Be My Valentine?

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while. The past few days have been crazy to say the least and they are only going to get busier throughout the rest of this week. I have two tests this week that I don't feel ready at all. I have a feeling I will be studying my butt off everyday for the next week and there is nothing in this world I hate more than studying. Ugh!

But on a happier note, it's Valentine's Day and this weekend has been a blast!

I started out by going to my sorority's pledge banquet on Thursday night which was amazing to say the least. We went to our advisor Patti's house and ate a yummy Cafe Rio salad dinner and then had a program to initiate all the pledges and make them actives. Each of the girls in the presidency got up and bore their testimonies and the Spirit was so amazingly strong in the room that many of us had tears running down our cheeks. Then each of the pledges brought their favorite flower to the front and introduced themselves and said what they would bring to the sorority. We put each flower in a vase and then gave the bouquet to Patti. I brought white orchids that I just happened to stumble upon while on an adventure in downtown Salt Lake City. I took the Trax train from school to meet my parents at Trolley Square and had to walk a few blocks to get there once I got off the train. On my way, there was a group of creepy looking men walking towards me so I dodged into a cute little flower shop. One of the first things I saw when I walked in was a big vase full of white orchids. I couldn't help buying a stem because they were so beautiful.

Friday I went to pick up the jewelry I made at the glass making class I took last week. (My stuff looks awesome if I do say so myself.) Then I went out to lunch with Rachel and Joanna. We went to a cute little Chinese place called Pei Wei and ordered off the kids menu. We talked about boys, and school and an adventure we plan to take when the whether warms up... we are going to dress up in fancy lingerie, make crazy masks, build a fire in a park and run through the trees like banshees. I can't wait.

That night Rach and I went to go see 'Dear John' with my friend Amanda who is in my sorority. We went to the Gateway Mall downtown and had fun shopping and getting ice cream at Ben and Jerry's. The movie was really good... then again, what movie with Channing Tatum isn't really good? We all cried like babies and it was one of those nights I really wished I would have brought tissues because we all needed them.

After the movie Rachel and I went back over to her house because she wanted to show me her basement. She is getting it remodeled and the painters finished all the walls and ceiling. They tore out the carpet so all that was there was bare cement. We decided to get Sharpie markers and write little notes to whoever pulls up the new carpet in the future. We also made a list of all the things that are popular right now.

Saturday Rach and I went on a double date with her boyfriend Jeff and my friend Kyle. We came over to my house and made pizzas and then went up to the U to go see our Utes play the Lobos in basketball. We went knowing they would cream us because they are one of the best teams in the nation right now and we are one of the worst. But we actually kept up with them pretty well! The last quarter was SO intense. We were screaming, and clapping, and banging benches, and waving our arms in the air like crazy people. We were 3 down, and there were 8 seconds left on the clock when one of the guys on our team threw a 3-pointer from the corner. The stadium went dead silent and then everyone went into hysteria when it swooshed into the basket. The game went into overtime and we ended up loosing, but it was still a great game! We all lost our voices.

After we went back to my house and watched Toy Story 2 and made yummy Reese's dessert bars. After the movie, Rachel and Jeff left so me and Kyle turned on the Olympics for a little bit. It got kind of boring so we switched to The Nanny. He had never seen it so I made him watch it even though Fran's voice annoyed him. haha I'm so mean :]

Today I went to church with my friend McKenzie. She lives in the dorms so she goes to a single's university ward. It was a lot of fun! We got roses in Relief Society and then in Sunday School me and Kenz whispered back and forth about a guy in our class that she thought was really cute. After church I went home and had dinner with my family. Grandma came over and we had a really yummy dessert: chocolate covered strawberries! We watched the Olympics for a couple of hours and I fell asleep.

Now here I am, wishing this weekend could have lasted so much longer and dreading the long week ahead of me. Hopefully I will find a little bit of time to add a post or two, but if you don't hear from me for a while, you'll know why.

Life Lesson #1

Live each day like it's your last. You never know how much time you or the ones you care about most have left. Love with all your heart, reach for every star, smile every moment, and always remember that each day is a gift. Fill every empty space with laughter and love.

Birthday Wishes

So today is my birthday. I am now in my very last year as a teenager *tear*sniff*. Every year I set my alarm for 5:00am so I can reminisce about the past year and think about how much I have changed. It's always weird to me every time; counting down the seconds I have left in that particular year in my life. And then at 5:01am, I'm a whole year older.

This morning I replayed my eighteenth year all over again and I can honestly look back and say I don't regret a thing.

My last few months of high school were definitely tough. Brighton High School became a prison to me after sophomore year and I was practically counting down the days until I graduated. It wasn't until a month before graduation that I realized it was nearly over. And instead of being happy about it, I was actually kind of sad. So I went to every graduation party, I decided to stop caring about what everyone else thought and just be myself, I took hundreds of pictures to save the memories, and I decided to try and enjoy myself. Funny thing is that I actually did. I was sick of my past mistakes dictating how I lived my life so I changed that. When graduation day came around I didn't know how to feel. Half of me was extremely happy and relieved to finally be done, and the other half wanted to start all over and not take one second for granted.

