So I sit here in bed, sipping a milkshake after a month without sugar.  Double fudge brownie never tasted so good!  I am still a little disoriented, but not nearly as much as when I woke up and realized I'd slept through part of class {thank heavens I'm just an auditor}.  I guess that's what happens when you stay up till 3:30 on a Thursday night.

Last week brought a variety of adventures:

• playing beer pong and various other would-be-alcoholic games with Mountain Dew.  As someone who almost NEVER drinks soda, taking so many shots of the sweet caffeinated drink left me high on energy, and at 3:30 in the morning I could only force myself to go to bed because my roommates were asleep and my computer wasn't working
• watching the Seasiders barely lose basketball game 
• miraculously squeezing 20 people into 2 tiny five-person cars
• discovering beautiful new beaches with giant teal waves and soft sand {that is STILL in my hair, dang it}
• stumbling upon the amazingly talented and inspirational Bethany Hamilton surfing
• relaxing on the shore with the glow of the full moon and orange light dancing on our faces
• lying in bed reading for hours

  The "yes game" that I mentioned last week has turned out pretty comical.  The night that it began, Lexi and Ashlyn called me up.  Of course I won't tell them about it, I thought. because if I do, they'll make me do all sorts of crazy stuff.  Ironically, that didn't stop Lexi.  "We should go sneak into the Jacuzzi!  We should go climb on a roof! We should go to the store and bake something!  We should go check out the comedy show!"  At first I was white-faced by her suggestions, not wanting to say "yes" but knowing that I'd have to if I wanted to win a free dinner... until I realized that she was coming up with ideas and rejecting them almost simultaneously, talking so fast that I didn't even have time to say yes.  "We should not go skinny dipping."  The three of us started walking into the Aloha Center, where apparently the show had ended.  So instead Lexi wadded up her socks, grabbed a random empty trashcan and decided, "We should play basketball with this."  "Yes," I shrugged.  Again she changed her mind.  "Oh look, here are some honor code lanyards, want one?" "Uhh, yes." I hooked it to my purse.   The night continued like this, and as we were walking through the empty school hallways she said, "We should dance!" and so we spun around.   "Katie, you should sing more."  So I sang a tad bit before the conversation took a new turn.  Hours later, we said goodnight and I thought I had managed to escape unscathed.  My diet was even saved when Lexi told me to eat an Oreo and then remembered that I was dieting and ordered me not to.   But as I was walking back to my dorm, the friends I watched Yes Man with spotted me and told me to come with them, knowing I couldn't reject their offer.  By now there were probably twenty of us playing the game.  We all forced each other to get up  individually, blast our headphones as loud as they would play, and sing.  I laughed so hard watching my friends rock out singing when they couldn't even hear their own voices, and the best of all was definitely the seven-minute-long Bohemian Rhapsody.  I just wonder why I thought choosing Rolling in the Deep would be a good idea when it was almost three in the morning, I'd had no water, and I had no way of knowing how I sounded as I belted it out.  It's not even karaoke when you're the only one who hears the music.  But I suppose that's what makes the wretched, sometimes tone-deaf voices all the better.

This post is kind of a cluttered mess of thoughts, but I needed to write it.  Tuesday morning I had to be up early for my fitness class.  I was tired from the schoolwork which consumed my Monday, my issues of last week had not been solved, and when we hit the courts to play volleyball I suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion as I realized how awful I was at the sport.  I just wanted the class to end, and as soon as it did I raced over to a computer and started writing things that frustrated me about myself {you don't have to read this if you don't want}:

    When my first relationship ended, of course I wanted to know why.  I won't go into any of that teenage drama, but one of the reasons he gave was that I'm not good enough at sports and board games.
    Being the good mama bear that she is, my mother immediately tried to comfort me by saying that he was just listing excuses because he was confused.  But even months before, I had seen the disappointed look on his face when I corrected his misunderstanding, that no it was not me who played soccer as a kid, but my sister.
   Truth be told, my whole body aches with boredom and restlessness when I sit down for a complicated board game.  And as for sports?  I love the sports culture.  Some of my fondest high school memories include stunting at basketball games or painting my face and screaming with spirit at football games.  I can't tell you the number of volleyball games I attended senior year!  But when I try to play any of these sports?  I'm wretched.  And I wish I could tell you that ten plus years of gymnastics/cheer/tumbling has given me the talent to throw a round-off-back-full or swing from bar to bar... but by the time I quit at 16, I had been much more impressive as an eight-year-old.  Something that I once loved, to which I dedicated countless hours, inexplicably turned into something that scared me so bad that I dreaded every practice.
   So, people ask, you're not a ball player and you took that many years of cheer and musical theatre?  You must be a good dancer!  HAHAHAHAHA.  Oh how I wish.
   Ten years of piano lessons later, I enjoy playing but should be way more skilled than I am... for someone who's going into graphic design, my art grades should be better... I wish I was as talented a singer as some of my friends... I wish I was better on stage... I wish I could play video games with my boyfriend without being stuck in the corner, unable to figure out how to control the character with the remote...I wish the scenes in my novel weren't so tacky... I wish I had greater potential in my career future and could be smart enough to go into bio/medical fields like so many people I grew up with... 

