June Roses

A wise, creative man once said:

God gave us our memories that we might have roses in December. --J. M. Barrie

Right now December is closing in. But those memories just make it worse. Does it ever get better? Living each day is a trial, and the past three have felt like a month on their own. My life has vanished, my best friend is gone. I feel so alone.

I have two more weeks of school. I need to push through and then I can be with my family for a few weeks before school starts again. I love my family so much and I would not survive without them. Thank you mom, you have helped me more than you know.

Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while. --"Sleepless in Seattle"

Two years...eternity.

So I'm going to breathe, all day long, and live off of June roses.

Gourmet [gor-MET]

For the past several Christmases we have the most fantastic tradition--an eating style called gourmet. Our friends the Peschier's gave us a set of six burners that you use as a family to prepare your own individual portions of different foods. Tyson had it with us last Christmas and asked if we could have it one more time before he left on his mission. And it was a splendid idea! My favorite thing to cook is Nasi, a Dutch-Indonesian dish that is absolutely wonderful, and this is how you make it:

1. Get the burner started. We found that there is a delicate balance of fluid in order for it to work properly. Too much or too little will not sustain a flame. The first time we did it we forgot the burner fluid and it was Christmas Day so no stores were open. We improvised with Petroleum Jelly. :)

2. Choose your flavor. There are all kinds of things you can cook on your personal frying pan. We had the ingredients for stir fry, Nasi, and little smokies. You can also cook pancakes, little hamburgers, anything you can dream up. Nasi begins with chicken that is marinated in Saute, a special Dutch marinade. You add onions and chicken and let it cook until it's halfway done.

3. Add veggies. Most of the dishes we made tasted best with vegetables, and so you add them next because they don't need to be cooked as long. My favorite way to eat Nasi is only with onions, but I guess it's healthier when you have veggies. :) They looked really pretty too...

4. Rice, Ketchup, and Nasi herbs. Once everything is done then you add a little "Ketchup Manis"--another Dutch ingredient, equivalent to soy sauce-- a tablespoon of Nasi herb mix, and a good helping of rice. Mix together, warm a little and then eat!

5. Start cooking something else while you eat!

It's a social dinner that is slow moving, but so much fun! We had lots of fun talking, creating new mixes, trying to cook the little smokies, and accidentally touching the bottom of the frying pan and turning hands, towels, and pants black.

We discovered that beef cooks much slower compared to chicken, and Dad became impatient and pulled out the blow torch in hopes of speeding up the process. That's my Dad!

We had a wonderful evening talking, sharing stories, laughing, cooking, and relaxing on the patio. It was so much fun to do it outside, and we stayed out there until it became dark and we were stuffed full.

Let me teach you a word: gezellig (click to hear). In Dutch it means cozy or comfortable. My mom always imagines a little warm fireplace in the evening with everyone gathered close. It's her favorite word in Dutch because she hasn't yet met it's English equivalent. It doesn't quite mean the same thing as cozy, even though cozy tries. But it's such a wonderful word, and in honor of our Dutch feast only a Dutch word could describe such a night. :)

Sparkly Crayons

Physiology is consuming me. My life is nothing but kidneys, the liver, and "lack of a terminal hydrogen ion and electron acceptor at the end of the respiratory chain"... believe me, you don't want to know. Due to this all consuming class I never leave my apartment, I study every minute I'm awake and not in class, and virtually nothing else.

Except, I've found a new hobby: Coloring. Spurred by my amazing box of crayons (courtesy of Sarah Singleton--many moons ago) I have become very fond of drawing pictures. I drew some pictures for my dad for fathers day and I told him to put them up in his office at work--and he did! All of the wonderful elderly at his work can see them. :) I drew a few pictures for my mom's birthday and gave them to her. They are so silly, but so much fun to act like a kid again. Cheap gift idea for parents: crayon pictures! They miss those times as much as you do.

When I was little I had such a difficult time coloring, but now it is therapy. Literally. Letting myself relax and be creative for an hour or so before bed is so, freeing. Granted I don't do it every night, but when I'm particularly stressed I do.

I think I'm going to invent color therapy. When someone is having a hard day I will hand over my box of 96 crayons and tell them to color. To me it is so happy-making! I feel like a little kid, choosing the perfect color, trying to draw straight lines, making the hair look semi-presentable. It makes me think of simpler times, when scraped knees and broken crayons were my only worry.

Did you notice that everyone looked the same as stick figures? Everyone had yellow balloon heads with oddly shaped clothing. There was no perfect stick figure, they were all equal. Isn't that interesting?

