my new interpretation of it and maybe you can sympathize with the fact that I've listened to it at least 1000 times in the past 24 hours.
Yeah, I'm listening to it right now.
Just Give Me a Reason- according to Jessie Wright
So we all go though hard times, right? Some people may be nodding a little more furiously than others but we all do, to some degree. I picture this song is more for the people who have hit an 8 or 9 on the wow-that-was-so-hard-I-think-a-part-of-my-soul-just-broke-off-and-floated-away-o-meter. Some people will admit that they have not yet experienced something on that end of the scale but others know what I'm talking about and the "not romantic" interpretation of this song is for you!
So instead of P!nk and Nate singing to each other (She could snap him in half anyway, no matter how awesome he is : / although you may notice that he's not the guy she's making out with in the pool...) I imagine it as one person singing with their sanity. I use myself as an example in parts because I have had up close and personal, front row seats to my own experiences but I'm sure this generalizes.
Here are the lyrics, I'll just break them down (My thoughts will be in p!nk):
Right from the start
You were a thief
You stole my heart
And I your willing victim
I let you see the parts of me
That weren't all that pretty
And with every touch you fixed them
Now you've been talking in your sleep oh oh
Things you never say to me oh oh
Tell me that you've had enough
Of our love, our love
So I love logic, I love feeling like I know what's going on, that I'm making an educated decision about things and that I have good judgement about something. In a way this can be defined as being "addicted to my sanity". I get a rush from being sane.
As a kid and in high school people always used to tell me that I have such a good head on my shoulders and that I had this gift for thinking clearly. My sanity and I became very close friends, when I struggled my sanity could fix it because together we could find logic and reason. (I guess this would be during times of lower level difficulty)
But during those really intense times sanity begins to betray us as a particularly difficult "growing experience" begins. In my experience it can begin telling me things I don't understand or want to hear because as most people know, when we pass about a 7 on our difficulty meter you begin to disagree with logic, reason and belief (if you don't lose them all together).
Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It's in the stars
It's been written in the scars on our hearts
We're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
And then we reach this point (generally near the end) where we've just about overcome our difficulty and things are hard but it's more of a residual effect. We feel like we're past it enough to at least try to reason with reason again and try to learn to work with our sanity! We can turn to it and say "hey, just give me a reason to try with you again, just a little one's enough!" We may be almost certain that our relationship was broken (even for years at a time) but at this point we have enough clarity and can now see that it's just bent and we can forgive each other learn to work together again.
I'm sorry I don't understand
Where all of this is coming from
I thought that we were fine
(Oh we had everything)
Your head is running wild again
My dear we still have everythin'
And it's all in your mind
(Yeah but this is happenin')
You've been havin' real bad dreams oh oh
You used to lie so close to me oh oh
There's nothing more than empty sheets
Between our love, our love
Oh our love, our love
Is this not exactly the argument we have in our heads with ourselves often? There's a part of us saying "hey, everything's fine, I don't even know why you're freaking out" and you (a small voice in the background) are saying "everything was fine! Why are things changing?! And yeah, things may SEEM ok but THIS is still happening!" and slowly but surely you and your sanity drift apart.
Oh tear ducts and rust
I'll fix it for us
We're collecting dust
But our love's enough
You're holding it in
You're pouring a drink
No nothing is as bad as it seems
We'll come clean
Here are all the coping mechanisms we try to fill that void with (where our sanity used to be)! We cry until we can't cry anymore and just rust up, we think we can fix everything by ourselves and the relationship between us and our sanity collects dust as we abandon it. We hold things in and turn to whatever we need to to feel grounded, things we never thought we would. But nothing is as bad as it seems or at least it won't be that bad forever because eventually we come clean and ask for even the littlest bit of hope at that friendship with our sane mind to be straightened out.
Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
It's in the stars
It's been written in the scars on our hearts
We're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again
And eventually it comes. That reason to see that we're not permanently severed from our sanity but that the relationship has just been bent up. We're destined to work well together! It's been written in the scars on our hearts (yes, what I find to be the dumbest lyric in the song) but while i don't believe in soul mates or that we are destined to find a certain person to love, I do believe that we are destined to figure ourselves out. It's our whole reason for being here! Become friends with ourselves, learn to love ourselves. THAT is something that I know is everyone is destined to discover.
First work is still going really well. Working on-call is really annoying sometimes but it feels good to go to work and feel like you're on the way to what you want to be. The kids are so funny, though troubled and it's fun to build those relationships. People are so cool and have so many different levels and dimensions and by going and working with troubled youth I get to hear and see the whole spectrum of human emotion.
AND THEN I had a training for a week that took me out of school and my internship for work where I was taught how to take down a resident, should the need arise. It was 40 hours of being thrown around and throwing people around and in the end I was officially certified! I got a certificate and everything!
