Best Weekend EVER

I had a fabulous weekend! I’m still basking in the joy it brought me! It may seem pretty normal to some, but it was definitely not for me.

Weekends are typically pretty boring for me. They include doing homework, feeling bad for not doing enough of said homework, and feeling exhausted from the side effects of 2 medications I take on Friday nights. That’s about it.

The past few weeks have been especially busy and the weekends especially boring. Though I am proud of myself for all the work I’ve gotten done, I’ve been way too busy and way too stressed.

Well, I decided that this weekend, even though I had a paper to write and books to read, I was just going to have fun and not stress myself out. And that is just what I did!

Thursday after class I finally bought myself an iPhone. (yes, it is amazing. Yes, I am so glad I bought it. Yes, I have a super cute teal otterbox. And, surprisingly, no, I am not completely attached to it.) Then Sarah and I went to my best friend Malorie’s house. We brought Taco Bell (cause it’s her favorite). We watched the new Three Musketeers (which is so so good!). We played with little Allie (who is the cutest little girl in the world). We talked about life (the good and the bad). We looked at the picture book Malorie is making of Allie’s first year (I made it in a few times! YES!). We stayed until 12:30 (and would have stayed longer, but Sarah had to work). It was wonderful! (and I can’t think of anything else to put in parentheses for that one…)

Friday I went to the Temple with Mom. I love going to the House of the Lord, leaving the world behind and worshipping God. I was able to feel the Spirit, pour my heart out to my Heavenly Father, and feel so much comfort that even though my life may not be going exactly how I want it to, my Father knows what He is doing and everything will work out how it is supposed to.

When I got home, I read the new book, Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson. I don’t want to say too much about it now, cause I’m planning a whole post based on it. But it was such a good read! Check it out! Though I didn’t love waking up the next morning with majorly puffy eyes from crying. It was definitely worth it though.

THEN the best part. Saturday Sarah, Malorie, Allie, and I went to the Zoo! I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Houston Zoo, even though I grew up an hour away. Maybe I did for a field trip or something when I was younger, but I definitely don’t remember it. It was so fun! We stayed for 5 hours. We saw almost everything. Later in the afternoon most everything was asleep which was a bummer, but it was still fun. We’ll have to plan better next time.

My favorite parts were:

The Otters (and Allie)

Holding baby Allie

Petting the Sheep-y! (though I was sad he wasn't fluffier...)

Seeing Cosmo the Cougar while wearing BYU gear (Ok, he wasn't Cosmo, but he was a cougar! He's hard to see, but he's up there!)

Holding Allie some more

Our oranges lunch break

The little monkey! (I was very excited if you can't tell!)

The elephants (poor Allie was a little scared)

We had so much fun!!! We came back to the apartment, ate Chick-fil-a, took a nap while watching Anastasia, and I held Allie for an hour and a half while she slept (really is there anything better than holding a sleeping baby? I don’t think so! And I was so proud of her for staying quiet with me so her tired mommy could sleep. She is growing up!). We spent another like 3 hours together, just hanging out. Not doing anything in particular. It was so wonderful. I don’t think I’ve been able to spend that much time with Malorie since she got married in 2008. We were together for 12 hours! I have the best, best friend in the world and I love spending time with her more than almost anything else. I am so grateful for her and our friendship. I don’t deserve it, but I’m glad she sees something good in me. I’m pretty sure we should have been sisters. I love you, Malorie!!! Thanks for being such a wonderful friend!!

Another particularly wonderful part of the weekend was hearing Allie say my name so much. She’s been saying it for a little over a month, but I wasn’t sure she knew who went with the name. But she does! Malorie had her practice saying our names on the way to pick us up. Then she said our names a lot throughout the day, which was wonderful. THEN later in the day I was in the bathroom and could hear her saying, “Where Rachel?” I about DIED!! It made me so stinkin’ happy! Then apparently she screamed our names on the way home. AWW!! I love that little girl so much! Thanks for sharing your beautiful daughter with me, Malorie!

