Festival of colors

I have heard about this festival of colors to ring in the color of Spring for years, but never went because I only ever heard about it the day after when I saw everyone's crazy pictures. Now my camera will never be the same. the yellow and pink pixie dust will forever remain apart of my already very well used and worn camera. So basically, you go to the harichrishna (sp) temple and buy some "chalk" which is really edible, colored, scented corn starch and at a certain time they say that it's time to throw it up in the air. I crowd surfed for my first time ever. It was fun (short lived, but fun!) and when the chalk flies you literally can't breathe! It is crazy and fun! We hugged people we didn't know and rubbed love on each other with the colors! It was great fun! followed up by a freezing cold dinner at Parker's Drive in after the sun was working its way down.

Simplicity

I was looking at pictures today and came across this one I took 4 years ago. I am amazed at how simple life used to be and how simple it can be. Sometimes when we just take a glimpse really quick we miss so much, but then when we look deeply there are so many things we never saw. Ever since my mission I have loved looking at Dragon Flies. For some reason I would find them dead all the time and I have like 3 in my journal from my mission. I am fascinated by their wings. How is that there is something so simple and delicate with holes in it that keeps them in flight? I don't know, but when I look at a dragonfly I know that God is in heaven and He knows a whole lot more about life than I do! So that's what I'm hanging onto today! Happiness and knowing that He knows a lot more than I do and sends me angelic things all day long! Today was a happy day! I laughed a lot and my students kept asking why I was in such a good mood. I didn't know myself and I can only attribute it to the fact that I prayed really hard on my way to school that I could be happy! So my dragonfly is another thing that made me happy and help me remember that He's there in his heaven and is watching gently over me. That is what I know today.


The other picture was a leaf bug I almost stepped on as I was walking on the football field. It represents for me (what I'm searching for right now) that just under your nose is something you just might not see, but if you look at things from a different angle you will find it and see it. So that's where we stand for now...keep on looking, sometimes from different angles!

Changed my whole day...take a look

Valentine's Weekend

My desk when I walked into my room made me cry for all the love I felt from all the people around me. I couldn't help it, but feel so much overwhelming love. I had so many emotions in me all at once and just was overwhelmed at how loved I am. I have a lot of good people taking care of me. Thanks everyone!


My Desk at the end of the day with tons of valentines.

Silly String wars make us silly

12:52pm January 29, 2010
Well I have had some fun today! Silly string is fun and not fun to clean up , but once it dries not too bad!!! I did a lesson on initiative today in student government where I sprayed silly string on everyone, then gave all of them a can to spray on each other. Everyone was saying “This is the funnest day I’ve ever had at school…” Then we before we cleaned it up, we read this story called “The Dog Poop Initiative”. It is a story about some man walking his dog, he poops and everyone avoids it but doesn’t clean it up. They just point it out and say, “Watch out for the poop” during the soccer game etc…well, no one does anything about it, but point it out and complain about it. Then this man and his son come to the game and simply get a piece of paper or cardboard and pick it up. There isn’t a big hoorah about it, but they just keep playing and no big reward is done for the guy who took the initiative. I was trying to teach them that we all have choices and some have good consequences and some have bad and some just have regular ones like picking up poop and no one really rewards you, but you feel good about you, cause you helped out. I told them, “Now we have this whole classroom full of silly string, I initiated it, knowing that I would have to clean it up and I invited you guys to join me, but you didn’t have to and you don’t have to clean up. Life is all about choices. You can choose to help or you don’t have to…but we are leaders and even when there isn’t going to be a reward we should dig deep down and not only do the fun part (spraying silly string everywhere) but we should do our part to clean it up, even if it’s not fun. Like everyone wants to help set up for the dances (we have one this next Friday) but no one wants to stay behind and clean up…the choice is always ours…I hope you guys will be leaders and take the initiative, even when it’s not fun and there is no reward…pick up some poop!” They all got right on it and we cleaned.

2 periods later my room was clean, like no silly string had ever been in here, and then I was innocently teaching and Mr. G came in with his own can of silly string and sprayed me down! Little did he know that I still had like 30 or 40 cans (from the last dance) in my room! I told my class it is now retaliation time! We all got armed with 2 cans each and after getting locked out, my hand slammed in the door and laughing like crazy (it was the hardest and most I have laughed in a long time) Mr. G learned to not mess with someone when you only have 1 can of ammo and you don’t know how many cans of ammo the other guy has!

After they cleaned up, I saw one of my students with a homemade hat made of a Styrofoam bowl that said, “I cleaned up poop today!” Now, that made me feel good!!! And so the dog poop initiative lives on! Thanks Jenni Call for giving it to me!!! And thanks Mr. Ettinger for not being too upset that we got silly string everywhere! It’s all cleaned up now, cause we all picked up some poop today!! And thanks Mr. G for being a good sport when you didn't know how much amo I had!!!

Life and learning

"Burdens provide opportunities to practice virtues that contribute to eventual perfection."

