Goal: to be just whelmed

I have so many things going on in my life at the moment. I think I'm juggling at least 5 different huge things in my life at the moment that have big looming deadlines in the next 3 months or so. Bill and I were scheduling some things we want to get done in the next couple weeks and it completely blew me away how much of our time is already booked for weeks in advance. I have a very strong desire to cut work out of my life so I can get everything else done. Anyone have any ideas how I can continue to finance my life if I do that? :) I told him I was feeling very overwhelmed last night with all the things that need to be done in the next few months, and his comment was, "Well, what can we do to get you just to feel whelmed?" I thought it was hilarious! Sorry, honey, I don't think it's going to happen, but I'm glad you're thinking of me!

Rock Climbing & Birthday Fun

This has been an interesting and rather difficult summer for me for lots of different reasons. What with everything that's gone on, I haven't gotten out to hike or rock climb or do many of the fun things that I like to do in the summertime. Things have really started to turn for the better, but I've been a little sad that I missed a great season for outdoor adventures. I needn't have worried though. The Fall is definitely looking to be fantastic, and this weekend was a prime example. Bill and I went with the BYU Outdoor Adventure Club down to Maple Canyon (near Nephi, UT) camping on Friday night and rock climbing Saturday. It was tons of fun, and so beautiful! We had a fantastic time and I'm so glad we went. Friday night we got to hang out with my friend Alyssa and catch up and chat about all the craziness that's gone on in all of our lives in the last few months. It's so great to have good friends. I'm glad we worked together for awhile so that we could get to be friends. Saturday was filled with climbing, a little bit of hiking, and generally just having a great time.


Sunday my family got together for my mom's birthday celebration. It's always fun to spend time with my family and it was especially fun to have some of my aunts and uncles and cousins there. My dad pulled out a potato gun that he just built, and we had a fantastic time shooting those super soaker squishy balls out of it. My parents have a park right behind their house that we went out to and had a great time shooting the balls for my nieces nephews and cousins to catch. The houses were too close by to shoot actual potatoes, but we had tons of fun with what we used. I wish I had pictures to post, but I'll have to wait to get them from my sister. What a great weekend!

I love to dance!

While I was at BYU I took a bunch of ballroom dance classes. I loved them! I don't know what it is about dancing, but I just love it. Since I've graduated I haven't danced very much, but every once in awhile I get the chance to go dancing and it is always so much fun. Way back at the beginning of the year I went on a couple dates with this guy who was the best partner I've ever danced with. I've danced with guys that have better skills than him, but he and I just danced better together than I ever have with anyone else and it was like magic was happening every time we stepped out on the dance floor. I was pretty sure it was love at first dance. It was fantastic for the 2 dancing dates it lasted. lol. The experience got the dancing itch started again for me.

Well, my cute boyfriend was ever so accommodating to take a social dance class at BYU this semester. I've had my fingers crossed for months hoping that he'd get addicted like I did and want to keep dancing, particularly with me. Last night was the first time we've really danced together since our first date in February, and it was amazing! He has a foxtrot test next week, so I was helping him practice, and it was so much fun for the few minutes we got to dance. I don't know if he's as addicted as I am, but I definitely think the potential is there. :) Yay for dancing with the love of my life!

What is love?

I've had more opportunity to ponder this question of late than ever before in my life. I don't think I ever realized I didn't actually know the answer until lately. So this one's up for people to answer. What is your definition of love in a dating relationship?

You may be wondering why I ask. Mostly I'm wondering what love is like in a long-term relationship, marriage particularly. My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost 7 months, and I'm kind of past the butterflies-in-my-stomach-when-I-see-him part. I'm pretty independent, so I enjoy when we're together, but I'm not heartbroken when we're apart. I can potentially see a great future together, but yet I'm currently stuck in a major career rut and it's hard to imagine it's going to change anytime soon. I feel very stuck in the situation I'm in currently, and it clouds the relationship a little bit. I guess I just want to know what makes a long term relationship work and what it feels like to really be in love. What I thought it was before seems more like infatuation to me now and where I'm at is new territory for me. Any comments from anyone?

and 5 more things...

