New Beginnings!

Lots of new things happening for me. Tomorrow I take the ACT so I can start school in the fall or winter. As of right now my heart is set on Cello performance and something to do with Russian.
I get married in just 4 days to the love of my life.
And I turn 21 in four months.
I decided I want to make a "bucket list" of things I want to do in my life. It's always cool to have goals and aspirations. Most of mine are coming true lately so I think it's time to make new ones. One of the things I want to do is start a DIY craft/art/sewing blog. Which maybe I'll actually just do on this blog so I can keep track of one rather than two.
Anyway, I'm going to incorporate my "bucket list" into my brand new 2014 scrapbook. Then at the end of the year I'll check off all the ones I did. Of course I journal a  lot so there will be those experiences written down so I can remember them and tell stories about them in the future.
There may not be a blog post for a while. But I am doing a lot of DIY stuff for my wedding so I think that will be the next few posts. Excited?? I am! :)

My next adventure

I am such an undedicated blogger. I hope that changes, because I really do love it.
I haven't blogged for almost 2 months and here's the reason:

 February 22nd, 2014, the love of my life and I took a (freezing) day trip to the oregon coast. We spent the day making sandcastles, playing in the water, drawing in the sand, and adventuring. Then sunset came and my best friend got down on one knee on the beach and proposed to me.

To celebrate our engagement, we had an engagement party at claim jumper. Both of our families (minus a couple of his brothers) met each other. His mom ended up accidentally spilling sparkling cider on my dad. My dad gave a beautiful toast for me and my fiance. Almost had me in tears. Great food, even better company.

And here's one of our engagement pictures. Taken in the downtown of where I grew up. Kind of a cool tidbit: this is the same street where I got my High School Senior photos done 4 years ago.

So there you have it. A very unexpected, but totally joyful change in my life: A new adventure even. We are getting married in June. We have less than 2 months left until we get married (AHHH!!!!) and I am so excited and kind of nervous. I am going to have a husband, be married, and be a wife. I of course am aware of the fact that we are engaged, I just get sudden moments of extreme realization. And then I start grinning and smiling from ear to ear because I am so excited for this eternal adventure! :)
I think I wrote a post a few months ago about how suddenly life can change and you don't even know it's coming. I am so excited; but at the same time, like many engaged women, I'm sure... I feel inadequate. This man really has changed my life in the 4 short months we have been together. I've known that he's the one for most of our relationship. I am so grateful for him.

I have also started back at my old job at JCPenney. It is fantastic. I love this company and working for them is awesome. I may come home tired, but I love working for jcpenney.

As my wedding approaches (extremely fast), I am thinking a lot about how I am about to become a wife. Wow. A wife. Wow.  I'm the luckiest person in the world.

Yeah not sure what else to say but I am so excited and exhausted.

Progress

I keep forgetting to blog.
But I didn't forget today! :D

Since I blogged last I have worked out every day except sunday. Yesterday I had a pretty dang good workout. I am still tired from it. I can already see quite a bit of result and its only been a few weeks of eating better and working out.
Here's my workout from yesterday:
Medley Monday
Legs:
-Stretches (5 minutes)
-"Fat Burner" mode on elliptical (30 mins)
-Lunges 2x15 (two sets of 15) *no weight
-Squats 3x15 *no weight

Arms:
-Stretches (5 minutes)
-One arm curls w/dumbbell 3x15 (15 lb dumbbell)
-Tricep extension w/ dumbbell 3x15 (15 lb dumbbell)
-200 pushups (throughout the day, I did about 15 push ups an hour the whole day)

Abdominals:
-2x50 crunches
-3x30 leg lifts

That's medley Monday! Pretty intense, then the rest of the week is mostly focusing on the individual groups. Tuesday is running day, except I didn't get to do that because I had a lot to do today so I am moving it to tomorrow and shifting it around a little.
I can already feel myself getting stronger. I haven't noticed a whole lot of fat loss from my body yet. I think that's because I only just recently changed my diet to drastically lower my sugar intake and also because I realized I've been subconsciously replacing sugar with carbs. I've been eating a ton of bread and potatoes. Which is good, but I eat way too much of it all.
Anyway I am very proud of this fact though: my boyfriend and I have been eating a lot healthier. We eat a lot more vegetables.

Anyway, not much else going on. Next time I post on here I will have pictures to measure my progress better. I think it's cool to see the before and after stuff :)

Well, that's about all for now. Yeah. Boring blog post.

