Another Trapeze Video

I'm sure we've all figured out that I'm in love with aerial acrobatics, and that I have plans to run away and join the circus someday (seriously!), so here is yet another video of me flying. The trick is called a pullover shoot, and catching this trick was a big deal for me. I had only seen one person at my studio catch this trick, although I watched a lot of failed attempts. I had some extra motivation for making this catch though - my friend Alyson lost a bet and now has to fly in a prom dress! You better believe I'll be posting video of that once it happens. =)

Lyra (Hoop) Performance

I finally let the owner of the aerial studio talk me in to performing at the studio's Winter show. I performed with 3 of my friends who take classes with me, and I don't think it turned out too bad!

Neurofibroma

Remember when I mentioned the bump on my nose, and how badly I wanted to get rid of it? A few months ago a friend of mine gave me the name and number of a dermatologist that her boss had highly recommended. I copied the information on to a sticky note, folded it in half, and tucked it behind the cover of my cell phone. For months I could see the yellow piece of paper through the cover each time I looked at the back of my phone, but I hesitated to make the call - assuming that my lack of health insurance would ensure a large chunk of cash would have to exit my bank account to make the removal possible.

As time went on I got more impatient. This bump has not been on my face my whole life; I first remember it making an appearance somewhere around 2004, and it continued to grow slowly each year. I didn't worry about it too much at first, I thought it may be a wart, and warts can supposedly go away on their own once the virus has run its course. I hoped this would be the case for me when I left for South America in 2006. When I returned to the USA in late 2007 the bump was bigger, and I decided it was time to try a home wart remover. It didn't work, so I left it alone again.

Children found the bump on my nose fascinating. I mean, how could they not notice it? Kids would often ask what was on my nose, and some would even reach out to touch it. I didn't mind- it was just their curiosity. What I did mind was when of my friends' kids - who is old enough to have manners - started being mean about it. He would be sure to point it out every time he saw me, and just be a little brat about it. Worse? His mom seemed to purposefully ignore him when he started teasing, and one time his dad overheard the kid call me a witch, and he laughed. Really?? What happened to teaching your kids to be kind and polite? Annoying.

Last month I finally decided to call the dermatologists and set up a free consultation. I figured I could at least find out how much money I needed to start saving to make my nose look normal again. So, one week before Halloween I skipped out of work for a couple hours and went to my appointment. The doctor looked at my nose, said she didn't think it was anything to be worried about (as in, it looked non-cancerous), and told me how much it would cost for the procedure and lab work. Surprisingly, it really wasn't that expensive, and she said she could do it right then! 15 minutes later I was bump-free and had a band-aid stuck over my half-numb nose. I love it.

Fly Away!

I noticed I haven't been dedicating much time to my blogs lately. I was wondering why I haven't sat down and written anything, and I think I'm afraid of posting something boring. Right now my life consists of work and aerial acrobatics, and that's about it. I LOVE talking about aerial stuff and telling people about the progress I've made and the fun things I do with my friends that I've made while training, but I quickly noticed that when I talk to people who don't have any experience with aerial acrobatics they almost instantly tune out. I also think that my online audience has dwindled a lot over the last year, which is fine, but it's hard to find the motivation to write when I feel like no one's going to read it anyway.

Maybe I'll think of something interesting or witty to say one of these days, but for now I'm going to get ready for bed, dream about flying, and let the stress of my week go as I soar through the air tomorrow morning!

Just for kicks, I leave you with the wonderful words of Aerosmith in "Fly Away From Here":

Gotta find a way
Yeah, I can't wait another day
And nothin' gonna change
If we stay around here
Gotta do what it takes
Cause all in our hands,
We all make mistakes, yeah
But it's never too late to start again
Take another breath
And say another prayer

Then fly away from here
Anywhere
Yeah, I don't care
We'll just fly away from here
Our hopes and dreams are out there somewhere
Won't let time pass us by
We'll just fly

If this life
Gets any harder now
It ain't no nevermind
You got me by your side
And anytime you want
Yeah, we can catch a train and find a better place
Yeah, cause we won't let nothin' or no one keep gettin' us down
Maybe you and I
Could pack our bags and hit the sky

Then fly away from here
Anywhere
Yeah, I don't care
We'll just fly away from here
Our hopes and dreams are out there somewhere
Won't let time pass us by
We'll just fly

Do you see a bluer sky now
You can have a better life now
Open your eyes
Cause no one here can ever stop us
They can try but we won't let them
No way

Maybe you and I
Could pack our bags and say goodbye

Then fly away from here
Anywhere
Honey, I don't care
We'll just fly away from here
Our hopes and dreams are out there somewhere
Fly away from here
Yeah, anywhere
Honey, I don't, I don't, I don't care

We'll just fly away

Don't Mind Our Dust...