Blogger is dumb and only lets me post 5 pictures at a time, so here's my other 5 things:

5. Working at Philmont Scout Ranch as a COPE Instructor

6. Playing Program Director a Camp Kern BSA camp in California
7. Winning my age division at the Top of Utah Marathon

8. Graduating from BYU, twice :)

9. Running the Boston Marathon

10 Amazing Memories

My friend Alyssa posted on her blog the 10 Happiest Moments of Her Life. I really like the idea, but want to modify it a little, to 10 Amazing Memories in my life. I don't know that I could pick the happiest moments in my life. I have been blessed in far too many ways to pick just 10, however, I have had some great experiences, and they're fun to remember. I'm excited for all the years ahead to create 10 or 100 or 1000 more. Good memories really do make life more fulfilling. Here's some that I can think of:

1. Summers in Washington at The Homeplace (my grandparent's house)
2. Playing tennis and volleyball in high school

3. My best friend Kirsten4. Teaching English in Russia for 2 semesters

6 Months

I haven't spent much time on this blog talking about my boyfriend, Bill, except a brief mention here and there. It's high time he gets a little face time, particularly because as of last Friday we've been dating for 6 months. I'm not that big a fan of calling it an anniversary, I just think that's weird when you're not married, but it was a happy day, and I'm happy that he's in my life. He's quite an amazing guy and I feel blessed that he's in my life.

So for those of you that don't know, Bill and I got set up on a blind date back in February when my ward was doing a dinner/dance where all the guys asked all the girls out, based on getting matched up in this random computer program. One problem: we didn't have enough guys, so we (me as the activities co-chair and the Elders Quorum activity guys) went recruiting. Bill was in the other ward in my complex and one of the guys recruited him. We decided we were fated to meet each other because he definitely wouldn't have said yes to a random blind date like that from a guy he didn't know normally. On my side, I was really frustrated and angry about the whole thing because I wasn't having the best dating experiences at the time and it didn't help to feel like the odd man out that the computer program didn't match with anyone. I didn't really want to go, but with being semi in-charge of it, I tried to be a good sport. I did make my opinion and feelings abundantly well-known to our EQ President. That part is amusing because the leadership in my ward has kept close tabs on our developing relationship ever since. They are never going to let us live it down that we got together after my bad attitude. :)

So back to the date. I didn't have a problem with going with Bill, I was just frustrated with the process. Secretly, I was actually excited about the chance, but was too annoyed to admit it. Talk about pride...Anyway, it seems to have worked out okay, as we had a fantastic time together and that started the ball rolling on an amazing relationship.

Bill and I on our first date

These last 6 months have been quite the ride. I don't know that I would recommend starting a serious relationship before you're really friends with a person, but it's worked for us. It's been a bit of a bumpy ride at times, but we've managed to get through that and develop both an amazing friendship and relationship together. I don't know that I've ever felt so comfortable with a guy I'm dating in my life. I find myself telling Bill things that I've never told anyone else. He brings a smile to my face, can almost always make me laugh, is the most amazing support to me, particularly as this hasn't exactly been the easiest 6 months of my life, totally separate from our relationship, and is just generally amazing. Sometimes I struggle with my view of the future and what life has to hold, but when and think of ours together, the future seems amazing. The endless possibilities that are open to us give me a lot of hope when I've otherwise struggled with that.

I'm generally not a sappy person. Not outwardly, at least. :) I don't really like chick flicks, I get along with a group of guys better than girls, and I'm not that big a fan of sharing my feelings. However, I have my moments, and this is one of them, that I just feel like I need to open up a little and share a piece of my heart. I am head over heels in love with my boyfriend and I'm so excited for the future and I'm just so happy he's in my life. And for those inquiring minds, no we are not engaged, I will let everyone know when we are, and we are very content to have a decent length courtship, despite living in Utah County, land of introductions to weddings in 4 months or less.

Now, to add further to the cuteness factor and sappiness of this post, I've got to add some pictures from Friday night's celebration. Bill surprised me with a bouquet of roses when I got home from work.

Then he bbq'd steaks for us. They were amazing.


Talk about a great dinner. Steaks, asparagus, and mashed potatotes. It was so good!
We watched The Scarlet Pimpernel afterwards and spent some quality time together. Life's pretty busy, so it was so nice to have some uninterrupted time together. What a great night! Oh, and those roses are still as beautiful as ever sitting on my kitchen table. Way to go Bill!

Professional Woes...Advice Needed

I had a conversation with one of my friends at work yesterday about our jobs and what we really would like to be doing professionally and it really made me think about where I'm going in my life. She's a commercial interior designer but is working as an administrative assistant currently because the housing industry is so volatile and she and her husband need at least one stable job between the two of them. I am the office manager of a little company, which means I do everything from event planning to HR to IT stuff to project management to whatever else needs to be done. I'm closing in on 2 years working here. Somehow it's not where I expected to be right now. I got my degree in Recreation Management and Youth Leadership, which I thought would put me on track to be running a recreational company at some point. It doesn't really seem like I'm getting there. I spend 8-9 hours a day in an office setting, mostly at my computer. It's quite the struggle for my somewhat ADD personality. I just don't know that I'm best suited for a desk job. Of late I've found myself daydreaming all too often of what it would be like to do something i actually enjoyed. What would it be like to want to go to work every day? Now, if I only had a clearer idea of something I would actually enjoy, that would help! I really liked my job for the first year, but this second one has been slowly killing me off. It seems such a waste to spend so many hours doing something just because it brings in a paycheck. By the time I get home, it seems like so little time is left to do things I actually enjoy.

