scripture study

This semester has probably been the weirdest of my entire life. Never before have I had so many ups and downs with friends, family, dating, school, etc. It just seems like this semester everything has picked up in its own special little way. I've had a really difficult semester in a lot of different ways and have been very grateful for peace and comfort through reading my scriptures.

We were really blessed with awesome home teachers this year and I am so grateful for them and for their lessons. In February, we had a fabulous lesson on how to effectively study the scriptures. One of them showed me his document on his computer where he types a question and then reads the scriptures with that question in mind. I had heard of a lot of people doing this and finding it effective, but for some reason I had never tried it. I've been doing that the last couple of weeks/month and it has been a really awesome experience. I feel like not only do I get answers to those specific things I am asking about, but that Heavenly Father also speaks to me and tells me things that I didn't know I needed to know. It has literally opened the windows of communication between me and my Heavenly Father and I don't know that I have ever felt such a close and sweet relationship with Him. I know without a doubt that He lives and loves me. I know that he is involved in the smallest things in my life and am so grateful for his guidance and direction.

I'm so grateful for the Book of Mormon, and for the Prophet Joseph Smith and his dedication in translating those plates for our good. I don't know where I would be without those inspiring words that answer my questions and allow me to feel peace and comfort even when I am struggling with something that seems so hard and so never ending. I'm grateful for my Savior and for the knowledge that I have that I never ever have to do anything alone. I know that he is always with me and willing to help me if I will only ask him.

feb/march in pictures

I know I already did a picture post, but now I have so many more that simply must be documented. 

crazy nights in the library

dance parties

yum

Jerusalem reunions

America themed parties

Caitlin's mission call to San Francisco/Oakland

Katie's cute new socks

Bountiful temple trips

finding really cute old pictures.............

cheesy pics

pinterest recipes

a cute new cousin!

cleaning out my closet......

my best friend is getting married

cheer friends at Sarah's bridal shower

filling up the C on my sister missionary countdown AND receiving Dwight and Dev's wedding invite!

ward parties. 

best friends at Sarah's bridal shower

missionary farewells for Jerusalem friends

I don't know.

Palm Sunday Jerusalem Reunion

Feeling grateful for wonderful roommates who heat me up  a neck pillow when I'm stressed

dance parties

I'm not sure why we are sad. That is not my hand on Sarah's head

all the girls at Sarah's shower

with a clean freak like myself...I have NO idea how this happened in my apartment. 

dearelder.com

My best friend is on a mission. She left two months ago and is leaving the MTC for St. Petersburg, Russia this very week!!!

She's the Sister on the left. Isn't she adorable?

I have been VERY grateful for Dear Elder these last two months. Alyssa and I have been best friends for a very long time and it's been really hard not having her around. I write her very very frequently, but this week I have been writing even more than usual. After this Sunday letters are no longer free and same day delivered, so I'm taking advantage of the system.

Do you see all these Dear Elder confirmation emails? Yes I have sent her four letters since last night...one of them was definitely sent at 1:54 AM. (it was important!!!!!!)

Thankfully, Alyssa wrote this week and said that with the new church policy she will be able to email me from Russia every week. Don't make fun of me, I cried when I read that. I was SO happy. Hearing from her only once a week right now is hard enough...don't know how I would have/could have possibly gone months without hearing from her. Thank goodness for technology!!!!!!

It's a Match!

Tinder. For all you married/taken people in the world... Tinder is a lovely iPhone app that pulls up pictures of people in your area. You can either "like" or "reject" people after looking at five pictures of them. If two people "like" each other, they are notified and then can chat through the app. I downloaded it about a month ago because my friend told me it would give me a good laugh. The first thing it gave me was a killer confidence boost. All these boys who I thought were WAY cute thought I was cute too!! Woo! Then I started feeling creepy and creeped out all in one. A few of my matches started talking to me...and I just didn't want to talk. That's when I realized that I was in it more for the confidence boost than the actual dating.
Sometimes super awkward things happen on Tinder. My roommate matched with a boy in our ward that she hadn't ever talked to. They started chatting and connected that they were in the same ward. Then at the next ward party they didn't speak to each other and it has been awkward ever since.
Other times boys ask you for your number and you text a little. I have yet to gone out on a date with a Tinder match, but I've sure seen some cuties. I hope I don't meet my husband on Tinder....that would be the worst story to tell.

