paradise

i have really enjoyed the music of Coldplay for a long time, and they released a new album yesterday called Mylo Xyloto. i haven't had a chance to listen to the whole thing yet, but i am already really taken with their song Paradise. the music pulls me in and the video that goes with is it unique too! check it out!

for anyone who wants to listen without the video here is the link. i'd recommend listening to/watching both because the song without the video has more instrumental build at the beginning of the song vs. the video version. and it is amazing!!!

i have to admit that at first i wasn't totally sure i was "getting" the video, but as it went along and by the end i thought it was great because of the message it shared in conjunction with the lyrics. what i took from this song and the video is that paradise isn't about having fancy or expensive things (i.e. a bicycle instead of a unicycle haha), but rather it is about being with people you love and care about. it doesn't matter so much your surroundings or situation (could be in the middle of a field, for example), but when you are with those people whom you love and they love you the world continues to spin and the goings on in the world continue to go on yet what matters is being together and loving each other and the feeling of joy that comes from that. i think people in the world today spend lots of money and travel far and wide to try to find what they think will be "paradise" to them. sometimes i think they are missing the point. i know i could find paradise in my living room if i had Mike there with me :) and i'm really looking forward to finding a paradise in my parent's living room when Mike and i go out to VA for Christmas and EVERYONE will be there!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Gifts for baby Addison!

It's time for bed so this won't be long, but I have completed my projects for my good friend Kim's baby that is going to be born around the end of the month!! It was so fun to have a project to work on again! I'm so excited to be a part of helping Kim and Tim decorate to welcome their new baby!! Here are some photos of what I made! :) I almost forgot how much I love creating things :)

P.s. Sorry the pictures are kind of weird...I had a hard time getting them uploaded from my phone

Welcome to the world, baby Addison!! :)

life in technicolor

i heard this song from coldplay for the first time recently and i LOVE it!!! it's fairly short and there are no vocals until the very end, but i just think the song is amazing. here, why don't you check it out!

aside from the fact that i love a good song that builds its way through the music, i am impressed by the power of this song. it makes me think of what it feels like after you've repented and you come alive again...i just think it perfectly embodies the emotions and thoughts that are going on inside just after repenting and finally feeling that forgiveness. before you repent and when you're still holding on to your sin, life can feel like it's just grays and blacks. there doesn't feel like there is much joy to be had because there is something yucky that you're carrying along with you wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you're with. it changes the way you experience life - it brings you down. once you let go of that thing, the color starts to return to life and to the world as you see it. the song starts out with just one main sound - in a way kind of tentative since it's all alone and carrying the song. i think after repentance we are sometimes tentative as we get back into the swing of life the way we were meant to enjoy it. we may think, "am i really free? can i really go ahead and move on?" as we continue to do so, the music and the color in our lives build just as this song does. i picture this as the end part of a repentance journey for a person, and by the end i picture that person dancing and feeling lighter than ever as they are able to feel pure joy from being cleansed through the Atonement of our Savior. they are again able to see all the beautiful colors of life and are basking in the happiness that being clean brings. anyone who has repented knows this feeling - it is incredible :) and this song brings me and inkling of that feeling as i listen to the music build and reach it's height towards the end of the song. what a happy song to have around!

this song has actually inspired me with an idea for a painting so we'll see what comes of that in the near future :) 

strawberries!!!

YUM!!

i love strawberries :) i remember when i was growing up that i was not a big fan of strawberries for some reason. perhaps it is the fact that they are covered in seeds that turned me off from them when i was a wee lass, but i can properly appreciate them now that's for sure :) i even remember the experience that led my opinion of strawberries to take a turn for the positive. i was invited to a sister in the ward's home for a seminary celebration dinner and she served strawberries with angel food cake and whipped cream for dessert. these weren't even just your standard i-picked-them-up-at-the-grocery-store strawberries...she had grown them in her garden herself. man. talk about guilt-tripping someone into eating something! she went on and on about how delicious they were and how proud she was of growing them all throughout dinner and when dessert rolled around, my plan of politely declining had been dashed to pieces. there was literally no way that i could turn her down. i figured i'd just eat a couple of them and that would be enough. however, a curious thing happened. i tasted one - hmm...that was actually not so bad. another one - okay, maybe i can eat them all. a third - YUM!!! i was hooked. i think i even had seconds :) 

so now i'm reformed and i quite enjoy strawberries in a variety of things. it seems that lately i've had quite a few pleasant encounters with strawberries and i wanted to share!! here are a couple pictures of strawberry delights of which i have recently had the pleasure of creating and partaking :)

light, delicious summer strawberry pie!!! and it's healthy too!!! :)

german pancakes for breakfast with strawberries and whipped cream!!! delectable!!!

