One of those Big Decisions

Why hello everyone! After my rather long leave of absence I'm back! There is so much to catch up on, but that will have to wait for another day. Life is busier than ever. At times I look back on my previous semesters and wonder what I did with myself. I guess the great thing about life is that we keep moving forward and continue to learn.

The biggest thing that has happened recently is that I got engaged!! Remember that missionary I mentioned quite some time ago? Well, he has been home for three months now and we are getting married!

I've known for quite some time that he would be the one. We went ring shopping about a month ago. At first I thought I wanted to pick a general style and then have him surprise me with the final product, but as we looked I realized that I was pickier than I thought I would be. But don't you even worry! I found the perfect ring for me.

We went to several stores. We first looked at stores up at City Creek. We even went in to Tiffany's where I tried on a $5,000 ring. That was a little stressful. Our favorite place there was Kay's. Granted there are only two ring stores up at City Creek but still. We then made our way over to the University Mall. We were not overly impressed with any stores there.

The last place we went to was Wilson's in Provo. Right when we walked in I knew I was going to like this store best of all. The atmosphere was so easy going and friendly. For any of you looking at rings I highly suggest stopping in at Wilson's! Their employees aren't paid on commission so it doesn't matter to them whether or not you buy a ring from them. But I would honestly be surprised if you couldn't find something to your liking!

Anyway, I told Jesse that I didn't want to be there when he bought it. So after I found the one I loved I was pretty much in the dark. I knew that he was eager to get it as soon as possible, so for awhile there I was pretty consistently on my toes. I had a suspicion that it would happen this past Sunday. On Tuesday he asked me if I wanted to go with him to a homecoming of one of his missions companions and then drive out to look at the Oquirrh Mountain temple with him. This is the temple we had been talking about getting married in and we wanted to see if we really liked it. I don't feel like we usually plan things so far in advance, so I was a little bit suspicious. I speculated about it with a few of my girlfriends, but didn't give too much thought to it. The closer Sunday got the more excited I began to be.

Sunday morning came and we went to the homecoming. We headed back to catch the last hour of Jesse's ward where I went to Relief Society with his mom. She introduced me as her future daughter-in-law. This gave me hope that Jesse would be asking me to marry him soon. Not too long after church we decided to drive out to see the Temple. Jesse went to tell his parents we were leaving and his dad asked where we were going. I figured that he would know if Jesse had planned to propose so this made me think that it wouldn't happen that day. On the drive up Jesse told me that his bishop had asked if there was anything official between us yet. Jesse replied by saying that we were still waiting on the ring. My heart sunk just a little when I heard that, but I was still looking forward to walking around the Temple.

As we were driving up I almost had myself convinced that maybe there was still a chance. We got to the Temple, got out, and began to walk around. We made about halfway and we were talking about if we both liked it enough that we wanted to get married there. I walked about two steps and realized Jesse wasn't next to me, so I turned around and he was down on one knee! I didn't even give him time to ask the question before I said yes. I think he laughed and then asked if I would marry him. I repeated my answer several times. I even did a little twirl. It all happened so fast that it's a little bit of a blur, but man I can tell you that I don't know if I have ever been so excited in my life!

For those of you who are wondering, we are planning to get married on May 3rd. More details to come I'm sure:) Thanks to all our family and friends. It makes it even better knowing we have people who are excited for us.

Summer 2013

Summer has officially begun. I am a bit in denial. I still feel like I have classes that I have to go to next week. My roommates and I celebrated the end of the semester by going to Brick Oven for dinner. We walked since we live so close. On the way home we did heel clicks to try and let the reality set in. Pretend it makes sense and just go with it.

I'm excited for this Summer. I hope to make it a summer to remember forever. I'd say I'm already on my way there. Major sunburns, Summerfest, sending my best friend to a foreign country, Strawberry days rodeo and the list goes on. Next week I'll be taking my first plane ride by myself. I'm a little bit nervous, but really excited as well. My crafty senses are beginning to tingle. A lot of extra time means bringing Pinterest to life.

