Crazy summer times!

Well it's been a while since I've posted a new entry and because of that, I am way behind! So I'll just give you a glimpse what has happened this past month with some fun pictures.

Ok starting with EFY. I love EFY! I love everything about it - the kids, the activities, the spiritual uplifting and support, great friends, great lessons...it's heaven. I also love that once you put that counselor name tag on, you have the right and responsibility to go crazy! And we do! Here are some pictures of my 2 weeks at EFY at BYU. I have 2 more weeks at the end of July, but I'll be in Redlands, CA and I am way stoked about that!

My co-cos Patrick and Meagan



Game night and pizza night! Hooray for pizza day, the best day of the week!



It rained a lot this week and not all of us were prepared...



My co-cos Jimmy and Shanna and our coordinators. Love them!



My girls are always amazing!!! They are so much fun!!!



So some of the health counselors are my friends Jared and Juls. They're great! Jared was my home teacher winter semester and we're still in the same ward. I just love him!



So the last night of EFY, after the dance and good-byes, we went outside and it was pouring rain! So we ran to Heritage Halls and this was the result. It was crazy!



In between EFY I went to Lagoon with the fam and that was fun... when I finally got there. I sat in stopped traffic for 2 hours in North Salt Lake as there was a big accident that blocked the 2 lane freeway.



Jared is from Orem and has a sailboat so he takes us sailing somtimes.



And then I also met this boy...
Jared's roommate Alan Tanner and I started hanging out around March and went on our first date June 13th and have been dating ever since. We do everything together and I love every minute of it. He is amazing! I feel so lucky to be with a guy like Alan. Here are some of the fun things we've done.

Our first date was a double with Jared and his date Robyn. We went to Alan's and had some fun little competitions throughout the night. And Alan and I won by the way... :-)



We went to the St. George temple on the way to hike the Narrows in Zions with some friends. That was so fun! I got a little scraped up and my socks weren't high enough so I have some fatty cuts on the back of my feet, but it was so worth it. It was beautiful and we hiked in water most of the time.











And yesterday we went to the Oquirrh Temple Open House in South Jordan and saw a rainbow on the way home! It was beautiful!

Cake cake cake cake cake

We threw a birthday party for my roommate Whitney's 21st birthday and it was quite eventful! Saturday night we got Chinese take out at Saigon's and ate it on our roof! We live in a three story building and have roof access so we hopped on up and ate up there. It was so fun! Then Sunday we had people over and somehow ended up with 5...count them, 5 cakes! People just kept bringing them to us! We had so much left over that somehow we ended up in a cake fight at midnight and scrubbed it off our floor and walls until 1 in the morning. It was really fun though. First food fight!





My roommate Crystal us getting married to the love of her life this summer so we threw here a bridal shower! We made tons of food and played some fun little games at the park. It turned out well and hopefully she had fun. She said she did. :-)







And tomorrow I am off to EFY for the week! I am so excited! I love these kids. It is the best job I have ever had. Don't worry, I'll take tons of pictures!

Beautiful Spring!

My roomies and I have been talking about going to the Salt Lake City temple to do baptisms for a while, so we set a day and finally went. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The flowers were gorgeous and it was an amazing experience!

Earlier in the day we did a stake service activity and planted flowers on center street in Provo, went to the temple, and then ended the day with a woman's appreciation dinner that our ward did. It was to show how much we are respected as women. It was really sweet. The boys from our ward escorted us and we got flowers at the end. The night before I went on a group date and we did foil dinners in the Spanish Fork canyon. It was so much fun! And earlier that day I went sailing with some friends on my friend's sailboat. Sunday was Mother's Day which went really well. Mom said she had a good day so I'm going to go with chalking up that one under success. :-)

These week has been a little different. Yesterday I had nose surgery which was loads of fun. Last February I had nose surgery because the cartilage in my nose was growing more on one side than the other and pressed against my skin so you could see a large white spot where it was. So last year I got it fixed, but as my nose healed it didn't heal right and so much scar tissue built up that it began to make the cartilage on the other side stick out farther than the other and the cartilage formed in an S shape rather than straight...nice...so I got that redone yesterday and now I'm chilling at my parents' for the weekend. Last time I was conked out for 3 days with black and blue eyes, but this time I'm up and moving with only swelling and that's all! Hopefully I'll be back to normal soon. But if you get bored, send me a text! I'll just be sitting around until Monday.

Guidance

So my mom just sent me this and I wanted to share it for anyone who needed it...like me. :-)

Dancing With God

When I meditated on the word Guidance,

I kept seeing "dance" at the end of the word.

I remember reading that doing God's will is a lot like dancing.

When two people try to lead, nothing feels right.

The movement doesn't flow with the music,

and everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky.

When one person realizes that, and lets the other lead,

both bodies begin to flow with the music.

One gives gentle cues, perhaps with a nudge to the back

or by pressing Lightly in one direction or another.

It's as if two become one body, moving beautifully.

The dance takes surrender, willingness,

and attentiveness from one person

and gentle guidance and skill from the other.

My eyes drew back to the word Guidance.

When I saw "G": I thought of God, followed by "u" and "i".

"God, "u" and "i" dance."

God, you, and I dance.

As I lowered my head, I became willing to trust

that I would get guidance about my life.

Once again, I became willing to let God lead.

My prayer for you today is that God's blessings

and mercies are upon you on this day and everyday.

