Just throw them away E!

Do you have anything absolutely impossible to throw away? Every time I am home I try to go through some things and try to get rid of them. Inside my hope chest is a box of corsages from all of the dances I went to in high school. Quite a few I might add. Beautiful, still un-crushed in their little tissue paper, and still pretty-ribboned. Why do I still have these? I don't know. I keep asking myself! Today, I am going to throw them away! For heaven sakes, I still have the pictures of the dances, do I really need the flowers? Although I think having flowers in my hope chest reminded me of something romantic from a novel or what I imaged a romantic person would have in there...reminants of old lost, forlorn loves....

The Nancy Drew in You

Scully and I went to Nancy Drew last night and I was simply delighted by it. They cast Nancy perfectly and her cute little boyfriend, it touched just the right nostalgic bone in me that remembered the little Nancy Drew that is in all of us. Not her personality per say--but that sweet innocence--where everything before you is possibile, and slitghtly out of touch with reality--you will let nothing stop your dreams. The critics gave it a C-, but I give it an A+.

I'm a Big Girl Now!

I've reached a milestone in my life. My dad finally trusts me! I only ran into the garage one time during driver's ed and he never let me drive anything but my own car! I have been banned for years against any of the tractors and the riding lawn mower! Come on! But yesterday my dad let me drive the riding lawn mower for the first time in my life! Whooo hooo! It was so much fun. I did an awful job on the little parcel of the back lawn my dad left for me to mow (we have a gigantic amount of grass, and he let me mow a tad in the back where I could mess up and no one would see). It is harder than it looks! I left little patches of tuff everywhere and you can see the funny circles I made in the lawn for trying to turn around, but my dad didn't even scold me once! Ha ha. My dad letting me drive the riding lawn mower is a metaphor for the fact that my dad respects me as a grown individual who is responsible. My dad is truly wonderful, I hope that didn't make him sound like a tyrant, it's just one of those family things!

Small Town Provincial

Elder Eyring told Moses Lake we could be a Zion people. Maybe not in this generation, but that we have the potential to be, he sensed that about us. Which I thought was cool. I've been running that around in my head since I have been home these last two weeks. Not that the following is the receipe for a city of Enoch, but there are plenty of wonderful things about my hometown.

1. Scully's mom's funeral. The stake center was full to the brim. The salt of the earth people I have known my whole life, and from various wards in our stake, all there to honor her mother, and attest to the wonderful woman she was. I know funerals aren't happy events, but it made me cry to see a gathering of such wonderful people, all of whom had been apart of not only Scully's family's life, but all our lives, so interwoven. It's gathering to comfort, and mourn, to weed gardens, make dinners, and just be there.

2. My old YW leader Brenda let my aunt who is sick in bed a lot borrow her BBC movie, North and South, my mom borrows it from her, watches it with my sister, waits unitl I come home, and I watch it until 2:00 a.m., we give it back to my cousin who watches it twice in a row with her mom and sister in law, and then somehow the DVD gets back into the right hands. Well, on our street, us women of various ages all think North and South has the hottest man in it, and that it rivals even Pride and Prejudice.

3. My dad borrowed a loader from a neighbor to hoist us up in front of the house to paint it, another neighbor borrowed our BBQ-er for the YM BBQ, my dad volunteered to haul cattle to a slaughter house for my first date's dad, and the list goes on. In two weeks, so many neighbors helping neighbors. We were out riding horses at our family reunion and one of their non-LDS neighbors came out with her horse because she noticed that we had too-many-kids, not-enough-horses.

And I'm enjoying laying on the couch and the lawn and reading good books. So far: Of Mice and Men, The Secret Life of Bees, The Chosen, and I'm part way through Eldest.