I kind of like it when things go my way.

Ya know what I love? Crazy-cool stuff. That's profound, huh? But it's true.

Here are some crazy-cool things:

Last weekend I got to go to Women's Conference at BYU in Provo. For those of you who know me very well, you'll understand a bit of the craziness that might happen when my quirky-inappropriate tendencies are multiplied. That's what happened when my mom, my grandma, three of my aunts and two of my cousins got to hang out at Women's Conference. Let me just tell you ... we had FUN! I love all of our quirks and crazinesses! In the middle of fighting with Aunt Lizette over my camera (I'm sure that she wanted to take a picture up her nostril) and feeling Sydney's hairy legs to see how her Nair cream is working, I actually got a little teary-eyed! I get to be with these wackos FOREVER! I am so grateful for eternal families! As an only child, I've developed a very strong appreciation and attachment to my extended family on both sides, and guess what? I've got some of the very best! I'm so grateful that both sets of my grandparents were sealed in the temple and they've passed those blessings on to their children. I'm so grateful that if we all honor our covenants that we will be together in the eternities! Who wouldn't want to live with these nuts forever?!

It's so awesome to me that we got to share in such an awesome event. Women's Conference is amazing. I learned so much that has changed my life already, and as I study my notes and further implement the things that were taught, I know I will only see more and more blessings in my life. I'm so glad I was able to share that with my family.

In addition to recognizing my great family, I also had another strong confirmation of the power of friendship while I was there. One thing that's always concerned me is how easily friendships come and go. I've always craved permanence. I've never had siblings to bond with, fight with, or share anything with. I've grown close to friends and have shared a lot with them, only to have each one slowly fade from my life. It's a heartache that hits a little too close to home sometimes. I have a dear friend in my life right now who is unlike any other. Through the short time we've known each other, we've been able to share, grow, support, teach and learn so much from each other. I am in awe at the blessing she has been to my life and how strong of a bond we've created in so short a time. I'm terrified of the day that will fade or end altogether.

I have started to notice more and more how Heavenly Father uses others to bless our lives. One prayer I have always prayed is that I can be a tool to help someone I love and care for. This last weekend, I was blessed with an amazing opportunity to follow the Lord's direction and to help my dear friend. I am so grateful for the connections we have in this life. I am so grateful for good people who love and laugh and cry together. I am so grateful that we're social creatures and we're intended to help each other. I am so grateful for eternal families and for the wonderful (and hysterical) family I've been blessed with. I am also so grateful for those angel friends who Heavenly Father places in our lives who become like family. I want those relationships to be just as eternal.

I've got good people. Thanks, guys, for being good people in my life!

You guys are my world.

Silvester side: Cousin Amanda, Cousin Jennifer, me, Cousin Heather, 2nd cousins Shyanne and Hunter at Heather's house for a mini-gathering. The four cousins haven't all been together in the same place in maybe 20 years? I love that we've all found each other and developed cousinly-love through blogging and facebook!

The Silvester side: Cousin Brock, Uncle Bob, Aunt Kris, 2nd cousin Shae, Cousin Amanda and me at Shae's baptism. I love how many of us came to represent! We may not be good at communication, but Silvesters are supportive!

Chapple side: Cousin Amanda and Aunt Lizette got hold of my camera in between talks at Women's Conference. What a riot!!

Chapple side: Grandma Ruby, Cousin Sydney and Aunt Lori looking all sweet and Women's Conferency.

Cousin Amanda, me and Cousin Sydney. DANG, we're cute!!

Chapple side: Back row: Cousin Sydney, me, Cousin Alex Middle Row: Cousin Whittney, Aunt KayLynn, Aunt Vicki, Grandma Ruby, Mom Brenda. Front Row: Cousin Danielle, Cousin Amanda. Buncha crazy women all pretending to be normal for the camera. I freakin' love these ladies!

The friend side: Back row: Brooke, Gina, Lisa Front Row: Kimball, me, Lisa. Ever heard of best friends FOREVER? yep. That's what these guys are. They are rockin' awesome, and I'm so grateful they're in my life!

Attachment 1

Lisa just sent me the picture from our Earth Day gathering I spoke about in prior post:

Ang, Lisa John, me, Gina and Annie all met up at the Earth Day celebration where Lisa and Annie were running booths for work. Well, Annie was a little distracted by the food at this moment. And obviously, she's not too thrilled about this picture! I think she asked that it be posted with the comment: "This is why Annie's not married." Whatever. The girl rocks! All these girls rock! Yay.

Happy about a lot of things ...

So, today in sacrament meeting, Jill Schenk shared a thought that's been on my mind a lot lately. The topic was on faith. She said that one way to increase our faith is to look back on times when our faith has been strengthened; remember spiritual experiences and times when the Lord has answered our prayers.

