Best of 2012

2012 was pretty good to me.
Here are the highlights from each month:

January:

The year started off with some good laughs. Megan, Gavin and I went to see Brian Regan at Abravanel Hall. We laughed, laughed, and laughed some more. 

February:
Jenny and I took a little trip up to Logan. We hung out with Megan, went to a basketball game, went hot tubbing, went to a comedy show, and ate a whole lot of crap. Good times. No, I did not become a true blue Aggie, and now that Megan has graduated and I don't foresee any other reason to ever go back to Logan, that's probably not ever going to happen. Oh well!

March:
BYU Lu'au!  We practiced those faces for months to get them just right. Loved dancing in the Fiji and New Zealand sections. I'd even say it was worth all the grumbling and 6 am practices. 

April:
I celebrated a quarter of a century of life, and Megan made sure that I had the best all-day birthday celebration ever, including two breakfasts, a bike ride on the Provo river trail, dinner out, and a dollar theater movie. Best birthday ever. 

 May:
I went on the road trip of all road trips. Seriously. You haven't road tripped until you have road tripped with your favorite senior couple. We drove from D.C. to Nauvoo and back, and we had a blast walking around the City Beautiful, attending a beautiful wedding, and eating at every buffet we possibly could. 

June:

I threw a bridal shower for my bestie--probably the best party I'll ever throw in my whole life.

Gavin and I trekked back up to Logan again to sleep over with Megan at the Inn on campus. We went to a water park, went bowling, watched a whole lot of Harry Potter, and ate nothing but junk food and Aggie ice cream.

I went to California to attend my bestie's wedding. Where she passed out, as she was getting married. Haha. Good times. It was beautiful weather, a beautiful wedding, and a beautiful reception. I even caught the bouquet!

July:
I hopped on a plane and headed over to the most magical place on earth: France. Southern France was truly nothing short of magical. I spent a glorious summer in Toulon, visiting elderly people, hanging out and pretending to do a lot of work, and riding the train all up and down the coast.

Jacqueline and I spent one heck of an amazing day driving to Apt, riding bikes up a horribly steep hill, and running around in the most picturesque lavender field on the planet.

For France's national holiday, we went to see the most incredible fireworks show EVER. ever. ever. ever. We went to this fortress in Carcassonne, where we saw a jousting match, ate some crepes, toured Nottingham castle, and yeah, even though it took us several hours to find a good spot to watch the fireworks, it was worth it. It was even worth the million hours it took us to drive home. 

(eating ice cream after the show as we walked back to the car. check out the fortress in the background, and that lovely happy glow on all of our faces)

Jacqueline and I also spent a weekend in Bretagne with one of my favorite senior couples who were serving their mission in Rennes. We went to le Mont Saint-Michel, walked around this amazingly beautiful rose garden in Rennes, drove to a couple of cute castles in picturesque towns, and even saw Merlin's tomb. Oh! And I met some fellow calédoniens at church :)

August:

The southern France bliss continued as I discovered Cannes, Avignon, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, St-Tropez, Nimes, Monaco, and my favorite, Nice. 

And finally, in Paris, I fell in love under the Eiffel Tower. With Paris. Though I still think that southern France has claim on my heart. 

September:

I started my internship with BYU Magazine, and it's been great. 

I also started my new no-sugar lifestyle, and contrary to what I would've thought, it wasn't the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Not even close. Four months and going strong!

October:

In October, I did nothing but work on this little puppy: Stowaway magazine, an online travel magazine for college-age adults. As a Senior Editor, I edited just about half the magazine, and I also wrote three articles (which you can read here until they get up on the Stowaway website).

November:

I skipped out on school for a few days to take a road trip from Arkansas to Tennessee. Nashville was so much fun! What do they do to food in the south to make it so dang good? Fry it, perhaps? Right...

Megan and I took off for another fun weekend in Boston. We had so much fun checking out Harvard, Salem, and all of downtown Boston. Basically we fell in love with Boston, and may or may not have plans to pack up and move there one day...

December:

 I managed to survive the last couple weeks of school, spent more time in the library in one week than the rest of the semester combined, and came out of it with pretty decent grades. The last day of finals, I took off for the great state of Arkansas. Here I am in front of the first store of what would become Walmart. Cool, huh? 

So, yeah. I'd have to say that 2012 was pretty awesome.

I hope that it was a good year for you, too. 

