Beachin' & Preachin'

This past fews days we had the opportunity to head to the beach with our friends, Rachael & Matt Gregson! There is just something about the open air, sand, and waves that gets me thinking. No better place to write it down than here, right?

No matter who we are or what stage of life we are in - we all have weaknesses. And I don't mean chocolate or french fries. I am referring to flaws in our minds and hearts.

Greed. 

Impatience. 

Pride.

Selfishness.

Ignorance.

Envy.

Animosity.

Laziness

Every day we go about our lives trying to be a little better, and every day we are challenged to give in to these flaws. After all it's easy to be prideful and harder to be humble. Easy to be selfish and takes effort to serve others. Easy to be envious, and more difficult to have gratitude. But these are the traits that matter! 

Kindness.

Service.

Humility.

Diligence.

Patience.

Gratitude.

Forgiveness.

How easy it is to focus on our flaws though- because we are constantly striving to improve and constantly falling short. No one on this earth is perfect. We all miss the mark on something. 

Because of this, 

we need to be kind.

Kind to ourselves. Kind to others. 

We are all trying in this world and wouldn't it be nice if we all recognized that a little more? 

I can not for the life of me ever figure out how to line the pictures up nicely.

Sorry, all you OCD people out there...

Police, Tickets, & Double Standards

I would really like to write this post ambiguously, but obviously I'm writing inspired by recent events so that just isn't going to happen. 

Utah Drivers. 

Everyone in Utah has an opinion about us. 

Whether you are originally from out of state like me, or a born and raised Utahn. 

Compared to Oregon the speed limit is much faster here. 

People drive more aggressively here. 

Cops are more lenient on pulling people over for speeding here.

Or are they?

Flash back to this last week when I was pulled over for speeding. Yes, I was going over the 65 mph speed limit, but who wasn't? 

Raise your hand if you always, without fail, drive 65 mph or below on the freeway. 

**Insert silence here** 

So where do police draw the line? Apparently it's a zig zag mess in Utah. The "standard" (I kid you not) is 75mph. That is ten over the speed limit. I have seen cops, who are ACTIVELY using their radar, just let cars going 75 mph fly by. 

Mind you, the cop that pulled me over was not using radar, to my knowledge. He was driving way in front of me. Somehow he clocked me going an exact speed. 

How is that possible?

 It doesn't matter though. I got a ticket and it's over. I could go to court and fight it but it's always going to be his word against mine. Guess who wins that battle?

 I'll give you a hint... not me. 

Some would say, "Just don't speed and you won't have a problem." 

 I am not writing this post to say speeding and essentially breaking the law is okay. 

Because it isn't. 

All I am trying to say is that there has to be a reason for police to pull people over/not pull people over at different times for committing the same crime. 

Whether the reason is filling monthly quotas, profiling, etc. I don't know. 

But there HAS to be a real standard though. Is this a letter of the law or spirit of the law type thing? 

Yes. But it cant be.

If the standard is 65mph like a court judge would tell you, then ENFORCE THAT all the time. Pull people over for going 72 mph all the time or don't do it at all. 

For whatever reason, police do not do that in Utah. 

So back to us as Utah drivers. Is this our fault for always driving 5-10 over the speed limit? Probably. In Oregon you will get pulled over for that every time. No questions asked. 

So why do we all speed here? Is it because we don't know any better? 

No.

It's because the speed limit isn't enforced as a standard. 

We shouldn't need to be treated like children who get their hands slapped when we drive over the speed limit. But give us an inch and we will take a mile. 

Not all of us. But most of us. So when are we going to get punished for this inch or mile that we take?? We never know. It could be at 67 one day and 75 another. 

And that is my issue.

Prison Break My Heart

Over the past few weeks we watched the entire series of Prison Break. The show revolves around two brothers. One gets framed for murder, sent to prison, put on death row. The other brother gets himself sent to the same prison so he can break his innocent brother out from the inside.  The series is filled with lots of intense moments and frankly, lots of violence. This doesn't sound like the type of show that would leave you in tears after the series finale. WRONG. I cried like a baby.

For some reason I got so attached to these characters! SPOILER ALERT: In the end, the main character, Michael sacrifices himself to break his wife and soon to be child out of prison. Maybe it was the insane sacrifice that made me cry. Maybe it was to hard too see him die after everything they had been through. I don't know what it was exactly, but I was a freaking water hose.

I feel like this happens to me every time I finish a book or TV series. This is a serious sign that I need to get a life. And also maybe I am turing into an emotional girl. It had to happen at some point.

                                        All my fellow Prison Break friends- Tell me you did not cry right here...

What Champions Are Made Of

This morning I had one of those experiences that would only happen on a Monday morning, when you husband was already gone. I was getting ready for work, minding my own business and a HUGE spider crawled from behind my makeup bag! Actually I am not sure if it was behind or in it.... either way it was terrifying. I mean look at the thing!

