Today, I spent the morning and most of the afternoon with friends, laughter, healing, good food, a cute baby, and a slobbery dog.

Last night was Robin's Florida viewing and funeral.  It was probably the most difficult thing I've ever been through.  I can't pinpoint why this pain has just been punching me, leaving me winded.  Robin is safe, she's complete, and healed.  She is completely happy and doing what she loves -- serving her Heavenly Father and following her Savior.  I was happy to see her family accepting and happy.  I know I'm going to see her again.  Maybe I am yearning for that view of eternity that my Heavenly Father (and now, Robin) has or maybe I just am letting selfishness overtake me and allowing myself to wish that she was still here to help me strive to become the earthly angel that she was.

Whatever it may be, I was glad to not be alone in whatever it is I've been feeling, yesterday.  I was surrounded by people who have known me and have loved me throughout my life -- whether they just entered it or they have been in it since Barnie was my favorite past time.  I was greeted with a hug at every corner.

I was not alone today when Emma, Molly, Rebecca, Ruby, Momo, and I spent the afternoon picnicing on Kingsley Plantation.  The plan was to go to Davis Park (in honor of Robin's last name), but the park didn't allow dogs, and we couldn't have complete happiness without our Momo.  I'm not sure that there is anything else that I needed today besides those precious, perfect moments with those wonderful people I am blessed to call my friends.  I somewhat wanted to just crawl into my mommy's arms today and continue to release the pain, but I think I ultimately wouldn't have made it out of bed had I let myself do that.  I needed to be carried away from my thoughts, and be consumed in them all at once today, and that's what I got.

Today was a day in which my wounds were vulnerable and completely exposed, but somehow the edges were healed -- not completely, but it was an almost feeling.

A Beautiful Daughter of God

I have had a wonderful past few months.  Time with family and friends was an abundant element of my non-existent calendar; school is really good (for the most part); church is more and more uplifting and comforting each time I go.

Wednesday, my grandma came home from a trip of visiting a friend of hers that used to be in our ward, and gave me crushing news.  My friend, my Young Women leader and a faithful daughter of God, Robin Davis, had passed away earlier that day.

The shock did not set in until I got to church and I was surrounded by a room full of people I loved, just devastated (not to say that my grandma wasn't devastated, but the information did not sink in until I was in that room).

I have felt -- for lack of a better word, and to use a cliche -- somewhat numb.  I know my Savior and Heavenly Father have provided freedom for Robin.  She was so sick and hurting (she had cystic fibrosis) and she was fighting so hard to stay alive, get the transplant she needed, and be there with her husband and family for as long as possible.  I felt a little selfish being so sad and missing her so much.  I felt like I had been cheated of time that I wanted to have with her, to tell her how beautiful she was and how incredibly blessed I was to know her and to have her testimony, and strength, and complete love for life, in my life.  I now know, thanks to a wonderful friend (Emma), that she knows.  She knows how much she has meant to the lives of so many people and how she just warmed everyone's hearts.  She now knows how her special spirit made others' spirits feel so uplifted and so important.  She had a tremendous testimony that was truly unique and a heart that was and continues to be incomparable to any other.

I keep trying to keep myself busy and not think about things.  Please, pray for her incredible family, reader.  Pray for her wonderful husband and her mother and just her entire family and her friends.  She has touched so many people and I'm so glad I got to be one of them.

Lists and Such

So, for the entire span of my seventeen years and (almost) four months of existence, I have always scoffed or turned away from people who cherish making lists or detailed time schedules.  As I have gotten older, I have just come to the conclusion that that works for some people, but that's not my thing.  Now that I have gotten even a little more older (great grammar, I know), it's time I suck it up and get to listing.

My reasoning for the sudden change of heart is not because I'm way behind on homework due to the stupid flu I've had all this week.  It's not due to the last two Doctor Who episodes awaiting my sight.  It is the same reason that it has always been: my books.  I am currently borrowing three books (On the Road, Game of Thrones, and Spencer W. Kimball) and I haven't even finished the one I was reading before they were all loned to me (I Capture the Castle).  The only reading time I've allowed myself is what little time I have at school to read school assigned books, which is fine and dandy, but reading is a little more difficult for me when it has been assigned and it's not a book that's been on my To Read list.  (Yes, that is the only sort of list exception I have ever made.)

