If only I could breathe underwater...

I told Preston that I would let him write the next post, but he's going to wait until Sunday, and while I'm not going to report on anything he will expound upon, I feel like I have things worth writing. Or maybe just things that would feel better on here than inside.

Let's not make this a pity party. I'll start with some good news. Or great news. I FINALLY got a job! I say "finally" because I feel like I've been waiting forever, when really, it's only been about 2 months since Preston and I moved down here to Springville. After sending out about a million resumes, going to 5 interviews, and receiving 2 job offers... I found the one that fits. And I'm grateful. I get to answer phones, and wear professional type clothes 5 days a week. The pay isn't great, but I'm out of the house, an income is an income, and my life has started moving again. Or so I thought.

Maybe I should back up. Preston is in school. A good school. A school that I wanted to go to and was, I'm now comfortable saying, totally rejected from. Preston is learning new things, meeting new people, and making friends left and right. On top of that, he gets to teach at the greatest place in the world; the MTC. I realize for some that the MTC doesn't hold pleasant memories. That's a shame. The MTC was life-changing for me, and I will never forget the things I learned, felt, heard, and experienced while I was there. So yes, the memories for me of the MTC are good. The best. And my husband works there. I vicariously take part in his joys and sorrows for his missionaries as they learn the language, the Gospel, and the love that it takes to be a servant of the Lord. And I miss it. I dearly miss missionary work, my people, and the Philippines. Anyway, the point is, Preston is literally living the dream. And for the two months that I didn't have a job, I felt completely useless, at times hopeless, and often worthless.

For someone who has no degree, no skills to speak of, and no ridiculous talent for convincing people to buy things they don't need, finding a job that doesn't involve the words,"Can I take your order?" seems to be exceedingly difficult. Which means my self worth was being totally attacked. Mostly by myself.

Which means that instead of seeing these around town, I started feeling it on the inside:

It's wrong of me to put a price or achievements on my self worth. Shouldn't it just be there? And yet somehow, we all, without even realizing it, feel small, inadequate, and completely worthless. Especially in comparison to others. Which is one of my biggest faults. I like to compare my weaknesses to others' strengths. Which, logically, is completely unfair, but who doesn't do it? And it seems that ever since I've been home from my mission, it's been this constant battle to feel good about myself, because for the previous 18 months, I was practically flying. More happy than I've ever been in my life. I was in the service of the Lord, doing something I loved, and I was not ashamed.

How can you not have a blast with people like these????

So, what happened?

I came home and forgot what loving myself felt like. It wasn't until Preston came home that I started to remember. The people you love can do that for you. They can make you feel important and amazing. But it's not the constant high I felt on my mission. Let me get to the point.

Lately, I've been feeling small again. Where is my life even going?? I don't have a degree, don't have kids, don't even have a calling, so how can I feel worthwhile? I've compared myself to my friends who have graduated with masters degrees already and have a CAREER. I have friends with kids, friends with their own businesses, friends that are in shape, friends that seem to have so much more going on for them than I do.

Here's what I have to say about that: So what?

I've lived an amazing life. I've never done anything stupid that I have to regret for a million years. I've been to college, I've played sports, I've made friends, and I've loved the Church. I've sung my heart out, had it trampled on, and gotten back up. I've had goals and dreams, and I've seen my fair share totally fall apart. But I've seen more miracles than many people ever hope to see in their lifetime. I served the Lord with everything that I am for 18 incredible months, and was tried, challenged, and stretched until I believed I could handle no more. And then I was tried again. I found the man that everyone dreams about, and to my luck and astonishment, he loves me with a beautifully pure love. I get to be with him forever, and you know what? If that was all there was, I could be happy.

What I'm trying to say is, even the most mediocre life is full of the most extraordinary things. Find those things and pull them out on rainy days. Days when you say to yourself, "I really could use a little help," but know one knows? Yeah. Those are the days when you remind yourself how great you really are.

In conclusion, it's all about love. You can be loved by the most amazing people in the world, and that's good. It goes a long way. But until you learn to love yourself, you'll be stuck in the rut you've been trying to get out of your entire life long.

This whole tangent was brought on by one of my good friends, pouring her heart out to tell the world that she's human. I'm grateful for her.

