2015 + 2016

2015 is ending so here is my year in review and what I have to look forward to and work on in 2016.....

Last year 2 goals I was able to achieve were:

-Travel somewhere new

-Work on building up food storage 

This year, I will continue with these goals by traveling somewhere new and continuing to build up my food storage. 

Last year 2 goals I was not able to achieve were:

-Catch up on scrapbooking

-Read 24 of the “classics”

I worked on scrapbooking, but did not catch up. This year I will make more of an effort to catch up on my scrapbooking by scheduling out time each month to work on it. 

I did not read any of the “classics”, but decided that was a goal I was no longer interested in completing.

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​I had a lot of high points in 2015 and events I will always remember. First off, was getting my sweet pup, Hendo. He has been such a lifesaving blessing for me. 

Mike and I were able to go camping at the Grand Canyon, which was amazing! It was absolutely beautiful and somewhere I would love to go back to. 

We were also able to go to Cedar City with his family again this year. I love going to the Shakespeare festival each year. We also went to Sedona to do some hiking for my birthday in September. My big new destination in 2015 was going to San Diego. We were able to go to the zoo, the beach, Balboa Park, and the temple.

​In 2015 I was able to spend time with my family as they visited me and as I was able to visit them. With every trip to Utah, I was able to do some hiking which allowed me to spend a considerable amount of time in the mountains. Additionally, I was able to do some hiking in Arizona.

In 2015 I was able to make some new friends and started feeling like Arizona was my home. I graduated in December and was able to accomplish my goal of graduating with a 4.0.

The hardest part of 2015 was the whole summer. Summer in Arizona was hard for me. I desperately missed going outside and we were so busy during the weekends to be able to get away too much. I felt lost and depressed, but did my best to make Arizona feel like home. It was also hard for me to hit 1 year (and then a year and a half) of trying to get pregnant without any success. 

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​My hopes and goals for 2016 are:

-Go to the temple 24 times

-Run a half marathon 

-Run at least 200 miles

-Travel somewhere new

-Get a job that will use my master’s degree

-Buy a house

-Complete 2016 reading challenge (approx. 52 books)

-Start the process to be foster parents 

Last year I focused on: “let go & let God”. The quote I lived by was, “One of the happiest moments in life is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change”. This was so hard for me, but I truly feel as if I have come a long way. I was so devastated I wasn’t a mom and that things weren’t happening the way I wanted them to. In 2015, I let go of the anxiety, worry, and sadness coming from the things I have no control over. I put my faith in Heavenly Father, knowing he has a plan for me. None of those wants and wishes have happened yet, but I believe in my Heavenly Father and have truly learned to accept what I cannot change.  

​This year, while I continue to practice letting go of what I cannot change, I want to focus on JOY. I want to look for the joyful moments all around me. “God didn’t create [me] to be sad, he created [me] to have JOY” –Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Rather than waiting around for all of the things that I believe will make me happy, I will make the most of the moments I have and find the happiness in them. I will take more time to do what makes me happy. I will find pleasure in the journey and be happy with who I am and where I am in my life right now. By extracting happiness from my every day life, I know I will be able to make 2016 an unforgettable year. 

Because what's better than being full of JOY!? 

​

weekend update:

We're gearing up for Easter! 

Friday we went and saw the easter pageant at the mesa temple. Unfortunately it's not performed live...just actors/dancers lip syncing to pre-recorded music. ...don't tell anyone...I didn't love it. The idea was good, just wished it were all live. The pageant tells the story of Christ through song and dance. 

Saturday I spent most of the day shopping for gear for our camping trip next weekend!! Whoo! Thank you tax refund! 

Today, I dyed Easter eggs! My favorite! I got all the dye to myself and got to dye all the eggs I wanted! I loved it! 

& now time for the walking dead! 

Weekend happs

Saturday was rough....

We started the morning by running a 5k..

My friend from work ran it as well. 

The 5k was fun! It was in Phoenix along the canal. I've been running with Hendo and feel like my times have been so slow. I was happy with my run time yesterday so that was nice :) 

We got home and I got to work on writing mine (and mike's) talks for church today. It took for-ev-er. I don't know why, but it was rough! It took me all day. By about 5 I needed a break so I took Hendo for a walk. I love this time of year when everything is blooming! I saw this pretty flower on our walk.. 

We came home, I did homework and finally finished our talks in time to go to bed at 11. 

Our talks went well and church was good. We came home, I worked on more homework and then even had free time! I forgot what that was! So I scrapbooked for a bit. And of course took Hendo on another walk :) 

So glad this weekend is over! Only two more weeks until the Grand Canyon! 

Cal-zonés

Does anyone even read my blog?? Haha well tonight for dinner we had....

Parks and Rec style. 

For your calzone: 

Refrigerated pizza dough 

Parmesan cheese 

Pizza sauce 

Pepperoni 

Any other pizza topping

Flatten out the dough, split in half (to make two large) On one side spread the pizza sauce, add cheese and toppings. Fold the end over and pinch the ends shut. Top with cheese and bake at 375 for 15 minutes. 

