2 Year Anniversary

For anyone who has known me for a while knows that I'm a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that I was baptized exactly two years ago today. It's been a crazy two years but I've loved every minute of it. Even the day I was baptized was crazy. Lake City meets at 1PM every other year and two years ago was one of the years they met at that time, so that meant getting out of church at 4PM long enough to go home for maybe two hours just to come back to the stake center for my baptism at 7PM.

 My missionaries have been two of my absolute favorite people. They taught me so much in the few times we met in the weeks prior to my baptism. Two years later, I still can remember the lessons we went over and the explanations that Elders Strange and Cracroft gave me to my questions. I couldn't have asked for a better set of missionaries to teach me. ♥

I can't help but smile when I see the pictures of that day and remember everything that's happened since that day. I've talked to missionaries about Elders Strange and Cracroft and they've had nothing to say but absolutely wonderful things about them. I must say I agree with them -- my missionaries were amazing. And they're amazing people in general. They've given me something that no one else has given me -- the chance to learn the truth and be happy and I'm so grateful for that.

I consider myself to be lucky in that I had the chance to see my missionaries for a while after I was baptized (Strange left first and Cracroft was in Lake City forever) but I look at my boyfriend now and he's already lost the missionary who did his confirmation (he was confirmed the 12th) since Elder Penrod's going home and I think Elder Burgess (Burgess baptized him on the 5th) got transferred. I would have absolutely hated losing both of my missionaries in the same transfer meeting. I'm also lucky in that I have both of my missionaries on Facebook and have the ability to write them whenever I miss them too much. Since the boyfriend doesn't use Facebook, he doesn't get that ability. I would go crazy if I couldn't be able to talk to my missionaries or any of the other amazing missionaries I've meet since joining the LDS church.

Resurrection!

Yeah, you read that correctly. Gir has been raised from the dead! I'm so happy to have him back, despite the fact that I can't edit the playlist that's on him. The important thing is he works and he charges when he's plugged in to the computer.  So excited!

 Life just doesn't seem to want to slow down. I feel as if I've been going nonstop for the longest time now. I don't know how I manage to get sleep with all the stuff I've been doing. This last week or so has been pretty awesome, though, and this weekend was worth the lack of sleep since it was YSA Conference weekend! It doesn't really get much better than hanging out with a whole bunch of people who you don't know to make new friends and learn something new. Friday night's baseball game was so much fun! It was the Tacoma Rainiers against the Salt Lake Bees. And we lost. By a run. Final score was 5-4 Bees. At least it wasn't a shut out. The only real major downside to the game was that we started almost an hour late due to one of the teams not being there on time. It sucked for those of us who had arrived on time.

 

Becky totally took me by surprise by finding me at the game! I knew that she was going to be there but I didn't realize that her tickets were for the section next to mine, so I got to see her! I was super stoked when she came to say hi. It doesn't get much better than when you run into an Odd Squad member. I thought I was going to end up near first base or something with what I had been seeing online for where the sections were for seats and didn't know that section B was one of the places to sit, so I got to sit behind third base. For the most part, it wasn't a bad game to go to for my very first ball game. Free game, free food, friends.... Doesn't get too much better than that.

 Steven and I were so bored during the extra hour wait. There wasn't much to do the whole time except talk, get food, wander around Cheney Stadium. And that, weirdly enough, gets boring. I think by this point we were just flat out complaining about the late start of the game and how the Rainiers were making the Mormons look good (the Rainiers were the ones who were running late and the chances of at least half the Bees being LDS was pretty good). All in all, we somehow managed to survive the boredom during the extra hour long wait and were able to sit through the game. It'll most likely be a very long time before I go to another baseball game again since it isn't too entertaining a sport to watch and I'd rather not have to pay all that money to spend time socializing when I can do that for free.

Poor Steven got bored after the game and before the fireworks as we were waiting to try to leave the stadium to go to the ice cream social at the 12th and Pearl building. It took forever to get to the parking lot and even longer to get to where we were parked since the gate was locked until after the fireworks show, so we were forced to stick around and watch, despite our efforts to leave before the line of vehicles leaving got too horrible. Being bored that night seemed like it was a theme with him. At least while we were at the game, it did.

In the meantime, I got to spend time with this guy on Saturday (Sunday, too)! Definitely fun seeing him. He was trying to avoid the camera by this point, even though lunch was the first time I had brought it out to take pictures all morning (I had it out during breakfast to show him the pictures and videos I took with him in mind) since there wasn't a point to taking pictures during breakfast or devotional. He was so lucky that I only took the two pictures of him that day. Actually, they were the only two pictures I took of him all weekend. So he got off really easy. Lucky boyfriend.