In which I give up sugar for a year

Okay so some of my twitter followers were promised a blog post tracking my progress. As in the past, I am a tad flaky on meeting my personal blogging "deadlines". So, my apologies :)
  Well this past Wednesday I started my year without sugar. This was inspired by a Mormon vlogger on youtube. Actually, by his awesome 10 year old son. Check them out. They are the shaytards and their vlogs are hilarious and adorable. I love seeing the new ones they post everyday. They are an awesome and inspirational family.
  So this awesome, adorable kiddo went a whole year without candy, dessert, and soda. He made it a whole YEAR! That got me thinking about how this year I am training for a marathon in 2015. (Which by the way is probably going to be the Portland marathon since I live super close to Portland and will live even closer probably marathon season next year.) It got me thinking that I need to change my diet. And so I set this goal which I started on Wednesday.
AND IT'S ROUGH!!!
  I never realized just how much dessert and candy and soda crap I put into my body everyday! It has been only 3 days and it feels like at least a whole week. Then yesterday, I did half a juice fast. Since I always have really low iron I need at least one meal a day or I get shaky and dizzy and I get a headache. But I woke up this morning feeling so good! The sun was shining, my body felt good and tight and I wasn't starving like I usually am when I wake up everyday. It was awesome!
  I am loving this year long sugar fast thing so far. I can already feel a difference in just three days. I seriously have more energy and it is a lot easier to eat healthy. This morning I had apples and toast for breakfast. Usually I skip breakfast because it's kind of frowned upon to eat sugary stuff at that part of the day. And I usually rationalize that if I don't eat breakfast I can get away with eating more later.
  Okay, enough of the chit chat. Here are my stats for January:
January 24, 2014 (is it really 2014??? Hasn't really clicked in my brain yet.)
-Weight 150 lbs (Yeah I know, but that's going to change!!!)
-Best mile time: 8:01
-Days without candy, soda, sugary desserts: 3

So there's that :) I am so excited to see my progress this time next month!

One more thing I really want to blog about. This sunday makes one month of dating my best friend. Did that make sense in English? I just want to avoid the use of "anniversary" because I only really consider anniversaries as yearly things.
But I digress...

I am so happy. This month has been the happiest I've felt in a long time. January marked one year since my mom passed away from stage four Breast cancer and I was having such a hard time with that grief and that heartbreak in November and December. Then my sweetheart came along at the end of December and helped me so much. He continues to lift me up everyday and help me to choose to be happy. He makes me laugh and he makes me think. We have deep, meaningful conversations; and we have goofy, nonsensical ones in which we laugh forever. He's teaching me to drive. He's smart. He's one of my very favorite people :)
Thank you to my sweet goofball for a month of fun and pure joy that I haven't felt in a long time. You are the best :) Here's to many, many, many more months of the same :)

Thank you too, readers for being so loyal. I can't believe how many of you actually read my blog! It's fantastic and gets me super excited. :)

In which life changes in an instant

  I think I've talked about this before; the concept of life changing in an instant for good or bad. Last year about this time, my family's life changed in an instant for the bad. This year, my life changed in an instant in a positive way. Let me explain.
  10 days ago I came to the conclusion that I would just suck it up and be okay with being single. I would take the time to do things I wanted to do and become who I wanted to become. I had been single for almost a year and I was over trying to find a guy to date. I would just go on adventures, work, have fun and let the right man fall into my life as I went along.
  It turns out that's exactly what God wanted me to do. Three days later, BAM! My friend came over to just hang out with me and watch a movie. To be honest I don't even remember what we were watching. When he walked in the door I remember having the distinct impression that he and I were going to start dating, REALLY soon. I was mad at my brain for tormenting me that way. I did like this guy and maybe even tried to flirt with him at some point months before. But I was convinced somehow that he wasn't interested in me. Then we started to get close and he held my hand. I don't know why but just all of a sudden I lifted his hand which was holding mine, and kissed his fingers.
WHAT? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
My eyes were wide for about 5 seconds and then he tilted my chin up toward him and planted one on me. That's right. Kissed me right on the lips.
Then he said "What would you think about being my girlfriend?"
I said yes and smiled and since then it has just made sense and things have fallen into place.
So guess what, internet? I'm not single anymore. HOORAY!
It's been 8 days that we have been dating, and I personally think we are the cutest couple in the world. I mean, come on. Just look at those adorable faces....

