Well I think I'm pretty much done with blogging. I just read this talk again the other day and thought that it talks about a lot of important things. And that's about it! You will just have to call me to tell me what's up now, (since we all wrote on here so much) :)

Finding Joy in the Journey

President Thomas S. Monson

My dear brothers and sisters, I am humbled as I stand before you this morning. I ask for your faith and prayers in my behalf as I speak about those things which have been on my mind and which I have felt impressed to share with you.

I begin by mentioning one of the most inevitable aspects of our lives here upon the earth, and that is change. At one time or another we’ve all heard some form of the familiar adage: “Nothing is as constant as change.”

Throughout our lives, we must deal with change. Some changes are welcome; some are not. There are changes in our lives which are sudden, such as the unexpected passing of a loved one, an unforeseen illness, the loss of a possession we treasure. But most of the changes take place subtly and slowly.

This conference marks 45 years since I was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. As the junior member of the Twelve then, I looked up to 14 exceptional men, who were senior to me in the Twelve and the First Presidency. One by one, each of these men has returned home. When President Hinckley passed away eight months ago, I realized that I had become the senior Apostle. The changes over a period of 45 years that were incremental now seem monumental.

This coming week Sister Monson and I will celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary. As I look back to our beginnings, I realize just how much our lives have changed since then. Our beloved parents, who stood beside us as we commenced our journey together, have passed on. Our three children, who filled our lives so completely for many years, are grown and have families of their own. Most of our grandchildren are grown, and we now have four great-grandchildren.

Day by day, minute by minute, second by second we went from where we were to where we are now. The lives of all of us, of course, go through similar alterations and changes. The difference between the changes in my life and the changes in yours is only in the details. Time never stands still; it must steadily march on, and with the marching come the changes.

This is our one and only chance at mortal life—here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find joy in the journey—now.

I am what my wife, Frances, calls a “show-a-holic.” I thoroughly enjoy many musicals, and one of my favorites was written by the American composer Meredith Willson and is entitled The Music Man.Professor Harold Hill, one of the principal characters in the show, voices a caution that I share with you. Says he, “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you’ve collected a lot of empty yesterdays.”1

My brothers and sisters, there is no tomorrow to remember if we don’t do something today.

If you have children who are grown and gone, in all likelihood you have occasionally felt pangs of loss and the recognition that you didn’t appreciate that time of life as much as you should have. Of course, there is no going back, but only forward. Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future.

If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will—to your surprise—miss them profoundly.

Stresses in our lives come regardless of our circumstances. We must deal with them the best we can. But we should not let them get in the way of what is most important—and what is most important almost always involves the people around us. Often we assume that they must know how much we love them. But we should never assume; we should let them know. Wrote William Shakespeare, “They do not love that do not show their love.”3 We will never regret the kind words spoken or the affection shown. Rather, our regrets will come if such things are omitted from our relationships with those who mean the most to us.

Send that note to the friend you’ve been neglecting; give your child a hug; give your parents a hug; say “I love you” more; always express your thanks. Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved. Friends move away, children grow up, loved ones pass on. It’s so easy to take others for granted, until that day when they’re gone from our lives and we are left with feelings of “what if” and “if only.” Said author Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”4

Let us relish life as we live it, find joy in the journey, and share our love with friends and family. One day each of us will run out of tomorrows.

Our realization of what is most important in life goes hand in hand with gratitude for our blessings.

Despite the changes which come into our lives and with gratitude in our hearts, may we fill our days—as much as we can—with those things which matter most. May we cherish those we hold dear and express our love to them in word and in deed.

Let us follow Him. Let us emulate His example. Let us obey His word. By so doing, we give to Him the divine gift of gratitude.

Brothers and sisters, my sincere prayer is that we may adapt to the changes in our lives, that we may realize what is most important, that we may express our gratitude always and thus find joy in the journey. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Off the Hook!

