General Conference

I love conference, and I mean LOVE it.

And every six months I am blown away, once again, at how much I love it. Which is honestly a weird thought. Not gonna lie, it's hard for me to watch conference. If you know me, you know I have a TERRIBLE time sitting through hours of television or watching movies. I usually fall asleep. And if that isn't the case, it's always the opposite. I go crazy if confined for too long! What makes it even better is that I have the privilege of watching it alone... I HATE being alone. Curse Keith's work schedule...

At any rate, in the midst of my intermittent napping, the drifting of my easily distracted mind, and my inability to sit in the same position for more than a few minutes at a time, I find myself in tears by the end of a session. Though I usually have to reread all of the talks at a later date to get anything out of them, one thing has always been consistently clear. The men and women that speak to us are prophets and apostles of God. Their messages are inspired and crucial to our happiness. I know that if we want to feel honest joy in this life, it is my responsibility to take heed to their council.

Rarely do I feel as humble, gracious, charitable, and grateful as I do at conference time. It is then that my eyes are opened once again to the many blessings I have received in the beautiful life that I live. I have a testimony that those blessings come because of the choices I make and the people I spend my time with. I love the Lord and everything He does for me. I know that even though He has billions of things to worry about, I am still one of His first priorities, and He truly concerns Himself with my happiness and welfare.

For some reason, these confirmations of my faith cause me to be a bit emotional. (Me?! emotional?!) Conference weekend and I have a love/hate relationship like that. I've been sporadically crying for like, the last five hours... In any case, I would rather be filled with these overwhelming feelings of gratitude, peace, and joy than not. The first two sessions of this, the 182nd General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, have been uplifting, enlightening, and profound. I encourage everyone to listen to these inspired saints.

Here is the link to happiness, peace, and love. Enjoy. :)

I rock. The end.

Yeah, I'm a good teacher, and I'm going to brag about it. :)

My mentor teacher wasn't at school again today because she was at home taking care of her sweet husband. The poor guy is finishing his last week of radiation/chemo. He is so adorable, and I really admire his determination, but sometimes it's just too much for him.

I had a substitute in the classroom with me today. (Even though I solo teach for the entire day, I still technically need a substitute in the room with me because I'm not officially certified yet. So they get paid for doing nothing while I do all the work. Lame, but that's just the way it is.)

Anyway, apparently this lady is a retired superintendent. She has been the principal of an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. And of course before that, she was actually an elementary school teacher for many years.

This lady had the opportunity to observe me all day today. At the end of the day, she wrote a VERY nice letter about me and my abilities to my mentor teacher. She gave me one of her cards and told me that she would be more than willing to write me a recommendation. She even talked to my school's facilitator over lunch and told her that she should hire me for next year!!! Hahaha, that part made me laugh, but hey, I'm not going to complain! She told me that I was one of the best student teachers that she had ever seen. Not only do I have an excellent grasp of the content knowledge, but I know how to deliver it effectively while properly managing a classroom of 30 rambunctious 7-year olds.

It may just be me, but I feel like after hearing all of that from a former teacher, principal, and superintendent, I deserve to boast about it. And treat myself to a nice snack later on tonight. :) Maybe some ice cream? Or cookies? Either way... yay me!

Talking in her Sleep

As you all know, we don't have kids, and we are both really busy with school and work. With few exciting things going on, it's hard to remember to update the blog on a regular basis. We have done a few fun things this week, and Nancyann is going to be coming out one week from today! Not that we're at all excited for this, nor have we been looking forward to this for who knows how long.... right.

Anyway, as we finished watching tv tonight, I tried to wake Julie up so we could go to bed. She told me she would prefer to sleep on the couch. (If I do let her sleep all night on the couch, I'm pretty sure she won't be happy in the morning. But when you're asleep, all you care about is staying that way). So I figured I'd check facebook and do a few other things on the computer before I try to wake her up again to bring her to bed. I'm sitting here on the computer, minding my own business when Julie asks me, "Did you get it lower?".....Uh... what? She has a tendency to talk in her sleep. Just a few sentences, never much more than that, and I am never able to get a conversation going. It's too bad. I think it would be quite entertaining. I'm really curious as to what inspired this one from a few weeks ago, "I think his latest would have been for Kyle probably..." followed by her chuckling a few times.... I have NO idea how to interpret that one! Oh, and the other night she started humming in her sleep. That's a new one. It was just a few notes, but it was definitely humming and not just some random noise. Perhaps if she has some more great ones I'll share them in the future. Well, it's late. I think I'm going to go try to convince her to get off the couch to go to bed again...

