Why I'm Pumped for July!

It's July!! Yay!! I typically say that May is my favorite month but I think July is a close second, but the Christmas season and my birthday are other favorites. Anyways July is always such a great month and here's why I'm so excited!!

-Independence Day. This is honestly one of my favorite holidays. Call me crazy or pathetic if you want but every Forth of July during a good firework show listening to the great songs about our country I tend to tear up, because I truly love being an American! I love this incredible nation I get to call home and I love being able to celebrate it! I don't know yet what we're doing and I'm super upset I have to work most the day, but I'm still excited nonetheless. And I bought a really awesome outfit for that day.

-Cow Appreciation Day. If you know me and/or this blog, you know I love cows. I love celebrating Cow Appreciation Day and am so happy to have a husband who allows me to celebrate it without thinking I'm a weirdo. Ha ha. This year Cow Appreciation Day lands on July 11th, and I still think it's weird it's a different day every year. Anyways, every year I dress in black and white, wear my cow necklace and earrings, eat ice cream (to appreciate the great product cows help produce), and take pictures with cows. This year I might not get to see cows though. I don't know where to find them here and Chris and I both work most the day, so I won't even see Chris. :( Also, if you dress up like a cow then you can go to Chick-Fil-A and get a free meal! I would wear my footie pajamas and my cow hat but I think both are in our storage unit in Logan. Bummer.

-My Family is Coming!!!! Much more importantly, on Cow Appreciation Day my mom, sister, brother, and grandma are flying to Texas to visit me!! I'm so insanely excited to see them!! My family is really close and I typically see them a lot so living in Texas is kind of difficult being so far away from them. But they wanted to come see me and we're going to Sea World, visiting the River Walk and finding lots of other fun things to do. I'm super excited and cannot wait!!!

-Pioneer Day. Texas doesn't celebrate Pioneer Day, but for the longest time Pioneer Day was my favorite holiday! I spent it every year sleeping on the side of the road downtown SLC to save our spot for the parade with my best friend, Lauren, and her family. It was the absolute greatest!! Even when I wasn't with Lauren there were at least still firework shows. But Texas won't have fireworks on Pioneer Day and I'm sad. Maybe we'll have to buy some and have our own firework show!! And Lauren, next Pioneer Day we totally need to do something together!

-In Laws Coming!!! My in-laws are coming to Texas as well!! But my husband doesn't tell me anything so I don't actually know when. Ha. So my brother-in-law Sheldon was actually supposed to be here the whole summer working with Chris selling pest control, but he had to stay in Idaho for school so he's not coming until the end of this month. Chris is both really upset Sheldon didn't come sooner, but also super excited for him to be coming later. We miss him. We also miss my in-laws and they are coming to visit! It'll be a good month having both sides of the family coming to visit us! We'll have to do lots of fun things!

-Summer Fun. I think the reason July is my second favorite month is because it's when it officially feels like summer, and summer is the greatest!! Also at the end of July my family always goes on our annual trip to Jackson Hole and it's the greatest! This year we don't get to go to Jackson Hole, which is something I've done with my family every summer for as long as I can remember. It'll be really weird not going and Chris and I are both really upset we can't go, but we're going to make sure next year in Jackson will be the best year ever!!


...So now that I think about it, technically maybe I should not be so pumped for this July. I mean, I'm working Independence Day and Cow Appreciation Day, I know after seeing my family for a weekend I'll only miss them more once they leave, Pioneer Day doesn't exist here, and I don't get to go to Jackson Hole... Yeah...Maybe this July actually will be horrible.

Regardless, I am excited for this new month and all the excitement it will surely bring! This is our last full month in Texas! What?!?! I'll be excited in August when we get to go back home, for sure! We won't be leaving till the end of August, right before school starts, but I'm already missing Utah, even though I love the warmth and having a pool. Texas is fun but I think I'm more of a Utah girl. We'll see though...

