I got to take a trip to Maui, Hawaii with my mom over Spring Break. It was the best vacation ever! Here are a just a few of the several hundered pictures we took. So much fun! We can't wait to go back! :)

Excited to be in Maui!!

At the Luau. So pretty!

First sunset!

Beach!

Normal. Dog at the beach!

Lucious and green scenery!

So excited to be at the aquarium! 

Lovin me some Maui Ocean Center

My momma :)

Sunrise bike ride. Don't worry, it rained, sleeted, and was entirely foggy. This was about what our sunrise looked like anyhow.

This is what we got up at 3 AM for. Haha. It was still fun though!

Cleared up as the day went on!

Pretty!

Snorkeling day! Super excited.

Seriously the ocean felt like a heated pool. It was so great.

Look alike tiki men. It's actually our flippers under water. Hahah.

"Road to Hana". Day trip, so prettty!

We didn't match purposely... wierd.

loved the waterfalls :)

Wine tasting. So yummy!

whale watching! stoked!

 

first sighting! 

All the white on the fin is actually scar tissue. You can generally judge the age of the whale depending on how much there is.

There was some serious business goin down right before this. The mom and her baby were surrounded by 4 or 5 other males, and they were getting really mad with each other, trying to be with the momma. There was fighting happening under the water (less than 50 yards from our boat) and then this happened! 3 times! 90,000 pounds of blubber jumping out of the water. It was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

On our way back, we got to see dolphins! This was actually our second sighting of them (the first was a school of a few hundred Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins). These are Bottle Nose Dolphins and this picture is not zoomed in. They were so close to the boat! This is also rare cause they generally hang out under the water but they felt like showing off today :) this is the dad, but the mom and baby were swimming close by!

Again, this is not zoomed in. Crazy how close they were! It was super neat!

I decided to take a break from blogging due to a lot of crazy things happening... During the past year, however, I've grown a lot and I'm ready to start again. Just a few things that have happened:

• I went through several bad relationships and lots of ups and downs in my social life. However, Christmas day 2011, I started talking to a wonderful man, and fell head over heals fast. We celebrated our 6 month anniversary yesterday, and I'm so excited for more to come :)
• School got to be pretty confusing and became a total downer for me. I changed my major from Elementary Education back to Nursing (which was my original choice), and tried to take some pre-req. classes again. That didn't go so well, but luckily I had an amazing guy by my side to support me every step of the way.
• I began working at a daycare as a substitute on call teacher during March 2011, and sadly ended my time there May 2012. It was the longest job I've ever had and I really learned a lot while I worked there. During my time there, a co-workers husband was in a serious motorcycle accident and was life flighted, in the ICU, and having multiple surgeries, all adding to around a MILLION dollars of medical bills. By the grace of God, he was wearing a helmet, and he pulled through but none the less it was a very challenging and emotional trying time. I worked a lot for those few weeks, and I saw that not only were we a center caring for children, but we are also a family. We all stepped up to help the family the best we could and it was so special to see everyone coming together. I knew to never take another moment for granted. They can be taken so fast.
• I decided SUU (Southern Utah University) was not the right fit for me, moved home, deciding not to go back in the fall, and applied at SLCC (Salt Lake Community College). I am taking a summer off from classes and will start again in the fall.
• I got a job at McDonalds. It was really rough for the first 2 weeks due never having worked in fast food before. Training was sort of brutal, but easier knowing that I'd be transfering to the new store soon. This is not the job I want for the rest of my life, but it's something to help pay the bills for now. After I got the hang of things, it quickly became much easier and I actually sort of enjoy it now. Although... they just asked me to do graveyard shifts... (9PM-4AM)... not sure how I'm feeling about that yet. I will be starting that at our newly remodeled location tomorrow! Opening day!