I've been doing that a lot lately ... not just concerning faith, but concerning a lot of things. I LOVE looking back on great things and moments in my life that make me happy-- and not just happy, but EXCEEDINGLY full of joy.

What's hard is that I don't always realize all the great happinesses in my life. It's usually in looking back that I can appreciate blessings and experiences. I was feeling a little bummed tonight, but then I re-evaluated my weekend and realized that it was rockin' awesome! I have so many great people in my life and so many blessings to count! I love remembering all the reasons I have to be happy! I'm going to just count a few ...

Last September, if you would have told me how my life would totally change after getting involved in the singles' branch, I wouldn't have listened. I didn't want to go. I had a bad attitude. Boy, was a WRONG! I see these people every day of my life. They make me so happy. They actually like to have me around! It's so stinkin' amazing to me to walk into a room of 20 people and have 20 close friends all happy to see me! I love having those friends whose faces just light up and you can't help but smile when you see them because we're all so dang happy to see each other! I've found those friends here.

Gina, Brooke and I all have a similar love of footwear. Go Teva!

Friday night we walked around the greenbelt as a Relief Society. They combined 2 branches, so we buddied up with someone from the other branch so we could get to know each other better. I'm so used to showing up and sticking with "my peeps" but I had such a blast walking with Shalina and realized that we have so much in common! The hour it took to walk around the greenbelt wasn't long enough to talk and get to know each other! She joined a bunch of us for a game of wallyball afterwards. I'm never going to miss out on a good wallyball game!

Even though stuff like this happens occasionally. "How did that happen?!" You may ask.

Yeah. I caught my thumb on my tooth. I'm retarded! Go ahead and laugh.

Saturday, Gina and I hopped on our bikes and rode to Tautphaus Park where Lisa John was working for Earth Day. Lisa's my sidekick. Our friend Ryan mocks us that we're ALWAYS together. But this week, we'd ended up going seperate ways and hadn't spend much time together. I'd really missed Lisa! But when we got to Tautphaus, we ran into some other friends and were standing around chatting when Lisa snuck up behind us! I felt myself just light up when she joined us! Even though I see these people nearly every day, it's always so exciting each time! I couldn't have been happier to see her!

I wanted to share a picture of us all together at the fair thingy, but Lisa John has it. She said she'd share, but she hasn't yet. So ... here's my new bike, the vehicle for this adventure!

Saturday night, we went to Jeff's house for a barbeque. I got to go to Walmart with Gina and Brooke to get fixin's and then hang out with them and lots of other fun friends at the BBQ. I love being with people. I love being with THESE people!

Jeanna, Gina, Brooke, Brooke, Lisa, Lisa ... and Wade. Which one of these things is not like the other?

(yes, we totally planned this. We're funny that way!)

And then today after church, Lisa John came to my house for dinner. We got to hang out with mom and day and do the family thing. It's good to have good people and to share good things.

I had pizza for dinner.

So, I haven't posted in a million and a half years. I have plenty to say, but I just haven't come up with the time or the energy to do it all justice. But really, where's that time and energy going to come from? So, I'm going to lazily update you all on what's going on.
Today has been DRAINING! I'm almost through with the 2nd full week of my job at the Post Register. I am so blessed to have found this job and to be working somewhere I enjoy and that even has a slight promise to be able to apply my degree. I was talking with Joelle (one of my English professors/friends) last night and she confirmed that I really was utilizing my degree. I guess I needed that validation. Right now, I'm still the new kid and I'm trying to adapt my learning methods to match Karla's teaching methods. Today was rough. I'm understanding it all until the sequence goes 900 miles a minute with seven hundred tangents in between because she elaborates on each concept before I've been able to grasp the foundation of it all. Yeah. Maybe I'm the dumb kid. But, it's working. I'm overwhelmed and tired and kinda sick from the gross-nasty pizza I picked up from Little Caesars.
I got a new bike. It's pretty. I've had it for less than a week and have put about 40 miles on it, but haven't felt like I've gone on a decent bike ride yet. I'm glad it came with an odometer so I can actually track myself. I bought the bike Friday, and on Tuesday I ran over a piece of glass and already had to replace the tire. Whatever. I'll post pictures of the bike later.
Also, this last weekend I got to go down to Utah to see Wicked! Holy cow, AMAZING! I've loved the play, the soundtrack, the story for years and finally got to see it! So, I made a round trip to Utah with friends on Saturday, then came back to Idaho Falls for church and on Sunday I decided I needed to go BACK to Utah for Shae's baptism. Shae's my ... umm ... second cousin? The relationship baffles me! But he's such a grown up little boy! He's 11 and has been taking discussions from the missionaries and made his own decision to be baptized! I'm so proud of that little punk and was so glad I was able to support him and his great family. I love my cousin Heather and the hard work she does for her kids. I'm seriously going to post more and elaborate more on all of this soon, I just needed to say SOMETHING for now!