Sometimes I enjoy my little Tinder communications, other times I go through phases where I delete the app completely. Either way, I think Tinder is silly. Its like one more way for boys in Provo to be lazy and not ask people out. Come on ya stinkin boys, man up and ask us (NOT over Tinder).

The news, again!

I was watching KSL 5 news the other day and heard a very interesting story about a new drug testing policy in Davis county schools. I grew up in Davis county I started paying attention! They are trying to drug test student representatives randomly (officers, cheerleaders,drill team, athletes, etc.) I think this is a brilliant idea. I know of a lot of people at my high school (and a few teams in particular) that had a lot of problems with substance abuse. Our drill team was pretty much known for their drinking, drugs, and sex and the football team wasn't much better. My senior year, it got to the point where our drill team girls were coming to school and even performing at games under the influence. Other schools would yell at them/ our school collectively and make fun of this widely known problem they had. I don't know why our school never drug tested, or kicked anyone off of the drill team. I was a cheerleader in high school and we would have been kicked off so fast if we had any of those kinds of problems. I think drug abuse is a big problem in high schools everywhere and I would definitely be supportive of random drug testing, especially among student representatives.

Musica

I realized this weekend that the type of music somebody listens to definitely can help you decide what type of person they are. I went on a date on Saturday, and it was really fun! Except that he kept playing hard core rap in the car and it swore a ton. He apologized for it once but then let it keep playing. I wish I would have said more and forced him to change it or something, but I didn't. When I got home and started telling my roommates about the date I realized that after he listened to the bad music I just started feeling like he wasn't somebody that I would be interested in going out with again. And it's definitely because of his choice in music. I may be judging him too quickly and maybe I'm about to miss out on getting to know somebody pretty great, but I was turned off by his choice of music. I know that I will always be more careful with what I am choosing to listen to because it does tell you a lot about a person.

pinteresting

Every once and awhile I go through some killer Pinterest addicted phases. It doesn't happen often, but I'm in a phase right now. I go on every time I have physical science because it's so boring. I love Pinterest! I think it's incredible that there is such a place where everyone can share their creative ideas and steal good ideas from other people. But there is a point where it's a little bit too much. The other day my 10 year old neighbor stared posting things for her wedding. Her wedding that wont take place for at least 10 years probably more. I think Pinterest is great, but what can a ten year old really do with it?!?! That was a little too much for me...especially when I realized that I had just repinned something a 10 year old put up.

i love technology

Technology is great. Today I realized another great reason why. My best friend is on a mission and I write her lots and lots. It would be REALLY nice if I could send her a text, give her a call...things like that. It makes me realize how lucky we are to have the technology we have!

Today I especially wish that Miss Alyssa Eyring had technology. It's really frustrating that I can't write her and hear back immediately, especially when another friend has given her false information about me that I would really like to clear up. Pretty frustrating when your best friends decide to tell other people confidential information, or even made-up information about you.

and that is why technology is fabulous.

Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts!

This weekend I watched Harry Potter 7.2 with my family. I am such a Harry Potter nerd. Here are the reasons why I love it so much... (and my love for it only increased when we got to read the Harry Potter and therapy novel for class)

1. Harry, Ron, and Hermione remind me of my group of friends in high school. We had a pretty good group of guys and girls and we just did everything together! Sometimes we were frustrated with each other, but most of the time we just had the greatest adventures! I love when I can relate to characters in books.

2. They destroy Voldemort but you don't even know it until the very last second. I hate those books/movies where you totally know the whole time that the good guys will win. Then you don't even have to get stressed about the ending because you just know all along that it will be the perfect fairytale. When I read Harry Potter 7 for the first time I remember not knowing what was going to happen, and I loved it! Even this weekend watching the movie it was almost like I could forget what I knew the ending was and it got intense all over again!!!!

