The littlest redhead goes to...

About 2 weeks ago, I bought this beautiful book. I mean beautiful in every sense of the word. Its illustrations are beautiful and its words are beautiful. Everything about it is beautiful. It's called Start Today and after reading through half of the simple, yet compelling pages, I read, "You can decide how much distance there will be between the life you have and the life you want ." A few pages later, "Get good at recognizing your dream. Get so good that when it is arriving, you can see it coming and run to meet it." I know I've heard some version of these words before, but they resounded deep within my soul as I read them anew. I pondered what they truly meant to me . It then prodded the question, "What is my  dream?" So what is my dream? At first, all I could think was, "I don't know....many things." But, as I've continued to think about this, I realized a few things that are my dream. My dream is to love God more than

Wow. What a year. I really can't believe that December is already here and 2015 is right around the corner. The fact that it will be 2015 is so surreal...wasn't it just 2000? Naturally, thinking about the new year makes me think back on this past year. This crazy, incredible, hard, and very rewarding year of 2014. As most of you know, I spent the majority of this past year as a member of BYU's International Folk Dance Ensemble. I spent last winter, spring, and summer practicing, performing, and touring all over Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Europe (Belgium, France, & Switzerland). Words cannot express how incredibly rewarding this experience was and I consider myself SO lucky to have been able to do one of the things I love most (dancing and performing) for thousands of people. However, one of my absolute favorite things about being on this team was the people I met. I came to know some of the kindest, most sincere, and most loving people, whether in the audience or on

I received an email today from my best friend who is serving a proselyting mission in Rhode Island and something in her email really struck a chord with me. Enough so that I wanted to record down some of my thoughts. She wrote of an experience she had after Elder Holland, an apostle of the Lord, had visited her mission area and spoke to all of the local missionaries in a zone conference. One phrase that she quoted Elder Holland as saying really resonated with how I have been feeling lately. In fact, he put into words something that I didn't know I was yearning to hear until I read it in her email. He said, "We don't fly because we are too inclined to play it safe." I love this phrase because   I have been feeling some hesitancy on how to move forward with my life now that I am graduated and I feel that it really just encompasses everything that I think the Lord is trying to tell me at this stage in my life right now.  Last week, I applied for an internship in Wash

So I was going to post about this last week, but to tell the whole truth, I just ran out of time! Last week, my media class became a court room; that's right, we held a mock trial in the basement of the JKB. :) The case was about prohibiting the sale of video games to minors, with the two sides being the protection of minors vs. the freedom of speech.  There were many roles for which we could volunteer for, such as bailiff, witness, lawyer, etc., but I volunteered to be a lawyer for the below reasons: I didn't have to write a paper that the rest of the class did! I've always wanted to be a lawyer in real life! (But really I was planning on going to law school for awhile). I love to argue... :) My first instinct was to pick to be on the protection of minors side, but the freedom of speech needed more volunteers...so I reluctantly played the devil's advocate and picked the "road less traveled". Surprisingly, I am VERY glad that I ended up on the side I d

So the assignment I had due in class today was to write a persuasive letter to someone in authority (i.e. a state representative, senator, the FCC, the ESRB, etc.) regarding something that should change concerning media.  I looked through my notes and thought about what I had learned over the course of the semester and decided to write about implementing a book rating system.  I had a hard time choosing who I would address my letter to, seeing as there are absolutely NO review boards for book ratings...so I decided to pose this question to my local government, specifically Utah State Representative, Jason Chaffetz.  Below is my full letter, but I have to add that this is a very important topic! Many books have SO much inappropriate and harmful content, but they are not monitored like video games or movies...and this is not okay!  Children and adolescents become more aggressive (among other negative side affects) when they read about aggression in books.  This detracts from their overal

Okay, seriously society? Why the obsession with zombies?! It's kind of disturbing and gross. I mean with the development of The Walking Dead series and the new Warm Bodies movie...it kind of makes me want to throw up! Both of these look terrible! It's just another ploy to get another SUPER inappropriate series/teen movie out that has WAY too much sexual content in it. So I ask again, why the popularity with zombies? Why can't we be fixated on something/someone that is actually real and good? Something that could solve world hunger or bring world peace? I guess what I'm just trying to express is my distaste for what content is put in these sort of movies/TV series and ultimately what condition the "world" is in...it just ended up to be taken out on zombies...sorry. (I mean, if this were a few years ago, I probably would be doing the same about vampires...) Anyway, just thought I needed to separate myself from the majority of other voices cheering for this