In this picture we went to a Young Single Adult (Mormon) dance in Portland by the Portland temple. It was so much fun! We decided that we wanted to dress up. I just wanted to go all out and have fun. When he came to the door he showed up with a purple rose (he said I know purple is your favorite color) Won some major points in my book.
The theme of the dance was "Through the ages" so we could dress up in any era we wanted to. I chose the 50s. As you can see I wore super bright lipstick, pearls, my hair up in a huge polka dotted bow and matched it with a polka dot skirt. Then we went to the dance and I had absolutely the best time. My sweetheart is an incredible dancer and I have three left feet. Yup. You read that right.
But he sort of taught me a little bit of the basics. Enough to be able to seem like I'm not a mental patient when I dance. And I loved it. When midnight came around, we kissed. My first time being kissed on new years.
This past sunday he also took me to Urgent Care. I lost my voice and my throat was so red and sore that we thought it might be strep. He spent all day with me in urgent care and took care of me afterwards.
He's such a good guy and I am so grateful and blessed. He's my best friend too. It's so nice and refreshing to date someone who is your best friend and who you can laugh with about silly things like earwax, card games, and battleship. We love to play the card game speed together and other board games. And I just love to talk to him about things.
I'm blessed :) That's all :)
And as of late, I am receiving a lot more revelation on what the right thing to do is for me and my life. On New Years, he and I went and walked around the Portland Temple for a little while and I felt strongly that I need to pursue civil engineering or architecture. And I need to start going to school for it this year.
I think 2014 is going to be a very good year. I am so excited for what my future holds.
The past few weeks have been really rough on me. December was hard. I went through a lot of trials. With my dad having heart problems, and a scare with my sister's health, working long hours, being single, missing my mission and my mom... among other things, it was rough.
A good friend of mine said in a text "Know that I am praying for you, your break will come soon." That was about two weeks ago. I know that was inspired of him to say and it gave me hope because I am finally catching a break.
By request I am coming back to blogging frequently again. I did miss it. It was so much fun to blog all the time and see how big my audience got.
I do want to talk about a movie I saw on Christmas with my family. It was perfect for me and motivated me quite a bit to do things I want to do.
It's called The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. With Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig. It was absolutely fabulous. I feel a lot like Walter Mitty myself. Daydreaming but never really following through with those dreams and things I wanted to do. Until the past week. Do yourself a favor and see it. For real.
Well that's about all as of right now. Life is good. Wonderful, really. I am very happy and enjoying some much needed peace. I am still sick with the remains of that virus that I went to urgent care for, but it's just a cough and headache and sniffles now. All is well.
Dang. I'm blessed. :)

Back to blogging!

Hello my dear friendships!
It has been a while since I posted on a regular basis. I have to admit right now I will only be blogging 2 times a week. I've chosen Tuesdays and Thursdays to post on here.
Since my return home, a lot has happened. I've made a down payment on an apartment in which I will be living with two roommates from my new ward. I am now in the Young Single Adult ward. I've been going to institute and Family Home Evenings. I went to a dance on Saturday and met a really wonderful guy.
Life is going on. And I am so excited for what the future holds for me.
I wanted to go to BYU in the spring, but I can't take the SAT or ACT in time to go. But that's okay. I would rather be here for a while anyway in lovely Vancouver. I've got a job interview on Thursday and I am hoping I can maybe get two jobs at once so that I don't become financially unstable so early in my adult life. While working I plan on doing BYU independent study for my major in Civil Engineering. But if one of the classes is cheaper at the community college close to where I will live, I'll probably start there first.
Oh, that's another thing. I've decided to major in Civil Engineering and minor in Russian. Sounds so official right? I'm really excited. Science and architecture have always been so cool to me. And as much as it pains me to say it looking back at my high school years... I like math....
*GASP*
But it's true.
Let's see... what else?
I've been going to the gym pretty often lately in an effort to train to do swimming at BYU when I get there next fall. I already feel so much better health wise. Since I've been lifting weights and exercising, my back pain is very minor and happens only in the evenings once in a while. Which is fabulous. Life is good.
At the end of November I'll be moving so for that week or so I probably won't post. But I will do a two time a week posting. Does that make sense? I don't know. All my thoughts are in Russian now.
So, as always. Life is great. Grand actually. I am incredibly blessed to be able to be home and get my life going. My dream with civil engineering is to assist in the constructing of temples. Ideally a temple in Russia someday since I served there and I am minoring in Russian for that reason.
I am seriously so excited for what life has in store for me. I've gone through it seems like nonstop consecutive difficult trials for the past 2 and a half years and I am ready for some OPTIMISM! :) I have found that simply by choosing to be happy, I feel a lot happier. Easier said than done, but once I find good parts of a bad or awkward situation, the situation becomes a lot less bad, awkward or stressful. Does that make sense? Maybe. But that's how I've found I am happy. And also seriously, counting my blessings and saying all the time "WOW! I AM blessed!" The more you say something out loud the more you believe it and the more true it is!
Last night at FHE, we played Book of Mormon charades. SO much fun! I thought being a convert, I wouldn't get any answers right. BUT!! I read the Book of Mormon all the way through and studied it all the way through while on my mission and I realized that I knew all of the answers last night. I am so excited that I finally know the scripture stories in the Book of Mormon that well! The funniest one to watch being acted out was when Ammon cut off all those guys arms. Our ward is hilarious.
Anyway, that's all I really have for today. I'll get more into the habit of posting more interesting things. For now, go watch this Mormon message... I LOVE IT!

 http://www.lds.org/pages/mormon-messages

PS: I also just this second got an interview for tomorrow at Macy's!!!!
I am so dang excited!

