give me strength, reserve control.

Not getting sick once during the semester. Then getting sick during finals week. Now that's what you call ironic.

Sore throats and stuffy noses are lame.

To keep me going, I've been drinking lots of ice cold water, taking my medicine like a good girl, eating left over Easter candy, and cracking open my window to let in the Spring breeze. Not too shabby.

Oh, and also listening to the We Bought A Zoo soundtrack.

source.

You can listen to it here. For free. Seriously, listen to it.* It is beautiful and peaceful. It makes me happy. Also, it's mostly instrumental, so you can listen to it while studying.

I'd like to conduct an experiment to prove that listening to classical/ instrumental music while studying improves your test taking skills and your motivation to study in general. Someday.

Good luck fellow students with your finals. :)


*And, seriously, if you haven't seen the movie, go. You won't regret it.

life is beautiful.

Joy is what happens to us 

when we allow ourselves to recognize 

how good things really are. 

~Marianne Williamson 

Yay for happy weekends! They typically consist of food, family, sunshine, and babies. :) Yesterday, my cousin Jann's beautiful baby Eva was blessed. She is an adorable, happy baby with a tight grip. ;) She didn't make a peep when I held her, so that's a good sign. Seriously, though, babies are the best. I think it would do everyone in the world some good to hold a baby for twenty minutes a day. After the blessing, I got to see my cousins who came all the way from California. It was great to catch up with them.

Temple Square was beautiful on Saturday. The tulips were blooming and the grass is now officially green. I wanted to run around barefoot, but I restrained myself.

Easter arrived with a beautiful church service and then a scrumptious ham dinner. I thought a lot about Jerusalem. Oh, and there was plenty of Easter candy--chocolate bunnies, French and Belgium chocolates, tangerine jelly beans, dark chocolate eggs, cadbury eggs, and peeps.

P.S. peeps, in my personal opinion, are nasty. But my brother loves them, so what can we do? :) The way I see it is, it's all sugar, but if you're going to get fat eating it, the stuff better taste pretty darn good. And peeps are just like eating straight-up sugar with no flavoring. So I'll stick with my European chocolate thank you very much.

P.S.S. When we were little, my mom hid Easter baskets around the house for us to find in the morning. And we always had a huge Easter egg hunt in the afternoon. I loved racing around my grandparents house in St. George looking for the eggs. I always got less than my brothers, though. They are legit Easter egg finders.
My mom didn't like the Easter Bunny idea when we were little, so we always knew the Easter Bunny didn't exist. Which is funny because we still believed in Santa and fairies. Go figure. Anyway. The Easter Bunny still kind of creeps me out. And I think I have some solid reasons to back up this fear.

Exhibit A:

Seriously? That is the creepiest bunny suit
I have ever seen. It's like the killer bunny
from Mounty Python. (source.)

Exhibit B:

Yeah, kid. I would be trying to get away
too. I'm so glad my mom didn't make
me go through that. (source.)

Exhibit C:

And finally, the Easter Bunny at the White House. Don't be fooled by their
smiles. Look closely at Natasha--she's giving the bunny a worried look.
And Malia looks a little scared too. Plus, notice the wide gap between
the family and the Easter Bunny. Need I say more? (source.)

Happy Monday!

memo to mother nature.

Not cool, Mother Nature. Not cool.

To start off, I like snow. Because it means things like skiing and hot chocolate and snowball fights and sledding and snow days and Christmas. In fact, I'd rather any day be slightly colder than hotter. Yes, I'm a sit-in-the-shade-over-the-sun kind of person.

But, I like Spring. No, I LOVE SPRING. It's my second favorite season, right up there with Fall. Spring is that beautiful transition from dark wintry days to the hot sticky days of summer. Spring, with its 60 degree weather and slight breezes, its week of Easter and Cadburry eggs, its budding tulips and promise of new life, yes Spring is what gets me through the other months.

I will trudge through the knee-deep snow and blizzards and hail. I will freeze my nose and ears off running up to campus. I will let my shirt paste itself to my back as I walk in the sweltering heat. I will deal with the blinding sun and the 100 degree weather of August's dog days.

I will do all this if you just give me Spring. Sweet, uninterrupted, beautiful Spring. Preferably six straight weeks of it. I don't think I'm asking too much.

And the snow that's frosting the world at this very moment?

Yeah--it needs to disappear. April Fools was last week, remember?

So, I'll just be getting my capris and sweaters and sandals ready. And waiting.

Sincerely,

Charlotte

those canaan days we used to know.

Where have they gone? Where diiiiiiiiiiiiiiid they go?

Sigh. This past week being Passover has brought a flood of memories back from Jerusalem. And then my roommate made a Seder meal for her dinner group and I almost started crying. Almost. 

So, I thought I'd reminisce about the Seder that we had in Jerusalem. Because it was legit. It involved singing in Hebrew, eating [nasty] bitter herbs, watching a hilarious rap by some JC boys, and let's not forget drinking the grape juice. I'm grinning just thinking about the night.