I guess since you guys apparently still want to read this I'll be more descriptive, haha. Last weekend was one of the most icy weekends of the entire summer. If not THE best. Friday night we went to the dollar movie theater and the malt shoppe. Then...dance party!! We do that frequently. Generally we make music videos, and they are pretty awesome. Saturday, Brittany and I went to the pool again because we are determined not to be less tan after the summer than we were before the summer. Say what you want, I don't like being a ghost. Got home and packed up to go on another monstrous bike ride to Target because she wanted me to highlight her hair. I ended up finding about 70 bucks worth of stuff that I wanted as well while we were there....that's what happens at Target. We got rained on coming home and since Brittany is a GENIUS she decided to go to the gym! So we're walking home from the gym sharing an ipod and headphones gigging out to some song like 2 Step Remix. And suddenly we hear one of our favorite dance party songs from off in the distance. Actually, we thought it was coming from inside the library. After going on that long of a bike ride and to the gym and getting caught in the rain I'm sure we were looking pretty rough. There was a very small stake dance taking place in Brigham Square. But we decided we would leave after the first bad song. An hour later, the electric slide came on and we peaced out, haha. Probably one of the best DJs ever. We met these two guys there, Travis and Sean, and they ended up asking us on a double date which I'll talk about later. So we left and ran through the sprinklers and I thought I had accidentally dyed her hair blonde, but it ended up being all good.

Monday we went to a nursing home for Family Home Evening. Last night we went on our double date....I guess I will tell you about it. First off, it was much better than other two, which I guess I didn't say anything about. Basically, I've been on two other dates and one of them is just a friend and the other one was very odd. But we figured they were at least RM's since they were living off campus, ya they ended up being 23 and 24. Not really a big deal I guess. But anyways, we went on like a three hour bike ride and it was an AWESOME trail they took us on. Led to Utah Lake and rode alongside a stream the whole time. And....we were supposed to go play Ultimate Frisbee with them afterwards but we didn't really have time. Like I said, Brittany is crazy and went to the gym again last night right after our bike ride. Yes, I could choose not to go with her, haha. But I told myself and her that I was going to go every time she did and I'm keeping my word. Then we came home and hung out with Andrew. And that's about it. Good morning. And in case I don't see you, good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night. Anyone know what that's from?

Road trip!

Every time I come back to Utah I remember how much I love it...even though I make fun of it all the time. Love the mountains, love seeing my family, love driving, love the people, love the weather...

Driving here was quite the adventure. It was my first real road trip where I did part/ most of the driving. I drove about 12 out of 19 hours. Today we drove for about 5 hours. We were on the phone with my uncle about to drive through some tiny southern Utah town and I was driving. I tend to have a "lead foot" while driving. My mom and I were discussing this in the car because she was getting mad at me for driving like my dad. She said I am a true Italian, stubborn and impatient. So anyway, I was driving about 85 as we were coming into this little town and my uncle was joking about how I needed to slow down for the cops whether they were real or not. Sure enough, we saw three patrol cars going through. What was funny though is when we drove out of the town there was a cop car sitting right on the sidewalk and you had to look closely to see that it was a dummy in the front seat who's head was leaned back over the headrest. Hahaha...

But now I'm at my grandparents house for a few days. Pretty much all they like to do is watch the news so I'll be glad to get to my cousins house. They came by for awhile today...my cousins are awesome. Especially the Utah ones. I'm going to meet two on my roommates either tomorrow or Thursday...I'm pretty excited! I'm so glad to be out of Texas. Now that I'm gone I realize how much better I like it pretty much everywhere else. It's just too...uppity. There its more about the cars and shopping and partying. Most other places its more about friends and family and having fun. I just sounded like one of those "this message is brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" commercials. Utah must be getting to me already.

I have a few favorite things to add to previous lists I've made. Steve Martin has to be added to my favorite actors list. And Serendipity is the cutest movie ever, and should have been on my favorite movie list because I saw it when I was probably 8 for the first time. And Pay It Forward is also a favorite.

I have a few things to say about living in Texas. It was a lot different living here than anywhere else... the main thing I've noticed recently is that I'm much closer to my family that I ever used to be. Probably because of the fact that I had many fewer friends, but oh well! I wasn't really interested in making tons of friends here from the beginning, I knew I would be leaving again soon and didn't want it to be as hard for me to leave here as it was for me to leave Iowa. Not to say that I don't have some awesome friends here, I do. But I'll see them enough that it won't be a terrible thing to leave and I can't wait!

Piano Portraits

Yep, I'm still alive Jessica. Here's just some random stuff from graduation week and when my family was all here. Carroll Class of '08. Windy as heck! My cap fell off, apparently I was one of many, typical, though.
My grandparents took me to get my graduation present which was a keyboard to bring to school...and I LOVE it.

