Sophomore Year

I successfully lived through my second year of college! Actually, I didn't just live through it... I lived in it. I really felt like I embraced the college life and grew and became a better person. That's a good feeling. So, here's a list of 16 things I learned this year--1 for every year of my formal education and 1 bonus one because I'm weird about multiples of 5... I don't really like them.

1. Be present in the presence. 

2. Be "Awe"-ful.

3. Be Yourself. 

4. Russia and the Pacific Ocean are HUGE.

5. I have to Pray, Decide, Listen, and Obey.

6. Family makes good the best friends.

7. Sometimes we need to remember to give Peter the benefit of the doubt. Peter My Brother

8. An active lifestyle is a happy lifestyle.

9. If you want adventures, YOU have to make them happen.

10. Be Grateful.

11. Chill Out!

12. It's possible to live with only $8 in the bank account.

13. Don't apologize when you have to give a talk or speech in public.

14. Heavenly Father listens and loves us.

15. The sun can burn you.

16. Nerd dancing every now and then, is cleansing to the soul.

It was a great year! I learned some scholastic things and I learned a lot of life things. I really feel like I got closer to the person I want to become. But I know that I still have a lot of work to do, so good thing I'm young and I have a lot of years ahead of me to get better. :) Life is the best and I'm glad to be living it! 

THE BEST TIME EVER

It's almost official... I'm dropping out and becoming an adventurer. When Olivia told me that I needed to sign up for Questival, I asked how much that was going to cost me. She told me the sign up was $30. At the time I only had about $70 and I was thinkin, "That's like half of all I have." But, I decided to sign up anyways and it's the very best $30 I've ever spent! Going into the weekend I wasn't sure how I was gonna like the whole thing. It sounded daunting. We were going to do a bunch of weird things and a bunch of very crazy and tiring things, all on a few hours of sleep. When I got home Friday afternoon though, I did what I do a lot--I just decided it was going to be awesome. My mind has an incredible power. If I decided something's going to be fun, it all of a sudden becomes really fun. So, I decided and that was the second best decision I made about the weekend (the first was signing up).

So, we started Questival. We're pretty competitive girls, so we started the day before... well, we started planning. We had papers all over the floor and markers and pens everywhere, designing our plan of attack on the weekend. It surprisingly takes a lot of organizational skills and pre-planning to do this adventure.

Some of our planning sheets

I am not going to give you a run down of everything that we did because it would take about 24 hours, but you can check out what we did on this sight: http://questivalteams.cotopaxi.com.

We started off at the festival where we checked in, got our SWEET new COTOPAXI backpacks, did some challenges, donated food to the food bank, ate a pizza, and took a selfie with a llama. At 7:30 we made a llama sound with all the competitors and sprinted to our car.

CHEEEEEEESE!!!

The first thing we did was go and thank a professor. We drove to Olivia's professor's house and videoed Olivia thanking her. Then we went and watched the sunset.

So good it doesn't need a caption

During the evening we gave a pillow to a homeless person, food to some homeless people, shared a cupcake with a friend, high-fived 20 people in a restaurant, escorted some nice boys across the street, shook hands with the mayor and did salutations to the sun at Sundance Ski Resort.

Do good=feel good

Sun salutations at Sundance

We also hiked the Y and wrote a poem. Then we did the crazy... we headed South. Our goal--go to all 5 National Parks in Utah in one day.

We got to Arches at about 3:30 a.m. We pulled into a parking lot near a campsite, pulled the tarp out of the trunk and while I slept warmly in the back of the car, my teammates, Olivia, our roommate Rachel, and our friend Lyndsey, slept in sleeping bags under the stars. At 5 we woke up and packed up in a hurry. We drove to Delicate Arch and hiked. Now, we were on a mission to win the whole thing. We weren't hiking for fun. We were running up to Delicate Arch and we ran back down. We ran everywhere. It was tiring. Anyways, you're going to get bored if I tell you every thing we did. So I'll give you the rough run down.

Delicate Arch

arches on arches

Sunrise

Canyon Lands

False Kiva Alcove (Amazing View... Just WOW)

#beaUTAHful

Moab

Capital Reef 

Hickman Bridge

Hercules ain't got nothin' on us! #shortgirlontheleft

Bryce Canyon

Baby Waterfall

Then we were going to hit Zion's, but our time was out and we didn't make it. But, we continued onto Zion anyways because we were determined to see all 5 in a day, even if we didn't get points for it. So, those were the major things we did. Some of the other things we did during the day:

Wrote a rap, another poem, sang the Utah State Song, did my nails, yodeled in a public place, gave flowers to a little girl, did a balancing act, mailed a post card to Grandpa, flew a kite, made a campfire, taught how to save someone who's choking, and a much more.

 We just balance each other out... that's what Sister's do.

It was the best adventure! And, I wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else. All four of us are very competitive people. We wanted to win and we were doing all we could. We ended up being 68th out of about 418 teams. So, we were pretty proud of ourselves.

You don't wanna meet us in a dark alley :)

This is just a side note, but there was one time in the car that we were laughing so hard we were crying. We're pretty sure we're the funniest people in the world. And it's nice when you can spend about 36 hours straight with someone and like them more than when you started. We solidified our friendships and had a DANG fun time!! I have kind of decided that Questival is in my top 2 favorite holidays. I'm already looking forward to it for next year! Oh, this is a wonderful life!!!  

Lent

I want to document this thing I did called Lent. Olivia and I decided to do Lent and give up desserts and goodies and fruit-snacks and granola bars with chocolate in them. We didn't eat that stuff for 40 days. Also, about one week after Lent started, we began training for a half marathon. We also recently started doing push-ups and sit ups after our runs. It's been pretty effective training for us. I don't mean to brag or anything, but through this training and eating healthy, I lost 10 pounds. I feel so much better. It's really awesome to look in the mirror and things fit better and I just feel better. I took some before and after pictures that I'm not going to post, but I really did change. I'm really excited about the change. Here's a quote that Livi sent me the other day that I really liked (please excuse the bad word).

Now the hard part, the part I'm scared for, is keeping up the healthy lifestyle now that it's not a self requirement. Because Lent is over, I can eat cookies and cake and chocolate if I want to, and I want to, but I don't want to go backwards in my progress. I don't want to find myself looking like the before pictures. The change is great, the keeping up with it... that's gonna be hard. I at least know that I can have self-control because before this whole deal, I wasn't sure I did with my eating any more. 

K... that's it. I'm just gonna do it. I'm going to stay healthy.