Did you ever notice that most drawings when you were little were about your family? I remember so many pictures of mommy and daddy, angel Nikolas, and a little Kam and baby Kenz. I think that was a time when our priorities were in order, our family came first, until the teenage years came to ruin it. :)

The thing I love most about drawings is that nothing is impossible, and you are only limited by your imagination. Things fall from the sky, cheetahs are purple, and the sun has glasses. Growing up has killed some of our imagination and made us think inside of the box, but wouldn't it be great if we could break free of that? Maybe with a little practice I can. :)

Physiology

This class has been my life for the past week and a half, and I study all the time for it--Jessica can testify. It didn't help that I had a test exactly a week after classes started and have been studying like crazy for it. I have it for an hour and a half every day, and then on Tuesdays I have a lab right after that lasts another two and a half. If it wasn't for my institute classes I think I would die.

Tuesdays are particularly long, and the labs are fairly interesting. Today the lab was taking blood pressure and doing blood typing. I have been dreading it for seven days.

When someone takes my blood pressure I hate it. I feel like they are going to squeeze the life out of my arm and I'm going to die as a result. Yesterday I learned that they really do cut off your circulation and find out how much pressure it takes for the blood to push through. That's comforting. Needless to say, it scared me to death.

Also, I found last week that for the blood typing lab we have to do our own blood, and to do this we have to prick ourselves in the finger. Ourselves.

Last year during the UofU Blood Battle I tried to give blood. During that crazy consultation where they stick your finger I fainted. My body didn't like that too well. And today I had to do it to myself.

I was terrified. Beyond words. But I wore pants and a jacket so that I didn't get cold, and I made sure that I had food and plenty of sugar in me, and I prayed really really hard.

I put on a brave face for the lab, and it went pretty smooth. The sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff) didn't scare me, even though she did it twice--not in a row. I probably took too long taking my partner's blood pressure, but it was a success! My pressure was about 120/80. I feel so smart because I know what that means!

I tried not to freak out when it came time for blood typing and I just forced myself to do it before I thought too hard. I watched my partner do it first, and I backed out only once because the button wasn't very sensitive. But I did it! I pushed the button, and dropped my blood on to the slides and bandaged up my finger. My hands didn't shake too bad, I kept a cool head, and it wasn't as horrible as I'd imagined. I realized I'm a pretty good bleeder so I didn't need to try very hard to get the four drops of blood I needed. My test indicated that I am O positive, though I'm not exactly sure how accurate it is.

You cannot imagine how happy I am! I was so afraid for today, but with help from my Father in Heaven I made it! Alive! Unscathed! and without fainting!

Kameron's First Date

This 16 1/2 year old boy has been pestered and teased so much that he was on the verge of never dating, EVER. Our family can do that... BUT Tyson planned out a date and we kept it on the down-low Kam agreed to go. The first step!

The first challenge was asking the girl. They sat down with no distractions and Tyson began explaining and giving encouragement to this poor, frightened boy. Tyson made a bulleted list of everything Kam needed to tell her and walked him through the entire phone call--several times.

Kam asked Tyson if he should wear his hat or not... to call her... on the phone. He was very nervous, as you can see. I'm not sure what he was thinking... Then he said he needed complete silence so that he could concentrate and at that precise moment my mom's cell phone alarm went off and he went crazy.

It took him nearly an hour, but he finally said, "Ok, I'm going to do it."

Then he said, "Should I say a prayer?" In all seriousness. My brother is a stud. :)

He called her and like a shotgun gave her all the information she needed to know without bothering to wait for a reply yet. But she was sweet and agreed to come. He succeeded and did very well, I am proud.

Through a series of events the first girl wasn't able to go and instead of spending another mopey night we needed to act fast and find him another date. We decided on a neighbor girl that Kam had known for years and figured that it would be a pretty comfortable first date. He threw a fit about everything, maybe she isn't old enough, maybe she's busy, it's too short notice, blah, blah, blah.

So I told him I would call her mom and make sure she was old enough and make sure she was free tonight. I dialed and he screamed and ran out of the room. I talked with her mom and she was definitely old enough and she was indeed free, so I handed over the phone to the scared boy and he calmed down and asked her on a date.

Success! No more mopey Kameron and we were going to get this first date over with! Now he is a pro at asking girls out--he did it twice! ;)

So we walked him through all the things he needed to do, and although he was really scared he did just fine. He picked her up and had her mom sign a waiver, and did everything right except he forgot to ask what time she needed to be home. But overall it was a complete success.

