This Christmas

So it is about that time again, but this time around it will be completely different than any other year in my past. This time I am waking up to my amazing husband to share Christmas with! I know that one day when we have kids Christmas will hold such a sweet innocence, but this year it is just plain fun and magical in it's own way.

For a moment there I felt like we had nowhere to be...we were too old to sleep over at our parents and hop on their beds at 6am and anxiously wait to open gifts on Christmas morning, but too young to have kids of our own (not entirely true since we are technically the dreaded "late twenties married non-parents") to have a Christmas morning with.

Well, the reason I am tragically far behind in this blog is because we have just had the busiest year of our lives. Long story short, my brother got married 8 days before we got married and it made for a hectic summer, not to mention moving out of state and cramming ourselves into a tiny, happy first apartment of joy! So my darling little brother and his darling blondie wife have given us a tiny little Christmas miracle. They are letting us sleep overnight on Christmas Eve and we are all going to share our first married Christmas with each other! I am truly touched that they would be willing to do that with us! We are going to wake up late, eat cinnamon rolls and egg nog (except Johnny who gets sick from the nog) and open our gifts from our spouses together! I am as giddy as I was when I was 8 for this Christmas morning because it will be one totally full of love and happiness! We all get along really really well so I am sure it will be an absolute blast!

Well, it's past 2am so I figure I should probably go lay down and try hard to sleep through my excitement!

Smile there's no crying on Christmas

Oh My

Honestly, planning a wedding and moving out of state in the same summer is proving to be one of the hardest things I have ever tackled. More to come, but it is also the most wonderful!

Smile

Soul Food

As much of a foodie as I am, and I would really love to sit around and write how much I love food, this entry is about the soul and the things that I do to feed mine. My time for myself is spent immersed in warm bubbly happiness in the bathtub. Now that I have a computer I put on my favorite Ingrid Michaelson Pandora station and soak with my fashion magazines that teach me all about how to be prettier. Really I just like the pictures, I am like a child who loves picture books! I know it sounds completely cliche' but candles really add to the experience! I fit all different ways into the bathtub and so I squirm around until I am comfortable and then I melt in all the gooey goodness of spending quiet time with myself and my favorite music. Sometimes I find my mind has taken over and the pretty picture isn't holding my attention anymore. I will unleash my wandering thoughts and let them roam freely. This is when they tend to reveal truths that I didn't know I knew. This is when I can truly be quiet and teach myself. I mull over decisions, I piece together troubles and problems, and I think about everything in my life.
My hard working body thanks me every moment I am in the tub. My muscles drink in the warmth and heal with it. More often than not I am having a bath to ease my muscles and not my mind. I recommend hot baths to my massage clients every single day, and wouldn't that just make me such a hypocrite if I didn't take time to enjoy one?
Another thing I do to feed my soul is work on my relationship with God. I study the scriptures, I say heartfelt prayers and I take time to study and conceptualize the things I learn each Sunday at church. Feeding the soul should be the most enjoyable of experiences. Speaking of which, all my bubbles are slowly popping without me enjoying them! I'm off!!!

Risks and Benefits

Risk vs Benefit

This biggest decisions in life can have the biggest payoffs, and also the biggest risks. Why wouldn't something so grandiose also come with the potential of failure? The big question is how do you know when the benefit outweighs the risks? You could pull the pen out of your pocket protector, slide your glasses further up your nose and scribble down a pros and cons list in your daykeeper or you could do as I do! I spend weeks thinking of almost nothing else, I weigh the odds with my heart and feel them out. I try to imagine any outcome, what terrible thing could happen to me? How much happiness could I really have? In my contemplation I often unearth truths and revelations that I didn't know were in there. Every day in my life I am realizing that being an adult doesn't get much different than it is right now! I thought maybe that someday life would be boring, or that some light could go on above my head that pointed a giant “Grown Up” arrow to me. It feels pretty much the same day in and day out as the years before. Though I have often been told I act a bit more mature than I actually am, I think it may have something to do with my optimistic yet realistic expectations about what life is.

I learned early on that life will not be handed to me. I am engrained with the thought process that I can do anything I want with my life and it will happen if I put forth enough effort. So that is exactly what I did! Pioneered my way into a career, moved out of state, improved upon myself until I loved what I saw in the mirror and found behind these green eyes. Though I can barely take any credit. Every talent I have been given and every opportunity I have acted upon has been handed to me on a silver platter by the Lord. The process of me utilizing these things for my benefit is a two person act and I am currently trying to perfect that balance between me and the Big Guy Upstairs.