The parking lot of the office complex where I work is getting a makeover. I don't mind having to park farther away in the neighboring restaurant's parking lot for the week, and I can handle the Latin-born workers' intense stares as I walk in and out of the building (thank you, Uruguay for all your training), but the random rumbling and shaking of the building as they scrape off the old layer of asphalt is going to kill me! No matter how consistently I feel it I still get the urge to duck and cover beneath my desk as I try to remind myself that it is NOT an earthquake...

Pulled Over

I consider myself a good driver. I have only been in one accident (which wasn't my fault), and I have never gotten a speeding ticket. But that doesn't mean I've never been pulled over; I have been pulled over 5 times - all within the last 4 years. You may be thinking that I am a mastermind of escaping speeding tickets but that would be wrong... I have never been pulled over for speeding, it's always something crazy!

First Time - Burnt out brake light. Not a big deal, but I was on my way to a meeting and would have been on time if there wasn't a new cop in training who took FORTY-FIVE minutes to write up a fix-it ticket... I ended up being 30 minutes late. I think they could only spare that much time to let the newbie practice because it was a Sunday. They must have been bored.

Second Time - Obstruction of view. I had a small Uruguayan flag hanging below my rear view mirror. Again, this was on a Sunday when the cops were bored. I pulled it down and he let me go.

Third Time - Registration not quite expired. I had Colorado plates while going to school in Vegas, and a motorcycle cop pulled me over to remind me that my tags were expiring at the end of the month. I was honestly able to tell him that I had spoken with my dad about my tags the day before and was waiting for the new ones to be mailed to me.

Fourth Time - Burnt out licence plate light (I REALLY think cops love to target me when they're bored). I was driving a friend home from a church dance at 1am. The cop asked me where I'd been, where I was going, and if I had been drinking....as I was thinking "I'm 25, don't have a curfew, and made a complete stop at the last stop sign..." It's like he was trying (unsuccessfully) to find a reason to keep me pulled over. Three years later and I still haven't fixed this light. No one else seems to have a problem with it.

Fifth Time - Missing registration stickers. I was VERY confused as to why the highway patrolman started tailing me before flipping on his lights. Of course this would happen the ONE day I was trying to get to work early. Turned out someone stole my registration stickers off of my licence plate! I had proof of registration, etc. So I got a fix it ticket and paid $18 at the DMV for a replacement sticker. The cop told me how to prevent this in the future by taking a razor blade to the sticker once it's on my license plate so that it can't come off in one piece for a thief. Go, go, ghetto cop!!

I swear - it's always the strangest things.

So This One Time When I Was 28...

I dyed my hair pink.

Indecision

There are some things/choices that have been on my mind lately, and I'm not quite sure what to do about them. It seems like no choice is exactly right; either because I won't be happy with one outcome or another, or people close to me won't be happy with one outcome or another, and I don't want to let them down (I don't know if that makes much sense, but I feel like explaining more would be divulging a little too much personal information in a public setting). I know I can't make all my decisions based on what other people think - and trust me, I don't, but these are the types of decisions that would affect others enough that I should consider them in this decision making process.


I'm in the middle of reading a book right now that caught me by surprise when it described almost exactly how I'm feeling in regards to my indecision. While the examples of choices laid out for the protagonist of the book are not the same as the choices I'm facing, the general idea is the same:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

"From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

I feel stuck, very unsure of what to do, and frustrated because my usual sources of input/advice don't seem to be working. I just don't know what to do!

Front End Split

I solved my phone problem last week, and can finally upload videos from my phone! Even though they aren't the clearest things, I'm still glad I can do something with them. So, for those of you who haven't already seen my YouTube page... enjoy!

My World Will Never Be The Same

I am in love.

I had heard stories; other people's experiences. Butterflies in the stomach, the feeling of letting go and trusting in someone else completely. I knew I had to experience it for myself, it was just a matter of when I was ready to jump feet first off the deep end... or, in this case, the 24 foot platform.

My new love - is flying trapeze.

Preemptive Blogging

We all know that with Spring and Summer come the countless numbers of wedding invitations in the mailbox. There is nothing wrong with these announcements - it's great that these friends have asked me to celebrate their big day with them. I do try to attend as many of these events as time and money allow.



