Well, another semester has been conquered and I figured I should post some of my favorite memories for proof to my future posterity that, yes, I have always been slightly insane even in my "adult" life. College brings out real personality, enough said--let's get on to the pictures because they tell more than any amount of words. :)
Who said best friends couldn't/shouldn't room together? I was so lucky to get to room with my two best friends/twins/sisters-in-another-life: Kate and Bridget. We really are like triplets and spent every moment together laughing, quoting movies, and reading each other's minds.
7 years strong baby!!
The Loverly Kate
The Domestic Bridget:
Our vanilla scented campfire--we don't get out much.
I still giggle thinking about when I took this picture; Provo was at extreme levels of scorching temperatures and I caught Kate pulling a Marilyn Monroe over the blowing AC vent. This pic doesn't quite capture the whole hilarious effect. :)
A shout out to Cheez-its for getting Bridget through her Philosophy videos
And a shout out to BYU Creamery's Cookies 'n' Cream Chocolate milk: you're my liquid heaven on earth.
Kate's a creeper, but only an amateur compared to my skills
AHH--my squash boat!! This was so fun!
We sent him with a little note for others to find... :)
I reeled in Catherine, Ariel, Bridget, and others in my little nautical adventure
Watching my boat get demolished by the ducks (and an evil little boy trying to sink it by throwing bread into it)
Proving to Kate that her Nutella was bigger than her head
Chelsea, my other wonderful roommate, has the strange addiction too...
Extreme ends of the healthy food spectrum
It's been said before that if Kate's family ever had a brother, it would be Kate.
annnnnd, I found about 15 pictures of them on my camera one day...
They're creepers keepers these ones.
I'm not too worried about any boys breaking our trio up yet... :)
I decided to do a more unconventional figure
One of the greatest things about this semester was that my brother Bryce was here at BYU too. We tried to get together every now and then despite our busy schedules.
A nice picnic with homemade chicken alfredo and breadsticks + some intense card games + three of my best friends = a beautiful day.
Breadstick sword fighting
oh, he's so wonderful!! I LOVE MY BROTHER!! I'm gonna miss him while he's on his mission for two years.
hehe, so Bridget was trying to be helpful by folding up the picnic blanket and in the process whacked Kate hard on the nose. We were all doing the strange mix of laughter and being concerned for her.
hello very white legs
Like all good friends do, Kate was pulling out a grey hair she found.
Thanks for keeping me young.
Kate, the Environmental Science major, loves plants...sometimes more than people.
I really am their long lost triplet...even if I was a FedEx child, I still claim the relation.
Just taking some pics to send to a friend on his mission. :)
It was a kind of strange transition this semester because all of our 'guy friend' population was depleted by them all going on missions. We did our best to send letters and got a few really great updates on their awesome experiences across the world as they share the great news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. [visit mormon.org]
Kate had this strange fettish with laying on my bed throughout the semester for no apparent reason. She even admitted that she will probably have withdrawals this next semester because I won't be there so she can't be a bed stealer anymore. After a while it was kind of like having a cute little dog crawl onto your bed...she even barks. [haha, I added that just for you, Kate
This was another strange transition: one of my roomies from last year, Jessica getting ENGAGED!! According to our loverly little roommate agreement, she owed us cheesecake for the accepting the proposal. [holding hands=owe cookies; kissing=ice cream; make out=pizza; engagement=cheesecake, steak, or philly cheesesteak]
For Halloween we went to our ward's sweet dance at a private hanger in the Provo airport.
Pirate, deer-in-the-headlights AKA Lucille Ball, Hippy, and Just plain adorable.
Our neighbors :]
Roommate reunion as we head off to Jess's bridal shower
Spooning--so much cooler and comfortable than planking.
Making our fireplace to make our cinder block wall apartment more festive.
Notice the olive wood nativity that Chelsea got in Jerusalem--can't wait to get my own next semester!
Just a little egg coloring to surprise Bridget, and yes, that is a storm trooper in the back right.
