Month in Review: July

The first week of July, I finally got to go home to Texas! It was the first time I'd been back since our wedding last September, so I was really happy to go home, feel the Texas heat, and enjoy spending time with my parents. I also took literally no pictures. I was way too busy relaxing! I spent the long 4th of July weekend by the pool, running errands with my mom, making homemade ice cream, and eating. Honestly, what could be better?

For the rest of the month, I just stayed busy with my Spanish classes and work. In addition to my office job, I was also a teaching assistant for Bro. Ludlow (on of my professors back in Jerusalem). He needed some extra help during summer term, so I was more than happy to offer my services. It was fun to go to his classes again, organize his office, and grade assignments. Between my classes and assignments, the office, and TA-ing, I had a pretty busy schedule that ran like clockwork!

I also got to stop by the Young Ambassador Singing Entertainer's camp at BYU! This is a week-long camp that the BYU Young Ambassadors (the performing group that I am now a member of!) put on for middle and high school students. I went three years when I was in high school, and I loved every second of it. I felt like I learned so much as a performer, I made great friends, and I solidified my dream of becoming a YA. anyways, I stopped by some of the workshops to say hi to fellow YAs and some campers I knew, and I got to see the final show at the end of the week. I was so amazed by the talent of these kids! They put together such a great show in just a week; even though I didn't know most of them, I was so proud. It made me think so much about when I was in camp, and it made me even more excited to be in YAs this next year. I can't wait to share happines and my testimony and love with others through song and dance.

Matt was still at LDAC for most of the month. He suffered in the Kentucky heat and humidity, but he made it through alright. He FINALLY came home on the 21st. I don't think I could've last another day! I got to go pick him up from the airport and then surprise him at home with his "Welcome Home" banner (I couldn't resist). It was a sweet reunion.

Matt's Platoon at LDAC -- He's the first on the left, third row from the top. So serious ;)

Pioneer Day was the 24th, and we went to a fun parade in Spanish Fork with the Greens. It was a fun parade and good company. We got there so early to save seats, though! It was worth it.

We also wore matching outfits...

Matt's birthday was the 25th! Happy 23rd to my sweet husband :) There is a separate post for his birthday (or there will be soon).

Feeling 22

I'll be honest--I have still never heard Taylor Swift's "22" song, but it just felt right to reference it. I'm twenty-two now! Woohoo! It's so weird to me that I am now fully into the third decade of my life (I had to think about that...third? yup). I've never really had a bad  birthday, but I've had some pretty great ones. I think that this year really takes the cake, though. So many sweet moments and birthday wishes came together to create the perfect day.

The Sunday before my actual birthday, my sisters hosted a fun birthday dinner for me at the Dicksons. It was so fun to celebrate with them and eat delicious food. Steak tacos and chocolate bundt cake! (not together, obviously...)

Now for my birthday on the 16th...

First off, it was a reading day! My birthday always falls pretty close to finals week. This year, I got lucky, and my birthday was the day before finals on a reading day. The only school-related thing I had to do was attend a review session! After my review session and a few hours of work, I got to hang out with Matt all day. I'm the type of person that doesn't need a big group or party--I'm totally good with just being with my best friend. And that's what I did.

My first present of the day was finding out that I made the Young Ambassador's team at BYU! The YAs is a performance group at BYU that sings and dances all around the world. I have dreamed of being a YA since as long as I can remember, and finding out that I finally made the group was more than I could have wished for. (I'll write more about YA's in a later post!) We went to an early dinner at Tucano's, one of Matt and my favorite restaurants. Afterwards, we went home and I got to open my presents! Matt was so good at keeping them surprises. I got a new jacket and scarf (thanks mom and dad!), and Matt got me a piano keyboard! I have been having withdrawals from playing the piano, so I was so happy to get a keyboard of my own. I'm so grateful for my husband who helps me develop my talents and do the things I love.