So here are some of the things I've contemplated doing to change this situation I've found myself in. If any of you that actually read my blog want to comment on which path you think I would most enjoy, or have any ideas that I haven't thought of, please let me know!

1. I could go back to school for an MPA. This would give me more business experience, but potentially put me back in an office situation. Not that I hate that, but I definitely want the subject matter of my job to be more interesting to me than the current medical IT research subject of my current job is.
2. Do the Family Recreation masters offered at BYU with the intent to teach, probably at the JC level and maybe later do a PhD and teach at a university.
   
3. Get a job at this very cool company I know, called Aspiro (http://www.wherehealingstarts.com). I would be a wilderness guide and be out guiding groups for 8 days and then of for 6. It's quite the crazy lifestyle, but potentially I could work into the management levels because of my other job experience and maybe the schedule would change. I really like this idea, but I can't seem to reconcile how that would have any positive affect on my dating relationship and that's really important to me. Yet, it'd be so much fun!
   
4. I could stay at my current job and just ride the storm and hope it gets better over time. Maybe the roller coaster interest level in it is normal. I make decent money and like the people I work with, so it's not all bad by any stretch of the imagination.
5. I could look for a whole new job in...well, that's the big question, in what? I'm roped to Utah County at the moment and that doesn't give me a huge list of options. Any ideas of good places to job hunt? I'm not having so much luck in the places I've looked.

We are the champions!!!

Aaahh, sweet, sweet victory! Last night's game was AWESOME!! Everyone on my team played really well and we just had the best time. I hit a triple and a few single base hits. We had a bunch of home runs from the guys and solid base hits from all the girls as well. Pretty much we just went out there and played our best game and just dominated. We ended the game half an inning early because we were ahead. It was great!

My Championship Team!

A couple entertaining highlights:

1. I was playing 2nd base and a girl hit her pitch high and infield. Our defensive pitcher and I both ran to get it. It didn't come quite as far as I expected, so I caught it, but with my glove about a foot from the ground and on the run. I was looking at the pitcher when I caught it, more worried about colliding with him than about the ball, so I was almost surprised when it hit my glove. Thank goodness for confidence in my ability to catch!
2. Every game several of our guys hit home runs with the bases loaded. They go blazing around the bases, way faster than those already on base. We usually bat guy/girl back-to-back, so what always happens is the guy that hit the home run is chasing down the girl ahead of him coming from 3rd to Home. I don't know why I find it so amusing, but it's just hilarious to see my girl teammates running more to get out of the guy's way than to actually get to home. It's awesome!
3. My teammate Mike is probably our biggest hitter. If he makes good contact, that ball is gone. The poor other team has no chance. In the 4th inning, Mike came up to bat and swung as usual at the pitch. He made contact, but not what he expected. The ball slammed into the dirt right in front of home plate and stuck. He was as surpised as the catcher, who had to scramble to get the ball out of the dirt as Mike sprinted to make it to 1st base. So funny!
4. I was playing 2nd base again in the 5th inning. A guy hit a smoking grounder right at me. I reached down to get it, with all expectations of easily picking it up and throwing him out at 1st. To my shock, I missed it by about half an inch. I think I didn't get my glove all the way to the ground and it slipped right under it. The thing that made the play funny was when my boyfriend Bill started laughing at me from the sideline where he was watching. I guess the look of shock on my face was so pronounced he could see it from halfway across the field and it cracked him up. Not my most shining moment, but so very funny!

We switch up who is 1st or 3rd base coach. I look so enthralled here. :)


Me up to bat. I think I have pretty good technique, even though I just started playing 2 months ago. At least I hope so...

My roommates and I after our game earlier this week.

So to end the already fantastic evening on a high note, my bishop sent us all out to Coldstone for ice cream on the ward's dime. What a great guy! I guess that's a perk of having a ward team. Go Alta 56!

It's been 7 Years...

I'm a little competitive. Okay, I'm a lot competitive. What can I say? I find immense satisfaction in coming out on top of the pile. I can't explain it, but it just does something for me that is incredible. I've lived in Provo for 7 years. That's right, 7 years!! Give it a few more and I'll have lived longer in Utah than anywhere else. Scary! Now, in that 7 years I've competed in a lot of intramural sports. Tennis, racquetball, innertube water polo, flag football, ultimate frisbee, and now softball. Not once in all those 7 years have I come close to an Intramural Champions T-shirt. That is, until now. Tomorrow night is the night. It's time to end this streak. And of all sports to be ending it in, softball is it. My team is undefeated in the tournament as of last night. If we win tomorrow night, the t-shirts are ours. I'm so excited!