all of my recent encounters with strawberries haven't necessarily been food related. i am including two strawberry songs for your listening pleasure because i have been enjoying them quite a bit as of late :)

enjoyable song, plus the video is pretty entertaining :)

no video on this one, but the song is top-notch :) always love owl city!

so as you can see, strawberries are great and can provide some tasty treats for the tummy as well as some sweet and fun sounds for the ears :) yay for strawberries!!!

what's goin on

it has been awhile since i posted anything! there have been a few times i've thought of something great to post on here, but i didn't have the time to write it at the moment so the thought drifted away. maybe those thoughts will float their way back to me at some point :) but for now i just felt like i wanted to write a post, and the first thing i thought of to write about is my manager Priya who had her last day at our branch today :(

Priya is the best manager i've ever had! i am so sad to see her go :( i don't think i've ever had a manager who i truly considered by friend before...there was one day that she took me out to lunch which was the "grand prize" for the game we had been playing that week which i won :) it was so much fun!!! i really enjoyed getting to see Priya outside of work and getting to talk to her on a just friend level rather than a friend/manager level which is a little bit different :) she asked me questions about mike and life and my family and i got to find out more about her boyfriend and her life and family too! i really enjoyed having a friend of mine be my manager :)

Priya also believed in my abilities to succeed at work. it's kind of tough getting started out as a teller because there are expectations we're expected to meet in terms of "sales" made. i figured if i made "threshold" (the lowest acceptable level with no bonus compensation for reaching that level) then that would be good was a good enough goal for me. well, i managed to reach threshold with two weeks left in the quarter (we reset our count each new quarter) and Priya told me how proud of me she was and that she knew that i had the ability to reach bronze (the next level of sales that included bonus money for reaching it). she remembers how i laughed when she first said that, but she was serious! in the next day or two i realized that maybe all it would take was owning that goal and determining to achieve it. i decided to go for it and, lo and behold, i achieved bronze! achieving any sort of level with bonus money your rookie quarter is something to be very proud of and so it really gave me alot of confidence in myself and my abilities! Priya knew and believed from the beginning though that i could do it, even before i knew and believed it. i have never had a manager that pushed me to do and be better and believed in me. all my previous managers seemed pleased with my performance (i think so anyway, i really didn't get much feedback!) but didn't try to urge me on to do more. Priya was proud of what i had accomplished but let me know that she knew i had even more potential in me and helped me achieve that. there are so many lessons for me in that!

Priya had the ability to express to everyone that she cared about them in a way that each person could tell that on a personal level. you know how it's different amongst different people in terms of the actions they interpret as meaning that someone cares about them? well Priya figured out how to show each person that she cared about them and then she showed them. whether it was through joking around or simply asking about how things were going or being encouraging or a multitude of other things, i knew that Priya cared about me :) i have had managers in the past that did convey care and concern at times, but no one who did it like Priya did. because i knew she cared, i knew that i could ask for help or understanding in a tough time. that really meant alot :)

i don't know if the examples i've shared really embody how great of a person Priya is, but she sure is super and i'm going to miss her a bunch!!! maybe at some point i'll end up working at her new branch :) but in the meantime i will miss her!!!! thanks for everything you've done to help me be a better teller and a better person, Priya! you have taught me alot that will help me in work and in life too :) thank you for being such a great friend to me!!!

for time & all eternity

look what we got in the mail today!!!! our personalized temple picture!!!!!!!!!!! :) i love it!!! i wish i could sleep with it but i'm afraid of drooling on it and making it yucky. it is so big and beautiful!! even bigger than our tv :) totally worth saving our money up for a month for!!! i love the temple! especially the one i got married in!!!! :)

(i wish i had time to make this post longer, but hopefully all the exclamation points make up for it hehe)

minnesota grass

as i've been observing the fading out of winter into spring this year, i've found myself contemplating on the grass at various points. at first, as i mentioned in another blog, i found myself gazing upon the dead, deep-freeze-attacked grass. it was all brown and boring and kind of yucky, but i was still pretty excited to see it because it meant the snow was receding. in the last few weeks i've noticed that the grass was starting to turn green! it's alive again!! i guess april showers really do bring some spring colors! but, as i thought about it, i realized that i started seeing green grass before we had any showers. and that got me thinking.

that grass was crushed all winter under the excruciating weight of the snow that seemed to be EVERYWHERE and lasted seemingly FOREVER. if i was grass, i would've been pretty angry with the snow! i mean, that snow made it so the grass couldn't get sunlight and it was so cold that the ground was frozen and couldn't get any water! that's mean. i bet the grass felt like it was a pretty unbearable thing that they had to endure with all that snow sitting on top of them and smushing them flat. i'm pretty sure the grass couldn't see how that situation could be anything but bad.