I love my life! I had such a good weekend. And because I was doing things I wanted to, I didn’t feel bad for not doing my homework. Normally I just waste time and then get mad at myself for being lazy. Not this time! I loved every second of it!

And I’m also proud that I forced myself to stay on campus to write my paper until I finished it today. Yay!

2/30: Fears, Tonight’s Thoughts

To know what I'm talking about, read this.

Describe 3 legitimate fears you have and explain how they became fears:

1) I’m pretty freaking scared to death of spiders. I’m not really sure where this fear came from. When I was a kid, there was a huge banana spider outside my bedroom window and I wasn’t afraid of it. Now, if that happened, I’d die. I don’t know what changed to make me scared. But oh boy, I am! I have too many scary spider stories. I can’t even type them cause they freak me out. Some of you have probably heard them. Please note: I just typed some key words about them to explain how horrible they are, but got too freaked out and deleted it. A friend of mine convinced me to let a tarantula climb on my arm (for moral support – she wanted to for a specific reason but needed someone to do it with her and because I love her so much, I agreed). Fortunately for me, she never got it set up, so I got out of it. Thank goodness. I probably would have had a heart attack and died. Just talking about this gives me the heebie-geebies! I think I need to take a shower after typing about this…

2) I’m scared of crazy bridges. Not just your normal, run-of-the-mill bridges. I can handle short ones or straight ones just fine. The ones that get me are the super long or super curvy ones. For example, most of the on-ramps for Beltway 8 in Houston freak me right out. I have to focus on my breathing and tell myself repeatedly that I’m not going to die. For some unknown reason, I always think that something is going to happen to the car and I’m going to lose control and careen over the edge of the bridge and die. It’s kinda horrible. I also always get just a bit anxious when I drive to Galveston on those long bridges. It’s not too bad, but I am a little hyper-aware on bridges like that. The worst example of this was when I was driving to Florida. There’s this huge bridge through some swamp in Louisiana. It’s something like 50 miles long. It takes an hour to drive on. Nothing but swamp for miles and miles. I couldn’t help but think about how the bridge was surely going to collapse and then we’d crash into the water but we wouldn’t die in the car – we’d be able to get out but then we’d have to swim to land, but that wouldn’t be for another 20 miles so we’d definitely either drown or get eaten by alligators. And with my luck it would be either my mom or my niece that got attacked first and then I’d have to fight off the gator and…and…and… So many horrible things went through my mind the first time we crossed it. The second time – it was even worse. EW! I’m never driving on that bridge ever again.

3) I’m afraid of leaving this life and it being like I never existed. I’m afraid of being forgotten. I’m afraid that when I die hardly anyone will be at my funeral. I’m afraid that there will be no mark left behind because of me. Now, I know that these things won’t happen. But my fear of being irrelevant drives a lot of what I do with my life. I want my life to have meaning, not for my own benefit, but for others. I want to do things that influence other people for good. I want them to feel the love of God because they knew me. I want to help them in their hard times. I want to life them up and give them hope. And if I’m successful in doing that, I don’t have to be afraid of my life having no meaning. In some ways as I’m writing this I feel incredibly narcissistic. But mostly I realize that because I value helping others so much and want so badly to do that, I’m afraid that I will fail.

In other news...

Today I had a cool experience. I got to observe some Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy. I’ve been really interested in this model of therapy for a while, have read a book, seen some videos. But I’ve never seen it live until tonight. It was SUCH a good session. Amazing things happened. I could not believe how much progress I saw in just one session. I already thought I wanted to use this model, but wasn’t completely sold yet. After seeing tonight, I am 110% sold. I loved it! I was glued to it! I cried, I laughed, I thought deeply. I can’t say enough wonderful things about this session. A lot of people may say that emotions don’t matter that much. I don’t buy it. They matter so much. Beneath everything, there is an emotion that affects us. We learn to ignore it and deny, but it’s there. And when we let it out – oh man! That’s where the magic happens. For various reasons, I almost didn’t go tonight. I am SO glad I did. My experience was invaluable!