This complaint has been on my blog too many times to remain stagnant.  I am making myself and schedule, and no one (not even myself) is going to stop me, reader!

The Result of General Conference and Personal Progress

9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

 10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Our acts of charity inspire faith and love because our giving hearts and helping hands are what bring the love of God upon us and those around us.

I love being inspired by General Conference.  I love Personal Progress.  I love this gospel.

22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

To Forget or Never Forget?

Today is 9/11.  The day, ten years ago, I left my second grade classroom in a confused haze as to why my big, strong teachers held fear in their eyes.  It was the day that meant my cousin would be heading to Iraq in a short period of time and would eventually be hit by a road-side bomb (he survived, but to be ten or eleven years old and hear that your cousin was hit by a scary bomb is not something that just fades to the back of your mind).

The confusion of the country -- or maybe just my internal conflict -- is how much are we to "never forget".  I was listening to NPR the other day with my grandma, and the report was about a few families who had lost loved ones that day that want to forget, and they isolate themselves on this day in order to escape the remembrance of that heartbreaking time.  It was kind of humbling.  Only a week before hearing this report, I was in a bit of a debate with my grandma and mom about how people are arguing that 9/11 should be a national holiday.  I'm not sure it should go that far, but the argument my grandma and mom were posing was that, "We don't have a national holiday for Pearl Harbor or others who have served in the military and lost their lives, why should we have one for 9/11?"  My refute was the fact that those who serve in the military are serving willingly and are ready to give up their lives for the country's freedom; those who died on 9/11 died in innocence, without that willingness to completely give up their lives.  It was sort of strange how impassioned I was about the whole thing.  The fact that some people don't think that day was important brings me back to that scared seven year old that would hide under the covers every time she heard a plane, for about a year.

I have chosen to remember that day not with loud exclamations of "never forget" and "rest in peace".  Instead, I wore my red and black dress that everyone else doesn't really know I wore for commemorance.  I'm not going to repost Facebook statuses, but I'm going to "never forget" by myself and pray for those who want to forget.  That's what I've chosen to do.  You are free to remember or not in whichever way you please, reader, but that's what I'm going to do.

Delayed Farewelling

I'm having a teensy bit of trouble ignoring the hollow, aching feeling in the center of my chest and at the pit of my stomach.  The tears haven't come yet.  They've emerged, but the flood gates haven't been fully hatched just yet.

Now, if you have no idea what has been happening in my life these past few days, you have probably mistaken me for some sappy, misunderstood teenage girl who's depressed about some boy or the fact that her nail polish is chipped, or maybe the fact that no one ever seems to remember George Harrison.  This is not so.  However, the George Harrison thing does kind of get me down a bit when I think too hard about it.  Reader, today I said goodbye to my family, a friend I've had since I was thirteen, and a friend I've had in my life since I was four.  It's been a weird, long day.

This past year has been one where I have said copious amounts of goodbyes.  Last summer, one of my Young Women leaders and her husband (i.e. two of my best friends) moved back to Utah and my dear friend, Emma Lucy, moved to Bosnia for the entirety of the next year.  Six or so months before that, my cousin, Nathanael, left to serve the Lord on his mission in Brazil.  I had a couple of friends drop out of my school (to go to other schools) throughout the year.  With each time someone left, I was an emotional wreck for a good couple of days afterwards.  I'd eat my ice cream, read, and break out the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice, but that wave of emotion doesn't seem to want to slam into me today.  Today, the day I have said the most goodbyes I've ever said; the day where I actually had to say goodbye to family whose home was my second; the day I said goodbye to the girl who inspires me with every word she says; the day I said goodbye to the boy who I used to chase around after church when we were less than five feet tall.  Have I became stone and hardened to these details, to these farewells I seem to constantly encounter?  I am deeply sad, but my eyes are telling me otherwise.  It will probably hit me in a few hours when I am consuming the cookies I made with my aunt's chocolate chips cookie supply that she gave to us when we were at her empty house, while I watch my least favorite episodes of Gilmore Girls (the beginning of the fifth season).  Or maybe it will hit me now, reader...

