Life Left To Go

I started this blog the Wednesday just before Thanksgiving break. I just finished it. Sorry it took so long to post!

I recently was introduced to this band called Safetysuit, and I'm in love with their stuff! The title of my blog is one of their songs, and I feel it's somewhat suiting for my blog content. Youtube it. It's amazing.

We finished the "Tuesdays With Morrie" movie in my marriage class yesterday. I cried. Fact. It really put things into perspective for me...what is important to me? who is important me? am I afraid to love and get close to people? am I running from something? am I living the life I want to lead?...There has been a lot of self-reflecting for sure after these past two classes. Of course, I always am doing that after I get out of that class. Which is a good thing. My marriage class is seriously a huge break from all my other classes. I look forward to going and I've only missed once (for chemistry). Since I shared my notes from the first half, I guess I should share the rest of them. Ha.

Don't be afraid to be loved because you're afraid to give yourself to someone.
Am I leading the life I want to lead?
Is this the person I want to be?
If you accept death, you'll live your life differently.
Work, money, ambition--we bury ourselves in this but do we step back and ask ourselves, is this what we really want?
Never do work that uses people or degrades and hurts.
Love always wins.
We think we don't deserve love, if we let it in, we become soft; love is the only rational act--let it come in.
There is nothing innately shameful about being dependent.
We we're infants we need people; when we're dying we need people--here's the secret--we need people all along the way, too.
We must love one another, or die.
The only regrets we should have are pride, vanity, and hardness of heart.
Understand and forgive yourself. Forgive everybody everything. NOW. Don't wait.
We learn from what hurts us as much as what loves us.
What are the poisons in life that you need knocked loose?
Sometimes the simplest things in life are the most perfect.
Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Who's the Morrie in your life?

Again. If you haven't read "Tuesdays With Morrie", I STRONGLY encourage you to read it. It's life-changing.

Better

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Where Is Your Heart At?

I just joined Tumblr.
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But don't go there right now because it won't have anything on it. :-)

Today has been a day of reflecting for me. My heart is pretty smiley right now and I'm very happy with the life I have right now. I just want to share it with everyone! I have FHE in a half hour though so I have to hurry. Ha.

Okay so I had an incredible Sunday yesterday. I taught Gospel Doctrine (my favorite calling by far!) for the first time this semester (yes I have been called all semester long but I just haven't had to teach. weird.) and it was on Temples and Family History. I kid you not, every lesson I have taught since having a teaching calling has been for me. It makes me smile thinking about all the lessons I've given too, and how I lovelovelove each one. Anyway, this was such a good experience because it talked about how much we can do and all the tools we have at our disposal. One of the things we talked about was writing in a journal. Everyone struggles with this. Seriously. I definitely do. I try to write in my journal as often as I can (usually once a week) and for the first time in my life I have almost filled an entire journal. Cool right? So my roommate, the baller that she is, is best friends with President Eyring's granddaughter (or great granddaughter I'm not sure) and she went over to their house once because he was in town visiting his son (who actually used to be my stake president!) and she shared this awesome experience...He gathered the family together in this library room or something and what he does, every day, is does a journal page on the computer. He does a picture, shares spiritual experiences, feelings, everything he did that day. The picture he takes with his iphone. He types it all up on the computer, and then emails it to EVERYONE in the family. How amazing! After hearing that, I really want to be better at journal writing. I guess having a blog helps a TON. Let's be honest. Typing 3 pages is a lot faster than hand-writing 3 pages. Ridiculous. I love my ward too by the way. So many nice people. Especially our leaders.

Another thing I wanted to tell everyone about was my Eternal Marriage class today. We started talking about the natural man and how to overcome it by having divine qualities. And of course we started the movie Tuesdays With Morrie (which is also an amazing book and I highly recommend you read it if you haven't!). My teacher assigned us to take notes like mad which was very easy to do considering the content of everything. Basically, for those who are wondering, its about a guy named Morrie, who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), who teaches a previous student of his about living life as he begins to die. It's a real eye-opener because it teaches you also about the meaning of life and how to live it to the fullest. How unimportant all the games are and how we just need to be honest with each other and not protect each other's feelings when it's important to share them. Okay really I'm just going to share my notes. I think that's best in order to get my point across. Haha.

