A Few Happenings Lately

I just love this picture of Will :)

My ornament I got from Sen. Hatch. I'm pretty proud of that thing

My singles ward put on a live nativity and they did such a great job. It was in a barn and they had all the live animals for it, even a camel, and we sat on hay bails for seating. It was the perfect thing to get in the Christmas spirit.

Em and I went and saw the lights on temple square with Jesse and his brother Matt. I always love going there.

Ty and I went cross country skiing on Christmas day :) That boy is way better than me on those skis.

How Cordie Tippets gets me to do insanity with her.

She opens up a box of chocolate and has me sample each one, then I feel guilty and have to work out. Great plan Cord.

Signed Up!!!

Only the half, but I signed up last week and training started yesterday! I'm so excited :)

Do you want to know?

10 things you may be interested in knowing about me lately

1. i started working for sprint the end of september as a host/tech. basically it's the perfect job for me right now

2. i am interning on senator hatch's campaign. i honestly have never been so impressed by a person. the work is kind of tedious, but it's all for a good cause. anyone wanting to be a state delegate, let me know :)

3. i've started making baby blankets for the church's humanitarian efforts. i've made about 5 so far and they are so fun.

4. i just purchased an ipad on saturday, and so far, it's been the best purchase of my life. michael and i stay up late finding the best apps and talking about what we used our ipads for during the day.

5. i basically have never disliked school as much as i do right now. basically there is just so many other fun things to be doing. i have absolutely no motivation or care about school.

6. i'm a ward missionary in my singles ward. i go visit inactive members every week. i usually dread going because it is so far out of my comfort zone, but i always appreciate it after and i really can see the blessings from it.

7. boys. . . definitely taking up a portion of my time :)

8. i found out today that i'm allergic to the glue on eyelash extensions. not a fun experience for my eyes or me while i was tearing off my beautiful eyelashes. (Em did such a good job putting them on too)

9. i've started eating a lot more whole/natural foods, (basically because the movie "fork over knife" scared me) but i bought tofu from the store for the first time yesterday, and i must say, i quite enjoy it. i'm excited to try all sorts of recipes with it.

10. my favorite quote right now is from president monson's april general conference talk,

"your future is as bright as your faith"

simple, yet bold

Books

Lately I have just loved books. Before this past month I can only think of one book I ever bought to read (I just read books my teachers assigned), but in this past month I have bought many books that I am so excited about. I think reading has become my new found hobby since I don't have school or work anymore to keep me busy, but I feel like there are so many books out there that I want to read that I will never have enough time to read them all. So right now, while my life isn't real busy, I've been reading...

I recently finished this book:

I read this book in 2 1/2 days and loved every minute of it. I had never read a book straight through like that before. I learned a lot of things about President Bush and our country that I had never realized. I really respect President Bush for his hard work and compassion during the extremely challenging eight years of his presidency. When I was reading this book, I appreciated his honesty and opinion on issues. It put things in a different light for me. I would recommend this book to anyone, even if they don't like politics or President Bush. I learned a lot about our country through this book, and that's something everyone can appreciate.

This book I just love:

It's a book by Elder Holland that has such great quotes in it about us being "created for greater things than we can comprehend." One of my favorite quotes in this book is this:

"God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future--to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities."

I love it! :)

And I bought this book today that I am so excited about reading:

I have heard nothing but great things about it and can't wait to see why everyone loves it so much :)

Busy Playing

The day I left from Boise I headed to St. George to spend time with my family during my nieces' and nephew's spring break. Mindy and Dave had invited us down and it was so much fun, even though I didn't get to stay there long. I had a plane to catch. I went from St. George to Florida to see my brother and his family. I had so much fun on both trips!

I came home, had an enjoyable Easter weekend and then went down to Pleasant Grove to babysit for a little bit. I had so much fun with the kids, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the fun things we did. Thanks guys for being so perfect while I was watching you :)

Finished Up in the Governor's Office

Weeks 12 & 13

I have finished my internship with the Governor's Office in Idaho. As it was coming to a close I was getting pretty sad, because I loved it up there and I knew I would miss it. A couple days before I left, a lady in my office gave me a gift with a very nice thank you card in it. That of course, only made me more sad about leaving, and I decided to just sit at my desk and think about the things I am going to miss, but I was pretty much just sulking. Wile I was sitting there some sad country music just randomly started playing. I felt like it was right out of a movie. They always play music during the sad scene in shows. Apparently someone was listening to music on their computer, (which never happens) but I just had to laugh about it.