3. There are so many different relationships that are SO REAL. Harry and Snape don't get along but you don't realize until too late that its just because Snape was so in love with Harry's mom. Of course he would be rude and jealous! I also love Harry's relationship with the Dursley's. It definitely helped me to realize that dysfunctional families are OK and that good people (like Harry!) can come out of bad situations. Harry's relationship with Sirius Black makes me happy too. Really anything involving Harry makes me a happy girl.

4. I also love that the movies didn't ruin the books. Obviously I was a book lover long before a movie lover, and the movies just made it that much better. I'm the biggest fan.

There are like 100000 reasons why I love Harry Potter so much, but those are just a few.

The only thing that I really don't love about Harry Potter is that Ron and Hermione end up together. I think that Harry and Hermione would be a way better match. But then I guess Ron and Ginny couldn't end up together and everyone has to fall in love, right?

For Thanksgiving break my family took a cruise out of Florida, but before we sailed away we DEFINITELY made a good stop at Universal Studios. I could have lived in Harry Potter land ALL DAY LONG. I even bought myself my own wand. 13 and 3/4 in. Nature Curved Oak with the

aca-scuse me?!

This weekend I went up to my friend Meg's cabin in Midway. We had the best time ever catching up, playing games, eating lots of treats, and we watched Pitch Perfect. I've been hearing about Pitch Perfect FOREVER but just hadn't gotten around to seeing it so I was excited that the girls wanted to watch it.

I thought it was HILARIOUS. I laughed out loud so many times. The story was entertaining, funny, cheesy (but more making fun of acapella groups than real life cheesy)....However, it was terribly crude. The whole movie was full of sex jokes and inappropriate humor. There were so many things that they could have taken out so easily to make it more appropriate. This movie has seriously been the big thing for so many weeks and now that I've seen it I understand why. I couldn't stop watching it because it was so hilarious. But so inappropriate. It's always so frustrating when you find a movie that is so entertaining, but so raunchy. I vowed I'd never see it again because I felt yucky after.....but I'm sad that I vowed that because it was so good!

...and this is what Satan does to me. Makes me love something that I just can't love.

makin memories, makin memories!

There's that old cliche saying...."a picture is worth a thousand words...." Well its totally true! Some pictures seriously are worth more than 1,000 words, which is why I love taking pictures so much. 

So here is my life lately according to my iPhone pictures: (haha pictures are backwards...they start most recent and get less recent....)

survived school through snapchat.

sent and received MANY letters from my favorite sister missionary

celebrated missionary homecomings with mini cupcakes and fabulous roommates

jerusalem reunions!

jerusalem roomie reunions

pictures obviously not in order. snapping with my favorite sister missionary

nineties parties

i miss my missionary

sleepovers with the roomies before alyssa left :(

mac and cheese with my bff.

saying bye to sister eyring :(

lookin fly

crying

welcoming home missionaries!!!!!!!!

listen baby i'm sorry, just wanna tell you don't worry!

I love music. I have always loved music. I love the way it makes me feel. I love those songs that I just can't sit still when they come on. My very most favorite "happy" song right now is On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons. I first heard this song this summer while I was on study abroad in Jerusalem and I just fell in love! Now I love it even more because not only does it just have a happy beat and happy lyrics, but it reminds me of the greatest four months of my entire life.

When I was in Junior High, I went through a phase where I listened to the radio with my friends all the time. We knew every word to every top 40 song (and the lyrics were not great....). I knew I should stop listening to the bad music, but I just couldn't get myself to. It was like listening to that music made me more a part of my group of friends. Our music totally identified us.