Then I took my cousin Kelly out shopping for a few hours and came home to leave for the Rangers game last night.

Just For Laughs

We had one of our few family traditions today. We have three that I know of...I'm sure we do other non-typical things, but I probably don't realize that other people don't do them. The one we had today was celebrating my uncle's birthday. He died when I was five or six, and he was 32 I think. But every year on his birthday since then we get helium balloons that are dark green, his favorite color, and let them go. (In the sky) And eat his favorite kind of cake.

Ok and funniest show ever. Watch this clip...it's worth the 5 minutes long it is. It's called Just For Laughs and I don't even know if it plays anymore but I remember seeing it sometime last year and someone was talking about it the other day so I looked it up and remembered how incredibly hilarious it is.


And last thing for today....the Twilight trailer!! If you don't know what Twilight is, well sucks. I'm definitely going to the midnight showing. That reminds me! The Dark Knight midnight showing Thursday night! It's becoming a tradition for me to go to a midnight showing of a movie the night before the last day of seminary. Ok here it is...get ready....

May Days

So my friend Charlotte, in the picture, and I have very similar tastes in music and about a month ago we were out for dinner talking about music and she told me about this concert that we went to last night that was AMAZING. And since I know a lot of you like band recommendations...a couple of the good bands there were Young and Divine, Scenes and Sirens, The Secret Handshake, and Forever the Sickest Kids. It was SO much fun.

I was planning on taking about a million pictures and then left without my camera. So we went back to get it because no one else brought one and then it died after we took two pictures. We went with her brother and his girlfriend and my friend Julie. I guess they are planning a surprise birthday party for his girlfriend that Scenes and Sirens is playing at!

Guess what else I did this weekend? Cleaned out my entire room so I won't have to worry about it right before I leave. I found SO many old pictures, I kept getting distracted looking at old stuff. The best thing I found was my compatibility tests that Valley used to always do around Valentine's Day. Andrew Schultz is my least compatible match, how appropriate. Almost all of the girls that were in my most compatible friends list were my friends, Jenny Richmond and Stephanie Hiller...it was a fun thing to find. Jake was on one of my most compatible lists, too, haha. But this was one of the funny pictures I found.

Pura Vida

OK so...if you thought I had skipped posting the last few days, you were wrong. I've been working on this one for awhile. About two weeks ago I had to do a mini presentation about my trip to Costa Rica for something at church, and it was brought to my attention that the only record I have of the trip was our trip schedule and about 100 pictures. And decided I should probably do that before I forget...and I can type about a million times faster than I can write. So here we go. Oh I almost forgot the major MAJOR notice that I have to put before this.

NOTICE: This whole entire post is 99.5% for me so I have it in 50 years and .5% for those of you who might (but probably won't) read the whole thing or decide to go on an AYS trip. Plus I haven't had anything remotely worthwhile to write about.

(ays.org)

So AYS is a church program based in Salt Lake run by this really cool guy named Mike Riding that gets to travel around the world with teenagers for a job. Awesome. Anyway, they go to about 6 locations around the world. Each group goes to the selected place for two weeks with a group of 25 kids from ages 16-20. My mom heard about the program and signed my dad and I up for it, my dad was going to go as a chaperone. Oh ya, there were 6 adult chaperones. Three from the US, three from Costa Rica that we met when we got there. Actually, one was our mini-bus driver. All three of them were named Mauricio, it was a really popular name.

On July 6 of last summer we all flew to Houston to get on a flight to San Jose. Turned out that there were 19 girls and 4 boys in our group. I had talked to a lot of them emailing, too, before I met them, so that was fun. It was about a two hour flight, we landed in San Jose, went through customs, and went to the minibus. Which was the coolest thing ever.

Its horn sounded like a theme song from Twilight Zone.- We spent about 30 hours on it, total. It had just enough seats for everyone, so all of our luggage had to go on the roof. One of the first things we learned upon getting there was that you couldn't flush toilet paper, you had to throw it in the trashcan. We were also very much the minority, it's not one of those Spanish countries where they are really just as many white people as Latino. Nope, almost everyone spoke only Spanish. I have to say, after coming home I was pretty fluent in Spanish after the whole experience there and my four years of high school Spanish.

