Sad...

As funny as I wish I could say this is... I just can't.

This is just way too true.  Teenagers have sort of come to this conclusion that everything will just work out in the end.

Laziness has become the new cool

The lazier you are the funnier you are.  The funnier you are the more loved you are.

What happened to respect though? Is love not a form of intense respect?  So are they really loved?

What happened to effort to make life a more likable activity?

I'm sorry but the teenagers are about to fall into a band of hobos or hippies and their own kind doesn't even bother to look up.

It takes too much effort to care apparently...

Socks

What makes you happy?

What makes me happy, is the fact that I'm sitting here writing this in a sweatshirt, pajama pants and fuzzy socks while eating macaroni and cheese, drinking hot cocoa, and watching Pocahontas. 

What makes me happy is the fact that I was able to drive only a short distance to each of my siblings house today just to say hi. It makes me happy that I have a close relationship with each and every one of them.  It makes me happy to know that we can all grow old together and laugh about it.

What makes me happy is the fact that just last night I was feeling lonely and I had friends less than five minutes away from me that love me and are willing to take me in even if it is eleven at night.

But mainly, my fuzzy socks.  To be able to hold something that is so pleasant to the touch and keeps me completely warm.  I mean really what person is like that all the time?  What person can make you so happy always that they always feel good and they can always comfort you whenever you expect it?  My socks are here for me.  My socks know me.  And when I look at my socks I know that they are mine.  I know that they will never leave me.

I know that it's a wee bit dumb to be writing about something as taken granted for as socks but really.  What kind of a person can do what they do?

To my readers...

  I got a comment from a reader that they wanted to hear more about my vacations.  Well, I regrettably tell you now that that would take a lifetime to explain every detail but I would like to happily say that I will do my best.

It all started when I was a young child.  Just the simple amusement parks such as Lagoon or Disneyland.  Maybe the occasional camping trip every now and again and then there is Idaho.  I can honestly say that Idaho is my second home even though I have never lived there.  My aunt and uncle own a swimming pool up there and a camp ground with it.  So, once or twice... ok maybe three times a year we like to take our trailer up there to go and swim around, camp, and drive to Jackson hole, Wyoming to go and see the plays that serve dinner.  Well, growing up, this is where I learned how to swim.  I loved my swim lessons because I got to do this with all of my cousins.  I guess you could call this the family reunion.  But me, my brothers, my sister, and my cousins would all go at the same time to learn our swimming/ first aid lessons.  It was an absolute blast.  We would experience this in the morning and then at night we would go back to the trailer and eat homemade hamburgers and donuts and we would just sit and play games or explore the campground.  Then my all time favorite parts of this annual trip.  It's night time.  I love the beauty of the sunset as it hits the mountain at full force and bouncing off into the greens surrounding the flowy river.  I honestly could just stare at this sight for hours.  We would ride our ATV's up the canyon that we were staying in there and go to this camp spot with a fire pit and roast marshmallows.  I'm pretty sure every time we go up we stay there until at least midnight solving the worlds problems.  Then once we get back we get into our bathing suits once again and go take a dip in the hot tub.  This is especially fun because the whole pool is closed but because my uncle isn't done venting about the crazy mother-in-law, he opens it back up just for us to go and sit and drink soda's and have a really nice little venting session.  I can honestly say that this is my favorite place in the world.  Ok, just kidding, second favorite place.

My all time favorite place is Geiranger, Norway.  I kid you not when you visit this place (if you so desire) you will fall in love with it.  It is the tiniest little village ever but it's so beautiful.  I went here on a cruise but everybody who lives here has boats so that they can get from one place to another.  It's such a little fairytale land.  Everything that you see is so green.  The houses look like little hobbit holes because the doors are just surrounded by grass. The roofs are filled with green and the front of the houses have either grass or ivy growing a long side it.

 

In the picture above you can see the water falls.  This water fall is called the seven sisters waterfall because there are seven waterfalls right next to each other and when you are up close and personal to the waterfall you can see a little hut that lives right behind it.  How these people are able to get up there every day, I have no idea.  I'm sure it must be fun in the winter though.

Also, there are Fjords surrounding the whole thing like a dome

 

 I love it!!! This picture was taken in July and there's still snow on the mountain!! Oh ya, but still it was 74 degrees outside.  This village was seriously so beautiful and while we were there, there was this guy who brought his whole herd of reindeer down to his little shop to grab food.  We say watch out for deer they say watch out for reindeer. No big deal.  Then me and my family went hiking further up the mountain and there was a church with a wedding going on in the church.  Now for any of you who know anything about Europe in general, you know that marriage really is very rare.  Most people now a days just live together and have kids with out the commitment of having to stay together for life.  So, that was pretty special to just happen to come across a Norwegian wedding.  Anyways, so we were on our hike and another thing we came across was this tiny little cafe that served the absolute best waffles I've ever had in my life.  Let me tell you how they served them and how I now eat waffles.  First off they're heart shaped.  That's very important.  Then for the topping they first spread it with sour cream and then on top of that they put strawberry jam.  It's heavenly! I love cultural food.