The last great journey is dying and something of value can be learned from it.
Find time--make time--to thank people, to talk to them.
What is it about silence that makes people so uneasy?
Dying is just one thing to be sad about, but living unhappily is another.
Are you giving to your community?
When you know how to die, you know how to live.
Catch your breath every now and then!
How do you see time?
We must love one another, or die.
Aging is not just about decay, it's about growth.
Mourn, and then detach. Don't give yourself time to self-pity. It's not worth it. You have a whole day of living ahead of you.
Don't ever lose the desire to be touched--Don't be scared to let people in--Don't spare people's feelings by denying them.
Did you ever stop to think about what you're running from?

We didn't even finish the movie and I'm already pondering on how I can make my life better. What am I holding back from? What can I change? Who am I not letting in? What am I running from? How am I living? I really want to be a better person. I love my family so so much (every part of my family!!!!) and I want them all to know it. I know I don't know everyone in my family as well as I could or am able to, but I really do love my family so much. I wish I could see all of you all the time and I hope with all my heart that one day we can all live closer and I will be able to devote more time. I don't like how school envelops all my time right now. It is so so hard, but I know this is where I need to be. I want you to know I'm sorry I don't keep in touch as well as I should and I don't see you all as often as we all would like. I do love you all so much. You have a huge part of my heart and soul...

Need You Now

Okay for some reason I have been on a serious Lady Antebellum craze lately. Actually, I really have gotten into some country music lately. It's really strange because if you know me, I'm not always proud of the fact that I'm from the South but recently I really really love it and my accent has come out a lot more. It's fun. I'm really liking it a lot. Haha. I don't like country either, but I really like it a lot lately. Still not into the super twangy stuff and I don't really know If I ever will be, but I think it's a good thing I'm getting into my southern roots. If you have any recommendations for me, let me know! :-)

So my roommate blogs about her love life a lot and I realized that I don't do that at all. I leave little hints every now and then, but nobody gets them because NOBODY knows whats going on half the time. And let's be honest... the majority of the time, I don't either. Anyway, the point is, I decided I'm going to blog about my love life tonight. Because all my other blogs have been kind of boring lately. So I'm gonna bring on the good stuff.

Where to start... Oh goodness. Okay well, for those who are close to me, you have probably heard me talk about Brian--my best friend of...4+ years now. And if you know that, you also know that friends is all we ever have been for many many reasons. Some of which I still am confused about. Haha. Anyway, he just got off his mission. I've gone to Utah a couple times, he's come up here, and we've hung out and had A LOT of fun together. It's so so complicated though because I feel like there is something there, but because we never have enough time to explore that, there hasn't been a lot of progress made. In the past I had forgotten what it was like to miss someone... and he's made me remember that feeling. I also don't think he really knows how much I care about him and I don't really know how to convey that to him. Even as just friends, this has got to be one of the hardest relationships I've ever been in. But it's totally worth it. And I'm honestly happy with everything.

K so then there's Sam. He's from Washington. And he was in my ward last semester but we never really talked or hung out. Anyway, we started talking on facebook a lot. I won't lie, I'm pretty interested. He's very much my type. He's tall, and has dark hair and GORGEOUS green eyes. He's super athletic and funny too. Anyway, he came to visit last week and we went out to Jamba Juice (I highly highly recommend the pumpkin splash drink they have! so good!) and it was just really fun! We had good conversation and he was very respectful. We'll see though.

There's also Jared. Who was also in my ward last semester and is friends/roommates with these other guys I was interested in. He's a stud and sooo funny. He went to Ukraine on his mission, very cool I know. I love Russian so it's a total plus. He doesn't have any idea that I'm interested either. He kind of reminds me of Korben in his sense of style and his sense of humor. Which is appealing cuz Korben is like my best friend and what girl doesn't want a guy who has similar qualities?

That's pretty much it... I'm sure I drive my roommates crazy with all this stuff. Especially since I'm so on and off with all of them. I really really like Brian a lot. Sam and Jared are kind of "let's see what happens" type of things. Like I would be okay if we ended up just being friends. I'm just takin it a day at a time though. What else can I do! Whatev. It's fun. :-)

Now My Feet Won't Touch The Ground

Stress sucks. And I really don't think it likes me very much. I don't handle it well. I'm a very laid back person and very non-confrontational. So when stress hits, it is literally a nightmare. I wish I knew of a stress management class. Except I don't know how much good that would do for me because it would probably just stress me out even more having to deal with that class on top of everything else in my life. Ha. I may look into it.