It was a wonderful semester full of MANY memorable moments with these great friends. They are such great examples to me. It was so fun to get to know Chelsea and talk and talk and talk about Jerusalem together (she went last Fall) and get me more pumped to go. And the twins were so patient with me as I excitedly talked about Jerusalem to them almost everyday. It really is true that the one of the best gifts you can give yourself is good friends and I have truly been so blessed it borders on spoiled in that area. Thanks for your Christ-like examples and patience with me, Kate, Bridget, and Chelsea!! I will miss them loads while I'm skipping the country for a few months.
Annnnnnnd now, I'm off to the Holy Land! Literally, my plane leaves in a few hours, I just can't sleep. I'll try to post as much as possible, but the internet in the BYU Jerusalem Center isn't so stellar and has several restrictions. I'm beyond excited to study the life and ministry of Christ in the actual places that he lived and ministered. I hope to come closer to Him in thought, word, and deed as I learn more about my Savior and feel the Spirit abundantly. I've named my experience for the next 4 months: the Holy Land Making Me Whole. I truly hope to become more of a true and whole disciple of Christ through this experience. I know that my Redeemer lives!
Okay, so I write this blog for myself, but I just feel so strongly about several things lately that I just want them recorded. It's not to persuade others, but to just articulate my thoughts and splash my feelings onto a permanent medium.
Here's the first of many...but who knows if I'll ever get around to posting my other critical thinkings. A glimpse into my cognitive ramblings:
This fall, when I returned to my beloved BYU bubble I strutted campus with the elated idea that I was going realize my full potential, fix all my mistakes I made in the naivete of Freshman year, and hit the ground running. I was sick of all the grade-grubbers, the crazy curve obsessors, and the in-class Facebookers and Angry Bird-flingers. I was sick of seeing lazy corner-cutters coming to lecture only to waste away their subsidized tuition for a disrupting chat with their neighbor--it's not Dating 101, it's Music 101, gah! I don't think people realize that even the 72 year old widow in South America is diligently paying her tithing, a part of which supports their education, for them to "Enter to Learn and Go Forth to Serve", not "Enter to Disrupt and Go Forth to Waste Others' Offerings". There were and are SO many people who sacrifice SO much for us to be at Brigham Young University; people who know the meaning of sacrifice for a good cause: truth.
[deep breath] So, my goal: seek learning and truth; seek to love to learn; seek to become closer to God by gaining truths, or intelligence, because God is intelligence and we come closer to Him as we seek to learn truth. I sensed that I had missed the boat on this idea for many years of my education, and in consequence, I have been waiting for years on the dock, longing for a higher motivation for my education. I've always known education was important, for reasons like preparation and being able to use your knowledge and skills to build up the kingdom, but I never realized the true motivation for seeking truth. At BYU I have felt the Spirit speak to me truths in Family Finance, Biology, Psychology, Human Development, and yes, even in my Self-Defense class. Intelligence is God, and as we seek truth and intelligence we seek God--and that should be our true motivation.
I'll take one foot off my soap box now, but only one because I just cannot be done quite yet. Yesterday my Music Civilization professor (Dr. Howard) catapulted this exact idea of a higher knowledge into our faces and I just gritted my teeth and tried to soak in every ounce of what he was really saying. It was a profound message. And it all started with talking about metaphysical poetry and the poet John Donne. We watched a few excerpts from the exceptionally moving movie, "Wit". Here is the excerpt that cranked the cogs of our class discussion:
It is a beautiful thought: to separate death and eternal life by "just a comma"; to actually learn something from the poetry, even down to the punctuation. But the profound thought by my professor really made me re-think my motives in life. He said in his brilliant British accent,
"This class is just the tip of the iceberg; not even, it is the 3 snowflakes on the top of the tip of the iceberg. I just hope that sometime in your higher education, a professor has the courage to return your work and say, 're-do this; you can do better'. I hope that you take the opportunity to find something that you're passionate about and instead of expanding outwards, dig deeper. Dig deeper than the life of John Donne, dig deeper than his poems, dig deeper than the stanzas, dig deeper than a sentence in that stanza, dig deep, even to the punctuation of the sentence and study it passionately."