One of the four guys ended up being a kid that was in my EFY group first year with Herb! Which was random. The roads there were a little creepy. We took a two hour bus ride to our orientation camp on the coast. There was a tree blocking the road on the way there which had also cut off the power to the orientation camp, which was already just cabins. I believe we had a candlelit spaghetti dinner that night and went to bed early after a long day of traveling, trying to do everything by flashlight. (They had to ease us in to the Costa Rican cuisine...)

The next day we had our first experiences with the showers. Since it is a hot country, they don't have hot water. Ever. Except in the temple, haha. That day was Saturday and pretty much all day we learned about the culture and about each other. We had a few miniature Spanish lessons for the people who didn't know it. And then we went exploring around the camp and tried a bunch of fruits that were growing on the trees there. Then we played Ultimate Frisbee, went swimming, played soccer...which was THE Costa rican sport. They were crazy about it. Then we had a salsa dancing class...which was sooo fun! We had frequent dance parties, our three Mauricio's all loved to dance.

The next day we went to church after having our first authentic Costa Rican meal of rice, beans, and eggs. There were two classrooms and the chapel, and we made the congregation about 3 times bigger. The American missionaries translated most of the meeting for us, everyone stayed in the same room the whole time because there weren't enough people to break into separate classes. After church, we had planned on driving back to San Jose to go to a stake fireside there, but it was raining to hard for us to leave on time so we ended up staying at the camp for another couple of hours. At that point, we hadn't really been exposed to the country at all other than our tour guides, we had only been to the camp where it was only our group. So, that night when we went to a shopping mall for dinner, it was quite interesting. Obviously, none of the fast food restaurant workers spoke English. Luckily, I was one of about 5 of the kids that new Spanish pretty well and could basically get the point across. But it is a lot different actually doing it than learning about it in school. It was also our first time using the Costa Rican money, colones. 517 colones was equal to about a dollar. After dinner, we drove to the hostel. Most people know what those are, for those of you that don't, it's a hotel for youth groups. The rooms have about 10 bunk beds in them, usually everyone shares one or two bathrooms. The middle of them is open to the outside, and they usually aren't very nice. But it was better than a lot of the houses we saw when we were there, and we loved it by the time we left. The next day, Monday, we started our service projects. We drove over to the elementary school which was in one of the poorest parts of the country, surrounded by barbed wire fencing. We were told about our four projects...build a wall, plant a garden, pave the playground so the kids didn't get all muddy, and dig a ditch so the playgrounds didn't flood. We didn't start that day because of rain...and instead went to the Costa Rican Walmart and explored all of the stuff they had there. That night we got into groups of four and went with 7 or so different families in the San Jose stake to their houses for Family Home Evening. The family whose house I went to was a bishop's family, who had three boys. After that we successfully taught the bus driver Mauricio how to play Egyptian. All in Spanish. On Tuesday we started our projects. I was in the group digging for and breaking apart cement blocks to lay on the playground before we paved it. We worked for about 4 hours shoveling and spreading and hammering...my biggest job was using the jack hammer to break up the big cement blocks. Which was fun, haha. Oh I forgot to mention that it was like spring break there the week we worked at the school, so none of the kids were there but they all came to see what we were doing. One of them came with his dad and wanted to take me and my friend and one of our chaperones back to see their house. So we went with them, accidentally forgetting to tell anyone else where we were going. We figured we wouldn't be gone for long and that it wouldn't be very far away, but it was. About 20 minutes later, we saw my dad and Mike running down the street...they weren't too happy.

The next day we started working on the garden and building the wall. I don't remember what the wall was for, I was never part of the group who worked on that. But for the garden we had to clear the land for it and then we paved the little pathways and went to pick out all of the rocks and plants for it. That same group that was working on the garden also helped with the ditch...we got a little sidetracked and made some mud snowmen to leave for the kids. And got extremely muddy in the process. After working all day, we went souvenir shopping. I don't really remember what I got, a soccer jersey, t-shirt, bag...my dad is the one that got a ton of stuff. A couple of the guys in the group decided it would be a good idea to get hunting knives. One of them told us later that while he was buying the knife he was looking around at some of the other stuff at the shop and kept asking the guy what things were for. Of course almost everything he asked about had something to do with grinding or growing marijuana.

