Stretching

I knew something like this was coming…I’ve been asking for it. What is holding me back from reaching the next level that Thou would have me be on? One of the answers: You need to be a better friend. You need to think of others more than yourself and your comforts and conveniences. You need to overcome your fear of reaching out, getting involved, loving more deeply, and taking life by the hands. And even though I’d been asking for it, the lesson came more painfully than I ever thought it would. Surprisingly painful. And maybe that’s how it is in life. We think to ourselves, this changing will undoubtedly not be pleasant, but unpleasant becomes poignantly painful oh so quickly. And maybe that’s how He has to get it deep enough in our hearts so the lesson’s seed won’t merely be blown off with the first passing wind. It’s got to be deep to take root enough to grow; make a lasting impression. But the planting hurts, maybe so we’ll more easily remember. You don’t really have to ask why it’s happened when you were the one who asked for it. You just make the connection and know that’s how it is; how He works within you. Now you just have to get all you can out of it, learn the right lesson. Is this what it feels like to have a change of heart? And you thank Him…and you love Him for it…because you can see what may become; what you may become. This stretching has purpose; these thoughts fill your mind as your eyelids fall before you sleep. And somehow you already feel the growing. Somehow your heart feels just a little nearer, a little more like His. You’re learning the right lesson it whispers.

“If a sudden, stabbing light exposes the gap between what we are and what we think we are, can we, like Peter, let that light be a healing laser? Do we have the patience to endure when one of our comparative strengths is called into question? A painful crisis may actually be the means of stripping corrosive pride off of that virtue.

Can we remain silent when silence is eloquence—but may be used against us? Or will we murmur, just to let God know we notice the ironies?”
(Irony: The Crust on The Bread of Adversity, Neal A. Maxwell)

He's My Best Friend

I got to write this for my building eternal marriage class, so I thought I might as well use it as a post as well: )

(that pic. was taken on our second year anniversary on top of "our mountain")

I first ran into Chad in the sixth grade when my best friend Mandy and I decided to go the movie together. The movie had started and we were sitting comfortably in our seats, when suddenly out of nowhere we noticed that kernels of popcorn were being hurled at our heads. We looked behind us to see a group of seventh grade boys trying to act unsuspicious. Among them, oddly enough, was my future husband, though I would have never guessed it in a million years. Though that was the first time I met Chad, our story didn't begin until a few years later down the road. The thing that means the most to both Chad and I and the thing that amazes us the most about our love story is looking back and seeing just how intricately and perfectly God's hand was a part of it all. We look back and see He was there every step of the way, even when we were so unsure at times. The timing of it all was both a hard thing to understand at times and yet was an incredible blessing and witness to Chad and I. Chad asked me to my first prom when I was sixteen years old. I couldn't believe that Chad Walker would ask me to prom. At this point in time in both of our lives we needed a change, we just didn't know Heavenly Father would bring it to us in such an amazing way. From about eighth grade up to my sophomore year I'd been struggling with some things at home that left me uncertain and confused about who I really was and about what love really was. By the time Chad asked me to prom despite my constant efforts to be at peace, I was in more pain than ever. Chad was also looking for a change that would bring him closer to his Heavenly Father. Our prom date was really fun and I was amazed at how easy it was to be around this hilarous, fun, and kinder than ever boy. We became instant friends and since both of our groups of friends were friends we'd get to see each other all the time. Chad said he could feel it from the beginning that he loved me, but it was harder for me to be convinced of my feelings. Much harder. I was unsure that two people so young could really feel true love, but looking back now, I feel otherwise. I also knew I didn't want and shouldn't want a steady boyfriend, but Chad was okay with that. That's what amazed me about him. He was okay with everything. Because of some of the turmoil I was feeling at the time, I'd push him away time and time again, but yet again, he was okay with that and he'd still stay by my side. As our friendship grew and grew not only was I able to see more clearly that what we had was good and real, but so much of the sadness I felt would disappear when I was with him. He could make me laugh harder than anyone I had ever met, and I guess I must have made him happy too, because no other boy would have stuck by my side that long. I knew he really cared about me and liked me for who I was because he never even tried to kiss me at all through highschool. We were content going on sunday bike rides, playing connect four and tetris, laughing our guts out, playing with our nieces and nephews, and whatever else sounded fun for the moment. Anywho, to try and make a five year long story a little bit shorter as both of us grew closer together we also grew so much closer to our Heavenly Father. It was feelings like that and many other little witnesses and miracles that let me know we had been led together so early for good reasons and that what we shared was something Heavenly Father was happy about. Needless to say, though it was a very long process, we both became that need and love and support and healing that each other needed more than we realized. We had our first kiss, and my very first kiss, two months before he left on his mission to Mexico, and that in itself is another funny yet super neat story. He left for Mexico while I finished up high school and headed off to Snow. I dated a lot and had fun, but nobody compared to Chad. No one made me as happy as he did. I realized I truly loved this boy about one year through his mission. He came home in January 2005, and it was as if we had never been apart. We got engaged two months later in March and were married May 27th, 2005 in the Bountiful temple. It was an amazing day. More amazing than either of us ever thought it'd be. Now we've been married for over two years and have loved every minute of it. Nobody ever told us that marriage could be so much fun. Now we have a little one year old girl named Emyri who is seriously the coolest little person we have ever met. We love her to death and life together is amazing!

