I'm dreaming of a white Katie....

Which actually happened today. I woke up to about 5-6 inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down strong. I almost left home with just a flimsy jacket (meaning a jacket that would keep me warm and still look cute, but that does nothing to keep snow out of my shirt.). I had to run back down the stairs a couple of times cuz it's been a while since I've had to walk in this much snow and I kept forgetting things. But finally I was all bundled up and ready to walk the 4ish blocks to class (of course I had to start my day on the opposite side of campus than my house...just my luck). Remember that the snow is still coming down at a pretty decent pace. By the time I got to class I was COVERED in snow. I almost wish I had a picture to show you, almost :) My hair took a while to dry out (I forgot to grab a hat...I've learned my lesson for next time. My forehead was cold!) It was funny to look around the class, you could so tell who had walked cuz they were covered in snow or had very wet clothes on, kinda like me :) Then for the next 4 hours I was in class (don't worry, I have an hour break, I'm not crazy enough to sit through 4 classes in a row, I would go crazy!) so I didn't see much of the snow. Then came time to walk back home. Let's just say it was interesting... I had snow blowing in my face and I had to try to watch out for the big piles of snow that were very good at deceiving me into thinking that there was a sidewalk under them. And to top it off I came home to this:

There's about 13 inches of snow on the driveway, my car, the sidewalk, it was crazy. Mostly because it's STILL snowing! The only thing that kept me from crying was that I knew Mom would want me to take pictures and enjoy it for her, so I decided I would put aside my dislike of the snow and have fun watching it come down. Just for you Mommy :) Then I decided that I would do Cindy a favor and clear the sidewalk and driveway. It was suppose to be easy, especially with a snow-blower, right? True, but that's only when the snow-blower actually likes you. I couldn't get it to start and I just gave up on it. So instead I shoveled the snow, which I never would have done last year. I would have waited till Cindy came home and made the snow-blower like me. But over the summer Cindy was brilliant and had a carport installed, so now I don't have to shovel as much.

The wonderful carport covers a little over half of the driveway. So, I was way more willing to shovel the snow by hand. It took about an hour to get it all done (I must admit that I took a lot of breaks. I  had to, there was 13 inches!) but I got it all done. As a sad commentary on my life, I actually enjoyed doing it because it meant that I wasn't sitting in front of the tv like I do everyday. Now I'm sitting all nice and cozy in front of the fireplace. I might get up and get some food in my system, but it's so warm right here....

Oh be still my heart!

Burn Notice is back on the air!!! And I couldn't be happier :D Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen is just a huge hunk of amazingness that I am at a loss of words. I love the plots, the outfits the characters wear, the sets, the awesome insights into the mind of a spy that you get, everything is just freaking A-mazing! If only they would bring back Michael Shanks' character, it would be complete. (If you don't know who Michael Shanks is then I shall direct you to the show Stargate: SG-1, also one of the coolest shows ever. Of which I have all ten seasons, Thanks Mom!) To have two such adorable hunks on one show would make me never want to delete it from my DVR. If you haven't seen Burn Notice, go and watch it now! But only if you have the time to devote to another show, cuz trust me you will be addicted. 

P.S. You can thank Laurie for the inspiration of this post and its title. I do believe it once was the title of one of her posts.  

I'm growing up!!

I went and picked up graduation papers today. I have to fill them out and turn them in to my advisor by Feb. 11th. It's kinda scary to think that in December I will be all done with school. It's all I have done for the past 16 years. I'm not sure what life will be like without homework. But I bet that it will be A-mazing!! ;D 

Now all I have to do is figure out what job to get. Any ideas?

Update

No I haven't heard from Alaska Coach Tours yet. I don't expect to hear anything till next week. But I have made my decision. I'm not going. I realized that not going was the answer when I went to the temple with my ward. I sat next to Bishop in the chapel by the font and we were talking about who would be a good replacement for Candice as R.S. secretary. He mentioned a name and then said he didn't know if she would stay for the summer. I replied that I didn't know if I was going to be here either. And at that moment I got this horrible feeling in my heart. I knew that I couldn't leave, there is still something that I need to do here and going to Alaska would be a mistake. 

It's interesting because just earlier that day, I had decided that I was willing to give up being home for all the fun things and that I would accept the offer, if there was one. But the Lord and I have an understanding. I make a decision and then I let Him tell me, in whatever way He needs to, if my decision is right or wrong. And this is was one of the most powerful feelings of "you're going the wrong way" I have ever felt. I will admit that it took me a few days of wrestling until my mind accepted that answer, but ever since then I haven't looked back. 