Favorites:

Rules
1. Go to http://www.flickr.com/(I used images.google.com a bit, too, it's a little easier to find a usable picture sometimes!)
2. Type in your answer to the question in the "search" box
3. Use your favorite image of the subject.
4. Copy the html and paste for the answer. (I don't understand what this part means, so I didn't do it.)

HOMETOWN:

Idaho Falls

Where we "meet at the wooden Indian to clean each others' plows."

FAVORITE VACATION DESTINATION:

Gringo Perdido in Guatemala

(my pictures are better, but they're not on flickr or google)

FAVORITE COLOR:
Green. :)

DREAM CAREER:

storyteller

(this is Teresa Clark. She plays the guitar and sings, too. AWESOME!)

And maybe something to do with this:



GUILTY PLEASURE:



FAVORITE HOBBY:

I usually prefer better company, but sometimes Sasquatch is the only one who will tag along!

and exploring along places like this:

FAVORITE RESTAURANT:

Mekong Cafe in Sandy, Utah

FAVORITE ACTRESS AND ACTOR:

Oh, AND

FAVORITE VEHICLE:

FAVORITE PLACE TO SHOP FOR MYSELF:

FLOWER:

Poppy.

(I think I'm supposed to name a daughter Poppy. But only after Andrea names one of hers Daisy and Lindsay names a girl Lily. )

Now I'm supposed to tag people. But, I don't wanna. If you want to do it, I'd love to see your pictures and answers! It's fun!

Pay more attention to my life!!

"Pay more attention to my life!"

So, I had a friend tell me this in jest awhile ago, and I still think it's hilarious! He was so perplexed that I'd forgotten he was out of town one weekend when he'd told me months ago that he was going. Yeah. Sorry, Gary. I forgot.

I've realized that I blog about a lot of random crap and thoughts and stuff, but talk very little about the goings-on. Even when I have news to share, I hesitate to share. I kind of just don't tell people things until they ask. But then I expect you all to being paying attention to my life!

I got a new job. I start on Monday. I'll be working for the Post Register (Idaho Falls newspaper) in the advertising accounts department. I think I make sure each ad that's sold has a space in teh paper, make sure they're all scheduled to run properly and built to the right dimensions. I'm not really sure what else. The job starts out at 30 hours a week, with the hope of full-time and benefits in the fall. I found out about the job a few days ago. I don't know why I hesitate to share! So, cousins of mine whom I talk to every day without mentioning this: Here's your news! Uhh ... Oh, and I'll be working with my high school volleyball coach! Small world! AND I'll be working with several other people that I've never met before in my life! Big world! :)

So, I'm done at the temp job. I told them I wanted to be done Thursday so I could do something fun on Friday. They got another temp to start Thursday, thinking I'd need time to train her. We both got there at 8 a.m. and I left at 10. There's really not much training involved! So, I was out an un-planned day off work, but whatever. I'm home now. And I need a nap.

Other event summaries: I went to Utah last weekend for conference with my friend, Lisa. We stayed at her grandparents house and were able to go to Saturday afternoon session at the Conference Center. I randomly ran into my old roommate, Debra and it was really good to see her! Saturday evening I hung out with Shmarah and had crazy adventures like always! I spent Saturday night and Sunday morning with my Chapple grandparents, then picked up Shyanne (a Silvester cousin) to go watch Sunday afternoon session in sign language! Debra joined us and we chased around Temple Square for a LONG time trying to find where it was broadcast! What a CRAZY trip! I ran into an old neighbor/family home evening sister who's serving her mission in the Salt Lake area. I LOVE finding friends on their misssions! Then, we headed to cousin Heather's house for a LONG overdue Silvester gathering. There were 4 Silvester girls and their families there. None of the Silvester boys showed up, but that's actually pretty typical. It was so fun to hang out with Heather, Jennifer and Amanda, though and just be together! we can't remember the last time the 4 of us have all been at the same place! Umm ... has it been like 20 years? But we've reconnected via this wonderful blog and facebook, so we decided it's fun to be friends in person, too! Guess what?! It WAS fun! I love you ladies!! My family rocks!!

I went on a 20-something mile bike ride on Tuesday. It was our 1 day of good weather before the rain came again and I took FULL advantage of it! We also played 3-on-3 wallyball for 2 hours last night! With 3 on 3, you get a pretty good workout! So, naturally, I'm going to go eat a cookie and go back to bed.

Recent life event summary in pictures:

Lisa John's birthday is on St. Patrick's Day, so we all wore purple and took her for a Progressive Birthday Surprise!

First stop: Red Robin where the waiter kept invading her personal space!

