as an explanation...

not to make an excuse for not blogging very consistently lately, but there are some days that are so great and so full of happiness that i just don't know if i can put them into words. and, to put it bluntly, there are some days that are just better lived than retold.

this is not to say that i am taking a hiatus from my blog (not that i think too many people would care too much anyway). but just know that if i'm not here super often in the coming weeks and months of summer fun, it's because i'm out living. and life is pretty darn good right now.

over and out. be back later.

a perfect sunday

yesterday was the kind of day that i want to repeat all summer. here's what it consisted of (i'm not going to include church on this list, though it was also great. but it's kinda something that happens all year...):

being outside from 5pm to 12:30am
walking to joaquin park with meredith
lazing in the front yard of the taj with all sorts of friends
laughing like crazy at one friend's hilarious stories
trying matzo ball soup
scootering back to joaquin park to see the solar eclipse with a ton of people from the ward
having awesome girl talk with two of my favorite girls
sitting by the hammock with a couple boys "sharing our feelings"
sitting in the hammock with several boys talking and laughing and just generally having a good time together
wearing one of my favorite dresses from 11am to 12:30am

basically, what all this amounts to is that i spent the day outside with a whole bunch of great people having a grand old time. and, i have only identified one bug bite so far; it's on my big toe, so no worries.

this morning when i woke up i could still feel the sway of the hammock.

and that is what i want my summer to be.

my relationship with hikes

so, i'm not much of an outdoors(wo)man (um, how awesome is it to put parentheses in the middle of words? pretty awesome). i like being outside, particularly in a hammock or in a swimsuit, with a good book, but i'm not what you would really call "athletic", per se.

when i was younger, i dreaded hiking. i hated going to girls' camp for this reason. and several times, i couldn't finish a hike because i felt terrible. basically, hikes are kind of traumatic for me.

a couple weeks ago, a group of us planned to hike up to the y on a monday evening. i was pretty excited. i haven't hiked in a while, and i thought it would be fun to go up there with a group of my friends. and i've hiked the y, so while i knew it wouldn't be easy for me, i knew i had accomplished it twice before. i told everyone that i probably needed to take it easy and take lots of breaks, though i felt bad because some of my fellow hikers are outdoorsmen and could probably run up to the y without stopping. people seemed supportive anyway. but maybe 15 minutes in, i couldn't go any further. i felt nauseous, i was hyperventilating, my legs were shaky. i had to go back down the mountain.

i was really embarrassed. i hate feeling like i can't do something, and i hated that i was failing in front of my friends. and i hated that i had somehow gone backwards, that i had once been able to climb that dumb mountain and now i couldn't.

this past monday and tuesday i was down in moab for the aforementioned skydiving excursion. the boys wanted to spend the rest of our time at arches national park. the last time i was in moab, for a ysa trip, was right after i graduated from high school, and i had attempted to hike to delicate arch that time. but the same thing happened to me then that happened at the y--less than halfway through, i felt totally sick and couldn't go on, even with the promise of getting to spend more time with the boy i liked if i stuck it out. i was pretty nervous for this attempt at delicate arch. i didn't want to make a fool out of myself again, and i wanted to see the sights, dang it! i tried to take all the necessary precaution: drinking enough water, wearing sunscreen, wearing good shoes.


and i did it. i made it to delicate arch, and i made it through all the rest of our hikes, too. it felt so good to finally make it to the famous arch after an abysmal finish six years ago. and i realized that i'm not a bad hiker or something--i just need to take some extra precautions. because maybe i'm just more prone to dehydration than some people? i don't know. but i did it and i felt really good. and i think maybe my intense dislike of hiking came from this feeling that i couldn't do it--but i can do it and, maybe more importantly, i can actually enjoy it. so here's to me being maybe more of an outdoorsman, a hiker, in the future. as long as i have enough water.

never thought i would say this

yesterday i spent about four and a half hours at this place:

it was under the guise of providing moral support for the five friends who bought groupons for tandem skydiving, but it turned into me really, really wishing i had also bought a groupon and was going to be jumping out of a plane.

so, if that groupon comes along again, or if i somehow decide i'm okay with dropping almost 200 bucks to fall out of the sky, i'm going to become a skydiver.

seriously, though.

oh yeah, i really do love teaching

that is the realization i had on sunday as i was sitting in a training meeting for my new calling as the co-chair of our ward's gospel teaching council. i guess i've always remembered, in the back of my mind, that i love teaching, but i sometimes forget in the practice of it all (and in the midst of a lame semester, as far as my own education goes). i may not be a paid instructor anymore, but i hope teaching will be a part of my life forever. in the training meeting, i remembered how many amazing teachers i've had and how they inspired me to want to try to change lives. cliche, i know. but just because it's cliche doesn't mean it's not true, capiche?

and so this summer, at least, i get to teach sunday school. and that shall fulfill me for awhile.