Thanks for reading. I feel better now that I'm caught up on here. I'll be more consistant from now on. Til next time :)

Confidence

I heard this song on my iTunes this morning. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and desire to be better in every aspect of my life. It means a lot to me so I thought I would share it. Unfortunately I couldn't find it on youtube, but here are the lyrics :)

Before it was Said by FFH

Every day I sit and pray to God above
To watch over me and my family
But every day I seem to pray the same old thing
In the same old way, and I start to think

That maybe I should change
And find something better to say
But I've learned to believe
You always hear me when I pray

So I get down on my knees
'Cause I'm stronger than these
Voices inside of my head
They try to deceive me
And make me believe
That I would be better instead
To take my requests and put them to rest
But You're already one step ahead
You knew just what I would say
Before it was said

Every night I lie awake wondering
If You're listening to every heartbeat
You've told me that You know the deepest part of me
And You'll watch over me and my family

So I guess I shouldn't change
'Cause You hear every word that I say
And I know You are here
When I come to You this way

So I get down on my knees
'Cause I'm stronger than these
Voices inside of my head
They try to deceive me
And make me believe
That I would be better instead
To take my requests and put them to rest
But You're already one step ahead
You knew just what I would say
Before it was said

So I guess I shouldn't change
'Cause You hear every word that I say
And I knew You were here
When I knelt down today

So I get down on my knees
'Cause I'm stronger than these
Voices inside of my head
They try to deceive me
And make me believe
That I would be better instead
To take my requests and put them to rest
But You're already one step ahead
You knew just what I would say
Before it was said

People are Tacky

There are several things that I've experienced in the last several days that I think are extremely tacky.

• Breaking up with someone over the phone is tacky:
• This actually happened to me this week. I'll admit it's a step up from email or texting, but still... if you can't break up with the person to their face, there's an issue.
• Offering an employee a new job over instant messaging is tacky:
• Someone close to me had this happen. She accepted this new job. Her boss later called and took back the offer. This is bad on many levels.

We're so attached to our rapidly increasing technology that we can't have an important conversation, like those listed above, face to face. Unfortunately, this is a growing problem. I am all in favor of adapting our lives to what we've got surrounding us, but I also think that we need to still know how to appropriately deal with important situations. If people could handle these scenarios before all this new stuff came about, then surely we can do the same now.

• Over the top tattoos are tacky:
• Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to tattoos in general. That would be dumb because I have one myself. However, it's located on my ankle and very discrete. I can still be a professional. I agree with self expression, but I also think it's taken too far when it covers your entire limb, back, face, or any other location of your body.

I got a hug from Jenna!

           My roommate Jenna came upstairs looking for some help this afternoon. She was looking for assistance in replacing a brake light in her car. My car has a similar set up and I've replaced my lights before so I took a shot at it. Alas, I was successful! Jenna was super excited when I was able to help her. She gave me a big hug and said that I won "The Best Person of the Day Award". This is sort of a big deal because apparently it only happens once a day, hahah. Jenna is not the hugging type of person so it was an even bigger deal. I've never seen Jenna give anyone a hug. Ever. It was quite an exciting event that I got to take part in :)

Spring :)

 

These are just a few of the beautiful flowers that I got to see when I was home in

Salt Lake for Mother's Day weekend. The weekend was gorgeous and the weather

was spectacular. The yearly Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point is an incredible

sight, and I hope to go again in the future :)  

My beautiful Mother on Mother's Day Weekend! :)

         

Explanation

            Today, I am starting on this new adventure of blogging. I have always been an avid journaling fanatic, but lately I've been slacking because it hurts my wrist to write so much. I also have a deep love for my laptop and enjoy typing, so I figured I would give this a shot. I can still get my thoughts out and my hands can actually keep up with my brain at this rate :) I'm much faster at typing than writing...

           So, what actually inspired me to start this blog is a technology presentation in my Maymester class this morning. We are teamed up and each group chooses a piece of technology to implement into our classrooms (iPod, cell phone, Skype, you name it). The group that presented today chose to discuss how to apply blogging when we are teachers. I'm all about going green, so when they shared how many things you could do with blogs and save paper, I got really excited. Henceforth, an idea was born.