A Shout Out

As of two days ago I was certain that my somewhat measly little blog was only viewed by about four people, four way rad people however, but nevertheless probably only about four people. But Friday afternoon I got an unexpected call from my long lost roommate Ruth. As we were talking and catching up on things she told me that she was an avid fan of the vdub's blog. We had a great conversation cuz she's such an amazing girl.... (; ) it's true ruthio), but as I hung up the phone I was left to wonder just who else is out there finding enjoyment and satisfaction (hopefully: ) from my little musings. I came to the almost scary yet pleasing conclusion that One can never be quite sure who reads there blogs, someone across the country could have happened upon them and made checking it's contents a happy part of their daily routine. With that being said, I wanted to put something extra special attached to this post in hopes of making my little anonymous reader's (if I'm lucky enough to even have any of those) days just a little brighter: ) For all of you out there reading along.... I present the one and only hilarious Hyperactive boy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCTyEXOnQ-g
The Quadruplets! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcCZABr_G1k
Little Superstar! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM
and Potter Puppet Pals (for all you potter fans)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4&mode=related&search=


*sorry you'll probably have to copy and paste those links in your web browser to get to the links....I'm a little blogging technologically deficient: ) enjoy!

The Random Sampler

You know sometimes at restraunts they have an appetizer that's named a "Random Sampler". That's what I've decided this post it....a "Ramdom Sampler"; a little of this a little of that, it's all good right: ) I keep waiting for something exciting to happen to blog about, but nevertheless things have been pretty much same-oh-same-oh, besides the fact that we had a community party last night and Chad and I ended up square dancing, something that Chad informed me we would not participate in on our way to the party, and it was actually a blast. Chad even liked it. So hooray for square dancing.
Ummm....so what else can I say. Oh, updates on Emyri. She is now 13 months old and cute as a button......one of those really cute buttons. She likes to spend her time giving luvs to my in-laws dog Bosco, dancing to a collection of her favorite tunes including Dora the Explorer theme song, Wonder Pets, and the Elmo song, and she also is huge fan of head banging. Seriously folks it's funny stuff. Sometimes I even have to calm her down because I'm afraid she'll give herself shaken baby syndrome. She's also quite sociable and says "hi" to whoever we're by. I was holding her while looking at some shirts for Chad in the mall the other day. There was this young couple shopping next to us and as soon as Emryi made eye contact with them she said "hi". When they laughed and said "hi" back she proceeded to continue to say "hi", "hi", "hi", "hi", for about the next five minutes. I kind of laughed at first and said, "She's pretty friendly" and turned back to my shopping so as not to make things awkward, but after she wouldn't stop I didn't know what to do. Should I look at them and say something else? Should I just gradually move away? The couple finally left, but not without emyri giving them one last good "hi" before they did: ) She's the kind of kid who really likes to make people laugh and once she's found something funny she'll use it for all it's worth: ) She really is so awesome though. I love getting to hang out with this amazing and funny little buddy of mine all the time!
Well this post is already random so to finish it off, everyone should check out my friend melissa's blog and also her sister Tara's blog. They are two of the funniest bloggers I know and always have something to say that will put a smile on your face. I've already got melissa's link on my blog, but I'll put Tara's on and hope that she doesn't think it's too weird that this person she doesn't know finds her completely hillarious and linked her on her blog. I hope things are going awesome for everyone! Good luck with school starting all! I'm out for now: )

Finally!

