Practice What You Teach

I absolutely LOVE this quote from President Uchtdorf's talk at the General Relief Society Meeting: " Sisters, wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, you are not forgotten. No matter how dark your days may seem, no matter how insignificant you may feel, no matter how overshadowed you think you may be, your Heavenly Father has not forgotten you. In fact, He loves you with an infinite love." It never ceases to amaze me that my Heavenly Father knows and loves me. The past few days, I have been feeling very discouraged about school. I get kind of stressed about my grades, and have a tendency to be a bit hard on myself, as we all are, when things don't go as well as I would have liked. Yesterday was a particularly discouraging day. I knew that remaining discouraged and wallowing in self pity would get me nowhere, so I prayed and asked my Heavenly Father to help me get over my discouragement and move on. As I was walking to our hall bathroom, I noticed that so...

BYU is amazing. It's just plain amazing. I absolutely love it here! These past three weeks have just been so full of fun and blessings! My classes are fantastic, I've met some wonderful new friends, and have just been having the time of my life!   My three favorite classes are Book of Mormon, World Dance, and of course choir! My Book of Mormon teacher gave us the assignment to read the first half of the BOM in two weeks! I have never EVER read it even close to that fast, but I was excited to take on the challenge! I found that I now understand the sequence of events better than ever! It was such a cool experience and strengthened my testimony of the BOM! Plus, it doesn't hurt that I now have a 100 on my first assignment! In my World Dance class we learn dances from a bunch of different countries and it's SO FUN! I love it. Then of course I love choir. That's just a given. We're singing a Gospel Choir like song, and those who know me well know that I'm pretty...

It's still so hard to believe I'm in COLLEGE! I absolutely love BYU! My mom and I flew into Utah on Tuesday. We met up with my grandma when we arrived at the SLC airport. We then went to Deseret Book and looked around for awhile. There was so much stuff there! Then we went to Temple Square and walked around! After that, we met up with Colleen for lunch. Then my mom and I walked around some more and got a really neat tour of the Conference Center! We got to go up on the roof and got a really great view of Temple Square! Then we went to Kathy's house where I took a two hour nap, to help get over what I dramaticized to be a horrid case of jet lag. Somehow I've managed to adjust to the time difference. It's a miracle really. Anyways, we went to dinner with the Utah family then I went back to Kathy's and totally crashed. I was exhausted! Wednesday morning I moved into my dorm! I'll post pictures later, I'm kinda too lazy right now. I got to meet my awesome ...

I never anticipated how difficult going off to college would be! I am honestly SO excited, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, it's been really hard! First off, I've been working on packing up my room! It's so weird to see my closet so empty! I've made list after list of stuff that I need to pack/get and the "fun" never seems to stop! It has been pretty fun to see all of the stuff that I find when going through my room though! Papers from classes I've hated, letters and card from people, purses with my long lost camera buried in the back of my desk drawers, and so on! It's also given me quality time with my mama, who's been fervently helping me through the packing process! Then of course there's the good-byes. Literally the worst thing ever invented. It's such an oxymoron, I mean what's good about saying "good-bye" or "see ya later?!" English is SO weird. Anyways, I've been SO blessed to have had some r...

                   I apologize in advance for the nostalgia of this blog post. In 20 days, I'll be leaving Virginia. IT is going to be SO weird, because I've lived here since I was 3 years old. Two different houses, but they are within 4 miles of each other. I've been so blessed to have so much family close by. My mom's sister and her family have lived down the street from us since I was about 8 years old. My grandparents live about 20 minutes away, and my Aunt Becky lives close by in Arlington. Our family has become really close as a whole for that reason, and I love that so much! In addition, as cliche as it sounds, I think NOVA is SO pretty! Provo has a lot to live up to, I really hope those mountains pull through! My friends and I like to joke about how I'm going to forget what a tree looks like! I'll Google them every day just in case. You never know, I may get to busy to stop and th...

I can't believe that my baby sister is 14 and starting high school!! Here are 14 things I love about my Jenn! 1. She will just say and do the most random things that are SO FUNNY. I literally can't get through a conversation with this girl without laughing hysterically at least once. We talk a lot, so needless to say she keeps my life interesting! 2. She has such a great sense of style, something that I on the other hand was not blessed with. She helps me find cute outfits and will never hesitate to give me some constructive fashion criticism. If I had a dime for every time she's given me her judgment face followed by the classic "WHAT are you WEARING?!" I would have a lot of dimes... 3. She is a wonderful singer! I really don't think she realizes how good she is! I love that she's a little budding soprano, because the soprano section's totally where it's at! I'm not the least bit biased! 4. When Jenn is passionate about something she ...

Oh my goodness. I'm an adult. That's just so weird. Honestly though, I'm pretty much still a kid at heart. So anyways, I had such a fun birthday! The festivities aren't even over yet! My birthday's lasting a solid week and it's beautiful. I'm all for it. Anyways, the day started out with me waking up to someone banging on my bedroom window. I LEAPED out of bed. I was absolutely TERRIFIED. The incessant banging on my window was shortly thereafter followed by incessant banging on my front door. I opened it to find my cute cousins Michael and Jacob standing on my doorstep. Jake sang "Happy Birthday" to me, then the boys left. My dad had left Abby and I my favorite breakfast: bubble bread! So good! Then after I picked Abby up from swim practice, we took a spontaneous trip to get a delicious smoothie from Robeks. Then, my best friends Hannah and Micala came over. We played Guitar Hero, and then went to our favorite restaurant, Charlie Changs, to get som...