BUT. as the temperatures began to rise, the snow began to melt and the grass was visible again. and this is the part that i realized recently - not only was the snow melting away, but it was nourishing the grass with water again at the same time! the very cause of the grass's death (or hibernation or whatever grass does :) in the first place became the very thing that made it strong again...maybe even stronger than before! (more resistant to lawn mower blades perhaps! :)

this made me think of life - i know i've been in plenty of situations that i thought were less than wonderful and i didn't have the foresight to realize how those situations could actually be of good to me in the future and leave me a stronger, better blade of grass...oops i mean person :) it's hard to be in a bad spot like that and to see what the benefits will be, but i hope that everyone is able to look back and see that, as undesirable as the trial may have been - and sometimes even of one's own causing, good things came as a result of working through it, being patient, and persevering. maybe the snow isn't so bad after all!!

"oh darling i wish you were here"

well, as i write this blog, mike is off at an elder's quorum activity. "an activity where the wives weren't invited??!" as my mom asked. nope. not invited. but not too horribly sad about  not being invited since it's a video game night ha :) my contributions to the evening consist of encouraging mike to go so he could get to know his quorum better and making chocolate chip cookies for him to take along.

anyhow, the title of this blog is a line from the Owl City song "Vanilla Twilight". i always liked that song and have thought of it at times when mike and i were apart. we both really love Owl City and listen to it together often :) we watched the video for it last night which is really neat and, unexpectedly, touched me. check it out:

click on this link in case the video doesn't work: Vanilla Twilight music video

i think this video is AWESOME. the idea that i get from the video is totally different from what i get from the song, but i love the creativity of the music video - it seems like we don't see that so often anymore. what i love about the video and what touched me is the way that this phenomenon that is occurring in the sky is something that connects all these random people. they all stop what they are doing (driving, walking, playing, sitting) and pause to watch what is going on...i noticed that even nature paused for a moment because it stops snowing briefly in the video! maybe it's weird, but i get this really cool feeling inside when i think of or see things that make people interconnected. i just love knowing that even though there are so many people and we are all so different, there are still things that make us all the same in some way. everyone feels sad whether they want to admit it or not, and everyone feels happiness too at some point. everyone desires to be loved. and like in the video, everyone who saw something like this going on in the heavens would stop and look up. it makes me think of the second coming and what it will be like at that day when everyone stops what they are doing in response to the Savior returning to the earth. which reminds me, everyone is a son or daughter of God and that is probably the strongest way we are interconnected. it will be awesome when everyone realizes that :)

i love being interconnected with other people. i wish that more people took the time to connect with others - even with people that they don't know that well. i see this all the time at the bank - some people are too busy and impatient to even have a conversation with the person who is depositing their checks or getting their rolls of quarters for them. or they go beyond being short and are rude and hurtful for who knows what reason. we're all the same in so many ways, i know they wouldn't want to be treated like that. all i want to do is make the people that come through my line smile or even just make their day a little better or easier. oh well. i just try to remember of how we're connected whether we're friends or not and move on to the next person who will let me help them to smile :)

well, all this deep thought just to say that i miss my husband. "i'll doze off safe and soundly, but i'll miss your arms around me." i'm excited for you to get home, mike!! :)

the rain came back!!!

I MISSED THE RAIN ALL WINTER AND IT'S FINALLY COME BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i cannot begin to tell you how exciting it is to have rain again. (and actually, since the rain has returned we've had another heavy snowfall, but i am too excited about the fact that it's getting warm enough to have rain again to be bothered by that fact haha. if it rained once it will rain again soon!) i have always loved the rain, and have so many fond memories of it. i think because my dad loves the rain i've always had positive feelings about it. rain is so calming and peaceful - doesn't matter if a thunderstorm is going on, it still seems peaceful to me :) i love it.

i remember staying up really late one night with megan when we shared a room growing up. a thunderstorm started while we were talking and "trying" to fall asleep and we got really excited and decided we should watch the rain. we both laid with our heads upside down and hanging off our loft beds so we could see out the window we opened and watched the rain and lightning. it was so cool :) i love that memory. i think the storm went on for quite sometime, but it got to a point where we couldn't lay with our heads like that anymore. i'm sure we drifted off to sleep listening the sound of the rain tapping on the metal awning covering our window. that sound is one of my favorites - makes me want to go get a metal awning for our tiny little basement window!

another rain memory from when i was growing up is from a sunday afternoon one summer. we got home from church and begged mom to let us go outside and play in the rain that had been falling all morning. she said we could if when we came back inside we came in the laundry room so we could dry off and change and not get the carpet wet all through the house ;) so my sisters and i all went outside to play in the rain. we splashed in puddles in the driveway, and became fascinated by the river of rainwater that was rushing through the gutter by the curb in our front yard. we waded around in that for a bit and discovered that our flip-flops floated down this mini river if we set them on top. we decided to have flip-flop races and timed our shoes to see which one was the fastest :) i remember having to chase one down the street because the current took it away quicker than we had expected!  i remember the missionaries looking at us pretty strangely when they drove up for a Sunday visit and all four of us were dripping with rainwater having a marvelous time splashing around in the gutters hahaha. we were thoroughly soaked by the time we decided to head inside, but we were happy and had made some awesome memories.