      

    

Summer Symphonies

I wrote this on 7/28/11, but never posted it for some reason. So, here it is...

Blah blah blah I haven't written in awhile.
So, that sounded a bit snotty.

I'm currently sick and feeling nostalgic, so here goes something.

The reason for this blog post has a lot to do with my reading Kristina Horner's blog for the past hour or so as well as my lack of journal entries this summer.  Heh...cough.

This has genuinely been the greatest summer of my life.  My first summer after freshmen year was complete chaos.  I literally was not home for the entirety of the month of july and the end of june.  I had no time to breathe, and the chunk of the part where I wasn't breathing was spent with people I didn't really want to spend that time with.  I was at this summer National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine, or some special title like that.  My group kind of got the short-end of the stick throughout the entirety of the week (or was it longer??).  The day groups visited medical schools, we ended up being assigned the one on the campus we were staying at, and we spent the entire time waiting for our main speaker to show up, which they never did, so they improvised, and we listened to these two very nice older woman as they tried to convince us that we didn't all have to become doctors, and that we should be nurses instead.  I was also one of the younger ones of my group (most of them were going to be juniors or seniors), so the older kids kind of kept to their own group, while the younger ones tried to awkwardly put our two cents into conversations.  I did, however, manage to find the only other LDS person there, and my time was a bit less painful after that, but anyways...

(Don't get me wrong, I was very grateful for the things I did learn at this forum, but with all the money that had to be paid to go, I feel like there could have been so much more.)

My summer after sophomore year was spent being completely lazy because I didn't want another exhausting summer where I didn't enjoy myself, and I ended up being grateful when school started because I was just SO BORED after girls camp and youth conference and such were done with.

This summer, though, has been tremendous.  It has been a summer where I have witnessed just how wonderful and beautiful this world and the people in it can be.  Girls Camp was an incredible experience, as mentioned in my previous post.  I realized just how lucky I am to have all of these girls that I can genuinely say are my best friends.  When I think of a best friend, something that really comes to mind is someone you can just sit and talk with about absolutely anything or absolutely nothing, and I really can't do that completely with girls (and boys) that do not believe the same things I believe, and it's just an incredible thing that I can talk to these girls about music, girly things, and the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, all in one day.

I have realized just how amazing literature is.  I really cannot think about the experience I had at LeakyCon without having the urge to tear up.  People that are a part of the Harry Potter community are just full of their own, unique energy of love, compassion, understanding, and fearlessness.  It is an absolutely beautiful thing, and even though I've only been a part of it for a couple of years, I am so grateful to have been a part of it for even that short amount of time.

It feels like it has been the summer of endings -- Harry Potter ending, my last year of Girls Camp, friends going off to college and moving  -- but I'm grateful that I have one more wonderful time of Youth Conference and possibly EFY to attend.  I -- like many other youth who have had the chance to attend it -- have very fond memories of EFY.  EFY (Especially For Youth) is where I gained my own, real testimony of the gospel; it's where I decided and understood that I really was a daughter of God and that Jesus Christ really did die for me and really does love and understand me like my Heavenly Father loves and understands me.  After I realized this, each puzzle of my testimony started falling into my place.  I suddenly knew for a fact that Joseph Smith really did see Jesus Christ and God that morning in the grove and that he really did, through divine help and faith, translate the Book of Mormon.  Suddenly, I knew that the Bible, along with the Book of Mormon and the prophets of these Latter-Days were my guide and key back to an eternal happiness that my mortal mind cannot even begin to comprehend.


Youth Conference is something that I wish was much, much longer.  These past two years, especially, warm my heart when I think about them.  It is the friendships and the love that I feel at girls camp, along with my favorite guy friends, and all-around better hygiene.  I have been so incredibly lucky to have been a member of this church with these friends throughout our entire lives.  I am so incredibly sad that most of them will be shipping off to college this coming month, but I am so fond of and so grateful for the memories that we have shared.  I think one of the things I love most about Youth Conference overall is the fact that through every conversation and through every meaningful moment with friends, you, all at once, completely understand that no one person is the same, but we are all here for each other through our individuality.  You come to understand Heavenly Father's love for each of us in this way.  If I didn't have Emma J., I wouldn't want to be a better version of myself; if I didn't have Alexis K., I probably wouldn't be completely okay with being myself; if Heavenly Father did not bless me with all of these incredible people in my life, I would not be me.  I would be completely stuck and unable to change into greatness;  I wouldn't have the positive outlook on life that Chelsea A. has given me; I wouldn't have the desire to try harder that Brianna M. has given me; I probably wouldn't be okay with just saying what I want to say, no matter what, without Megan F.; I probably wouldn't want to be more understanding and insightful the way that Millie J. is.  This has turned into a shout-outs thing, so I'm just going to keep going with it.