It was interesting getting ready in the mornings. My room had 11 girls in it, with two showers and two bathrooms. A couple of times people forgot that you couldn't flush toilet paper. We found out that there really is a reason for that. We had rotations all set up for showers....the person at the end of the mornings rotation got ice cold water in their shower. Luckily no one really bothered getting ready other than having a shower. Unless we were going sightseeing or out to eat. On Thursday we kept working on the garden until about noon when we left to go to the temple. It was pretty cool that we got to go there, I must say. And on Friday we finished all of our projects, which I will put up pictures of later. We also spent a good part of that last day at the school picking up garbage bag fulls and garbage bag fulls of trash. So we were done with the school. That night we went sightseeing in San Jose. The first place we went was the national theater. Well, kind of. We got kicked out after about five minutes of the tour for using flash photography. Then we went to one of the big Catholic cathedrals where a wedding was going on, which was weird in the first place. Then some of the stranger people in my group started taking pictures, so we got kicked out of there, too. My question is, why would you want pictures of a stranger's wedding anyway? Plus, if I was getting married and a bunch of kids from a different country wandered in taking pictures like tourists...at my wedding... I would be pretty ticked off. That night we had our big soccer tournament. Like I said, it was huge there. We got some local kids to come play with us and they were not only crazily good at it they were so into every little detail about the game. It was pretty crazy to watch. The next day, Saturday, we did some more sightseeing. The first place we went was the volcano. Which was a little different that the volcanoes we went to in Hawaii. It was basically an ashy wasteland with a lake of acid green water and fog.We saw some more churches, Mauricio pointed out lots of stuff to us as we were driving. We saw monkeys that day, too!! Just off by the side of the road. That night we were having a "surprise dinner." Up in the mountains. So we all actually got ready for the first time since being there. We all loaded up on the minibus and drove for a while and eventually some of us realized that we were driving at about an 80 degree angle up a mountain. Not kidding. So we were all looking out the window down at the city, a little creeped out because, well, obviously. And then the bus stopped going. We had only been going about 10 mph anyway since it was such a steep hill and such a heavy bus, but it stopped going. For a second I thought the bus was going to roll backwards, but it had just broken down, so we all got out and walked the rest of the way up the mountain to the restaurant! So we got there, and it was actually a really nice place, which I don't think there were many of in that country. It was outside looking over the city and they had a private room all set up for us with little cups with punch sitting in front of our places. So we all sat down and started drinking our punch waiting for the bus driver to make it up with the bus. So we are all sitting there drinking out punch until someone found out that the drink was alcoholic. Ahahaha...that was priceless.

So we had a really good dinner. Well, really good compared to the black beans and wild rice we had been having almost all week. And fried papayas. After dinner, we found out what the "surprise" of the dinner was. Since we had been learning salsa and meringue, they had some Latino dancers come perform for us. My dad got pulled out of the crowd to dance with them, also pretty funny. Sunday, the next day, we went to church again, at a different building. Since it was in the city and not the country it was a little bit nicer/ bigger than the first one and they actually had separate classes. After church we all got packed up for our six hour bus ride up into the mountains to the town we would be staying in for the next week. For the first hour or so, everyone was able to sleep, and did. After that, the road was so bumpy it was impossible to even stay in the seat sometimes. Again, we were driving up the edges of these mountains where you could look off one edge and see that our tires were inches away from a dropoff with no guardrail. We had a good bus driver. We got some really good landscape pictures on that drive though and saw some more wildlife. We finally got to the town after it had gotten dark. Earlier in the week at the school, the leaders had paired us into groups of two or three who would each be staying with a separate host family in the town, Canitas de Monteverde. So when we got there, we were all paired with our partners. So we met our family. There were two girls, Ruth and Nazareth who were 12 and 14 I think. And one boy, Christian, who was 17. The dad drove us around on his little motocycle. He worked at a dairy farm that was owned by a couple other people in the house. They had chickens and cows and cats and a dog. The mom made and sold jewelry. A lot of the people in the town were related, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. There were only about 10 houses and they were all within a ten minute walk of the town center where the community place was. So that is where our group would meet up. The mom would always show me how she did things...she had me handwash some of my clothes (they didn't have a washer and dryer) and cook some of the food. That is one reason I was kind of worried about rooming with someone I didn't know...my only experiences with that have been in Costa Rica and my second year of EFY and neither turned out too well. Luckily, I already know my roommate at BYU is awesome, so I'm not worried about it anymore.