PPT--Progressive Power Tumbling in Provo. Coolest place ever.

They had all kinds of equipment for bouncing and having fun: tramps, spring boards, balls, wheels, you name it. We rolled Tyson and Kam around in a big wheel, and we played Aeroball and Taylor played with Tyson's new camera. I found out how to work it once we left, naturally, so the pictures aren't great.

They had sumo suits that made you look incredibly huge, but we couldn't really find the purpose in them. They didn't bounce, they were just heavy and big. Kameron discovered that falling over "hurts the same." They certainly made for some funny and embarrassing pictures though.

We all jumped in the foam pit, which was disgusting, but incredibly fun. You are completely safe jumping into it and can land on your head and not feel a thing. If you jump really high and fast before falling in you get buried really deep and practically disappear. Getting out of the pit is extremely hard and usually requires assistance because it's deep and there isn't anything to stand on. But it was cool, and I slowly became more brave as I went along.

Things became crowded with little high schoolers over by the pit area, so we found something else to do. There was a long tramp with a ball-like thing at the end that you jump over onto a thick foam pad. We all took turns and Kam and Tyson had no problems, but I could not jump over it to save my life. I chickened out a lot too. I can't even do a cartwheel. What makes me think I can do a flip in the air like that?

It was fun, but soon started to get too crowded so that it wasn't fun anymore, so we decided to leave. The next stop was Stan's and we all got shakes: Reese's Pieces, Mint Chocolate Chip, Oreo and I discovered my favorite: Fudge Brownie. The most delicious chewy brownie pieces in plain vanilla ice cream. Heaven!

After we let our stomachs settle for a bit we finished our date at the Spinney Park at Cherry Creek Elementary. You are even more dizzy at night because you can't see well in the dark, and so it took forever to recover from spinning.

The pictures turned out pretty sweet because they are all fuzzy and smeared and enhance the dizzy factor. I look like Frankenstein, but I blame it on Tyson...

We tried out the "puke chairs" and climbed all over the playground. We tried to do a train, but it failed miserably with our big bodies. We spun until our stomachs screamed "STOP!" and then we decided to call it a night.

We watched Kam's "awkward doorstep scene" in which he failed and didn't walk her to the door. But he only messed up twice, and we are proud. :) Next time will be easier and he won't have so much on his mind.

Kam's first date: Success.

My Life's Quest

I graduated high school with a goal: Pharmacy School. I wanted to do something great in the world and prove to myself that I could do anything. I wanted to make good money, be a professional, and I wanted to be a mom. This was the perfect career, how could anything go wrong?

I'd prayed sincerely back in October to know if it was right. I chose Pharmacy School and prayed, and I never got a "no," so I stuck with it. I pushed myself hard and I planned on an exceptionally hard school schedule to get it done in time. I was enrolled in Physiology and Calculus for the summer semester and many more hard classes in the Fall and Spring. I was pushing myself to the limit.

I went to three days of school this semester, and something simply wasn't right. My physiology class was exciting and interesting, but calculus wasn't clicking. It had been a year too long and the information wasn't coming back. I tried so hard to understand integrals again, using manuals, equation sheets, but nothing made sense. I simply couldn't do both classes and succeed.

My last option was to buy the solution manual and hope that it would help just a little with calculus. When I bought it she said that the last day to return it for a full refund was the next day. I'd been thinking of dropping it, but this kicked me into hyperdrive. I needed to decide TODAY.

Dropping calculus would put me a year behind in my pharmacy goal. As things were I would graduate at about 24, but putting off having children for that long isn't something I wanted to do. As I discussed things with my mom we thought absolutely everything through. The most important thing I discovered though was this: When I graduate I will accumulate at least $100,000 in debt. But when I graduate my plan was to immediately be a stay at home mom. In order to get rid of that debt I would need to work for three years and save every penny I could, and still not pay it off. That plan doesn't work when children enter the picture.

I've always wanted to be a mom, but that thought seemed so far distant that I started to focus more on my career. Through this realization and many things mentioned by my wonderful institute teachers, I've put my priorities in order again, and I'm going to be a mother--not a pharmacist. I didn't realize how far away I'd gotten until I took a step back and looked at myself. I wanted prestige more than I wanted a family. Now I want a family more than anything else in the world. I love mine sooooo much, and I hope that one day my kids will love me the way I love my parents.