I have 17 credits for next semester: Motor Development, Chemistry 106 with a lab, Exercise Physiology with a lab, Sports Nutrition, Photography, & Weight Lifting for women. Yeah I'm gonna be pretty busy. The response I've gotten when I tell people that has been pretty 50/50 too. So I can't figure out if I'll end up dropping or not. A lot of these classes will be a cake walk, it'll just be putting the time and effort into them is what will be hard. I'm really excited about photography though. It's gonna be tight.

Flag football ended pretty well! It was actually a really exciting week for that! We were...1 and 5? I think. And then we had a playoff game last Tuesday and we won 18-0. SWEET. Semifinals were an hour later and we won that game too!!! 18-13. HECK YES. Finals were rough. The team we played was very rude and NOT fun AT ALL to play with. So it made it really difficult. I really wanted to take a few girls out. Seriously. We lost 13-0. SUCKED. BUT! At least we got second place. And I made some really awesome friends from being apart of this team :-) It was seriously a blast. If it were possible for me to love football more than I already do, I would say this experience did it.

Well, Chemistry is calling may name unfortunately. Until next time.

CrushCrushCrush

Gotta love some Paramore...

So I'm studying for an CPR test right now...pretty sure I'll pass. But I'm just kind of frustrated so I decided I'd take some time blog aka vent..

Do I look like a doormat? Do I have a sign posted somewhere on my body that I can't see that says, "hey walk all over me! I seriously couldn't care less!" Sometimes I feel like I bend over backwards for people, or just am nice to them in general, and they think it's okay to treat me however they want afterwards or just take advantage of my hospitality. Are you kidding? Wow.

I'm just kind of shocked with some of the behavior of people I know. It's give and take people! Or nothing at all. I seriously can't put up with this much longer. I'm running out of patience and my fuse is getting shorter and shorter by the minute. Sooner, rather than later, I'm gonna blow up. Gosh.

Ramalama Bang, Bang

Such a strange name for a song.

So. My Halloween costume is becoming more of a struggle than I thought it would be. My plan is to be Amelia Earhart--the infamous adventurer who was the epitome of independence. She's quite the inspiration so I figured it'd be fun to be her.

There's only one week left to get a costume and I only have half of it. My roommate Melanie and I went to DI in Idaho Falls last night and within 5 minutes of being there, she found me pants I could wear, we found a belt, and I have boots. Now, I need goggles, a scarf, and an aviator hat, OH and a bomber jacket. and a shirt. haha. (Does anyone have any of these things?) I'm not worried about the hat, goggles, or scarf because they have kits online. But a bomber jacket has been the hardest item to find so far because all the good ones are ohhh 2 grand... No big deal. I found some at DI but they were ginormous. Haha.

I found these pictures of her (or people posed by her) that gave me really good ideas, Hayden Panettiere being one...

Abby you'll like this one...this outfit is baller.

Anyway, I am so excited for Halloween. I MAY be going to Utah??? Trying to get a bunch of people to go with me. I've never spent Halloween in Utah before. Should be fun. I hope it works out.

So yeah, that's my costume right there! I'm so excited about it! :-) I love Halloween. I just wish I wasn't too old for trick-or-treating! Haha.

Bruised

I just looked over my blog.

I suck at blogging.

Haha.

That is all.

Hear You Me

Okay I'm gonna try this new thing... Usually when I post, I'm listening to music. So. From now on, I'm going to title my blog as the song I am listening to when I start it. Neat, yeah?

I got out of class REALLY early today (almost an hour and a half...its 3 hrs long) and I have a lot of time to kill... So I thought I'd post a blog.

My next class is Prep for Eternal Marriage and we're doing a presentation today on In-laws and conflicts between them and the married couple. I feel like this is kind of an important topic with me because I know I want to marry someone who gets along with my family. And since my family is so big, if someone doesn't like the other, that could be a problem. So doing this presentation has been kind of neat. When I researched for my section of the presentation, I found out that the top 5 common problems are as follows:

1. Annoying Habits
2. Criticism
3. Keeping In Touch
4. Privacy
5. Family Occasions

Pretty self-explanatory right? I thought so, too. I also found it interesting that this article was posted by "Psychology Today" and throughout the whole thing, the whole resolution was always "decide as a couple", "talk as a couple", "work together", "have fun", etc... It was neat, because in all the General Authority talks I researched for this, they said the same thing, too. Glad we're all on the same page here! Ha.

