My Favorite Day

I love Sundays. I love the peaceful feelings and joy that I seem to always wake up to on these beautiful days. I love being given time to pause from countless hours of school work and classes and instead focus on the life of my Savior, Jesus Christ. To focus on who I am and how I can improve. To focus on how I can better serve others. To focus on the words and teachings of living and passed prophets and apostles.

Sundays have most definitely become my favorite day of the week. I'll admit, it hasn't always been that way. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we believe in keeping the Sabbath Day holy. In other words, we try to set Sunday apart from the rest of the week by not doing activities that we'd do on other days, such as shopping, hanging out with friends, watching tv, etc. As a child I viewed this day as the "boring" day because I couldn't do the activities that I did the rest of the week. But as I've grown older, I've begun to appreciate this beautiful day more and more. In a world where there is so much busyness and chaos, I look forward and thrive off of this day because it gives me the opportunity to slow down and let peace flow into my life. I know I am a better, happier, and kinder person because of it, and for that, I am immensely grateful. 

Meet Candace!

This is Candace. 

She's one of my new roommates!

She loves bunnies.

She likes pink. 

She's the size of a toothpick.

She's 5'1" (and 3/4)

She can lift a whole 5 pounds (she worked up to it of course). 

She's great at making lasagna. 

She has a boy + friend = boyfriend

She loves Bachelorette. 

She loves Jef from Bachelorette. 

AND she's also a blogger. Check her out! :) 

Guess Who's Getting Married?!?

Haha well not me, if that's what you were thinking. That will come in its own time. :) But today I'm talking about my older brother, Christopher! Him and Nicole met when she was a sophomore and he was a junior in high school. They had Spanish class together, and Chris made a deal with the teacher that if he could sit next to Nicole, he wouldn't talk (haha ya right...that's an impossible task for Chris to do). Anyway after becoming good friends, they eventually started dating. Here's a couple pictures of them from high school dances they went to together. 

Now let's fast forward to the present. Chris returned home from serving a full time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on May 9th. Before we knew it, Nicole and Chris started dating again. It didn't take long before they realized they were meant to be together.

Last night Chris proposed to Nicole. He did so by having her go on a scavenger hunt around our city to places that held significance to them, such as where their first date, first kiss, and first time talking about getting married was. It was sort of like a walk down memory lane for her. The final clue took her to a lookout spot over the whole city, where Chris was waiting for her. He then got down on one knee and proposed. You can guess what her answer was. :) 

We are so excited for Nicole to become a part of our family. She has so many wonderful traits that we love about her.  Congratulations Chris and Nicole! 

Beautiful Moments

So today was my second day volunteering in the recovery room at the hospital. As you know, I am a Nursing major at Brigham Young University. There are many things that I have really been looking forward to doing once I graduate and become a nurse. With that said, there is one thing that I've been scared about, and that's the work shifts. I get tired very easily, and have often been afraid that I wouldn't be able to handle the 12 hour shifts that most nurses are required to work. I'm glad to say though that after today, that fear has been eased a little bit. 

Although I got pretty tired after being at the hospital for ten hours, honestly it was the patients that really kept me going. For example, I had one older man that started crying when he woke up after coming out of back surgery. But the wonderful thing was, these weren't tears of pain, but tears of joy. The man told me that the intense pain he had been dealing with in his leg for the past five years was completely gone. He simply couldn't keep the tears back because he was so happy. How beautiful the moment was. It really is times like these that I'm reminded why I'm doing what I'm doing. How blessed I am to have the opportunity to be a part of it. 

Long Time No See

Okay. It's been way too long since I've written on here. For those of you that are still loyal to reading my blog, thank you! I don't really know why I stopped writing...honestly I think I just became overwhelmed with school and didn't feel like I had time for this. But with that being said, I've been home for a month and no longer have any excuses for why I haven't written. So here I am again - hello! :)

UPDATES:

• My older brother, Chris, returned home May 9th from serving a two-year mission in Brazil. It's been a lot of fun having him home again!
• Since being home from BYU, my life mainly consists of cycling, working, practicing cello, watching TV, hanging out with my siblings and friends, and eating free food. 
• I'm moving back to BYU June 18th for summer semester, in which I'll be taking anatomy and geology. I'll also be working as a nanny. 
• I miss my roommates a lot, and am way excited to get to see them on June 4th when I go down to Provo for a day. Yay! :) 

Hmm well that's all I can think of for the time being. Sorry it isn't much! It's great to be back. :)

P.S. My brothers lost my camera, which makes it pretty challenging to put any pictures up on here. So until I figure out a solution, you'll have to excuse that...sorry!

Oh So Punny...

When chemist die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any

time.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I'd

never met herbivore.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type-A blood, but it was a typo.

Why were the Indians here first? They had reservations.

We’re going on a class trip to the Coca-Cola factory. I hope there's

no pop quiz.

I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me.

Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because

she couldn't control her pupils?

Broken pencils are pointless.

I tried to catch some fog, but I mist.

What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.

I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.

Haunted French pancakes give me the crêpes.

Velcro — what a rip off!

A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.

Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!

The earthquake in Washington obviously was the government's fault.

Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.

Where's the Line?

Wow....it's been a while since I've really written on here. Yeah, I've posted little fun stuff that my roommates and I have been up to, but that's not really what I intended this blog to be. I wanted it to be a little more personal. 

I used to use this blog as a place to share my deepest thoughts and emotions, but lately I've strayed away from that. I don't really know why though. Honestly I think I just got a little freaked out about the whole thing and started to feel very vulnerable. It was weird knowing that I was completely opening up to strangers, as well as my closest friends. I also had a hard time sharing everything, knowing that the people that were affecting my life the most were most likely going to read it. Not like I had bad things to say about them, just personal things. In addition, I was afraid people would get on this blog and read stuff that they would judge me for before they even got to know me.

For example, me having a brain tumor. If you've been a follower of mine from the beginning, you may have noticed that I did a couple posts on that whole experience. But if you're new to my blog, this is the first mentioning of that tumor that you will be able to find because I deleted the old posts. As I said before, I was scared of being judged by my cover. For example, let's say I meet a boy. I like boy and he likes me. He gets on my facebook and sees that I have a blog. He clicks on the blog and before seeing anything else about me, sees that I had a brain tumor. Automatically boy becomes uninterested because he doesn't want to be in a relationship with someone that may have cancer or other health issues. (Just for the record, the tumor was benign and I am perfectly healthy today). 

Now first off, that story did not really happen (at least that I know of). It was just a hypothetical situation that I made up. I know that you may be saying that I shouldn't want to date a guy like that anyway, but honestly, if you put yourself in their shoes, could you blame them for being afraid of getting into a relationship with someone that may have or have had health issues? I personally can't say I wouldn't. 

Anyway, the point of all this is that if I didn't blog about that stuff, the boy would never know about those personal things until it was the right time to share it with him...after he had gotten to know the real me first.  

  So where is the line? Where is the balance? How can I be personal, yet not too personal? I feel like I either have to be all or nothing, but that's not what I want. You, my readers, are my friends. Even those of you I've never met, I still care about you too, which is why I don't know how to find the right balance of what to tell you, and what to keep to myself. 

Sorry, just something I've been thinking about....I'd love to hear any of your thoughts on this in the comments below.  Thanks :)