--Elder L. Whitney Clayton

Life is an interesting thing...we are sent here to laugh and to cry and to learn and become who it is that we are supposed to be...one thing I've learned is that in the end we become who we choose to be. Life is all about choices and we ultimately become who we choose to be...today I choose to remember that I'm on this earth to bring about good things and if that means loving, losing and learning, then that's what it means. And no matter what, we get to choose what we will learn and what we won't. We get to choose to learn and be sad, cry and let it out and take the time to move on and grow, or sit around and not learn what it is that that experience is to teach us. I've learned today and yesterday and the day before and the day before that....that there is always something to learn. So really it boils down to the fact that we are here to learn and if our learning is thwarted, then why are we here and what are we doing? Our purpose has ceased. This sounds like a whole lot of babbaling...but it's because that is what the last 3 weeks of my life have been a whole lot of circles of not understanding and then getting it and learning a little bit or learning a lot...so the end result is me learning to let go and let God teach me what it is that I'm supposed to learn at this point...so here's to learing.

Halloween 09

Witches' night was so much fun! Really just a great, fun, total women's night out bonding time!

It was a great halloween! I swear I've never dressed up so much. It was spirit week at school so I dressed up different every day. I was a yankees fan, an old lady, a retro 70's person, an orange troll, a dead snowboarder and a witch!!! It was so much fun!

A little freezer burn. I was a dead snowboarder on the actual halloween! In the rest of these pictures we are just doing rock band and making carmel apples! That was fun! I enjoy making stuff I am realizing over and over again. There really is something so fulfilling about creating something with your own hands!

Sister Gillman made these awesome cookies! They were so cute and good!

This year was crazy. I swear I wore more wigs this week than my whole life put together and painted my hair bright orange and dressed up crazy and pretty much just had a blast! I made this really yummy rice dinner thing in one of my very own harvested pumpkins. It actually gave me hope that I could have kids, because when I was taking out the seeds from the pumpkin I was almost crying, because I was proud that I had grown this beautiful pumpkin. I had worked hard and watered and planted and weeded and loved, (I seriously loved my pumpkins! Everytime a new one would start growing, I was like a proud parent hence the analogy) and here were the seeds. I baked them and they were so good. and the pumpkin was beautiful and it tasted so good! Oh the joy that can be found in the simple things in life!

The final crop of the year!

18 pumpkins! the final freeze killed everything, but the joy!

So it was my first year having a garden. Such a wonderful thing to do! Really I had such a blast! I loved it so much. If you feel like you want to do something that is fulfilling, plant a garden. It is hard and time consuming, but the fruits of your labor are worth it! And I ate so healthy all summer. It was a life changing experience.

Life recently...

So as can be seen in my lack of blog entries a lot has happened in my life in the last couple of months that I haven't been updating my blog, but it's on facebook kind of. Pictures are my life! I'm a visual so I capture life in my pictures. Nothing really big has happened, except just in case anyone didn't realize the time did change! One extra hour of sleep! That means to bed early so I can get up early when my body is already set to get up at 5:30, it will really be 4:30 so I get to go back to bed for 45 min cause I'm faking myself out that I got to sleep in, but I really am only waking up 15 min earlier than i have been! K enough rambling here's some pictures! This is the cornmaze at cornbellies! We had a blast!

Spirit Week Twin Day

I love twin day Tuesday during spirit week! Mr. G and I were Yankees fans today! We are excited for the Yankees to win the world series!

Women of Steel Triathlon results

We are doing a race event at school and so I was making the assignment up and realized that i had never actually seen the results of my women of steel triathlon and i found them today. so here is the link if you want to check it out. pretty cool. I swam in 7 min...pretty much almost my best time ever. I think that was good considering all the crazy passing and slowing etc that happened...yipee! And here comes Red Rock Relay just around the riverbend! and that is literal too cause I run a lot on the river during it!

http://www.milliseconds.com/participants/detail/805553037

My First Garden

It has been an incredible harvest! So fun and wonderful. I ate stuffed green bell peppers from the garden tonight. So crazy to say, "Let me go out back and get dinner." Jenn Stevens came over and we cooked us up some really yummy stuffed bell peppers and some wheat rolls! Awesome stuff! Life is good and I love my garden! What a great experience!

Happy 29th Birthday to me

Holding to tradition, Kelsey and I went to Texas Road House for my bday and rode the saddle! It was fun! We got our traditional Chicken Critters, Salad with Ranch, Sweet Potatoe Loaded and Honey Mustard on the side! Good stuff! Life is good and it's awesome to have friends you have continual traditions with. It's been what, 5 years? Something crazy like that! Love you Kelsey!

Dessert #1! Shaunae made me a fruti pizza, which Bradley managed to eat half of by himself! Crazy kid!

Then mom whipped out the cake! It really had 29 candles on it! She had to get the Multi-pack of candles to make sure there were enough candles!! Getting up there and having a blast doing it! What a great year it has been and I can feel one of my happiest, most growing years coming up! Thanks to all those who love and support me!

Funny stuff! I just got a birthday card from the staff and this was the picture inside. I had to laugh out loud. I have more pictures from my birthday dinner at mom's last night, but silly me forgot her wallet and purse (including camera) at home...so this is all I got.

My fun summer job