Spokane with the Fam

I went to Spokane with the fam this weekend. My cute little sister had a volleyball tournament so we went to support her. Let me just brag about her for a second. My little (big) sis is 5' 11". She is 15 and she made the 18 year old Weber State University Club Team this year. She is amazing! She does all of this while keeping a smile on her face and making everyone around her so happy. I look up to my little sister so much! (literally) I was happy I was able to see her play all weekend.

Spokane was smaller than I expected it to be but it was gorgeous! Here is a picture of my dad and I standing in front of the Spokane Falls. There were tons of little falls! You could hike all over the place to look at The Falls from different angles all while getting a nice cold mist of water all over everything. My favorite was at night time when the falls were all lit up. 

Above is a video of my sis playing some volleyball. She is the outside hitter, number 10. The tournament was all weekend and girls from all over the nation came to play. I thought it was so funny how all the girls were snapchatting and tweeting at each other the whole time. You could be updated on the outcomes of the tournament instantaneously just by looking at Twitter. Honestly, twitter is confusing to me. My roommates have tried to help me get one and figure it out but I failed miserably. Anyone out there have a foolproof, Twitter for Dummies guide? 

The lingo for social media apps is so amusing to me. What is acceptable and what is not? For instance, if you get a general Snapchat from someone are you expected to Snapchat back? Obviously when you get a text message it is courteous to text that person back, but do the same rules apply to Snapchat? What about flirting over social media? I feel like a whole post could be written just on that! Then there is Instagram, if someone comments on your picture are you supposed to comment back to everyone separately? How many days after a picture was posted can you like it and still not be considered a creeper? Who even knows. Also, don't even get me started about hashtags!.... It took me forever to understand those silly things! Oh social media, the lingo and so called "rules" are so funny sometimes! I will probably never figure it out!  

Nobody's Perfect

Does anyone remember the good 'ol days of Hannah Montana? I may or may not have been addicted to this show. I even had Hannah Montana school supplies when I was in high school. (Just a notebook and pen guys, calm down) Everyone knew that Sami loved Hannah Montana! For a school talent show, my friend and I decided to do the Nobody's Perfect dance. It was my favorite song. We never ended up actually performing the dance in front of the school (thank goodness) but we did throw together a quick YouTube video as we were practicing one day. 

I have been thinking a lot lately. For some reason perfection, or lack thereof, has been brought up over and over again in my life recently. Through family, friends, and dating, I have realized that everyone has a story and everyone has gone through something. It is important to remember that no matter how perfect someones life seems, they actually could be the ones that need help the most. Every time this is brought up my mind goes straight to my favorite Hannah Montana jam. Nobody's Perfect. It seems silly, but this song has helped me through the hard times and helped me to have realistic perspectives. I encourage everyone to try and remember to keep an eternal perspective. We are all children of God and we are all doing our best with what we are given. Don't be so hard on others but most importantly don't be so hard on yourself. Perfection is unrealistic. Because... Nobody's Perfect! I will just let Hannah do the talking, or should I say singing? 

Isn't she great? I know. Love her. 

I found this quote from Elder Uchtdorf and I just fell in love. He is always so great at putting all the million thoughts running around in my head into one eloquent paragraph. 

God is fully aware that you are I are not perfect. Let me add, God is also fully aware that the people you think are perfect are not. And yet, we spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others- usually comparing our weaknesses to their strengths. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does. 

–Dieter F Uchtdorf

So once again, lets all remember that.... NOBODY'S PERFECT!! 

I Don't Know About You, But I'm Feeling 22

Taylor Swift was my jam last weekend. I turned 22 this past Saturday, March 21st. It was seriously such a fabulous day! I am so blessed to have so many awesome friends! My roommates, family, and friends, really went above and beyond to make my day special.

               

First things first, I had a flag football game. I played the best I have ever played! I even got an interception. (Which calls for a selfie) It was a beautiful, sunny day and it was lots of fun to start out my birthday with some good ol' competitive flag football. 

After football, my roomies and I went to go get a pedicure! Ashleigh and Erin (my roomies) seriously were with me ALL DAY! They are the best! We had a relaxing pedicure and then we went to go get smoothies because that is my favorite food :) 

Later that night, I went to meet all of my friends at Red Robin for a birthday dinner. I was so surprised with how many people came to celebrate my birthday with me! After our tummies were all full with bottomless french fries, we went to the new Insurgent movie. Then some of us went to celebrate the final hours of my birthday at Swig after the movie. Swig put on T-Swift for me and once again, (the 50 billionth time that day) we jammed to 22! Such a great day with so many wonderful friends! I am so blessed! 

I love how the new thing to do on birthdays is for friends to post pictures of you on social media, most the time they are ugly pictures. My sister is WAY too good at this. She posted this beaut yesterday. 

Thanks Syd.... Happy birthday to me.... Kidding. She is wonderful! My birthday = Success!! xo

Silly Sunday

Silly Sunday! Here is a little silly and a little spiritual to get you through the rest of the week. This video is priceless. I am so grateful to have prophets on the earth today! They are all such great examples and are inspired by God. I am looking forward to hearing from them at General Conference next month. It is my favorite!! :) I hope everyone has a fabulous week! (Maybe even eat some Resee's because they are yummy and the big Easter egg ones are out right now and they have the best peanut butter to chocolate ratio haha!) 

5-year-old Presidential Expert

This video made my day a little brighter, I hope it does the same to you! :)

Isn’t this little girl just the cutest? I think I need to learn a few more facts about history and the presidents... I mean, she is 5 people! Amazing!