   So going back to the break-up story-- Of course my mama bear was going to try to stick up for me, so she went on Facebook and typed up this whole post explaining what she loved about me and listing some of the qualities and accomplishments which made it perfectly OK for me to not be good at sports, despite what my ex said.  While I was typing the above, that Facebook post popped in my head... although I had forgotten what exactly it said and thought it would be one of those mother's over-exaggerating compliments.  I went searching for the post, written back in August of 2014, thinking it would just validate my point that even the things people THINK I'm good at, I'm not actually good at.
    But then I read it.
   This sweet message of love was completely sincere, entirely genuine.  My mom is not blind, she knows that  I have faults of course and that I'm not perfect at any of the things I do.  But who is?  Sitting there reading this uplifting post, I realized that the people who love us love us for who we are, not for who we wish we were.
    I completely reevaluated my thinking process.  Why am I being so negative?  Why am I scolding myself?  Yes, I could definitely be better at any one of these things, but there is always time for practice and learning. Maybe I'm not amazing at any of them because I have too many things I love to do to just focus my attention on a single one!    {Can we also mention the fact that I've been recently described as a hummingbird, constantly flitting around with so much speed and energy and too short an attention-span for any given activity... maybe it's just not in my nature to focus on a single thing anyway, haha!}Then there's also the possibility that I'm better than I think.  After all, we are our hardest critics.  But even if I never had the chance to get better at any of these things, I will still be me.
    All of this aside, I guess the reason I'm posting this is because I want to try to see the best in myself because ultimately a positive outlook will lead to a happier lifestyle.  I'm not saying to live with pride or delusion, but to just be accepting of myself because there is no one in the world who is exactly like me.  Maybe if I just keep struggling through my novel like I have been each and every day, my writing skills will improve.  Maybe one day I'll just sit down with a remote and spend hours practicing moving the character around until I can enjoy a nice, intense game of Halo with my boyfriend.   Until that day though, I just need to emphasize the unique qualities and talents that I have been given and remember that I am a daughter of a King.

   I'll be honest, I did not look forward to that plane ride back.  I had enjoyed my return home so much and after spending two-and-a-half weeks racing around trying to see everyone and do everything {not to mention get ready for my mission}, the last thing I wanted to do was homework.... which was all I did for three-and-a-half days straight.  No breaks.  I hardly saw anybody outside of the classrooms.  Boy was I grateful for Lexi, who was there to just chit chat about anything and everything after I was feeling so exhausted and lonely from being holed up.
   Also this week I've been trying really hard to get better health habits. I work out for an hour at least five days a week and have cut out a lot of calories. Sometime I will watch documentaries for an hour on the treadmill, another time I did 1000 squats and was quite confused when not my legs but my ARMS were sore. What?
   Fortunately, I worked myself a little too hard and ended getting all of my homework done early.  That meant another three-and-a-half days of solid break.  I've enjoyed the hike to PCC Falls and LOTS of book brainstorming/organization time.
    Along with this, I've watched some videos from return missionaries who served in my same area and I am so excited.  Yes, I know it will be hard, but the closer I get the more anxious I am to find out for myself what it's all about.  I will be living in Europe!  I will be giving to the people something that has been the number one most incredible part of my life, something that can influence them for the better and let them know the wonderful purpose of our existence! Yes college is great, but a mission should be something so much bigger. It will no longer be about myself anymore.
   Today I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Elder Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speak to the school about how, although many will tell us that the Millennial Generation is lazy, self-absorbed and irresponsible, we instead are a generation who can choose to be great.  I'll admit, this week has been hard in ways that I won't say here... but this talk gave me so much hope and joy.  When times are hard, I just need to remember that I have SO MUCH TO BE GRATEFUL FOR.  I have the Gospel, I have a loving family, I have enough money to live comfortably, and for goodness sake I'm getting a college education in Hawaii!  

For Rachel's 18th birthday we went to Liberty Market.  A fellow Arizonan here at school remarked that Gilbert should be better known for its amazing food.

Since Nana Hanny speaks Dutch, she tried to help me out with some of the pronunciation of letters I'll be using on my mission.

Gosh how I missed Katie's crazy laugh!

My parents bought a program called VidAngel which edits movies according to what you select out.  One Sunday night we watched Kingsmen, which would normally would have 100-someodd f-words but now had been successfully cleaned up.  At the end of the movie however... we realized my mom must have missed one of the check boxes... because suddenly A HUGE NAKED FEMALE BOOTY POPPED UP ON THE SCREEN and my whole family communally screamed haha.

Lois is so sweet, and so talented !  At 16 she already has her own album!

In reminiscence of THIS NIGHT, we decided to repeat the adventure and had dinner at Flo's in Scottsdale followed by some solid shopping and a night at a downtown Phoenix hotel.  My cousins are a hoot-and-a-half, and when they work together they can make you laugh so hard!

For New Years I bounced from the party at the Hanks' to the party at Lindsey's to the giant party with Paige at the Nile where Dallin and I went last year, only hours before he asked me to be his girlfriend.  2015 started and ended in the same place for me, but so much changed in between.