Back in the Burg...

...And it feels so good.

I've now had all of my new classes and my favorito is definitely going to be Book of Mormon. Even though it's at 7:45am in the morning (the most unholy of hours for a college student who goes to bed at 1am), I know it's going to be worth it. When I was changing around my schedule during registration, nothing was working out; when I finally settled on having BOM at 7:45, everything worked out. So I'm supposed to be in this class, right? Right!

Spanish 201 is hardcore. We only have one more day of speaking English, and then after that if you say a word of English in class you're outta there! Yikes!

Not having to walk around campus with a coat on is pure bliss. And nighttime walks up to the temple are also pretty high on the awesomeness scale.

Liz, Kristina, and Audrey are all here. Can you say part-ay?

Math isn't going to be that bad! I was definitely surprised at this information.

Devotionals are proof that this is an exciting time to live and BYU-Idaho is the best place to be right now!

Remember Friday

I remember a certain Thursday.

It was raining when I woke up, turning everything outside that we thought was spring into mud. That's okay, I thought. I like the smell of mud. It means that the earth is still good enough to be cleansed by God.

This Thursday was like most other Thursdays in that it didn't hold any special event or awakening. Until I read this:

I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross.

On that terrible Friday the earth shook and grew dark. Frightful storms lashed at the earth.

Those evil men who sought His life rejoiced. Now that Jesus was no more, surely those who followed Him would disperse. On that day they stood triumphant.

On that day the veil of the temple was rent in twain.

Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were both overcome with grief and despair. The superb man they had loved and honored hung lifeless upon the cross.

On that Friday the Apostles were devastated. Jesus, their Savior—the man who had walked on water and raised the dead—was Himself at the mercy of wicked men. They watched helplessly as He was overcome by His enemies.

On that Friday the Savior of mankind was humiliated and bruised, abused and reviled.

It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.

I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.

But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

And in an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filled the air with wondrous praise, for Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, stood before them as the firstfruits of the Resurrection, the proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence.

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.

No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come.

Joseph B. Wirthlin, “Sunday Will Come,” Liahona, Nov 2006, 28–30

So tomorrow when you wake up and find that it's still raining and you wish that spring would come, or you are simply struggling and wish that your Sunday would come, remember a certain Friday a long time ago. And remember how everything that happened on that Friday was so you could have a Sunday. Remember.

Anybody Up for a New Pet?

Numero Cuatro

I have this crazy addiction and it involves getting onto flickr.com and saving other people's pictures onto my computer...those ones that truly inspire me. I also like to name them crazy things, and this picture (fourth one in my fourth folder) was incidentally named "four in the a.m." This photo is the bridge at Heceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon. I miss it like WHOA. Someday soon I will be there...

How Redheads Charm People Who Aren't Redheads

Boycotting: A Definition

Yesterday Caleb got home from walking Ellie to her friend Marissa's house. For those of you who haven't heard about the Adventures of Marissa, she's not exactly Caleb's favorite playmate. Last month he learned about "boycotting" because of Black History Month and the Civil Rights Movement. But just to clarify, he asked me again yesterday what it meant. I explained that it's when you choose not to do something, like the black people who chose not to ride the buses anymore because they had to sit in the back.

He asked, "So...it's when you don't like something, right?"
"Sure..." I said. Where is this going?? I 'm thinking.
"Well then I boycott Marissa!"

'Nuff said.

Funny how dad's blog is about Caleb's latest quotation, too.

Fear of Water?

Last night I had a really eerie dream. The kind that make you wake up and think, "Dang I'm glad that was just a dream." This is how it all went down:
My grandparents on the Livingston side were taking Ike and I on the usual camping trip we always used to take every summer. Only this time we were going to a lake on the outskirts of Seattle (p.s. IS there a lake on the outskirts of Seattle? Because I would really like to know how my brain came up with that one). In order to get to this lake we had to drive through a very dense forest with absolutely no light except what was coming out of the headlights of the car. Everything about this dream was dark, let me tell ya. Then when we got to the lake there was nobody else there. The shore was totally abandoned. We were staying in this little shack that looked a LOT bigger on the inside. Ike kept trying to get me to go swimming in the lake but I refused over and over. At one point in the dream I went up on this bridge going over the lake (where I could see Seattle off in the distance) and could see down to the bottom. I don't know about you, but when I can see all the way to the bottom of a deep surface, I get kinda creeped out. It seems like you shouldn't be able to SEE all the way down there. I've always been this way, even with public pools, because I just don't want to imagine what could be down there. It's dark. It's too far down for me to breathe. The End. Anyway, I could see piles and piles of cars that had sunk to the bottom of it. There was even a separate pile of the discarded license plates. I could also see eels and other creepy-crawlies swimming around at the bottom. And Isaac kept swimming right into swarms of them. And yet he'd keep saying "Come in! Come in and swim!" I woke up really glad that I had not stayed asleep long enough to actually listen to him.