So, ya Geiranger is my favorite place in the world but that wasn't the only place I went on this cruise.  We first started by flying to Denmark which was absolutely amazing.  We were in Copenhagen for five days and one of those days was spent in this place called Hillerod.  This is my moms favorite place in the world.  This is another one of those fairy tale places.  Especially at sunset.  There is the Fredriksberg castle that was absolutely magnificent inside but right before that, it was one of those towns that you see at the beginning of beauty and the beast that is just lined with little shops that have the best pasteries and chocolate milk in the world.  Then you can go behind the castle to what I call Narnia.  Seriously it's the biggest backyard I've ever seen. And you walk around to see that all of the grass is trimmed and green as well as the bushes all being designed in some fancy way.

 

We went to other places in Denmark but who has the time to hear about that.  Anyways then we boarded the cruise ship and headed off to Aulesund, Norway where we met up with our foreign exchange student and her family that we had a few years before this.  The first thing they did when we got there was take us through an under water tunnel to get to her house.  It was trippy.  Then when we got to her house they fed us the most exotic food I have ever tried.  They fed us whale (which by the way tastes nothing like fish it's actually more like a really deep steak), They fed us musscox (which is like a soft beef jerky), I tried some bread with Norwegian mayonaise and fresh shrimp on it.  Now when I say fresh shrimp I mean as fresh as it comes.  Literally the fisherman catch it, we buy it, then we take it back and wash it off then you rip off the head and the tail and eat it.  That's what I mean by fresh.  Anyways then they took us to the top of the mountain to overlook the whole valley and it was so beautiful.  What I love about all of the places that we went was that every where you looked it was so green and there was water surrounding everything.  Anyways then on the way back down from there they gave us pancakes with twinky filling.  It was literally like a giant pancake twinky.  It was so good.

 

After Aulesund was Bergan and that was beautiful, then it was Tromso where we met up with another family friend Marit, to take us around and that was a blast. It's been a long time since we've seen her. I miss her and her family a lot. Then we went to the North Cape which is the most northern part of Norway.  It was cool to say that I've stood literally just a few miles away from the North pole but it was pretty boring as far as activities go. Then we went to Geiranger:) and after that we hit our last stop in Christensand. This is where I found the largest McDonalds I've ever seen.  Seriously, imagine a palace and then don't change anything.

 

Oh!!! I forgot to tell you.  The sun stayed out for 24 hours everyday that we were there.  The sun never went down.  It was weird. Me and my siblings stayed up until three in the morning playing poker and we were'nt even tired.  It was rediculous.

 

Well, ya sorry about the length. I will tell you more about some of my other trips later and don't worry I will keep them brief from now on but how can you put such beauty and light into such a small post?

Oh the crap people go through

Being human is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.  The crap that people go through in their lives is beyond what people can even fathom.  We've all heard all of the stories, maybe even experienced some. But to be human is just emotion.  People turn to logic because it makes sense but being human means you feel. And let me tell you I've felt a lot.

Physically, I've broken both of my arms, I've broken my toe and ripped off the nail, i've gotten my wisdom teeth removed and I've experienced strep.  Even worse than that was mono. I've had the flue and I have chronic headaches. Some worse than others.  I've been cut and bruised but the worst is a broken heart.  They say that breaking your femur or child birth is the worst pain but there's nothing worse than a pain that doesn't heal.  No matter what happens in your life once your heart is broken you can always relive that pain. 

Emotionally, I've gone in and out of depression.  I've cried for no reason at all and I've cried for reasons unlimited.  I've been left behind and I've been kicked behind.

Being human is what we do for a living.  It's just one of those crappy things in a crappy world that we have to go through.  We have to make mistakes.  We have to be sad otherwise we would never know what it's like to be happy...

Sometimes you just have to take the bad days as well as the good ones

One day, when it's my day.

  I've seen a lot of people fall in love.  I see my mom and dad everyday how easily it is for them to fall in love with each other all over again every time he kisses her or makes her breakfast in the morning. 

But what I experienced yesterday almost brought me to tears...

I've seen a lot of people fall in love.  But not like this...

Yesterday I had the great privelage of accompanying my brother with his proposal to the love of his life.  It was the greatest moment of my life so far. 

It was her birthday yesterday and he said that he would come and get her for dinner at around five.  But that was just a rouse to get her to look as pretty as possible.  Instead of him picking her up, me and my sister showed up on her doorstep with a camera and a small handfull of flowers with a note on it explaining the situation of what was going on.  How he sent my sister and I to take to a bunch of places that meant a lot to her and my brother.  At every place there was another flower that she would find with a riddle explaining the next place that she would go.  Well while we were stuck in the BYU traffic she began to tell us all about her experiences with my brother. 

