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.