My political blog

Well if I'm not here, you all can go over to my new blog at http://thepeanutgaller.blogspot.com/ Three cheers to Mimo for suggesting the perfect name for my blog. *Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!* I haven't posted anything yet but I will this weekend. Any suggestions or input would be great because I know very little about politics! LOL

Blogging is so in

Here I didn't even know what a blog was until about 6 months ago. Now, I've been asked by a professor to create one. I was surprised when my American Goverment teacher asked us to create a political blog. Fantastic. Two things I know very little about - blogs and political issues. lol I don't even have an idea what to call it. Politics for beginners? lol So if anyone has a fun title for my new blog, I'm all ears! As soon as I have a title, I'll post a link for all those political buffs that can give me some good insight. :-)

Overall though, school has been going really well. I was given the absolute best advice = view school as a job. In the end, you'll receive a large paycheck. With this perspective, it's actually helping me have a much more positive outlook on college. I was so burnt out from high school that when I entered college, I had just had it with schooling. But now, I look forward to my classes. I don't want to memorize the textbook. I want to learn, I want to expand my knowledge, I want to take all the information I will be given and actually apply it to my life. Two of my classes don't even have textbooks for those exact reasons. I'm stoked.

Here's to hoping I'm still this upbeat come finals week. lol

Exercising is my friend, port-a-potty's are not...

Today, a friend and I decided to go walking. We first made a quick stop at Wal-Mart where we bought pedometers. If you don't have one, I highly recommend you get one. The kind we bought tell you how many steps you've taken, how many calories you've burned, and how far you have traveled. It even has a clock. For less than $7 I considered it a steal. At our walking area, we strapped them on and away we went. Both of us were carrying a baby and we both were pushing a stroller with a toddler in it. Talk about a work out! The course we took was not a normal, flat walkway. Oh no, it had hills, up and down. With two kids in tow, my legs and arms were feeling the burn. I was glad we were exercising though. I mean if Carrot can do it, I can do it. :-)

5,000 steps and 1.7 miles later we finished our walk. Whew! We shaved off 5 minutes from our last walk, which I was proud of. That means we're improving. The one difference this time around, was that we brought water. You'd think we'd have taken water with us the first time, but we didn't realize how hard our little journey would be. How we did it the first time around without water still surprises me. But anyway, we had water today and it felt so good to drink it in such hot weather. By the time we loaded the kids up and were about ready to go, I could only think of one thing. No it wasn't how nice it would be to have my AC on. I had to go to the bathroom!

I honestly didn't think I could make it to the nearest gas station. Just my luck there was a port-a-potty right there. Now I'm not one to normally use one of these, as they are terribly disgusting. But it was use that or go in the street, in my new I-want-to-look-cute-but-I-really-look-fat sweat pants. So I opted for the port-a-potty. Thank goodness I know how to do an air chair. I'm trying not to be too grossed out when I just happened to look up and to my left. Guess what I see? A HORNET'S NEST! Four hornets are having a party.

I freak out. I don't want to run out of the bathroom with my pants down so my friend can see me in my partial birthday suit. So I'm trying to pull my pants up all while the whole port-a-potty is shaking vigorously. I get even more worried that the shaking motion will make the hornets come after me because I disturbed them. My friend must be thinking I'm crazy seeing the whole thing shake back and forth at this point. I flung the door open and my pedometer drops outside and breaks apart. But thankfully it didn't fall into the toilet right? I jump outside with my pants mostly pulled up and slam the door shut. I couldn't believe it. I didn't even get stung. I must have been really crazy because I opened the door back open to see what the hornet's were doing. I know, you're thinking "if she was in such a big hurry to get away from the hornets why would she want to look at them again?" I guess I was curious as to why they weren't coming after me. They were happily enjoying their little nest.

What kind of hornets make a nest in a port-a-potty anyway? I mean really? Do they have zero sense of cleanliness? What animal or bug in their right mind would want to see someone using the bathroom? Maybe they don't have morals or maybe they were all out on a date and were too engrossed in themselves to be bothered by little ol me. Whatever. Thank heavens I wasn't stung. Next time I'll hold it.

In need of a vacation!

I couldn't even tell you the last vacation we've been on. I mean a real vacation. Not just going to see family for the weekend, kind of vacation. Maybe our last one was before we had children, almost four years ago. I think that was it. On the spur of the moment we decided to go to Seattle, Washington. We had so much fun! Now that was a vacation!

This week, we've decided to head out of town for a real vacation before school starts. We need some family time together and a vacation is a great way to do that! Don't get your hopes up, we're not going anywhere really exotic or anything, just to Utah. But I've been happily surprised that there are many fun places to visit in Utah. My husband has planned out our three day, two night, trip, down to the hour of every single day. I'm very impressed. We'll even have time to visit either the Salt Lake temple or the Jordan River temple. I'm so excited! I've never been inside either. Well that's not true, I did go to a sealing in the Jordan River temple, but never an actual session. So I'm looking forward to that.