This Summer will be great. I can feel it.

Who doesn't love an embarrassing story?

I decided to do Spring semester. I was worried about not feeling like I was accomplishing anything, but then again this is the time of year where it starts to get easier to waste time and do whatever you want. Keeping all of that in mind I decided to only do 3.5 credits. Add 30 hours a week at work and there you have my life.

I'm taking two classes. 1) Zumba. Heck to the yeah.  I obviously look like this at the end of every class. Perfectly curled hair, no sweat at all.

False. I look more like him. Sans the headset. But I love it all the same.

2) Abnormal Psychology. Sounds interesting enough, right? 

Let me tell you about my first day of class. About two weeks ago I got an email saying that my Abnormal Psych class changed from where it originally was to the Taylor building. For those of you who attend BYU how many have even heard of the Taylor building?! Maybe I've just been living under a rock or something, but I had no idea where it was.

Fortunately, there was an address included in this email, but if you know me and my lack of skills with directions that still didn't offer too much help. I asked my mom and we came up with a general idea of where we thought it was. I left in plenty of time to get there, in my car even. For the life of me I could not find the building. I pulled up a campus map and thought I knew where it was. Drove there. Nope. Finally it dawned on me that I should turn on my navigation on my phone, I'm a thinker, I know. That finally led me to drive by the building.

At this point I was already 10 minutes late. I don't know about you, but I hate being THAT student. Plus, I feel like teachers give their best tips on the first day early in the class. Feeling flustered I made my way into the building. Since I was already so late I asked the girl at the front desk for directions, and hurried myself to class.

Naturally, everyone turned to look at me when I opened the squeaky door. It's fine, whatever. The professor was introducing himself and I was thinking sweet I haven't missed anything. Not long after he held up the textbook and it didn't look anything like the one I had purchased, but I did buy mine off of Amazon so I thought oh maybe I just bought the wrong edition. I made a note to check when I got home. He then proceeded to talk about the overview of the course. There was a picture of a child on the screen with the words Child Psychopathology. I assumed that meant we would start talking about children then move to adolescents and then on to adults. He then began to say that taking Abnormal psychology was a good basis for this class. Excuse me what?? Abnormal Psychology is the class I'm supposed to be sitting in. I was in the wrong class. 

I began to panic a little bit. Did I sit through the class and then go talk to my actual professor after the class was over? Do I make another scene by gathering up my stuff and opening the loud door again? I had already missed 30 minutes of my actual class at this point. I decided 2 hours of sitting through the wrong class was a long time. So I got up and left.

Lucky for me, the door to my real classroom was right in front of the class and the entire front half of the classroom was full. I walked past everyone to the back row. Right as I sat down they had finished going over the syllabus. Great. I missed all of the professor insights for the class. Oh well.

On the plus side, I am really enjoying work and the warm weather. Spring always brings out something weird about me. This year it's a desire to deep clean everything. Not such a bad thing really. Hooray for spring time and all it brings with it.

A Kooky collection

Have you ever seen the hard plastic cups with straws? Here let me illustrate.

It feels like every time I walk into Walmart I walk out with another one of these. I love using them for green smoothies. I will probably end up with one for every holiday at some point. I also like to give them away as gifts so if your birthday is coming up soon don't be too surprised if one of these puppies comes your way. Maybe tell me your favorite candy first, so I can give you something we both love. 

How it all started

Why and when did you start blogging?

I had a strange blog in 9th grade. I posted a total of 3 times then completely forgot about it.

Fast forward 4 years to my Freshman year of college. Every Friday Alyssa Shirley and I had a break at the same time. We would sit together, chat, eat our lunch, and just talk about life. I had a few friends that were avid bloggers and I began to consistently read a lot of their blogs.

I, of course, brought this up with Alyssa and she was very encouraging that I could start my own blog. I was a bit apprehensive about it. Mostly because I had a strong desire to do it, but was afraid I would be bad at it and that I wouldn't really find friends in the blogging community.