this memory is a little more fuzzy, and i admit that it could be not a memory at all, but rather a dream or a piece of someone else's story that i converted to a pseudo-memory :) but i have this thought of a time when my family was together and i woke up in the night and heard my parents' voices outside. the place we were staying had a porch with really nice rocking chairs on it so i went outside to see what they were doing. there was an amazing rainstorm going on and my parents were sitting and talking on the porch while enjoying the rainstorm. i'm sure i joined them and enjoyed it equally as much :) if that's not a real memory, then oh well. i guess i'm getting old. but it makes me smile to think about it so maybe we'll have to do it sometime and make it a real memory :)

i have so many memories from my mission of rainy days (shocking, i know). i loved serving in a rainy place! there were lots of rainy days, but not very many thunderstorms, so i remember one night when we actually were graced with a thunderstorm. i was in a trio at the time and me and one of my companions ran outside to enjoy the rain and lightning and the other begrudgingly joined us since we had left the apartment and she had to also :) i remember just standing in the rain and laughing and talking and singing. then as we were driving home from the airport on the day i returned to VA from my mission, i remember the most incredible thunderstorm and thinking that Heavenly Father was giving me a really great welcome home present :)

when mike and i went out to the west coast for Anny's wedding we enjoyed several rainy days :) the house we were staying in was right on a lake and it looked so beautiful with all the ripples caused by the rain! we were borrowing a friend's jaguar to get around while we were out there and we loved the automatically adjusting windshield wipers that the car had - if it rained harder, the windshield wipers would speed up with no adjusting. if it stopped raining, the wipers stopped. wow. we have since reflected on all the rain we experienced on that trip as well as how nice it would be to have those windshield wipers on our cars!

i know i have plenty of other rain memories, but these are the ones that came to me first. from what i've heard, it's supposed to be a stormy spring here in MN so i'm really excited to make more rain memories this year!! I LOVE RAIN!!!

what's new and exciting

i am excited about the new dishes set that mike and i bought the other day at target when we happened upon the gift card we combined all our gift cards onto! we won't pull out the dishes until we get our own place, but it's exciting to have them :)

i am excited that the german pancakes i made the other day puffed up nice and big like it's supposed to! last time it didn't work...maybe because i used vanilla-flavored almond milk instead of regular milk haha

i am excited about my new rolling pin!! also purchased from target with wedding gift cards :) also exciting was the pizza we had...and something weird is that i rolled it out with the rolling pin ha, but it actually worked out nicely!

i am excited that me and mike played stake conference bingo last sunday!! and also that we both won smoothies from it :)

i am excited about the tupperware we bought!! i told mike i wanted to go buy something fun and he asked what i had in mind. he laughed at me when i said tupperware and said "i thought you wanted to buy something fun" haha ;) it is fun! he turned out to be pretty excited about it to though once we got it :)

(close-up of the swirlies on the tupperware!)

i am excited that it's easter time and the peanut butter cup eggs are out! to me, these have the perfect combination of peanut butter and chocolate and are best served frozen :) yum!!

i am still excited about our awesome penguin backpacks from mom and dad at Christmastime haha! i stumbled across this picture and felt i should post it since excitement still filled my heart at the sight of them :) we are excited to take a trip so we can use the penguins to bring some of our stuff! lots of cool and exciting stuff going on in big lake as you can see!!! :)

life is like a TV series

sometimes people compare life to a movie. like they're the main character and going through this one plot and eventually it all gets resolved and everything is hunky dory. sometimes it takes longer for that conflict to get resolved depending on the person, so maybe in that case they would say it's just like an extremely long movie.

well, i disagree. i think life is like a TV series. i recently went with mike and some of his family to see the movie Unknown at the theater. it was a pretty good movie, but after it was over i was left feeling like something was missing. i thought about it for a few minutes, and i realized that i have been watching so many TV serieses (seri? how do you pluralize "series"???) recently that a movie just didn't have the depth and breadth that i have come to expect from a story. so like i said, the movie was decent, but i felt like there needed to be more to it.

so, to my point, a TV series does go into depth. a TV series has several conflicts throughout - often many at the same time. a TV series may end one episode leaving you in suspense and dying to watch the next to see the resolution, yet you watch the next episode and...what?! a new conflict?? and they didn't first resolve the one that you were hoping to see through?! haha. i used to hate that - i'd be all excited for the next episode only to discover that the focus was on some other side character or someone's history or something else unexpected and i didn't get to see things resolved as i had hoped...so i usually would go on to watch the next episode after that hehe :) but this is so much more like real life. some conflicts remain throughout the whole series - it starts in episode one and goes all the way through the season finale. other conflicts are introduced and resolved within one episode, while in the meantime the hero/ine struggles with the original conflict plus surely a few others that have arisen.

