Get Your Motor Runnin....

Okay, so maybe that song is irrevelant but it was stuck in my head :-)



ITS MOVING WEEK! Whew! Boy is it stressful stuff! I heard somewhere that moving is rated in the top three on the list of "most stressful life events" and I definitely believe that. Luckily unlike my other Provo cohorts, I do not have to try to move during finals....just during a busy work week :) I feel like I've learned a lot through packing and moving though. Here's a few of the highlights. First, I need to de-junk constantly so as to not have to do it all in the middle of moving week. From talks that "I'm going to read....someday" to old clothes I haven't worn since I moved to Utah, it was nice to get rid of stuff I don't need but I wish I would have done it before now. Second, I hate goodbyes! In the midst of the excitement over a new apartment and all I kind of forgot about the people I am leaving behind. I know, I know, true friendships stand the test of time, distance, etc, yeah yeah, but it's hard enough living in Provo and making the time to see friends, now I'll be even farther away. Also, my dear ward friends! Ah, I will miss them so! But I also know the timing is right for me and hopefully we'll all be able to keep in touch. Ok, third, change can be good. As stressful as it has been packing and cleaning and de-junking for the big move, I am sooooooooo excited to be living in Eagle Mountain and living with Heather. Heather is amazing! Over this past weekend and through last night I have been busy getting my room ready for me to move in, which includes not only arranging dressers and bookcases but assemblying them too. I am so lucky that Heather was there-she majored in Interior Design-Yay for me! She was like a pro and without her help, I would probably still be in that room trying to figure out the dresser. IKEA is a great place in every way, except their directions- horrid! Also, we are way excited to paint this weekend. We are doing a red kitchen and have picked a 'Golden Desert' for the living room! Now I just need to settle on a color for my room, but one thing at a time, eh. Okay, I think that's all for now. My official move in date is this Friday. And Saturday starts the paint fest ;) Then we are having a sort of house warming party on the 25th-if you didn't get an evite and wanna come, lemme know! :)

Count Your Blessings...Name Them One By One

I've been feeling very lucky and fortunate lately. So from the oh-so-trivial to the serious stuff of life, I just wanted to quickly re-cap my blessings!

*Family-My family is am-a-zing! I recently elected my mom as the funniest person I know and I'm so lucky and blessed to be able to talk to her often :)

*Spirituality-General Conference was this past weekend and it was soo refreshing! I am so thankful to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and know what I know.

*Friends-AH, what would I do without them! They sustain me day to day, even if I don't see them very often. I am so grateful to have so many friends who are so supportive of me. And to have friends all over is pretty cool too. I was recently asked "What is the first quality you look for in a friend?" I honestly answered 'humor' Thanks for cracking me up guys!!

*My hair-Ha ha, trivial and vain, I know but it's getting so long now and I love playing with it!

*Jobs-I feel sooo lucky to have two jobs that I love going to each day. Some days I am tempted to sing "I ....don't want to work....I want to bang on the drum all day...." but then I realize that I am grateful just to have a place to go every day and earn a living at it :)

*Sports and Sunshine :)-Speaking of jobs, one of my jobs allows me to be outside and bask in the light of the sun and it involves sports, I absolutely love it!!

*Skillz- :-) I have been trying to cut back in different ways, a big one being eating out. This has allowed me to cook at home more and I recently learned that YOU CAN FREEZE FOOD! haha, probably pretty basic, but now I freeze everything.

*Boys- Ok, so they make me crazy, but they provide a completely different point of view. I mean, how boring (and dramatic!) would a world full of just girls be..? So, from my dad to my home teachers to the boys I work with and those that I flirt with....I'm grateful for them ;)

*The Web- By this I mean, Blogs and Facebook. It's kind of silly to be thankful for things such as these but they are one of my major means of communication. I love reading everyone's blogs and seeing what they've been up to. And a number of my extended family members have recently joined Facebook. I'll admit, it was a little weird at first to have my aunts and uncles and cousins that I rarely talk to commenting on my status updates but it's nice and all our family, regardless of distance, can communicate on there. Yay!

