Today.

Today was good.

I woke up and went to Travis' and Jorge's sacrament meeting to listen to Travis speak. He spoke about magnifying your calling, and it was a great talk. I told him later that it made me feel kind of guilty because....visiting teaching is not my favorite thing!! I don't mind doing it, it just stresses me out because the only day that works for all of us is Sunday, and so I feel so much pressure to make all of our schedules work. I focus too much on planning it than actually doing it.

Then my ward. Today was our Fast Sunday since next week is General Conference (yay!!) and then either the next week or the week after that is stake conference. The testimonies were so great today. I felt the Spirit very strongly. Although the testimonies were very uplifting, at the same time they were a little bit depressing to me, especially the testimonies they youth gave. The youth in my ward are so strong and I am so proud of them. The reason it made me a little sad though was because I used to be like that, but I don't feel like I am anymore. I had my life on track and I knew where I was going. Now here I am, twenty years old in a family ward. I feel like I'm going nowhere. I'd like to go to the single's ward but I'd feel bad leaving Mario (he's the little boy with Down's syndrome who I help every week) and I don't really like my single's ward...it's very cliqueish. I really like Celesta's and Linda's single's ward. But my dad told me he was basically positive Pres. Hall wouldn't let me get a boundary exception...which is understandable...

I just feel like I don't get as much out of church as I used to, as I could, and as I need to. Probably because I'm in primary for 2 of the 3 hours....and I don't do anything. I don't teach. I just sit there with Mario. I have a feeling my time with Mario should be up. When I started working with him, he'd only been to all of primary once or twice because he'd throw such huge tantrums. Now he goes, no problem. However, Mario knows that I'm there for him, and he's began to try to walk all over me. He always needs a million drinks during class, he always wants to go "night-night," he always wants to leave and go get Gracie (his little sister) from nursery....but he wouldn't do that for the normal teacher. I think I've done what I was supposed to do for Mario but at the same time question if I have since I haven't been released yet (even though I've mentioned it to my dad and he's in the bishopric..? I wanted to gauge his reaction). I don't know. I'm just tired of not being around people my own age.

I said today was a good day then I wrote about why I was sad. Sorry that doesn't really make sense haha. Today really was good. Another reason why it was good was because of my little brother Travis. He's in this habit of starting to watch a movie at 10 or 10:30 almost every night. Normally on Sundays he chooses a "non-Sunday" movie, and I remind him it's still Sunday. He doesn't get mad about it but he's definitely not happy about it. Well tonight he was in the family room by himself and put a movie in. I thought, "Hmm, it's probably a non-Sunday movie and he probably thinks since I'm not in there watching with him it won't matter...gahh." But! As the movie started I realized he was watching John Bytheway!! And not only was he watching it, he was glued to it. When he got up to make food, he kept looking over the counter at the TV while he was getting his food out of the microwave. That made me so glad...he's been doing a lot of changing and maturing lately. He is going to be a great man. I am so glad and grateful that he is my brother.

Well...I want to start going to bed earlier so that A) it's easier to get up and B) I can exercise (go running or to the gym with my parents) and read my scriptures in the morning. So I'm going to go. Good night.

So far in March I have...

Enjoyed the lovely flowers in my yard.


Drawn an epic octopus picture for Travis.

Decorated Kaela and Derek's yard with Celesta in celebration of their news...baby boy Camden! I can't wait til he's born! We went after we both closed at work and didn't finish til like 1:30 or 2 in the morning. We enjoyed walking around in Walmart at midnight talking in British accents randomly calling out "Associate!!" (we needed to speak to a Walmart associate to ask about balloons...haha)

I celebrated my birthday which included being sick, going to school and work, receiving some great music and a letter from Travis, some nice jewelry from Jorge, some fun odds and ends of things from Michelle, being birthday attacked by Richard and Celesta,

opening a time capsule I made when I was ten (it's half my life old!),

and receiving lovely flowers from my parents while at work.

Between my birthday and the next event, I randomly got really sick at work and the paramedics came. Thanks Anamin, Rhonda, Linda, and Kaela for staying in there with me :] Thanks for all your prayers (and Travie and Jorge too)! Sorry for scaring everyone...

The next day Jorge came over and him, Travis (my bro) and I made a movie...here's a pic of Travis from that. The movie is on facebook.

I gathered up all of the beer bottles in Tito and Pancho's apartment and lined them up so they could see how much they really drink. :[

I don't have pics of this because I left my camera at home. But one night after work, Celesta and I went over to Ryan Cox's house and hung out til just past midnight. It was lots of fun, we ate delicious homemade pizza and cinnamon rolls, got to use this gigantic antique paper cutter they have, petted (is that a word?) a chicken, played the piano (Ryan is amazing! He has written some awesome songs), hung out with his cute little sister Kalissa, and ate their home grown swiss chard, which was..interesting. After we left Ryan's, we snuck over to Jorge and Joseph's apartment where Travis and Ryan Jean were spending the night and they were all playing guitar hero. We scared them it was great. We ended up hanging out there until 3:30 in the morning. After we woke up we went goofy golfing at 11...needless to say we were all dead tired. (Sorry not everyone got invited it was really last minute!)

Monday Travis and I hung out. We went to the mall where we met up with Tito and Pancho for a bit. Then Travis and I went to Jack in the Box and Bahama Bucks, then to my house, then to work. I said good bye to Tito Monday night :[ I miss him so much. I'm so glad I got to meet him though! Hopefully he had a safe flight back to Chile, I haven't heard from him yet.

Then yesterday I went to Utah. Which is where I am now, sitting on my old roommies' couch. It's kind of a bummer because they're in school still and have lots of homework so I've done a lot of listening to music (thanks Travie for the new music), computer, and texting. More pictures will follow later. Sometime. I'm sure we'll have more time later to have fun. I wish break was 2 weeks long so I could spend one week in Utah and one week at home with my AZ buddies who I miss sooo dearly!!!

I hope you're all having a great week! (and break!)

An Old Fart

I'm 20 now! Gross!!!!!

(Well I guess I still have 19 hours and 12 minutes to go...)

7:44 PM!