I had a good last 2 weeks though. My sister Tricia came with two of her kids and it was so much fun for me to show them around and spend time with them. Everyone up there was so nice and so appreciative of the work that I did, and let me know that I was going to be missed.

I do feel like this was a great growing experience for me. I understand politics so much better and I enjoy it so much more now as well. This helped me to form my own views and opinions, and to stand confident in what I believe. I learned that if I don't understand something, then I need to research it from all angles. I was able to strengthen my people skills and talk with strangers comfortably. I met and got to know many great and interesting people. I will always remember the wonderful people and experiences I had up there.

This is about half of my staff that I worked with :)

Weeks 10 & 11

I honestly think my proudest accomplishment for me in week 10 was to eat a steak that looked almost exactly like the one pictured above. I thankfully got lucky and mine was a little bit more cooked in the middle, but not by much. Dad and I went to a Dairyman's Association dinner and when I saw the steaks come out, I was silently panicking to myself. I really don't like meat and the dairyman are really serious about their meat. I was really worried that if I didn't eat it, I would offend them. But it was actually pretty good, and I left that night without offending any of the dairyman.

These past two weeks seem to have blurred in with each other. I don't remember too much of what's been going on. Last week I sat at the Governor's main office desk for the week. So that was fun for me. I couldn't do much work, because all of my work was at my computer, so I was able to just sit and talk to whoever came through. By the way, I am getting pretty good at being able to carry on a conversation with complete strangers :)

This week was pretty slow for the people in the Governor's office. The Governor was out of town for most of it and it's always busy when he's in. It's nice when he's gone because it seems like I'm able to get caught up on work, but I hate it when he's gone, because then he calls the office so much. I have to be on guard every time I answer the phone, and then whoever he wants to talk to, I swear is never by their phone whenever I try to transfer Governor over to them. So it's pretty stressful for me when I'm trying to make a good impression.

It also seems like the legislators got really busy this week, but it hasn't hit the Governor's office yet. I think it's coming to us this week though. I mainly spent week 11 doing work that needed to be done by the end of April. Since I probably won't be here then, I thought it would be best if I did it before I left instead of just left it for someone else to do. So I wrote up a lot of proclamations and welcome letters this week.

It's been a really good week though. Everyone has been so nice and happy this week, I have loved it and I'm not ready for the session to end. One day Claudia, the main secretary, left about 2 hours early, so I was covering everything for her. About an hour after she left, she called me just to tell me thanks for all my help, and she was being really sweet about it. I thought that was so nice of her and I loved the compliments. However, after I got off the phone with her I realized she had just gotten back from a doctor's appointment and then I started wondering if she had been drugged up, but nevertheless, I still appreciate her compliments and I still believe them to be true :)

This has been making me laugh all afternoon so I had to post a picture. My dad got a new program that allows him to talk into his head set and it will type what he's saying. So all night long he has been testing it out. He says random sentences and then tells it to capitalize a certain word or make it bold or strike some part of the sentence. So far it's taken him much much longer to say it than if he were to actually type it, but supposedly it gets quicker the more he uses it. Let's hope so!

What Jennifer has Been Waiting For!!!

Jenn! I finally have pictures of the Condominium dad and I are staying in! About dang time huh?

Ok, so this is what the building looks like from the outside. Dad and I are on the fifth floor straight above the main entrance door, so our windows face the capitol building. We are only about 2 blocks away from the capitol so it's quite pretty at night when the capitol is lit up.

This is the lobby when you first walk in. This is also the lobby dad had to wait in for 2 hours when I locked him out of the house one night. He didn't mind it too bad though, he just found something to read and sat by the fire patiently.

