My Thoughts: Laughter

I found this quote somewhere online and i found it truly inspirational

You've got a lot of choices.  If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice. 
~Steven D. Woodhull


I find that this is absolutely 110% true. Why do we often force ourselves to live in some existence where just finding something to smile about, or to laugh about often is harder to do then to find time to do that thing at the bottom of your "to-do-list"? You know what one I am talking about. The thing that sits at the bottom of that list and may never actually get done, it just makes you feel more productive to have it there, so that is where you place it. Why does finding something to laugh about get pushed under that. Sometimes I find people that have it pushed so far to the bottom of that list that it is covered in dust and moth balls. If you could smell it it would probably smell something like a hope chest full of old dresses and corsets that was opened for the first time since the early 1800's. After pushing their giddiness and true laughter (I say true laughter because no matter how stuffed in an old "this is my routine and I'm sticking to it not matter how miserable it makes me" box they are, there is always the courteous or social laugh), and expelling everything from their lives that makes them do these outlandish happy things, these people seem to complain endlessly about how miserable their lives are. Sometimes they do not actually complain out loud, that may be true, but they complain through their actions, or even their lack of action. I call these particular kinds of acquaintances the "soul-sucker." I'm sorry that it is a little bit of a harsh term, sure, but that is truly what it feels like. When i make the acquaintance of someone of these sorts, I generally come home much more tired then usual, and a million times more sully! 


My goal from here on out is to banish any soul sucking tenancies I may have in myself (I believe that everyone is guilty of being a soul-sucker at one point or another, not matter how brief and minimal or long and drawn out it may last) and to look at life with a constant smile in my soul. 


Remember, happiness is a choice. Find something to laugh about, it truly is THE BEST medicine. 

Lovin the summer

I watch the time go by and hope, some how that 4:00 never comes and that the evil of "time to go to work" never arrives. Slumping my shoulders knowing that despite the beautiful sunshine outside, I must lock myself into a cubical and listen to the never ending calls come in. My feelings on the matter are probably not helped by the fact that i called in "sick" yesterday in order to spend a fun filled day with my friends at Lagoon, and that tomorrow is my day off, and it's just not coming fast enough :).
Summer is such a beautiful time of year! My favorite by far! I love the feeling of the warm sun soaking into my skin,warming me all the way through!! I love to hike up into the mountains near my house and disappear from the world, my exact location known by only me and one or two of my closest friends that have come with me. Looking down from my high place and remembering the words my uncle told me the first time he took me to the G. Remembering that no matter what, life is just a board game with many players, we create the hustle and bustle, and that much of what matters today, will not matter tomorrow.

Welcome To Life

Its been a long time!! My apologies! For those of you who did not know, Trev left officially on Wednesday. What an exciting thing for him!! I just sit here waiting for my first letter to appear in the mail box or for his first family email to be forwarded to my inbox, either way, its communication and I truly do think this is officially the longest I have gone for over a year and a half with no communication with him at all. Alright so that would be a lie, he spent a week and a half last summer in Guatemala and did not want to be charged the roaming charges so he turned off his phone for that time, but this is something different entirely. I'm dealing...well I would say, much better then i expected anyway. The day he left I spent the morning babysitting Gracie Lyn, and she was cute! Sherri woke me up (because I was sleeping on her couch) and Gracie spend the next hour and a half holding my hand as i drifted in and out of sleep. And when i fixed her breakfast she told me how much she loved me like every five minutes. It's amazing how such little people can understand completely while in all actuality they really do not understand. I find that children are my favorite people to be around when I am feeling down or alone I just have to find something new to fill my life with sunshine for the next two years, until that point, i will sit here patently looking at the mail box in anticipation.

One thing I have done to distract my mind and keep myself busy is i officially started two new jobs this week. Both being somewhat mundane and mindless jobs but that's alright! I can't complain really!! It defiantly keeps me happier!!!! Funny how in an instant you can go from dreading work to sitting around waiting to go to work. I'm sure I'll go back to the first here soon as soon as the shock wears off. Another plus is this gives me time to read A LOT!!! Cheesy lovey dovey books of course!!!! There is truly nothign better!!!!

This is the Final Last Call

I sat down tonight to write a paper to answer a question with no real answer and I thought to myself, What kind of a Math Major am I?! I'm not even taking a Math or Physics class this semester.

I have come to learn something very essential about myself, stress does not help me, not even a little. My desired coping mecinism at the end of each semester is to curl up in a ball, stareing at the otherside of my room, where the mountianus pile of homework and study sheets all needing my attention by the end of the week lay, just waiting for me to look at one of them. Luckily, I have control over this urge. I have not yet curled up to let myself soak in my wallowing and it is almost halfway through the week!! Hurray!!! Mostly I just keep reminding myself that if I get it done, the semester will be over and I will have an entire summer to curl up and wallow in my boredom. Man that will be nice!

I Love to See the Temple

Because Trevor is leaving on his mission so soon we have been going on a lot of dates that have been very temple based!! I have loved every minute of it!! We went to the Logan temple over spring break. Unfortunately we did not have the appropriate attire to go in the temple, nor did we exactly have a place to change if we did. That was okay though. Someday I will go in this temple! We spent about an hour just sitting and wandering around outside. At one point in time while sitting on the edge of one of the flower beds outside the old entrance of the temple, a man came and talked to us and told us incredible stories about the Logan temple. He told us stories about everything from the stone its made out of to experiences of GA's after the dedication. Absolutely beautiful!!