I also talked to my mom about this idea. My mom is a beautiful writer. In fact, she's a published novelist. She has a few different blogs that she contributes to and so she was all for the idea. She helped me put together a design and a name. Here's a secret about me. When my mom believes in me and helps me with something I feel like I can do just about anything.

So, I put on my girl pants and decided to give it a try. I fell in love with it. I really enjoy this form of keeping track of life. Sometimes I forget it exists and that is totally okay. I like that I can blog however frequently or infrequently I want to and nobody minds.

If anyone is reading this that has thought about starting a blog, but isn't sure they want to I say try it out. You'll soon see that it's a lot of fun :)

Q&A Catch up

 Because I have a weird sense of commitment, for lack of a better word, to this blogging challenge I started, here's my way to keep it up. A couple of weeks ago one of my professors challenged us to do a media fast so we could see how sensitized we've become so I didn't really blog on the daily. Ready? Here we go.

 Q:What's your dream job?
A: If I could honestly pick what I want to do for the rest of my life I would pick to be a stay at home mom. In the professional sense I want to be a Marriage and Family Therapist. I know some people think that counseling is for people with problems, but welcome to the real world. We all have problems. I've been on the receiving end of this profession and I would love to help other people like I've been helped.

Q: Biggest Pet Peeve
A: When the bottom of my pants are wet. Truth.

Q: What's on your life list/bucket list?
A: Go to the Netherlands, run a half marathon, be genuinely happy, marry my best friend in the Temple, try sushi, finish an entire season of a show in a day, I could go on but I'll leave that for another day

Q: Daily routine
A: This one is more for myself in the later years of my life than for anything else. Wake up around 7:15, shower, eat breakfast, read my scriptures, go to class, eat lunch, go to work, come home, do homework, eat dinner, write in journal, sleep, repeat. Wow when nit's put like that my life sounds pretty boring. Don't worry folks it's not all that bad

Q: The last book you read
A: Non textbook- Reached Allie Condie

Q: Something that you miss
A: There's a certain boy in Texas I've been missing lately. I use the term lately loosely. On the plus side he only has 6 months left. That is unreal. I could not be happier.

Q: Do you have regret?
A: There are things in life that I wish I had done differently, but as an overall I'm pretty happy with my life.

Q: What's your biggest accomplishment?
A: I am pretty proud of the fact that I am keeping up with school. BYU's rigorous pace has made me wonder if I would be able to make it at times.

Best Childhood Memory

I don't think I could ever pick just one memory to be my best one, but for the sake of this I'll pick. I absolutely loved my childhood summers. My childhood was spent running around our Cul-de-sac. We played night games every night until our body parts were going numb. Those were they days of being care free and basing what I did off of what it looked like outside.

I loved my childhood because I used my imagination. I had good friends. Seriously I was blessed.

One of our favorite things to do was hook up a big sprinkler to a hose and run through it until we looked like drowned rats. We drew with sidewalk chalk and played soccer. We made a baseball diamond in our backyard and spent hours running those bases.

We rode scooters, played with skip-its, jumped rope, played hopscotch, and skinned a few knees while riding bikes.

Riding to Macey's to get candy on our bikes and a can of soda for a quarter was always an adventure.

Looking back I even liked my summer chores.

Summers were good to me.

Challenge- Day 3

What makes you happy?

If I were to write down everything that makes me happy I would be here for weeks. So I decided to write about 3 things that make me happy.


1. Friends that know my back story. One friend specifically you should know about is Carolyn. I can't even count the number of times I have just cried to this girl. One day last year I got off the phone after a heart wrenching conversation about everything someone in my family thought I was doing wrong. They tore me down until I felt like I was literally nothing. I sat on my floor and cried and cried and cried. She sat with me until I was done and let me rest my head in her lap. And she slowly began to build me up again. There have been things that have happened to me that she has never had to deal with before, but she constantly is saying the right thing when I need to hear it.