Happy 2013!!

the funny thing about life is...

Sometimes, you think your life sucks. And then something else happens to make it suck even worse and you realize that you were wrong before, but now you're not. And that's life. Megan and I often have to remind ourselves that, as bad as life is right now, it could be worse. The dialogue goes something like this:

"At least we don't have some horrible illness..."

"At least we're not morbidly obese..."

"At least our cars are still running..."
"At least we're not married to some jerky, mean guys..."

You get the idea. It's only a moderately depressing brainstorm.

Anyway. I'm sure you've seen Les Misérables by now, n'est-ce pas? If you haven't, you should.

I'm reading the book right now, and let's just say, Victor Hugo sure knew how to write one heck of a good book. So one of the main characters is Fantine, the dewy-eyed-girl-turned-unwed-mother forced into prostitution. Maybe one of the most tragic characters ever. She was so young and beautiful and innocent, and one dirtbag of a guy ruined all that. Okay, I guess it was more than just the guy who got her pregnant--it was also the innkeepers who ripped her off while pretending to take good care of her daughter, the overseer at work who fired her, the gossiping town busybodies who got her fired, etc., etc...

So yeah, young, beautiful, innocent, loving, full of hope, full of dreams. Maybe the best example also of how things can always get worse. She got pregnant, was abandoned by the guy she loved, had to give her daughter to greedy strangers to be able to get a job, got fired from the job, had to sell her beautiful blond hair, had to sell her two front teeth (they really couch that in the musical!), and finally got desperate enough to sell her body. Talk about life getting worse and worse. And granted, the song from the musical doesn't exactly follow the book, but it evokes the right feelings:

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
when hope was high
and life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die;
I dreamed that God would be forgiving...

But there are dreams that cannot be,
and there are storms we cannot weather.

I had a dream my life would be
so different from this hell I'm living.
So different now from what it seemed.
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

That song has been stuck in my head all week. It's just so sad and tragic (and makes me sad that I am not talented enough to be a professional singer). And yes, I realize that my life is not even close to as bad as all that, but it still sucks sometimes and feels as though it couldn't get much worse (until it does!). (Is it my pessimism making life so much worse? hmm...) But really, do you ever get to the point where it just feels like things are spiraling out of your control? That's about how I'm feeling right now, and I'm hoping it's due at least in part to being on break, and that the structure of school will bring back some of that control. But I also am realizing just how much you are blessed when you are obedient to God's commandments, and how much those blessings can be taken for granted--until they get taken away because of disobedience. Maybe that's the difference between me and Fantine--I'm the cause of all my problems! Oh boy, that's even more depressing.
Okay, but this one really did make me laugh:

Anyway. Through it all--all the hopelessness and suckiness of life--this one quote always comes back to me:

"No matter how bleak the chapter of our lives may look today,
because of the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, 
we can hope and be assured 
that the ending of the book of our lives
will exceed our grandest expectations."
-Pres. Uchtdorf

What's interesting is that even though Fantine had to give up a lot of her dreams, she really never gave up her hope. (What wikipedia has to say about hope: "Hope is the emotional state which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life.") She had hope in her daughter--hope that they would be reunited, hope that she would be able to take care of and provide for her, hope that her daughter would have a better life than she had. Somehow, that hope in her daughter gave her the strength to do what she had to do in life. 

Likewise (although, not exactly likewise, because prostitution probably isn't going to be what most of us have to resort to, to get through life), Jesus Christ is the source of strength (aka grace) to help us do what we need to do to get through life. By our channeling His strength--His grace--life doesn't have to be the killer of our dreams. Instead of always getting worse, life can exceed our expectations and be wonderful. So says President Uchtdorf.


I have to believe that dreams can come true and that hope isn't always in vain. And I have to believe that at some point, it stops getting worse. Who can back me up here?
Here's to hoping!

Time well spent.

but sometimes it gets all mixed together and suddenly I'm crying at my own jokes. not pretty. ask my sibs.

Nu Skin Christmas!

Well, it's the time of year again, when the Nu Skin Christmas party comes around. Maybe you remember last year's party? So, needless to say, I was excited for this year's party. And, irony of all ironies, Christmastime came around and I actually had a boyfriend, but his living 1,300 miles away kind of ruined all Christmas-party plans. Luckily my ol' back-up date is always there for me. Thanks for coming, Meg!