Now, I've had some success in other sports, particularly running. I've amassed a few trophies and awards in the last few years in that sport. It's quite the rush to cross the finish line and find out that I've come in at the top of my age division. I'm a fan of my 1st place trophy from the Top of Utah Marathon in 2007. Who wouldn't like a black moose mounted on a slab of wood, if nothing else than the absurdity of it? My medal from running the Boston Marathon in April has a prominent spot in my little collection of awards. There's just something about finishing a marathon and feeling how my body is completely spent, how I've used up every reserve and every bit of energy and will I have to give that is incredible. Yet, it's an individual sport. It's a game within my own head. I use the other runners to help me push myself harder, but it's mostly mental.

Rising to success in a team sport has a completely different feel. When I graduated from high school, I couldn't wait to leave it all behind and get on to bigger and better things. That is, I wanted to leave everything behind save one thing: tennis. I LOVED playing tennis and particularly my tennis team. I still love to play, but now it's an individual sport. Back in high school I got to play with 10 other players and we were all pulling for the same goal. My win could only give one point towards our overall victory, so I did the best I could, but then went to cheer my teammates so hopefully we all came out on top together. And it was possible for me to lose my match, but our team still to win. It wasn't ideal, but at least it lessened the pain of losing.

So to come full circle from where I began this post, I'm playing on a coed softball team again, which I absolutely love! It's taken me back to the days of playing volleyball and tennis in high school, and I love getting the chance to feel the togetherness and challenge and fun of everyone working together to reach a goal. We're playing our championship game tomorrow night, and if we all pull our weight together, we are going to win and it's going to be amazing!

If all goes well, one of these is going to be in my possession:

Woohoo!!!

My newest sport

I like to think I'm pretty good at most sports. I run, play tennis, volleyball, racquetball, rock climb, play ultimate and touch football whenever I can find people to play with, and the list goes on. Basketball isn't really my thing, being that my face is at most other people's elbow level, but you can't have everything, right? Oh, and I'm a little timid when it comes to soccer, as I find it nerve-wracking to put my body in the way of others kicking as hard as they can, but since my boyfriend Bill thinks it's pretty much the greatest sport ever invented, I have a feeling I'll get over that eventually. :)

Somewhere in all the years that I learned to play these sports, I missed one that I've found to be tons of fun this summer: softball! Particularly co-ed softball. I played on a girl's team in May and June and now I'm on a co-ed team with my roommates and some people in my ward now. We won our second tournament game last night and I can't tell you how much fun it is to play, particularly with a bunch of guys that are REALLY good. That just makes it all the better! When I picked up a bat at my game in June, it felt like a foreign object. Now it's turned into a piece of equipment that I find far too much pleasure in swinging. :) It is so satisfying to get up to the plate with bases loaded and actually be able to hit into the outfield so that some of my teammates can get home.




Next week is the first game with my work co-ed softball team. It'll be interesting to see how playing city league is different than BYU Intramurals. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, I have a shot for the first time to actually earn a BYU Intramural Champions shirt. That would be so awesome!!!

I've Succumbed

A couple months back I entered the blogging world and discovered just how fun it is to keep up on all my friends' and family's lives. It's addicting, truly it is. Last week my best friend finally got me to promise I'd create my own. Thanks Kirst, I needed the push. It's about time I start contributing to the blogging world. :)

So those that know me know I love the outdoors and basically every sport and activity it offers. Winter, summer, it matters little, I can always find something fun and adventurous to do. For some reason this summer, I haven't had as many opportunities to be outdoors. Well, I guess that really depends on your perspective. I consider going out twice a month not very often. Others might consider that overload. :) That being said, I finally got out backpacking last weekend with Bill and a friend David from Salt Lake. It was awesome! We headed out Friday night and backpacked up to Red Pine Lake in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Minus the mosquitoes it's an amazing place to camp! I got eaten alive the last time we went camping and Bill didn't, so I borrowed his one-man tent and he slept out. Bad idea! Poor guy, he got like 25 mosquito bites. I thought my 10 or 12 were bad...

Anyway, Saturday morning we woke up early and hiked one of the mountains surrounding the lake, called White Baldy. It was incredible! Practically the whole mountain was a pile of boulders as you can see, so we boulder-hopped the whole way to the top. We chased a mountain goat up as we were climbing. It was super fun going up, but terrible coming down, so on the way down we took advantage of a bunch of snow left on the slopes and glissaded down them (basically we slid down on our bums with ice axes in our hands to self-arrest in case we lost control). What an awesome trip! To top it all off, Bill and I got back to Provo in time to make a late lunch with his family at PF Changs. You've got to love living so close to the mountains that you can do both of those things in the same day!