Okay, fine maybe I googled this picture (which I do NOT recommend..... I may have nightmares.) Moving on. Since Austin had already left for school I couldn't ask him to dispose of it for me. I had a decision to make:

1) Run away and let the fear of this monstrous creature haunt me for the rest of my days or.....

2) Face my fear and kill it.

I knew if I did not kill it that it would be long gone when I came home. At that point it could be anywhere. In my bed, in my shoes, in my clothes, on the ceiling right above my head.... the possibilities were endless. And also terrifying. Keep in mind that once I found a spider in my room and I chose NOT to kill it. When I came back it was gone. I opened my covers that night and found it IN MY BED. No joke. I slept in my sister's room for a week.

With that said, I knew what I had to do.

I proceeded to walk to the bathroom and unroll at least half of the roll of toilet paper. I opened the seat for quick and immediate disposal. I walked back to my room and located it. Luckily, it had not moved from it's original position. Stupid spider. So I took a deep breath and........ SQUISHED THE BEAST

or so I thought.

I lifted up the wad of toilet paper only to see nothing. The spider was gone. Vanished. WHERE IN THE HECK DID IT GO?? Oh, don't worry. The next thing you know it is crawling out from the middle of the toilet paper wad, UNHARMED. I freaked. And by freaked, I mean threw the toilet paper wad and ran away squealing. Literally squealing like a 5 year old girl. Not my finest moment, I must admit.

So now I was back to square one and the spider was who knows where. My heart was racing. Tragedy had struck. It was loose in my room and it was going to eat me. I was running out of time because I had to leave for work. I was frantically searching the contaminated corner of the room for the monster. I finally found it sneakily hiding in the dark corner. This time I grabbed a shoe (Austin's of course. Love you honey!) I'm no dummy... Obviously the TP wasn't doing the job.

I SLAMMED the shoe down on the carpet and twisted it a few times to make sure it was dead. I lifted the shoe and to my amazement I had killed it! There may have been a leg left on the carpet. I was too grossed out to do anything about that though. I ran to the bathroom with the spider as far away from my body as humanely possible and flushed that baby!

At this point, adrenaline was pumping and I was pretty proud of myself. I did that. I killed that thing! *Insert chest pound here* BAM. I grabbed my lunch and walked out the door with my head held high, feeling like a champion.

How's that for a Monday morning?

The Long Winter Is Overrrrrrrrrr

Can we please talk about how fantastic this warm weather is!? My thermometer in my card hit 83 yesterday. That thermometer has not been known to show the most accurate temperatures, but I am choosing to ignore that little fact. For how long and cold this winter has been, 83 is HEAVEN.

We spent lots of time at the park this weekend, just laying in the grass and enjoying the sun. Does it get much better than that? No, I think not.

Please embrace this list of summer songs with me.

(Courtesy of my amazing friend/DJ Abby Delawder)

Cruise- Florida Georgia Line

Brave- Sara Bareilles

Young Homie- Chris Rene



Direction

You know how you make decisions and carefully plan your life out just the way you want it? And then things happen that scream, "Hey, remember that cool plan you had? Oh yeah, just trash it." Story of my life.

I graduated from BYU with a degree in Recreational Therapy. I thought I would get a job with some great hospital or rehab center, and become this amazing Rec Therapist. In reality, I sat a home for a good month searching for ANY job. Let alone a Rec Therapy job...

And now I am working at a real estate agency. Right now I work as an assistant to a realtor but, I am currently working on getting my real estate license. Soon, I will be a licened realtor and I will be working as a Buyers Agent for the Dan Kennedy Real Estate Team. It's going to be a new experience that calls for lots of hard work. I can't wait.

From Recreation Therapy to Realtor? I guess that's life.

It's about time.

Okay, so I have been married for a good five months now and I'm not blogging? Like really, what kind of Mormon girl am I? Well here I am world. I'm for real this time. I'm jumping into the blogging world with little to no experience. As my current five followers know, I tried it once. It was well.... not great. I'm trying again though! Here's my disclaimer:

I'm no expert on fashion, I didn't major in english, I don't cook or bake mouthwatering delicacies, and my life is by no means a fairytale. I can tell you this though...

I am a twenty-three year old BYU Alum that lives in Springville, UT. 

Marrying my husband, Austin, was the best decision I've ever made. 

I love chips, cheddar & sour cream to be exact. 

Summer is my favorite season, solely because of the existence of wakeboarding.

Winter is a close second (when I have $ for snowboarding).

My favorite color is royal purple.

Oh and here's the thing... I'm going to spell things wrong. My punctuation is awful. No need to inform me of these things. 

With all that said, here I am! I look forward to just being Callie, and documenting my relatively new life as a married woman.