So right when we got in, there were tables filled with these cute presents:

 They weren't so much presents as they were cute little appetizer boxes. Either way, it was good :) 

 We were having a really hard time looking cute in our pictures. Plus I forgot my camera in the car, so we were relying on my crappy cell phone camera... Somehow the ones on this setting looked the best. 

 We got there a little bit too early...

So for the entertainment, Nu Skin booked The Forgotten Carols with Michael McLean. 

It was SO GOOD! I can't believe I've never seen it before. We laughed, we cried, and we finally understood all those random songs that we hear so often on the radio. 

After the show, it was present time.

I was so set to win a laptop. Didn't happen. I was consoled by the fact that they didn't give away any laptops, so at least nobody won one and not just me. 

However, we did get a lot of great presents anyway:

$100 gift card to Costco

$250 American Express giftcard

some huge donation in our name to some charity (obviously I paid a lot of attention to this one)

more free Nu Skin stuff (more than we usually get every month, that is)

two weeks' pay (woot!)

an Apple TV... 

maybe one day I'll take it out of the box and figure out exactly what it does. As a not-huge-Apple-user, I don't know how much use this is going to be to me... but I'll try to make it work...? Thanks, Nu Skin! Just wish I had the iPhone, iPad, and money (for downloads) to make this thing worth it. :)

I love my job!! Thanks Nu Skin!

You know you've got a good friend when...

she'll not only come to your French choir concert, but she'll make a sign specifically for you and stand up in the middle of the concert to hold it up and show you that you are, indeed, top.

I almost couldn't sing for laughing so hard. 

Anyway, so remember how I took French choir this semester? And how I would sometimes remember to go? Well it was actually pretty fun, and I enjoyed performing in our final concert. Now I'm not a huge Christmas music lover (especially pre-day-after-Thanksgiving), but it was kind of nice being able to sing Christmas hymns throughout the semester.

This was my favorite song that we sang: Minuit Chrétien (O Holy Night in English). I don't know how great this recording of it is, but maybe it was better in real life...? Oh, and don't try to look for me, because I'm on the second row, hidden behind a tall girl who decided to stand in the front. Merci beaucoup (haha, just kidding).

The line that really got me in this song was, "qui Lui dira notre reconnaissance? C'est pour nous tous qu'il nait, qu'il souffre et meurt" ("Who will tell him our gratitude? It was for all of us that he was born, that he suffered and died"). I just love that. 

So, maybe my message is, qui Lui dira VOTRE reconnaissance this year? And how will you show your gratitude to our Savior for coming down to earth to suffer and die for our sins? May He always be the most important part of our holiday celebrations. 

Gotta love...

the Festival of Trees!!

We go every year, and have since as long as I remember. When we were little, my dad built playhouses for the Festival every year, so we would always go to check out dad's playhouse. Is it just me, or do they not do playhouses anymore? Maybe I just don't notice anymore. The only problem with the Festival anymore is that it's so huge, and unless you get a giant cinnamon roll halfway through to get you through it (which I can't... so obviously that didn't happen), it's a challenge to make it to the end. Another thing is that it can kind of make you sad if you think about it too much, because these trees are done in memory of someone who has died... So apart from those two things, you really gotta love it. I mean, where else can you go and walk around for hours looking at decorated trees and gingerbread houses? 

Especially in Utah. There were TWO gingerbread temples. Loved it. I must've taken the picture of the Provo Tabernacle temple with Lisa's camera...

Love this bumbo baby.

We love the Festival of Trees!

And she loves grandpa!

We are totally fluent...

... in Middle English. 

NBD. 

This is our group for our Middle English class's performance of Herod, this really awful 16th-century play depicting that time when Herod had all the little boys in Bethlehem killed. Yeah... 

Tell me we are not totally legit with our swords though. Luckily one of the girls in our group is dating a boy who is in the fencing club. Quelle chance!

3 knights, 3 Herods, Nuncius

 So we each got assigned a part (or two parts, for the three of us below, who each had two or three roles), and we had to memorize our lines IN Middle English. No easy task, my friend, when you consider the fact that the great vowel shift took place after this play was written. Luckily for me, French vowels are pretty similar, and we had a great TA who helped us with some of the trickier pronunciation problems. After a solid week (cough, cough, day) of memorizing, I was ready to go!