What fun things are you doing in July? Let me know it the comments below! 

June Obsessions

Typically I do Monthly Favorites posts but since I'm struggling with blogging lately I'm keeping this incredible short. However I may change it so all my Monthly Favorites are like this, more of a list rather than a lengthy explanation for things. Anyways here are my latest obsessions:

-Cinema Sins
-YouTube in general
-Wholly Guacamole
-Bejeweled Blitz (you guys, it's a literal addiction)
-Pokemon
-Not being sick, because currently I am
-Really Don't Care by Demi Lovato
-Demi Lovato in general
-I finished the Divergent series and I can't decide what to say about it... but I want to see the move again
-Catching Fire, just want to see it again!!!
-Taking baths or showers in the middle of the day
-Doing nothing the rest of the day
-Writing in my book
-Family Guy, sigh, I have a problem
-Lying out by my apartment pool
-Eating dried fruits
-Target
-Putting my hair in a bun... every day.
-Bumblebee from Transformers (honestly I have a crush on him, it's totally not weird...)
-But not the new Transformers movie
-Texas thunderstorms (seriously, they are awesome and frequent)
-Getting too excited for the Forth of July even though I have to work (See below)
-Getting even more excited my family is coming to visit me in Texas!!!!
-Chris and I are now primary workers?
-Making money (which sounds petty but honestly we were really struggling before this)
-Sunshine and summertime!!
-Working on my beach body... and failing and eating donuts
-CHOCOLATE!!!


*About working on the Forth of July: I think it's wrong for things to be open on our Independence Day. We close everything for Christmas but we can't do it for the Forth of July? Jesus's birthday, yes, that's totally understandable. But America's birthday, where we gained independence to become a wonderful country that gives us so many opportunities... who cares leave everything open, make it seem like a normal day that isn't actually important in any way. I think everything should be closed on Independence Day, except of course the necessities. Just have fairs and celebrations, make it one big party!! Exploiting Independence Day for sales is awful. I know I'm being kind of weird but I just generally hate the fact that America doesn't respect itself enough to make Independence Day more important. It seems to me like it should be much more important.

Changes Are Coming...

Hello blogging and internet world! You are probably all wondering where I have run off to for the past month. I've pretty much vanished from the blogging and social media world and have been pretty much non-existent for a while.

You're probably thinking that working more hours is keeping me away. Or perhaps that my husband's laptop broke for a few days, and now magically works again. Or that my horrible immune system got me sick again, which it did. Or maybe you think I'm having so much fun living in Texas that I'm too busy to blog.

Well you're pretty much wrong. There is no real reason behind my absence. I just haven't wanted to blog. I feel horrible saying that! Ugh!

While I have been working more, the laptop did break, I am currently sick, and living in Texas is fun, the majority of my time I have been spending on our laptop writing, a book, not blogging. Since I was about nine years old I've been writing stories and while the answer to what I want to be when I grow up has changed a million times and I still haven't decided (even though many people may already consider me "grown up") I have never once strayed from the idea that I want, no, am going to get one of my books published someday. So that has been one of my focuses lately.

I honestly do feel bad about my absence from this blog, because I genuinely love writing and love this blog. I just can't find the motivation. I can't get into it lately. I started writing a post last week and gave up. I don't really know what's wrong.

I really hope I get get my blogging vibe/motivation back, and while I'm at it I may be giving my blog a makeover. I think one of the biggest things lately that's bringing me down about blogging is that my blog is almost two years old yet I have significantly less followers than my friend's blog who has only been around a few months longer than mine. It's discouraging. But at the same time how can I get more followers if I stop blogging? I can't!

Anyways, the point of this post is to tell you that I haven't forgotten about you and the blogging world. But there is so much personally I've been going through that I've had other priorities.

I've been struggling a lot these past few months trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. College makes me depressed. I don't even know if I want to be a teacher anymore. I've lost my direction. I don't know what to do anymore. I've been feeling incredibly lost.

