Spring Break Adventures

Hiking the River Trail:

(This is my favorite picture)

There was still snow on the ground, but it was probably
about 45 degrees. So nice!

Utah State: WAC Champions

Sunday Walk:

Logan Temple from Old Main Hill

Old Main (It's kind of the Brigham Academy of Utah State)

It's not a pillow Dad, but I found a ketchup packet
and made it work. Turned out okay, huh? =]

12" of Snow

Wait, THIS is Spring Break?!?!
This is only about 8 of the total 12" that we got that day.

Working:

It's a terrible picture of me, but I love the Little Blue sign too much
to not include it. Big Blue is Utah State's mascot.
The elementary school that is run on Utah State's campus
has a mascot too: Little Blue. This sign is in their lunchroom.

Family Time:

Nap time was hard for Chase for some reason,
so Mommy held him and got a nap for herself too!

There were other equally spectacular things that I did during Spring Break that weren't captured on my little cell phone camera, so you'll have to deal with just having these memoirs. Happy, productive, non-sinful Spring Break. =]

Ditsy or Deceived, but I still Love it

Last week was Spring Break. It was an event to be savored, since my entire college career has been null and void of anything even similar to a sliver of Spring-Breakishness. As my supervisor astutely (and sarcastically) noted, "it's because Spring Break represents sin and they want to keep students from committing sin." That made me laugh. Hard. Anyhow, a log of my amazing Spring Break will hopefully be forthcoming soon. I even learned how to extend the videos on my cell phone so that they're longer than 15 seconds. I don't know if any of them are post worthy, but we'll see.

I wanted to mention a discovery I made last week. On Thursday I was at the Salt Lake Wal-mart, wandering around as I awaited the time when I would be going to visit a few of my freshmen roommates for a little reunion. Well, Wal-mart has taken it upon themselves to sell some of their DVD's for $5. My guess is that they are replacing these boring, normal DVD's with the more exciting Blu-Ray ones. But really I don't care why they're doing it. All I know is that I benefit highly from these sales. And what, may you ask, did I find there? The Secret of NIMH. That's right. Good little Mrs. Frisby and the rats that she calls upon to help move her house, with the creepy owl and all. Well, I couldn't pass it up. I'll be honest, I giggled a little as I put it down on the counter. When I got back to Logan I told my friend Alise what I'd found. She giggled with excitement as well. And of course, we planned a movie night for the next night to watch it.

Three things popped out at me as we watched the movie. The first is obvious: It's an incredible movie, an incredible story. Who DOESN'T love a story where the Mom has the most astounding courage in order to save her children's lives; and where, as Alise pointed out, the good name of a man ends up saving his family's life, even after his death. Jonathan Brisby's name get's his wife in to see the Great Owl and the Rats of NIMH. He is the whole reason that they agree to help her in the first place. Actually the second thing that popped out at me is that in the movie their last name is "Brisby," whereas in the book it's "Frisby." Alise and I determined that the filmmakers might have thought "Frisby" would confuse the children somehow.

The last *POP* occurred when we turned the subtitles on to figure out if they were saying Brisby or Frisby. We left the subtitles on, and when it got to a part where they talked about the rats, I noticed for the first time that NIMH was in all capitals. Now, in my defense the last time I read the book was when I was about 9 or 10. So NIMH in capital letters wouldn't have meant much to me. However, now I am a semi-educated graduate student that has worked in the mental health field for 3 years or so. So now NIMH in call capital letters automatically equals (drumroll please) the National Institute of Mental Health. That's right. It was the first time I made the connection. I giggled some more, and Alise laughed that I was such a dork. Yea for new discoveries. I'm going to read the book again when the semester is over (or when I finish Peter Pan--my current guilty-pleasure book that I use to avoid homework when necessary) to see how many jabs at the National Institute of Mental Health there are in the book. Hopefully not too many. I wouldn't want a book that I loved so much as a kid to turn in to some giant backlash at an institution. It would lose all it's charm of being such a sweet story.

The Smoothest Line Ever

Our Stake President told us in church today about an interaction between his 3 year old grandson and another little girl at the playground.

Boy: I'm Tarzan
Girl: I'm Cinderella
Boy: I have your movie...and I LIKE it.

~Just for kicks and giggles!

Top Ten

Top 10 Things You Need if You Have A Stomach Ache
1. Pepto Bismal. It can be the Equate version.
2. Unsalted saltines
3. Ginger snaps. It calms the stomach. BTW, a cook that I used to work with told me that ginger in large quantities is poisonous. And he worked in the Temple, so it had to be true.
4. Pajamas
5. Pillow
6. Movie
7. Sleep
8. Chicken broth. Not actual soup. Those pesky noodles and veggies and such might make you feel queasy. Just drink the broth from a cup.
9. Classical Music
10. Bubble bath. And a bottle of bubbles to blow when you get bored of laying in bed.

Top Ten Reasons We Don't Deserve to Encounter People from Other Planets
1. MTV and BET
2. The flutophone
3. Newscasters from FOX network
4. Rhythmic Gymnastics
5. Jim Carrey (calm DOWN already)
6. People that wear shorts/flip flops when it is 30 degrees Fahrenheit or less outside.
7. Any "reality" show
8. Comic books (I include this not because I hate them, but because it would confuse our visitors. Can you imagine? "What, you mean you can't read people's minds? You can't control the elements? You can't repeat pi to the 400th decimal point?")
9. Hairless cats
10. Botox. You know why you're on here.

There are a lot more relevant ones (like Rwanda, Darfur and the Holocaust) but I thought for entertainment purposes I'd put the funny ones.

Just for fun, check this out. It has rained fish. I'm not crazy.

Big=Little IFF Little=Big

I found a new equation today, as you can see. Actually, I included the "IFF" (if and only if) in here for my little sister, Britte's, sake. Math nerds.

I decided in my Sunday School class today that big things are actually little things, but only if (and only if) we make the little things in our lives big. Let me explain: The little things, like reading our scriptures and saying our prayers, writing in our journals, going to the Temple and doing our family history work, make us who we are inside. They are the building blocks of our character. My character is determined in the little things that I do every day--the things that are inconvenient at times, tiresome, wearisome, and even sometimes a little confusing (I knew I should have taken that Understanding Isaiah class at BYU...). I don't necessarily have to understand how these things are changing me. I just have to have faith that they are, and then be able to step outside of myself and evaluate how I'm doing.

Creating your character is like creating any piece of art. It takes planning. It takes patience. In ceramics (and unfortunately, in some of our lives), it takes beating the clay, throwing it against the table to get all the bubbles out so that you have something you can actually work with--something that won't explode in the kiln. It's only after all that preparation that you're clay is ready to be formed into something worthwhile; ready to withstand the incredible heat it will soon be exposed to. If you didn't do all the little preparation, then the big test will seem just that--a big test. But if you did go through all the little preparation, then the big things are just another little thing. And suddenly taking out your extra pair of earrings, or looking for someone to share the gospel with so the missionaries don't have to do quite as much tracting, or walking across the plains, or building a Temple with your bare hands when you know that the people waiting to overtake the city are just going to burn it down to the ground anyways, or being asked to serve in a calling that you don't feel quite prepared for--they aren't big things any more. They're just little things. Because your heart was ready for it.

You only learn to jump rope by jumping.