Our Current Economic Status: I hate to use the 'r' word, but the recession has turned me into a Recessionista :) I've been panicked enough to try to cut back and save more, both things I should've been doing all along. Also, since I now loathe spending money, I needed work pants and decided to go to our local thrift store, DI. I usually hate thrift stores because just thinking about someone else wearing what I'm wearing kind of grosses me out, but I found two amazing pairs of pants and spent a total of $12 bucks! Woo Hoo! And I believe that hard times bring us all closer, so yay!

So there ya go, a short list from me. I know that so many of these things come and go and most of them could be gone tomorrow. But for now, I am SO thankful for these and ALL the blessings I have been given. :)

Go Jazz!

On Saturday night I became an official fan of the Utah Jazz. When I first moved to Utah, I heard a lot of talk about the jazz, but honestly I thought the "Jazz" was kind of a dumb mascot so I avoided them. Then on Saturday, my ultra cool roommate-to-be Heather invited me to go to a game with her. It was against the Phoenix Suns, yeah, Shaq's team and was the most exciting display of athletic yumminess I have ever seen! I had been running around all day Saturday, driving like a maniac here and there so I was pretty tired and thought, oh man, I'll have to be up late because of the game. Little did I know my energy would be renewed quickly. As soon as Deron Williams stepped on the floor I became a devoted fan of the Jazz! The game itself was great too! (You mean hot players and a good game!? - we hit the jackpot!) The Jazz started off up by twenty but Shaq didn't let that stand, the Suns came back and were eventually up by two with the clock winding down. Then it was tied, sending it into overtime! Yay, overtime! We ended up winning and it was awesome! Woo-hoo! Here's my favorite Jazz player and my choice for MVP of the game-Deron Williams ;) YUM!

A Daily Serving of Humble Pie...

So, I had a fun experience this week that I am 'dying' to share. Let's just say I was 'bitten' by the bug of humility this week. Ok, ok, I'm not that good at dropping hints so the story goes a little something like this...
I've been a bit stressed and moody lately just with the daily rigors of life and getting ready for big changes. Unfortunately when I get like that, I tend to lash out on the people closest to me :( This time it was my roommate. I didn't do anything extreme, I'd just been a bit more difficult lately. Well, on Sunday, after church I was writing in my journal and had decided that I needed to be more humble. I'd had a lot of pride and just needed to try to have more humility and understanding of other people-nicer, per se? And so that was my goal on Sunday. Now, I am aware that oftentimes one should not make a goal to be more humble because if one is not humble to begin with, it could be a long hard fall to the bottom of one's own well of humility. :-) So I started the week off trying my best to be as humble as possible, but...well...I'm human. Tuesday rolls around and I wake up and start to get going, but when I step out of my bedroom I notice something in my doorway. It was a wrapped box with a note attached. It was from my roommate, Maryvonne. The note said something to the extent of 'thank you for giving me rides everywhere and going grocery shopping together and thanks for being such a great roommate.... Um, maybe she put this in the wrong doorway, I'd been horrible to her lately and here she was thanking me!?! Talk about humbling! Ugh! I picked up the box and began to open it. I tore off the first layer and almost started to cry! She had gotten me TWILIGHT ON DVD!!!:) Not only is this the ultimate girl-who-loves-Twilight-moment, but we had gone to see it together.....twice. What a great, thoughtful, nice thing to do! We are both moving soon, so it is a wonderful departing thing for us to watch it together again. I haven't exactly finished the movie yet, but we watched all the special features and I've fallen asleep to it every night...sickening, I know. But I'm thankful for Maryvonne and for all of the people in my life who teach me lessons like this-that even when I'm moody they can see past that and know that I'm still loveable <3> So thanks guys, that humble pie is tasting pretty good.

Update!

