My Miracle

Okay so I have an important story to tell. It all started tonight in the Walmart parking lot. (Okay I promise this is not a creepy or inappropriate story.) Travis Birch and I hung out tonight and we didn't know what to do, so we decided to be bums and go to Walmart. As we were leaving at about 10:20, there were tons and tons and tons of moths flying around the lights in the lot. Travis named it the cloud of moths.

After I got home from dropping Travis off, I noticed there were about 6 or 7 grasshoppers on my front porch. And that was only under one porch light. We have 3. So I suppose there were really probably closer to 15 or so. I texted Travis and told him I believed the cloud of moths we saw was actually a cloud of grasshoppers. He texted me back and told me there were several grasshoppers outside of his house, too, and that maybe it was a sign of the Second Coming. (For real!!)

I was sitting on the couch and Travis (my brother) commented about the number of grasshoppers that were swarming outside.

My whole family went to bed. And THEN!!! I noticed there was a grasshopper flying around in my house!!!!! I have a question to ask: WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!?!?!?! When I was younger I used to spend my entire recess catching grasshoppers and butterflies and dragonflies and ladybugs. Literally the entire recess. But NOW I absolutely FREAK out if a creature lands on me. Especially in my hair. So naturally I was sitting there paranoid that this grasshopper was going to jump me. Jump on me. Whatever.

I made some feeble attempts to catch it...and somehow thought I would be able to do that without it touching my hands. Hah. Needless to say I did not catch it. It kept flying all over the place, doing crazy spirals and spins and flips in the air then landing for a few minutes. I decided it was time to pray...I know, I am that pathetic. (Not that praying is pathetic. But I think praying for protection from a grasshopper might be a little pathetic.)

So I said a prayer that went something like this: "Please bless the grasshopper. Please bless that it will not land on me. Please bless that I can somehow get it out of the house."

What should happen next but a miracle.

My dear beloved doggy Scruffy wanted outside. I opened the backdoor for him. Don't jump ahead of yourselves in the story! The grasshopper did not miraculously jump outside. Something even better happened.

As Scruffy walked past me to go outside, the grasshopper JUMPED ONTO THE DOG and rode on his fur outside into the night!!!!!!!!!!! THAT was the most HILARIOUS answer to a prayer I have EVER received. Heavenly Father DOES listen and He DOES have a sense of humor!! Hahaha. Just thought I'd share!!!

Ugh.

So remember in my last post how I said I want to move away?

Well, I really really want to now.

I'm so tired of everything in my life right now. Moving away all by myself far away would be an adventure. I'd get to know myself better and become more self-reliant and responsible. I wouldn't have to worry about pleasing anyone, it'd just be me. No one to pretend for. No one to hurt. No one to be hurt by. No one to annoy or be annoyed by.

I guess that sounds really selfish. But today I realized that I live my life trying to please others. Not trying to suck up to people but just trying to always genuinely be on everyone's good side, whether it means sacrificing my own happiness and dignity or not. Well I'm tired of that.

:[

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Ugghh

Right now is one of those times where I'm tempted to just pack all of my stuff and move to some completely random location without telling anyone. (I guess I just ruined it.)

Also I've been thinking about random stuff lately....how weird our culture is. We've shortened a smile and something to the effect of, "Hi! How are you today? Have a good day, see ya!" to a simple jerk of the chin. We've shortened "I'm going to" to "Imma." We don't say any of our words correctly....for example "wooden" isn't "wood-en," it's "woodn." "Button" is not "but-ton" it's "buh-n." We are so weird. Or maybe just rude and lazy.

The end.

Derek Mathias Schell and more!

It's crazy to me how smells can have such a powerful effect on me. Sometimes I'll catch a whiff of something or someone that really strongly brings back a memory or feeling, it is so nostalgic!! This comes to my mind because tonight at work I was on register and this grandma lady and her grandson walked up and one of them (I'm pretty sure the little boy) smelled just like my best friend Derek did in high school. I literally sat there inhaling with my eyes closed for like 5 seconds (that doesn't sound long but try inhaling deeply for 5 seconds!) haha it sounds creeperish of me!!! But it was the weirdest thing....all of these memories/feelings about Derek came back to me and I felt like we were best friends again. (We're still friends but it's more of a text each other every couple of months thing. It's sad..) I felt something physically too, almost like I was about to hug him or something, it was so weird. I really almost cried. I miss Derek a lot.

I think I wrote about him in my post from several months ago about people I love...but here I go again! Haha. I don't know if he even knows how much he affected my life....I've told him but I don't think he really knows. My sophomore year in high school was terrible but Derek was there for me the whole time. He helped me through that awful year. There are few people I have cared for as much as I cared for Derek. He is so great!

On another note, I'm excited for tomorrow!!! General conference!! Celesta, Brianna, Travis, Travis and I are going over to Jorge's to make a huge delicious breakfast and then watch conference tomorrow since it will be Jorge's first time since he got baptized. I'm really really excited!! :D I love all my friends so much! And I absolutely love listening to conference, it makes life so much better, more meaningful, and more hopeful. It's great!

The other night Travis and I went to a concert. Suburban Legends and Forever the Sickest Kids played, along with 4 other bands. It was the longest concert ever!! Like 4.5 hours it was crazy....but it was so good! Suburban Legends was amazing as always!! And before the concert I only knew 2 or 3 songs by FTSK but they were sooo awesome! I bought their album (like 10 songs for only $7 on Itunes!) and oohhh my goodness! So amazing. As a matter of fact I'm listening to them right now. Anyways.

And now I'd better get to bed because I need to wake up in like 6-7 hours and I've really been slacking in the sleep department lately haha.....bye!

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!