If that thought doesn't give you the chills, then something is way off balance because this is a profound message that can be applied to every aspect of life. By the seemingly "small and simple" things, like punctuation, "great things come to pass". Dr. Howard is passionate about what he teaches and has done the 'digging to the punctuation' in his area of expertise--and it shows in his eyes. This is what I hope for in my lifelong education and search for truth, both secular and spiritual. We can wait until someone else does the digging, but we won't gain the same things; the whole truth comes by us doing the actual digging ourselves, learning the determination it takes, experiencing the sweat and the blisters, and then feeling first-hand the euphoria of striking the gold, the full meaning of the comma.
What would it feel like to go through college actually listening to dozens of "Punctuation Professors" with fresh dirt on their hands from digging, with the mind-set that truth and intelligence are contributing to our seeking for more God in our lives? Would we pay more attention and fine-tune our mental radios? Would we try to apply the concepts and truths to our lives? Would we learn to love to learn? I answer with a resounding affirmative.
"Feast or Famine"? My Sociology professor (Dr. Ralph Brown) started the semester with telling us four rules that he has in his house--one of which is to "Always choose feast over famine." His point was that sometimes in life we get so caught up in the getting-it-done that we don't realize we are starving ourselves. Why in the world would someone spend thousands of dollars for something cheap and flimsy that will break the next day? Haven't we been taught to get the most "bang for our buck"? Instead, clever college kids cheat themselves of the best education they could get--they choose the famine over feast--as they devise ways to get out of reading the assigned material; they create GoogleDoc study guides shared with the class, so they only have to do half of the work; they cheer when a professor says they have to skip something due to lack of time. Why do we do this to ourselves? It's not logical, economical, or intelligent. I'm not exempting myself, I know I've been there once upon a time. But not anymore. My love for food has triumphed over the laziness and lack of perspective of the emaciated famine-goers.
I choose the feast: a 6-course meal, free refilled drinks, and never-ending soups and salads. Sure, it may take more effort to really focus and pay attention, but when you look over at the withering famine victims there will be no regret. So, as this semester began with my goal in mind, I loosened my belt preparing for my feast. And let me say, it has made all the difference in the universe. I come to class ready to be enlightened, and I leave class illuminated. Literally, that's why I am even writing this. I have dozens of post-it notes with the profound insights to truth that I had that day in class that I wish I had the time to expound on. I actually apply the princples to my everyday life. It's like each of my classes give me a new colored filter to look at the world through and now I am able to see things that I never knew were there before.
I had to add that picture because that's how it really feels to me. It is exhilarating to see life with new perspectives. It's kind of sad to think of how many years of my life and learning I could have enjoyed and appreciated more. But I feel like an extremely lucky lottery winner to be part of the minuscule 6.7% of the world to have the opportunity for a college education. Some Many days I really wonder why I have been so blessed.
OH! and I almost forgot to mention a very wonderful bonus that comes with this way of seeking for higher learning and truth--my grades are better than they've ever been before, because it's real learning. I love this quote by our prophet President Thomas S. Monson:
"I tried to be attentive in any lecture in the classroom and to pretend that I would be called upon to present the same lecture to others. While this practice is very hard work, it certainly helps during test week [not to mention he had a photographic memory :)]...It is not the number of hours you put in, but what you put in the hours that counts."
That is what I will attest to: it's "what you put in the hours that counts". And as I have tried to put my best into each hour of my search for truth and learning, I have learned to love learning, I have discovered the meaning of the punctuation in some topics, I have loosened my belt a couple notches due to my feast, and most importantly, I have come closer to my Heavenly Father. And that's the truth.
This Memorial day weekend was extremely memorable. I had the gift of being with tons of my Pratt relatives for the whole weekend. We drove 3 hours to my aunt and uncles’ (Melinda and Jace) who live in Pima. I’d never been there before, and I highly doubt that many have….it was smack dab in the middle of no where…let’s call it MNW. But some how we managed to cram oodles of fun stuff into our schedule to create the perfect weekend; who knew there was so much to do in MNW?! We started it off by swimming in an abandoned rock quarry (they called it the pond, but it was really a football field in length), which looked a little iffy at first, but it turned out to be crocodile free. : ) There was an old crane that had a rope swing, which was a blast to fling ourselves off of. I felt like a little kid on an adventure. We finished it off like every swimming occasion should end: with watermelon, dripping down our elbows and stamping our cheeks with the infamous watermelon juice.