An early, but honorable return

I just came home less than a week ago from my 3 and a half month mission for the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. I was a full time missionary and I studied Russian in the MTC and in the field. Because of that I am now semi fluent.
Since I came home, I have had the feeling that I have to explain why I came home to everyone. But that really isn't the case. I've gotten so much judgement from some of the people I have told and haven't told. But some people who love and care about me very much have told me "You know why you're home, and the Lord knows why you're home. That's all that matters." It's true. It's extremely unchristlike for someone to judge a sister who came home from her mission early. Especially if they themselves have never served missions. And it's ironic and sad, but most of the people who have snubbed me haven't ever been on missions.
Anyway, I want to talk about what I learned on this mission. Yes, I learned Russian and I was able to go to Russia. That in and of itself is enough of an experience. But here are the life changing parts...

1.) I learned to respect the priesthood with all faith of heart. Not that I didn't respect it before, but before my mission I was under this state of mind: "Why do men get the priesthood and women don't? That's so not fair." And I was a little annoyed because it didn't seem like anything special really but it seemed like just a title to me. I was SO wrong. In the MTC I had the opportunity, privilege and blessing to be in a class with 6 Elders and 5 other sisters. Those Elders taught me so much about respecting the priesthood. I was able to be there for the first time most of them ever gave blessings. It was a beautiful and sacred experience. I was sick a lot and got a bad back injury in the MTC and each time I was hurting or really sick, the Elders gave me a blessing and always listened to the spirit and gave me truly inspired blessings. They became dear friends, incredible examples, and strong in their priesthood. I was blessed to have one last blessing the night before we left and the Elder who gave the blessing was in my first area in Orenburg, Russia when we got there. He was truly inspired. He called angels to surround me and I truly felt them and witnessed their hands in my life. He reallydid call angels to minister unto me, and he did it by being worthy and taking his priesthood seriously. I will always be so grateful for him and that blessing.
2.) I learned that women also have a sacred responsibility and divine nature. Not only in the caring for and nurturing of families and children. But in charity for others. I was able to minister to people by praying and recognizing my divine role as a woman/ sister. Women have a huge role and I have personally seen and gained a testimony that a priesthood holder cannot fulfill his priesthood responsibilities without the charity, help, love, and nurturing of women. And the same is true for women. We can't do all we need to do without priesthood holders. We really are equal and meant to support to each other as equal partners/companions.
3.) Life in Russia is hard. I was called an antichrist. I was told to go home because nobody wanted me there. A lady thought we were metaknights and said "Your church is dangerous for us. I cannot talk to you metaknights." There were broken bottles littered everywhere from liquor. Drunks walked up and down the streets everyday everywhere I went. People were rough and sad. But once I got to know them or connected to them or expressed a true desire to help them, they are the most genuine people I have ever met. The most beautiful souls. True blood of Israel.
4.) You can have back and forth conversation with Heavenly Father. I knew you could pray to Heavenly Father like a friend, but I had never experienced conversing back and forth with Him. Because of the sister who taught me and my class in the MTC, I learned this. And because of her, I received so much revelation. Some of it life changing even. And answers to questions I never really knew I had.
5.) I learned to work with another person equally and to work out conflicts or to just be open with them and ask for help. I learned how to support another person. I also by doing these things learned how to cook and how to cook for someone allergic to milk, wheat, and who couldn't really eat a lot of meat. I learned how to be supportive and loving in a companionship.
6.) I learned so much more too, but most importantly, I gained a solid testimony of the Book of Mormon. Of apostles and prophets. Of the priesthood. Sisterhood. And of the Holy Ghost.

When I had two more weeks left of my mission, I committed myself to work hard 100% everyday. Because of that I saw and felt miracles. I worked hard and Heavenly Father truly worked through me. I was an instrument of the Lord. I became a new person. When I came home I realized how much more obedient, patient, and spiritually clean I became. I am so grateful that I was able to  be shaped by the Lord into who I am now.

My life has changed for the better the past three and a half months. I've experienced so much and learned so many life lessons. Even though Russia was hard to live in, and there were a lot of rough times and people... there were beautiful moments and beautiful people.  I was so blessed to be there as long as I was.

I loved my mission. I served honorably and worked hard and served. It was short, but honorable. I know it, and the Lord knows it. That is what really matters. :)
Now on with life again. I will keep all I learned in my heart and apply it everyday in every way I can. I'll get a job, save money, go to college. And who knows what will happen along the way.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who supported me on my mission and who supports me know. God bless you beautiful people. I love you so much. Thank you thank you.