Election Day...over!

When election time comes, I admit it, I get slight anxiety. Why? Because I HATE politics! A lot. I would love to be more informed, but I get anxiety whenever the conversation in the room moves into the political realm. It always creates a heated discussion. And I hate heat/contention. Anyways, I am so happy today is the day AFTER ELECTION DAY!!!

I exercised my right to vote yesterday, and I always feel like I'm making a difference. I teach math, so I know my one little vote doesn't matter, but in the grand scheme of things it does. I know this.

I am also SUPER excited to see every single political advertisement taken down over the remainder of the week. Morgan Philpot, I'm talking to you!! Especially on 1300 East, please and thank you.

I VOTED!!! Making a difference, one vote at a time ;)

One more thought on love...

So I do have one more thing to say about love, and then I'll be done. Maybe. Being married does not define who you are, nor is it what makes you happy or unhappy. Now before you married folk get upset, let me explain a bit. As a single woman over the age of 25, I see a lot of women my age and younger who get upset or depressed because they have no boyfriend and/or because they're not married. And ladies, let me tell you two things: number one, it's not worth it to get upset over that; and number two, it's not going to help you get married any quicker. It is most definitely a righteous desire to be married, and we should never push away that desire; however, please do not let your happiness depend on your marital status.

I've realized that our lives are at the mercy and grace of Heavenly Father's timing. He, and only He, knows the things we need to accomplish while we're single and while we're married; and we must trust in Him. In my own life, I have just begun my fourth year in my career and have accomplished and am still continuing to accomplish so much in regard to my profession. I love being a middle school teacher and having the opportunity to influence around 120ish kids each year. It's the best job in the world and so fulfilling. Granted, it's an incredibly exhausting job in every sense of the word, but SO fulfilling. Every day of my life. When I think of how much I desire to have my own children and influence their lives, raise them in the gospel, and love them; I am reminded of how many more kids I get to influence each school year and that helps me to be patient until it'll be my time to be a wife and mother.

Over these past few years, I have also come to realize that your happiness depends on you. Only you. So many times, girls are unhappy or depressed because they're boyfriendless or husbandless, and seek to find happiness through finding a man. From my own personal experience, you can be happy and concurrently without a man. Because I am both boyfriendless/husbandless AND happy. Amazing? Nope. Not at all. My happiness comes from many things: my testimony of the Lord's timing in my life; accepting His will; temple covenants; family; relationships with all kinds of people; church attendance; and so many other things, I can't list them all.

While marrying and having children is SO important to fulfill our grand purpose on this earth, please DO NOT let it define you, and do not let it define your happiness. Because I believe that if you do, someday you'll be let down.

Moral of the story: be happy and love life. Single or married. I do.
Love,
Bekah :)

Not too tired for Halloween!

I LOVE HALLOWEEN!!! There, I've said it. I love that darn holiday. Or is it not a holiday? I'm not sure, but anyway, I love it!! I think perhaps that's why I teach middle school, so I can continue to celebrate that holiday with my students and dress up! I'm super excited for my costume this year: Barbie!! Maybe I'll post some pics after Friday. I do have to say that I hate two things about Halloween: (1) When people, especially girls, use Halloween as an excuse to dress immodestly; and (2) When people, especially boys, use Halloween as an excuse to dress vulgarly. Other than that, I LOVE IT!!

I also love Hocus Pocus, and am super excited to watch that movie this week!! If only I were young enough to go trick or treating...just kidding, I don't need to eat that much candy, I'm trying to hang onto my girlish figure ;)

Glad to be alive. Now.

In previous posts, I've mentioned my intense love of the library. This is true. However, recently I've realized that I've exhausted the library's resources. I go to the library and can now rarely find movies of interest that I have not seen. So I've picked up some random period movies, and they've been OK, not great, just okay. But I've realized a couple of things by watching these recent stupid period movies.

The first thing is that I am grateful to be alive. And be alive now. I am free to choose a spouse and companion of my own choice!! Imagine that?!? However, I am SO glad that I get to choose a companion that I want to marry regardless of his rank, family, or wealth; and also regardless of my rank, family, or wealth. I am not forbidden from choosing a spouse due to my "situation" nor due to his "situation." In some of these movies, the spouses have been lured into affairs because they were unhappy in their marriage (because they did not marry for love). SO STUPID!!!! The movies also glorify these out of marriage affairs, which is also SO STUPID, and NEVER OK!! However, I could not even imagine what it would be like to be forced into a marriage with someone that I had only met a couple of times and really did not know. I cannot even imagine what it's like to be in a marriage at all. Obviously, since I'm single and have never been married. So grateful to have my free agency. Yep, true dat. Someday I will choose a spouse whom I love and one whom I've felt will make me happy forever. Oh to imagine what that's going to be like; bliss :)
Disclaimer: By stupid period movies, I do NOT mean Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, or any other Jane Austen movies--I mean more modern ones like The Duchess, He Knew He Was Right, Daniel Deronda, and Becoming Jane. I really love Jane Austen's stories.