I also took the MMPI today. It’s a personality assessment. It’s 566 questions or something ridiculous like that. It took me an hour. I thought my hand was going to fall off. Seriously. It was insane. Don’t ever take it, unless you enjoy the feeling of immense pain in your hand from meticulously filling in over 500 stupid little circles til you go crazy.

Also – I’ve been boycotting Glee since the episode in the Fall about the characters all having sex. I don’t think we should encourage sexual activity in teenagers. Some may disagree, but I feel pretty strong about it. However, my sis and I found out that Matt Bomer was going to be on last night. We absolutely adore him. Like, I’m fairly positive he is the most attractive man that has ever lived. So, we gave in on our boycott for one night. And let me tell ya – it was the best decision ever. Matt Bomer on his own is pretty fantastic. Add him singing and there is just nothing better. If you didn’t see it, you should look up the song he sang on youtube, Somebody that I used to know. SO GOOD! I love me some Matt Bomer!!

Night!!

Procrastination

Words, so many words. And none of them fun.

I’m trying to do research for a presentation I have Tuesday at 1. My brain is having a very hard time staying focused. If I’m gonna look at pages and pages of words, I want them to be fun. This is boring. Boo. I am so distracted! But at least it's with something much more entertaining - me!

Why yes, I do sometimes take breaks from homework by taking pictures of myself in a dang-cute hat with my face and hair lookin’ fantastic while neck down I’m in my purple, starry nightgown. Don’t you?

In other news, have you seen the new edible Easter basket grass? It’s blue and pink and green. It’s especially Green because it reduces plastic waste. It takes it away from the landfills and puts it instead in our little tummies (the waste and the grass part, not the plastic part – I would never recommend eating normal, boring, tasteless, plastic Easter basket grass). Sarah added it to our surprise Easter baskets this year. Partly because we had both already said we were curious how it would taste and partly because silly Target ran out of the normal, wastey Easter grass. I was pretty excited to try it. I ripped off a piece of the pink grass and shoved it in my mouth as fast as I could. Then I pulled it back out to look at it closer thinking, “wait, this is the edible stuff, right? Cause I don’t taste a thing!” It mostly just tasted like paper. Which is I guess a little better than plastic. I realized I would never know this pink grass’ true identity unless I tried it again. I turned the corners of my mouth down, shrugged my shoulders while raising my eyebrows and popped it back in. Paper, definitely paper. Oh wait! Its dissolving. Ohhh, there’s the flavor. Turns out it has to dissolve before it lets the light flavor seep out. It’s okay, but nothing to freak out about. I’m glad Sarah got some cause otherwise I would have wondered for the rest of eternity what the edible grass tasted like. Now I know. Where was this stuff when I was a baby and would often eat dirt and grass while my parents videotaped me (rather than stopping me)? It would have come in very handy.

My Easter morning surprise! Thanks, Sarah!

Sarah also got us fun new herb/flower gardening stuff! 8 new packets of seeds! I can’t wait til this presentation is done so we can plant them! As you can see, the pots and patio table are all teal. So is the little owl planter decoration thing we have so loving named Owlie. He's a hoot and a half! (did you catch that? hehe) We have such a skill for giving personalities to cute inanimate objects.

I’m not the kind of girl who claims to have a signature color because what does that even mean and what makes them so special they can claim a color anyway? But if I was one of those girls, teal would mine. I think this arose out of my love affair with the color green while I was married to blue. Blue was my favorite color for as long as I can remember. Then all of a sudden green started growing on me and I felt like I was cheating on my blue-hued love. Then I realized that (unlike in real affair situations which I highly discourage) I could combine my loves and make teal. And what a glorious epiphany that was! My life will never be the same.