Here is a link so that everyone can "get to know" President Obama a little better. He is just like everyone else! Except.... he is the president.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewgauthier/the-president-uses-a-selfie-stick?utm_term=.ejDyeXOkx&sub=3628089_4962236#.lqQZdeOp0

Picking Up Guys At Institute

I went to Institute last night with my friends, Kristin and Hali. It was a great combination of spiritual and social… AND there was food :) We have previously been driving up to UVU’s institute but we decided to try out the one in Provo at the MSB instead. We were surprised by how many people showed up! There were 4-5 classes that were all very full and afterwards everyone met up to socialize and eat food. What could be better than cute boys, food, the spirit, boys, friends, learning about the Book of Mormon, and CUTE boys!? I know. I sound boy crazy but I really am not. I am just a single girl at BYU trying to get married, just like every other single girl at BYU who is nearing graduation hah!

Anyway… After the spiritual lesson, Kristin, Hali and I were huddling together eating our bagels and scoping out all the cute guys in the room. We started watching all the other girls around us talking to cute guys and we kept wondering how we could talk to the cute guys too! Girls are so forward and we are all scardy cats! Then, Spotted. Across the room there was a group of extremely attractive guys and we all kept making awkward eye contact. We clearly wanted to talk to them and they clearly wanted to talk to us! We stayed there huddled talking about what we should do. We are so silly! We looked like we were huddled together having a serious meeting or something! None of the boys are going to talk to us if we look like that! We decided to do a walk by and hopefully say hi and start talking. Nothing happened. Hah we are ridiculous. We were all so mad in the car driving home, so many girls are so forward and we just aren’t good at it! Girls who aren’t forward don’t thrive in the Provo dating world.  We tried to come up with a plan so that we could approach cute guys. We needed to figure out how we can talk to the cute guys next week! We decided we need to look more approachable in the big group settings and we need to just smile, be brave, and say hi. Who doesn’t like a smile and happy greeting? That’s not weird! Right?... I dropped my friends off after having a big conversation about being brave and dating and I headed to Smith’s to go grocery shopping. Lo and behold, one of the cute guys was there from Institute! Ahhh! Time to practice what we just talked about! So what do I do? Well just like any normal human being would do, I follow him around discretely of course. For like.. 15 minutes... Duh. I finally got brave and I was going to walk past him and make eye contact and smile and say hi and….. he stared down at his phone and wouldn’t even look up. Epic fail. I was so mad. Needless to say, our socialization at institute ended up being a flop haha. There is always next week I guess!

On the bright side, we had an awesome lesson and spiritual thought that night! We talked about agency and grace. Our institute teacher shared this video and I thought it was so touching! I am so grateful that I was born in a family in the church. It is so easy to forget how bad some people have it out there. This world is a scary place. The gospel extremely blesses my life and I am grateful for it each and every day! Watch and enjoy :)

Teaching Children About Intimacy

In my Media, Family and Human Development class today we talked about sex and the media. The topic of pornography was addressed. What exactly is pornography? It is something that it is hard to define because it is so arbitrary. We talked about an alarming study that was done at BYU about pornography where they found that 35% of BYU students had viewed porn in the last month. That shocking number is actually much higher because this study was based on self-report results. They found that LDS people view porn less than the overall population, but when they do, they are much more addicted to it. It is also is found that in our church, the actual act of having sex outside of marriage is viewed as less of a problem or sin than porn. This view seems skewed to me. So what are we to do about this?

Porn is a serious problem. I want to emphasize the fact that I do not agree with anyone viewing porn and I do not support it in any way. I do, on the other hand, think that we need to find a way to emphasize the importance of this sin while not making people feel worthless and embarrassed. Porn is a real addiction that is easy to get sucked into. The best thing we can do is to reach out to the people that are struggling. Gordon B. Hinckley said this about addictions, “Plead with the Lord out of the depths of your soul that He will remove from you the addiction which enslaves you. And may you have the courage to seek the loving guidance of your bishop and, if necessary, the counsel of caring professionals” (Liahona and Ensign, Nov. 2004, 62). Just remember, there is a way back from pornography addictions!

God gave us sex as a gift. It needs to be taught as a sacred beautiful thing that husbands and wives share. It needs to stop being addressed as such an evil, bad thing. It needs to be talked about, and it especially needs to be talked about to the children.

My awesome professor, Dr. Sarah Coyne, taught an elementary school about internet safety. She used the CAN DO acronym to help teach these kids what they should do when they are faced with pornography.

C- close my eyes

A- alert a trusted adult

N- name it when I see it

D- distract myself

O- order my thinking brain to be the boss (not the feeling brain)

The only problem about this is that she wasn’t actually allowed to explain what pornography is. How are these children going to be aware when they are faced with pornography if they don’t even know what pornography is? The scary thing is that most kids these days are exposed to pornography between the ages of 8-11. In these days it is not a matter of if they are exposed, it is a matter of when. I think it is important to create an environment, whether at home, church, or in school, where sex and pornography can be talked about freely without being embarrassed.

http://overcomingpornography.org/spouses-and-families/articles/creating-a-safe-place-to-talk-about-dangerous-things?lang=eng

The LDS church is trying to tackle the problem of porn and the problem of teaching children about porn and sexual intimacy. BYU professors met with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles recently to try and explore different options. Below is an article that LDS.org recently came out with. It is filled with helpful ways to teach children about pornography and intimacy. Knowledge is power. It is better to be aware of what is out there and know how to avoid it than to shelter yourself, and others, from the problems of the world.

https://www.lds.org/church/news/new-fhe-lessons-help-teach-children-about-pornography?lang=eng&query=intimacy