Life&Babies&Maps

Wow, I feel like my life is going in fast forward.
School has consumed my life and I feel like I'm doing something ALL the time. I miss having down time. I miss sleeping. Remember how I signed up for 8:00 classes every day? Well, they're killing me. I get no sleep pretty much and I honestly feel like its high school all over again. Why did I do this to myself again?
Besides classes, I have had a lot fun recently hanging out with friends on weekends. Jordan and I have become really close with 2 girls in our ward and so we have movie nights like all the time. Corny, cheesy chick flicks are our speciality.
On Saturday, we went on a group date with some guys in our ward we don't know as well and it was honestly the most fun date I've ever been on. What you do is first split up into two teams. Each team takes a camera (or in our case a handy dandy iPhone) and has 45 minutes to take 10 random pictures all around campus. After 45 minutes, you meet up with everyone again, switch phones, and then have and additional 45 minutes to replicate the pictures that the other team took. Therefore, you can guess that good strategy would be to take pictures in places that are hard to find. Obviously you can't be as discrete as zooming in on your face by a tree, but you have to leave just enough evidence for it to take time to find. It luckily stopped raining and wasn't too cold on Saturday so it was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend this idea to everyone!

These are just a few pictures... We had quite a few more but half of them were taken on Jordan's phone. 

Then on Sunday, we drove up to Bountiful to hear Elder Taylor's homecoming talk. Zach was in Ireland and Scotland for two years serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was cool to see so much family, especially my cousin Jenna's ADORABLE baby Emmy! It was our first time meeting her and she is definitely one of the cutest babies I've ever come in contact with. Her big blue eyes are just so precious! We also got to see Sydney's baby Amara who also is just down right cute. So many pretty Taylor babies!

Aren't they so cute?! I was loving all the baby time. They both have a hilarious fascination with the cameras on the iphone so we had some fun photo shoots. I can't wait until I can be an aunt and have nieces & nephews! I keep hinting at Ash & Rob but at the same time I don't want them to have a baby until after I get back from my mission.


In other exciting news, the map is up! Jordan is expecting her mission call in exactly one week. We're both so excited, I can't wait to find out where she goes!

The map is pretty out of scale, but oh well. The cool thing too is that we can leave it up for people to guess where I am going to go too. My papers are almost done, I'm just settling some dental stuff like going to the oral surgeon to schedule a date for my wisdom teeth to come out.
Stay tuned to see where Jordan goes...

Lastly, I've been challenged by my Book of Mormon teacher and my Mission prep teacher to review what I've learned in class and in personal study, so I will be posting my thoughts on each post of what I've been learning so that I don't forget!
So in Book of Mormon this past week, we've continued in Alma and centered on the atonement and how our mistakes don't define us. We all make mistakes and even though we may feel the weight of many sins bear down on us, there is only one solution: Christ. He is our solution to any problem, any sin, and any worry. His atonement is such a great and wonderful thing and even though we may not always feel worthy, he is always there with open arms.
Besides our own mistakes and use of the atonement, we also need to refrain from judging those on what they're doing to get back on the path and how they use the atonement. We all have different lives and we will never know what someone else is dealing with. Something I've realized a lot recently is that its important to try and be Christlike and kind to everyone we meet. I know for me, especially with people that can annoy me, this is a hard thing! But everyone is fighting their own battles and we are constantly in battle with Satan. For people who are having a hard time, the last thing they need is drama or coldness from other people.
In Alma 37:6 we read that, "by small and simple things, great things come to pass." It doesn't take a lot to get yourself back on the path or go out of your way to be kind to someone. Little actions can go a long way and I think it's something that I've really come to realize this past week.

Laugh of the Day: 

So last Friday I had my first anatomy lab with cadavers. It was really quite a traumatic experience for me and I was definitely freaking out the whole time. When we first got there, they split us into two groups and one studied directly off the cadavers while the other just studied off a leg of a cadaver. Yep, just a leg! It was pretty freaky. I decided to start at the leg which meant sitting down as well (not like I thought I was going to faint, but you can never be too careful). When I sitting there, this guy from the other group came over and had to get a spray bottle that is full of this solution that you have to spray on the cadavers every 5 minutes to keep them from drying out. Well the handle is pretty touchy so when he picked it up, it ended up spraying on this girl in the face and chest area. At that point, I was still freaked out and a little bit emotional so I started laughing with this guy next to me and was like, If that happens to me I am soooo out of here! I couldn't believe that actually just happened! The thought of cadaver moistening solution all over me just gives me the shivers. It definitely wasn't funny that she got sprayed, just that it actually happened when a lot of us were on edge and freaked out. Who knows if I'll be able to last this whole semester but I will just die if that ever happens to me...

ChristmasCruisin&NewYears&WinterSemester

So I know its like way past the time to write about christmas break butttt my break was just too good to not write about!
To start off, for Christmas this year my family decided to go on a cruise! We went on a 5 day Carnival cruise to Progreso & Cozumel, Mexico. It was my first cruise so it was definitely a cool thing to experience. Luckily, the extent of getting sea sick was just feeling queazy the last day at sea because the ship was really rocky. However, all of the good food and relaxing hours on the boat made up for it. Overall though, my favorite part had to be the two days we spent in Mexico. I really liked how we went to both Progreso and Cozumel because I got to see two very different parts of Mexico. In Progreso, its much more rustic and not as modern as opposed to Cozumel which is very modern and highly centered on tourists.
Our excursion in Progreso consisted of a van ride an hour from shore to a place where we hopped on bikes and biked out to snorkel in two cenotes. For those of you who don't know what a cenote is (because I didn't), here's the official definition from dictionary.com -
Ce-no-te [suh-noh-tee]
noun 
a deep natural well or sinkhole, especially in Central American, formed by the collapse of surface limestone that exposes groundwater underneath, and so metimes used by the ancient Mayans for sacrificial offerings.