Hey Ya'll! I suppose it's time for an update, it's been, what, two months!? Geesh, I promise to try to be better. I feel a little selfish because I love reading everyone else's blogs and I feel like your lives are so exciting, what with babies and engagements and newlywededness and a big out of state move, my life seems a little mundane. So here goes with the boring and mundane ;P

Update #1 I'M MOVING! Yay! In about a month, so mid-April, I'll be moving to Eagle Mountain, Utah. I'm stoked about it. My new roomate is Heather, a friend that I've had for about 5 years. We met when we were roomates in the MTC (Missionary Training Center) right before our missions, and just kept in touch from there. The summer after I came home from my mission I came on my very first vacation ever, to visit Heather here in Utah. It was wonderful! So Heather bought a condo out in EM and asked me to be her roomate! At first the answer was obvious, who wouldn't want to live in a sweet condo with one of their best friends? But there was more to weigh, like work, commute and money. I will still keep both my jobs in Orem and Provo, which means about a 30 minute commute, but remember how I'm from a rural town, 30 minutes is nothing :) So I'm pretty excited and hopefully everything will work out perfectly. I'm working on getting all my stuff together and de-junking before I move-that's a task in itself. But I'll keep ya'll posted

Update #2 KAYLA! Ha Ha. Kayla is my new work buddy and I just had to give a shout out to her. :) In all seriousness though, I'm so glad that I work with her and since she has come to our office, I've been suprised how working with good people who you enjoy being around can make a huge difference in your life. Not that our work environment was horrible before, we just had people who made it a little more difficult to get through the day with...I'm sure everyone has those kind of co-workers. But we recently had a lot of moves and transfers and in our office, we got two new people. They are so much fun and nice to be around too. And, to add to Kayla's awesomeness, she just got home from her mission in Tennessee, so we sit and talk all day about missions and the south :) And, I have to announce, she just got engaged too. So, being the silly girls that we are, we've been pseudo-planning her wedding! Yay!

Update #3 KICKBOXING So since I posted my New Year's resolution blog, I decided that I needed to give an update on the working out. Bottom line: It's hard! Lol. I think it's a much harder long term goal than short term. It's easy to say 'ok, I'm going to work out three times this week' and do it, but much harder to turn that goal into a monthly one. Time is a huge deficit in this too. But fortunately I have amazing friends! One of which, Kelly, just had a baby and now wants to lose her baby weight. So we have teamed up and started doing Turbo Kickboxing at the gym. I'm not gonna lie, when she told me about it I though 'there's no way'. But really it's not that bad, soooo much fun and very empowering. It's an interval class so it starts off slow and works up to a faster pace and it's kickboxing so you pretend to hit like your smashing someone's face in :) It's an hour class and a great workout, I was sweating in places I didn't think I could sweat in :S We were doing it about once a week and then I would do my own "low key" workout the rest of the week. Fun stuff. My next fun thing I want to try now that the weather is getting better is to hike the Y. For those of you outside of Utah, I did a little research :D The Y, or Y Mountain is at 8520 feet and is a 1.2 mile hike from the parking lot to the Y. It's a pretty popular place to hike especially in Provo and since its not the most vigorous but still a pretty good workout, I'm adding it to my list. :)

Update #4 MY BAPTISMAVERSARY! On March 4, I celebrated my "baptismaversary". I'm pretty proud of myself for making that word up :) But even more excited that it was my nine year mark as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Wow! Who knew that my simple small baptism nine years ago would bring about such great blessings and life experiences for me. I was thinking a lot about my life now and how it would be different if I had never joined the church. It was almost unfathomable to me. I would have never served a mission, never moved to Utah, all of the friends that I have now I probably would have never met. It's amazing what the gospel can do for you. And the knowledge that I have now is irreplaceable. I can now say that I know that I have a Heavenly Father who knows me and loves me. I know that His Son, Jesus Christ is my Savior and my friend. He is the light that should guide our lives. I know that families can be together forever through the ordinances of the Priesthood. I know that we can have a little piece of heaven here on earth through the House of the Lord, the temple. And actually, I had the coolest experience- the day of my baptismaversary we went to the Draper Temple Open House. Before temples are dedicated, we get the opportunity to tour them and see how beautiful they are. I went with my ward and it was an amazing time! The temple is such a beautiful place and as soon as you step on the grounds you can't help but feel peace. It was sooo wonderful!