The three of us played the knights sent to kill the babies as well as the mothers of the babies (or in our cases, our beloved stuffed animals. Mine was a giraffe)... kind of awkward, yes, but what can you do. 

I played Miles (knight) #1 and Muliers (woman) #2. To give you an idea of how unintelligible this text is, here is one of my passages:

Go lightly!

Gett out of this wonys, 

Ye trattys, all at onys,

Or by Cokys dere bonys

I make you go wyghtly!

Thay ar flayd now, I wote; thay will not abyde.

So, I mean, you can make sense of it... kind of. I only wish that you could read it in the Middle English accent that I have no choice but to read it in, in my head.  It just makes it so much better! I thought that I was going to hate this assignment, but I ended up really liking it. Not that I'm good at acting, by any means, but it was still kind of fun. Oh, but the best part was that afterward, our professor was saying something about how he didn't think this shy girl had it in her to be Herod, and then he goes, "And I get the impression that Mindy just grew up speaking Middle English." Haha! Love it. So, if you need any help with Middle English pronunciation anytime, just let me know!

Perspective

So I'm developing this bad habit of starting blog posts and then not finishing. But really, it always seems to happen that they would have been missing something anyway. I started this post a few weeks ago, but when this painting was brought up in one of my classes today, I knew it needed to be included.

"La Condition Humaine" René Magritte, 1933

On my mission, my trainer would often talk about her desire to be "quick to observe," as it talks about in the scriptures. I, being the naive little greenie, was so proud of myself for having this trait down. I mean, I noticed everything. We would leave someone's house, and I'd be like, "did you notice that sign on the side of their door?" (or something equally trivial), and of course she hadn't, which only furthered my foolish pride in the matter. This scenario replayed several times, and I was content in knowing that I was, indeed, quick to observe. 

Well, naturally, as life is only too happy to teach us, I found out that I wasn't as great as I thought I was. I wasn't so much quick to observe as I was quick to judge, and that often got (gets) me in trouble. Turns out, it's something that I really struggle with! I am starting to realize that my problem here has more to do about perspective than anything. I am quick to observe, that is true, but then I am prone to making snap judgments about what I see, without pausing to consider any alternatives. So this is my 2 cents about perspective. Take it for what it's worth...

You probably know how much I love Harry Potter. You may remember in HP 7.1 when Hermione, Ron, and Harry narrowly escape a brush with the wedding-crashing death eaters,

and Hermione gets so upset that they didn't celebrate Harry's birthday. Harry reminds her that they had just avoided being killed a few minutes previous, to which Hermione responds, simply, "Right. Perspective." (Here's the scene, in case you wanted a visual:)

A few weeks ago in my random honors lecture class, this art professor was giving a presentation, and he told us about something that completely blew his mind. He was at the park playing with his kids when he realized that the shadows you see while you're on the merry-go-round are totally different from the shadows you see when you're on the ground, and it hit him: God can see everything. At the same time.

And here we are, like little kids, just hanging on to the merry-go-round, and seeing the shadows and thinking we know everything. We think that we can see everything that's going on, but we can really only see part of what's going on--even when a different perspective doesn't even seem like a possibility to us. Perspective!

Okay. On to my stories.
So while on our little weekend Boston trip, I had three experiences that, much like with this art professor, kind of blew my mind.

#1
We were on the bus coming back from church. We were sitting in the very back, and I was sitting in one of those aisle-facing seats. I noticed this old Asian man sitting a few rows up. He was laughing to himself and throwing his hands up in the air and clapping, like any good loon would do. And I just thought to myself, "I love crazy people." So that would have been the end of the story: the crazy old Asian man I saw on the bus. Until Megan nudged me. She was sitting on the back row and had a good view of the whole bus. She told me to lean forward so I could see what she was looking at. It turns out that just in front of that old man was a cute little kid in a stroller... who was in desperate need of someone to play peek-a-boo with. That old man had obliged, and they were engaged in the cutest game of peek-a-boo I've ever seen. The old man would seriously do anything to make the little boy laugh. Most adorable thing I've ever seen.

(creeper picture from Megan's phone)

#2

We were walking through this outdoor market one night just as it was closing down. There was a woman walking in front of us, and I noticed that her produce kept falling out of her little metal rolling cart. She would stop every once in a while to collect her renegade items, swiftly stooping almost without missing a step. I commented to Megan, "Man, that stuff just won't stay in her cart, will it?" To which she responded, "Those things weren't in her cart--she's stealing them from off the ground." The silence of my stupidity ensued.