This isn't our layout, but the look is almost the exact same. Same floors, same furniture, same counter tops. This is a little nicer because they have it decorated a little more than ours and they are at a corner and have windows on 2 sides, but this helps you get the idea of what ours looks like.

Week 9 was sure interesting

This picture is from a rally held wednesday evening formed mainly by the teachers who do not support the education reform plan. This was the largest rally I have ever seen from the 10 weeks I was a page and the 9 weeks I have been doing my internship. They had each person lined up and walk around the capitol. The line was big enough to make it all the way around the block the capitol building is on. I was impressed and sad at the same time. I sat and watched this crowd for about 10 minutes and I found it interesting that so many people outside that capitol building hated this plan and just 20 feet away inside the capitol so many people loved the plan. The protesters outside say the politicians agree with the plan because they want to punish union workers, secure their seat for next election, get money for their campaigns from big businesses and so on. The politicians say the protesters don't like it because they don't understand the plan. They don't understand that we simply don't have enough money to keep things the way they are, they don't understand that you can't stabilize an economy by raising sales taxes, they don't understand what is actually in senate bills 1108, 1110, and 1113. I've been pondering all week about who is actually right. I always expect issues to be black or white, but this isn't. This plan could be the best thing for Idaho education if it goes the way the politicians want it to go, but it will be pretty devastating if it goes the way the protesters think it will and if the teachers think it will fail, they will make sure that it fails. Most people who have called me about the plan know little about it, and if so it's usually the generalized version the press. Some do know a lot about it and are still against it though. And some people call in and think it's the greatest thing ever. I have followed this plan very closely and take every chance that I get to learn more about it, because I feel that it's important that I know all about when people ask me questions, but also because it's interesting to me and I have never seen so much opposition on one side and so much support on the other side.

Moving on. . . ha I have had the new job for a week now and everything has gone quite smoothly until today. I sit at the Governor's secretary's main office desk for usually 2 hours a day, but today I was there for about 5 hours. Within the first 3 hours I had four incidents dealing with constituents where the Idaho State Police had to step in and help me. Up until today I have never had an issue like that, I couldn't believe I had 4 all in one day. 2 of them turned out to be nothing and just harmless people, but 2 of them scared me. The first guy was asking where the governor was at and just acting really suspicious and would question me and then repeat everything I said like, "Oooohhh, so the governor is in a meeting right now, hmmm..." "Oooohhhh so the governor will be back in his office on Monday then." He was just acting really suspicious and crazy, he said some crazy things. Ha the police officer that was in my office at the time didn't get a good look at him so he was questioning me about what he looked like. And you know how that goes, once someone asks you what they look like, you all of the sudden can't remember, yeah that was me today.

Then later that day, the officer who has an office next to mine left early for the day and then thirty minutes later a real crazy lady came in. She thought the twin towers was a conspiracy theory and hated the government and started yelling and swearing at me and just saying some awful things. I didn't know what to do because my security guard was gone. I have a panic button on my desk that I can push, but she wasn't violent, just crazy so I didn't want to push it unless something happened, but I was still pretty nervous because I was the only one in that office. Luckily another lady walked in so the crazy lady left shortly after, but the security guard across the hall saw her storm off and called my desk and told me all the secret codes for everything incase that happens again I'll be prepared :) ha

Week 8

This week was by far the busiest week I have had as an intern, but I'm afraid this week might be even busier. Our special assistant for Health and Welfare got a job in Washington D.C., so last week was her last week. Amy, the secretary in our office, my mentor, and my favorite person ever, took over her job, which meant I took over Amy's job. But I don't have an intern to do the job I was doing, so now I am doing both jobs and although we didn't officially start our new jobs until today, we were busy trying to learn our new jobs. I found out about this only about a week before, so I had so so much to learn before the switch. This was like a job now, not an internship. I had to change my mentality too. Before I was just there to learn, but now I am there to work hard and do the best I can. Before, if I didn't know something I could just ask Amy, her desk was about 5 feet away from mine and she was always willing to help out, but now she is really busy with her own job and clear across the office, so I have to be on top of my game. So I was busy learning everything preparing for this week and it was a crazy week anyway. The capitol was FULL of high school and middle school students protesting the new education reform plan. It is perfectly fine if people go and protest, but these students got a little out of hand and were very loud and very disrespectful. One guy in my office told me he had a new name for the Capitol, "Daycare for a Day" because students were running around everywhere, even sliding down the banisters. So that was a little unnecessary.