So today we went looking for our temple recommends. We recently had them renewed but failed to remember where we put them. I began to get discouraged because we couldn't find them anywhere. Then my mind began to think of silly reasons why we couldn't find them. Maybe I'm not worthy enough to go? Maybe this is a sign we shouldn't go? Will the bishop even be able to get us new recommends in such a short period of time? Will he all of a sudden say "I'm sorry you're not spiritual enough to go." Then my husband found his. Yay! But we could not find mine. We had our bedtime prayer together and my husband prayed that we would find my recommend. I didn't really believe it though, stupid me.

The reason being we misplaced one set of scriptures and I thought my recommend was put in there after we got it renewed. We hadn't been able to find that set for weeks so why would today make any difference? I felt awful but my husband was resilient and kept on searching, now through our closet. I told him more than once that I had just cleaned the closet and I didn't see the scriptures. I almost cried because we weren't finding anything. How could I have lost something so important? Or was it not that important enough to me so I didn't care what happened to it? But then my husband found it! I was so happy! I immediately felt bad that I didn't have faith that Heavenly Father would help us find my recommend. He does answer prayers even if we don't think He will. I know my recommend is important to me, I do value it a great deal. I have missed and longed going to the temple. I'm very grateful we found my recommend so we can go this week. Yet another blessing!!

We are going to have the best vacation I just know it. It will be wonderful spending so much time together as a family before school starts. Happy, happy, happy! That's me! Happy, happy, happy!!

Breathe 1, 2, 3 and breathe.....

I go back to college in 9 days. Eeekkk! Some days I feel really good about going back and I even get excited. I bought a new backpack today. It's purple, and very large. The joys of college textbooks and their size. It's been fun to do a little back-to-school shopping but it does also make it more and more real. I know this is what I need to be doing right now but sometimes it's hard to feel happy about it. So many people aren't even happy for me. They all ask "why isn't your husband in school? When will he go back?" Some come across as being upset that I'm in school and he's not. He would be if he didn't work 18+ hours a day. It's not that I don't feel bad he's not going back, because I do. He will be going next year. I would love it if we both could go at the same time, but right now it's just not possible.

I find the whole thing a bit ironic actually. Most of the people who are unhappy with my husband not being in school are my own family members. I remember when I first attended BYU-Idaho over four years ago. My family had this expectation of me to graduate with top honors and a Ph.D in hand. I'll never forget what happened when I told them I was leaving school after only one semester. Second semester rolled around and it just didn't feel right to me. I no longer had any desire to go; I felt out of place. I came home for my birthday and I just couldn't bring myself to go back. Something wasn't right. I took a week to try and figure things out through prayer. That same week an incident took place and my mom ended up in the hospital. I was the only one there from when it happened to when the ambulance came and picked her up. I cannot fathom what could have happened if she had been alone. I knew after that, that I was no longer supposed to be in school.

That weekend I went back up to campus and packed my bags and checked out. I also had a family baby blessing to attend and that's when I told the rest of my family. Every one of my brothers and my dad told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I tried to explain that they could not receive personal revelation for me and that I knew where I was supposed to be. They were very upset and I was hurt. I wasn't surprised by their reactions but it still stung. Then not even two weeks later, I met my husband. That was no coincidence. I knew Heavenly Father had something else in store for me and that was it. My family could never see that.

So now that I'm going back to school, I sadly made the assumption that they would be happy for me. Again, I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing but it's always nice to hear that someone else is happy for me. But no such luck. In some respects I can understand. Some days I wonder what was I thinking? My husband works two jobs, we have two children, how will I juggle it all? I'm only taking four classes but they are three credits a piece. It's not like I'm taking "Learn How to Walk in a Straight Line 101" or anything. I don't really foresee my classes being hard either, but definitely time consuming. I worry about being able to have enough time to study. I think that may be my biggest fear, not doing as well as I know I can do. I don't want to have to settle for a grade just because I was too tired to study. I feel knowledge and grades are very important. I want a degree that if needed later, I can fall back on it. I don't want employers to look at my college grades and wonder why they aren't better. I just want to do well.

I know it won't be easy but I'm going to give it a try. I can only pray for the extra help I'm going to need to get through this and next semester. I'm sure I will have many stressful days but I know I can get through them. If this is what Heavenly Father wants me to do, then He will make "all things possible" unto me. Woohoo for that!! LOL

Ahhhhhh......

We now have cable internet. I feel the love. I feel the joy. Ahhhhhhh. I've missed my cable internet. It's been almost a year since we switched from cable to dial up. For the first few months I was really happy with it. Dial up to me at the time wasn't as bad as everyone had told me it was. But looking back, I think I was ok with it because we were cutting down every expense we could. You make the most of your situation right? :) Then the last few months it started to get hard. See, every month I do a family newsletter for my side of the family. Every month, my family emails me with information about what they've been up to and sometimes they send pictures. Now, we all know how long it takes to download a picture. Last month I had over 40 in our newsletter. 40! It took me TWO days to download all the pictures. It was the last straw. It's not just the newsletter, it's other things I do online also. I've decided we will make room in our budget for cable internet because dial up is just too slow. Now I don't tie up my phone line for hours and I can get more done in a lot less time, which means more family time. I'm stoked! I'm feeling the love here today! Yippee!