THE CALL FINALLY CAME!!!!

Well! My call is finally here! I can't believe it! I knew it would come this wednesday and I oculd not concentrate all day long! Class was useless....I would just stare off into space with a dreamy look on my eyes wondering where I might possibly be called. To be quite honest I never really believed the day would come!

I was studying my "Genetics for Dummies" book when my phone buzzed on the table in the music building. the entire symphony was out in the hallway on their lunchbreak. I answered the phone, my hands shaking. I heard mom and dads voices as they opened my call in anticipation...then they began to read....Dad read silently to himself then started laughing. this did not sit well with me as he had been joking all week that I would be called to Boise Idaho.

finally they told me where I would be serving...My mouth dropped and my heart almost stopped. MALAGA SPAIN!!!!! I could not believe it! Spain had to have been the only country that never crossed my mind! But It felt right!...and It was my call!

Beauty Around Us

My psychology professor assigned me to meditate for 20 minutes every day for two weeks... with the "om" and everything. I tried it today but fell asleep, I kept making fun of myself in my head for actually humming to it. However, even though I find this exercise to be a little odd I can see the usefulness of it.

Sometimes I just wish life would quit being so busy and sit down beside me so that I could enjoy its company for a while. But that is not the way life works...or my life anyway. But I do remember a time when life was laid back and one could just gaze in silence as a summer day walked serenely down the road.

Sundays at grandmas house always seemed this way to me. The men would go into the back room and watch the sports game or 60-minutes. the women would sit in the front room and talk about whatever thoughts had been playing about their minds for the past week. On the cupboard there were always two glass dishes, one with "hot tamales" and the other containing "mike-and-ikes." And in the kitchen every summer you could find a tuperware of freshly cut watermelon (courtesy of grandma and grandpas amazing watermelon picking abilities).

The children would play together every sunday, we always had a number of things that we would enrapture our minds with whether it was sitting in one of the cars and listening to "hip music" which I never knew the words to. or playing night games like "ghost in the graveyard" or "Annie-i-over." However, one of my favorite things to do was to take a short hike up to the waterfall that was located in ogden canyon right behind my grandmas house. It was beautiful, and the pipe with the water running through it was cool and you could lay on it when the day was sticky and hot.

I recently had a chance to go back and visit my childhood hike and remember those days when life really was slow and easy. It reminded me of the beauty that is in this world, sometimes we pass it by to easily and we don't notice the colors and vibrancy surrounding us. I'm grateful to have these memories...I'm grateful to my aunts who I grew up listening to and most of all I'm thankful for the beauty that is constantly surrounding me.

Maybe it's not that life is to busy to sit with me for a while, but maybe it's that I just have not invited it over in a while.

All Grown Up Now?

As you all know I am the youngest of seven...(see title picture) and being the youngest I have always felt that I was expected to act a little more mature than my age...or maybe that is just how I was being raised with siblings that are a bit older than myself. I think maybe I tried to grow up to fast. I think I might still be growing up to fast. sometimes it feels like I should still be twelve and going through that awkward pubescent phase...I never really ever got that many zits. what happened? Sometimes I find myself saying..."after this next phase of my life I will be happier" I should be extremely Happy right now! Why do I always think that the next phase will bring happiness? It must be my attitude! My whole life I have been trying to catch up to my brothers and sisters. I wanted to go to college when i was 13 so that I could experience the joys of living on my own. I wanted to serve a mission as soon as I graduated high school and was very upset that I had to wait. (patience is not a virtue I have) When I went away to good ol' BYUI I was brainwashed to think that if I am 20 and unmarried that I am a spinster! THIS DOES NOT SIT WELL WITH ME!!!!

I figured out today that I am probably never going to catch up to my brothers and sisters...they are all at different parts of their lives. I love them all so much and thats why I have striven to be like them. but it's time for me to live my own life. I am 20 yrs old, getting ready to serve a mission. and I just went through the temple for the first time. I am happy where I am.

For once I'm gonna act my age!

I'm getting ready to serve a mission! My papers are almost filled out and I'm beginning to prepare. I was trying to choose the proper picture to put on my mission papers. they were all "selfies" as Anne used to call them. However, it was still me in every single picture, so they all looked (of course) very similar. Dad told me the process of how they issue the calls and looking at the picture was a very big part of it, so I had to have the perfect one. I was going through each one wondering if it looked like I should be sent to a specific place...(I was hoping for Europe) But most of them looked like I would be sent to mexico or texas (to me anyway). Well this is the one I chose...what do you think? Do I look European?

A legion of Five

This summer has been so incredibly hard but beautiful at the same time. Life can be so horrible sometimes, to the point where you think that the world will implode upon itself...and for a while it seems that way. But someway or another we pull out of ourselves and we become something different, something a little more refined and beautiful. it is love that shapes us this new way. here is my favorite passage By C.S. lewis.

To Love is to Be Vulnerable

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the perturbations of love is Hell.

(C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 169)