Me, Hillary, Megan, Willie, Kristin, Sara, Lisa, Jeanna

Second stop: Tautphaus Park ice skating rink. Lisa had NO idea what we were going to be doing that night, so I made sure she brought gloves and heavy socks! ... and a swimsuit, flashlight, hiking boots, scriptures ... I couldn't let her know WHAT she was preparing for!

Me, Hillary, Lisa, Kristin

Crazy friends on skates. My favorite part was that Lisa kept saying goodbye to everyone as we'd leave to head to the next place!

Little did she know she'd be seeing them again in five minutes at Jeanna's house for cheesecake!

Lisa Jenkins, Kristin, Ashley, me, Lisa John.

We had a karaoke party with our friend Hillary before she moved to Washington.

If you couldn't tell, we got really into some of the songs!

Lisa stole some ice cream and we had to go back to Reed's Dairy to pay for it!

me, Lisa Jenkins, Lisa John and Jeff Larsen bowling for Jeff's Birthday.

Lisa Jenkins and I came up with a congratulatory gesture for "Gutterball."

There's one for a strike, and one for a spare, but something's missing!!

Me and Lisa after Saturday afternoon session at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City.

I met Shmarah at her apartment and then we went to Red Iguana for some YUMMY mole. aka. chocolate tacos.

This was such a pretty tablecloth. I really wanted to take it home with me!

Debra, me and Shyanne after Sunday afternoon Conference Session on Temple Square. Watching the session in sign language was AWESOME!! I learn things that I don't necessarily learn just listening in English!

I found Karilee ...ahem. Hermana Park on the way across Temple Square after conference! She lived with me at Greenbrier for YEARS and was my Family Home Evening sister a few times! I always wanted to run into her while I lived in Salt Lake, but never thought it would happen! What are the chances I'd see her now?! I LOVE this girl!!

Cousins Amanda, Jennifer, Brooke and Heather with 2 of Heather's kids, Shyanne and Hunter. Silvesters are a lot of fun!

Amanda's son Silvester (first name). We repeatedly discussed the fact that this kid has no hope of ever being "cool." But man, we love that nerdy little boy!! (and his nerdy parents!)

Gavyn, Ian, Ivy and half of Hunter.

It was a nice day outside so the next generation could "run and pray" in the backyard.

There's my life in a nutshell. Pay attention! :)

Post 101

Oh, hey! That 4 of 4 post was my 100th blog post! That's pretty good for having a blog for a year and a half! It makes me want to look back and see if I've said anything substantial. I doubt that there's any single person who's read all 100 of my posts, but there are probably a few of you who've read most of them! Am I wasting your time? Am I wasting my time? What can I be doing/saying to make these words worthwhile?

I don't think anything I say here is going to save anyone's life. I don't think I'm going to have any effect whatsoever on your health, your finances, or your eternal progression. So, what's the point? Well, when I read your blogs, I see your families, your kids, your hopes, joys, and laughter. I laugh with you. I pray for you when you need it. I'm aware and interacting with those that I love. When you read my blog, I hope you find a few laughs and a few insights to ponder, and maybe just a few reminders of why we're all friends and why we like to keep in touch.

I've been thinking a lot lately about purpose. What's my purpose in all of this? What am I trying to achieve? For the last 4 days, I've been working through an employment agency as a temp for a construction company. I basically sit at the front desk all day and direct phone calls. (there aren't many, the business is just getting started again and their work is all in Mississippi.) I've lost my purpose. I seriously feel like a waste of space and funds. (yes, they're paying me for this.) As much as I thought I'd love a free-ride job with little responsibility, I realize that I hate it. What's the point? What do I have to show for the end of the day? Where's the progression? I spend my day on email and facebook and I read old conference talks all day.

I know this position is just a short, frustrating phase, but it's caused me to reflect on my day-to-day life. What do I have to show for the end of the day? I spend so much time with my friends and really enjoy those relationships. I love being able to step back and evaluated the growth we've made together, the things we've taught each other and the love that we've shared. No matter what I do, no matter what my situation is, I want to make sure it's worthwhile. I struggle with finding a purpose in all things. As I sit here typing, I don't know what I'm going to do after this post is finished. Check the fax machine? answer the phone? But those little things aren't that important. What REALLY matters is what we do with ourselves in the grand scheme of things. I want to be working to improve constantly. I find myself frustrated with my job and home situation and I become stagnant. I can't wait until my situation is perfect in order to progress. I have to do what I can with what I have and know that someday, if I maintain my faith and if I follow the Lord's direction, my situation really will improve.

I had a priesthood blessing from my dad the other night. One phrase really stood out to me, and it's kind of been my theme lately: "Most jobs are dull. Most relationships require effort. And most progression requires work."