Update #5 I'M GOING HOME!!!! This is the biggest update of all for me because it is soo exciting. After a year of not being home, not seeing my mom or my sisters or my family, I will be flying home on May 9 (my dad's birthday) and staying a week. Ahh, a week in Southern Illinois with the people I love the most. Yay!!! I'm super stoked. Luckily, I was able to get a week off work, which is a pretty tough thing to do, and plan and book my flight. It feels like a miracle because it's something that I've wanted so badly. It's hard to believe that it's been a whole year that I've not been home! I had planned on coming last October but had to work, then maybe for the holidays, but again, had to work. But now it is finally happening! Wahoo! I have started a list of things that I want to do at home....*take a picture in a cornfield :) *eat at numerous southern illinois places like quatros pizza, tequillas, south side ribs..... *go to my sister, Ali's softball games *Workout with my other sister, Michelle *hug my mom ♥ *visit with my grandma (she was recently diagnosed with cancer and is going through treatments now) *Visit with numerous cousins and extended family members *take pictures of gravesites for family history *visit old high school friends ...there's probably more but I can't remember them :) But, to say the least, I'm excited!

Okay, I think that's it. Whew, that was a lot. I will try to be better! Until then-Happy March!

Tagging: Randomness

So this is pretty much a Facebook thing, but I decided to share it with everyone. It's just a compilation of random facts about yourself. And really, who doesn't like thinking about and discovering random things about themselves. So I thought I would give it a try. Here goes...


First, a random picture to start everything off :)

28 Random Things About Amy

1) I have naturally wavy hair, but never wear it natural. I used to hate it but I've learned just to either make it straight or curly.

2) I have been blessed with bright blue eyes, but in high school I wore aqua contacts to make my blue eyes bluer

3)Country Music calms me. Oftentimes I fall asleep listening to country music on a radio next to my bed

4)I live with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome)

5)I converted to Mormonism at 16, and am the only member of the Mormon church in my family

6)I am Italian

7)...and left handed

8) I love to sing, but am horrible at it. My dad recorded me at age 3 singing with a baton as my microphone and I cringe everytime I hear it

9) I learned how to say 'hello', 'i love you', and 'monkey face' in Tongan while serving an LDS mission in Long Beach, California

10)I have a very complicated family with half siblings, ex-step-siblings and interracial marriage, but I love it and wouldn't have it any other way. We are so much more normal than some others I know :)

11) I Am very rebellious, tell me to do something and it either won't get done or I will do the complete opposite

12)Those who are acquainted with me think I am nice and sweet; those who really know me think I am moody and fiesty :) I think both are true! ;)

13)I truly believe that anything can be cured with loud music, a fast car and/or dancing.

14)I was voted "most likely to be your best friend" and "best laugh" in high school.

15)I drive barefoot whenever possible (yes, even in the winter in Utah :>)

16)I am a born listener, it's a gift and a curse sometimes

17)In kindergarten, I had a hard time being left-handed, and wrote my name as YMA

18) I am more intelligent than I ever let on to be

19) I am horribly addicted to magazines. I could spend hours reading them. Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Taste of Home, Self, Prevention, etc. I will read them all!

20)I have had a nail biting habit for 25 years (egad!) and am currently trying to overcome it. (My manicurist says the cure is to push back cuticles whenever I feel like biting, and it's working so far...)

21) I am intrigued by people and their lives and their happenings. Thus, I could spend literally hours on Facebook and Myspace just seeing what people are up to.

22)I am from a small rural town-Steeleville, Illinois Population 2100.

23) I am a list person. I make tons of lists every week. From budgeting to wish lists to things to do before I die... It's the only way I get things done.