The next day was Monday. Ziplining day. The roosters next door woke us up at about 5:30. We were suprised to wake up and find that everyone in the house was already gone to school and work by the time we came out of our room at about 5:45. School started at about 6 for the kids. So we had the breakfast she had made, she was an AMAZING cook. Luckily. Other than I discovered that I'm not much a fan of papaya. After breakfast we walked down to the community center to meet our group to go ziplining. It was pretty interesting to hear about everyone's different experiences overnight. Everyone's dog had followed them down from their houses, too, there were about 15 of them waiting with us for the bus. Including puppies!! One of the dogs had had them the day before we got there and they were adorable. Any free time we had we were playing frisbee or playing with the puppies. I swear, when I'm older I'm going to have a hundred dogs. They are my favorite animal by a landslide.

Anyway, we got to the zipline course. Got on our helmets and everything and went to the first one. Which everyone thought was pretty big. I mean this is up in the jungle, and even on the baby ones you went pretty fast and they were pretty long so there were some people that were really nervous to see what the non-baby ziplines looked like. But before we got to those we did a "rapelling" course. Which was really just that they hooked you in and then dropped you about 40 feet straight down without telling you what they were going to do. It was pretty fun. And after that we went to the tarzan jump, which was even more fun. I love stuff like that. It was like the giant swing at OYA, kind of, for those of you that have been to OYA. For those of you who haven't been there. I'll explain it to you. So we hiking over to it and when we got there it just looked like a 150-200 foot tall electric tower. With steps leading up to the top. And they hooked you into this big cord that stretched out over the valley and pushed you off the top and you swung out over the valley and back to the tower. And when you slowed down two of the employees would come over with this gigantic pillow thing and catch you with it. It was awesome. After that we went to the real ziplines that were...no exaggeration...about 500 feet off the ground. And it wasn't as if we were in the woods so we couldn't see how high we were...it was like...going over a valley in between two mountains. On a thin wire. It was also really cool, as long as you didn't think about the fact that if your wire somehow snapped or anything of the sort you would be a pancake on the jungle floor however many hundred feet below you. After that exciting experience, we went to the nearest semi-big town. Which was still really small. But compared to the town we were staying in with our host families, it was big. We got back to Canitas de Monteverde and had our first chance to walk around the town and see where everyone had been staying. All the little kids were home from school and came to play with us. One of the families that another group was staying with had an entire farm with pigs, horses, goats, etc that they showed some of us. A couple of the little school kids showed us their climbing tree which we spent a lot of that afternoon climbing. That night we went to a bar and did karaoke.The next day was Tuesday. They warned us from the very beginning that we would probably be doing harder work than we had ever done in our lives. It hadn't been too hard up until that point for most people...but that whole day was just...exhausting. We got up really early and left to go to the Santa Elena Reservation about half an hour away, still up in the mountains. We got there and some of the state troopers on duty at the reservation told us what we would be doing. There was a big pile of water resistant gravel in the parking lot. We were going to get about 20 pounds of it scooped into a canvas bag that we would carry on our shoulders about a mile down the paths in the park to pave the path. The part we were doing was seriously in the middle of the jungle. The kind of jungle you imagine when someone says jungle with moss and swinging vines and huge trees and logs and streams and tropical birds and waterfalls. For the first hour of the day, we carried the bags of gravel back and forth paving the paths. They had been mud, and since it rained a lot up there, people didn't really like hiking on muddy paths. So that was the point of the project. It was a super long day. I'm pretty sure we all went to bed around 6. Early, compared to when we usually, went to bed, about 1.The next day we were back in the town for our service project. We painted the fence around the community center and then went to their soccer stadium to paint the inside of it. There were three buildings in the town other than the houses. The community center, the soccer stadium, and the elementary school. Noone really drove cars because they could walk anywhere they needed to go. Not even everyone had cars, but I'm pretty sure everyone had a moped/ Vespa/ motorcycle. While we were painting the soccer stadium, a girl in the group fell and had to go the emergency room. I didn't really talk to her about it, or don't remember, but I'm sure that was interesting going to the E.R. in a foreign country.

