A Weekend Jaunt in SLC

The semester is over! Hallelujah! It was a crazy end to the semester, as always, but everything got finished. Aaron and I have been off of school for the past couple days, and boy we've loved it!

We had a fun excursion in Salt Lake City on Saturday. We started off with a live session at the Salt Lake Temple (my first time inside!) and I loved it! It was, if possible, more beautiful inside than outside! Aaron and I both needed that break from the world.

I dream of one day having a gardens that are a fraction as beautiful as the temples'.

Photogenic.

Love this kid.

When we left the temple, my stomach began to whisper, "Take me to Settebello. We wants it. We needs it." I couldn't say no.

Yes, these are leftovers. I wanted to take a picture of the full pizza, but my stomach took over.

Settebello is this incredible Italian restaurant that serves authentic Italian pizza (this ain't Pizza Hut). The chef is actually from Italy, and they ship almost all of their ingredients straight from Italy because they are a part of this sweet Napoletana society that works to preserve the authentic pizza of Napoli. Boy, is it magnificent! My brother Jared signed off on it, and he served a mission in Milan, Italy. Wonderful. They actually have a sister restaurant in Orem called Terra Mia, which is also excellent, although in my heart, I am still partial to Settebello.

As part of our end-of-the-semester celebratory meal, we got some gelato next door! A wonderful decision.

Mango & sweet cream for Aaron

Mint cookie & sweet cream for me

One of Aaron's cousins had a hotel room in Sandy he had bought, but he wasn't able to use it so he offered it to us! It's a rare treat for us to stay in a hotel room, so we couldn't pass it up. Hello cable television!

It was a wonderful celebration between semesters. The next term starts on Tuesday. Oh boy.

However, on a happier note, today marks the one year anniversary of the day that Aaron proposed to me. What a wonderful, surreal day that was! I can't believe we're starting to hit these year marks! I'm feelin' like an old married woman! Love you, husband.

A light at the end of the tunnel

After nearly 5 years of unidentified stomach pain, (gotta love terms like functional disorders) I finally have a specific reason to blame! Food allergies! Can I just tell you what a relief it is to find out I'm not crazy? Or undefinably abnormal?

Instead of just telling you what I can't eat, I thought I would write a few haikus:

Juicy, dripping, pink.
Gandalf's Elvish word for friend.
Spit out the black seeds.

Nebraska's cash crop.
Steamed, creamed, grilled, boiled, cobbled, and shucked.
Fields of golden maize.

It's the poor man's steak.
I like it Kentucky-fried.
Bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk.

The only green nut.
Nutella's glorious nut.
These nuts grow on trees.

'Loping melons.
No more of these in a pod.
Pink freshwater fish.

There. Those are the big ones. I have also have a slightly smaller allergy to bananas, string beans, carrots, coconut, mushrooms, oats, potatoes, rice, rye, sunflower seeds, peanuts, walnuts and chicken.

I have gone through what I call the stages of allergy acceptance:

1. Acceptance. (OK, so this is what's going on!)
2. Excitement. (Finally, I know what's wrong with me!) 
3. Sadness. (I can't eat. Or that. Or that.)
4. Anger. (Stupid body. Why would you be allergic to all of those things?)
5. Second acceptance. (Sorry about that, body. I know it's not your fault.)
6. Hope. (Yes, substituting turkey for chicken could work. So could substituting quinoa for rice! This could be OK)

In the end, I believe that it's better to know why I'm feeling pain. I'm very grateful for modern day medicine that can me what's going on with my body.

In other news, I made this tasty cookies for choir today:

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Ingredients

1 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

2 c. white sugar

1/2 c. vegetable oil

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 c. all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c. confectioners' sugar

Directions

Mix together the cocoa powder, sugar, and vegetable oil in a large bowl. Beat eggs into the cocoa mixture, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Stir this mixture into the cocoa mixture.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a baking sheet.

Fill a shall bowl with confectioners' sugar. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Roll the balls in the confectioners' sugar and place on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from  the oven and allow to sit on cookie sheet for 1-2 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Thank goodness I can still eat these. Mmhm.

Insect War II. Bring it!

I had a lovely weekend.

Up first, I worked with my group to finish a magazine group layout project. We created a layout for The Sweet Tooth Fairy, this delicious little cupcake shop that started in Orem. I think it turned out pretty good! What do you think? 

Of course printing this little beast was a different matter. First, I didn't print out the bleed correctly, and then I cut out the last page a little wrong. When I tried to print off the last page again, they were working on that printer, and I had to use a different printer which printed out a slightly different version of the colors. Thankfully, my professor allows us a few freebies on printing. She wasn't kidding when she told us printing was going to be the bane of our existence.

On Sunday, I made these delicious beauties:

Soft-baked Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl Cookies. Oh, these were tasty. Yes, it does involve making 2 different cookies doughs, but they were both so easy to make that it only took me about 20 minutes total to make both of them! You should know before you start out that it requires a little refrigeration to help the dough not be too sticky. I'll definitely make this recipe again! I'm even considering what other smash cookies I could make: mint with dark chocolate? Snickerdoodle with sugar?

Check out the recipe here.

Choir practice yesterday was a huge success! We had a 200% increase in turnout. Of course, ward choir is still mainly a women's choir, but hey! Aaron's got an actual choir to conduct! We were giddy with excitement. Maybe word got around about how delicious my cookies are. Yeah, I bet that's it.

Also, I found 3 different spiders in the apartment on Sunday. Aaron was there, mercifully, so they were killed swiftly, but it's got me on edge. They weren't huge. I'd classify them as a small-medium, one as a baby-size, but if the small-mediums are showing up, then there could be some big Grandpas and Grandmas hanging around, too. I'm going to grab that insect spray and keep it out in the open. I'm sure Bri will be excited by the spiders return, but I'm not. They're going down.