Emily L.: Her all-around wonderful heart; from the way she wears her testimony, to the way she is always smiling, gives me this beautiful outlook on things that I've never had from anyone else.  She has taught me that there is nothing that I need to be ashamed of, but that I should always hold my head high.

Marissa R.: I have only recently met this wonderful girl, but she is the sweetest, most down to earth human being.  She makes me feel like it's okay to not stress out over things and just wear a smile despite anything that life throws at you.

Elizabeth J.: Her ability to just always laugh, I think, is what kind of always made me want to make others laugh and be happy.  I've grown up with her laugh, and it has always made my day brighter, and it has always made me want to make others' days brighter.

Emma Lucy P.: This girl's intellect, mixed with her smile, and her massive imagination have given me light to the fact that being the one in a corner, book tightly gripped and pressed to the face, is something to be admired and cherished, and it's also something that more people should strive for; it's something that I strive for: a brighter imagination and beautiful way of drawing others in with it.  Also, she has been one of those people that I'm going to look back and think, "Wow, was I incredibly lucky to have known her."


Jessi and Ailene (because I cannot mention one without the other): Your simple ability to bust out in song and/or dance without a care in the world as to who is watching have been a beautiful thing to witness.  You both make me want to be brave and not give a care.

Ben B., Troy L., Nate L., Brady R., Nicholas K., Joshua K., Nathanael K., Josh G., and all of my other favorite Mormon boys: They truly have given me an understanding of what it means to be a righteous priesthood holder.  They have truly made me understand how I want my future sons to be and as well as my future eternal companion.  They are also some of the best dancing partners a girl can find.

I guess this blog post has really just been a post that has looked back on the summers that I dreaded, and the summers like this one, and the people that made them so incredible.   If this summer were a soundtrack, I'd want to stinkin' play that thing until the CD wore out (YES, THE CD, NOT THE IPOD PLAYLIST).

I am incredibly lucky.

So, reader, was that enough cheese for ya?

P.S.  Know that there are many wonderful people and friends that I did not mention, but again, I love and am so grateful for each of you.  You all have given me so much and made me the person I am (along with my wonderful family, of course).  So, I thank you for that.  Heavenly Father has richly blessed my life with each of you and with every moment I have been so blessed to share with you.

Feeling

I am feeling tonight, reader.

I am feeling the age of my heart, the age of my mind, and the age of my body collapsing and colliding into clashing contrasts.  I do not want the fear of adulthood, I do not want to relive the painful naivete of my childhood, I do not want to think beyond my years anymore.  I am stuck.

My birthday and my whole last week were wonderful.  I want to instill myself into those moments over and over again until I am sick from the happiness and the love.  I do not want to be too old to feel the vibrancy and the newness of youth.  It's ridiculous how hurt and sorrowful I am feeling for this.  It's only girls camp, but it really isn't.  It is the time of each summer for the past six years that I have categorized as my time to spiritually refresh and cleanse.  It is the time where the world is put away and I am allowed to be loud about being a daughter of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ.  It is the place where I have my made my very best friends, the friends I will visit with in the eternities.  They are the people I can express every thought and feeling to and they understand precisely what I am saying and how I am feeling.  We have helped each other grow in our testimonies, and I cannot believe that that time we have been blessed with every summer, is over.  It hurts miserably for some reason.  I have shed more than a few tears, and I never realized how much those one weeks out of these six summers have meant to me.

The gospel of Christ is a gospel of love, faith, and forgiveness.  I have girls camp to thank for helping me understand these attributes and to understand my divine potential and my divine abilities.