Thanks to my friends Stephanie and Brianne for feeding me delicious dinner. The steak was perfectly cooked, the candied yams were delectable with their marshmallows, cinnamon, and oats, the green bean casserole provided the perfect dipping for my roll, and the pretzel salad made my heart sing. Thanks for being such great friends. J I’m super excited about our season tickets to the Hobby Center. I feel all kinds of cultured at the mere thought of the theater productions we shall see.

And now, back to the no-fun, make-me-want-to-do-anything-but-read-them words…

G’night!

He Is Risen!

I love Easter Sunday.

I love that my sister surprised me with an Easter basket full of candy and fun new gardening stuff.

I love all the Easter candy that can only be found this time of year (jelly beans, Cadbury eggs and mini eggs, peeps - YUM!).

I love Easter dinner and how it usually consists of something a little special (a few years ago I had asparagus for the first time ever on Easter - now it's one of my favorite veggies).

I love the bright fun colors that people wear (today I'm wearing a pink blouse, white skirt - and my cowboy boots).

I love the sun shining lightly through my window. (Did I just say that? Normally I hate the sun - I must really be in a good mood).

I love seeing pictures of little kids doing Easter egg hunts (get those up on Facebook, friends!).

But more than anything else, I love that I get the time to think about my Savior Jesus Christ and all He has done for me.

I love that Christ loved me enough to pay a ransom for my sins. I love that He suffered for me in the Garden of Gethsemane. I love that I know He not only suffered for my sins, which are many, but that He felt all of my pain, my loneliness, my despair, my fear. He suffered everything I will have ever felt and ever will feel so that in my darkest hours, He would be able to be there and say to my spirit, "Rachel, I know this is hard. I know you are hurting. I know exactly how you feel right now. I know this because I suffered for you. I love you so much that I never want you to feel alone with your pain, so I felt all this for you. If you trust in Me, if you lean on Me, I can help you carry your burdens. I can comfort you and put my arms around you so you know you are not alone. I have graven your image in my hands. I did it all for you, Rachel. I paid the price for your sins. Turn to me and I will forgive you. Together, we can me it. I am here for you. Do not despair. Someday you will be able to see me again, and hug me, and cry with me. I can't wait for that day! But until then, turn turn to me. You may not see me, but you can feel me. I am right here. All this Rachel, because I love you!"

I love that because He rose from the grave, so will I. So will everyone I love. I will get to meet my brother who was taken from this earth before I was born. I will get to see my 3 grandparents who have passed and get to know them so much better than I did here. I will get to meet my ancestors. And we will all be together forever. This life is not the end. This life is just a moment in our eternal lifetimes. I am so grateful for that knowledge!

I am teaching in Relief Society today about the eternal nature of our souls. I know that we lived as spirit children with our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ. I know that we chose to come to this life to grow and progress so we could return to live with Them. I know that we have existed forever and we will continue to exist forever. I know that because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ we can be forgiven of our sins and we can live forever with our families in the presence of God.

I am so eternally grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for His Gospel that teaches me how to live my life as He has asked. I am so grateful for the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation, that God loves us enough to allow us to grow through trials, and that He has provided a way for us to return to live with Him again.

When I think of these glorious truths I want to climb on my roof and sing praises to my Savior! He loves us! He is Risen! We will live again! We can be forgiven of our sins! We can have eternal JOY! He is glorious! He is perfect! He is the definition of Love! He is my Savior and Redeemer!

Click here to see a beautiful video of the Atonement, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the video you see first on the page.

Click here to learn more about the truths I've expressed here.

I know some of you believe differently than some of what I have expressed here. Some details may be different, but I think we can agree that Jesus is the Christ. He died for us and He lives again! Praise to the Lord, the Almighty!

Happy Easter Sunday, all. Remember the reason we celebrate.