Things I have learned this week

- I somehow have a way of disappointing a lot of people without ever meaning to. Like I can literally make people really upset with me and not know it until boom it is blowing up in my face. Your thoughts?

- That my nephew and niece love me as much as I love them. I just said goodbye to them because they are going back to their dads for the weekend and today was the last day I would see them before I moved. I spent most of the day with them at the water park swimming and going on water slides with them. It was a blast. Then they came over to eat bbq at my parents house. I played Wii with my nephew as my niece told me stories about her boyfriends Finn and Puck (yes the ones on Glee). Then it was time to say goodbye. My niece turned four not too long ago and is only kind of comprehending what me leaving means. But my nephew is 6 and we have always been really really close and he got it. He came to give me a hug and didn't let go. The hug lasted like two minutes and he had tears in his eyes when he was done giving me the hug. Which of course made me start to tear up a bit. Which made him give me another hugg because he thought I was sad. Then my sis in law text me later and told me that when her and my bro got home my nephew was really quiet and when they tucked him in she asked him if he was okay and he started bawling and then my niece came in and she started bawling and then my sis in law started bawling because I was leaving. She never said if my brother was bawling but I am just going to assume he was as well. Man am I going to miss them and am so glad that google is as amazing as it is and has a video chat so I can still watch my nephew and niece grow up.

Now I know that everyone always claims that they have the cutest nephews and nieces but c'mon look at this picture and try to argue with me on this one.

- Also I learned that my serve in volleyball is back and almost better than ever. Just need a little more power in it so it hurts to hit back and then it will be there. Hopefully my new singles ward has a weekly volleyball night happening because I am going to miss playing volleyball with my friends every wednesday here in F-Town. That means Farr West you sickos.

Gavin Degraw -Recreating Chill Music

Of the many types of music I listen to chill music is one of the most constant. I like music that makes you feel something, and real chill music does just that. One of my favorite chill artists is Gavin Degraw. I love the songs Belief, We Belong Together, and probably my fave More Than Anyone, the stripped versions of the songs, the other poppy versions don't do it justice. I also love old motown songs. Smokey Robinson is king, if I could sing like anyone, he would be one of those that are at the top of my list, also Sam Cooke. My favorite Smokey song is Tracks of My Tears and one of my fave Sam Cooke songs is Cupid. I can't sleep and am playing on youtube and discovered this little gem where Gavin Degraw mashes both songs together in the best chill mashup I have heard in a long time. Enjoy

Tonight I Wanna Cry

So I learned today that two people that I love and look up to and helped make my mission what it was passed away. Hattie Smith and my Grandma Rosie, Rosie Shelton.

Hattie Smith


Those of you who know Hattie knew there was something special from the get go. She was a horrible smoker for years. Started meeting with the sister missionaries and tried to quit so she could get baptized for a year with no success. Then she had a stroke.......and then she had another. And then she gave up smoking and considered the two strokes a blessing because it finally allowed her the opportunity to get baptized. Such a strong example of making the best out of a bad situation and recognizing blessings in the most obscure ways. I served in her ward for a year and went back to visit since coming home. Two weeks before I went home I was able to go with her to the temple for the first time, which for mormons is a huge deal. Everytime we left her house we had to sing I am a Child of God. The strokes left her with limited speach and in a wheelchair and when she sang along you really knew that she was just that, a child of God. Her smoking caught up with her and lung cancer hit and combine that with another stroke and Hattie returned to her Heavenly Father two months ago. I wish I would have known sooner so I could have tried to be there for her funeral.

Rosie Shelton



The next one really hit me hard. Rosie Shelton is one of the greatest people I will ever know. She took me in my first night in the ghettos of Chicago and reassured me of what I was doing and that I would be safe. My first 7 months of my mission I was in the cornfields of Indiana and then the ruralish suburban city of Oswego IL. Then I was transfered to the southside of Chicago. I was amazed at the poverty, the dirtiness, and empty feeling I felt as I made the drive from the mission home to the southside. I was scared. I suddenly became very aware how white, how privileged, and how niave I was. Luckily I had a companion, Shane Hall, who will always be a brother to me, show me the ropes and on that first night he took me to Rosie. I walked into her small apartment in a senior citizen high rise tired, scared, and beat spiritually, mentally, and physically. Shane was still a fairly new missionary and I wanted to give the spiritual messeage to show him A that I was a good missionary and someone he could learn from and B that he could trust me to deliver. Rosie was personable from the very beginning and contained the perfect blend of sass, love, and hilarity. After my spiritual thought she gave me a hug and told me that we were going to get very close while I was serving in her area. Little did she know that I was going to be there for 7 and a half months and she would be seeing my face at least once a week for that. We had a special connection from day one and when I call her Grandma Rosie I mean it. I viewed and loved her like she was my actual grandma and I know she felt the same for me. Her sass toughened me up, her love gave me the sense of family I missed, and her hilarity kept me going when I wanted to give up. Her cooking was out of this world and I will never have cornbread that will compare to hers and I will be having some corned beef and cabbage in her honor. There is so much more that I want to and can say about this woman, but just know she has left permanent footprints on my heart and her death has broke my four year absense of crying. She had MS and after I left dimentia began to set in and she forgot almost everyone. But in my dreams I would have long conversations with her that felt so real. I have missed her ever since I left Chicago and will miss her everday until I get to see her again. Grandma Rosie I love and miss you.

