i'm taking a mental picture of you now.

This weekend was brilliant. And I only have one picture to prove it.

Yes, those are Magnum Bars chilling (literally) in my freezer. 

Let's just say FHE last night was pretty sweet (no pun intended). 

Also, it reminded me of the $$$ I dropped on those little bars during my study abroad.

It's not that they are the best chocolate bar in the world. They're not.

It was just the taste of something remotely American on a hot and sticky bus ride that made me cave in and buy them.  

I can remember all the counter tops where I passed over my shekels and was handed in return 2 minutes of joy. 

But I digress. 

This weekend, Danielle came to visit. This translates into awesomeness. 

We ate Mexican food, 

visited the new shopping mall City Creek. Yeah for the Disney Store, :)

stayed up late talking,

watched funny youtube videos and ate pop-rocks chocolate (in memory of Jerusalem days),

and laughed. 

All without taking one single picture. Even when she brought the clicky camera. Sad. 

Oh, we also officially decided we are backpacking across Europe when we get back from our missions. I. Cannot. Wait. 

I'm thinking a reading of Rick Steve's Europe is in order. 

i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately...

... to front only the essential facts of life, 

and see if i could not learn what it had to teach...

i wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...

our life is frittered away by detail. 

simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?

we are determined to be starved before we are hungry...

let us spend one day as deliberately as nature, and not be thrown off the track.

- h. d. thoreau

All this warmish weather and the winding down of the school scene has got me itching to go exploring in the great outdoors. I love the first big hike of the new year. It's like you've been hibernating inside a dark cave all winter, sometimes acting like a grumpy bear, and then you escape to the mountains one fine day and you stretch and feel the breeze and smell the flowers and life is better. Always. 

10 things that make me really happy.

1. Rainstorms and rain boots and big puddles.
2. Being one final away from academic freedom for 18 months.
3. Eating an afternoon snack of blueberry bagels and strawberries.
4. Playing Disney songs on the piano.
5. Getting surprise emails (and letters) from missionaries.
6. Going to the temple with my roommates.
7. Watching an episode of The Office and laughing till my stomach hurts.
8. Discovering a new really good song. And listening to it repeatedly.
9. Coming home to my apartment watching We Bought A Zoo. Classy.
10. Eating leftover Easter candy all week.

Have a Happy Weekend!

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.)