Our First Time Bowling

Jon's been bothering me for the past 11 hours about blogging this post, so I figure I'd better get to it. Last night, we went bowling together as a couple for the first time. Before going, we both admitted to each other that we weren't that good. For example, I usually bowl somewhere around a 115. Him too. So we show up at Miracle Bowl in Orem at 9:30 (it's only $1.50 per game after 9!) and started. What followed was both hilarious and embarrassing.

After the first three sets, this is what the scoreboard looked like:

Those cross things under Jon's name? Those are strikes. Those round things under my name? Those are zeros.

After five sets, Jon still had all strikes. This is what he looked like:

Even our neighboring bowlers were noticing. Finally, with his 6th set he "only" got a spare. By the end of the game he had bowled 6 strikes and 3 spares. I'm not going to tell you what I bowled.

In the end, Jon had a total score of 207. I had a total score of 41.

It was the best game of his life.

It was the worst of mine.

It might have also been the best night of Jon's life. He really loves winning.

It might have also been the best night of mine, because I really love him.

"I Want to Be a Mother!"

One day when I was in seventh grade, I sat on the curb outside the school waiting for my mom to come pick me up. While I was waiting, one of the school counselors happened to see me and came to join me. He'd talked with me in the past and we knew each other. He seemed to view the "waiting on the curb" moment as a great opportunity to talk a little bit about life, because that's what he started doing.

He asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. This was an easy question for me to answer. Without pause, I replied that I wanted to be a mother. He seemed to laugh to himself and then asked me what I really wanted to be. Slightly infuriated, I responded that I actually really did want to be a mother, but that if he was curious that didn't mean that I wasn't planning on attending college and that I still wasn't sure what I wanted to major in but I had considered teaching and dietetics, thank you very much!

That was me all growing up. Being the strong, religious person that I was, I learned early on that the greatest possible "profession" I could aspire to obtain someday was that of mother. A wonderful stay-at-home mom--along with the feelings in my heart--convinced me that this was true. And just like I said to Mr. 7th Grade Counselor, whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew-up, my first response was: "A mother!"

How surprising it was, then, when this started to change when I went to college. I went to college at BYU, an institution funded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka: the Mormons). At BYU, people joke about the female population and how they're all really just there to get married (Studio C's music video on the subject is hilarious!) It's a great topic to joke around about, but it's not reality for most girls. Overall, I believe that most girls at BYU place equal value on the acquisition of knowledge as they do on the acqisition of a husband.

Unfortunately, however, during my time there this running joke started to influence me. I didn't want to be seen as the girl who was only there to find a husband. I wanted people to know that I valued my education too. As a result, my answer to the "What do you want to be when you grow-up?" question changed.

"I'm still deciding what to major in," I said my freshman year.

"I'm going to give elementary education a try, but we'll see what happens," I said after that.

"English Education," was my final response. "I'm going to be a teacher."

It is ironic how sometimes, when we live in a culture saturated in what we believe, we start being untrue to ourselves just because we don't want to be defined as a label.

Luckily, I married a man who saw past all my "I don't want to be defined as a label" mumbo jumbo, and five years later--as of one week ago today--I graduated from BYU with both the man and the degree.

I didn't really recognize the shift that had taken place within myself until six months ago when I was called to be my ward's girls camp director. When my bishop extended the call, he made sure I knew that it was against camp rules for pregnant women to attend camp. Though I hadn't really been putting having kids on hold, it wasn't something I was actively pursing at that point and the bishop's words barely made me skip a beat. In fact, I wanted to say yes to the calling right away (I love the youth!), but I felt like my husband and I should talk and pray about it first, so I told the bishop I'd get back to him. I'm so grateful that I did, because even though I accepted the calling in the end, the process of discussing it with my husband, studying the matter, and praying about it reminded me of the conviction and aspirations I had deep inside of me but had lost sight of while at college.

I'm so grateful that the Lord has helped me remember that there is nothing second rate in attending a top-notch university and in wanting to be a mother at the same time. In fact, for women who choose to pursue higher education, it's how He wants it to be.

In this past April General Conference, Sister Oscarson said:

"[W]e need to boldly defend the Lord's revealed doctrines describing marriage, families, the divine roles of men and women, and the importance of homes as sacred places--even when the world is shouting in our ears that these principles are outdated, limiting, or no longer relevant. Everyone, no matter what their marital circumstance...can be defenders of the Lord's plan described in the family proclamation. If it is the Lord's plan, it should also be our plan!" (Defenders of the Family Proclamation)

What a wonderful second reminder her words were to me of who's team I'm on and what I should be standing up for. I want to be a defender of the Lord's plan! I want His plan to be my plan as well.