Music isn't as much a part of my life anymore, and it definitely doesn't define me or my group of friends. It just makes me happy when I need a little pick-me-up!

nineties

books books books

My favorite book growing up was Harry Potter. I loved the whole series and I can't even tell you how many times I have read each book. I remember re-reading Harry Potter at a really trying time in my own life. My sophomore year of high school I went through a difficult transition with friend groups and found myself without good friends for a short period of time. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were “my friends” at the time, but their example of friendship helped me to realize what type of relationships I would want with my friends. I also learned a lot from Harry’s ambition. As I was reading, I realized that Harry was a very determined young man. He never gave up for anything and was willing to do anything to protect his beliefs. I learned that it is so important to stick up for my beliefs and to fight for what I know is right. My old group of friends were getting into harmful substances and inappropriate behaviors with the opposite sex and seeing Harry’s determination in the books helped me to stand up for my beliefs in front of those friends.

I don't think I really have a favorite book now, but anything in the romance category is just lovely. One of my favorites is  A Distant Thunder by Anita Stansfield. It is an LDS romance novel about an LDS girl and a non-LDS boy who fall in love. Their story takes on many twists and turns as the girl, Elizabeth, loses her brother and the boy, Jayson, deals with his alcoholic father. They help each other through trials and come closer to God and to one another.I love this book a lot because while it is still a sappy romance novel, it is very clean. I read this book over Thanksgiving break while I was going through a break-up of sorts and it helped me see that one day there will be a boy in my life who I wont want to get away from :)

 

the bachelor

I feel like I have to blog about The Bachelor sometime this semester, so I might as well get it over with now. I only watched like twenty minutes of one episode on Saturday and maybe ten minutes last night but that was enough for me. My freshman year we RELIGIOUSLY watched The Bachelor with my Taylor 1200 girls, and I think it was a good bonding experience back then. But now that I'm all good and bonded with my friends/roommates I don't think that watching The Bachelor is a necessity in my life anymore. Although its super entertaining when Tierra tells you that she can't control the way her eyebrows move so expressively or when one girl sits with Sean on the beach and cries telling him about why her family is so important to her and then not ten seconds more into the show ANOTHER girl is snuggling up with Sean on the beach crying as well. It's all just a little too dramatic for me. Or maybe it just bothered me because tomorrow is Valentines day and the only boys I have in my life are ones that I wish would leave my life. But back to The Bachelor...

When I was younger, my mom never let me watch this show. Well actually I probably never asked but I think I just knew it wasn't really appropriate so I assumed it wasn't allowed. That's why I watched it my Freshman year...because my mom didn't need to know. Now that I have watched a season or two, I have realized that it's not really a bad show...it's just not a good show either. Watching it gives me a good laugh, it definitely doesn't influence me to go against 20 other girls to try to win a guy over (not to mention that the guy is most likely a tool)....It's just pure entertainment. But I wonder if it would have impacted me as a teenager. By the time I was "allowed" to watch it, I mostly had myself all figured out. I knew what I believe and what I would and would not do. But had I watched it as a teenager, maybe that would have been different.

So for now, I will just keep watching The Bachelor thirty minutes a week for a good laugh.

jerusalem/blogging

I've never ever been a blogger. I don't feel like my life is interesting enough to talk about or share with the world. However, when I studied abroad in Jerusalem this summer my parents were very concerned about not hearing from me enough or seeing pictures of me. So I decided to start a blog about Jerusalem. At first, I was very tentative about putting up so much information about my personal life. I didn't know if I really loved sharing everything about myself with the world. After about a month or so, I realized that blogging was almost therapy for me. Sometimes I even looked forward to putting up pictures and coming up with something clever to tell my friends and family back at home. Once I got home I stopped writing immediately because I didn't want to be one of "those" blogging girls, and I'm glad I did because I still definitely feel like my life in Provo isn't nearly entertaining enough to share with anyone. I wish I had cool things to say on this blog. The truth is that blogging makes me VERY homesick for Jerusalem. 

Obviously I haven't fallen madly in love with a boy yet, because I can honestly say that JERUSALEM is my one true love. (pathetic?!)

Red Sea!

311 roomies 4 life. 