After dinner, Matt took me to the "Sacred Gifts" exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. Ok, this was really my idea, but Matt was kind enough to allow me to drag him along! The exhibit was all religious paintings  of Christ by Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofman, and Frans Schwartz. It was such a beautiful exhibit. It was incredible to actually see in person these paintings that I have seen all my life. I especially liked seeing the lesser-known (at least to me) works of Christ.

All in all, I had such a wonderful birthday. Thank you for all those who made it that way! 22 really does feel good.

Welcome, New Year

M and I had a fun time ringing in the New Years with friends. We stayed up playing lots of games, eating treats, and laughing (the best way to start anything is with a laugh, right?!). I'm convinced, though, that M and I are actually 3 times our actual age--midnight was about as late as we could last. Nonetheless, it was all good fun.

Traditions I'd like to keep to celebrate New Years:

1. Eating Chinese Food on New Year's Eve (I know M wouldn't mind...)
2. Playing Games
3. Toasting with Martinelli's
4. A New Year's Kiss... of course!

I think I need to figure out some new traditions to add... my list is embarrassingly lacking. Any suggestions?

Merry Christmas to All

M and I had a very lovely Christmas (and almost no pictures to show for it!). We spent the holiday with the Greens this year and had a lot of fun. The whole family got together Christmas Eve and had a delicious dinner, followed by a little Christmas program. We sang carols and read scriptures about the Savior's birth, reminding us all about the reason for the season. Afterwards, we played games and visited, then headed to bed.

Christmas Day started out with presents and breakfast! We were so spoiled by our families--thank you! After presents, we watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I had actually never seen this musical (shocking!), but it's one of M's favorites from his childhood (even more shocking!) and I loved it. We then got ready, visited M's grandparents, and headed to a family dinner and party. M's family has a big gingerbread house competition every year, and it's gets pretty intense! I made a good showing for my first time though--I was on the winning team!

TL: On Christmas Ever; TR: Matt's team made a gingerbread manger scene; BL: My team's winning gingerbread house; BR: The third team's Tongan house

Amid all the fun and presents, though, is the real meaning of Christmas. The miracle of Christmas is always so amazing to me. Without Christ's birth and life, we would be lost. My favorite part of the Christmas story is the shepherds. Maybe I have a soft spot for them because of my experience in Bethlehem, but it's my favorite part nonetheless. I love that the first people invited to visit the Christ child were humble, lonely shepherds from the fields. The first noel, the announcement of the birth of the Savior, was sung by angels to these hard-working and meek people. They had really difficult lives and did their best with what they had, and they were greatly blessed for it. I think that like the shepherds, we all are called to see the Christ, if only we will listen. No matter how hard life may be or the challenges we face, we are always welcomed, and even called, to the stable to see Christ for ourselves and believe on Him.

Christmas at the Green Home

I absolutely love Christmas--the lights, music, stories, food, you name it and I'm probably a fan of it (except for egg nog). This year was especially fun because it was M and I's first married Christmas! It was so fun to decorate our little basement and bring in the holiday spirit.

I was most excited to set up the olive wood nativity scene that I got from Jerusalem. It had a place of honor right in the foyer.

This is when I bought the nativity set in Jerusalem, from Omar's shop 9/2011.

 I was also very excited to set up our first Christmas tree! In all honesty, I was a little nervous because I didn't have a clear vision of how I wanted it to look, but I think it came together rather nicely. We have some ornaments about the 12 Days of Christmas, along with some of the ornaments I grew up with. In the Pelton family, each of us would get a new ornament every year, usually from a place that we visited. I've always loved that  tradition, and I hope that M and I will continue it. Anyways, it's resulted in some pretty cool ornaments, so I was happy to add some to the Green collection.

(I had a really hard time getting a good picture!) 