Tonight I am missing, reader.  I am missing the part of my summer that defines me; the part where I most openly am able to express my love for my Savior, Jesus Christ and for my Heavenly Father, His gospel, and His children.

Just a Thought

Carrying grudges causes wrinkles, not only on our faces, but on our spirits.

The Nightmare

So, I probably just had the scariest dream of my life.

I guess the schools around my county were all offering a trip to Europe (I'm not sure about all those details, that part is kind of fuzzy).  My mom and my cousins were chaperoning.

My friends and I visited this mall because suddenly they were super interested in fashion(?).  Right next to the mall was some place that was having a party.  A bunch of European celebrities and models were there.  We made a few friends and had fun.

The next thing I remember is being attacked by some green alien-like thing that was a cross between Mike Wazowski and Ooblar from Jimmy Neutron.  These things were all around the town attacking everyone.  They were all wearing these oversized 80s-esque jackets, and I came up with the strategy that if you pulled there sleeve out of which they were attacking you with their tentacles or guns or something, and tie the sleeve in a knot, you were safe and apparently they were so light, you could swing them around and use them as a weapon...?  Everyone was running around looking for safety and shelter, so I had quite a few encounters with these things and people being attacked by them.

For some reason the buses were still running, so everyone was piling into those for safety.  I was telling this one man who had a son what I had learned about attacking these things, but he couldn't comprehend what I was saying, either because he wasn't completely familiar with the English language or because I was explaining it in a weird way.  Said man's little boy was the cutest thing in the world, by the way.

Throughout the dream, I kept having encounters with these cute little puppies that looked a lot like the puppies my brother's dog just had.  For some reason, everyone was afraid of them, but they were really sweet to me.

For some reason, everyone had to get off at the same bus stop, which I think was the party place from earlier in my dream.  The next part I remember is being dragged/forced to this back room.  My closest friends and family were there and they were all chained to the wall like prisoners.  There were people I recognized from the party, working with something that you'd see in Chemistry class on tables thirty feet away from me.  I was then chained to the wall as well.  As ominously as possible, this girl I had met at the party and spent most of my time with while in Europe, emerged.

She was definitely the model type.  She was tall with super long legs.  She was wearing an outfit that few people would actual wear in public because of lack of confidence.  She was wearing a cutoff black tank top, black leather-spandex skinny jeans, black sort of strappy heel-wedges and she even had her black hair in one of those high, long ponytails with hair wrapped around the top so that you couldn't see the hair-tie (I'm not sure what that's called).  She apparently hated Americans and their hunger for war.  Apparently her peaceful country had been completely warped and twisted by the mindset that Americans were successful and thriving because of their war-thirst.  Her country had created the alien-like things and genetically mutated dogs that would attack any person who rolled in its path.  Hence why people were so afraid of the puppies that kept finding me, which I didn't think were evil until one came running into the room towards me (along with a kitten?).  I found it kind of comforting, until it started whining, which made me sad and nervous because I didn't think our torturer had seen the dog and I wanted him to stay and be of comfort to me.  My friends and family were looking at me now, and I was trying to explain to them that it was okay, that everything would be fine.  They kept looking at the dog in horror and trying to hint that I needed to get rid of it ASAP.  Then came the big dogs.  Well, one giant, godzilla-like dog.  It was tearing down buildings and killing just about everything in its path.

There was a lot of mental torture and exhaustion that took place.  Then, this women asked me if I thought everyone was tired yet and ready to go to sleep.  I said I thought that we were all pretty much alert and awake because of all the adrenalin pumping through our veins (or something more funny to try and "diffuse the tension.")  She then came around to each of us and gave us a chip that had dip on them.  It was super sketchy, and I kept yelling at everyone to not eat it, but they wouldn't listen for some reason.  My mom finally heard me after she had taken a bite.  I asked her how she was feeling.  She said she was really tired and felt like she was going to throw up.  She looked scarily ill.  Our oppressor was walking away, and for some reason I knew that whatever she had given them would make them sick and make them forget everything.  I started screaming and crying at her.  I ran after her and kept hitting her back.  I actual grabbed on to her super long ponytail like a child trying to get attention, and somehow she was strong enough to drag me along like that until we were on some cobblestone sidewalk.  I still didn't let go, and I kept screaming at her through my sobs to bring each of my loved ones back to me.  I had never felt so much anguish.  It was horrifying.

