100 Things I'm Grateful For

1. The Atonement of my Lord Jesus Christ
2. The Plan of Salvation
3. The restoration of the gospel
4. The scriptures
5. Modern revelation
6. General Conference
7. Temples
8. My mom
9. My dad
10. My other mom
11. Jarad
12. Kelly
13. Shawn
14. Shelly
15. Katie
16. West
17. Becky
18. Dani Lee
19. Sam
20. Cheryl
21. Cody
22. Dylan
23. Kendal
24. Ricky
25. Kyle
26. Tucker
27. Brooke
28. Jewelene
29. Jacob
30. Emma
31. Rachel
32. Brent
33. Josh
34. Mason
35. Benson
36. Bailey
37. Cai
38. Afton
39. Matthew
40. Luci
41. ??????
42. My amazing roommates Anna, Briaunna, and Heather
43. I'm grateful that Heather gets to be in England right now (My roommate, not me :)
44. I'm grateful for Thanksgiving and all the delicious food!
45. My awesome ward
46. My incredible bishop
47. Relief society
48. Trees
49. My bed
50. Nathaniel's cool firebreathing tricks
51. My super fun classes
52. My blog : )
53. Colors
54. Books
55. Crayons
56. Snow
57. Christmas
58. My friends
59. The world
60. Flowers
61. Good movies
62. Laughter
63. Music
64. Cuinasaire rods
65. Animals
66. Dentists
67. Doctors
68. Grass
69. Swings
70. Frisbee
71. Children
72. Airplanes
73. I'm grateful that Kelly and Kyle moved to Utah
74. And that Shelly and Ricky are moving to Utah!
75. My home
76. My hilariously fun childhood growing up in Woodland Hills
77. CO2 in the atmosphere that helps me breath
78. In fact, all of the elements that allow me to live
79. My body and everything it can do
80. My eyes in particular because I love seeing all of the beautiful things around me
81. I'm grateful I can hear, and walk, and run, and leap, and, well, all that stuff
82. I'm grateful for pictures
83. The sun
84. The moon and the stars
85. I'm so grateful when I can look up at the sky and see the milky way galaxy
86. Mountains
87. Football
88. The gratitude tree in my apartment
89. Games
90. Language, I'm grateful I can talk to people!
91. Clocks
92. Missionaries and missions
93. My job
94. Fire, campfires in particular. Oh! And smores
95. Grocery stores
96. Gardens
97. Cell phones
98. Autumn
99. Trials (well, I'm trying to be)
100. Life!

A Word for Books

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a love, perhaps even a passion, for books. As a kid I relished the title "bookworm" that was so often bestowed on me, but as I grew older I realized that my degree of literary consumption was considered anti-social, and was unappreciated by the greater high school population. My desire for social acceptance urged me to keep my passion to myself and let others see mere enthusiasm. Now I throw social conventions aside and express my deep gratitude for books. Trivial as they may seem, they have been my escape, my comfort, even my friends, through joy and sorrow. That ancient combination of words and plot holds for me a fascination both irresistible and sweet. But what is it that gives a collection of thin paper, adorned with carefully placed ink stains, such charm? For me the answer lies in the connection they give to the human race. Although the stories themselves are fictional I often reflect that the people who wrote them were not. They were people just like you and I who dedicated years to the construction of a single plot, carefully choosing their materials from a myriad of ideas, thoughts, conversations and people, both real and imagined, and books that they themselves read. By writing these stories they were simply expressing the view of human nature that experience instilled in them. Their words are read by people all over the world, and those readers are then influenced, whether knowingly or not, in their own ideas, opinions, and views of human nature. Those people, so influenced, become our leaders, our teachers, lawyers, doctors, politicians. They drive our buses, run our grocery stores, and repair our household appliances. In short those authors, whether famous or obscure, influence every level of our society. And so, as I voraciously read Jane Eyre I become connected, not only to Charlotte Bronte, but to every person who has read her words. Perhaps I am only trying to justify my passion for so solitary an activity, but hey, it works for me!

Today I'm especially grateful for my amazing roommates and awesome friends!

You know you're in the right major when...