A few decorations-- namely our wreath, Christmas Tree, Nativity, and Advent Calendar

The wreath was actually from our wedding, but I just added some festive ribbon to give it a holiday flair (reduce, reuse, recycle, right?). The advent calendar was a bit of an experiment. I saw a cool idea on Pinterest (of course...) about a paper-bag advent calendar, and it was super cute, so I naturally had to try it for myself. I used some leftover favor bags also from our wedding and numbered them 1-25. Then, I put a scripture in each bag to read on that day. The scriptures went through the story of Christ's birth and life from both the Bible and Book of Mormon. I then clipped the bags onto my string board with mini clothespins. It was cute, but I think it can be improved upon next year. Maybe I'll even put treats in the bags! I'm already excited... 

Luck o' the Irish

Remember that Disney channel original movie? The one about the high school basketball star who turned into a leprechaun? Not gonna lie, it was always one of my favorites. Happy St. Patrick's day! I feel like my blog is turning into a hoopla for random and overlooked holidays: new years, President's day, Valentines, Pi day, St. Patrick's Day... what's next? Maybe April Fools' Day? Anyways, focusing on the present. Whit and I celebrated green day early by going to our friend Michael Sean's party. He's a friend from Jerusalem, so we knew we would have a blast see everyone again. He also hosted it with his cousins, so there were plenty of people that we didn't know too! Yay for making new friends! It was a really fun party with lots of  Irish decor, green clothes, a potato peeling contest, and even a Blarney Stone to kiss! I also tried out a new dessert--rice krispie treats, but instead of rice krispies, you use Lucky Charms. Whit had the idea, so I did it. They turned out ok; since the cereal already had frosting/sugar on it, the mallow coated it kinda funny. But they still tasted good, so I guess that's what counts! I at least get extra points for holiday spirit and appropriateness.

3.14 Happy Pi Day!

So even though I am no longer a math major (yes, I was one for two whole semesters... still wanna be friends?), I am still a huge fan of pi day! I'm obsessed with numbers and any cool patterns that they form. For instance, my birthday is April 16th, 4/16. First of all, 4 is the square root of 16, so that's already awesome because my birthday is a perfect square. And my favorite number is 8, which is the double of 4 and the half of 16. And my golden birthday was my sweet sixteen--how much better can that get, right? And the year of my birth is also divisible by 4, so my whole birthday can divide down. And my Grandma told me that I'm distantly related to Abraham Lincoln, and guess which number of US President he was?....16! I'm obsessed with numbers. I memorize addresses, telephone numbers, scripture references, and ID numbers by forming patterns and equations. Maybe two sequential numbers add up to the value of the third number, or the sequence is almost the Fibonacci series. Whatever it is, I look for something that will help me remember it. I don't even do it consciously--I just look at numbers and automatically start making connections and patterns. I think it all started in elementary school when my math teacher Mrs. Anderson would put a series of numbers on the board, and we had to use any type of mathematical operation between the numbers to make two equal sides of the equation. Here's an example:

3  0  5  1  2  7  4

One solution is this:

3 x 0 + 5 x 1 = 2 + 7 - 4

See, both sides now equal 5! This is a really simple solution, not very sophisticated math, but I thought it was pretty good for not having the number planned out or anything. But I digress. I think it is now obvious that I like numbers and math, even though it's no longer my major. So naturally I celebrated Pi Day. Since Whit and I didn't have any pie at our apartment, we decided to get the next best thing: pie shakes at Sammy's. Sammy's is a Provo gem: it's this tiny hole in the wall restaurant that is fun, artsy, and serves the best sweet potato fries and shakes. They are especially famous for their pie shakes and cupcake shakes, and yes, they actually put a piece of pie or cupcake into the shake and blend it up. How much better could it get? Once we got there, though, it seemed like half of Provo also had the same idea as we did... but don't worry we still got out shakes. Whit and I also dragged our friend Carter along with us, so we got three different flavors: banana cream pie (Carter), peach cobbler (me), and raspberry cheesecake (Whit). They were all really good, but I'm not going to lie, I really really just liked mine a whole lot. I didn't really want to share. Luckily we're all friends so I could just be honest about it, but I did still let Carter and Whit have a few bites of mine while I stole a few bites of theirs. Divine. And the best part was that we did this all at the spur of the moment around 11 pm. I definitely think Sammy's pie shakes is a Pi Day holiday tradition that I wouldn't mind keeping for years to come. 