sometimes it's a surprise and a conflict that you had thought to be previously resolved, never to be dealt with again, pops up and becomes the current focus. that's kind of how i feel now in life ha. i already graduated from school and went through the decisions that come with getting a bachelor's degree: where should i go to school? what should i study? what classes do i take? where do i live? i remember thinking about all those things and going through the stress of trying to answer those questions. it was tough at times and i didn't see how everything would finally end up. yet, here i am, past all of those things. it got worked out. i didn't think i'd be needing to ask those questions again in my life, but i find myself asking them again with and for mike. i see him feeling stressed out by not knowing the answers, and i remember how it felt to not know exactly what i was supposed to do. but i also remember that things worked out and i made it to where i am, so i know it will work out with him too :) we'll get it! and i know that just like sydney bristow in ALIAS or jack bauer in 24 or michael schoffield in Prison Break, we'll figure out the answer amidst all the other conflicts/plots that are going on in our lives right now :)

i know that movies are shorter and don't leave as much time for character development and blah blah blah, but still. live is like a TV series...just sayin ;)

i wish i could do something more

** pre-script to this post - i do apologize if this seems disjointed at all...it has actually taken me three separate sittings to finish this because of things that have popped up, thus introducing three different mindsets and groupings of random thoughts floating around each time. i think that my original purpose was to express the frustration i sometimes feel when i see people who are struggling and i want to help but don't know how. i also wanted to address how feeling for people and having a heart sometimes does leave you vulnerable and does allow for pain to be felt, but i think it's worth it. that being said, here's how the post actually goes...:) **

these last couple weeks have been so busy!! unfortunately that means less time for blogging. i have thought often of things about which i would like to write, however, and so here is one of them. there are two interactions i've had with different people in the last couple weeks that are semi-related in that the person initially was a stranger to me, yet upon hearing their story, my heart really went out to each of them. sadly both situations were such that i couldn't do much to help them. geez, seems like more often than not that's how it goes!

i met the first lady when i went in for a haircut and she introduced herself as the person who was to be cutting my hair. this hair-cutter and hair-cuttee situation is always pretty funny to me. i mean you try to strike up a conversation with a person that you hardly even look directly at - your head is tilted up towards the ceiling as she stands behind you and washes your hair. then you go back to her station and you talk to her in the mirror because she is again standing behind you. hahaha. oh well, so it is :)

at some point during my haircut i noticed the framed picture of her two kids sitting by the mirror. i had already mentioned that i was a newlywed and so i asked her if she was married. the wording of her response struck me as a bit interesting when she said with a hint of surprise, "well, yes. i actually am married." i asked a few questions about her husband and, while she always did respond to my queries, it seemed like she was just giving the basic answers and not elaborating on anything. finally i asked one question to which she decided to open up, and i found out that her husband had previously been seriously injured at work (he worked in construction) and actually now lives in a group home leaving her to raise their two children all alone. i felt so sad when she told me that! she was probably in her late 20s or maybe early 30s...i can't imagine how difficult that would be. i wasn't really sure what to say to convey that my heart was hurting for her, and truthfully i don't know that she wanted or expected that really. i mean i was a stranger to her and how many strangers really take the time to think about it and care in such a situation instead of just uttering the obligatory "i'm sorry to hear that" in response? i don't mean to take a negative view on this, because i actually do believe that at least some people care, but i wonder if that's how she might've looked at it. she hastily changed the subject and finished my haircut, but afterwards i just really wanted to give her a hug...i didn't, but i wanted to. instead i gave her twice the tip i would normally give and i've thought alot about her and even prayed for her since. i guess praying for someone is doing something. i mean, i don't guess, i KNOW it is, but still. i wish i could do something more hands on for her! maybe go babysit her kids or find a cure for her husband...sigh. anyway, there's story number one.

the second interaction occurred when i was at work - telling people stuff about their money at the bank...or tellering...or whatever the verb would be :) a girl came in with a question on her account - apparently it was overdrawn by several hundred dollars and she was unsure about what was going on. unfortunately, it turned out that her direct deposit advance from the prior month had come due and the bank had debited her account for that money. i showed her on my screen what was going on and i could see that as she began to explain her situation she started to choke up. "i lost my job in january and i don't have any steady income right now. i can't pay that money back right now - i was expecting more time before it was due. on top of that i just found out that i'm going to be a mom...i don't know what to do..." that's when the tears started to fall. man! i wanted there not to be a counter between us at that moment because, again, i just wanted to give her a hug and tell her that we could work something out with her to pay the money back later or in smaller increments or something...unfortunately i do not have the authority to do that. in fact i didn't have the authority to do anything to help that girl from a banking standpoint. all i could think to do was grab her the tissue box and talk to her about her baby that's on the way. a banker came over to us and gave her a number she could call to try to work something out, but he did voice his doubt that anything would be able to be done. boo! not cool.