I feel terrible about my blogging absence for the past...what has it been now...about three weeks. Wow! I've kept putting off posting because I've felt like I've had so much to say that it'll take so long to write, but in actuality I should have just at least been making little posts here and there so I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed with all I was not writing about. Well, I've changed my ways, brought my sister in laws laptop outside along with emyri and plenty of toys to entertain her, and I am dedicating this next however many minutes or hours to complete and publish an entire post no matter what. And right now emyri is sucking on some rocks she found in the drive way while standing on top of her Dora push car about ready to tumble over any second, but I am so dedicated to this post that I'm just gonna let her enjoy her little oddly behaviored self. : ) First things first, I still haven't posted the seven random things about myself that melissa challenged me to do oh so long ago. Mel, I'm not a very fun person to play tag with....I've been it for about three weeks now: ) my bad, hopefully you'll forgive me for my trespasses. Anywho, so I've had quite a while to think of seven random things about myself so here they are take 'em or leave em.

1. I have a semi-secret obsession with the Disney Channel. Does anyone else find the shows they play as entertaining as I do? Among my top favorites are "That's so Raven", "Hannah Montana", Phil of the Future", and "Cory in the House". It amazes me how their simple themes corny jokes and little kid humor captivates me so, but there's no denying it, I seriously find great humor fulfillment in each episode. For those of you who haven't ventured into this funfilled disney entertainment world, you're really missing out: )

2. So when I was a Freshman I was invited to attend a Math competition with the SV team at a nieghboring college. I'm not sure why I was invited, I like math but I'm by no means a genius or anything. Well, the rules of the competition were that we would take a certain number of timed tests throughout the day. For every answer right you would get plus ten and for every answer you got wrong you would get -5, and if you left an answer blank you didn't get any points plus or minus. (or something to that affect). Well, the tests were needless to say pretty tough for a mere freshman and I did leave a lot of the answers blank, but I was quite confident that that ones I did answer had to have been right. We all waited for the tests to be graded and in the mean time ate at the cafeteria, flirted with some boys from other school, I was given the nickname fat veda (another story for another day), and all was well...that was until the results were in. Our team ended up not even being mentioned and the worst thing was that when our coach announced our individual scor\es I had scored an incredible....NEGATIVE THIRTY! Needless to say the kids who were taking this competition seriously were about ready to mutinize (is that a word?) me. But I eventually got over it though to this day I am still a little hesitant in my math skills and also quite calculator dependent.

3. This one is quite embarrassing, only because of the fact that I've had to admit it to not only my optometrist, but 1-800-contacts as of late. The truth is that I've been wearing my contacts that expired two years ago in 2005. Yikes! The thing is that I'm just so cheap that I've kept putting off getting new contacts and despite the fact I'm only supposed to wear one pair for a maximum of three months I've figured why throw them out if their still working and have worn some pairs probably up to around nine months. Man! So I finally went to order some new ones through 1-800-contacts and after calling to verify my perscription with my optometrist they called me back and said "Your doctor said your last perscription expired in 2005, is this true?" I just kind of sheepishly laughed, "Yes, that's true." Well, now I've got to pay for a new perscription and set up another order...crazy stuff huh: )