So I was going to go to the Boys Like Girls concert tonight in Blackfoot, Idaho. I'm really impressed with Southern Idaho's choice of bands for concerts. I mean really. Who knew Blackfoot would get Boys Like Girls and The Maine and Cobra Starship? I can't go unfortunately. Too much to do and all my money is going to other things (like tuition since grants/loans didn't work out) so its a bummer. But whatev. When I'm rollin the the benjamins I'll fly all over the world to go to concerts. No big deal.

HOW ABOUT THEM BRONCOS?????? O-M-G. I'm so so proud of them. 6-0?! It's amazing. I love it. And I love rubbing it in. Eddie Royal? Kyle Orton? I just want you guys to know, I love you two. I hope this continues! My weekends are so so happy partly due to the Broncos undefeated season so far! :-) OH and lets not forget about my fantasy football team. Tom Brady? You were my top scorer this weekend! Thank you. I love you. Larry Fitzgerald did amazing also. I freakin love football.

Since we're on sports, let's hit up baseball, too. I'm so sad my Red Sox are out. And the Cardinals too, let's be honest. Freakin Angels are completely responsible for the Red Sox being out. So, due to that fact, I'm rooting for the Yankees currently. Yes, I know. That's pretty much against the laws of baseball and sanity. But why would I root for a team that just killed my own? I know the Yankees killed the Red Sox too this season, but I do respect Jeter, and I kind of really want it to be the Yankees and Phillies. Is that even possible? I dunno. Whatever. I just don't want the Angels in the World Series.

Anyway, life is good. I love Rexburg. and I CANNOT wait for snowboarding season. The pass for the hidden gem here, Grand Targhee, is only 200 BONES THIS YEAR for students. Normally its like 750 for all adults. They finally got some brains. Early Christmas present? Ha, I'll take it. I'm seriously donating all the plasma I can so I can get this pass. Whatever it takes. I'm going to have a good season this year. Fact. Bring on the snow.

Brand New Eyes

Someday I hope my posts won't always be 7 months apart.

I bought the new Paramore album today. It's so bomb. I love Hayley Williams. If I ever was brave enough, I'd color my hair just like hers.

Okay here's something I'm super stoked about (Abby you'll love this)--
Over my 7 week break from school in Colorado, I visited an estate sale. This guy that lives down the road from my grandparents was put in a home because he has Alzheimer's and his family is all over so no one can come take care of him or anything. So his kids were selling everything. My grandparents came home with some sweet finds so I went over there myself. I bought a desk lamp for school (my melted), two old cigar boxes (very cool looking), a mirror, and two Polaroid cameras. One is just a regular snapshot one but the other is a Polaroid Land Camera, which came with all the flash bulbs and lenses and everything. All of that for 10 bucks. Heck yeah. I'm so stoked. Now all I need to do is buy film.

DISTRACTIONS

I should be working on a research paper currently, but I think I need a break so I wanted to post a quick blog...

Things are going really well in life! I try to stay as busy as I can with school, but of course, I have to make time for socializing too. :-)
Random--I applied to BYU Provo yesterday. I didn't even think twice about it. I just did it. I can't even believe it. I didn't even think about what I will do if/when I'm accepted! AH! It'd be freakin cool if I got in though...
Also, I was reminiscing today on fun times in the past..I talked to Korben yesterday who was helping Elle wipe her bum after a good dump, and it made me think of when I went to Disneyland with my family a couple years ago. SO FUN! and one of my favorite memories I have, aside from meeting Peter Pan!, was Elle dancing in the street right before the parade. and I feel lucky enough to have been able to take a video of it! PS--I tried to rotate it but it wouldn't work.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S/SINGLE AWARENESS DAY!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Or... for some, like myself, Happy Single Awareness Day!

I have a love/hate relationship with this holiday. Hate, because of the commercialism this country gives it--NOT because of all the frilly presents and gifts and huge amounts of love everyone gets from their significant other (although, why should a holiday be an excuse for that when it should be a year-round thing? ha). Love, because of the history behind it. They should make a chick flick for that... Valentine's Day Special!

