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...