4. In eighth grade I had this huge crush on this tall, dark, handsome, jock like guy named Jayce. Despite the fact that he openely had a girlfriend who was in highschool and also kind of on the side liked one of my good friends kel, I still thought he was something else. We were in student council together which was definitely an added bonus. There were about ten or so of us in the student council all together and every month or two we'd all take a vote and whoever was voted for was the new president for the next month or two. Well, during the time that this little mishap took place Jayce had been the Pres. for the last month and it was time to vote again for the new president. Well, apparantly I wasn't paying attention, more likely dreaming about jayce, when our advisor announced that we couldn't vote for someone who had already been president, so when we were voting I quickly scirbbled jayce's name on my little unanamous paper, folded it once, and passed it to the front of the class. I sat chit chatting with some of my friends while our advisor tallied up the votes. Suddenly, our teacher must have come upon my little paper with Jayce's name on it because he quieted the class and announced that whoever had voted for jayce again had to come up and vote for someone else. My peers erupted in laughter at the thought of someone dumb enough to vote for jayce again after it had been clearly stated that we couldn't. I tried my best to blend in with their jabbing laughs and looked around the room with my best, "okay, who's the ediot who did it" face, but I'm sure I wasn't fooling anyone because I could feel my face turning bright red. Again the teacher called out, whoever it was just come up here to we can get this over with. By now people were questioning one another, "Was it you?","No, you?". There was no way I was going to walk up there to the front of the room and admit to everyone that I was the love strucken ediot who'd voted for the same dreamy guy twice. The heavens must have looked down upon me that day with pity because just at that moment the bell rang and I bee-lined my awkward eighth grade body out the door, never to reveal my embarrassing secret for as long as I lived.....or until today that is: )

5. When I was little, the only logical conclusion I could come up with concerning how babies were made was that people got pregnant by kissing each other. And man, I seriously believed it too. You should have seen me once the boys in my grade started thinking kiss tag was fun. I'd run my little guts out before I'd ever get caught. And after making a mad dash away from some stinky boy I'd look back and feel so sorry for those girls who were somewhat speed challenged and who'd end up getting kissed. It wasn't until I realized that the girls who had got kissed weren't suddenly having babies that my theory was in fact false.

6. I sometimes have an overwhelming urge and desire to be in a punk band or some really cool alternative band singing and playing my heart out on a mic and guitar in front of hundreds of people. Really though, I can't imagine how much of an adrenaline rush that would be. How awesome would it be to have your song be the song that stuck in people's heads all day at work: ) Then I could wear some really crazy off the wall clothes and people would think it was cool rather than just wierd or untasteful: )

7. I'll end here with a fond childhood memory. Does anyone else remember jumping on their tramp with their little brother and thinking that it would be cool to throw dog food up on the slanted roof then lay down with your mouths wide open to see how many you could catch in your mouth? Those days were the best weren't they: )

Here's to becoming a more dedicated and more frequent blogger in the future....cheers!

Sweet Pictures eh?

This is a pictures, actually a whole bunch of pictures, that my little brother put together. I thought it was pretty cool so I decided to post it. He's pretty handy with the ol' photoshop: )

The Tragic Tale of the Sticky Mouse Trap

Yesterday the saddest thing happened. We went over to my parents house for Sunday Dinner and after dinner Chad and I started looking at his high school pictures...which was quite fun by the way, while Emyri played around. After a while Chad took Emyri upstairs while I kept rummaging through his pictures. About 15 minutes passed and I decided to go upstairs to see where everyone was. I found Chad laying on the tramp outside, my dad, grandma, and my little brother and his friends in the front room, but the one person I didn't find was Emers. I went back to the tramp. "Chad, where's emyri?" "Doesn't your dad have her?" "I don't think so." I said as I headed back into the house. I started searching in every room when I heard a faint cry from the back room in our house. When I opened the door I found the saddest little tear streaked face you could ever see. Upon further inspection of the sad baby I found the reason for her woes. I looked down to find that her tiny hand was thoroughly stuck in one of those gross green extra sticky mouse traps...you know the kind....the ones that are so sticky that when a mouse happens upon them their rodent bodies become so entangled in the goo that they easily give up all hopes of ever getting out and eventually die in a ball of glue-matted fur. After I picked her up, wiped the tears away, and pulled the nasty trap off, the next task was to try to remove the green goo and seriously...that stuff is ruthless. It took another 20 minutes and multiple sticky stuff remove it products before her fingers would stop sticking together. Needless to say it was quite the experience for this almost one year old.