And after that fiasco, my host dad brought his motorcycle down and let us all take rides on it. I love riding on motorcycles! Anyway. Then we played a bunch of games that some of the kids there taught us, mostly involving getting really dizzy, falling down, and looking like idiots. The next day we woke up super early and said goodbye to our families to leave for the beach. That drive was about three hours long, and was the most fun one yet. A couple of my original roommates from the hostel and I and Keifer, one of the guys, were all in a mini mini bus because there wasn' enough room for everyone on the second bus. I dont'really know how that happened since we had room there. Maybe its just because it was too cramped. So, the six of us were in the separate bus. It was mostly fun because we made lots of videos, but I couldn't find any of them. On the way there we stopped and got out to see some crocodiles in the river we were passing over. And they were ginormous. People would toss a pebble or something over the edge and five or six crocs would jump out of the water thinking it was food. And then we got to the beach and our best hotel yet! Six of us were in one room. It actually had semi warm water, comfortable beds, outlets and airconditioning. And a tv! And refrigerator. Basically it was a typical U.S. hotel which was heaven after staying in some of the places we had been staying. And we had our second American meal of the trip before heading out to the beach. Hamburgers. And at the beach, it was pretty cloudy, but we all tried surfing. I got up once. Maybe, it's a lot harder than it looks. One of the Mauricio's used to be a professional surfer who claimed to have surfed with sharks. On the way homefrom the beach, it started pouring down rain. Lightning and thunder bigger than I have probably ever heard it before. And we had to cross a one-car bridge going oback to the hotel. What I mean by that was that the bridge was so old and rickety that only one car could go across it safely. We were a minibus! But we had to cross it and did, even though we could feel the wind shaking it underenath us. There were quite honestly at least 4 people crying at that point. But it was all good, we got home and watched the storm from our hotel while eating ice cream and watching the Disney Channel.

Friday was the last full day we had there. We went back to the beach. The whole day was fairly uneventful other than three of my friends and I went on a banana boat ride. I love boating/ tubing. Turbing is one of my favorite things to do, but if I had the option of banana boating instead of tubing, I would pick it. I'm pretty sure that is the only time I have ever lost my voice. The guy driving our boat didn't care if we were holding on for dear life like the lame guys at United States beaches. He probably went faster the louder we screamed. At about 4 we drove back to our original hostel and were planning on going to a stake dance that night. But we got kicked out again because I guess it was single adult and there were the majority of us who were 16 and 17. Then we had our own party at the hostel. There was a wedding going on their...I don't know why someone would choose to have their wedding at a hostel. But it was a party, I'll tell you. And we had our testimony meeting that night before leaving the next morning.

It was quite an adventure, as you can probably tell. It was already that long and I could have said so much more...I didn't even talk about any of the people in the group and all the drama that went on with people. I'm pretty sure there was at least one relationship that went on on that trip. Sad, but true. But pretty much everyone was awesome, I even thought about rooming with one or two of them in college because we still talk all the time. Didn't work out, but ya. You guys should all look in to going on one of those trips!! I'm sure you would have as much fun as I did! I really want to go again, actually, maybe to Fiji next time.

This was our theme song for the trip...I swear it came on the radio every five seconds.

Rockin Photonics

I finished my music collage today.

There's lots of stuff you can't really see unless you are looking at it live. But I said I would put up a picture. The only thing you need to know is that the swirly black line says music....and it's done in earphone cords. That's my favorite part.

Old Pictures

The one good thing that came out of today was that I was bored enough to look through old pictures which I never have time to do! And since some of you are in them, I'm putting some up.
O

New Beginnings when we were all twelve I believe...ha ha. I really think its my favorite picture ever. I especially like how I look like a little Chinese boy. Whatever.

And this one would be a few years ago on High Adventure!!! So my brother is going on a High Adventure this summer for scouts and I heard kind of about it and what they are doing...ya not even CLOSE to roughing it as much as we did on that trip. I also almost laughed in Young Women's when they were talking about their girl's camp this year where they will be staying at a lake house and learning how to water ski. AT A LAKE HOUSE.

