The Big 18!

Today is my baby sisters 18th birthday!! She is officially an adult. (making my parents officially old) I can't believe she is 18! Over the last 18 years of having her in our family I've decided that I love her, even if she is not a boy-which is what I was hoping for 18 years ago today. Despite that set back she is still pretty great. My favorite thing about her is how happy she makes people. Whenever I'm around her I can't help but smile and laugh, even at myself! She just has a way like that. I'm so proud of the little adult she has become!

Here is a little love note for her:

Abs,

Happy Birthday! Welcome to the world of adulthood. Don't worry it's not quite as scary as it sounds because you're still allowed to do stuff like drive fast, color, and watch Disney movies-you just have to be prepared to pay for the tickets, crayons and movies yourself!

I think you will be good at this whole grown-up thing though, once you get the hang of it. I'm pretty sure you will be an awesome adult, and I can't wait to see the amazing things you do with your life. Also-this year is going to be an epic one for you. LIVE IT UP!

I love you and your freckled face,

Colie

PS-This is the year of the nose muff. (patent pending) I just know it.

Today

Yesterday was not so great. However after a conversation with a roommate I decided that today was going to be different. And apparently so did the rest of the world. Let me tell you about it:

At work I walked in to find this sweet gift left on my desk by a supervisor in our office. It was too kind-and I kind of love being the owner of fancy pens now!

In Clinical Trails my professor surprised me first by knowing my name and second by letting us write the quiz we have next class period. (awesome)

In Injury and Violence Prevention my professor told us that our upcoming test is open book/open note/open laptop. Because after all "College is really about teaching you where to look things up."  

(more awesome)

But wait it only gets better.

While in Banana Republic today this cute lady working there stopped me, and asked if she could give me her card. She explained "I do hair, and you have beautiful hair. I would love to cut it sometime." Needless to say I now love this girl.

Also her name is Chanel. Pretty sure I can trust my hair to any women with a designer name.

There is still more.

I came home to find this present from my visiting teachers. Do they know me well or what?

And to top it all off-I got my entire "To Do" list done today!

Great day right? I was so excited I just had to share!

Paint Your Heart Out

I have a deep desire and a real intent to be creative. However, somewhere between desiring to be creative and actually being creative I lose my will. That probably happens while pinning. Friday though Jenna and I were determined to get creative. So we picked up some brushes, paint and canvas, made some crystal light, put on painting clothes and turned on Sleepless in Seattle.

And this is what resulted:

My three canvases. Canvesi? Who cares-the creative type don't worry about spelling

Jenna and I each did three canvases and I have to say it was one of our greatest ideas yet. Now I know they may not be museum quality works of art, but for our first time I'd say they show great promise.

Lets get real here-mostly we were just excited to actually do something creative.

Pretty sure we deserve a large diet coke for that :)

I've meant to post something.

That is a lie. 

I haven't had anything I've wanted to share, and to be quite honest I don't right now either.


I don't have lots of pictures, or funny stories, or some giant reason why I haven't been sharing.


I guess I haven't been posting because I've been just too darn busy living. Nothing major, just living. Going on diet coke runs. School. Staying up to late. Work. Making fun of the Bachelor. Being a friend, sister, and daughter. Church stuff. Washing my hair. (hey this takes quite some time for me) Homework. Cooking. Having #fgps with my roommate. Talking. Listening. Sleeping when I can. Planning. Eating. Laughing.


See... I've just been living. Just living, but it's been great. My life is good, and beautiful and hard and I love living it.
I plan on posting more, and taking pictures more. I really do.


(I also plan on working out, doing all of my reading for school and eating more veggies though, so we'll see what happens)

Happy New Year!

"So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterday however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future."

-Jeffrey R. Holland, Remember Lot's Wife

A Favorite Christmas Tradition

We started it when we were little. The whole family would head off to the 1$ Store and buy each member of the family a little gift. The trick of it was that you had to be inventive in how you hid your purchases since the whole family was walking around the store. I'm sure when we were little we thought it was awesome to have gifts that were secrets from our parents, and now it is still awesome because we usually try to come up with he most funny/random/creative crap.

Once home safely unseen by the others the gifts are wrapped and placed in our GIANT family stocking where they remain until we open them Christmas night.

Some of the best gifts this year: carpet cleaner for the dog, hand sanitizer, no rip toilet paper, and a FBI badge.


*It should be noted that we buy each other thoughtful, useful Christmas gifts too :)

Happy Christmas

Last December I spent a Sunday morning wandering through a beautiful art gallery. It is not my usual Sunday morning activity, but as I wandered through this famous, usually packed space the quiet, and emptiness spoke to me. I had a spiritual experience as I came upon a painting of the Christ child, being looked upon and adored by his mother.

I think I've seen every nativity ever made before (and half of them are in our living room), however this particular representation of a mother adoring her child, and her savior spoke to me in a way none other had before. It showed a mother overjoyed at having a child, and in awe of who her child was, and what he would do.

Before I'd never really thought at the joy Mary must have felt when she became a mother. Everyone mentions how intimidating, hard, or overwhelming it would be to realize you are the mother of Christ. However, there must also have been great joy. She had our Heavenly Father on her side, like no other mother before or since. She had a knowledge of what was to come. She knew that there was great reason to rejoice in the birth of this son, because of who he was, and what he would do for the world.
About the hope he would bring to it.

I've been thinking a lot about hope the past weeks. About what it really means and about the role it plays in my own life. I think President Uchtdorf spoke of hope best when he spoke in General Conference a few years back:

"Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness"

"Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of the faith in our Savior."

"(Hope) is believing and expecting that our prayers will be answered. It is manifest in confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, and patient perseverance."

"There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope... Hope teaches that there is reason to rejoice even when all seems dark around us."

And I think that this hope, bringing happiness and rejoicing, is really what Christmas is all about.