What a weekend

This weekend was one of those weekends where I had nothing planned for activities (outside of church/break the fast today). However(!), I ended up doing a whole bunch of stuff that is now causing me to be really tired at the moment. I got a text Friday from a friend asking if I wanted to go to the trail clean up at Point Defiance for National Trails Day the next day. I said I was all for going and we went with a couple of our other friends. We ultimately ended up walking around some of the trails with a few other people we didn't know to pick up trash since there was too many people to help build "speed bumps" to prevent the land moving. Wasn't too bad. Afterwards, we went and got ice cream at Dairy Queen and then to Denny's for lunch to celebrate a friend's birthday. The girls and I went to the Enrichment activity (swimming!) and it was so much fun. I hadn't been swimming in a couple of years. Going to the bottom of the 12.5' pool wasn't the best idea since I hadn't swum deeper than maybe 6' in years. The pressure on my ears was bad. As in you feel it for the next five minutes after resurfacing bad. It sucked. But I at least have an idea of what my brother went through as a child when we would fly from one place to another. After swimming, I went to help move Jenny's dad from one place to another, which wasn't too bad, before meeting up with Alicia again at a McDonald's. She and I ultimately ended up at Red Robin's with four other people to do a birthday dinner kinda thing for Paul again. We didn't leave the restaurant until midnight or so. So much fun.


Today was Fast Sunday, so that meant no eating all day until after church at 3PM (so glad to be at the branch -- Break the Fast is at 4:30PM at my home ward). A baptism was announced for someone who had been coming to the branch pretty regularly lately at 5PM. Between Break the Fast and the baptism (everyone is somehow done eating by 3:30PM), Jenny, another girl, and I ended up at Spanaway Lake and hanging out there until it was time to meet up with a few other people for Nathan's baptism (he's the third guy from the left). It was so amazing to see someone else get baptized, especially when it's so close to the two year mark of my own baptism. I even ended up talking to Nathan about my own and a bit about my missionaries. The missionaries at the branch are pretty cool but they could never replace my missionaries (the two who taught me and baptized/confirmed me [I miss you, Cracroft and Strange]). I hope he won't forget his baptism like I haven't forgotten mine. After the baptism, some of us went to Sprinker and had invited Nathan and Nick (someone else from the branch) in the process, so I got to know Nathan a bit better in the process (I had been meaning to get to know him better, so mission accomplished [well, kinda]).

Call me crazy but I've been listening to a lot of the Mulan soundtrack. "I'll Make a Man Out of You,"  "A Girl Worth Fighting For," "Honor to Us All," and "True to Your Heart" mostly. I absolutely love these songs. Which is why I'm sharing them. :)

I feel old...

...Despite the fact that I'm really not that old since I'm in my early 20's still. I just think it's crazy that I'm celebrating another birthday in my 20's when it still feels like I should be in the 6th grade still and turning 10 years younger than I am today. I don't know where the last 10 years have gone to besides school. I haven't even done anything remotely cool either besides move from New York to Washington and visit Spain for three weeks, if you can consider that cool.

Is it sad that I haven't had a birthday party with friends since my 9th birthday? I've only celebrated with family for the last 10+ years and the "parties" weren't much of parties. Just a couple of presents, cake, possibly ice cream, and maybe a dinner of my choice. What a way to spend your birthdays from 10 until the present. I even considered having a get together the Saturday after to celebrate but as it got closer to June, it turned out that the Relief Society Enrichment activity was that day and turned out to be the day of the bridal shower of someone from the branch and I had been hopeful to invite people from church but didn't want to take away people from one of the other two activities since they already kind of overlapped in time. Having the get together the weekend before didn't really make sense to me unless it was to be a get together combining my birthday with a friend's since we're less than a week apart in age with him being the older one.

Anyways! On a happier note, I was listening to a CD that I haven't heard in a while from Poets of the Fall and rediscovered the songs "Fire" and All the Way/4 U off of the Carnival of Rust album. I absolutely adore these songs. Especially the latter. Poets of the Fall have such beautiful music that I could spend the rest of my life listening to.

I have Pandora on Vladimir and I was listening to one of my channels one day and one of the songs that came up was by Jim Brickman that I really liked. I ended up getting everything I could find by him and one of the albums I got was call Disney Songbook. While listening to it, I encountered the song called "Beautiful". A girl like me can only dream of finding a guy who would do something like sing this amazing song to her -- It's one of those songs that stick with you because it's a, well, beautiful song.