Math

Hey, I'm not judging...

On being single...

"I have a ton of guy-friends, which is basically a firing-squad of rejection"

Orchestra

I read this today and thought it too beautiful and poignant not to share.

"Some are lost because they are different. They feel as though they don’t belong. Perhaps because they are different, they find themselves slipping away from the flock. They may look, act, think, and speak differently than those around them and that sometimes causes them to assume they don’t fit in. They conclude that they are not needed.

Tied to this misconception is the erroneous belief that all members of the Church should look, talk, and be alike. The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony. All of Heavenly Father’s children are different in some degree, yet each has his own beautiful sound that adds depth and richness to the whole.

This variety of creation itself is a testament of how the Lord values all His children. He does not esteem one flesh above another, but He “inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; . . . all are alike unto God.”



. . .Brothers and sisters, if only we had more compassion for those who are different from us, it would lighten many of the problems and sorrows in the world today. It would certainly make our families and the Church a more hallowed and heavenly place."

-Jospeh B Wirthlin

Elder Cody Bug

My baby brother is now a missionary! He has been in the Argentina MTC for 2 weeks now and he is LOVING it. Driving him to the Airport instead of the MTC was weird.

Here is me and Annie showing off our Lip Gloss at Cody's Goodbye Breakfast. I'll probably send him this picture and tell him it's us blowing him a kiss goodbye.

Here is our Family at the airport, right before Cody had finally had enough of us and made it through Security where we would have to stop hugging him and pinching his cute little cheeks. (Lacy was missing because of higher education, so she is excused)

At Cody's Farewell. We still all look like clones but Cody is finally the tallest.

Cody is allowed to email on Thursday and today I was just made aware that I've been sending his emails to his old email address. In his letter today he wrote... " Hmmm and Star? Why? Porque no me amas? (Why don't you love me?) No letter. If only I had the perfect scripture to send to you telling me how to guilt people into sending me mail. Let me just check my fancy book thingy here."

Which is hilarious because I made Cody a book of everything I learned and thought he needed to know for his mission.

This was one of my favorite pages from the book. (Cody got the actual picture in his book)

The book, by the way, is awesome. It ended up being about 50 pages. Here's a small sampling of what I put into it.

Cover Page.

Back Page
Several Facebook Pages

Scrapbook pages

Cuisine

Good Mission Advice

Also in Cody's letter was this, "So not much has happened since last week. Except that they dropped me and another white boy in some subburb in Buenos Freakin Aires."

I can't imagine! When I was in the Provo MTC the worst that they did to us was make us talk to people pretending to be investigators. We had no idea what those people were saying but we could just smile and nod. He had to go out and talk to people. He said that a missionary from another church tried to preach to them, "It was like a 7 minute rant and all we heard was Yo se que (I know that) and Creo que (I believe). I feel bad for the guy though, he put so much effort and facial expression into trying to convert us and we had absolutely no idea what on earth he was saying."

He LOVES getting to play soccer everyday. They call him Baby Rooney due to his skill and his ability to look like Wayne Rooney the soccer player.

No, Star is not my stripper name, it's my real name.

My Stripper name is actually Sacralicious.

I often chide my parents about their choice in name for me. "What, exactly, did you want me to grow up to be?" I would tease them. "A stripper or possibly a Madame who runs the best little whore house in Texas"

Here is a random Facebook Message I got today.

I can only assume that Southern Comfort is a strip joint, and he would like me to get him in touch with one of the dancers. I, of course, immediately went and checked my privacy settings.

All disturbing pervs aside... I really do love my name. I can't tell you how proud I feel when someone tells me my name fits me perfectly. (unless of course they are alluding to the fact that I am some sort of trollup. I am actually quite the prude, Thank You very much)

Unless, of course, I am in Vegas.

Fire

Sunday, September 19, 2010

4:30pm: There I was driving along I-15 heading to my parents house in Herriman for Sunday Dinner. Around 9000 S I noticed a huge billowing cloud of smoke hovering over the Herriman area. I called my mom and half-jokingly asked, “Is Herriman on fire?”. She was confused. Herriman was not on fire, they hadn’t noticed the smoke, and it didn’t appear too bad from their house. As I exited I-15 I could see that the fire was on the other side of the mountain.

4:45-7:25pm: We ate dinner and planned our trip to Yellowstone. (Yellowstone is going to be so much fun)

7:30pm: We noticed the smoke was worse and then watched it climb over the top of the mountain. The flames were HUGE! We stood in awe and speculated what would happen. We hoped that the fire would have a difficult time going down the mountain. Within 5 minutes it had speedily spread down toward the neighborhoods.

8:30pm: We took Hilary and her 3 kids home. Said prayers, brushed teeth, washed faces, and put on pajamas. The girls were in their beds and Isaac was fighting off sleep in his swing when Hilary’s neighbor came over and told us we needed to evacuate. We called Cody, he came over, loaded up the kids in Hilary’s van and took them to our parent’s house. Hilary and I packed two duffle bags of clothes, diapers, toiletries, passports, birth certificates, computer hard drives. It was fascinating to sit there and ask Hilary what she wanted to take. It was unlikely that the house would burn down but she needed to be prepared for anything.

The fire was huge and intense but when a house caught on fire, everybody knew it. Those fires were Ginormous.

My favorite part of the experience was finding Hilary’s missing cell phone. She had misplaced it in the past few days. We were calling it and searching the house. I finally heard a faint rumble. It took quite a few minutes to locate the sound, as it turns out it was coming from the dryer! This is why people should buy indestructible phones. Hilary’s phone made it through her washer and dryer. It came out squeaky clean and was no worse for wear. Awesome

9:00-10:00pm: We had evacuated about 1 mile up the road to my parent’s house. The smoke was overwhelming. There were times you could barely see, and breathing wasn’t the easiest. We waited for Hilary’s Husband Greg to get home from work. He got stopped outside the neighborhood but was allowed to walk about a mile to the house to get his family. They left at about 10:30 to stay at an Aunt’s house (didn’t want the kids breathing in the smoke). My mom and dad stayed put.

11:30pm: I arrived home, wired and smelling like a slept in a campfire. It's going to be a long Monday.

Crazy!

Baby Isaac

Anyone who knows me knows how proud I am of my nieces. Well now I have a nephew!

Baby Isaac born July 6, 2010 @ 1:37 am Weighing in at 8 lb. 1 ounce, 20 inches.

The rest of my family was in Mexico. We got on the internet and facebook chatted with Hilary as often as possible. On July 5th we were chatting and keeping track of her contractions. It helped us feel more part of the process.


Isn't he precious?

Ahh! Nothing better than a baby sleeping on your chest.

This is Cody and Isaac pretending to sleep. Neither of them are good at this game.