brick oven new cal reunions

We (former New Cal missionaries) love when the Mautzes come to town! Mostly because we love them so much, but also because they take us all out to dinner so we can see and catch up with everyone.

Somehow we didn't end up taking a group picture this time (I think the group is getting too big!), but here's (mostly) everyone:

It was fun to see one of the young women from New Caledonia as well! And our mission president and his wife were able to make it too. So fun!

Was there ever a group of missionaries that loved each other as much as we do? I don't think so.

have I mentioned how much I hate the snow?

the pros and cons of frontrunner:

cons
-it's always late (forcing you to wait in the snow), except when the shuttle bus is late getting there. then it's on time (causing you to miss it and thus forcing you to wait in the snow).
-they made the provo station a convenient 25-minute bus ride from school.
-it takes the same amount of time to get to school from sojo as the express bus took, except now the commute includes switching from tram to bus (in the freezing cold and snow). that is, if the bus is still there.
-no heat? they do realize it's the dead of winter, right?

pros
-it runs later at night (meaning that when the shuttle makes you miss it, it will be even colder while you have to wait).

good going, UTA. not.

*noise that the gremlins make as they change into gremlins*

Nothing like being humbled by a 16th century French author.

I am relieved to report that my French Renaissance prose class is going slightly better than it was at the offset. We have moved on from the scandal-loving Rabelais, and I'm not having to skim over semi-pornographic passages and I don't fear looking up the meaning of words anymore. Not only that, but this last reading that we did was actually quite inspirational.  

Lady Oisille:

"My children, what you ask of me, to find what would undo human despair, is no easy task. I have spent my entire lifetime searching and have found but one solution--the reading of Holy Scriptures. There one finds true and perfect spiritual happiness, itself the basis for bodily repose and health. If you ask what, in all these years, has assured my joy and good health, I can tell you this. The moment I rise in the morning, I pick up the Scriptures and read. I meditate upon the goodness of our God, who for our sake sent his son on earth to bring us the holy word and the good news for the remisson of our sins and the payment of our debts. This he does through his gift to us of love, worthiness, and ultimate sacrifice. These thoughts fill me with such joy that I take my psalter and in great humility give enthusiastic voice to the wonderful hymns and canticles that the Holy Spirit inspired in David and the other psalmists. The happiness this brings me is so great that whatever the travails of the day, I see them as so many blessings. For through faith I have him in my heart who has taken these burdens upon himself for my sake. 

"Likewise before supper, I withdraw to take in some spiritual nourishment, to think of all that has transpired during the day, so that I might ask for God's forgiveness and give thanks for his many kindnesses. And thus I retire with my thoughts of his love, peace, and power, protected thus against all evil. And this, my children, after years of searching in vain for happiness in other places, is the activity I have chosen. I am of the opinion that if every morning you were to give one hour over to reading and to saying your prayers devoutly at Mass, you would find, even here in this barren place, the splendors of any city. For whoever knows God discovers beauty everywhere, and whoever does not finds all things ugly. 

And so I tell you, follow my counsel if you wish to live in joy."

So there you go. Now go read your scriptures!! ;)
But seriously. Oisille is supposed to be like the evangelist in the story, so she's always encouraging people to read the scriptures for themselves (the reformation... go figure), but I just love at the end there how she talks about taking time at the end of the day to think about what has gone on, ask God's forgiveness, and "give thanks for his many kindnesses." How wonderful would it be to go to bed every night with your thoughts centered around Heavenly Father's "love, peace, and power, protected thus against all evil." No wonder that's where she found happiness. I think I'll try this method, too. 

Holy Places

Spending too much time at my house is bad for me because I just start to think of all the decorating projects I could do if I had a house. But I don't have a house; I have a room. So my designing is limited to four sad little walls. Ah, to be a grown up. One day, maybe. 

Anyway, at church we are doing this thing where every month there's a different thing to work on. January is all about making holy places, whether it be in your room or your car or your workplace or wherever. So since I've been spending so much time in my room, I decided that would be a good place to start. Besides the fact that I have been trying to clean my room since I got home from France (four. months. ago.).

The theme for the year is "Stand in Holy Places," from the scripture D&C 87:8, which was the inspiration for my new wall.

Here is the before picture of the wall above my desk:

I love my safari poster, but it's been there long enough. 

I bought a whole bunch of frames from the DI...

 and even lucked out getting these really nice frames for only $8 for all three. Score!

I painted all the frames white, but the two roundish ones didn't really cooperate. On Saturday, I went out to get some more spray paint and thought that I would just go to Hobby Lobby and buy a round frame, but then I thought to go to a different DI, and what was waiting for me there but this little beauty of a frame: 

 It made me so happy :)

I also spent a few hours making up some posters for the wall. Of course I needed the scripture on there, so this is what I made:

Unfortunately, I forgot the measurements of my frame while I was making it, so I had to cut off the bottom (I'll fix it sometime and print out the whole thing so it fits). Still cute. 

Mapping out the wall:

Ta-da!! The finished wall.

I filled the frames with pictures of some of the temples I've been to. Pictured here are the Provo, Boston, Manti, Los Angeles, Logan, Nauvoo, St. George, Washington DC, and Fiji temples. 

No, these are not the exact words to the scripture, but they are the lyrics to a Chris Tomlin song (yes, again, I listen to the Christian station. don't judge) which I love. It's almost the scripture...  

The after of that cute frame I found. Love it.

I like this one. It's "endure to the end" in all four languages from my mission: English, French, Fijian, and Bislama. I did it because I love that the expression for "endure to the end" in Bislama is "stand up strong." Gotta love those pidgin languages.

I've also been spending hours trying to make my bookshelves cuter. I would have to say that I've succeeded. At least I think they're cute.  Now if I can keep this space clean, it may just work as my holy place.

So... any ideas for other "holy places"?

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.