setting the world aglow

Fall really is an amazing time of year.  The leaves are so changing to brilliant colors, the air has a snappy quality to it, and yet it all signifies death.  Soon the leaves will fall off the trees and cover the earth, soon the earth will be covered in snow, and soon all the busy insects will be gone.  Nature seems to be teaching me a lesson.  I am young, and yet everything has a season.  Like the leaves I also will die at some point.  No one has a choice when it comes to dying, the choice I have is to make sure I do not die with any regrets.  I do not want to look back and regret the life I have lived. I plan to live my life as though I am going to die tomorrow, but plan my life for dying in a hundred years. This means I am going to take a walk in the autumn leaves today (well not literally today because it is dark and quite frankly the would defeat the purpose of taking a walk through autumn leaves), I am going to hike the mountain that I have always wanted to hike, I am going to be a good person (sometimes I struggle.  Why can people not call me when they want to set up an appointment instead of repeatedly going through random people!).  I want to live a good, productive, and happy life so that when I have my autumn, it will be the beautiful autumn I see when I drive through the mountains. The kind of autumn the sets the world aglow and and makes death a glory.  The kind of autumn that reminds us that the next stage (death) is not that bad.  Here is to a very random post.

elections are coming!

It seems so odd that soon it will be election day and I must cast my vote for whom I want to be the next president of the United States.  I have watched the debates, I have discussed the issues and I have decided I am going to write about my opinion on marriage because that is something I do know (quite clearly I do not have strong convictions on other stuff).  I find it fascinating to hear the debate whirling around marriage.  I guess I grew up in a conservative town with small town ideas ( you wave to everyone who drives by because you just might know them). My parents  always taught me was to be kind to others and treat everyone as equals. I feel in this debate over marriage, people are mixing up what the concept of equality with the basic definitions. For thousands of years marriage has been defined as the union between a man and a woman. I am also a very religious person ( The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and have read the old and new testament repeatedly. These text that I accept as the word of God (both the old and new) do support marriage as being between a man and a woman.  That doesn't mean that people who wish to create alternative homes do not have the right to. If people have a desire to live together, that is their choice. If a patient in a hospital decides to have a friend/ partner visit them or have rights to medical files, they should have the choice. By definition though, marriage is the a union between a man and a woman. In this election, California will again be voting on the definition of marriage. I fully support proposition 8.

strong enough?

Who am I? Where did I come from?  Now, these question could be answered in many different ways, but this summer I started studying my genealogy and I learned literarily about the people I came from (that sentence seems redundant.  It probably is but I am tired).  I took this cool family history class because Family History is very big in the Mormon church and I felt I should know more about mine.  Of course I did this during the summer so I made very little progress and no progress since school started but all the same it was well spent time.  Not only was it fascinating to learn about the various people that I share a genetic code with, but it was interesting to see the events that impacted their lives.  I encountered many ancestors that left their families and crossed the American plains with nothing, simply because they had a testimony that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the same church that Christ established on the Earth thousands of years ago.  It is a little intimidating to think of the strong Faith these people had.  I guess it also makes me wonder what trials I will have to face.  We all have trials.  Will we be strong enough?

Silent Night

Right now, I am dealing with midterms at school, and this has made me very happy about Christmas.  I can not wait until this semester is over!!  Stress, stress, stress.  So, to make me happy, I have decided to write again on my new and lovely blog about my Christmas traditions.  For me, Christmas is the best holiday of the year because that is the holiday when my siblings try to make it home (until they get kids...). I am the fifth child out of six and I love it when my parents home is simply filled with people.  There are little ones running around, the house smells amazing, and we are playing Christmas music constantly.  In general there is such a happy spirit.  Christmas Eve is the big day at my parents house.  We have this amazing fondue dinner and then my sister drifts to the piano.  She plays and I sing christmas carols until a good amount of the family has finally made it to the piano and joined us in our music making.  We then sing some Christmas hymns and start reading stories. We start with the fun Christmas books like the Polar Express and finally we move to the Christmas story: Christ's birth in Bethlehem.  We read the account out of the book of Luke and then, if we have not already read it in the last few days, we read the account of Christ's birth from The Book of Mormon.  This account is such a different perspective because it is an account at the time of Christ of faithful believers in Christ but living somewhere in the Americas being told by God and not the first hand experience we read in the Bible.  I love this account because I believe in Christ, but I can not see his birth.  I also must find out that he was born through listening to God.  Christmas is amazing.  I love it all and I really want to hatch out my Christmas music.    Silent Night, Holy Night...

Traveling the world

I love it when people ask the question "what would you do with a million dollars?" because I always have an answer. I would travel the world. The list of places I need to visit before I die keeps growing at an alarming rate. Even if I do get to go somewhere, I usually want to go back. I lived in London for two months last summer, and now all I have to figure out is how I can go back.

I find it fascinating to see how alike, and how different people are even in a small area. For example, My parents moved when I was in high school from the small Idaho town I grew up in, to another small town in Utah. People were still nice and friendly, but it was cool to see the different traditions in the community. In Idaho when a guy asked a girl on a date (or Vice Versa) he simply called her up and asked.  The town that I moved to had all of these complicated ideas for asking people on dates (a puzzle with the name on the back).  On the other hand, when someone was sick in the community, people still took over a casserole.  People are great no matter where you go.

 I love going to new places, and something I love is that no matter where I go, I can find family.  I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and no matter where I go in the world, the church is the same.  A year or so ago, I was in Vienna, Austria and even though I did not speak German and did not know the people, I felt at home.  We still had Sacrament meeting, Sunday School, and Relief Society and I knew I could find someone if I needed help.  I loved it.  Sometimes I think the reason I know I can travel the world, is because I always know I will be-able to find a family wherever I go.