Another thing I've realized as I've watched these movies is that I'm in love with love. Weird, right?! What does it mean to be in love with love??? Well, I'm not exactly sure, only that as I'm watching a love story, I can't help but get twitterpaited right along with the main female lead character. Even though I know, like in Becoming Jane, that the main character never marries. I still get so happy to watch the characters fall in love. Yet my heart also aches when their true love gets away. Ridiculous, right?!? Not sure what to do about that one.

Third thing I've realized, I want to go to Europe. I want to go see all the history there and meet people with different accents, speaking different languages. However, I am grateful to live in America, a place with real toilets that flush the real way and a place that is relatively clean...I think...I hope.

Fourth thing I've realized is that I'd also like to wear a big dress with corset some day. They're so cool! Really, they are. Maybe for Halloween someday...just maybe.

And the fifth thing I've realized is that I'm so glad that I'm not just a babymaking machine. That my womanhood is respected and celebrated. I'm not someone who is expected to marry and produce a male heir to my husband. I am a person. I have value. I am a daughter of God. And yes, it is important for me to someday marry and have children, in the Lord's timing, but there's also so much more that Heavenly Father needs me to do.

End of story. No picture for this one. Sorry, too tired.

Wuv...trwue wuv...

So I've been thinking I need to blog again. It's been awhile. And by awhile, I mean days. As I sit here in our living room, watching a cheesy Disney movie, I am reminded of a few things I wuv, trwuey wuv.

#1: THE LIBRARY!! I am a library nerd. It's official. Not that it hasn't been official before, but I love it and here are a few reasons why. You can rent movies for FREE! You get them for a whole week, free of charge, no matter how lame or stupid they are. We've rented countless movies that turned out to be real "gems," and quite a few that turned out to be real duds. But, here's the wonderful part: because we didn't pay for the movies, we can turn off the stupid ones without feeling like any money was wasted! How awesome is that?!

#2: PRETZEL M&M's! They're wonderfully delicious. When you first eat them, you think, "Weird. Sweet, salty, crunchy candy shell?! What were they thinking?!" But upon giving them a second try, you think, "Oh my great goodness, these things are AMAZING!! How did they pack SO many flavors into such a little candy?!?" Magical.


#3: LIFE! Life's awesome! Really. It is. There are ups and downs, but overall, it's pretty GRAND, I must say. Hopefully, you must say so too. There are so many wonderful and amazing things in this life and on this earth, it's hard not to marvel at the beauty in life.

#4: THE GOSPEL! I don't know who reads this thing, but I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if you didn't already know. And the gospel of Jesus Christ is amazing and such a blessing in my life. We had our semiannual General Conference meeting where our church leaders spoke to us at the beginning of the month, check here for more info. The gospel will truly bless your life :)

#5: LOVE!! I am kind of in love with love for the moment. As in, even though I watch a movie knowing that the ending is going to break my heart because the two people don't end up together, I can't stop watching and I can't stop smiling at how in love they are at the moment even though I know it's not real and I know their characters aren't going to end up together. Not quite sure what's wrong with me. Maybe I'll figure that one out soon...

There are SO many other things I love, like diet Coke, cheesy movies, awesomely funny youtube/hulu video clips, and sleep. Which is why I need to be done blogging for the night.

Bekah :)

I Can Do Anything Good!

I absolutely LOVE finding little video gems on YouTube or Hulu, they mostly end up being funny SNL skits, but I've come across a lot of other "gems," as I like to call them. Here's one of my favorites, as of late. I had come across Jessica and her "daily affirmations" awhile ago; however, something happened a few weeks ago that reminded me of her and I watched again.




She. Is. My. Hero! Lately, as life has been overwhelming, rough, exhausting, and just all-around challenging will all that I've been handed; I still love it! There are so many things that Heavenly Father has blessed me with and given me wonderful tools to help uplift me, and it makes me realize how AMAZING and beautiful life really is. It makes me tear up just thinking about it. I love my life :)

Fridays :)

I LOVE FRIDAYS!!! Here are just a few reasons why:

1) Late-start. We have collaboration time in the mornings, so even though I still have to be to work at 7:30am, I still get 2 hours of kids-free time. We work on other things, but it's still nice to get together with the other teachers and work on whatever's on the agenda.

2) 55 minute periods. Due to the late-starts as mentioned in #1, our class periods are shortened down to 55 minutes, as opposed to our normal 72 minute periods. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE having my kids for 72 minutes of math everyday, but the shorter periods make the day go by more quickly.

3) Relief. Once Friday hits, I have an immediate feeling of relief that only comes on Fridays. It's like my body's telling me, "YaY! You get to let me rest now for a little while (maybe you should be resting a little bit more during the week, just sayin')."

4) Staying up late. I am a night owl, and NOT a morning person. Therefore, I love knowing I can stay up late on Friday nights.