#3    

Again, on the bus. As the bus came to a bus stop, the guy standing there was obviously intending to get on, but it seemed to me that he was sure taking his sweet time. I was so annoyed that he was holding up the entire bus by being slow to get on. When he finally moseyed onto the bus, I said something about it to Megan. Then she, obviously being the wiser sister, said, "didn't you see the blind man waiting at the bus stop too? That other guy was telling him which bus was arriving." There had been a pole on the sidewalk, conveniently blocking my view of the blind man.


Just like that painting, in each of these situations, something was always blocking my view of reality--even if, in some cases, it was just my own hasty assessment. When looking at that painting within a painting, you really have no idea what could be going on behind the easel. And that lack of perspective is maybe showing the real picture, or it's maybe just keeping you from seeing the real picture. Either way, these are some life lessons, folks. And here's to hoping I'll stop judging things for what they are--or are not. 

Things are sweeter in Tennessee

Remember how I used to be obsessed with this song? Well, it turns out that things are indeed sweeter in Tennessee, and I sure had a great weekend there with some great company! Here are the highlights:

Church in Memphis. Promise we paid attention, despite the warning from 2 different people that this was a "special" ward... as if we couldn't tell from the Elvis look-alike with full-on sideburns and a purple suit. We were loving the whole Southern Baptist feel of testimony meeting and were kind of disappointed not to hear any "hallelujahs" or "amens" being shouted (though Adam considered it)... oh well.

We drove past the Memphis temple (with the adjacent church building that looked much more normal than the one we attended). I think it's the smallest temple I've ever seen, but of course still beautiful.

After lunch where our waitress called me "hot pocket" and offered us her babysitting services (yeah... no idea), we drove the few hours over to Nashville on what has got to be the most beautiful freeway I've ever seen. Trees line the road, but not like the trees in Washington state or Virginia where it's just dense and green. The fall leaves were still hanging on, and the colors were just beautiful. I didn't take a picture because I knew that it wouldn't do it justice, so you're just going to have to imagine that part. 

Nashville: we hit the highlights. The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum. 

Yeah, Adam likes cars. And guns. So really, this was made for him.

 Elvis's golden car...

 and his golden piano:

 watching a Jeff Foxworthy act about rednecks...

 Rascal Flatts!

 Yeah, they sell crickets. Like, to eat. Southerners...

 Nashville's Broadway

I really should wear hats more often, right?

 The CMT building!

We took a tour of the Ryman auditorium, which is a tabernacle where they used to have the Grand Ole Opry. There was this little video that they show inside, and they were talking about how awesome the acoustics are inside--"second only to the Mormon Tabernacle." Woot! 

Adam's favorite picture from the trip:

The stage. We learned all about Minnie Pearl (which I'd only ever heard of before from the movie Selena) and all the other oldie performers with the Grand Ole Opry.

Hit up the capitol building

 And then had lunch at the Loveless Cafe. 

My yummy Southern meal. Barbeque pork with sweet potatoes and fries? Yes, please. I may be Southern. Or turning it...

 Our marathon day ended at the movies... James Bond? His idea.

We took a tour of this beautiful old Southern plantation called Belle Meade.

The people who owned this house also owned the horse whose posterity includes every horse who has ever competed in the Kentucky derby... or something like that. Pretty cool.

 There was even a carriage house. Obsessed! Megan and Lisa, I know you'll know why... Gables books, anyone?

 Last stop was this park where they have a replica of the Parthenon. We didn't have time to go inside, but it was still cool to see!

 Yeah, we're cute. So then we started out on the beautiful "five hour" drive back to Little Rock... which definitely ended up being longer than five hours. Just long enough that we got to the airport late and I missed my flight! Good times. btw, if you've ever thought it would be fun and exciting to miss a flight, it's really not. It's pretty much just expensive. Haha. But maybe worth it. We went out to this Mexican restaurant and I got some fajitas--my fave, so it ended well :)

 And then we went to Walmart, because you can't go to Arkansas without going to Walmart... it's just not possible. 

So yeah... it was a great road trip! Who knew that Tennessee was so beautiful (when you ignore all its ghetto areas!)? If I go again, I'll have to bring a better camera and get a good picture of that highway. But yeah, I can guarantee: things are sweeter in Tennessee.