Real/Funny Parody Videos

The Harvard Sailing Team comedy group is seriously the best thing to happen to me in a long time. Ok that was a little dramatic but seriously I could watch these videos a million times and never get sick of them. Here are my four favorite. The first three are parodies with a lot of overexaggerated life truths about the difference between men and women. And the last is a joke on people getting together who do not know how to play poker. Please watch, enjoy, and let me know what you think.









You're Welcome. Now when I say totes or where are you from- a stupid rock? you will know why.

Another Post about Sunrises

Ok I know I posted a long time ago about how I dig sunrises and sunsets. I am going to repost why I enjoy them:

Sunsets/rises are one of the great equalizers in our society. I derive this partially from one of my favorite books, The Outsiders and partially to my own thought. If you have read this book or seen the movie you may remember how Ponyboy and Cherry and later how Pony and Johnny talk about sunsets. During Pony and Cherry's discussion Ponyboy talks about how he likes to watch sunsets. After ranting about all the breaks rich kids get Cherry says something like, "Pony things are tough all over." Ponyboy disagrees and she asks, "Can you see the sunset on the southside?" Pony replies, "yeah." As she leaves she says, "Yeah, you can see them real good from the north side too." Later on in the narrative you have on the run criminals Pony and Johnny hiding out in an old abandoned church in the country on a hill. One morning they wake up early and see the sunrise. It is the first time Johnny has ever taken the time to notice one. He says that it is golden. Then Pony recites a poem by Robert Frost, that to this day after reading this book so many times I have memorized:

Natures first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf a flower
But only for an hour
Then leaf setside to leaf
And so Eden sank to grief
As dawn goes down today
Nothing gold can stay.

As sad as it is, these moments of the true granduer of God are fleeting and are at an apex for such a limited amount of time that it is so easy in the hustle and bustle of modern day life to miss it. That is what makes Johnny's request of Pony at the end of the book to stay gold so poignant because the ability to stay gold is so universal, so tangible, but so often and easily missed that one needs to be reminded that "things are tough everywhere," but the ability to overcome lies in all if we allow it to. If we choose to stay gold.

I have not been to a lot of places in my life but the few places that I have been are tantamountably different. One common theme in all is that they all have killer sunsets/sunrises. Whether it is watching the sunrise over a snowcapped Mt. Ogden from under a blanket on my parents deck to watching the sunrise over Lake Michigan and the city of Chicago. Or watching it set over the cornfields of Indiana,or from the twelth floor of a fenced off balcony of a housing project in the inner city, or watching it set over a lake in the serene mountains oustide of Cedar the common theatric visage is possible to see everywhere. Echoing the true physiognomy of God, that he is there and the silenced plea to stay golden, to endure well, is echoed in the chromatic hues so effortlessly spread across the sky.

So sunrises, the one thing that we all got to remind us to keep on keepin on.

Two weeks ago I went down to visit ASU Law School to check things out and on the drive down me and my friend Christa stopped by the Grand Canyon to watch the sun rise over the natural wonder. We were the only two people there in that part of the park that early. Here is what transpired:























Once the Sun was up this is what we were able to see















This experience was easily one of the most incredible things to ever happen to me. We got there when it was pitch black, only the moon and some stars to light the path to the edge of the canyon. Then the sun slowly began to rise and every minute illuminated on something new. New colors blew up across the sky in front of us and it slowly painted the most incredible background behind us. It reinvigorated me, physically and spiritually. Physically it opened me up to new senses and visages that blew my mind. Spiritually it confirmed to me that God is there. I had a moment sitting there on the ledge. A moment where I felt very connected, connected to something so real, so tangible. It was incredible. It reminded me who I am, what I should be doing, and that life is for lack of a better word, good. I was reminded of what it is like to be golden, or at least to feel it. Ponyboy and Johnny's conversation hit me hard. Nature's first green is gold. And that gold can come and go so easily. This whole experience lasted for less than an hour. Then the sun was up, the gold was gone, people started to enter the park. Life was back to normal. But I still have that moment in my mind's eye. Where things were golden. I have gotta stay gold.

Law School

So I have had a few requests for an update on my law school situation. So here it is. It will begin with the schools I have been accepted to and their ranking (2011 US News and World Report Ranking, just out) and will be listed in preferential order. Then the wait listed schools and then sadly the schools who have rejected my sorry butt.

Accepted:
1. Arizona State University, Pheonix AZ, Ranked 38, $15,000 Scholarship
2. Pepperdine Universtiy, Malibu, CA, Ranked 52
3. Baylor University, Waco, TX, Ranked 64, $21,000 Scholarship
4. American University, Washington, D.C., Ranked 45
5. University of San Diego, CA, Ranked 56
6. University of Houston, Houston, TX, Ranked 59

Waitlisted:
1. William & Mary, Ranked 28
2. University of Utah, Ranked 42
3. Wake Forest, Ranked 38
4. University of Arizona, Ranked 42

Rejected:
1. Cornell, ranked 13. There goes Trebel
2. Washington University, Ranked 20.

Let me know what you think I should do.

Redemption Song

Normally iconic songs like this should never be done. But if it is Lauryn Hill I will generally make an exception. Add Ziggy Marley to the mix and it is definitely and exception. Add that they are both related to Bob Marley and it makes it even more acceptable. I love this version of the song. Lauryn's rhymes dropped in the middle of it complete the makeover. Sooooo good. I can listen to it over and over again.
Enjoy