Then, I woke up, reader.

A Memory Forgotten

So, reader.  I'm sure you have a lot of memories, right?  I mean, I'm assuming you're some sort of life form, so I'm assuming you have some sort of sense of memory.  Even cells have memories, so I'm sure you do. Anyways, so, memories.  Why are people so intoxicated with them?  Why is it that when we meet someone who is elderly, we wish nothing more than to hear their life stories?  Why is it that the places that hold our most precious memories bring us peace and a sense of restoration when we think back on them or revisit them?  Or maybe some places hold haunting memories that seem to want to diminish in the back of our minds, but never do, and become fresh, new, and scarily alive once even a glimmer of something reminds us of them?  Ormond Beach is one of those places that holds a sentimental and intimate place in my memory.

More specifically, the timeshare my best friend, Gabby's, grandmother owns.  I came here for the first time when I was about eight or nine, I think.  The place is right on the beach.  They have a pool area, then you can walk right out from the pool, on to that beautiful beach.  I don't know what it is about this beach in particular.  Yes, the water is a little clearer, and it's definitely not as crowded as most beaches I've been to, but there has always been something magical about it to me.  I have had so many meaningful conversations on that beach each time I've been here.  I have made many friends and had many arguments here that altered and realtered my opinions.  Each of the four times that I've been here, I have been a different person than I was the time before.  Last year, I was not quite strong in my conviction to be the sort of person I knew I should be and wanted to be, and the year before that I didn't even know what or who I was or who or what I was trying to be, and the time before that (when I was eight or nine), I had no sense or understanding of the world going on around me or what role I played in it -- well, at least not to the extent that I did the time I came after that, but that's expected after five or six years has passed, right?

This year has definitely been the most meaningful, I think.  I never realized how connected I was to this place until I came yesterday in the late afternoon to see that the cheesy/70s/beachy-feeling decor of the place had been remodeled.  I realized that I had missed the door you have to slam to shut when you use the bathroom and I missed the ugly walls.  I had forgotten the comfort of sand being all over the floors and all over my clothing.  I had forgotten how much I missed the donut shop and the family-owned pizza store across the street.  I had forgotten about the only beach I've ever loved, reader, and I am so sad that this is the shortest I'll have ever stayed here.

I'm going home tomorrow and I'm not sure that I'm happy about that, reader.

What Is This Place?

Oh, hello strangers.

So, it's been a while since I've blogged, so I'm a bit rusty at the moment, but hopefully that will change, and quickly.

Today is my first day of summer.  I was going to spend it with my friends, Charity, Nate, and Adam.  We were going to go to the Landing, which is this somewhat ghetto shopping place downtown.  All the shops surround the center part of the place, which is a stage with a circular area for the crowd to be.  (The crowd stands on cobblestone, or sits/stands on cobblestone stairs, or plays in this fountain thing.  Well, it's not a giant fountain, it's just one of those things where they're multiple little holes in the ground that randomly spit water out at you.)  A lot of bands play there.  My dad did a lot when I was little.  I think the best part of the place, though, is the fact that it's right by the river, which is right behind the stage and the stores.  We were going to go there and just hang out together all day.  Adam is going to Michigan for a month, and when he gets back, the busyness of my summer starts.  So, we wanted to hang out one more time before that happens.  Adam hasn't been feeling too great the past coupled of days -- mostly due to his lack of sleep from working on final exam projects -- and he just wasn't up for the task of being outside all day today, which is absolutely fine.  I want him to get better before his trip.  I just also wanted a proper goodbye.  I didn't hug them when I left them yesterday.  Adam and I have been writing letters to each other ever since I dropped out of the only class we have together, because, at the time, there was no other time we talked to each other.  The last letter I wrote, I gave to him on Wednesday, and he never wrote me back.  In joking, he wanted me to write one that he could read throughout the entire summer, -- because my letters are always notoriously longer than his -- and I was going to pull through with that joke, but he never wrote his reply, and I wanted some foundation as to how to start my letter by replying to his.  So, I'm a little sad this morning, but I plan on using ACT practice, Wall-E, Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen, and Doctor Who season 5 to distract me.  (I watched the first episode of the season last night, and the entire show definitely got a complete upgrade.  Haha.)