We then cleaned up in a jiffy, so that the older kids could go to the new Pima temple for baptisms. It was beautiful: the temple, the Spirit I felt, my family that was with me, the whole experience…it was all beautiful. The temple workers said that by the time we were done, they had done 1,000 baptisms for the dead that day—AMAZING, for a place the size of MNW. It was so special because you could just feel how much they cherished their new temple, dedicated last year. They even had us put on ridiculous plastic booties to protect the floor from our harmless shoes. We were walking around like we had just stepped into large marshmallows. But you know what? I didn’t feel ridiculous at all; instead, I felt very humbled as I entered the Lord’s house, surrounded by people who truly knew the sacred ground on which they stood.
Next day was the Sabbath and church was light-years away at the 1:00 time, so I got to play the piano for awhile at my aunt’s request, taught my cousin Kali how to braid, got my hair done semi-resembling a braid, played with little cousins, and visited with aunts and uncles. Then we all went down to their unfinished basement, piled on top of a few blow up mattresses, and watched a short video on John Tanner, who we are all related to through my grandpa Pratt. He was an inspiring man during the restoration of the church who helped the church in many ways, but mainly financially: donating over 250 million dollars to the church (in today’s terms). At one point he gave away so much of his extreme wealth that he only had $7.50 left for his family of nine kids. The prophet Joseph Smith said to him at one point, “God bless you, Father Tanner, your children shall never beg bread.” This promise from a prophet has held true to the generations of John Tanner; we visit some of his posterity, John and Bobby Tanner, every now and then and they serve us delicious desserts in their immaculate mansion. The Tanner generations have truly not had to ‘beg bread’ again. This is just a trailer, but it’s enough to make your heart swell in gratitude for those who came before us with such great faith and selflessness.
Treasure in Heaven—John Tanner Story
We then went on a little Sunday walk around MNW:
OH! and throughout this whole weekend, I was constantly stuffing my face with loads of delectable foods. My cousin Peri and I kept saying as we lay in a food coma, “oh my gosh, I never want to eat again”……and then 2 hours later we stuff our bellies past their capacity and follow the same routine. It. Was. Great. (but highly disturbing).
I also got to surprise a few family members, my Grandpa Pratt and Louise in particular, because they didn’t know that I was staying in Arizona for the summer. It was so great to see everyone again.
Melinda and Jaces’ family is adorable. I want mine to be just like theirs. After every family prayer they all huddle together, put their hands in the middle and say, “To Eternity and Beyond!!!” It’s one of the cutest and most powerful things I’ve heard exclaimed from tons of little kids. I determined then and there that I’d do that with my family. Another thing that just sums up how their family runs is this insert in their hand soap bottles:
They truly live this to a T.
Then came Memorial day. I woke up to my 4 year old cousin Hyrum standing next to my bed staring at me. He then just came into my arms and snuggled; it was so precious! Then I had another really special moment as I watched and photographed my cousin Trae putting up the flag and our family’s tradition of putting up our copies of our ancestor Parley P. Pratt’s liberty flag. While innocently in jail at one point, Parley made a makeshift flag (from a shirt) on Independence day and put it out the jail window. Each of our families all have made our own and let it’s bold message fly alongside the American flag.
It was also Kali’s birthday and baptism. Peri and I decided to sticky note her door with love notes. And we saw later that her brother Trae had added his own sweet note.
Kali’s baptism was so special. There’s something about baptisms, just going back to the basics; it’s really powerful. My favorite part is always when all the little kids squish together to see the baptism up close to the font. It’s a good thing they had glass there, cause I’m sure a few kids would’ve fallen in because they wanted to be so close to the action. I have a strong testimony that we are to be like little children. They are so pure, so sweet, so loving, so forgiving, so Christ-like. It was a beautiful experience.
We all enjoyed a fun lunch together and then had to pile up in the car to go home…and finished it off perfectly by watching Tangled on the way. It was really a perfect weekend. It felt so surreal, so perfect. It felt like I had truly tasted a bit of what Heaven is like: surrounded by loving family “To Eternity and Beyond”.