There were dogs everywhere! This one was just chilling while we all grabbed bikes from this little pavilion.

Unfortunately, I only got a picture of 1 of the cenotes that we went to, but look how gorgeous this is?! It drops off and it was really cool to snorkel in. Very cool. 

I asked our tour guide if this was a petting zoo, but he responded saying that people were raising these animals to eat. "That's Christmas dinner right over there! Ha!" 

We got to see a lot of Progreso on the van ride which was really cool. We saw real people and their run down houses like this one.

The view right off the ship. The port is actually the rocky horizontal strip in the picture. Progreso's port is the longest in the world! It's 4 miles long. 

Our next stop was in Cozumel where we got on a boat and rode to a snorkeling spot off the beach. After we snorkeled for awhile, we went and spent the rest of our time on the beach. It was cool because there were these huge inflatable slides and different things that were fun. I got to paddle board too which was also something that I really enjoyed.

The water was absolutely GORGEOUS!

Drinking our pepsi on Christmas day on the beach! #cheers

Eating a snow cone and taking a picture with the creepy Mexican grinch pretty much made it the best Christmas ever! 

Overall, the cruise was such a fun experience and I'm so glad I got to spend it with my family! I will admit that the cruise ship itself got boring after awhile, but it was actually kind of nice to have nothing to do and nowhere to be all day. We went to a lot of shows and cool things at night, so I was grateful to just relax a lot during the day on the ship.

After we got back, I spent a lot of time with friends and family and tried to soak up as much of the Texas warmth as I could before I had to return the icebox more commonly known as Utah. For New Years, Briana and I drove out to Friendswood to spend it with the Ellsworths. We sang karaoke, played Bunco and ate all night so it was definitely a ton of fun. We had a confetti fight at midnight and that lasted for a good hour. Who knew chunking little pieces of paper at your family could be so fun?

  

This picture cracks me up

confetti angel!

Isn't he the cutest?!

This was shelby ALL through the fight.  

What the night ended with. #classic

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS: 

1. Establish more of a sound sleep and study schedule 

2. Watch, listen, or read some kind of guidance from general authorities every Sunday

3. Run & exercise more 

Still working on some, but I think these are pretty sound for now... 

So now that I've caught up, here's a little update about how my life has been in January 2013 so far! 

1. I'm in all new classes (totally weird and different from high school, but I love it)

2. I'm in a drawing class and am TOTALLY loving it. I'm so excited to be doing art again in a conventional manner. 

3. IT'S FREEZING HERE. Like seriously, in the negatives and 1 digit degrees. 

4. I have an 8:00 class everyday. You know what that means? I get no sleep. I am currently in the process of trying to establish a normal, healthy sleep schedule and I am failing. 

5. I'm about 90% done with my mission papers! I just have to finalize a few things and then I can submit them! 

6. I conquered the stomach flu or some kind of bad stomach bug last week and didn't get Jordan sick! YAY. 

7. I'm in 2 religion classes (Book of Mormon and Mission Prep) and I love it! I have such great teachers that leave me so spiritually enriched after each class. It's great. 

Actually, in talking about my religion classes and Book of Mormon, I just want to share a little bit of what we've been talking about. 

I've never been a great scriptorian or been able to interpret difficult scriptures on my own, so I absolutely love it when a teacher or speaker explains scriptures and doctrine in a way that I totally understand. For me, Brother Griffin does that. This past week in Book of Mormon class, we talked a lot about the devil and how he works in so many great ways to trick you. In Alma, we learn of Korihor who was deceived by the devil so much so that he truly believed that what he was teaching was the truth. In our lives today, there are Korihors all around us. There are always going to be people and things that distract us and try to sway us from the truth. However, when we fall into these traps and remove our center focus from Christ, a domino effect can happen on our entire lives. It occurs like this- 

No Christ = No hope = No Future = No prophecies = No forgiveness 

This proves the importance of centering ourselves toward Christ and how only through him are we able to grow and become better. So just as there is a negative domino effect, by adding just two simple letters to the first one, we have a much more desirable domino effect- 

Know Christ = Know hope = Know future = Know prophecies = Know forgiveness 

I love this because it lays it out so plainly. In Alma 30:52, Korihor writes after being struck dumb, "I know that I am dumb, for I cannot speak..." This is a lesson for all of us because we can see the effects of hearkening to the devil's voice. We gain nothing from following the devil, but gain SO much from following and knowing Christ. This is such a comfort to me because it only strengthens the fact that God and Christ are always there for me. If we trust in him and follow him, we will be blessed and be so much happier because of it.

Laugh of the Day: 

While in Cozumel, I decided to paddle board in the ocean. I had only paddle boarded once before in California where the water was much calmer, but I loved it so I decided to give it a shot. It was a little bit more challenging, but I managed to balance pretty well. Once I mastered just merely staying up, I decided to try to stand on only one foot. I could easily do it in California, but because the water was much more rocky in the ocean, it wasn't the same. Needless to say, I had quite a few falls off the paddle board. This was pretty funny in itself, but the funniest part of paddle boarding was when my brother Frank swam over and we both tried to balance at the same time. This was proving to be VERY difficult and we ate the water so many times. I can only imagine what we looked like because when you fall from a paddle board, it's not always so graceful.We had so many falls, but so many laughs. It was worth it.