I did have a really fun week though, everyone in my office is great and always so appreciative of the work I do. Wednesday I went out to a really fun dinner with my dad, all the new senators, a lobbyist and the Pro Tem. The lobbyist was trying to set me up with his 26 year old son the whole night though, because his son is engaged to a girl his wife doesn't like, so he's trying to break that up, and I guess he thought I was the girl to do it. I told him I was going to stay out of that. Right after the dinner I found out David and Katie had their new baby, baby Jack :) Friday night I went to Bannock Counties Lincoln day, Saturday morning Bear Lake's Lincoln day, and then stayed after for a meeting with Superintendent Luna and the teachers of Bear Lake to discuss the education plan. That was pretty interesting as you can imagine. After that we went to Logan, to see new baby Jack and he is so so adorable and then headed down to Provo for baby Liam's baby blessing on Sunday. It was so fun to see everyone there and all the little kids I just loved. Em and I had a date that night and when we got back we were locked out of the house, but didn't want to ring the door bell and wake up a child, so we just slept in the truck, except we didn't get much sleep. Sunday was Liam's blessing and he looked so cute in his vintage outfit. Then it was back to Boise. It was a great weekend and went by way too fast.

Today was a lot better than I was expecting. I was so nervous I was going to be lost all day, I worried about it most of the weekend actually. But it went really well. This morning when I got ready I made sure to put on heals and pearls so I would be confident the whole day, and I was. It worked! I was busy, but nothing too bad and I felt like I knew what I was doing the whole time! Hopefully it stays like that the rest of the week.

Finished with my 7th week

(Picture from -Eye On Boise)

I had a lot of weird, mean, annoying phone calls this week and I was starting to get sick of them by the end of the week. I think mainly because we are starting to get right into the middle of the session and the hot issues are becoming more real to people. There were a lot of sensitive issues that were voted on in the senate this week. So it was a tough week for senators and the constituents that didn't like the way the votes turned out. That being said, the ones that weren't happy called the governor's office and took out their frustration on the first person they talked to, which just happened to be a 19 year old intern who has no say on what the politicians do and was starting to get annoyed. . .

Monday I had a really rude lady call and ask if our office was working since it was President's day, and then questioned me about how much our office was recycling, and she was pretty belittling, which I did not think was real necessary. Then about 10 minutes later, I had a guy who was completely stoned call in and say that the state of Idaho needs to start growing opium to sell. If any of you have watched That 70's show where they are high and call the white house, that's exactly what it reminded me of. The guy was crazy and very anxious to get off the phone once he suggested that.

Monday night the governor did a phone town hall conference meeting about the education, so Tuesday I had a million people calling telling me what they thought about the education plan. A lot of people had good things to say about it and a lot of people had bad things to say about it. So Tuesday I was on the phone a lot.

I had one lady yell at me on the phone for nearly 20 minutes, and I couldn't even hold the phone up to my ear, it was too loud. I held it about a foot away from me and still didn't have a problem hearing her. The thing was though, she was complaining about President Obama so there wasn't anything I could do to help her anyway.

And you would be so surprised how many people I had tell me they were going to contact the court, because they wanted to talk to "Butch" and they couldn't.

Ha and one lady called in upset about the idea of Idaho bringing foreign investment into Idaho. This is how the conversation went:

Me: No ma'am, China is just another foreign trade investment, we already have foreign trade in Idaho. This will create American jobs, the Chinese will not be sending a community over. Only a few will come and they will have to obey American law anyway."

Lady: "That's not what I heard. I heard we are giving them land and they are building a community that is big enough to have an airport. This is dangerous! We can't have communist China take over Idaho and that is exactly what will happen!

Me: I repeat everything I said before and add, no there will be no "little China" in Idaho, a business is coming over, not their government.

Lady: "That's wrong, you must be misinformed because that's not true. You sound pretty young anyway, you probably don't really know what's going on. Let me explain it to you."