*As a side note, all of my friends tell me that I take too long to tell stories... I wonder why in the world anyone would ever think that I was long-winded? Where would I get that from?

I prefer it awkward?

Okay, we are LONG overdue for an update.

Last Friday while I was at school, I checked my phone during my lunch break. One of my old roommates texted me and mentioned that BYU was having their preference dances that weekend. They were going to get tickets for that night and wondered if Keith and I wanted to go as well. That text was a freakin dream come true! I had just talked to one of my other old roommates about how Keith and I haven't gotten out of our house in so long. I specifically mentioned how awesome it would be if we could just get to one of those lame on campus parties. TA DA!

So Keith and I, two of my old roommates, and their cute boys all went to preference last Friday night. We showed up to the ballroom... and it was an incredibly anticlimactic sight. The place was empty... like COMPLETELY empty. I have never seen such poor attendance at a BYU dance, ESPECIALLY a preference dance! Those things are always packed! On the bright side, we actually had enough room to dance. The other thing that made this dance so awkward was that all of the lights were on... Yeah... who actually dances when all of the lights are on?! No one. Even those of us who enjoy dancing feel a bit self conscious in the light.

But though the conditions were poor, we still had a ton of fun. First of all, the company was great. I absolutely LOVE my friends. Their presence can make anything enjoyable. Also, there was a triangle pair there. Triangle meaning, that those two definitely belong together. Maybe I'll explain that analogy in more detail later. Anyway, watching them dance made the entire night worthwhile. SO FREAKIN HILARIOUS. Some people (like myself) hide their horrendous dancing from the rest of the world. Luckily though, others don't, which provides those people like me with some fantastically awesome entertainment.

Keith and I also had some fun with our friends in a photo booth! I swear I haven't seen one of those since I worked at the mall back home. I forgot how fun they could be! We stuffed all six of us in there and took some wonderful pictures. Too bad Keith and I didn't get to keep any of those ones. Then of course, each couple had to take their turn in there alone. Pretty sure that my roommates did some pretty scandalous things in there haha. Anyway, I really like the pictures that Keith and I took. I just think they all turned out really well. Maybe it was because we actually went out and tried to look decent for once! That usually helps. Anyway, enjoy!

And does anyone think it odd how similar we look?? We definitely look related... and not just by marriage!

2012

Keith and I have come to the conclusion that I say really strange/ confusing/ just plain idiotic things late at night while lying in bed. Yet they always end up being hilarious, so I guess it's all good. This is one of our latest conversations:

Keith was talking about how in 2012 there are going to be these solar flares, and there are going to be all these horrible results. Blah blah blah, cell phones don't work, yadda yadda yadda. Apparently he read all this stuff after some crazy man posted it online? I don't remember. I was sleepy.

Me: Well it IS going to be 2012. Isn't that supposedly "the end of the world? Again?"
Keith: *Laughs* Yeah, whatever. Have you ever seen that movie?
Me: 2012? No. All I remember is seeing the trailers for it. There was a lot of ice, some cave men, and a prehistoric lion? What's that thing called again?
Keith: ......... What are you talking about?
Me: A sabertooth something something?
Keith: ........Julie........?
Me: .....OH! We're talking about the movie 2012! Not 10,000 BC... duh...

I was only 12,012 years off... Great...

Christmas!!!

Christmas has come and gone.  It was a good Christmas, even if it was fairly different from previous years.  First of all, I'm married.  Yeah, that's different, but really, really awesome too!  Julie's parents are really cool.  They were willing to fly both of us out there for Christmas, but since I had to work all of last week, Julie is the only one that went.  I don't know everything that went on, but I do know that Julie had an amazing time and barely slept all week long.

Lucky for me, we had a few friends stay in the area over break.  There was only one day that I didn't spend at least a little bit of time with someone else here in Provo while Julie was gone.  I was lucky enough to get Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after off work, so I got a 3 day weekend, and I didn't even lose any hours either!  I worked a full 40 hours last week, and I get 40 hours this week too!  Anyway, Julie got back in town the morning of Christmas Eve, so I went and picked her up (Thanks Jeremy for letting use use your car all break!)  As soon as she got home, she crashed for a good 3 hour nap.  Julie NEVER takes naps.  She was TIRED.  We still didn't have anything to put in our stockings, so we went to Walmart only to find that it was stripped bare.  It was crazy.  It actually wasn't as busy as on Monday when we went back to grab some groceries (the return line went half way across the store).  But we had a nice Christmas Eve just being together.  Before we went to bed, we read Luke 2 by candle light.  This is, more or less, what our Christmas looked like:

We didn't get a tree.  We were going to put lights on the dragon, but the only lights we could find on Saturday were icicle lights or net lights...  Yeah...  So instead, we had... swords...  Whatever.  We'll do something better than this next year, for sure.  One of our friends that Julie met her freshmen year here at BYU is from Orem, so we ended up spending most of Christmas evening there at his mom's house. In short, it was just a really simple Christmas, but it was fun.