Sweater Licking

I was asked to substitute to teach a children's class on Sunday. I had signed up to substitute a couple month's ago, but I hadn't been asked until Saturday. What age group was it, you ask? 4-year-olds.

I was so nervous to prepare a lesson for this age group. I don't usually have to teach children specific things like aspects of our church. It's usually more like, "Stop hitting your sister." "No, you can't bite my shoulder." "Yes, I am your favorite aunt in the whole world."

When I walked into the chaos of Junior Primary, the  Primary President approached me and said, "Is your husband here to help you substitute today?" I casually said, "No. Should he be?" She just sighed a little and said, "Good luck."

You'd think I was watching over little monsters and not cute little kiddies!

I sat down on a teensy little chair and was feeling pretty out of place until Alanee came over, a girl I had not met until that day, and said sweetly, "Can I sit on your lap?" My heart melted all over the floor.

I spent the first hour of Junior Primary convincing the kids to sit down and pretend like they were paying attention. At one point, a little girl sat down next to me, started to lick my sweater, and then said, "I want my old teacher back."

Needless to say, things went really smoothly. I made it through my own lesson with the help of two other volunteers and only had to take care of one screaming child. We'll just pretend she wasn't screaming because I wasn't her favorite teacher. I think I'll count this one as a success.

Have A Little Faith

It isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out. Don't worry. I say that to myself every morning. It will all work out. If you do your best, it will all work out. Put your trust in God, and move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake us. He will not forsake us. ... If we will put our trust in Him, if we will pray to Him, if we will live worthy of His blessings, He will hear our prayers.

Gordon B. Hinckley

These Are Not My Scriptures

Everything was going as planned today. I woke up at a decent hour, took way too long of a shower, rushed to church,  enjoyed the testimonies during Sacrament meeting and I stopped in the ladies' room before going to Sunday school. Sitting in Sunday school, I got out my scriptures to read a verse when I had a shocking revelation. I looked into one of the side pockets and saw an unfamiliar note written in a strange handwriting. That's when I realized what had happened.

These are not my scriptures.

This may not seem like a big deal to some people. I had obviously grabbed the wrong scriptures in the ladies' room and it was just a simple mistake. But it is a very big deal. I love my scriptures! I have all of my careful markings and notes from my Book of Mormon class last year and my D&C class this semester and lots of other insights from my personal study. It's another form of a journal for me. It felt like I had gotten dressed and it wasn't until lunch that I realized that I was wearing someone else's shoes or that I had somehow woken up with someone else's nose on my face. That's how shocking it was.

I realized that I must have switched scriptures accidentally while in the ladies' room. Thankfully, the scriptures are engraved with a name: Anna Toone. Somewhere in BYU land, there is a girl named Anna Toone who has my set of scriptures. I have messaged her on facebook but there has been no response yet. Sigh. 

I hope she treats them well while we are apart, that she feeds it 3 square meals a day and tucks it into bed every night with a hug and a kiss. What if develops Stockholm Syndrome and decides to never come home?!

I wonder if it misses me.

I miss them.

The Right Track

During a lecture this past week, my Doctrine and Covenants teacher asked us to think to ourselves and truly examine if we are in the right major for us. He said that some of us might have an unsettled feeling and we may already know we're going into the wrong career.

Rewind a year ago. A year ago, I was preparing to audition for the School of Music on my trusty clarinet. I was playing music for hours a day, working hard in my lessons, and suffering from all of the normal stress and anxiety of a freshman while also worrying continuously about my impending audition. There were many vital things I needed to fix before my audition and I found myself trying to fix habits that had grown over 9 years in just about 4 months.

I was a basket case.

I tend to be very tunnel visioned about things in my life. When I really want something, that is all I can focus on and I work until I reach my goal. It has been that way with the Nebraska Children's Choruses I sang with, becoming a Drum Major in high school, making All State and Honor Bands, and getting into BYU. This audition was the first thing that I felt that even though I was trying will of my heart, I might not succeed. It was the passing of an illusion that I had grown up with: all of your dreams will come true if you only believe and work hard enough. When I got that email in February informing me that I had not gotten into the program, I think that was the moment I started to become an adult.

I don't mean to say that being an adult only involves disappointment and hardships but it does entail gaining a realism that no matter how many books you read on the subject, you just don't understand deep disappointment until it happens to you.

It was hard. My focus was so tightly pointed at that one goal, that it was disorienting at first. I didn't know where to go from there. Thankfully, I was in an Honors English class and also working on a student journal on campus. Once I got over the initial heartbreak, I began to realize how much happiness my writing class brought me. I used my English assignments as a break, a release, from the boring and miserable Geology readings. I loved to write.

It took me a few weeks to get over my results, many phone calls home, numerous prayers, lots of hugs from my friends and family, and one life-changing pep talk from my Dad, and I was ready to move on. I began to look at English courses and all of a sudden it clicked. It felt like I had just broken up with my supposed soul mate only to realize that my best friend had been right there the whole time and was the right person all along!

I have since changed to English Language, and the feeling I get coming from my ELang 223 class is something that cannot be expressed in words alone. I get giddy, exhilarated, and am bursting at the seams with excitement after each class, ready to spill my love of the language on the next person I see.

Here I am, 1 year later, listening as my D&C teacher urged us to look inside ourselves to see if we've chosen the right major. I waited for the feeling of dread, of doubt and a miserable realization that I had got it wrong again. It didn't come.

What a wise and wonderful man

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

C.S. Lewis