Me: "Ma'am speaking from the Governor's office I can tell you that they will have to obey American law and it's to create Idaho Jobs."

Lady: "You are misinformed, you are getting your information from the wrong place"

Me: "Where am I getting my information?"

Lady: "Probably from the Governor."

Me: "Okay, ma'am I have taken down your message and will make sure that it gets passed a long to the right department. You have a good day."

You know me, and you know that sometimes I can have a bit of an attitude. I would never be rude to a constituent, but sometimes when they are really rude to me, I want to talk back to them. But I don't :) I just sit there and smile and continue to call them ma'am or sir.

Working in that office, I have realized that we really do take into consideration everyone that contacts our office. Their opinions do matter and anyone that leaves contact information we get back to. That's what the governor is for. So even if I do get annoyed with some of the calls because they are yelling and are rude, they are entitled to their opinion and I have to respect that. I'm not making fun of anyone's opinion. There was just only so much yelling I could take until I was hoping that the next person that would call would please be nice to me.

The picture above is from an education rally on monday, with people who don't like the education plan Superintendent Luna has proposed. There were over 1,000 people protesting. The education bill passed in the Senate chambers on Wednesday after 5 hours of debate. The vote was 20:15. Later the IEA scheduled candlelight vigils in over 21 places over the state, to mourn the passing of the bill. So there was a lot of action at the capitol regarding those bills and Friday the Senate state affairs committee voted on the nullification bill which passed the house committee and floor, but died in the senate 2:7. There were a lot of people unhappy about that and started assaulting the senators to the point where the security guards had to step in.

A lot of action during week 7!

Week 5 and 6

Time is going by so fast! I can't believe that I am almost half way done with my internship. A normal session usually goes 12 weeks, but luckily for me, everyone says it will go longer. I've moved in with my dad in a nice little Condo just two blocks away from the capitol and we are staying busy. Every night we go to one or two receptions. Honestly, I love going to them just to observe everyone's social skills. It impresses me that people are able to walk up to people they've never met before and carry on a conversation like they have been friends for years. That is one skill I have been trying to develop since being up here and those receptions are definitely testing those skills. Here's what's been happening the last 2 weeks:

*** I tried cougar stew, bear pizza, elk stuffed mushrooms and deer enchilada's, none of which were very good FYI***

*** Mitt Romney called me***

*** I went to a tiny town called Melba for Capitol For A Day. CFAD is when Governor Otter and members of his cabinet bring the government to the people in little towns so they have a chance to ask the politicians questions***

*** I am still taking many many pictures, but that's one of my favorite things to do. I get to see how Governor Otter interacts with them, and I get to meet a lot of neat people, like the Ambassador of Tanzania, Consul General of Japan, Consul General of Canada, and a Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient. But my favorite was when his granddaughter's girl scout troop came in. She was so proud to have the Governor as her grandpa and was holding on to him the entire time***

***I wrote a letter to former Governor Dirk Kempthorne, which Governor Otter hand signed, so it was pretty never racking to me because I knew the letter had to be perfect***

***When I first started interning I would answer phones and I would have people go off on me, about an issue that usually they had misinformation about. Well, while the other secretary I work with would always try and correct them, I never dared. I didn't feel like I knew enough of the information to do the same. But about in the middle of my second week a lady called me with complete wrong information, so I decided to correct her, but she just started yelling at me. So I hurried and got off the phone with her, and just let her have her way. Well, She called back again this week. And I was so proud of myself. I didn't even get scared when I started telling her that that was not how a certain issue was happening. People like that are still unreasonable and will never let you win, but that is beside the point***

***I bought my plane tickets to Florida!***

I am staying pretty busy up here and am absolutely loving having my dad here with me. I'm getting a little spoiled :) Work is still going great and I am still learning a lot.

Jenn pictures of the condo will come next week hopefully...