Of Zombies, Prophets, Gluttony, and Rain Beasts

Preston and I just had a fantastically crazy fun weekend, which kind of spilled over into this week. And I am so excited to post about it! Let's start off with Friday night. Date night. For a few weeks now, Preston and I had been talking about going to a scary haunted place for date night, and we had been weighing our options. Utah is literally filled with these money-making screamfests and we had a lot to choose from. We also kept getting busy (or Preston did. I don't actually have busyness in my life right now. Tragic), and ended up waiting until the last Friday in September. Maybe we jumped the gun a little on the Halloween festivities, but when your husband's favorite holiday is Halloween, you can tell me how to make him wait to go to one of his favorite places. Anyway, I digress. We ended up choosing "Nightmare On Thirteenth" in Salt Lake City. It's supposed to be the scariest in the country. We were stoked. When we got there we both decided that we'd use the restrooms ahead of time (a wise decision I feel), and made good use of the most disgusting port-a-potties I'd ever experienced. That was scary enough! But when I came out, this hulking, 10 foot, creature-from-a-nightmare was waiting for me just outside the door. Yeah. You get your money's worth of scaring before ever even paying. I screamed and ran while Preston laughed. Don't worry. He gets his comeuppance.

We paid, got our wristbands, and got in line. The first thing you see in line is this guy.

He talks in a creepy voice with an accent, and in VERSE. He was rhymin all over the place! He moves, his wings expand, he is SCARY. And that's before you even get inside... We were getting super excited.

Once you get inside, they check your wristband and send you to certain doors. You're thinking the scaring is already beginning, but you're not even ready. Good thing they only send you to a picture booth to get some of these:

That guy was creepy. So then they send you into this theater room where you wait in line. But while you're waiting, Freddy Krueger comes out to show you this crazy girl in a psych ward trying to get out with an ax. We're talking amazing animatronics. I don't want to blow the whole thing in case people are planning on going, but suffice it to say, just while you're waiting in line you're going to scream. Finally, they send you through a door and you're in. And you thought haunted houses were for little kids. This is where Preston got his comeuppance. I made him go first. I wouldn't want to ruin his manly reputation by telling you he screamed like a girl and grabbed me every 3 seconds. I wouldn't do that. But I WILL tell you that there was this one part where we were walking holding on to each other. I was on Preston's left side, and some creature jumped out at us from the right. Preston jumped into me, smashing me into the wall, and leaving me with a small gash on my forehead. I was laughing so hard, I almost couldn't breathe. It went like that until we caught up with another group, and then Preston was able to hold it together a little more since he wasn't first in line. I still screamed at the top of my lungs. I won't tell you everything that was in there, but anything that you've ever had a nightmare about, seen in a movie, or heard stories of was in that place. And it was HUGE! We were walking around for a good 45 minutes! Once you get out, you're almost relieved it's over so you can stop screaming. At the end of the night, we took aspirin for our screaming headaches, and went to sleep.

All this was great preparation for the next day's General Conference. We woke up on time, got the computer set up (we don't have cable), and enjoyed a spiritual feast. One of the things that makes the Church so true is it's living prophet and apostles. This makes it a living church, and one that receives revelation. How blessed are we to live in the dispensation of the fulness of times when we get to receive counsel from the prophets who know what the Lord would have us hear?! The Church is true. 