Well, reader, this is hopefully not the last time we talk this summer.

Uh

So, I kind of miss blogging...a lot.  I miss keeping up with everyone else's, too.

I took my last AP test of this school year, reader.  It was for English Language and Composition.  I don't think I've ever had so much fun taking a test before today.

Aspire

So, I'm sitting here, finally opening the AP Language and Composition book that I got at the beginning of the year (it's the day before the exam, people), and one of the first examples I stumble upon read:

People who knew American novelist Thomas Wolfe recall that he habitually roamed down the long aisles of the library stacks, grabbing one book after the other from the shelves and devouring its contents as if he were a starving man suddenly let loose in an immense storehouse of food.  He wrote with abandon, turning out incredible quantities of manuscript, filling whole packing cases with the product of his frenzied pen.

This may just be my thoughts being used to procrastinating, but I thought I'd write a blog post about this little diddy of an example.

I hope some day -- decades, even centuries from now -- when people stumble upon my name in a book store, they are enthralled to the point that they want to know what kind of person could have written such a thing.  I hope my imagination and my heart don't die with me, but live and thrive through my passion -- writing.

I hope I am remembered as the girl who reprimanded when someone said they had not read a certain book she loved.  I hope I am remembered as the girl who had a sparkle in her eyes when she spoke of those books and the many others that held a place on her shelf, her dresser, scattered all along her desk.  I hope I am remembered for the days I spent -- not wasted -- just reading or writing.  I hope I am remembered for my ability to go beyond this world, into one my mind created.  I hope I am remembered for my ability to make others see that same world and be affected by it in the same way I was.  I hope that once my last breath is taken from this world, those worlds in my heart and soul will not be taken with it.

I hope people remember me as the girl who was not only devoted to her faith, but devoted to imagining.

This is what I aspire to be remembered for, reader.

M-O-M-M-Y's

Today, I gave a talk in church about mommys, and how much I love them.

We then came home and my grandma and mom opened presents.

After that, we went to my aunt and uncle's to provide Skype for them for when our favorite missionary (Nathanael) was supposed to be able to talk to us.  He was an hour late, of course, but that's typical of him (even on his mission).  He has grown/changed so much -- both in stature and in spirit.  I see his increase of confidence and his joy.  I am so grateful to call him my cousin.

We ate dinner together as we waited for his call and peeled wallpaper from their dining room -- and started peeling in the living room -- before and after the call.  The nearer June comes, the more I miss them already.  All we did was peel wallpaper (everyone else faster than me, of course), but it was so sweet.  We laughed.  We hugged at random times.  We talked about little things and big things; everything and nothing.  We spent time together like we will in eternity.  It was such a beautiful way to spend Mother's Day.  It was perfect, reader.

Morning Magnificence

I was late for Seminary this morning.  After sitting down at my desk and waiting for opening excercises to be over, I noticed three symbols on the board.  One was the symbol for pi next to some other symbol that I guess was supposed to be some sort of rebus, but a little further from that, on the bottom right corner of the board was the symbol for the Deathly Hallows drawn in a brown marker.  I turned to my friend, Emma, and asked if she drew it or if she knew who did.  She looked at me with that look that we get when something Harry Potter-relevant happens.  She said she had no idea where/who it had come from.  'Twas excellent.

Not Disney

Tomorrow I am going to the happiest place on Earth.  I am so grateful.



I know with absolute assurety that my Redeemer lives and that He loves me and knows me with an exactness.

“Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world. …

“And when they had all gone forth and had witnessed for themselves, they did cry out with one accord, saying:

“Hosanna! Blessed be the name of the Most High God! And they did fall down at the feet of Jesus, and did worship him.” - 3 Nephi 11:7-11, 14, 16-17

"...God our Father has ears with which to hear our prayers. He has eyes with which to see our actions. He has a mouth with which to speak to us. He has a heart with which to feel compassion and love. He is real. He is living. We are his children, made in his image. We look like him, and he looks like us." - President Thomas S. Monson

My lullaby for tonight, reader.