Am I sad? In a way yes. I know that if I were to go, it would be an amazing adventure and I would love it all. But I know something now that I didn't know two years ago when I went to Disney. There is a difference between living the standards of the church and loving the standards. At Disney I found out that I can live the standards of the church in any circumstance I may find myself, but I can't have the Spirit with me in those circumstances. While I was there I didn't do anything that would make me lose my temple recommend, but there were many things that made me lose the Spirit. And I'm not willing to live like that again. In the two years since then, I have learned so much about the Spirit and the need I have to always have the Spirit with me, that the thought of going a summer without being able to attend church and be apart of a ward quite literally scares me. I can't do that again. 

I know that some of you are surprised by my decision. And I can understand that, I was surprised as well. I don't expect you to understand or accept my decision. All I ask is that you respect it because it is MY decision. I love you all and I am really excited to see what the Lord has in store for me this summer here in Cedar.

My interview

So, I went and had an interview with Alaska Coach Tours earlier today. Turns out that they double booked my time, so I was interviewed by a girl who had never interviewed before. It went just fine, despite both of our lack of knowledge of interviews :) She answered all of my questions and I talked about working at Disney and driving our big van around and other stuff. It was fun, she seems like a cute, fun girl to work with. At the end of the interview she told me that Kerry McDonald (he's the one who makes all the decisions and who was originally going to interview me) would let me know in a week or two what his decision is. She also said that she thought I would make the cut. Now it's just the waiting game for me. 

P.S. Robby, I do believe the correct term is meese ;) 

I seem to be drawn to exciting/adventurous/crazy ideas

Let me explain. I was chillin in class yesterday when the teacher introduced a guy from Alaska Coach Tours who is here on campus recruiting people. They are looking for people to go to Alaska for the summer and be a Driver/Guide for their company. Their employees drive a 50 seater bus around Juneau, Ketchikan, or Skagway showing tourists the glaciers (usually people from cruise ships, like what Mom and Dad did). It sounds really exciting to me (though driving that big of a bus scares me a little...ok, a lot!) and I'm seriously considering going. 

I've only had one other recruiter come to a class of mine and that lead to the awesome adventure I had at Disney World, so it was exciting to hear another presentation. (And it's a great distraction from actually having to learn something ;) ) The only thing that has been keeping me from becoming totally committed to the idea is all the family stuff I'll miss. Nate's coming home from his mission, Rachel's having a baby, Robby and Jenny are heading to New Zealand (of all places!), and I'm sure there's other fun stuff as well. But I've decided to apply anyway and see where things lead. If they don't accept my application, then there's no reason to stress, but if they do then I'll have to make a hard decision. Right now, I'm trying to not think about it lol, it'll only drive me crazy.

I have an interview today at 3:30. I'll let y'all know how it goes!

Giving in...

I do believe I've figured out why I stopped writing a journal. I have a hard time writing without an audience (how conceited is that??!!! but alas it is true). Sure I can pretend that I'm writing to my future children, but that only works for a while then I get bored pretending and I want it to be real, so I stop writing. That being said, I'm now going to make this public so that I really am writing other to people (who hopefully love me enough to write comments so that I know of their love :D wink, wink) and so that this might continue on longer than a week. Enjoy!

Words of Wisdom for the day

I was doing my reading for Institute (that's a first!) and I read Mosiah 3:19, which I've read only a hundred times, but this time something stood out to me that I hadn't really ever thought about before. I bet that there's some of you out there that will just roll your eyes at me when I tell you what I thought of, but just go with me, k? I've always struggled when it comes to reading my scriptures, so this whole actually reading them and learning from them thing is new and exciting for me. Anyway.... So near the end it's talking about how we need to be like children. Reading threw that list, I think it finally hit me what it means to be full of love. I use to think that I knew what it meant, but now I see the depth of that phrase like never before.

Over the winter break, my brother Matt got married to a wonderful woman, Sabrina. It was incredibly interesting to see the response of the grandkids to having a new aunt in the family. Lizzie went flying at Sabrina when she came in the door and would not leave her side. Shelly would frequently tell me that she loves Sabrina. These two girls are 3 years old and had only met Sabrina a few times and already were enamored with her. Watching those two sweet adorable little girls give their love so freely and then reading that scripture made me realize that that is how I ought to be. I ought to... no I need to share my love the same way they do. I need to tell those I care about how much I care about them more often than I do. So, now that I've learned this I have to do it (you know, the whole get-a-prompting-from-the-Spirit-and-have-to-act-on-it sort of thing). 