It was so beautiful and I began to think back to all of the memories that I had with her and my brother.  It used to be that they would kiss and I would scream PDA to the top of soul.  But now when I see them kiss I just know that they truely love each other. It's really sweet actually. They make each other so happy and when you look at them you can see that without a doubt they will spend the rest of their lives doing just that.

By the end of our journey finding all of the flowers, we ended up at the LDS Mt. Timpanogas temple where he was waiting patiently for her in the shirt he had so nervously ironed and the tie she had so graciously bought him.  She walked over slightly anxiously and it was dark outside but the lights on the temple were never ending. So, we could still see the look on their faces when they caught each others eye.  He then kissed her face and began to recite the poem that he had written just for her:

                                         Happy Birthday Caitlyn
                                        Todays a special day
                                         I've brought you here to ask you
                                        Please answer right away

                                        There's places I'd like to take you
                                         And places we haven't been
                                        Places that are close to us
                                        Or on a map we could pin

                                         We have had a long journey
                                         And more will come I am sure
                                         But I just keep telling myself
                                         That I belong with her

                                          I have a ring, as you can see
                                          Kneeling here on bended knee
                                           Happy Birthday Caitlyn
                                          Will you marry me?



They love each other so much.  And to understand the poem, there is one more thing you should know about them.  They have been dating for almost two years.  The reason that has been such a long time for them is because back in December, when he was originally going to propose to her, they had a little stopper in time.  Her mother.  He went to California to meet her family and for no reason at all she decided that he wasn't good for her.  Needless to say that when I heard about this I couldn't contain myself from laughing.  I can honestly say that I have never seen anyone more meant for each other than these two.  But this was a long process that sadly to say, is not quite over.  Her mother still so high strung and doesn't approve of him which no one understands at all. 

but as I was standing there filming this moment, I couldn't help but notice that she was smiling so hard (or maybe it was the tears streaming down her face) but she was so in love with him in that moment that she couldn't really say yes.  But from the very second that he got on his knee she couldn't stop nodding her head.  He slid the three carot diamond ring onto her finger and they just embraced each other for what felt like all night.

I would love a love like theirs one day.  They can just be silly with each other whenever they need to.  They trust each other enough to fix each other when it's necessary.  And they love each other enough to deal with the hard stuff as if it is their own problem. 

I truely believe that love is just the ability to be in peace and happiness even when the reasons to be happy seem scarce as you are around that one person, place, or thing that makes this possible.

Maybe one day, it will be my turn to experience true happiness. Or I guess, as you call it, love.

What just happened?

It went from Barbies, American Girl Dolls, and Polly Pockets to improving my skills in Dance, Piano, Violin, Acting, and Reading.

I didn't even care...

It went from stressing about the drama at Recess to making new friends in Jr. High

I was scared...

It went from being excited about a locker to deep black depression.

I almost died...

It went from finally making friends to saying goodbye to all of them all at once.

I cried...

It went from falling in love with my life and my best friend to adding a job on top of everything else.

I was stressed...

It went from one job to another and then another and everything else that you can imagine in between.  I have one year left.  

I went from carelssness to stressed in an amount of time that was clearly not long enough.  In Michael Krukow's blog called "Wanna Know How I'm Human?" there is a line that he uses that I think describes the transition from childhood to adulthood beautifully.  He says:

                         "I am stuck right now, right ont he cusp of the conclusion of my childhood and the beginning of adulthood" 

The reason that the teenage years are so stressful and awkward is because you're no longer a child but you are also not an adult yet even though the world expects you to act like you are.  If I could go back to the time when it was expected of me to play barbies.  When every day at school was a party because the teachers were funny and all the activities were fun honestly I can say I think I would only do that for one last day.  I would do it one more time just so that I could say goodbye.  I grew up so quickly that I didn't really notice.  I didn't really get to say goodbye.  But there is so much in the future that I look forward to.  I honestly look forward to working because I get to choose everything.  I get to choose where I work and I get to make a whole new set of friends and I get to go on vacations.  I get to get married and raise kids and be happy.  Yes, I will be stressed but let's be honest stress is real.  I was stressed when I was a kid whenever my mom grounded me, I was stressed in elementary school when that guy didn't ask me out.  I was stressed in Junior High when I didn't have friends and wasn't doing as good in school as everyone else.  I'm stressed now with relationship shiz and I will most likely be stressed in the future.  People often don't want to grow up because they say it's just so stressful.  Everyone is stressed always.  It's inevitable; you can't escape it and the stress is always going to be real to you even if someone else thinks it's dumb.  So, I say take that stress and turn it into something colorful like those crayons we tell ourself life took away...

How