Becoming ever more common these days though is the post-nuptual creation of a blog. The blog background gets decorated, the first post includes some form of the explanation "since we're married now, we thought we should have a blog," and three pictures appear down the side bar - an individual shot of each of the newlyweds, and one of them together with captions like "Him, Her, Us!" to ensure that you, the reader, didn't miss the fact that they are perfectly blending their two lives into a single entity.



Cool.



Now, if you know me at all you know that I have nothing against blogs. I have three of my own, one I contribute to with my family, and one that I set up for my friends and I to collaborate on. Blogs are fun! What I don't understand however, is the urge one suddenly feels to join the blogging world solely because they tied the knot. Is marriage considered a pre-requisite for starting a blog? It is almost as if one doesn't gain the knowledge of blogging until they have a ring on their finger. Or maybe they didn't think their life was interesting enough to blog about beforehand. It's kind of like the Christmas card club... you don't see single people sending out a picture of themselves accompanied by a letter of what they did during the year.



I pondered on these thoughts for a while, looked around, and have found that "saving blogging for marriage" does seem to be the trend. Take a gander at some of your favorite blogs and look at their friends list; I'd be willing to bet that the majority of those people are married bloggers. I understand that some of these people may once have posted companionless, but my guess is that the majority did not. One list in particular that I found on a friend's blog backed my thinking. I am the ONLY single blogger listed:







So since I blogged before marriage I have come to the conclusion that I must either be ahead of the curve, or committing some sort of sin. To hell with it. I need your addresses - I think I'll send out Christmas cards this year.

Staring Me In The Face

For many years now I've had a bump on the right side of my nose that has slowly grown bigger. I'm not 100% sure what it is exactly, but I've ruled out the possibility that it's a wart. Anyhow, it's at the point now where it's super annoying, I can see it when I look down my nose, and I've given up hope that it will decide to go away on its own.

This is a problem, because without insurance it's way too expensive of a cosmetic procedure. Tack on the fact that any dermatologist will want to biopsy it and send it to a lab, and yeah... I don't have that kind of money right now.

So tonight I had an idea that I wanted to try. (Word to the queasy - this may be disturbing to some of you...) When I was finishing my nightly bathroom routine I pulled out a short piece of floss and simply tied it around the bump to cut off the circulation. It didn't hurt at all; there's really no feeling in the bump, and I instantly saw a color change.

After getting it secure I walked into my bedroom to excitingly share my plan with my roommate. She. Freaked. Out. She proceeded to tell me that I couldn't do that, that my nose would bleed a ton (I figured...since there's a ton of blood vessels in the nose, and I had previously tried wart removal stuff which made it bleed profusely - the bleeding wouldn't phase me), that it could get infected, etc. and that she had a friend who had things lasered off before and would have good advise/input about how to take care of it in a more professional way.

She made me take the floss off.

Sigh... I guess I'm going to keep staring this bump in the face for a while longer.

Dominating 6 Continents

Celebration time!! I checked my map loco gadget at the bottom of my blog just a moment ago, and was extatic to see someone had visited my blog from AFRICA! I now officially have had visitors from 6 of the 7 continents (I totally don't expect visitors from Antarctica, so basically, I've had visitors from every continent that matters)!

Listed below are some of the most recent visitors (I did not include all of them). What I want to know is, who is visiting me from these locations? Post a comment so I can see who you are!!

Location of Visitor
Time of last visit to blog
Total number of visits from that location

