Girls' Night Out!

Have you ever done something and immediately regretted it? And instead of fixing it, you let it nag at you for days, weeks, years even. You think that if you do something about it, then life as you know it will be turned upside down. But really, when you finally confront the problem, the relief is overwhelming. I am continually amazed by the power of forgiveness. In just the past 6 months, I've met with both sides of this seemingly impenetrable wall multiple times- and conquered it. I've forgiven people when before I couldn't stand being in the same room as them. On the other side, I've been forgiven for things which were utterly inexcusable. I am amazed by the number of times we can forgive and be forgiven, even in the most impossible of situations. Seventy times seven. I am truly in awe. 
On a lighter note, how would you like to hear about an adventure? We'll start with our arrival in Logan. My amiga, Heidee, and I arrived in Logan on Saturday, totally stoked to spend the weekend with our friend Kim. Picture the cliche of girls' night out (Mormon style) and you've got it. We went to the mall to....should I tell you? Oh, okay. If you insist... We went to try on prom dresses. Now I know what you're thinking. "Why in the heck are college girls trying on prom dresses???" Honestly, I really couldn't answer that question. I think a part of you never wants to grow up, so every now and again you just have to throw perceptions out the window and do something crazy. HOWEVER. If you are going to do this, DON'T have your friend pick out what you try on (this goes for all shopping excursions). Let's just say that yours truly ended up in a pink (shudder), sparkly (barf), fluffy (...just died a little inside) prom dress. Kim, love you dearly, but that was torture.. Haha! One thing you need to know about me is this: I hate pink. Passionately. Okay, now we can move on. Here comes the cliche-->
For the remainder of the evening, we...
1. Ate pizza (waaay too much)
2. Watched chick flicks ("You've Got Mail" and "A Walk to Remember")
3. Ate ice cream
And we had a grand ol' time! The following morning brought about some spiritual refreshers and new adventures. We went out to a little town in the middle of nowhere to hear my friend, Kyle, talk to some youth.   The drive took seemingly forever as we continued into the fog (which was still around, by the way). Totally out of the blue, this little town just appears. It was actually kind of crazy. One second, blah, boring fields. The next, BAM! Cute lil' town. Long story short, we found the church after second-guessing our directions like 50 times. We weren't really sure what we were in for. All we knew was that Kyle was speaking at a church and we were there to watch/support. What a surprise it was to find a bunch of youth where we thought there'd be adults. It was a major throw-back (even though that wasn't that long ago for me). I'd almost forgotten the unique dynamic present in youth groups. The obvious jr. high crushes sitting by each other and the sudden courage to be sarcastic and outspoken was apparent in the quick-witted comments. Probably the funniest thing I saw while there was the case of brother vs sister. This kid is up doing announcements and stuff, probably the quorum leader, and realized afterward that he didn't have a place to sit. As it so happened, there was one seat left. Kyle pointed it out and was just like "why don't you sit there?" The look on that kid's face was totally priceless. Turns out that the last seat was right next to his sister. This I totally understand. They looked about as far apart in age as my older brother and me. Classic. Well, you're probably sick of reading this by now. Enjoy life and don't forget to look for the little happy things along the way.

Fog

I don’t have a lot of very profound moments in life, but today was an exception. My good friend, Heidee, and I had been planning on going up to Utah State to visit our other BFF, Kim Possible (long story). Life, being what it is, caught up to us and a chance of snow and some foggy conditions became detrimental to our travel plans. With guidance and advice from parents and the family milk man (my uncle), we decided to go ahead with our travel plans anyways. All was well and the fog wasn’t as bad as we were expecting. That is, until we hit Sardine Canyon. The fog became very dense and we couldn’t see too far ahead. I thought it was pretty cool and Heidee brought up the comment that it was much like life. We all have a road or path of life which we follow, but we don’t know where it’s going. We can choose to stay on the strait and narrow or we can choose to take the nearest exit and embark on a different adventure. The difference is, we are given tools to reach our destination if we stay on the path. If we go astray, we don’t know where we will end up and therefore have no tools to help us when we are lost. I’ve been thinking about those different tools we have. First to come to mind are church, scriptures, and prophets. But we also have our families. Personally, I think I have the best family ever. But I’m a little biased. I could probably go on about the little things in life that my parents or brothers have taught me, but you have your own pool of experiences to draw from at your leisure. However, I still hold out that my little brother is the coolest kid ever. He just turned 15 and is into the whole BMX scene. He’s actually pretty good. As much as it kills me to think about this, he can even do a back flip! So you’re picturing this kind of awkward, lanky, but pretty chill dude, right? This up-and-coming BMX pro is also my number one fashion consultant. Say what you want about your mom and your friends, but I still think my little brother has the best taste of them all. I’m not really sure how that ties into the whole tools of life analogy, but it just goes to show that help can be found in the most random places. But seriously, if you want advice on what looks good before your date with that “special someone,” just ask him. To sum it up, we reached our destination in one piece, although we did have to do a couple U-turns. But such is life. If I had any advice from our trip, it would be this: put on some good tunes, enjoy the road of life, and ALWAYS have a GPS handy.

