I LOVE PROVO BUT I'M GOING TO KAYSVILLE

The sad thing is, I really think blogs are for me and yet I hardly blog. (How fun it is to use it as a verb!) Full-time work isn't really helping either. But just so you all know, I blog in my head a lot. I post pictures of fun random things that happen or that I think. But of course when I get here in front of the computer, there is either no time, or I don't remember anything I wanted to blog.

So right now, I'll write what's relevant.  I'm off to Kaysville to hit about four birds with one stone:

1. Delivering some graduation announcements I designed for my lovely cousin Noelia.
2. Delivering a little package from Hna. Savage to her family.
3. Paying a visit to Elder Broadhead's nice parents.
4. Wishing Happy Birthday to Elder Hamblin's cool mom.

Goodbye, Provo.

(Just for a morning)

SPRINGING

I always told Dominicans about how much it snowed at my home. I told about how I might get home in time to see a bit of it.

I have seen enough of it. I have been cold long enough. I bet some more cold is around the corner, but for now, Spring is winning. Summer is coming.

Viable reasons:

• Yellow blossoms.
• The smell I smelled last night.
• The lack of shiver when I say goodbye at the door.
• Magnolia blossoms.
• The need to roll down the car windows.
• Longboards E V E R Y W H E R E.
• White blossoms.
• Lilac blossoms on the walk to work:

And this last reason is viable, but ever-so unpleasant:

• MOSQUITOness! - Today Ben asked me in the dusk if I was getting bitten like he was. I had something else on my mind and didn't make the connection that it meant mosquitoes. Just now I came home and I saw one buzzing around the lamp in the sala. It bounced into itself around the laptop, which is where I pinched it & killed it. That's right: I pinched it in mid-air. (That's how familiar I became with my biggest pet-peeve in the D.R. wonder world.)

I wish I could say Provo was so wonderful that there are no mosquitoes. But I concluded their sole purpose must have to do with my patience. And it helps me to appreciate the winter a bit more.

THE PROPHET COMES TO PROVO

President Monson spoke at BYU today and even though I could have walked a few blocks to be in his presence, I just watched him on the tellie.  (Now that I think about it, that's kind of weird. In the DR perspective, we would have traveled whatever it took if it meant he'd be on the island. But I guess it's a Provo thing.)

My favorite thing was actually a quote by someone else, but it seemed to be what I needed.

"No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God... and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven."

     --ORSON F. WHITNEY