4 years ago today. . .

I realized earlier that 4 years ago today, after 52 hours of traveling, I arrived home from my mission to the Philippines. I took some time tonight to look through my scrapbook and reminisce for a minute. What an amazing experience it was! I'm so grateful I took the opportunity to serve and feel like I still think about it in one way or another each day. At times it's tempting to feel a little disheartened at things that have or have not happened since, but I am who I am today in large part because of that experience and all that I learned through it. I wouldn't trade it for the world!

It's almost time. . .

So I just realized today that the olympics start in less than a month. Did you hear that (or rather read it since this blog has no audio capabilities). . . less than a month. Is anyone else excited? Or am I just too much of an olympics junkie?

Sunday naps

What a wonderful thing it is to be able to take a Sunday afternoon nap. Seriously, I think someone should learn how to capture and market the good feeling of winding down at 9:30 Sunday night knowing you accomplished all you needed to at church and other meetings today, caught up on some reading and phone calls, attended a fireside and got a glorious 2 hour nap in. All of which has allowed you to be just the right stage of sleepy to get a good night's rest soon and gear up for the busy week ahead. It really is a good feeling. Of course my day had to start at 6:30 to fit all this in and I'm sure it won't work every week but since it's probably been close to a year since I had a good Sunday nap I think I'll relish in the feeling for a minute :)

Battle of the Roses

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

But would it still be as thorny? Logic tells me yes, but I wish there were a way to make the thorns magically disappear. We have two rosebushes out in front of my apartment that are our responsibility to keep up. Truthfully they don't take much work, they are apparently pretty hardy because they don't take any extra watering or anything, and our neglect of them hasn't hurt them yet. They do produce beautiful pink and yellow roses, and when I think to clip off the flowers in time really do quite well. However, I guess I'm not as tuned into taking care of our plants as I should be because they often get neglected for months. Well today I decided to tackle the overgrowth and prune them down since according to the internet this is the right time of year to prune roses in Arizona. Well, my little hand pruners were too short to allow me to really do a good pruning (at least without royally scratching up my arms), so I borrowed some long handled pruners and after an hour of trimming, piling and hauling rose branches to the garbage, I managed to escape with some halfway decent looking plants, now trimmed down to a decent size with plenty of space to grow and only a few hundred thorn pricks, not bad for my latest battle with the roses. As always, I vowed to keep a better eye on them, but whether or not that actually gets done remains to be seen.

Mabuhay 2010!

Its always a little strange to me when these landmark year's finally come to pass. Growing up it was always the year 2000 that seemed the ultimate benchmark for the passing of time. I mean let's face it, it brought in a new decade, a new century, a new millenium, not to mention all the hoopla of Y2K and was the defining moment for the best graduating class Rigby High School has ever seen ;)
Well since then, 2010 has seemed to be the new benchmark. I remember studying the Healthy People 2010 initiative in one of my first college classes in Fall 2000, and as I continued on in the field of health education, it just seemed to cement it in my mind that 2010 was the next big benchmark to evaluate the progress of mankind.

So how are we doing?

Well, I'm sure we all have thoughts on that, but in any case, 2010 is upon us and its time to go forth and welcome the year for whatever it will become, or rather whatever we make it, so Mabuhay 2010! Happy New Years Everyone!

My SNOW fix. . .

Christmas was wonderful! Although even with all my dreaming of a white christmas, I couldn't make it snow here :( But nonetheless, I got my snow fix anyways on Dec. 26th in the form of an impromptu trip up north to find some snow. Here's us when we finally got out in the elements and it was beautiful. I know many of you reading this are probably sick of the cold snowy weather by now, and I feel your pain, but still love the snow at least for a couple days out of the year.