Tanzania, United Republic of
Yesterday @ 2:38 pm
1

San Francisco, CA, United States
Yesterday @ 7:14 am
2

Bethel, OH, United States
Yesterday @ 4:58 am
1

Baden, Germany
Yesterday @ 3:58 am
1

West Palm Beach, FL, United States
6 May 2011
12

Oak Lawn, IL, United States
6 May 2011
5

Las Vegas, NV, United States
6 May 2011
16

Henderson, NV, United States
6 May 2011
4

Mendota, IL, United States
6 May 2011
2

Fort Lauderdale, FL, United States
6 May 2011
2

Gary, IN, United States
6 May 2011
1

Chicago, IL, United States
6 May 2011
2

Bell, CA, United States
5 May 2011
1

Orléans, France
2 May 2011
1

Bloomfield Hills, MI, United States
2 May 2011
2

Kingston Upon Hull, United Kingdom
2 May 2011
1

Nellis Afb, NV, United States
2 May 2011
15

Penfield, NY, United States
27 Apr 2011
3

Mount Pleasant, SC, United States
25 Apr 2011
1

Mountain View, CA, United States
22 Apr 2011
3

Calgary, AB, Canada
22 Apr 2011
1

Bountiful, UT, United States
20 Apr 2011
3

Cincinnati, OH, United States
20 Apr 2011
6

Arvada, CO, United States
19 Apr 2011
4

Fort Mill, SC, United States
19 Apr 2011
6

Saint George, UT, United States
19 Apr 2011
9

Montreal, QC, Canada
19 Apr 2011
1

Phoenix, AZ, United States
19 Apr 2011
6

Brisbane, Australia
18 Apr 2011
2

Springfield, MO, United States
18 Apr 2011
5

Liverpool, Australia
18 Apr 2011
1

Seattle, WA, United States
18 Apr 2011
10

Bronx, NY, United States
18 Apr 2011
3

Little Rock, AR, United States
17 Apr 2011
3

Australia
16 Apr 2011
2

Logan, UT, United States
15 Apr 2011
2

Parker, CO, United States
11 Apr 2011
2

Provo, UT, United States
5 Apr 2011
1

Huntington Beach, CA, United States
3 Apr 2011
1

Pleasant Grove, UT, United States
3 Apr 2011
1

Layton, UT, United States
3 Apr 2011
1

Pacoima, CA, United States
3 Apr 2011
1

Hamilton, ON, Canada
2 Apr 2011
1

Houston, TX, United States
2 Apr 2011
2

Scranton, PA, United States
1 Apr 2011
1

Birthday Bucket List

Recently I have witnessed several of my friends doing wonderfully grand things to celebrate their birthday. One friend even went to the effort of creating a calendar of events leading up to his birthday that lasted as many days as the number of years he was turning. Seeing as I previously decided that this is "The Year of Me," I want to celebrate big too! Therefore, I am creating a themed list of things I want to do to honor my birth!

“THE WORLD IN MY BACKYARD”

I love to travel, but since taking big trips to all sorts of foreign places takes all sorts of time (and money), I thought it would be fun to explore the world – locally. Here’s the travel itinerary so far:

Saturday, June 11th – THE MEDITERRANEAN (Greece, Italy, etc.)

The Getty Villa in Malibu
· 11:30am – Architecture Tour
· Wander and see exhibits
· Free, but we need to book timed tickets in advance
· $15 parking = carpool!
· http://www.getty.edu/visit/

Late lunch at either Stop’n Café (1237 Third Street Promenade) or Sham Restaurant (716 Santa Monica Blvd.)


Saturday the 18th – FRANCE

Les Miserables at Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center downtown Los Angeles
· 8pm
· $42-$65 for the cheapest seats
· http://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/productiondetail.aspx?id=13736


Tuesday the 21st (My Actual Birthday) – CANADA

Attend my regular hoop and aerial fit classes with a handful* of close (and adventurous) friends. Okay, you’re probably thinking “how the heck is this Canada?” I’ll sum up: the owner of my studio was in Cirque du Soleil. Cirque du Soleil is a Canadian based entertainment company (Quebec), therefore Canada.
· 6:45pm – Hoop
· 7:45pm – Aerial Fit
· *You MUST contact me if you plan to do this. I have to let the studio know how many are coming beforehand (we can’t overcrowd the class), there are liability waivers to be filled out, etc. Just contact me.


Thursday, June 23rd – MEXICO

Mana in concert at the Staples Center!
· 8pm
· Cheapest tickets - $59.00.
· http://centerboxoffice.org/ResultsVenue.aspx?venid=100&vname=Staples+Center&event=Mana&nid=1&sortcol=retail&sortord=asc&showall=true&dist=GS&uq=mana%20staples&cid=7170563555&ppcsrc=1-HY-Staples+-Mana&gclid=CMqkxaTi0qgCFQYGbAod6EY__w

So far this is just a framework of ideas; none of it is set in stone…yet. But I do hope to make a majority of these events happen! I’d also like to add some more activities to include the Asian, African, and Australian continents if possible; maybe I’ll toss in a visit to the LA Zoo to cover all three of those!

And please, if you would like to join me on one (or more) of these adventures, let me know!!