However I think I've decided to make a change, and I will talk about it it greater length in a later post (hopefully) but ultimately I'm going live my life doing things that make me happy. I've struggled too long with my depression and while I know it can never fully go away, I'm tired of forcing myself to do stuff that makes me upset and feel more depressed just because the world expects me to do it. I'm going to do the things that make me happy rather than what's expected of me.

Somethings are still uncertain, but I'm figuring out how to reshape myself to be happy, be proactive, more positive, and ultimately never let my depression control my life ever again. I'm twenty-three years old and I'm ready to start living the way I want to.

Because I am working on reshaping my life, there will also be many changes on this blog. It may have a new focus in the near future. I'm still trying to figure it all out. I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I do know I'm not abandoning this blog. It just may take me some time to get back into the swing of things.

I truly love all my blogging/internet followers/friends!! You are all so incredible and you inspire me! You make this so fun for me and I'm continually amazed that you enjoy reading my random thoughts. I'm not giving up on you and I hope you haven't given up on me yet.

Being Successful

Have you ever just been in the moment and you start getting deep in conversation and end up saying something wonderful? Well that doesn't happen to me much, but it did last night! I don't want to get into the full story because it's personal between me and my husband, but we made up a new definition for success that I would like to share with you all.


I think our society is incredibly competitive. With sports all over TV, celebrities pressuring us to look a certain way, Facebook and other social media showcasing all our friend's triumphs and how wonderful their lives may seem, and basically any work or educational environment is filled with competition and all these things can really just bring us down! It's hard to stay positive when you are constantly comparing yourself to other people and in this world it's so hard not to make these comparisons!

BUT STOP!!

Take a breath. Breathe it out and relax. Now listen:

You are an incredible person! More than that, you are successful! 

Now I may not know you personally, but I know that if you're reading this then you've already had tons of accomplishments in your life! When we're babies and toddlers our parents make such a big deal over our first successes: learning to roll over, learning to crawl, learning to walk, learning to speak, even learning to sleep through the whole night is considered a huge success to them! But as we grow older all those little successes we had as children because normal and mundane because they are things we do everyday.

But what if we took that idea, how learning to roll over is considered a huge success and apply it to what we do now. As an adult it's hard to see anything you do as being successful especially in such a competitive world. But we are successful, everyday! And I think it's important to celebrate the small successes in life!

Maybe you made mashed potatoes for the first time (that was my success today), or maybe you got the courage to speak to your crush, or maybe you ate healthy today and avoided that brownie, or maybe your only success was pulling yourself out of bed and making sure you got to work on time! Those are all successes!

In this competitive world it's easy to belittle the small success we make everyday. I made mashed potatoes today, wa hoo, on Facebook I learned my friend is building a house. How does my success compare with that?

That's the point, we can't compare our successes to other people!

Success should not be measure by beating other people and comparing yourself to other people. You can be successful only by beating yourself everyday. You are successful by doing something that you like and that makes you happy. Who cares what other people are doing? Who cares what they think? If you think that making mashed potatoes is a small success in your life, than it is!!

It has been really difficult lately to watch all my friends graduate college. I feel like my college experience has led me nowhere. It is so hard to not compare myself to all my friends as I see them graduate and get good jobs. But I need to stop comparing myself to others. I need to only compare myself to my past self. Am I better off than I was yesterday? If yes, than I am being successful in my own life.

The richest man in the world may not actually be successful if he isn't happy with his life. So many of us may worship him and wish we were like him, but we can't compare ourselves to him. We can only compare our level of success to ourselves.

It doesn't matter if I haven't graduated college yet, I am successful in my own life because I feel like I'm going down the right path and I'm doing what makes me happy. That is the definition of success. It's not comparing yourself to others, it's doing what makes you happy and makes you feel good and proud of yourself, no matter how little those accomplishments may be... like making mashed potatoes.