May you abide in God, as God abides in you.

Dance together with God, trusting God to lead

and to guide you through each season of your life.

Chocolate bunnies, Chinese man, pastel eggs, and neon shirts

So a lot has gone on this month of April! Unfortunately the weather has not been ideal and has snowed and rained quite often...where is the sun??? But we're keeping it real and still having fun.

Easter was the week after General Conference and the Easter Bunny came to our apartment and gave us milk chocolate bunnies. Aw! Then after spending the weekend with the family dying Easter eggs and Easter dinner, I came back and dyed more Easter eggs and had an Easter egg hunt with some friends from the ward. We hid the eggs filled with candy around our complex. It was like we were kids again. :-)







Hayley's birthday was a couple weeks ago and she turned the big 2-0. We celebrated at Tepanyaki - delicious! And let me tell you, those egg roll jokes and throwing shrimp in our mouths never gets old. And p.s., I was the only one who caught it in my mouth! Hootie hoo!





I went back up to my parent's house this weekend and helped with Tate's dinner before her Sadie Hawkins dance. The theme was a neon/glowstick type thing so they all dressed in the same color as their date (anything neon) and posed for pics and ate Mexican food before the dance. (I helped make the enchiladas by the way...). But it looks like they had lots of fun!





This is Hayley's candid, but not so candid shot...but usually what she's doing throughout the day.




"No more school, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks!"

Well I am done with school for the next four months and am officially a super senior. I have one year left and then I am done! I'll be taking some fun classes in the fall (LDS history, geneology, social dance, food, drama, Education law, and health) and then head out to DC to do my student teaching. I heard the social life is amazing out there and the wards are so fun! It will be a huge challenge teaching the inner city students, but I don't take crap from anyone so I think I'm going to be able to handle the challenge. And depending on how I like it, who knows, maybe I'll stay out there. But I am planning on studying for the GRE and taking it in the fall and heading to grad school after I graduate to get a masters in school counseling. I'm going to meet with some high school counselors and get some information about the profession and requirements to get a feel for what I'm going to jump into. But until then I'm going to bask in the sun at the Peaks and work my tail off to save up for DC. Wish me luck!

Conference and Lazy Spring Evenings

So this last weekend was General Conference and it was amazing! Just what I needed to hear. I watched it with Brooke and Shalisa on Saturday and then I went up to Kaysville and spent the rest of the weekend with my family in Kaysville. Every year my mom makes hommade cinnamon rolls which we made this year of course. Soooo gooood!



My friend Mindy had tickets for Sunday afternoon so I got to go with some friends to the Conference center. There weren't as many protestors as I have seen before. In fact there were only two on the southwest corner where I walked to the Conference Center and standing in front of their large sign was a couple of young adults about my age with signs that said "Free Hugs!" Way to lighten the mood!



Then a couple of us headed back to my parents' for Hawaiian Haystacks and a game of scum. It was intense! There was screaming and shifting of seats like you wouldn't believe! Some of my favorite things from Conference are:
- President Eyring's talk on adversity - remember that God gave us the gift of mortality to prepare for the gift of immortality; even when we have faith, courage, and strength we will be tried, but things will work out, smile through the pain.
- Richard G Scott's talk on not complaining - Visit the temple regularly; don't complain and instead ask what the Lord wants us to learn; we can do the best we can, but the final outcome is up to the Lord.
- Steven E. Snow's talk on getting on with our lives - Prophets give us direction, keep an eternal perspective, have faith, and be of good cheer
- Jeffrey R Holland's talk on feeling alone - We don't need to walk alone or be unaided even if we feel that we are; stand by Christ at all times, in all things, and in all places

Amazing.



Today was a beautiful day! I walked out of the library when I got off work at 5. I began to walk home when I decided to stop and lay on the grass and start reading the book 1776 that my friend Donny let me borrow. After reading a couple of pages and feeling the warmth of the sun, I decided to take a little nap with the sun on my face and it was amazing! I know it's supposed to rain soon, but at least it's staying warm. I love the sun!

Pink chalk and crowd serfing

Today we went to the HOLI festival of colors - a Hindu celebration of the welcoming of spring. We aren't really sure of all the details of the celebration, but we did chant and sing:

Hare Krishna Hare Krisha
Krisha Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare!



Interpret that as you like, but apparently the Jehovah Witnesses across the street were not happy about this celebration that the covered the Hindu temple with thousands of people. They estimated about 10,000 people and I'm sure at least half, if not more, were BYU students. We left our apartment around 4:15 expecting to get there in time for the throwing of the colors at 5:45. Little did we know that most of Provo was also headed to Spanish Fork along with us and it took us a good two hours to get there when it should have taken no more that 30 minutes. We were in bumper to bumper traffic and walked from our parking spot for at least 20 mins. But when we got there we were welcomed by thousands of other people our age who were covered in purple, pink, green, and orange chalk (we missed the throwing of colors). We wanted to get in the action and jumped into the crowd to dance and also be covered in chalk. They were all out when we got there, but every once and a while someone had a bag and ripped it open and threw it into the crowd. At this point everyone near mobbed the poor guy with the chalk to get as much chalk on them as possible. Luckily we were in the right spot at the right time and were able to at least get some color which was the entire purpose of the trip. Overall it was awesome, another successful year at the festival of colors. Hare Krishna!

And in the words of Tate: "I have purple snot..."