That summer my grandmother was pretty sick and needed someone to take care of her. So I went over to her house almost every day and spent the best summer of my entire life there. On the days she wasn't feeling well I would sit in the rocking chair next to where she was sleeping on the couch and read or played soduko or wrote in my journal. My favorite memory that summer was on a day Grandma was feeling really happy and well. We pulled out some chairs that were stored in the garage and sat on her back porch and simply talked and laughed and napped and watched the birds in the bird feeder. Grandma was reading the newspaper and she covered her face with it while she slept. I remember looking in the back garden at all the white daises and gazing up at the dark summer blue sky and just listening to her breathe softly. That same day I went down to the lawn and picked a whole sack full of ripe pears from the pear tree and we stood in front of the window by the kitchen sink and ate so many we had to take another nap. Time seemed to slow to almost a halt at Grandma's house. The way she took  time to do everything she did amazed me. I was so used to busy, busy, busy and multitasking and getting everything done as fast as possible. I'm so grateful for my beautiful Grandma and how she taught me to sloooow dooown and smell the roses. I love my Grandma more than anything and that summer will always have a very special place in my heart.

When the summer months died down I went back to school. This time it was college and I was in for a world of change. The campus at the University of Utah is enormous. The first day I thought I was going to die because it was in the high 90's and I swear all my classes were on opposite sides of the campus. Eventually the long walks became one of my favorite part of going to school each day because I got to stretch my legs and breathe in the clean mountain air. I made a lot of new friends and strengthened old ones. I fell in love with the diversity there. Everyone I met was completely different than the next person and I loved just sitting on the grass under the big oak trees and watching all the different people go by and catching bits of their conversations. I learned how hard college was. I had to nearly fail a class to realize it, but now I know. It gave me a greater appreciation for the chance I have to learn and grow here.

This was the year I started dating again. All through high school it seemed that no matter how many times I would fall for a guy I would always end up hurt and bitter. By the time senior year rolled around I totally swore off dating because I was sick of guys thinking I was just some kind of toy they could toss out when they got bored or found something better. It carried over into my first semester at the U because I was so afraid of getting hurt again. And then one day at the start of this semester a guy at the bookstore asked for my number and suddenly dating wasn't such a big deal anymore. One thing my dating break taught me is that everything happens for a reason and to not even worry about what might or might not happen in the future. It taught me to simply live each moment as it comes and see where it takes you. It had been forever since I had the butterflies after meeting and getting to know someone knew and somehow the break made it all the more sweeter and exciting.

A year ago today I was a completely different person than I am now. I had a slightly sour disposition on life and it seemed that nothing really caught my interest or excited me much. Then a change in my surroundings and routine woke me up and I myself changed not only who I was, but changed my entire outlook on life.

So this year as I blow out my birthday candles, I will wish for a new year that is just as amazing and change-filled as last. I wish that at 5:00am on February 10, 2011,  I will be able to look back on this year with no regrets and that I will be proud of who I am and what I accomplished. And hopefully at 5:01am, when I turn 20, I will be able to go back to sleep content and happy with the direction my life is going.

Here's to being 19! May this year be full of laughter, smiles, love, happiness, and the occasional pitfall so I can learn to pick myself back up again. Cheers!

Comment Issues? (Plus a duck!)

A lot of people have told me that they weren't able to post any comments on my posts. I think it's because I changed my template and for some reason it messed with my settings. I tried to fix it but somehow the link to post a comment is ^up top^ right beneath the title of each post instead of at the bottom of the entire post itself. I will keep trying to figure out how to move it back down to it's normal place but until then you now know where the comment button is :]

Thanks everybody!

PS- I just had to include this duck... isn't it the cutest darn thing you have ever seen in your entire life?? I thought so.

College Thus Far

^This is me. Well, not actually. But it might as well be!

Here I am in my Fundamental Science of Human Nutrition class (it is indeed as boring as it sounds) not paying any attention. My professor is talking about "intracellular fluid" and "osmosis of water balance" and "ion pumps", so naturally I have no idea what's going on. Seeing as I am bored out of my mind, I thought now would be a good time to make a new blog post.

^This is my actual class. My teacher's name is Thunder Jalili... he's a BA. But a very boring BA.

Luckily I have this class with my totally awesome friend Catherine. She likes Obama too so we are way tight. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who likes Obama in Utah? Yeah, very rare. I met her in the LDS sorority I joined a few weeks ago and we just happened to both be in this totally boring class! Woohoo go Psi!

Anyways, so school... it's a lot more difficult than I thought. I find myself actually studying and watching lecture videos online instead of goofing off and finding something more fun to do. Most of the time I choose the later and go have fun, but I'm slowly learning to be self disciplined and do my work. (Paying attention in class doesn't count... especially this class teehee)

So far my hardest class has been my American Indian Experiences class. Don't get me wrong, this class is totally fascinating! I LOVE history and learning about the past, but this class has four text books. Yeah, that's right, four! And I actually have to read them all the way through. One is more of a novel about five indian kids growing up on a reservation which is really interesting. But the others are all about treaties and wars, and who did what to who, and what year that tribe got moved to that state... it's boring. I can read about a page before my mind wanders off to a far away place and then before you know it it's morning and I wake up with my face stuck to the pages of my book. Not fun.

Another really tough class is my math class. I'm pretty much the dumbest person on planet Earth when it comes to math. It makes absolutely no sense to me even if someone explains it to me perfectly. My mind just doesn't work that way. I don't like having things so uniform and perfect the way that math is. Because I don't think that there is an answer to every question. Some things are intangible and weren't meant to be picked apart with numbers and equations. That's just me though.

My favorite class is my Digital Photography class. There is just something about capturing a moment in time and making it into art that I love. I have learned a lot about composition techniques and how to make a picture more interesting by changing the angel or point of view. It's a lot of fun. My favorite part is playing with all the pictures I take on iPhoto and Photoshop. It amazes me what you can do to a simple photograph and turn it into something amazing. 

These are just a few of the many things I have learned so far this semester and I know I am destined to learn a lot more. But the best lesson I have learned thus far is to just be myself. Only you can be you, why try to be someone else? When you stay true to yourself you grow and learn and enjoy life so much more. Well, my class is over so I am out!