i know some people would say that having a heart and showing mercy to people puts you in a place to be taken advantage of - i do understand this to a degree at least in the latter case. i mean, if wells fargo was in the habit of making special exceptions for everyone in tough situations then they could really get taken advantage of and lose a great deal of money. i'm just glad that i am not a big corporation because that means that i get to choose to have a heart and to love people and do whatever i can to help them even if it is just saying a prayer! :) maybe that means that i will or have been taken advantage of before, but i just cannot imagine a life without compassion and caring and making an effort to help others. i suppose what i have done is try to learn and gauge how much to get involved in certain circumstances :) it is hard to not be able to help other people sometimes, but it is even harder when you do too much and end up making things difficult for yourself. i suppose it's best sometimes to leave it in the hands of our loving Heavenly Father who knows exactly what needs to be done or not done. sometimes we do get to play a larger part, but i've had to learn that i can't change everything and sometimes the only role i should play is that of pray-er.

well this blog wasn't originally intended to be a reflection on a lesson i've learned about life over time, but it kind of turned into that :) all of that aside though, i choose to love people! and i choose to care! and i am very happy with that choice because it means that i am being me :)

make your year a Christmas year

i got to give the talk on sunday that i was supposed to give in january! the bishopric told me to go ahead and keep the same topic that i had previously been assigned - keeping the spirit of Christmas with you all year round. my first reaction was to laugh thinking of giving a Christmas talk in february, but once i thought about it for a minute, it seemed like the perfect time to give it. i think the spirit of Christmas slips away pretty quickly once the holiday is over and it's back to the regular schedule of things and back to starting up a new year. so maybe it was the perfect time - a little bit into the year so that the spirit had faded already, but not too far so that people can remember how they felt about this time two months ago when Christmas was just upon us.

in preparation for my talk i thought back on a lesson we had in relief society before i received my calling to serve in the nursery. the lesson was about Christmas and the teacher opened up the class for input as to what it was that everyone loves about Christmas. essentially i made a list of things that are generally enjoyed about Christmas and talked about my experiences with it. i then talked about how that can be made an every day thing thus incorporating the spirit of Christmas into your everyday life. i never write out my talks word for word, but here is the outline i had - with a little bit added to make it better for the blog :)

Keep Christ alive all year – keep Christmas with you

What do people love about Christmas?

-          Being with family

o   Growing up – caroling, trip to see temple lights, Christmas Eve party, Christmas morning

o   We know that the family is central to our Father’s plan; it’s important to spend time and develop relationships now with people we strive to be with for eternity; FHE,family prayer, family scripture study, family dinner every night, just spending time together

-          Being with friends

o  Growing up - family Christmas party and inviting friends, friends at Christmas Eve party

o   Heavenly Father puts great people into our lives to help us all the time; similarly we can be used to bless others’ lives as well; spending time with friends helps us build relationships whether it be friends from church, work, or the community. Life gets busy, but it's important to make time for friends

-          Time of giving

o   Growing up - Family tradition of focusing on the giving of gifts on Christmas morning

o   Giving helps us focus on the needs of others rather than ourselves - it breeds selflessness, we need to give of our time, talents, and love, we need to take time to give service to others

-          Time of receiving

o   Growing up - Fun to get gifts from people you know love you, family tradition of being big on surprises - fun to see what the people in the family think you’d enjoy

o   Think of all the blessings you receive every day – show gratitude for those blessings. When you look at things in the right perspective you realize how many gifts you’re being given every single day from a Father who loves you

-          Music

o   Growing up - The Spirit of Christmas music – Christmas music being played at home months before the holiday, caroling as I mentioned, singing hymns Christmas a.m., Christmas program at church

o   Christmas songs bring joy and share a beautiful message. Listen to music all year that brings the same feelings of happiness and light

-          Feeling of love

o   Growing up - Christmas affords a chance to focus more on others – concerts we used to do for widows on Christmas day. Love is what you feel when you take a minute on Christmas morning and just sit back and see the smiles and feel the happiness. That incredible Christmas feeling that everyone enjoys so much is love

o   Help people know each day that they are loved. The feeling will be returned. Be still and feel God’s love even in your hectic daily schedules

-          Seeing people happy

o   Growing up - focusing so much on others at Christmas in an effort to spread happiness. Whether it’s you that made them happy or someone else, it feels nice to see others smiling and feeling happy about something in their life

o   People seem to have a lot more reasons to be happy around the holidays – give people reasons to be happy every day