We love the JC

beautiful

don't make us go home

My very most favorite city in the entire world. Can't believe it's been five months. 

joint facebook

Last night I had a great discussion with my roommates about creating joint Facebook accounts after getting married. I have always been 100% against it. Nothing screams "I don't trust you!" like a joint Facebook account. However, one of my roommates pointed out that it kind of makes sense because you have all the same friends, so you might as well have the same Facebook. Another roommate pointed out that having a joint Facebook would completely dissolve any type of concern so other online relationships couldn't even be a problem. Now I don't know how I feel. I know the names of joint Facebooks are awkward.....

Nate-andLiz Gardner, SarahandMatt Lundin, BreeJoe Rebman............ You know what I'm saying. Facebook was definitely designed for one person. Maybe Facebook should consider making a type of Facebook for married people who prefer to share, where they could have separate names and you log in as one person but the account is for the two of you....That's brilliant. Maybe I will create that and make millions.

I don't mean to bash anyone who has a joint Facebook account, I'm just curious why people choose to/choose not to. Since i'm not married it's not really something that I think about too often.....

So if you have an opinion, speak up!

to be busy ever texting

Texting is definitely my main form of communication. My mom always asks, "why don't you just call!" but sometimes I'm texting during class and can't talk on the phone. Obviously, if I had something super long to say or was needing advice I call...but for the quick messages that happen many times a day, a text message is so much easier. I don't really need to call my roommate to tell her i'm walking into the library and to join me if she wants. I also don't need to call my mom to tell her that I got out of bed before 9:00 this morning. I definitely didn't need to call anyone about my 73% on my physical science test yesterday (that was much less painful to talk about over text). Texting is perfect for the small victories, major blows, and pointless pieces of information that don't need to be talked about for long periods of time. 

There are times, however, when I hate texting. About a year ago I went on a date and the kid was texting like the whole time!!!!! What the?!?!!? I thought that was the lamest thing in the world. I didn't think I was that boring! Obviously he didn't understand the art of the bathroom text. That was our first and last date. I had a class with his wife last semester......I hope he didn't text on their first date! I also hate texting when you're in the middle of an important (or not-so-important) conversation with someone and they are obviously engaged in another conversation on their phone. After you have finished a five minute story with a great ending they say....."wait, repeat that!!!!!!" I know i'm guilty of it too, but i'm really trying to be better. 

In October 2010, M. Russell Ballard gave a great talk about media. He explained that texting is addicting and definitely harmful to creating meaningful relationships with others! I know I have said in texts that I would never want to say straight to someones face! I made it a goal after I went phoneless in Jerusalem for a summer that I would NEVER become addicted to my phone ever again. Obviously that went downhill as soon as I got my iPhone. However, I really am trying to be better about being in the moment instead of texting while i'm spending time with people in real life. 

Here is the link to the conference talk:

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/o-that-cunning-plan-of-the-evil-one?lang=eng&query=texting

snappin, snap me, snip it

My roommates are the best (I mean my fall 2012 roommates). They will always be considered "my roommates, no matter who I am actually living with. They are my very best friends and we are so lucky that such a unique group of girls can get along so well while living together. Sure, we have our problems every once and awhile but I feel like that's normal.

Alyssa, Hailey, Katie, Ashley

Miss Alyssa J. Eyring left on her mission today (farthest left in the picture). She is going to St. Petersburg, Russia and I could not be more proud. She is going to be an incredible missionary and I am really so excited for her. I had to say goodbye last night and it was just not a very happy night......

Anyways, Alyssa has been living at home since Christmas break so I haven't seen much of her. This is one of many reasons why I am so grateful for the media. 

SNAP CHAT! Yes. Snap chat saved our lives ever since Alyssa left us. We snapped all day everyday and I loved it. It's way better than texting because you get to see what the person looks like! (although not as effective for long messages). I know a lot of people are against snap chat because of inappropriate pictures that could be sent....but I only used snap chat in a very wholesome way. :) Now that Alyssa is gone...my snap chat usage will definitely be down. I think it is so cool that people are smart enough to come up with cool apps like snap chat! Good thing we have technologically gifted people in the world. They sure save my life. 

So the purpose of this post? Snap chat is great.