Well, I’ve never done a blog or anything of the sort before, so this is my experiment. I figure I have things to say and dang-it, why not share them with the world? Talk to any one of my friends and they will tell you that I LOVE sharing the random stories and adventures of my life. With everyone. It’s exciting! Latest adventure? Park City! A couple of my awesome friends and I went to Park City’s Sundance Film Festival to see if we could “spot the stars.” Did we see any? That’d be a negative. BUT we did have some epic fun exploring stores and people watching. Top experiences of the day: 1. Bramble 2. Kelsie the fashionista 3. “Are you that actress?”

1. Bramble. Upon exploring Main Street, we discovered this totally fantastic band named Bramble. To give you an example of their pure awesomeness, they used banjos, ukuleles, and trash cans for instruments. And then they switched! They are incredibly talented and our dear Kelsie got one of their CDs. Visit bramblemusic.com for your listening pleasure. Although as a forewarning, be careful if you decide to view their pictures. One does include some cheek action and I’m not talking about faces here.

2. Just as we were preparing for departure, Kelsie was approached by a woman with a camera. That’s right. Kelsie is now in a fashion blog. We all knew it would happen someday. Except apparently her. Kels, you are a fashionista. It’s true. Check out her moment in the spotlight at dawnstag.blogspot.com

3. The last is my funny moment of the day. While Kels was having her photo op, a happy, although somewhat creepy, old man came up to me and inquired if I was “that actress.” My only response, “I wish!” Pretty sure he was joking. If he were serious, well, that’d just be weird. But funny none-the-less.

When I arrived at my house, I embarked on my final adventure of the day: I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. A few weeks ago, my anthropology teacher gave us the assignment which will be my doom. We were to read a book (a biography of epically boring proportions) and write a three page paper on it. Hmm… If you know me, you know that I didn’t get the book until two weeks later and I didn’t start reading it until…well…last night. The paper is due today. Was due. Um, yeah. I didn’t finish it. Grade? Down the toilet. Again. When will I ever learn?

Procrastination is the story of my life. Here’s a little taste: 12^th grade English class. Thanks to the new English program in our district, I was able to take both semesters of English in one semester. I thought that was just the bees’ knees, if you know what I mean. So I signed up for both classes my second semester and put them one right after the other with the same teacher. Can I just issue this warning? DON’T DO THIS. Worst decision of my life! The way my teacher had her classes structured, there was one big writing assignment at the beginning of the semester and if you didn’t do it, then you wouldn’t pass the class. What did I do? As you can imagine, my inner procrastinator took over and I didn’t do the papers for either class. That meant I was going to fail BOTH my English classes. Not my best moment. Seeing as this was senior year, without these classes I wouldn’t be graduating. The ironic part? One of the papers I didn’t do was a graduation speech. Funny, right? So I talked to my teacher and she said she’d be willing to work with me. She would give me a “pass” grade instead of a letter grade, so the classes would go on as electives. BUT I had to still do all of the work for her class and not miss a single assignment the rest of the year. This also meant that I had to do packets to make up the English credits. Long story short, if I ever see one of those packets again, I will probably have a mental breakdown and be institutionalized. Hate them with passion. Moral of the story: don’t procrastinate. Making it up is so much worse than just doing the assignment in the first place. So you’d think I learned my lesson right? Yep, sure did…not. Obviously.

So here it is. The first post in my blog. If you like it, that’s great! Recommend it to others. Or don’t. Whatever floats your boat. I’ll just promise you this. I’ll try to make it interesting (my life usually is semi-entertaining). As for now, I have to work on some homework. Ahead of time. It’s a miracle!

(-<) peace