Anyway, the point of this entry is to hash out within my own mind the theory of risks and benefits, pros and cons and how do you know what the right decision is? Simple...whatever God wants for you will happen. That is a big pill to swallow! How long should we date before we get married? Should we even get married? What car would be best for me to buy in my life right now? What school will be the most beneficial in my carreer path? What should I do to be more financially stable? Would moving back to my hometown take me two steps backward? How much is too much to sacrifice for happiness? Am I being unrealistic and letting a golden opportunity pass me by? The trick is to put your faith and trust in the Almighty and be willing to be happy with whatever He decides for you. He has your best interest at heart and He can see the bigger picture of your life. You may want nothing more than to stay locked here in this beach town driving your convertible and basking in the SoCal sun, but He may see the greater happiness you will receive by doing something that seems impossibly unbearable at the moment. This is a hard lesson for this stubborn girl to learn, but I am learning it over and over all my life, and really I wouldn't have it any other way!

Falling In Love

Love has been on my mind a lot lately as I begin this new adventure with BlueStar. For me love grows like a well nurtured Forget-me-not, but not always. Sometimes the mere suggestion of being loved sends me spiraling into furious passionate reciprocal feeling when they may not actually be real (hence Marco)...I have also been reading this month's Ensign and it couldn't have come at a more pivotal moment in my life. BlueStar and I have decided to stay together and soak up every moment of perfection we have together here in California for the next five months. When August comes around there might be some severe heartbreak, but I am feeling so calm and peaceful about it that I am not worried at all! We fit together, like pieces of a puzzle. We are very much alike: naturally happy, adventurous, creative, driven people who have come from somewhat similar backgrounds (very wealth-less childhoods, major conversions to our church, independent of our families, awful heartbreaks) and we have tons of simiar goals that we just simply discovered that we shared and didn't make together: adopting children, settling down in Southern California, never ever having divorce be an option, going on a mission together, making a huge difference in the world somehow...I fit with this man.

So the question now is what does falling in love mean? How does it happen? It suggests that it was accidental and against your will. Falling is a feeling of being out of control and not understanding what happened until the result: hitting the floor. This sentence doesn't exactly sound like the best thing to ever happen in one's life, let's see if we can find the real gem in this concept. There are extraordinarly wonderful moments to be out of control, such as the huge drop of a roller coaster, or sitting lazily in the sun in the passenger seat of a car, or feeling your ears pop as your airplane wins the gravity battle. There are also many terrifying ones (some of my wonderful ones may be your terrifying ones...that is what makes life so diverse and amazing) such as being pulled from the shoreline by the undeniable forces of the tide, or watching helplessly as the car behind you refuses to slow down at the red light, or trying as you might to convey your opinion to a best friend who is ruining their life...out of control, like anything, has it's light and dark. Not understanding what happened until the result is a funny one. I remember once leaving my Mom's house on a frozen night and losing my footing on the 3 front porch stairs what were slicked with a layer of ice. I fell square on my back and got a horizontal bruise from hip to hip. I found it very funny because I didn't even remember slipping, just sitting on the ground laughing. I have also had experiences like this where I find myself deep in a puddle of affection without having any recollection of ever getting there. What did I see in this person again? How did I get to this point? It happens, and sometimes it works out for the best. Not having been raised on instant anything (there will not be instant pudding in my home, cook and serve only!) I am not a believer of love at first sight. My love must be nourished and reassured constantly until it blossoms into an all encompassing tree with it's limbs and blossoms wrapping tightly around the other person. The last and most terrifying part is the hitting the floor. This part can destroy a person, can turn them into a hollow shell and leave them shattered laying in the bottom of a dry bathtub wondering how they are ever going to find the strength to climb out. I do not want to focus on this because I am sure that with that visual each of you paused for a moment and remembered being there, wherever there was for you, and felt enough pain to not want to read further.

I love that the phrase contains the word “in”! Falling IN love. I imagine myself thin and lovely in a flowing wispy dress standing on the edge of a slab of marble. Spread out below me is an expanse of rose colored water, only it's almost more like air than water. Water surely is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, but air is a necessity of a different sort. We can choose to drink water, to eat wet foods, to swim until we are soggy; but breathing is a different story. As Regina Spektor sang it best “everyone must breathe until their dying breath.” Air equals love in this analogy if you have not gathered that already. Ok back to me in my pretty dress. I imagine gracefully tumbling, willingly taking the plunge so-to-speak. I would break the surface and breathe in a new life, new love, a new person. His smell would be all around me and I could simply bask in the deliciousness of this new sensation. We would float blissfully, tumbling forever in this rose colored endlessness, completely saturated IN love.

Now we approach the last word of our darling phrase, this verbage so easily confused with lust, among other things. l.o.v.e.....

What more to say? It is the single most sought after thing in the whole world. It is the holy grail of emotions, the fallen star, the treasured prize at the end of the race. Those few successful ones run hand in hand into the sunset leaving the rest of us behind in a shadow of green envy, and self pity. Love comes in all shapes, motherly love is the shape of warm lips gently kissing her newborns brow, friendship smells like sugar and is the shape of us all laying together on the trampoline on warm summer nights, family love is the shape of shipping rope tied in endless knots never to be undone and sometimes there is romantic love that is the shape of sand caught up on a light ocean breeze, it blows away easily and picks up just as easily the next time. If you can be counted as one of the lucky ones who found Atlantis you can only do your best to make love stick around like the polished slab of marble my feet were warming in my pretty dress. You feed it with laughter, you water it with compassion and thoughtfulness, and you put it in the sunshine of compliments. Ok this is getting stupid...you know what I mean. Both of you adore each other enough to nurture it and treasure it more than yourselves. This is falling in love to me!