Whit and Carter with their shakes

Happy 3.14!

Happy Heart Day!

Happy Valentine's day, singles awareness day, heart day, love day, Cupid's day, bows and arrows day, yadda yadda yadda. Basically, I hope that today you focused on the things and people that you love :) A lot of people think that Valentine's Day shouldn't be a real holiday, but I heartily disagree. Yes, I fully understand that sense of dread for the day when overly affectionate couples will embrace on campus and girls will be carrying around bouquets of flowers for everyone to see (really guys, really? you couldn't just give them to her later?). But let's try to look past that. I view Valentine's Day as simply a celebration of love, a day to remind us to love a little bit harder. It doesn't have to be romantic love; in fact, I almost think it's better if it's not romantic. I love my family, my cats, my roommates, my friends, my classmates, my ward members, my cookies, my shoes, my dinner group, my blog readers... so many things! So on Valentine's Day, I honor all the things that I love. Cheers to a life full of love, whether it be romantic, platonic, deep, eternal, fleeting, reciprocated, or one-way... it's all peachy!

Me and my Valentine's Day cookies!

Nothing says "love" like a heart-shaped frosted sugar cookie.

In other news, I also cooked for my dinner group tonight. Whitney and I joined a group of 12 other students in our apartment and we take turns cooking for each other Monday-Thursday. So, we only have to cook dinner like once every 3 weeks... it's great. Tonight I cooked my mom's delicious chicken enchiladas! They turned out pretty good, if I say so myself. I'm always a little nervous to cook my mom's food because I feel like it will just never taste the way I know it should. But, I think I may have done it this time! They were cheesy and creamy and yummy. Hopefully everyone in my dinner group enjoyed them and the little Valentine's surprise I made them! (...the sugar cookies... not that exciting.)

Love is in the air

This past Sunday, Whitney wanted to get all crafty and make Valentine's Day decorations. So, naturally, we did. We both love to be creative and make things, so this was the perfect project for us to do on a quiet Sunday evening. Whit focused on creating cute paper heart bunting, and I taught myself how to make a tissue paper pom-pom garland. It turned out pretty cute if I say so myself. We also have a "Love is..." wall that is covered with hearts that complete the phrase. My personal favorite is "Love is... Zac Efron." Just saying...

Garland and twinkle lights for Valentine's Day

Here is the tutorial I used to make the garland. It was pretty simple, even though it was my first time to make it.

Happy Thanksgiving! Galilee- Day 11

Thursday, November 24
Today was our last day in the Galilee as we made our way back to Jerusalem. It was so odd to me that it was Thanksgiving! This was my first Thanksgiving ever without my family, and so today was really the first day this entire semester that I’ve been truly homesick. It was hard to not be with my family and not have all of our holiday traditions and know that they were all together without me. Not to sound too depressed or anything, because I’ll be home soon! (Which is a whole other feeling in itself that I haven’t figured out yet). Anyways, today was a little rough, but I was surrounded by my 80 of my closest friends and saw some pretty cool stuff!