Because I had Monday off as well, we decided that we were going to make some yummy food!  I used the recipes from the Chinese food cookbook that I got last year for Christmas, and we made Broccoli Beef and Chinese Dumplings.  It was so good!  I think that the dumplings turned out better than the other dish, but it was still a lot of fun.

After making and eating dinner, we went to the dollar theater to watch Real Steel.  If you haven't seen it yet, go see it!  It was such a good movie!  Both of us really loved it.  We went with Michael, the same friend who we spent Christmas day with.  It was just a really nice, relaxing day.  But come Tuesday, my three day weekend was over, and I had to go back to work.  Work has been okay, nothing special.  But that has also left Julie home alone all day :-( NO FUN.  We just remembered yesterday that we got her some Zumba DVD's a month or so ago, so she's going to keep herself busy doing Zumba.  On top of that, we are having a good friend from study abroad over tonight.  Geneva is one of the happiest people you will ever meet!  We're excited to have dinner with her.  Then tomorrow night, we are having a small party at our place with some friends and family who are still in Provo for New Years.  We're going to make pizza, play games and just have fun.  Perhaps we'll actually have some more pictures after the party (but don't hold your breath, neither of us ever take pictures...)

Only Hope

So, I forgot this blog existed... I think Keith did as well, seeing as neither of us have posted anything in the past three months...

Anywho, life is swell! I absolutely love being married! Except for the fact that we have no money... and my husband is at work all day while I sit at home bored out of my mind...
but other than that, it's fantastic!!!

I am so happy I married my cute boy. He is seriously the most amazing guy in the world. He always tells me I'm beautiful, and he laughs at my stupid jokes. He deals with my blunt straightforwardness, and he NEVER gets upset or impatient with me. I've never seen him angry. I'm glad that's not his style. He knows how stressed I've been with homework and finals over the past few weeks, and he does everything possible to try and lighten my load. He makes me yummy food for dinner, does the yucky chores around the house, and is willing to just sit and relax with me when the night is finally through. He does goofy things that make me laugh CONSTANTLY and doesn't judge me for the random phobias that seem to control my life. He has gotten to know my best friends and loves them almost as much as I do. He respects and appreciates the things that I enjoy, even if he doesn't particularly care for them himself. He surprises me with things like candy and cheesecake. HE KNOWS ME WELL! He loves his family and tries to learn more about mine.

Speaking of family, I wish he could visit home with me! I'm going home to visit my family next weekend, and Keith can't come because he has to work all that week. It makes me SO SAD! Keith hasn't had many opportunities to interact with my family. By the time they finally started opening up to him, it was the day we were leaving after our wedding! At least he got to have fun with them for a few hours. Though I will be sad to part with my cute boy for a week, I am SO JAZZED to see my family again. I miss them like crazy and think about them every day. My brother Josh is going on a mission in January, so that's the main reason I'm going home. Mom thought it would be good for me to spend a little more time with him. Who knows where I'll be when he gets home in two years?! I'll be back on the morning of Christmas Eve, so I'll still get to spend that time with Keith. (Didn't think it'd be a great idea to spend our first Christmas as a married couple 2000 miles away from each other. Imagine that.)

Anyway, life is grand. Yesterday was the last day of classes for this semester, and I sadly realized that it was my last day of classes at BYU period! Next semester is just student teaching! I'm so close to graduation, and to be honest, I'm terrified about actually moving on to a new phase of life next year, but at least I'll have my best friend with me, and we can do it together. I love Keith so much and can't wait to find out what the future has in store for us. :)

P.S. In case anyone was wondering what the title was all about, I've been re-living my childhood for the past few days, and I thought of the movie A Walk to Remember. The song Only Hope (the one Mandy Moore sings in the play) was one of my ALL TIME FAVORITES! I love Switchfoot's original, but Mandy Moore's cover is SO good, and it's all because of the cello part. (I'm slightly obsessed with the cello. I think it's the most beautiful instrument in the world.) Anyway, it was always one of my dreams to play this song as a duet with someone else on piano, and I decided today that it was actually going to happen haha. Ordering the music now.

Listen/watch HERE if you don't know what song I'm talking about. SO beautiful. :)