The Eye of the Beholder

Beauty is much sought after, but what is it exactly? I work as a massage therapists and see bodies every day. Don't get all weirded out, it is strictly professional. I love doing bodywork on pregnant women and marvel at how natural and beautiful they are. I love to see the fairest of skin, the freckliest arms, the craziest tanlines, well worn hands, smile lines and the beauty and diversity of each guest who comes in. I like to think that I am the kind of person who sees people for exactly who and what they are and loves them. Idealizing someone for who you think they should be, or should look like is a dangerous past time. It sets you up for failure.

Consider the bombshell blonde, Orange County soccer Mom: flowing locks, bronzed skin, bright sunny smile. Now lets see her real beauty...or not so real. Besides having paid enormous amounts of money for double D's, orange skin, sewed on hair and striking white teeth, she portrays insecurity. If you have to augment so much of yourself to feel beautiful don't you think maybe the problem is inside your head instead of with your body? I would not want to be with a man who encouraged plastic surgury. (If I want it for some reason that is different than being encourged by my man) I would feel as though he thought I was unattractive, and would never feel up to par with him unless I was running the rat race toward this unattainable goal of beauty.

I realized for the millionth time today that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. I think I could maybe be happy with Quasimodo if he had a good heart and a loud laugh! Who cares what everyone else thinks about you or your significant other? They aren't you. They don't have that deep rooted connection that you have where your heart threatens to stop beating with joy when you catch him gazing at you instead of the movie. They may not love your freckly shoulders, or your weird habit, or the way your face curves, but someone does. I have seen the most in love couples being involved in this choir. I have caught sidelong flirts sent between couples married fifteen years, batting eyelashes and grinning foolishly at one another across a room. Maybe to an unattentive beholder these people don't have that...something but they have something better! They unabashdly love the person they are with, beauty being what it may! Truth is, age is inevitable (and another blog) and yet as we move progressively into our decades we become more beautiful in many ways that are not always physical! Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, try to see yourself the way someone else might. If you are still not feeling it, get a massage! One never feels more beautiful in their own skin than after a massage!

Smile

Messiah In America

This is the show I have been practicing with since January. It is my second professional choir that I have been a part of and I am wishing I hadn't let all those years slip by between high school A Capella and now. I love to sing, I adore it and can't remember a time in my life when performing wasn't my favorite thing to do.

Lets see if I can map out my performing. I debuted with The Winner School ballet class at age 6, not sure what we wore but I bet it was killer cute! I continued on as a dancer until about 14. By that point I was in advanced rigid ballet classes, but my body refused to grow into the shape of a ballerina! So after some really sad moments I morphed from dancer into singer! I performed at Kingsbury Hall in the children's choir in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (superb) at ages 11 and 12, then onto High School endeavors. We competed at State Competition and did well I believe. Then came the sad dry spell of just singing The Used in my car for a few years...and hello Disneyland! Last Christmas I was in the Candlelight Processional as a part of the Disneyland Choir and totally loved it! I couldn't just abandon my old friend music after reintroducing myself and so I immediately auditioned for OCMCO (Orange County Mormon Choral Organization) and this is what I want to blog about today...

Next week we are premiering Messiah in America! It is an original handwritten Oratorio by Brett Stewart who is an absolute genius and a spiritual giant to top it off. It is text hand selected from The Book of Mormon from the story of Christ visiting the America's after his resurrection. The Spirit is so strong in rehearsal I get chills just thinking about how amazing this will be at Segerstrom Hall. I have never had the opportunity to sing in a building with good acoustics. I am breathless with excitement!!! Perfectly befitting of my personality it just so happens that I am the bright eyed chipmunk front and center during the show! Beyond all of my excitement is a sense of overwhelming gratitude that I got to be a part of this.

It is a missionary opportunity the likes of which I have never had access to. I am the lone Mormon at work and get questioned about my beliefs all the time, Now I can simply ask for their support in my amazing show and with their bodies in the audience I can sing at the top of my voice my testimony for all of them to hear! I am very excited to have my boyfriend's parents attending, especially his Dad, and am anxious to hear about how their experience was during the show. I invited everyone to bring a non-member friend or just simply a date! C'mon who wouldn't love the opportunity to get dressed up and go to the theatre? It is my favorite thing...even better than ice cream! I feel enormously blessed to be a part of a professional choir that is dedicated to performing music that uplifts the spirit and invites peace into all those who hear.

Smile