Math Ed 305

Golden List

I want to keep a "golden list" of things that I'm grateful for, and miracles that I see in my life, on my blog. I'm going to start with my family. I love them! Each and every one of my fourteen siblings has been a huge blessing in my life, and I am constantly learning from their examples and love. We had a conference call yesterday and I loved hearing what everyone is grateful for. I can't wait for Christmas!

Dreams

My whole life I've been dreaming of growing up, going to college, having roommates, and dating boys. I watched my older sisters at this time in their lives and thought they were so cool! Then when I got here I became so busy and caught up in the decisions I'll have to make in the next couple of years that I haven't really taken time to think about life beyond that. So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote down some dreams. Basically I only got as far as a list of things that I'm excited to do with my own children and my nieces and nephews when I grow up. I thought I would share some thoughts. I want to be cool. My whole life. I want to be the cool mom that all the neighborhood kids love, and the cool aunt that the nieces and nephews want to spend a week with in the summer, and the person who's house everyone wants Thanksgiving dinner to be at. With my kids I'll hold art lessons, cooking lessons, build treehouses, build cities in sandboxes, put on plays, read books, paint, make jam and applesauce, bake bread. I want to make short films, sock puppets, stick horses, doll houses, moccasins, and dress ups. We'll harvest from my garden, pick wild blackberries, go exploring, have treasure hunts with treasure maps with burnt edges, play ultimate-hide-and-go-seek, build snowmen, go sledding, do science experiments, create a dance of the water cycle (yes, this is possible, I made a lesson plan for it just the other day), go hiking, and ride our bikes. There is also the distinct possibility of learning how to weave rugs and quilt. And field trips, there will definitely be field trips. A lot of this stuff I did with my mom when I was a kid, a lot of it I just want to do. And now I have things to dream about and look forward to for the next few years. That makes me happy!

"It is not every one," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead leaves."
-Sense and Sensibility

Thoughts

"But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."

-Alma 30:44

I've been thinking a lot lately about the way that nature affects me. My mom taught me, from a very young age, to love and appreciate the world around me, to view it as a gift from God. It was an easy lesson to learn, growing up in a small town called Woodland Hills. Our backyard was a mountain and we had groves where most people have grass. From our living room window we could see the whole valley, laid out before us. At night thousands of lights glowed in the neat rows of the cities. When I was little I tried to imagine a person for every one of those lights, I tried to picture them sitting in their houses, like me, or driving around in cars. The very thought overwhelmed me. In my childish innocence I couldn't imagine that there were that many people in the world, let alone in my little valley.

I spent much of my childhood outside with my sisters, imagining we were indians gathering roots for our dinner, or trying to catch sight of the fairies that we decided were living in the trees. In the spring yellow wildflowers grew like carpet on the "island" of trees that stretched from the mountain to our deck. I loved trying to walk through it without smashing a single flower.

In fall the mountain was a blaze of colors reaching up to the sky. From the deck of our house I had a perfect view and loved to see the orange and red of the maples weaving into each other, with the occasional burst of bright yellow from an aspen grove, or stroke of dark green from the formidable fir trees.

Then winter would come and it was all sledding and snow caves. I would gaze in wonder out our sliding glass door at a fresh blanket of white, now perfectly smooth, without a trace of the many footprints and angels we'd left there the day before. On sunny days a million shards of light would dance across that white expanse, gluing me to the glass pane.

But perhaps my favorite season was summer, when we could play outside all day, and sleep outside at night. My sisters and I would gather blankets and pillows, dig up a flashlight, and slip outside, taking care to turn off all the houselights behind us. We'd then troop across the backyard, set up our beds in a row on the trampoline, and spend a sleepless hour or two gazing in awe at the milky way. We'd try and find the constellations we learned in school, and, more importantly, made up our own. As I grew older I tried to imagine each glowing speck as a sun, the size of ours, with as many planets twisting around it. I tried to imagine people on those planets, billions of people for each and every star. And then I thought of God, and felt His love for me. I knew that somehow He knew and loved and each person on every populated planet, revolving around each of those stars. Even now when I think of that I feel like a little girl again, trying to imagine that there could be as many people in the world as lights in my valley. The thought overwhelms me, and will, I'm sure, until I gain a greater perspective than this world can give.