5) Sleeping in. Because I am not a morning person, I LOVE sleeping in on Saturdays. I don't know how else to describe my intense LOVE for sleep and sleeping in.

6) Math Department. Even though I mentioned our collaboration time in #1, I feel the need to mention it again. Kind of. I love my math coworkers, a lot, and here's a picture of why.


You may not be able to tell from the picture, but we're kind of a crazy department. We bought matching shirts last year, except for the man on the right-he teaches math part time, and they say "The math department are effective communicators." Friday's usually our wearing our matching shirts day, although we don't actually effectively communicate about that fact and frequently only a few of us wear them on any given Friday. The back of the shirt says "Math Rocks" with this really goofy looking older man on it.

I heart us.

And we're making new shirts for this year, thus the photo shoot this morning, and maybe I'll post a picture of what the new shirts look like.

I LOVE FRIDAYS. And it shows. A few of my kids even asked me if I was happy today because they could tell. In my defense, I've been crabby lately due to a nasty cold I've had ALL week, usually I am happier than I've been at work this week.

Unkillable plant?

Recently moving into a new place necessitated a housewarming party. Naturally. My roommate and I have not had the best luck with plants. Take the following examples---

~Case and point #1-Gertrude Chestida: After multiple times of nearly killing a Christmas poinsettia (named Gertrude Chestida) and bringing it back to life, we threw it away when we moved in May. Not too shabby; it pretty much lasted 6 months or so.

~Case and point #2-the Amish Bread: Two summers ago, I was given a bag of Amish bread dough by a co-worker, having no idea what it was of course, otherwise I may have refused. I was slightly overwhelmed at the fact of having to add ingredients to the bread or knead the bag everyday. It was a tall order to fulfill. And then I had to find so many people to give it to so I didn't have to bake 8 loaves of it myself, like I ended up doing anyways.

~Case and point #3-Basil: A couple of weeks ago, my roommate had the lovely idea to buy a fresh basil plant. Wonderful idea, I might add. How awesome would it be to have fresh basil to cut up and add to recipes whenever you want to; it makes the dish taste so much better, right? Well, we wouldn't know. It died the week after my roommate planted it in a bigger pot. I'm pretty sure we both forgot to water it.

~Case and point #4-CACTUS!!!: As a housewarming plant, my friend gave us this tiny little cactus that we don't have to water, success!!! Or maybe I'm prematurely feeling successful. I don't know. It has this cute little pink flower glued to the top of it, and some of the needles have turned pink. We're feeling hopeful about this one, and my friend specifically gave it to us because she knows of our history with plants...or lack thereof...

Hopefully, when I have children I won't forget to "water" them...I'm pretty confident I won't...we'll see...

Saved by the Bell...

When I was younger, like every other pre-pre-teen girl, I wanted to #1: Be Kelly Kapowski; and #2: Marry Zack Morris. And yes, I thought that it was COMPLETELY normal for a man to have dark roots and blond hair; I thought Zack Morris really WAS blond. How naive I was in the good ol' days.

Due to my deep love of the library, my roommate and I started watching some old "Saved by the Bell" episodes a few months ago. While in Michigan, my best friend gave me seasons 1 & 2 for my birthday (sweet!), and I recently purchased seasons 3 & 4 via Amazon.com while giving in to free super savers shipping as I purchased a new release book that I was waiting for. [Mockingjay---I am SO excited to read this one!] I can't resist ordering just a bit more from Amazon.com if it'll save me shipping, even if I end up spending more than I would with just the ONE item I wanted plus shipping---I'm a sucker, it's true.

Anyways, I digress, I'll try to get back to my point: while watching Saved by the Bell, I realize that I have little voices in my head saying the monologue from the show BEFORE it comes out of Zack, Kelly, Lisa, Screech, Jesse, and Slater's mouths. It's sad; apparently I really loved "Saved by the Bell" when I was younger and watched WAY too much when I was younger. If only high school was really like that...or life in general...hmmm....

The Mitten

Here I am, in Michigan, the mitten. I've been here for about four weeks and it's been so good. I LOVE MY FAMILY!!! And I really love Michigan. It's so green and beautiful and familiar...why don't I live here?? Oh yeah, because Heavenly Father said no. I'm supposed to live in Utah, and I love it there too; it's just different. I miss Utah and my friends there, but when I'm in Utah I miss Michigan and my family here...so basically it's a lose-lose situation ;)
While in the Mitten, I've done no mittenly things, I've just been helping my parents get their house ready to sell, which has included, but is not limited to the following: tearing up carpet, scrubbing floors, cleaning walls and other various surfaces, going through cupboards and other places and throwing all kinds of stuff away, talking my mother into throwing all kinds of stuff away, packing, decorating the house to sell...the list goes on...And I've also been reading my bum off to stay on top of my independent study class. But most importantly of all, I've been TRYING to relax and enjoy my summer vacation. It's almost half over, but I'm loving life, nonetheless.

Live life and be happy :)