Strange Happenings

Sometimes I feel like I have nothing to blog about when I don't have pictures. But really, that's not true! So, I decided that I'm going to try and do some shorter posts more often, and throw in a regular full-pictured post once or twice a month as usual. I have had a couple of strange experiences within the last couple of weeks; they are unrelated to each other, but they aren't so big that they require their own post either... It seemed like every morning for about a week I would wake up with a song in my head. This isn't an unusual occurance, really - I often wake up with a song in my head. It's just that this particular week it was suddenly the song "Yeah 3X" by Chris Brown. Every. Single. Morning. (If you need help figuring out what song I'm talking about, please refer to the first song on my playlist above). I do think the song is catchy even if it's not my most favorite, it's popular right now on the radio, and since I work in the music industry I listen to the radio a LOT to keep up on current hits. Still, this didn't justify the reason I woke up singing it every day. I finally figured it out. My phone alarm is what wakes me up every morning, and the sound that it makes is three notes that are oddly similar to the chorus of the song - at about minute 1:13. I'm now considering changing my alarm ring. The second strange thing happened just before I left my house for work one morning. I had already finished my makeup, and since my hair was still wet, I grabbed a hair tie that I put on my wrist so I could put my hair up later at work. I went about gathering my belongings and some automobile-friendly breakfast items and started heading for my shoes when I realized that the hair tie I had placed on my wrist was missing. I went back to my bathroom drawer to make sure I wasn't hallucenating and confirmed the fact that I had taken my hair tie. I re-traced my steps, looked on my bed, in my purse, etc. with no luck. Then, remembering I had done this once before... I hiked up my pant leg, and pulled down my sock to find my hair tie happily sitting around my ankle. Yep. I have a magic hair tie that likes to disappear, and reappear on my ankle! I can only assume you're thinking "what the... how did that happen?!?" Trust me, I thought the same thing the first time it happened. I will tell you. It only happens when I wear my long socks that come up just below my knees. In order to put these socks on, I reach my right hand/arm into the bottom of the sock, and then slide my left thumb down my arm to bunch up the sock and put on my foot. Maybe that doesn't make sense....go put on a sock and pay attention to how you do it. Then you might get it! Anyhow, sometime during that thumb sliding/sock bunching maneuver I manage to situate the hair tie in my sock, which then gets pulled on to my ankle. Talented - I know!

Learning to Fly

Remember all those bruises I showed you? They are all by-products of the talents and skills I'm trying to develop as part of my New Years resolutions. I have taken up Aerial Acrobatics! This is me - sitting in a hoop, and on the silks doing a move called Straddleback: There is this wonderful gym/studio/whatever-you-want-to-call-it/building that I drive by every morning on the way to work, and one day while waiting to turn at a stoplight it caught my eye. So after I finished work that week I dropped in to check it out and instantly fell in love! The first time I remember seeing aerial acrobatics like this was at a concert (thank you, Cher!), and I was amazed. I never thought it was something I'd seek out to do. I first signed up for the silks (fabric) class and started attending weekly. A few weeks in however, without my knowledge, the studio switched up their schedule and added a few more classes, including hoop. When I showed up for what I thought was my silks class that week I discovered they were really setting up for hoop. I wasn't so sure about it, but one of the employees encouraged me to try it out (you can try one class of each type for free), and then attend my normal class the hour afterward. I stayed...and have never been able to give it up! I take back to back classes every Tuesday night - hoop followed by silks - and while it can be exhausting I see myself improving every week, and have really come a long way in the few months I've been taking classes. I got a couple of the studio assistants to take pictures for me during hoop, but they take the silks class with me, so I don't have any more pictures of that class for now. Here are some things I was working on this week in hoop (excuse the blurriness - it's not the type of activity where one holds still very long!); I actuallly do more moves than these few, there's just not time to do everything in one class! Single knee hangs

Splits and Bananas (these need work...)

Straddle-ups (yay pointy toes!!)

Mermaids

Amazons

These next two were from a new move I was learning this week but couldn't quite get the hang of (no pun intended)... the bruise on my right hip is a lovely shade of eggplant because of it though!

Okay. Now that you've suffered through the blurriness I'll leave you with one photo that actually turned out well - it's a bonus that it was on a move that actually requires some skill, and just looks stinkin' awesome!!

Feelings.

I have felt pretty invisible this week. That is all.

Battle Wounds - Or In Other Words - I'm Not Being Abused

Feet:

Arms/Elbows:

Hands:

Hips:

Legs/Knees:

This is just a taste of the marks and bruises I come home with on Tuesday nights. There are other bruises that are on other areas of my body too, but those would be incredibly inappropriate to show on a blog.

Some of you already know how I'm receiving all of these colorful additions to my body, and no matter how much you may want to spoil the surprise for others, PLEASE don't reveal the secret by posting a comment that lets the cat out of the bag!! For those of you who are still in the dark... don't worry. I'm planning a full post with pictures to explain. I promise you'll like it!