After the morning session, my mother and father in law, Julie and Channing, arrived at our house. It was so awesome to have them here! They "oohed" and "ahhhed" over the house during the tour, and brought us our favorite candies! YES! Haha. We went to Deseret Book and the Distribution Center, and ogled over the things that we'll have "when we're rich." Julie and Channing took us out to lunch at this adorably delicious sandwich place called Kneaders. SOOOO GOOOD!!!! If you get a chance, go. We bought some awesome desserts there too, and took it all home to watch the afternoon session. We ate as we watched and thoroughly enjoyed stuffing ourselves (which was the theme of the weekend). Afterwards, we made Julie and Channing play MariKart Wii, and... let me tell you... there are few things in life that are more awesomely hilarious than watching "grownups" play videogames. Oh the entertainment! And the cool part was, they actually enjoyed themselves as well. :) The men left for the Priesthood session, and Julie and I went to Target to get picnic food for the next day's lunch. We laughed our way through shopping when we met her sister Janet at Target. Janet is a member of MoTab and gave us amazing tickets to the afternoon session of conference. She's also hilarious, and I couldn't get enough of her! We finished our shopping barely in time to rush home, get the boys, and make our reservations at..... TUCANOS!!!! My first time. Now you realize why "Gluttony" is part of the title of this post. That's exactly what happens at that restaurant. Pure gluttony. And it hurts so good afterward. When we walked in, it was hilarious to see all the white-shirted men who had clearly just come from the Priesthood session. Good tradition if you ask me. We ate until we couldn't move, and made it to the car. After skyping with my brother and sister in law, Jarod and Mariko (for their daughter Joi's birthday) in Japan, we called it a night and gratefully laid down to let our bodies adjust.

The next morning as we drove to SLC, we listened to the Sunday morning session of conference. We arrived around 11:30, and walked around Temple Square. It's so beautiful. The weather was perfect, and even the protesters with their ludicrous signs couldn't taint the joy we were feeling.

We ate our picnic lunch, and 1:00 rolled around. We went to our seats in the Conference Center for my first time EVER watching conference live. A million thank yous to Janet for mine and Preston's awesome seats. You can kinda see how good they were here:

Let's just say we saw the Prophet and Apostles and were in awe the whole time. Anyway, Conference ended, we headed home and said goodbye the the parentals. We had an awesome time with them here. As soon as they left, we went to bed, exhausted.

The next day, we made last-minute plans to go on our first camping trip after Preston got home from school. Our awesome friends, the Wells, had given us a tent and air mattress as wedding gifts and we were dying to try them out, and with the weather during the weekend supposed to be around 46, we decided not to wait. So we drove for about 20 minutes up the canyon from our house, and found the perfect spot. The woods are GORGEOUS right now with the leaves turning colors, and we couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather to set up camp. Our spot was right next to a creek and we were the only campers for a ways. It was perfect. As you can see:

Preston quickly set to work to make a sweet campfire and we roasted hot dogs for dinner. Aside from tin foil dinners, is there any better camp dinner than hot dogs???

That night, after the sun had gone down, and the fire was still going, we had Family Home Evening. Some people might wonder how that goes when our family consists of two people. I can tell you it's amazing and we learn so much from each other. We ALWAYS have a game to play, and ALWAYS have treats. That night it was smores, so it doesn't really get better than that. After Preston told a scary story, we hit the mattress and fell asleep. Well, Preston fell asleep. About 20 minutes after we stopped talking, I was hearing noises right outside our tent. It wasn't just the usual raccoon rustling noises either. No, it sounded like much heavier footfalls. And I had already seen a sign for bears, so I was on the alert. I woke Preston up, and told him what I was hearing. Since I was sleeping closer to the door, I could hear it easily, but he had trouble hearing it. I was literally shaking with fear from all the imagined monsters running through my mind. Preston opened the screen on the tent door to check and couldn't see anything. It was quiet after that for awhile. Then the rain came. In torrents, and with thunder and lightning, which would have been cool except that whatever beast was out there came around when it was raining. I was dying not sleeping. Preston seemed to just put it out of his mind and fall asleep, but every time I heard something, I was sure it was going to come charging into our tent at any moment. Finally, I just got mad and decided that I needed to see what it was so I could get some peace of mind and fall asleep too. I put my glasses on, and right as I popped up to look out the screen, something brushed against the tent! I instantly lost my nerve and fell back into bed, shaking. And that was how I spend the night. The next morning, the rain had thankfully stopped, and we quickly took down our camp so Preston could make it to school on time. We looked around for signs of the "Rain Beast" and found scratchings in the ground. We may never know what it was. Preston didn't tell me this until he got home, but he had actually seen the tent move during the night when whatever it was brushed against it so hard that the poles bent a little. Good thing he didn't tell me at the time. I was glad I didn't have to go to school and got some great nap time in before Preston got home. All in all, it was a great first camping trip, and probably the only one of this year. We had a blast and are excited to be able to go more next summer!!!