year round school

i am a teacher at a year round school. this means that throughout the year, i get breaks. these breaks allow me to relax and remember why i love to teach. 

one of these breaks happens to coincide with spring break which means that instead of having three weeks off, i have 4 and it has been amazing. 

but one question i continually get asked by my friends, family and ry is a variation of what are you going to do today or what did you do today? 

this meme explains it perfectly.

even though this is not 100% true, my days are considerably less busy than normal. 

** we are moving so i am packing

**i am done with two whole weeks worth of lesson plans

** i have watched 4 seasons of the office 

** 16 episodes of revenge {new addiction} 

worked out almost every single day

**gone to work 5 days { subbing or staff development} 

** had my wisdom teeth removed

i have done things but for the most part i have done absolutely nothing and it was everything i thought it could be. 

flawed factory reject

body image.

 it is not something that a lot of people, girls in particular, like to talk about. 

we like to pretend that we all love ourselves and don't cry ourselves to sleep when we are pms-ing and bloated. 

there is an article that i found on facebook and it was kind of interesting. {you can find it here.} 

it is about a girl who weighed 300 pounds and got the weight loss surgery. she talks about even when she lost 180 pounds and was a size 2, she was mad at herself for not being a size 0. she said that losing the weight did not address any of the problems that made her heavy to begin with. but one paragraph she wrote really hit home for me.

"Magazine articles about body image talk about loving yourself despite your flaws. Sometimes they get really radical and they talk about loving yourself because of your flaws, and that is supposed to be empowering. And it makes me mad, because we're talking about flaws here. A body that doesn't look like the body of a Victoria's Secret model is a flawed factory reject. My thighs aren't the thighs of a figure skater, so they're not good enough, but I should love the flubby little things anyway because I am so incredibly self-compassionate."

this paragraph really made me think about my own body and my personal views on what i look like. now i know i am not heavy. i do not weigh 300 pounds but i dont look like a victoria secret model either and more often than not, i feel like a flawed factory reject. and i know i am not the only one out there! we are imperfect. no one is ever completely happy with their body { if you happen to be one of the lucky few who are completely happy with their body... please TELL ME YOUR SECRET!} but after reading it, i was left with a feeling of "now what?" 

even though i know it is ridiculous, i still hate that my thighs touch and i wish i could have a flat stomach. even at my skinniest, most fit times, i was never happy. i was always looking for something that wasnt perfect. i know that we are beautiful in our savior's eyes but how do i see my own beauty? 

i have resolved to stop looking for my flaws. i know i am not perfect but i want to focus on health instead of perfection. if i am eating right and working out, i need to be ok with that. i need to be ecstatic to have a healthy body that allows me to do the things that i love to do. 

we cant all be victoria secret models.

but we can choose to love who we are, even if we are flawed factory rejects ;) 

Love story part 6

love story part 1

love story part 2

love story part 3

love story part 4

love story part 5

for me, meeting his dad was a funny experience. i had met bob once during a hockey game while ryan and i were still just friends. it was very brief and not very momentous. but when i officially met ryan's dad, i realized i was in for a very comical relationship. ry and i went to a rugby game to watch a friend play. while they were playing, ry, his dad and i started having a conversation about ry's brother joe who was serving a mission. we were talking about how joe was serving in france and had met elizabeth smart while she was serving there as well. 

{to learn more about missions and what joe was doing in france, please feel free to visit lds.org} 

one thing led to another and my future father in law made a comment about how joe should ask her out when he got home

 his first date idea... camping in the woods. 

funny but not funny. it is that same twisted humor that i have grown up with being the daughter of my dad. it was funny to hear it from someone else. 

i dont remember the first time i ever met ry's mom. =( i assume it was around the same time though. 

ry meeting my family. 

it was during thanksgiving break that ry met my whole family. 

remember how i had just sent off a missionary 3 months earlier? 

so i knew this was a big deal. 

 i knew this would be a game changer. luckily my family was willing to see what had me so interested in this guy. 

they knew he was important enough for me to bring him home.

i went home for thanksgiving break and ry came down to visit over the weekend. i thought the worst criticism would come from my family... 

how could i be so wrong??

my missionary was from the same ward 

{congregation we meet with} as me and on sunday, some of the people in my ward were quite skeptical of this new boy. luckily ry did not let that scare him away =) 

my family could tell from this first meeting that ry was something very special. 

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Love story part 5

Just in case you need to catch up, here is the first four installments. 

love story part 1

love story part 2

love story part 3

love story part 4

our first official date as a couple was spent riding 4-wheelers out in heber, utah. ry's family owns a cabin up there and has 4-wheelers, snowmobiles and rhino. i love spending time up at the cabin. we went up with ry's best friend matt and his girlfriend emma. 

that first day of dating was so fun.  the views were gorgeous and the company definitely wasnt bad. after we were done 4-wheeling, we went to the famous dairy king, home of the trains. 

next installment: meeting the parents 

dun dun dun... 

our love story part 4

october 31st. i wasnt doing anything and neither was ry so we decided to carve pumpkins and just hang out. 

i showed up in full costume.. 

as a super hero. 

after  a moment of shock, he let me in and we carved our pumpkins. after we decided we were hungry and he asked if i wanted to go home and change before we went to dinner. 

i laughed and he realized i fully planned on going out dressed as a super hero..

 cape and all. 

that poor boy took me to cafe rio on a packed weekend night. i made friends with a little boy in line who said he had always wanted to meet a superhero and as we stood in line i realized that ry was special. especially if he was willing to put up with me and all my craziness. 

the next day was my birthday and this romantic man of mine got me

 a loaf of bread.. 

 { dont worry he has since made up for this present.ry is a bomb gift giver.} 

but anyways. i went out to dinner with my girlfriends and afterwards met up with the boys { ry and his friends} to go see the movie despicable me. it was the perfect way to spend my 20th birthday. 

It wasnt until the next day that ry and i became an official couple. it is funny because i cant remember how it actually happened, what was said or how i felt that day. i just remember that he was officially mine and i was his. 

our love story part 3

ry and i started hanging out quite frequently. but it was complicated because as i stated before, i was kind of broken; trying to figure out if i really liked this boy or just liked having a boy. and then on a weekend at the end of september, we went to the utah county fair with a bunch of friends and everything changed. 

once again, sorry for the blurry pic. 

ry and i spent the entire night side by side. we went on rides and had a blast. but it wasnt until i lost my headband that i became really impressed. we went on one of the rides that tosses us all over the place and sometime during the ride, my headband fell off. i loved that headband and was really disappointed.i tried not to make a big deal but ry could tell i was disappointed. instead of just blowing it off and moving on, this crazy boy of mine spent 15 minutes looking around the coaster seeing if it had flown off. by some miracle we found it. his willingness to look for it seems so stupid but it meant the world to me at that time. 

{sidenote- once we were married, this headband was run over by a certain someone while vaccumming. it is now only a memory. } 

by october, i knew this boy was special. we had our first kiss one night underneath the starry sky. ry and i went on a walk talking about anything and everything. then we decided to climb up on the roof of his house. as we sat up looking at the stars, ry leaned over and kissed me. i was nervous and happy and spoke before i thought about it. the first words out of my mouth after this gorgeous man had kissed me was... 

way to go for it. 

such an idiot. 

luckily he just laughed, kissed me again and we hung out on the roof for a few more minutes before one of his roommates decided to ruin the moment. 

the rest of october was spent in that awkward stage most dysfunctional relationships go through. we acted like a couple, hung out like a couple but did not become a couple until one fateful night more than a month later..