Our table, with the infamous grape juice and the Hebrew books we
used to follow along with all the prayers, stories, etc. 

Just enjoying ourselves in the Oasis.

Close up of the traditional Seder meal. Bitter herbs=the harshness of the
slavery in Egypt that the Jews experienced. Charoset (apples + nuts)= the
mortar used by the Jewish slaves in Egypt. Roasted lamb leg=the
sacrificial lamb. Hard boiled egg=sacrifice offered in the temple.
Ha. I did learn something on my study abroad. 

Jared, me and Danielle. We look normal, right?

Um. Not quite. We blame the evening on the "grape juice."

Our Jewish Studies professor, Ophir. 

 Next year in Jerusalem! (Seriously, though.)

Musings while at work.

*The following thoughts have been compiled over the course of this semester. Read at your own discretion, as many of them were written at early hours and when I was in a less-than-conscious state.*

Oh. my. goodness. I'm pretty sure I work in Antarctica. What's the forecast for today? 70 degrees, you say? Oh, cool. Let me grab my parka and some gloves and a pair of boots. And pray that I don't get frostbite. Seriously, though, why is it soooooo cold in this tiny office?

Office swivel chairs are THE BEST. Turning around in them when no one's in the office never gets old. Oh, and pushing myself from the computer to the desk drawer to get the stapler makes me feel so official.

Sooooo tired. Can't get out of bed. Who invented 7:30 AM work on Fridays?

Sometimes I spend four hours in that little office space sourcing or transcribing without talking to anyone. So I go down the hall to fill up my water bottle, just to make sure that people still do exist.

Did I mention I have a key to the office? As in, I have a key to a building on BYU campus. Such power. Such responsibility.

Once you drive up to work once, it's really, really hard to convince yourself to not drive up again. Those 12 minutes in bed can make all the difference.

I love researching books and articles with all the power of BYU faculty. You don't even have to go check out a book from the library. That's right. You just look it up online and select "request faculty delivery" and it shows up in your office. Awesome. (Thanks to the in-between people, students most likely, who search for it, find it, and cart it clear across campus.)

Sometimes I get to go to lunch on the secret sixth floor of the library with my boss. And eat lots of really good food. And chat with the head BYU librarian. It's chill.

**********

In other news,

6 days till the last day of classes.
15 days till the end of finals.
55 days till I leave.

Oh, and lots of partying in-between.

sun today, snow tomorrow.

the weekend consisted of...

sunshine, rain, snow, hail, wind, sunshine, clouds. in no particular order.

hiking a little ways up Mt. Olympus with Peter and pretending to make a movie.

watching quite a bit of this.

playing with peter's clicky-camera (or as Nicole likes to call them, Digital SLR cameras). I really miss using Danielle and Nicole's one in Jerusalem. Focusing the big lens and then pressing the button and hearing the "clicky" noise is so. awesome.

listening to James talk all about tour and feeling a little jealous.

spending half of Sunday making cinnamon rolls. huge time commitment. huge success. proof? my dad ate three in a row. and then proceeded to tell us that if we kept making them he'd get fat. good thing they take forever to make.

eating pork burritos with the cousins.

finishing the hunger game series. i know, i've read them before. but i forgot most of the details and what with the movie out and everything, i figured it was a good time for a refresher.

playing the ultimate april fools joke on my dad.

teaching ginger to roll over. hooray!

happy monday!

i won't grow up.

That's me, three from the left. (source.)

If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,

I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up!

Not me!

(Not I!)

Not me! 

So there. 

This Is The Place days. Climbing trees, feeding animals, trying to fish in the pond.  

I love this picture of Peter. 

Some days I wake up singing "I won't grow up" from the Peter Pan musical.
My roommate just laughs at me.
But I'm serious.

Some nights I go to midnight movies even though I have class the next day.
And I realize that my friend and I are possibly the oldest people in the theatre.
Holy overload of freshmen.
Wait, does this mean I'm too old to go?
Absolutely not.

 Sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that I'm
21 YEARS OLD.
When did this happen?

Sometimes I eat ice cream for dinner.

Sometimes I read the Sunday morning comics.

Sometimes I wear different colored socks.

Sometimes I'm immature and laugh at dumb stuff.

Sometimes I want to play spy or cowboys and indians or go on adventures.

Sometimes I eat more cookie dough than I actually bake.

Actually, that last one should be always.

****

Tonight, I said goodbye to Faith, my dear friend who's leaving on a mission to Paraguay this Wednesday. And I had to face a little bit of "growing up." Bah.
I hate goodbyes.
I always just laugh and joke and pretend it's just a "see ya soon."
But this time "soon" translates to approximately 2 years.
Driving home, I realized how much I'm gonna miss that girl.
From the moment we ate pizza together in the airport to the last crepe party,
and all the moments in-between....
(Peru, freshman roomies, her silent laugh, California road trip, making dinners, awkward BYU dances, crepes, finding our true laughs, midnight movies, Thursday lunches)
...I knew we were meant to be great friends.
She is going to be an incredible missionary.

Good luck, Faith!