Week 4 on the job :)

Week 4 sure was good to me, maybe just a little bit better for my dad :) but nonetheless, I loved it! I am so happy to have him up here with me. I can't say it was a very productive week though. We were hoping Governor Otter would call on Monday, (he didn't actually call until Thursday) so between texting my family to give them the latest news, such as when the governor has a 10 minute break in his schedule that he might call, and questioning everyone in the office to see what they think, it didn't leave me much time for work ha. That was Monday through Wednesday for me. Thursday I was just so anxious for them to get up here and show them around, I couldn't concentrate and Friday, well it was Friday so I was ready for the weekend and that's also when I my dad was sworn in :)

Today my dad is moving up here. We found a nice condo right by the capitol that we are going to be staying in, so tonight I am moving out of the lady's house I've been staying at and moving in with my dad. I will miss my roommates, so this weekend I made sure we played. We went shopping, got in the hot tub, and made homemade hummus. It was sure good. I will miss staying at Mary Sue's because I love that lady, but I'm so excited to move in with my dad and talk politics with him after we get home from work :)

Week 3!!!

Week three really is a blur for me. I can't separate the days from each other. Last week went by super fast, but I was pretty home sick too. I made a quick trip home so I could see Em and my parents, and I ended up going skiing :) so it was a great weekend. I'm reenergized now. Some days I was so busy I didn't have time to take lunch. I have decided that tax meetings may not bother me, but the Ag meetings are really hard for me to pay attention to and stay awake in. . . and I went to a lot of them. I wrote a lot of letters and did a lot of research, but I didn't enjoy it much. I was getting frustrated because I felt like what I was doing was hard for me and I didn't know if that was normal or if I was just bad at my job. But I talked to my papa and all he told we was, "Well, that means you're learning." That put it in a whole new light for me. Instead of me thinking, "I'm not very good at this" I started thinking "Yeah, I'm learning how to do hard things" :) after I realized that, work got a lot better. I still was trying to campaign a little bit for my dad too :) Friday night was the precinct meeting and I hurried to Pocatello to go to it, but just when I arrived in Pocatello I got a phone call that the meeting was over :( but my dad was in the number 1 seat!!! I can't wait for week 4 to unfold who gets district 31's senate seat!!!!!!!!!!

Week 2 in the Governor's Office

(Senator Geddes right after being appointed as chairman of the Tax Commission)

Week 2 in the Governor's Office has been great. I've started to pick up a little more on my responsibilities and I feel like I've started to earn respect with everyone I work with. So that's always nice. Here's a little about what has happened during the 2nd week of the 2011 Idaho Legislative Session:

~ I became the Governor's Photographer. Whenever he makes an appearance or there is an event going on, I'm there to capture the moment. About a month ago I watched a documentary on President Obama's photographer, and I'm sure glad I did now. A photographer has a very important job haha :)

~ Senator Geddes was appointed to the tax commission board. Which means District 31 now has an open senate seat. So. . . on my spare time, I've secretly been campaigning for my dad to get that seat. I would love to have him up here while I'm here.

~ Martin Luther King Junior day brought many Tea Partiers to the capitol for a long and very loud ceremony.

~ I answered many phone calls. Most were dealing with real concerns and real problems, like people calling, worried about the medicaid cuts or people disagreeing with the new education plan. However, some were a little out there. For ex. one guy called, saying that he wanted strip clubs to allow full nudity, and then said he was just a concerned citizen.

~ I got my picture taken with Governor Otter. We are currently designing a new Idaho website and they needed a picture of an intern with the governor for the intern link. So in about a week I should be up on the website.

~ I sat in on many meetings which I have discovered I love them. I find them very interesting, even if it is a two hour meeting about taxes.

I feel like this experience is really forcing me to analyze and think for myself and to come up with what I believe is the right way to handle an issue. And that is exactly why I came up here. Everyone in the office gives me things to read that they think I will really enjoy and learn a lot from, and then they tell me to come back and tell them what I think. So that is really forcing me to know what I'm talking about. It is most definitely a learning experience.

First Week in the Governor's Office

I am fortunate enough to be able to intern for the governor during the 61st Idaho Legislative Session, and so far so good! The staff has all been really great to work with. They are all very nice and very patient with me while I am trying to learn all the different jobs I have to do. I have been learning so much and I love that I am able to experience the government from the governor's side.