This was high adventure, too, me in the kayak and Chelsey and J.B. in the canoe. After seeing this I remembered how much fun kayaking was and that I still haven't been since then! Just kidding, Crystal and I went in Florida. But I haven't been since then and its one of my favorite things EVER. I am so going to go sometime soon.

More recent obviously...the day before Grace got appendicitis when she came to visit me and about 2 hours before my front tooth almost got knocked out! Ooh, I have to tell this story. because I find it HYSTERICAL. (My part of the story at least) Idk who all I told already so skip this if you already heard the story. So...I saw Grace last spring break, too! Lucky for me, our spring break was the week before hers, so I got home from a cruise, went to school for two days, and then my mom let me skip the rest of the week because she got there Tuesday night! It was awesome. So the first day she was there we went to a movie, hung out, took some pictures like this one. Then we did the same thing on Thursday. Thursday night we were on Photoshop messing around with our pictures. It was probably about 11 o'clock and the only light that was on upstairs was the one right by the computer we were sitting at which is a fluorescent lamp type of a light. And this is right around the time when all of those DISGUSTING "may flies" come out. Well, they call them mayflies here, but really they are mutated mosquitoes that can get as a big as...I don't know...a packet of Equal? Sure. Continuing on...so we are sitting at the computer having a good laugh at the pictures we were editing and a may fly appears by the lamp. At first it doesn't bother us, but then it is attracted to the light from the computer screen so it starts flying around us in between the light from the lamp and the light from the computer. So of course it is a bit upsetting to have a mosquito as big as a..packet of Equal...flying around our heads, so Grace is ducking down to get away from it and I reach over her head to turn the light off and she comes up and hits my front tooth with her head. Here's where it gets good. So, she thinks that her head is bleeding badly because it was a pretty hard blow. And while she is thinking that her head is bleeding, I'm sitting there with I'm sure a look of complete horror on my face. She asks me whats wrong as I stand there for a minute, and then I run into my bathroom with her following and see my teeth. My front tooth was COMPLETELY crooked and, no exaggeration at all, about to fall out. It was disgusting. At this point I was bawling because, I don't even know. It was traumatic for one thing, but I also thought I would have to get a fake tooth. Not to mention, who knows how long that would have taken. We go to a busy dentist. I might have had to go around looking like a hick for a few days at the least. So we decide to just go to bed because I didn't want to wake up my mom and have it be a huge ordeal in the middle of the night because there wasn't anything we could do about it anyway. In the spur of the moment I had decided to at least try to put it back how it was supposed to be, so now it wasn't crooked, it was just about to fall out. So, whenever I have people staying in my room, I get out our camping cot and sleep on that and let them sleep in my bed because I love sleeping on the cot. So Grace is in my bed and I'm on the cot and I'm worrying out loud that I will roll over during the night and my tooth will come all the way out. And so I decide that I can't go to sleep. And during this time, Grace starts to feel sick. Three hours later, I'm still laying awake and Grace has thrown up a few times, but said she would be fine, because that's around the time she was having her stomach problems. But eventually this kept going on and at about 4 o'clock I went down and got my mom and being a nurse, she thought something else was wrong so she called Grace's parents and got permission to take her to the E.R. where we went. But as she was waiting for Grace to get dressed to leave, she's sitting in my room and I thought I should probably tell her about my tooth. So I did, hahaha. Perfect timing. It was quite the...medical emergency. So she was able to get me a dentist appointment later that day. I was scared to eat anything, so didn't. Grace ended up having appendicitis so we stayed at the hospital with her until my appointment. Her mom was going to drive down and would be there that night. So we left while she was sleeping to go to the dentist who said basically that it was a good thing I had moved it back when I had and he put a metal bar on the back of my two front teeth to keep it in place. I had to come back the next week to see if I would need an implant though! So we went back to the hospital and Grace had her surgery at about 5 after it had been postponed all day, and her mom got there. We all went home Saturday morning and they stayed with us for a day or two and then drove home. And I didn't end up needing an implant. The End.

This isn't really an old picture...actually its only like a month old. But I didn't know if you had all seen this picture that was after Extreme Makeover: Crystal Edition, ha ha.

That's all for now...

P.S. In case you noticed the random picture titles, I didn't do that. In fact I stole most of these pictures a really long time ago I think.