I'll give you one clue: it has to do with all the New Year's resolutions I made. =)

Januarian, Vegetarian.

I have officially completed one of my New Year's resolutions! I mentioned this one a couple posts ago, but didn't give any details other than the fact that I started on January 4th, and since it was a month-long goal I successfully finished on February 4th. Did you gather what the goal was from the title of this post? I went vegetarian. Why? Well, for many reasons: I had never tried it before, I wanted to learn how to cook more vegetable-based dishes/experiment with cooking, I only cooked 1 to 2 meat dishes a week anyway (who wants to wait that long to cook a meal when you get home from work and you're starving?), I have a roommate who is vegetarian, and I was just curious.

Let me make sure I clarify the definition of a vegetarian here (thanks to merriam-webster.com):

Definition of VEGETARIAN
1
: of or relating to vegetarians
2
: consisting wholly of vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and sometimes eggs or dairy products

So, no meat. Of any kind. Now if you're still tempted to ask "did you eat fish?" I urge you to look at the definition again and ask yourself if fish is a vegetable, fruit, grain, nut, egg or some type of dairy product.

My results? I felt slightly healthier in some ways (nothing dramatic in my case), I had to plan ahead to have a balanced meal, I enjoyed feeling full on produce, and I never once cheated or slipped up on my goal! It really wasn't a difficult talk for me either since I was used to not having meat every day. The only time I wanted to break my goal was when I was down to the last 8 or 9 days and my boss took everyone out to dinner - at a sushi restaurant. My coworkers seated close to me all gave me a ton of grief (I am the only female employee of the company), and tried to convince me to throw in the towel early and just order the sushi. I resisted anyway, and I had some sympathetic waiters who took pity and brought me some excellent vegetarian dishes, some that were on the menu, and some that weren't.

Grilled vegetables (over a live coal) and edamame (of course)

Seaweed salad wrapped in avocado and topped with other greens, served on a slab of stone (cool!)

I think my favorite was the dessert platters they brought out for everyone to share.

It was an interesting experience - one I'm not likely to repeat, but I do know that I'll continue to eat little meat (1-2 times a week), and I plan on adding more vegetables to each meal. I like veggies, so this shouldn't be hard. I also got better at controlling how much I eat; noticing when I'm actually full and not feeling like it's necessary to always have seconds. Goal 1 - Check.

A Change of Hue.

Before:

During:

Waiting:

Loving:

Just because.

New Year, New Goals

I feel like the Grinch at the end of his story where things just clicked and his heart grew three sizes.

For years I didn't think of Christmas as my favorite time of year - not because I don't like Christmas itself (because I do!), but I noticed that a lot of people seemed to exit my life near Christmas. Friends would move away, I would move away, I even finished my mission in mid-November of '07, so I left an entire country full of people I will most likely never see again in the Christmas-ish season. I really don't like the feeling of people leaving my life.

I also have been a Grinch when it comes to New Year's Resolutions. I would argue - "Why make one or two huge goals only once a year that you'll forget about by March? Then what do you do, wait another 9 months to do it all again?" I was more in the mind set of having smaller goals throughout the year that I made based on need/desire, etc, so, I avoided New Year's Resolutions for the most part.

And then this year something clicked. I was excited for Christmas because I realized that, like it or not, people will come in and out of my life, yet my family will always be a part of my life. And I always get to see my family at Christmas. Cheesy realization, maybe, but it felt personal, and healing.

As for New Year's Resolutions, I still don't think that's the only time you can set goals, but I made a cool connection while attending my parent's ward in Colorado:

The holidays in the Fall and Winter are lined up extremely well. Thanksgiving reminds you of all the great blessings you have, then Christmas follows reminding you of Christ and all He has done for you, and then there's New Year's, where you can re-commit yourself to being more Christlike and following His example. Our goal on this earth is to become like Christ; what a wonderful reminder these holidays are, right?

As for this new year I am starting to make new goals. I started a month-long goal on January 4th and can say I've been successful for an entire week! I really think this one is going to be easy. I'll probably post something about this goal upon completion, so I won't go into details now. I've also decided I want to try some new things; it doesn't matter if I'm 27 - I can go learn a new skill or talent and be successful at it. You know how some people put their kids in all sorts of classes and sports that are incredibly demanding because they think that's the only way they can be successful doing it? Yeah, I don't think that's true. So I'm going to go try something I've never done before - and I'm excited!

So Happy New Year, everyone, and go set some goals!