See...Saint Valentine was a martyr. He died because he wanted people to be together. In his day, there was an Emporer by the name of Claudius who felt like dude's who weren't married or had families, should stay that way and be soldiers. So he outlawed marriage for young guys. Saint Valentine thought that was stupid so he went on and married people illegally. But Claudius found out and imprisoned him.

This is a cute part--while he was in prison, he fell in love with his jailor's daughter who visited him often in jail. Before he died, he wrote her a love letter and signed it--"From your Valentine..." Awww... so sweet.

Anyway, my big VDay plans are not that elaborate but I am spending it with those that I love. Which is how it should be. :-)

Happy Valentine's Day. <3

PT/OT Society

So I was right about the snow. It's been pounding away for almost 3 days now.. I LOVE IT. I know I'm some kind of freak but... oh well. I love winter. There's just a certain caliber of peace to it that no other season can give. It's incredible.


Last weekend was amazing...having the opportunity to visit the Eastern Washington University and the University of Montana was such a blessing. It's like as soon as I made the decision to do Physical Therapy, everything has fallen into place.

Things were super cramped just traveling to these schools. There was I think 23 of us? and we were all cramped into two 12 passenger vans. It was annoying um...like 90% of the time. Thank goodness for ipods though. and phones! I'm glad I can text. Except there wasn't a lot of service traveling so... yeah.

Anyway, University of Montana is pretty cool. I really like their PT building. Of course, everyone is a hippie there so everything was really laid-back. I really liked how their program was set up though. They are doing research for quadriplegic and paraplegic people where they have them sit in recumbent bikes and they hook electrodes to their legs and then through the computer system, the patients are able to move their legs and have muscle contraction. It's amazing.

I think I liked Eastern Washington University better kinda. The overall atmosphere was a lot more like BYUI. They have a kind of dress code there and things were pretty organized. A couple grad students gave a us a tour of the facilities there and showed us a few labs. One of the labs we walked into was labeled "Anatomy Lab". Okay. I didn't really think anything of it cuz I've been in one before. Well. this was definitely different from the one I had been in. As I was soon about to find out...I walked in and there were ten stainless steel tables--2 rows of 5. Each table had a kind of lid to it that covered the entire table. Each table was about 6 feet long. the lids were like 2 feet high? My reaction was "oh cool! what are these for?" I'm definitely not the brightest crayon in the box... then i realize how cold it is in the room. I take another look at the tables. "OHHHHHHHH...." Yeah. it's a cadaver lab. Never been in one before. But it was definitely veryyyyy cool. Didn't see any bodies though. haha. dang.

Northern Idaho is beautiful by the way. I would live there. Maybe. It was AWESOME cuz I was right in the middle of Korben's soon to be mission field! Yes--Eastern Washington University is in Spokane. Freakin sweet. He's a lucky dude.

I'm so stoked about PT. It's gonna be so amazing.

PS--I saw Uncle Rob's grad picture for Pharmacy School at U of M!!!!! :-D

School...

So I'm in school. Back at BYU-I in good ole' rexburg, idaho. or iceburg. whatever you wanna call it. It's cold--it felt like -26 degrees the other day!!! So crazy. It hasn't snowed in a while though. But that only means we're gonna get POUNDED pretty badly in the next week or so.

Anyway, I've finally decided on a career! (i know everyone is celebrating...its a pretty huge deal. haha.) I want to be a Sports Physical Therapist (http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Explore_types_of_jobs/Types_of_Job/p!eipaL?state=showocc&idno=153). You know those people who run out on the football fields when players get hurt? Yeah that's what I wanna do. I wanna work for an NFL team (Broncos or Cardinals preferably...) and do physical therapy for them. It'd be SO tight. I can't wait.

And.. I feel like I'm already well on my way. I joined the Pre-Physical/Occupational Therapy Society up here at school and this weekend we're going to Missoula, Montana and Spokane, Washington to check out the universities up there for grad programs and for touring the school and stuff. I still have a LOT left to do...I probably have about 4 years left still, but I know I'm going to be successful in it. And hopefully I'll have a network built up so I can have a shoe in or something. That'd be amazing. Maybe I'll meet Tom Brady... haha.