She puts up with me when I'm being a grouch. She pulls me out of some of my darkest days. She is always making me laugh. She prods just enough to let me know she's there without being nosy. I know I can always count on her to share the exciting things that are going on in my life. There is something about not having to explain why you are choosing to do what you do day in and day out that is so comforting.

2. Sunlight. There is nothing that I love more than a naturally lit room. Just ask my roommates I wait to turn lights on until it is nearly impossible to see anything without them. In my future house I want big windows that let in lots of light. Sunlight makes me feel renewed.

3. My testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what all of my happiness revolves around. Without my testimony I would be lost. I have found my strength through Christ. When I am following His teaching and doing what He wants me to do I am happy. Plain and simple as that. My testimony has gone through its ups and downs just like every other aspect of life, but it has never failed me, and I don't think it will. I'm happy because He is the source of light.

I love this picture because it reminds me how Christ takes time for each of us individually. I know that He knows me by name and that makes me happy.

The ABC's of February

February was a month to go down in the books! In fact it already has. Here are some things that made it so memorable.

                          

Ashley getting her license

BYU vs. Gonzaga game
Car's getting broken into
Discovering Vampire Diaries
Elder Ddawg [aka Derek Hutchison] reached his year mark!

 

 

Flowers showing up to my apartment on Valentine's day 

Getting a new position at work

Helping Ashley get ready for her first formal dance

 

I learned how to file my own taxes

 

 

 

John left on his mission.

Keeping it real with family history work.

Lunch with Becca and Chylie

My mom and Scott moved to their new house

 

New tv. Thanks missionary brother.

Out of the 200's say what?!?

 

 

Phone call from the airport

Quiet moments

Realizing how amazing my home teachers are

Stephanie getting her mission call-this technically happened in January, but it counts

Teaching Sarah how to sew

 

 

Utilizing a giant bear as a pillow

 

 

Visit to the apple store

We rearranged our living room

Yolo

Z[elebrating] national pancake day

 

 

 Now I know my ABC's next month won't you sing with me.

Blog challenge? I'm in

I saw this on Carlee's blog and decided I wanted to give it a go. I love the idea of blogging, but sometimes I just don't know what to blog about! So I probably won't do this everyday, but I'm going to give it a shot. 

Day one:

[1] I love post it notes

[2] I write in 3 journals every night

[3] If I could go anywhere in the world it would be the Netherlands 

[4] I would rather eat fruity candy than chocolate any day 

[5] My favorite color is yellow

Don't live a meaningless life

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others."
-Morrie Schwartz

I had this quote up on my mirror for two weeks because I needed it. I am guilty of chasing the wrong things. 

Have you ever had where when you decide you are going to do something Satan just pounds on you the other way? That is the only way I can explain the last two weeks. I was having a hard time seeing the good in others. I found myself being short with people and getting angry at little things. I was living a meaningless life. Mainly, what it came down to is that I was focusing on myself.

I've found that the best way for me to love others is to talk with them. Find out what is going on in their life and what they care about. If I don't do this on a daily basis I feel a huge difference in my day. The power that a simple conversation can have astounds me. 

On another note,in my Geography class lately we have been learning about Africa. I learned that every day 40,000 children die from preventable diseases. PREVENTABLE. The reason that they die is because they aren't educated about some of the very basic things. I have come to realize how extremely blessed I am that I was born in the place that I am, in the time that I was, and into the family that I have. When we were learning about these children I felt an overwhelming rush of love for them. I pictured them as my little siblings and how devastated I would be if one of my siblings didn't know some of the basics of health care, and died as a result of that. Just look at all their cute faces!

For a small moment I felt a portion of the love that I know Heavenly Father feels for them. Learning about this was just what I needed to start focusing on others again. Take a minute and appreciate the people around you. Try to not get so caught up in yourself that you forget how blessed you are. 

Trust me, it's worth your time.