Today, if someone were to ask me what I want to be when I grow-up, I would proudly respond with: "I want to be a mother!" Because I do. And there's nothing wrong with that.

On Being Locked Inside of My House

Yesterday my friend locked her keys in her car.

Apparently, I decided to one up her this morning and lock myself in my house.

Yes--as I type this, I am currently locked inside of my house.

How the heck does this happen? Let me explain.

Our house is very old. We've been having problems with the doors, but have always managed to get it open in the end. Today, that luck ran out. I went to open the door and it wouldn't. The locks were unlocked and the door still wouldn't move.

Upon closer inspection, I found the problem. The little bar thingy that's supposed to go inside the door when you turn the knob wasn't going inside the door.

Okay. I'm a capable woman. I just fixed our bikes the other day; I can fix this too.

I unscrew the doorknob off the door. I hear the other half of it fall onto the ground outside and I take off the inside half. I try my best from this position to get that little bar inside the door, but it still won't move!

Finally, I gave up. I called the renters and they sent someone over to pry off the lock, promising they'd send a handyman along later. So now I can get out of the house, there's just a big hole in my front door.

Gotta love livin' in an old house!

A Bike Ride with Jessica and FHE with Bugs at Utah Lake

If you haven't caught on, I'm using some of the extreme amount of free time on my hands to chronicle every bit of my life. It's being fun, and I doubt I'll ever have time like this to do something like this again, so I'm goin' for it!

Yesterday was Tuesday, Jessica and Jon's day off! Unfortunately, Jon had to cover for someone, so he had to miss out on the daytime fun. Jessica and I had tons of fun though riding our bikes along the Provo River Trail up to Bridal Veil Falls and back! I was really excited because I'd spent the morning tuning our bikes, so I thought everything would be perfect! Well, in order for that to be the case I would have had to tune the bikes perfectly, which I didn't. Therefore, the handlebars on one of the bikes got flipped the wrong way shortly into the ride and wouldn't move back and the gears on one of the bikes didn't work well and the handlebars on one were too short and the tires weren't as full as I'd like them to be.

Therefore, rather than perfect, it was interesting.

But 20 miles later, we'd done it!

Later that evening, Jon joined us for FHE (which was a day late). I was in charge and I had this wonderful idea. This was the plan:

Make our way to Utah Lake right as it gets dark. Talk about the story of The Brother of Jared from The Book of Mormon. Then, because that story has glowing rocks, we'll splatted rocks on the lake shore with glowstick gunk and then skip them across the lake, watching the glow jump it's way across the water.

It would have been great, except then we got there and HOLY BUGS!!! I've never seen so many bugs all in the same place at once. They literally peppered the sky and filled the air with the constant sound of their buzzing. Loudly.

I've been to Utah Lake at night before, and this had never been a problem, so needless to say, this was a surprise.

We tried talking about The Brother of Jared, but Jon and Jessica were hopping around like rabbits and so we decided to try moving somewhere else where the bugs didn't qualify as a new form of air pollution. This new spot had less bugs, and so we tried cutting open some glowsticks, pouring them in a bag, and then shaking some rocks around inside of it. The problem now, however, was that instead of having bugs congest the sky, this new area had mosquitoes, and mosquitoes really, REALLY like my blood for some reason.

Jon was suddenly as happy as could be because he was skipping rocks and thinking he was cool for how many times they bounced, and Jessica was enjoying watching him. I, on the other hand was hitting myself obsessively to try and kill the mosquitoes that were raiding my body. I would hit three on my left leg (I was wearing capris) and then four on my right leg and then four on my left arm (short sleeves) and then five on my right arm only to look back to my left leg and find five more already there again! And I'm not dramatically exaggerating here! (My leg is itching in memory as I write this!)

I tried staying, because Jon kept wanting me to watch him be really cool and skip a rock a ton of times, but I failed to watch him skip nearly every rock because I was too distracted with hitting myself. Finally, after about five minutes, I just turned around and left. It was not worth it. Plus, the glowing rocks didn't even glow as they bounced across the water like the internet said they would. Lame!

Today, my legs look like they're recovering from chicken pox.