The day started off in Haifa, where we visited a Templar cemetery. I know, that seems like a really random place for us to visit, but it actually has a lot of meaning for the LDS church and the Jerusalem Center. Buried in this cemetery are two couples that converted to the gospel in the late 1800s, along with two missionaries who died of disease while serving in Haifa. It is sad that these missionaries (both from Utah) were not able to be buried close to their families, but it actually just shows how Heavenly Father has a greater plan than we realize. When the church was trying to get permission to build the Jerusalem Center, the Israeli government required there to proof that the LDS church had a presence in the country before the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. These converts and missionaries in Haifa from the turn of the century provided this presence. Without them, the center probably wouldn’t have been built. I know that I am eternally grateful for these people that I’ve never met, and who were not planning on being buried here (at least the missionaries). Aside from the historical and spiritual significance of the cemetery, the site itself was incredibly beautiful. It was just unkempt enough to feel organic and comfortable, but not too trimmed up where it felt sterile and austere. The sun was shining the beautiful way it does in the morning, and it was a nice autumn temperature. All in all, a great Thanksgiving morning. The second stop of the day was Caesarea Martima, which is a Herodian city built right on the coast of the Mediterranean. In ancient times it even extended over the harbor on big platforms and pylons. The history was really interesting, and the ruins were pretty, but I mostly just liked being by the sea again. Parts of the city that are right on the harbor have been converted into restaurants and a few little shops, which is fun. It was fun to explore around the area. I’m not going to lie though, I was ready to get back to the JC! I loved Galilee, but I just wanted to be home. Crazy that the JC is home, but I like it.

After the bus ride, we finally arrived back! All of us were so happy, and as we rounded the corner to come up Mount Scopus, we were all pointing out the arches of the Center and talking about how happy we were to see it again. We were practically running into the center, but then I legitimately broke out in a run... I saw Christmas lights! Our dear service couples had decorated for Christmas while we were away! There are now Christmas trees and lights and wreaths all over the JC, and I could not be happier! I may or may not have started crying when I saw it. It just reminded me of home, but then made me so happy that the couples would go to all the effort to decorate for us and make us feel at home. I love them and I love Christmas! It definitely got me ready for Thanksgiving dinner. After showering and cleaning up a little bit, we had out Thanksgiving feast in the Oasis. Achmed (our chef) and Sister Chapman are miracle workers! They worked so hard on making us a delicious meal that was “American.” We had big roast turkeys, stuffing, sweet potatoes, that one fruit salad with the whipped topping, it was great. Of course, I will still be looking forward to the frozen leftovers that Mom has promised me (DO NOT GET RID OF THOSE MOM- I WANT THEM SO BAD), but it was still so nice to have familiar holiday food. I sat with Robin, Adam, and Alyse, and we even went around and told each other what we were most thankful for. I’m so happy I got to share this holiday with them. And the turkey really was so good. To finish off the night, I got to talk to my whole family on the phone :) All my siblings are home, so I got to talk to my parents, siblings, and grandparents! I was so excited! (Again, may or may not have cried) It was a great Thanksgiving over all, and it really reminded me of the things I am thankful for most right now: my family and the fact that I can be with them forever; my health; my opportunity to be Israel; those who have gone before me and provided a way for me to be here; the students and faculty here; and most importantly, my Savior Jesus Christ and his infinite atonement on my behalf. I cannot be more blessed than I already am.

Happy Birthday Caitlin!

My little baby niece is one whole year old!! We had the party a few weeks ago, but now it's official... she's really been alive a whole year. It's amazing how fast she has grown. It feel like yesterday that I was just getting ready to start BYU and little baby Caitlin came into the world! She is such a little blessing to our lives and so sweet. I am so lucky to be her auntie :) I will miss her so much when I'm in Jerusalem, especially since she'll change so much over the next 4 months. I just hope she'll remember me!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today, only 27 (or so) years ago, something amazing happened: my mother was born :) I am so thankful for my mom. She is an amazing seamstress, decorator, gardener, chef, advisor, counselor, listener, gift-giver, artist, shopper, follower of Christ, mother, wife, daughter, sister, planner, coordinator, teacher, administrator, dresser, cheerleader, supporter, and crossword puzzle helper. Just to name a few. I am so lucky to have her as my mom and to be all those things for me these past 19 years. She truly is the reason for all of the good things I might be. All the bad things are definitely my fault, but the good ones are due to her teaching and love. I hope that this next year of her young life holds even more happiness and love as the last year did. I love my mom so much, and I wouldn't the same person without her.

My mom and I in front of the Santiago Cathedral in Spain