-          Focus on Christ

o   Growing up - not putting baby Jesus into the nativity on Christmas morning and pausing to do that and sing hymns before opening presents. Christmas is all about Jesus Christ – without Him we wouldn’t have anything to celebrate.

o   Make sure you’re making the weekly Sacrament about Christ, strive to be more like him each day, learn of Him and follow His example. make each day about Christ

wish you could've been there to hear my talk instead of just read the outline! maybe next time!! :)

if it's important to me then it's important to Him

i was just thinking today how awesome it is that Heavenly Father cares about everything that is going on in our lives, and how strong the power of faith can be. i remember teaching people on my mission that they could pray about anything at all that they wanted to. "if it's important to you, then it's important to Heavenly Father because He loves you and you are important to Him" i would teach. i knew this before, but i love how certain experiences in life help me to re-teach different principles to myself.

over the last few weeks i've had some trouble sleeping through the night. i've never really had a problem with this in my life, so it was particularly difficult to experience now. it seemed that i would fall asleep just fine, but i would wake up repeatedly throughout the night resulting in a less than restful night's sleep. there was one night that it got really bad and i was awake for a couple hours each time i awoke in the night despite feeling exhausted. i had started taking some medicines to help me sleep, but i don't particularly like doing that and don't want to get in the habit of taking that kind of stuff. i asked mike if he would give me a blessing before bed the next night and he did (i love having the priesthood in my home!!!). Heavenly Father told me He would help me to sleep through the night and get back into a regular sleep cycle. that night i slept great and have every night since :) similarly, mike was having a hard time sleeping last night and he woke me up and i said a prayer asking specifically that mike would be able to get to sleep. before i knew it he was sound asleep :) i know that not being able to fall/stay asleep isn't a huge deal in the big scheme of things, but Heavenly Father knew that it was important enough to us to ask for His help, and that meant it was important to Him. i think it's cool how sometimes all it takes is our asking. certainly there are times when more is required, but simply exercising our faith by asking can do alot. i sure love Heavenly Father :)

a warm towel

one of the last apartments i stayed in on my mission had the washer and dryer in the bathroom closet. at first i found this pretty annoying until i realized that if i put my towel in the dryer as i was getting in the shower, then it would be all nice and warm for me to grab right when i got out! it was pretty tough moving to the next area after that where a warm towel was not even a possibility since the laundry area was outside and around the corner from our apartment. a plain old room-temperature towel has never seemed the same...

...but! having moved in with mike's dad, the laundry room is the next room over in our basement from the bathroom. not close enough to do the warm towel thing on my own, but when it so happens that mike and i are home and up and around at the same time that the other is taking a shower, we often carry on the warm towel tradition :) it's a fun, nice thing to be able to do for each other. guess who just got a warm towel a few minutes ago?! i love having a loving husband who also loves warm towels!!! and who loves me enough to give me a warm towel :)

my first valentine!!

somehow through all my dating life, it always worked out that either i wasn't dating anyone over valentine's day, or we'd only just started dating or were in some kind of semi-dating stage (blah...the dating game is poopy - glad i won that game already!). so valentine's day was just kind of lame and awkward and we maybe went out for ice cream and that was it - i do love ice cream, don't get me wrong. just that valentine's day generally seems to warrant a bit more than that. whatever, my heart was not broken by never having had a real valentine. my heart is pretty happy now, though, that i have a forever valentine who i love like whoa!! and i have to say, it's kind of fun to have your first real valentine be your husband :)

for our first valentine's day together we decided to take advantage of my still being on the marriott payroll and use the discount to have a weekend getaway. it didn't matter that we were only staying twenty-five minutes from home, it felt like we could've been states away judging by how carefree and disconnected from work and school we felt :) it was soooo nice!!! anyway i thought it would be fun for our first blog entry to tell about our weekend!

we started out saturday afternoon by going to visit grandpa gary in the hospital. it's weird - he is maybe just over an hour away from us, but it seems so much further than that since it takes a good chunk of time to get there and back, plus it requires mike and i to be able to coordinate schedules for that chunk of time. anyway, i think the last time we visited him was on Christmas eve and he is looking much improved from then! he was sitting up with his hockey helmet on (hehe, super stylin) and napping when we walked in. we said hi and told him about our valentine's weekend plans and how we were going to the temple and everything. he opened his eyes and even seemed like he was trying to talk at one point. we sang "i love to see the temple" to him and teased him about whatever old tv show he was watching haha before leaving. we didn't get to stay long since we needed to head out to make it to the temple session on time, but it really felt nice to go and see him again :) plus even better that he's made some marked progress since last time! we love grandpa!!!

it was wonderful to go to the temple together as a part of our valentine's celebration!!!! we realized with a little bit of dismay that the last time we were at the temple together was on our wedding day!!! we would like to go more often than that! we'll have to work on it i suppose :) anyhow, it was wonderful to be in there together and extra glorious to be in the celestial room together and to just enjoy the feeling of peace and joy that the temple affords. i love that. that is definitely a feeling that is not easily replicated in today's world outside of the temple. i do think i felt that at my parent's house though :) me and mike have already talked about how we want our future home to have that feeling too. and we try to make our basement home right now have it! all we have on the walls are pictures of the Savior and our marriage certificate :) it's a start!

after the temple we went ahead and checked into the courtyard marriott in maple grove. 

