Luck of the Irish

This year's St. Patrick's Day celebration was fabulous. We started off the day by going downtown to the parade. I never even knew there was a parade! It was so much fun, and seriously, anything goes in this parade! We have decided to come up with an entry and march in the parade next year. If basset hounds and snakes on a float and a girl dressed as a pot of gold and soccer protesters can be in the parade, so can we!

I especially loved the Irish jiggers and the bagpipe bands. Oh, and we actually saw Mr. St. Patrick himself, and the Blarney stone too!

And of course we had to drown our sorrows in some Irish ale.

And what would St. Patricks Day be without some traditional Irish drinking games? A is for Anne, B is for banana .... We also had a successful treasure hunt, a limerick writing contest, we watched the St. Paddys Day veggie tales, held a contest for who had the best green outfit on, and ate some of our favorite green foods like mint chocolate chip ice cream, guacamole chips with green salsa, celery and snow peas, and of course some Lucky Charms. It was magically delicious!

This is us kissing the Blarney stone. Do you realize how extremely difficult it is to do a pushup while doing a handstand? But we had to stick with tradition. And hopefully I will now be eloquent in all my writing. Ahhh...I love this holiday!

What's a girl to do?

So, since I will probably end up being a spinster, I need to start preparing for this occasion. Spinsters usually have a bunch of cats, are librarians, wear cardigan sweaters, do their hair in buns, and knit.

I have a problem here. a) I don't like cats. b) I don't know how to knit. c) My hair doesn't fit into a bun. d) I have no desire to be a librarian. and e) I don't own any cardigan sweaters.

So what the heck am I going to do when I become a spinster? Does anyone have any ideas for me?

Checkmate

Do you ever feel like you’re in checkmate? Like every way you try to move or take a step, you can’t because you’ll just get slammed? I feel really “stuck” in my life right now—like everything I try to do is faced with not just a detour, but a complete barrier.

In chess, when you’re stuck in checkmate, the only option you’ve got is to realign your pieces and start a new game. But you always have the knowledge and experience from each previous game to be able to look at different strategies and moves for the next round until one day you finally win. I think it’s time for me to realign the pieces of my life and start a new game—hoping that the next round will take me one step closer to winning.

I went to go see the play Little Women last night, and as the play progressed, I found myself really relating to Jo. She had something amazing inside of her that was just bursting at the seams trying to find the right outlet for it to emerge. And it only came out after she went through a lot of heartache. I mean, she got rejection after rejection from publishers, her best friend married her sister, she missed out on Europe, her other sister died. But only after all that was she able to find herself and her voice. And because she was able to find herself, she reached her dreams and published a great novel and opened a school.

Sometimes I feel like I’m bursting at the seams. Like something fantastic is just screaming to come out, but it just hasn’t found the right outlet yet. I hope I can find my outlet soon because sometimes I’m afraid I’m just going to explode before that happens.

Roadblocks

This week I was reminded of an experience I had on my mission. My companion and I, along with 3 elders were crammed into the teeny mission car on our way to Malargue. Malargue is the furthest area from the mission home—about a 5-hour drive. We were headed there to perform in a musical fireside (we had been touring the mission doing these firesides in each of the stakes). The rest of our group was in a big van, and we were supposed to meet them there. Well, none of us had ever been to Malargue before so we really had no idea how to get there. We took one wrong turn and ended up on a very long, bumpy dirt road. We eventually made it to Malargue—about two hours later than planned.

Now we could have taken two approaches to this situation. 1) Freak out and worry the whole way about how we were going to be late and whether or not we were actually going to get there, and what was going to happen to that little car after 100 miles on a crappy dirt road. 2) Enjoy the moment. After all, when else would we have the chance to be on an open country dirt road out in the middle of Argentina surrounded by sheer beauty?

I opted for the latter. Even though we were late for the concert, and the car’s oil pan got totally busted, the memory of that gorgeous Argentine countryside will forever be engrained in my memory.

The reason I thought about this is because just two days ago, I thought I had my professional life figured out. I had finally found a graduate program that would lead me to the career I thought I would love. I applied to said program, and was confident I would be accepted. I was well on my way to professional bliss. But, come to find out, they did not have the same vision as I did, and I’m now faced with a roadblock in my path. I still have the same final destination in mind, but I’ve now got to find a new way to get there. Maybe the alternative will be a long and bumpy dirt road, but I hope the scenery will be worth the detour.

A wise old man once said, "Always take the scenic route. The joy is in the journey, not the destination."

An ode to the doctor

See them, see them up above.
These are classic books I love.
Would you read them in a car?
Would you take them to a bar?
Could you read them with a cow?
Do you read them even now?
Would you let them gather dust?
Or are they in your life a must?

Let's pull those classic greats off our shelves, and take a moment to remember a little piece of our childhood in honor of the one and only Dr. Seuss, whose birthday it is is today.

I could never get enough of that ABC book! I think the local librarian would automatically go pull it off the shelf for us when she saw us walk in. What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?