The end. 

today

Today we went to church, took a family walk, ate corn beef and cabbage, and did the unmentionables [worked on school stuff]. Goodbye spring break. Hello statistics. 

Hendo is too dang dark. He is constantly blending in. 

That one time I planned to take a pic and then accidentally ate half my food before I remembered I wanted a pic. #oops

3.1415

Goodbye spring break. You sure were lovely, but it's back to school we go. I will miss having so much free time to read, hike, sleep, run, and relax in general. 

And speaking of hiking, today we got to go up to the Lost Dutchman area to hike around the Superstition Mountains. The wildflowers were blooming and we got up close to the end of the day so it was nice and quiet. Arizona mountains are all dog friendly so we brought Hendo along. He was a champ! 

Our last day of spring break landed on pi day. Generally I love pi day...who doesn't love pie?? But alas, this month I'm not eating dessert-type treats. So instead we had chicken pot pie for dinner. 

I'm staying away from fb for a bit so stay tuned for more blogging :) 

top 10 in 2014

In no particular order, here are my top 10 books I read in 2014 

1. The forgotten garden- Kate Morton 

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book—a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-fi rst birthday, they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and very little to go on, "Nell" sets out to trace her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell’s death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. A spellbinding tale of mystery and self-discovery, The Forgotten Garden will take hold of your imagination and never let go.

2. Dancing on broken glass- Ka Hancock 

Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn't have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They’re both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder, and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy’s twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there’s no denying their chemistry.

Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work—and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, they have good days and bad days—and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is.

3. The Nazi officer's wife- Edith Hahn Bear 

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.

In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.

Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust — complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

4. Paper towns- John Green 

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

5. All the light we cannot see- Anthony Doerr 

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled city of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

6. Eleanor & Park- Rainbow Rowell 

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love—and just how hard it pulled you under.

7. The giver quartet- Lois Lowry 

The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. Lois Lowry has written three companion novels to The Giver, including Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

8. Zac & Mia-AJ Betts 

“When I was little I believed in Jesus and Santa, spontaneous combustion, and the Loch Ness monster. Now I believe in science, statistics, and antibiotics.” So says seventeen-year-old Zac Meier during a long, grueling leukemia treatment in Perth, Australia. A loud blast of Lady Gaga alerts him to the presence of Mia, the angry, not-at-all-stoic cancer patient in the room next door. Once released, the two near-strangers can’t forget each other, even as they desperately try to resume normal lives. The story of their mysterious connection drives this unflinchingly tough, tender novel told in two voices.

9. Looking for Alaska- John Green

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .

After. Nothing is ever the same.

10. I never had it made- Jackie Robinson 

I Never Had It Made recalls Robinson's early years and influences: his time at UCLA, where he became the school's first four-letter athlete; his army stint during World War II, when he challenged Jim Crow laws and narrowly escaped court martial; his years of frustration, on and off the field, with the Negro Leagues; and finally that fateful day when Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers proposed what became known as the "Noble Experiment"—Robinson would step up to bat to integrate and revolutionize baseball.

More than a baseball story, I Never Had It Made also reveals the highs and lows of Robinson's life after baseball. He recounts his political aspirations and civil rights activism; his friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, William Buckley, Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller; and his troubled relationship with his son, Jackie, Jr.

2015 goals

I make goals each year. I have as far back as I can remember. But I actually do the goals I set. 

Here are my 2015 goals....

-establish a food storage 

-read the New Testament 

-start reading the classics (2-4/month) 

-run 2,015 miles (amongst/with dad & lisa) 

-catch up on scrap booking 

-read my (current) weight in books 

-travel somewhere new 

Do you make goals or resolutions? What are yours? 

Final count: 103

2014 is officially over! But that's okay because I completed my goal of reading 100 books! It wasn't easy and took a lot of dedication, but I did it. This year I learned how much I enjoy biographies, memoirs about ww2 concentration camp survivors, and nonfiction books in general. I stretched myself and read many books I never would have thought to read. My only problem now is I don't know how to top it.....but that's okay. As long as I keep reading and progressing, that will be enough. 

December books: 

94. It's kind of a funny story: Ned Vizzini 

95. Paris to the moon: Adam Goprik 

96. A Christmas carol: Charles Dickens 

97. The catcher in the rye: JD Salinger 

98. The flight of the silvers: Daniel Price 

99. Dear Mr. Knightly: Katherine Reay

100. Same kind of different as me- Ron Hall & Denver Moore 

101. The lovely bones- Alice Sebold 

102. The hunger games- Suzanne Collins 

103. The Book of Mormon 

My favorite this month was Same kind of different as me. It's about two unlikely people who end up close friends....and it's a memoir. I also enjoyed Dear Mr. Knightly and the catcher in the rye.  

In 2014, I read close to 23,000 pages. 

This year? I'm going to start reading the classics, 1-2 per month and...

Read my (current) weight in books.