Then there's the internship: I get to go out with a case worker and meet with the kids in their homes, group homes or wherever they are placed, see how they're doing and talk over options for them in the future. It's amazing the millions of different things that go into youth making something of themselves. And I get to see it! It's been great to learn about what options are available to them. It's really helping me figure out what I what to do in the future.
And then there's school. Which sometimes I forget I'm doing because everything else pulls me away! but thus far I'm doing well so that's good since I'm jussaboutdone!
Well... this was going to turn into an actually interesting post but I am TIRED!
So an update of the actually fun things I've been doing will come soon!
So about a week before Christmas I tell my dad that this t-shirt would be an awesome birthday idea for me since I wanted it real bad. I figured Christmas was coming up too soon so just submitted it as a birthday suggestion and then Christmas morning I wake up to find that Santa has dropped it off for me! I was so excited!
Here is why I am so excited about this t-shirt: It has the lyrics of a song on it by Brandi Carlile who is one of the most talented musical artists currently walking the planet. The song was inspired by a friend of Brandi's who went through an addiction and recovered. At the concert she actually introduced the song as one that she hoped would inspired juvenile delinquents to aim for a better future and that falling down does not mean staying down.
As this goes along directly with my line of work I was basically smitten by her awesomeness. So I think I'll attach a link so that the joy can be consumed by the ears of all of my loved ones:
Ok so first Ben and I were hanging out and we were like "We're hungry. Let's make dinnner". But Ben is a vegetarian. I'm thinking about devoting a whole post to it. We'll see.
But anyway, I was like "what should we make?!" and Ben was all "Squash, peppers, onions and a little garlic"
And I was like- that sounds delicious!
But I need meat...
And this is what happened. Veggies and a Wendy's single YUM!
Ben also made sweet potatoes with Rosemary! This one looked happy and Asian >)
And then Ben ate him! He was a little less happy about that...
Also, as was mentioned in a previous post, I have a fear of whales. In order to help alleviate the fear, Ben found Steve (the tiny killer whale) and said (we'll find bigger and bigger ones until you get up to a real whale and then you won't be afraid! I said that was a bad idea because I don't want to be around whales at all but then when we at the dollar store yesterday we found this blue guy. Whale number 2. A little bit bigger than Steve. I've named him "That Whale Thing" (I just called it that one time and Ben decided it should be so). :( We'll see how this whole experiment works out...
So I was driving to a friend's place yesterday and saw a Christmas tree and thought "Oh yeah, it's almost Christma.... wait" and then I realized it's not almost Christmas. It's actually the middle of January!
Life has been crazy.
For example. On Christmas day I worked the evening shift at work. And then I worked every day after that for the next 7 days. By the end I was pretty sure I was dead.
But luckily I missed the sickness going around!
Ok, I'm just going to look back through pictures recently taken and do a little catch up!
So these are in no particular order, just how they uploaded:
So I went up to Farmington for a night and hung out with my grandma! She is know to the little kids in her neighborhood as "Grandma Puppies" because of Zeus and Pheobe. They are hilarious and love to cuddle. And Zeus likes to sit on Pheobe's head so that's always hilarious!
We got some Chinese food! What's funny though is that this is a picture of our food AFTER having finished. The portions were HUGE!
New Year's Eve was spent with me experiencing this Just Dance game for the first time and it was awesome! Some personal favorites were "Maneater" and some Ricky Martin song that made you do things like pretend to ride a horse and sword fight. It was awesome!
Then there was the drive to Idaho that was barren but pretty... kind of.
Brynlee and McKinley in matching PJs!
Our family tried to play Christmas Pictionary. You were supposed to use common Christmas phrases but Jeff started doing things like "Santa Claus likes ____" and putting the most mundane object possible (and then sucking at drawing it). As you can see Jake caught right on. We don't actually know if Santa likes pudding but at least it's within the realm of Christmas food. My favorite was Jeff putting "Santa said ho ho ho" and not telling us we got it right until we made sure to have "says" in the past tense. This is my family.
Syd and i tried some new stuff with her make up! Success! And I just love this winking picture :)
Homemade cake totally from scratch! Good thing Ben knows how to cook and bake...
One night Ben was like "I have your birthday present but I think I need to give it to you early." and so he pulls these out. Tickets to a concert that I really want to go to but wasn't sure if I should spend the money on! I was so happy I was speechless! Seriously, I didn't talk for like 5 minutes. We're going to Ed Sheeran!!!!!
I went up to Salt Lake to hang out with Pappity and we went to Les Mis. Ummmmmm stunning. Anne Hathaway and I patched up our friendship (which was going through a rocky period of lack of respect for her) when she flawlessly sang "I Dreamed a Dream" in one take.
And then Caitlan and I had a joint birthday party! This was not part of it but it was at Zurchers so Caitlan had to put it on her head.
Dan, Rich, Caitlan, Me, Loren, Amanda and Ben And here is a little snap shot from the party! The theme was 1920s. It was perfect and went awesomely!
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