Picnic near Vernal.

I love quakie trees and they are in abundance in the High Uinta Mountains. We came out to Vernal for Sara's high school graduation and yesterday my family had a picnic up on the mountain. It was so fun! Everything is so green with the spring. My dad made pork chops, which were delicious. We all tried napping on a blanket, but there were a lot of fire ants that made sleeping difficult. Sara and her boyfriend Kyle still managed to sleep, but I don't know how with all the ants crawling all over them. We went up Grizzly Ridge and Paul climbed a tower that is at least fifty feet high. I was thinking that someday when we have a little kid like Paul, I will never have peace of mind.

Ah. Shoes and water bottles.

I spent most of the day watching my friend's one-year-old Isaac. He's got to be one of the easiest kids to babysit. If you want to play with him, he'll laugh and have fun, but if you want to do something else, he'll happily entertain himself for hours. He has a lot of toys, but he seems to be more entertained by objects like shoes and water bottles. I've noticed this about kids. They always like the unusual things as if the new expensive noise-making toy is just not that cool. Boo ya for boxes, which seem to be a universal favorite of toddlers the world over.

I'm an Associate... or something like that. :)

Today my Associates Degree diploma came in the mail. It was exciting! Since we didn't actually walk in line at our graduation from UVU, it didn't really seem really or significant. "Yeah, so I finally finished all the classes from the pink paper... Yay." (The English department's list classes is pink, in case that confused you.)

But getting the fancy certificate in the mail cheered me up a lot. It suddenly made it seem like all the time I spent studying and forcing myself to class when I was freaking sick were worth it. I was slow getting it because of the illness and I often felt like it couldn't be worth it. But the letters on the certificate are shiny and everyone knows that a certificate with shiny letters is superior to one with dull letters....

Big news for my little sister.

My sister Sara is graduating from high school this week and it is so weird! She has really grown up fast. I still catch myself thinking of her as the little kid that she was back when I lived with my parents, but that was years ago and Sara isn't little anymore.

I don't know if circumstances will allow me to make it to her graduation, but I'm really proud of her for getting to this point. I remember how I felt at my own high school graduation, as if all of life lay at my feet for the taking. I hope she feels that way too, and that she finds life to be an adventure. :)

Simply peace.

I have learned a lot about peace this last week. I was upset because of a relationship conflict and many serious and weighty concerns that overwhelmed me. I still can't see the posibility of any of the problems going away or getting better any time soon, but I have felt a deep and abiding peace come into my heart.

It's hard to explain. I had a conversation with my sister and another with a friend and they helped me to see that I'm not the only person who has been through hard things. They were right there exactly when I needed someone to talk to, almost like it was all part of some plan.

I am grateful for a Father in Heaven who loves me and a Savior who can cleanse my soul when I have dirtied it with contention and malice. I feel now more than ever God's love for his children. It must hurt him when we're cruel to each other, but he can truly take away the pain from our souls so that it does not have to touch us anymore. We don't have to go around covered in searing wounds-- we can let them go and feel only peace.

Regret.

So the last blog I wrote has been taken off, if anyone read it. It was an upset blog because I had been hurt deeply-- and one friend who read it was hurt deeply back. I guess I knew that there was a possibility that that could happen, although that wasn't why I wrote it. I wrote it because my entire situation was crushing me and I had to express all my pent up emotion somehow. It was probably out of line and I regret it. Pain in the heart can be expressed as cruelty towards others, and this is never acceptable.

I'm sorry, my friend. You know who you are.

Blog written by my friend Melanie. :)

I am a sprite from the faraway land of Talula in the Galapan galaxy. I was playing a lovely tune on my harp with my underwater friends when suddenly I appeared in Jessi Robbins' living room. She was a little surprised to see me there at first. I think I may have caught her when she was very tired because she yawned (or was it her mouth opening in shock? hmm) and immediately dropped to the floor. Pretty soon though, she woke up again, and we began to share our life stories. She wanted me to write an entry in this . . . what do you call . . . a b-l-o-g? What a strange name. I would call it a lahoola. But that's in the language of sprites.
Well Jessi, what do you want me to tell them? I want to know how I shall get home. I have heard of teleportation but have no idea how it works. Perhaps I am developing a gift for it. I only need to control it. When I get it under control I'll let you know. Until then you are certainly welcome to visit me and I will grant you your heart's innermost desire with my sprite magic.

I need to work on my southern accent.

The fated letter finally came and we're officially not going to NAU in Flagstaff. We had a few seconds of depression, of course, but we're hopeful again. We have four schools so far that Paul has contacted that still have openings in their Master's programs. So we might go live Tennessee, Alabama, Kansas or Virginia. Crazy, huh?

It looks as though we're destined to live in the South! I hear good things about southern cooking, anyway, and we can make friends with the neighbors. :)