 

we thought it was pretty neat because those blue lights in the picture actually change color every so often and it was green when we got there :) we also saw it when it was purple! we ate dinner at chili's off the 2 for $20 menu and watched several episodes of 24 when we got back afterwards. we greatly enjoyed the chocolate covered fruit and nut medley that mike picked up at costco for us during our 24 marathon!

one of the things i'm most excited about from our weekend is the AWESOME french bakery we found called Chez Arnaud! man, i wish we could've sampled every pastry in the place! but we settled on an apple tart (yum!), a piece of some fancy chocolate mousse cake (decadent!), and the "paris-minneapolis" which was our favorite - so tasty!!! it was basically a donut shaped pastry about the consistency of the bready part of a cream puff sliced in half like a bagel with this ultra delicious filling stuff. i'm not sure how to describe the flavor except for "wow" and "i would like more please". the owner of the bakery is an older gentleman from France who is way cool! he took our order and made everything sound so much fancier with his stellar french accent :) mike was particularly keen on the fact that they had fresh pressed apple juice made to order - we even got to watch the guy press the apples for the juice through the big bakery kitchen window! it was fun to see all the bakers at work too :) anyhow, we give this place 5 big, bright, glowing stars and say that anyone who wants to come visit us in MN, you should definitely check out this place and we'd be more than happy to escort you there :)

our culinary escapades over the weekend did not end there, for we enjoyed a tasty meal at P.F. Changs also!! it was mike's first time and only my second time ever and we thoroughly enjoyed it :) i got crispy honey chicken and mike got sesame chicken...let's just say there were no leftovers ;) we even got dessert, but to-go to let things settle a bit first. it was both of our first times taking down the great wall of chocolate, but we managed quite well with both of us working on it later on, even if the going was slowed down significantly by the last bite :)

also at P.F. Chang's we had a really great server who made the experience even more enjoyable for us :) i miss being able to do that for people. it was fun to be a part of making someone else's night out even more fun when i worked at the olive garden. it's not quite the same experience trying to make someone's bank visit more delightful haha :)

we went to the maple grove ward for Sacrament meeting on sunday and had to set up extra chairs in the overflow for us to have a seat! that ward was big!!! it was nice to hear the talks on temple worship though and how it enriches our lives especially since we had just gone the day before! it was nice when someone followed us out of the chapel after the meeting to find out if we were new in the ward - it felt good to know that even in such a big, busy ward (there were tons of kids!) we were still noticed :) we told him we were from big lake, just enjoying a weekend away at the maple grove marriott and thought we'd visit their ward instead of going back to ours. he said we're welcome to stay at the marriott and visit their ward anytime :)

did i mention how nice i was to be able to sleep in?? i feel like i haven't done that in quite awhile!! it was also pretty neat to have someone make our bed for us and bring us fresh towels and whatnot. this led to a great daydream by mike and i about what it'd be like to have a maid and how long we'd wait to do that so our kids could learn responsibility through chores and stuff hahaha. it's nice to dream about being in the position to even consider hiring someone to take care of that stuff someday :) and even nicer to have someone do it even if just for a day at the marriott!

we did eat breakfast today at this place called the original pancake house. the pancakes were tasty, but that's about all i enjoyed about this place other than the company :) the service wasn't great and my omelette was pretty weird-looking! it looked like they cooked it in a whoopie cushion and implanted a cheese tumor on the side of it. hahaha. that meaning it was about the size and shape of a large whoopie cushion and all the cheese was in a weird bulge off one side of it. not too impressive. so next time we'll know to just hit up the french bakery again :)

so now we're back to real life and regular schedules...sigh. since getting back we've found out that the transmission is handicapped on mike's car, so we are pretty much just going to put it on craigslist for a chunk of change and hope a mechanically inclined friend decides to go for it and fix it up. we are pretty much waiting on hearing about mike's byu application before deciding what to do about his car. so that's the big situation we're trying to work out right now. i'm glad that we found that out after our weekend though...it was so nice to not have anything to worry about. no homework for mike or trying to make a sale at the bank for jaime :) of course life can't always be like that, but it was nice to have a weekend when it was just for those couple days!! and it was even nicer to have a wonderful husband to be able to spend it with!!!!! it seemed like a mini-honeymoon :) i love my mike and i'm so glad he loves me too!!!

hahahahahahaha. we had alot of fun with those in case you couldn't tell :)