On the Friday before conference, me and Trevor decided to go do baptisms in the Salt Lake temple. I had never been inside the Salt Lake Temple and all I have to say is that it is absolutely incredible!!! And I only saw the baptismal font! I can't even fathom the beauty of the rest of the temple! 

After we were done with baptisms, which, surprisingly for conference weekend, only took us about forty-five minutes, we wondered the grounds, an activity we do often. Its sad to think that where the beautiful flowers behind us turned into a pile of snow just two days later, most likely killing them all.

Outside the temple there were ducks! DUCKS!!! At the temple!!!

Okay maybe this isn't as rare as I seem to think it is but I've never seen them there!!!

I found in my photography class my Senior year in high school that I have an odd passion for talking pictures of flowers. I would have stayed at that flower beds all day long taking pictures of these flowers if Trevor had let me. He started getting impatient when I started taking four or five seemingly same pictures of the same groups of flowers. He had to pull me away. Its a good thing I captured them though because like I said above they died two days later in one of Utah's famous April snow storms.

  I believe that this was a perfect end to a perfect day. And the perfect way to get both me and Trevor into the right spirit for conference.

Quick Catch Up

I'm terribly sorry it has been so extremely long since I have posted anything!!!! My computer got this terrible virus and I thought i had fixed it like four times but it just kept getting slower and slower. Eventually i broke down and finally just wiped the whole thing and man I kind of forgot that this computer ever took less then 10 minutes to open a web browser!!

Life has been so crazy and yet it seems as though there isn't a ton to update on...for those of you who didn't know, Trevor got his mission call a few months ago. He will be leaving for Concepción, Chile at the beginning of June!!! I am unbelievably excited for him!!! That is almost all he can talk about anymore and it is so great!!!!! I love that he is so stoked and that he has already found a deep love for the Latin people in general, but especially those from Chile!! He has become so much closer to the Lord these past few months and I can not wait to read and hear about his growth over his mission, because if he is growing this fast before he leaves, I can't imagine how rapid his growth will become when he has the ability to completely submerge himself in the work!!!!

Over spring break, we went up to Logan just for fun, mostly we just wanted to get away for a little while, and Trevor got out this BEAUTIFUL solitaire diamond necklace, just because!!! Between that and Christmas I feel like one very spoiled girl!!!!

This is a picture I pulled offline but it looks just like it and I know that although I'm not cripplingly bad at taking pictures, there would be no way I would be able to take a picture of it without completely destroying it...

Thank you Natalie for giving me this 30 day Book of Mormon challenge that I've been doing, due to the fact that this is 18 times faster then I have ever read it, I am learning thing in such a different way then I ever have seen them before. If you've never done a challenge like this, I would highly recommend it! Its 18 pages a day, challenging but SO worth all of it!!!

So I have set a goal to read 25 books by the end of this year and I have completed all of one book...one book that took me 3 months to read. I don't know how this goal is going to work out...hopefully I have more time to read over the summer but if you have any good book suggestions I'm always always open for any!!!!

Oh the Light

Its been forever since I've written anything, I know and there is so much to tell but I have decided, although I did not create this blog purely to preach, that I would start with today, mostly because of how absolutely spectacular it really has been!!! I've been so busy this past little while what with school and work and things, I feel a lot like the only time I can slow down and think is at church, although this week that defiantly was not true. We had stake conference this week and boy how I love my stake presidency!!! But they were, in my opinion, not the best part of this particular conference. Although each one of them was highly insightful and a learned a lot, the best part of this conference was the beautiful couple, newly converted, who bore their testimony. Neither of them spoke for more then 10 minutes, but they expressed a kind of hope and comfort I have not seen in so long. The wife was my favorite, telling about her desperateness in life and how just in a moment, that was all turned around by this, the gospel of Christ. After her, everything just followed the spirit that she brought and completely went with exactly what she had talked about. Pres Top, my stake president, finished off this perfect conference by talking about light. More specifically, the light of Christ. How light is essential to both emotional and physical life. He talked about spiritual light blockers in our lives, things such as Facebook, dishonesty, and pride where the ones that he mentioned that stuck out most to me. In my scripture study when I got home I read the account in 3 Nephi 8 of the days after Christ was crucified, and there was complete darkness. They could not even light fires for the darkness would consume them. It amazed me, this is the kind of opressive darkness that President Top had talked about, not only is Christ all spiritual light, He is the provider of all physical light as well, He lights the sun, He lights the moon, He lights the stars. Satan is just the opposite, he is in darkness, he is the prince of darkness. This also is both physically and emotionally. This was an incredible talk!!!! I have felt the truth of it all day long, and I have had almost nothing else in my mind!

Okay, on to lighter subjects :). The semester has started and man!!! I love college so much more then I ever liked high school but man, sometimes I can't help but wish I was back there, it was so easy for me not to study, or even pay attention really, and still get quite good grades. College i feel completely the opposite and i obviously never tought myself good study habits but hey, as long as I get through right?! But really I love it!!! I'm taking a biology class that I'm almost sure is going to kill me, but that's only for my lack of caring for the subject, but that would be why I took it before Trevor left on his mission. He is amazing at Biology, he's in a class that most people don't take for just a generals biology class. He's pretty much the smartest person I know when it comes to that stuff so hopefully I'll do okay. I know I'm going to love my US History class, it's the second half to the class that I took last semester and I have found an odd passion for history that I never knew i had :). That's what happens when your professor is good at his job!! The rest of my classes so far are just kind of there because they have to be, but you never know, I may end up loving another subject that I had no clue I loved!!!

Well that's all for now, I have to try harder to get my posts up when I think of them!!