I decided to let go of that dream in favor of a better one. Once I had made that choice I felt liberated, free, and at peace. My prayer had finally been answered--on the Lord's time. There is a reason I'm here in Logan this summer, and there's a reason I went through the things I did. My physiology class feels right, and even though I don't necessarily need it, I'm going to stick with it because I love it.

My mom found the most wonderful scriptures and shared them with me. It felt like he was speaking directly to me and telling me that it was right. They apply to every major life decision I think, and I hope someone finds them helpful like I did:

2 Nephi 32:1,3,5,9

D&C 11:12-14

I've found that the Lord knows and cares about us each individually, and sends us tender mercies all day long. When I went home I got online and found out that the next day was the last day to drop a class and get a full refund. I'll get my money back, and calculus will just be like it never happened.

My life doesn't have a firm direction right now, but I've never been so sure that I'm doing the right thing. The pressures of the PCAT, getting good grades, taking hard classes, have all ceased and now I can relax and just be Taylor. I'm thinking about becoming a PTA and perhaps getting a degree in Psychology or something, but it doesn't matter right now. I'm happy the way I am and so very excited for life!

So Taylor the aspiring Pharmacist is no more... But whatever is next sounds exciting!

Springtime Serenade

It was a day to trump all boring days. There was nothing in the whole world I could think of to do, but I was positively aching to go outside. So I did. I picked up my blanket and my book and set off in the direction of Adam's Park, my absolute favorite place to go "out-of-doors." I found a nice partially-shady spot of ground and I stretched out and began to read.

It was a marvelous day to be at the park. There were so many people to see: the mom playing with her baby, the family taking pictures in matching white shirts, the guitarist in the far corner, the laughter of children on the playground. It was a simply gorgeous day!

I had been there for at least an hour and the guitarist I heard started to walk past me--I thought. So I feigned interest in my book and waited for him to pass by. He stopped, and asked me what book I was reading.

Confused, I told him. He asked what it was about, but this book was too complex for me to simplify, so I muttered something about "sci-fi" and "it's complicated."

Then he said, "You looked kind of bored, would you like a serenade?"

How are you supposed to respond to that? My head flew a million miles a second. What do I do? How do I say no politely? Is this going to be awkward? WHY do I want to say no? He is strange looking, but not threatening. What's the worst that could happen? When will this chance come again?

So I said, "Sure." I told myself that I'd just play it safe, and make sure not to give out too much information. It was a full park, not a dark alley. I was safe.

So he introduced himself as Matt and got out his guitar and sat on the grass in front of me. (Just because you can't really tell in the picture, he had blue highlights in his hair. Definite blue.)

He asked me what kind of music I liked, to which I replied, "Anything and everything." Those of you who know me can testify of it's truth. He told me that that wasn't very helpful, so he chose a piece of "Spanish guitar."

I know a little about the guitar because I used to play it... kind of. He wasn't by any means amazing, but he tried and did well. MUCH better than I could ever do. He kind of had pudgy fingers, but did well in spite of them.

He told me that it was called "Spanish Romance" which sent up a little red flag, but I promised I would play it safe and not give him any strange ideas. The entire time I was guarded, but I still had lots of fun. It was flattering that he picked me, most likely because I was the only one of his approximate age in the general vicinity, but it still felt nice to be noticed.

The next song he played was one he had written. He told me to picture the scene it was portraying, and what emotion I felt as I listened. It was a beautiful piece and I absolutely loved it. To me it sounded very thoughtful, contemplative. He was kind of taken back by my answer and he told me what his image was. He pictured a wide open field right after a battle during the civil war. With fog laying thick on the ground, broken wagons, and scattered helmets. It honestly did fit the music. The thoughtful feeling came from someone looking on the scene at the aftermath.

He repeated over and over that he loved to share his music with people, and I thought that was really cool. He's very brave for doing so. We talked about different things and I found out that he is from Long Beach, CA, is apparently a member of the church, and that he wants to go to beauty school. He was very strange, but talking to him was like medicine to my lonely soul that day. I enjoyed it.

He played one more song for me, "Come Thou Fount." I love that song. He forgot the words in a few places, but did a good job nonetheless. He had a fairly decent voice, and his guitar accompaniment was really good. That song was a wonderful reminder and something I definitely needed to hear.

Afterward he shook my hand, I gave him my thanks, and we said goodbye. Truly fascinating and wonderful! (And for your benefit Mom--completely safe. I'll never see him again unless it's a random coincidence.)

Now I can say I have been serenaded. In a park. By a man with blue hair. Aren't you jealous?