But that's not all I learned while reading! (Man, who woulda thunk it? Two things in one reading?!!? Wow, I'm good!) K, go back to Mosiah 3:19 (if you're still there, good for you! If not, I don't blame ya any. I'da done the same thing), read it again but notice where it says "unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit", k stop there. What are the enticings of the Spirit? I looked up enticing in my handy-dandy dictionary and this is what I got: attract or tempt by offering pleasure or advantage. Now what in the heck does that mean?!!?! I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "tempt" the first thing that comes to my mind is Satan trying to tempt me to do evil. So, is that what it means? 

Since I was confused (surprise, surprise...) I looked up tempt in my handy-dandy dictionary. I got basically the same thing as before just replace tempt with entice and add that it's usually to do something wrong. Now I'm just completely confused. So the Spirit is using a tactic of Satan's to talk to me? That's GOT to be wrong. Mostly because if anyone is going to be copying, it's gonna be Satan copying the Spirit to try to confuse us. Which leads to my next point, quite nicely I might add. What if it really was originally something the Spirit uses and Satan took that and twisted it into something evil (as he is so very good at, unfortunately)? K, go back to the original definition of entice, take out tempt and it sounds kinda nice don't ya think? 

If you don't get where I'm going with this (I can't blame ya, I have trouble following my own logic sometimes...) think of it this way: The Spirit is enticing (i.e. attracting) us using pleasure (love, peace) as our motivator. While Satan is enticing (i.e. tempting) us using something the natural man thinks is pleasure, but really isn't. They are both enticing us to do something, but the subtle difference between the two is the motivation to do that certain thing. One motivation is the love or peace we feel, while the other is the short lived happy feeling we get when our selfish side gets what it wants. 

Now that we've gone through that long, drawn out explanation, I want you to go to Galatians 5:22. It says right there how you can tell the difference between the enticings of the Spirit and Satan. If you don't feel any of those things, run away from that thought as fast as you can! 

Cool, huh? Again, I'm sure you're just rolling your eyes at me wondering why it's taken me this long to get it and more importantly why I felt this need to write a HUGE entry about it. The only thing I can say is I, or someone else, or both, needed to have it said. Who knows, maybe it's you and you just don't know it? ;)

Dating Discussions

The other day I was over at a friend's house to watch a past season of 24. We were just chatting while we waited for everyone to get there and the topic turned to dating. He asked why girls play games with guys. Apparently, he's getting the run around from this girl he likes. I was way confused, cuz, let's face it, I have a crush on this guy and I can't imagine doing something like that to him or any guy I like. I don't know any of the specifics of the situation, but I told him that if I were to ever do that to anyone, it would be because I don't have any real feelings for that person. The other girl that was there said basically the same thing. He didn't really like that response (really, who would?) and said that he wouldn't initiate texting/calling her for a week. That would put the ball in her court and then it is easier to see her true feelings. I've done that with a few of my friends. It really helped me to see how important our relationship was to them. I was surprised at the outcome, sometimes pleasantly, others not so much. 

What I found the most interesting about the conversation is that someone actually asked ME a question about dating. I guess he didn't know that I don't go on dates all that often and when I do, it's usually a blind date (which I hate with a passion!). So you can see why I was confused. I mean, it could be that that is the standard for all girls everywhere, give the guy you like the run around. But if that is the standard, let me be the first to say that that is the STUPIDEST thing in the world! Guys aren't going to sit around forever waiting for you to decide that the game is done. And why would you want to put him threw that kind of torture? It makes no sense. But that's just my own opinion.

Yoga

So, I've decided that I love yoga. I'm taking it this semester and it is just awesome! I'm a little sore because of it right now, but I feel so relaxed and ready to tackle my homework, that it is just crazy. I haven't gotten to the stage where I can stand like the picture shows, but I can to the tree stance. :) 

Joining the craze

I figured it was time to become a blogger. But because I am me and I need to be different than everyone else, I'm not letting other people read this. Not yet at least. If I continue to really use this and write, then I'll make it public. Until then, this will just be my own little place to write down memories and thoughts. 

I've been thinking about doing this for a long time. I struggle when it comes to writing a journal. There was a time when I was really good at it, but something happened and now it seems to be more of a chore than anything else. I think about it sometimes, but that's usually when I'm nowhere near my journal. Hopefully having this, where I can get on anywhere I have the Internet, will help me get back into the mode of recording the things that happen in my life. 

One of the things I greatly regret about my struggling is that I don't have my memories and amazing stories written down. And with Alzheimer's disease running in my genes, it's only a matter of time till I can't remember anything. I want there to be a record for my children (when I finally have some..) to read and get to know me better. Which is the reason this might actually work ;)

So sit well back in your seat, keep your hands, arms, and feet inside at all times, and hold on for dear life!