24)I'm a horrible dater. When I really like a guy I can't make eye contact. I blame genetics ;)

25)I love purses and shoes. The other day I was so excited about a bag I literally gasped out loud (No I wasn't buying it but it was a gorgeous bag...)

26)Despite my numerous speeding tickets I am a good driver and have never caused an accident

27) I have never broken a bone

28)I have a huge guilt complex and apologize for things I shouldn't

Man, that was more difficult than I thought it would be. It's kind of hard to think of things like that about yourself, but it's fun once you get started. I even added a few I thought of after I posted it. I think ya'll should try it. Whether it be via blog, Facebook, or email, send it to me, I want to know the randomosity of your lives :)

Well Hello 2009!

Happy New Year! I feel like it's taken me forever to blog in the new year, but I've been a pretty busy girl. I hope that everyone had a happy and safe new year and that 2008 ended well and 2009 was welcomed brightly.

I think for me 2008 ended with a bang. About two days before Christmas we had a robbery at the bank where I work. Talk about chaos and stress, and all right before Christmas. I learned a pretty big lesson through it all though. So, I work with the same people day in and day out, and usually that is a lot of fun. We all have pretty fun and outgoing personalities and I generally get along with everyone. Except for the Monday before the robbery. One of the guys and I were having what I would call a "personality conflict". I was getting annoying to him and he was being a jerk to me. Kind of just one of those things that happens when you're with the same people every day. I went home that night thinking, "Ugh, why do I have to work with him. He is such a .... (no need to go into detail :>) The next day I came to work and we got robbed. And I was sooo appreciative of the people I work with, I think I hugged them all, hehe. I was especially thankful for the guy who I was so mad at the day before, because he made me laugh and took some of the stress off. And so, the lesson I learned was to try to see the bigger picture. That sometimes "personality conflicts" are really just us or our pride getting in our own way and we should try to get over them and understand that most of the people in our lives are there for a reason. And so, they haven't caught the guy who robbed us yet, but I at least am optimistic that they will get him. With that and all the snow and staying in Utah for the holidays, I was pretty much ready for 2008 to be over and to start anew. Hence, welcome 2009.

I've decided that New Years' is one of my new favorite holidays (right behind Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day ;) ) It is such a great time to start fresh, to make new goals and to realign things. And this year, I was even on top of it. I usually make New Year's resolutions and try to stick with them throughout the year. Last year, I even made mid-year resolutions in July, hehe. So for my 2009 resolutions, I decided to get a head start (..that's not cheating, right??..) and I got my head start on one resolution the last two weeks of December. I decided to jump on the 'health and fitness' bandwagon and get more fit for 2009. So I started around the week of Christmas, heading to the gym every morning before work. And I've continued it!-which is the biggest suprise to me. Excluding holidays and Sundays, I've worked out everyday since. Yay! I have learned a few things along the way too. First of all, that number on the scale is meaningless. Like I said, I've been to the gym everyday for about two weeks and not only has that number not gone down, it's even gone up! Ack! Talk about discouragement. So I decided, it is just a number and it's not gonna get me down. Also, I've noticed other signs of improvement, I'm happier and I feel healthier, and to me that matters more than a number on the scale. Also, I've been able to track my progress by a remarkable mile time. I run on the elliptical (I'm still a little intimidated by running on the treadmill...) and I decided to try to run a mile under 10 minutes. Well, first I made it in 9:45 and then I topped that by running it in 9:38! That might not seem like an accomplishment to you who run a mile in 6 flat, but I was coming in at like 12 minutes before, so running a mile in 9:38 is a huge accomplishment for me. Take that number on the scale! :) So that is my most accomplished goal of the new year, others I'm still working on... we'll see. Other than accomplishing resolutions, I'm really excited about 2009. I am thinking about moving in with an amazingly great friend (props to Heather!) in April and hopefully making a trip home in May to see everyone there. We'll see. Happy 2009!