Floridas Winter Wonderland

Hallelujah! The cold front is gone!! we had about a week of intense freezing weather for us Floridians. I have gotten allot of comments about not being a true Canadian, but the truth is, after two years of the tropical Floridian heat, you would think that a girl would be acclimated by now. Canada can keep its cold winters, I'm quite enjoying my warm winter.

The temperature dropped down to 4 degrees Celsius on the coldest day, that would be about 39 degrees Fahrenheit for those of you who don't understand my language. On that particular day i caught mom turning on the oven with its door open just to heat up the house. and as i was laughing at the situation, she confessed that she had actually blow dried her already dried hair just to try and soak in a little extra warmth. I find it rather hilarious how pathetic our state of "freezing" was. All week i saw people in scarves, gloves, big sweaters, jackets and hats trying to keep warm (i admit i was one of those glove/large sweater wearers), it was funny looking around at the people in there state of climate shock, i think its good for us all to have a tiny taste of northern winter at least once a year. You know, i really really like Florida. Its funny that i say that too, because i used to hate it. it was way too hot, but now that I'm used to it i really like the weather. its so nice to have at least a month or two of cool weather, whereas the poor folks in places like Mexico (my grandparents) go through a whole year without getting any heat relief, even on through the next year. luckily for them they have air conditioning so at least they can keep a comfortable temperature in their house.

I cant really say our seasons here are anything like the incredible, colorful seasons of Colorado, but i have really come to appreciate a small change in season here and there. we have our rainy season, or dry and hot season, our cool season, the season where plants and flowers are at their best, and even then, Iv'e seen other plants at their best in a completely different season. I guess you learn to love where ever you are. Oh, and the beach! that has to be the biggest bonus about where we live right now. I can only say that now though because in the past i have hardly even gone to the beach at all. Lately i have realized how fortunate i really am, and have been taking every opportunity to go. I mostly just go running on the beach in the evenings when i have time, that has been Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays for me. One day i took my school work with me during my school hours and worked on some of my tan along with some of my education. i admit it was very distracting, but i really enjoyed it. Yesterday after i was done my school work i took my book of Mormon and read for about an hour before i had to get home for mutual. I get around on the buses with my trusty bus pass for transportation. I love my bus pass, my bus pass and i have a very serious relationship, i don't know what i would do without it. It has been the cause of many of my exciting getaways. I think I should give it a name...

Anyways, everything is all good now that Florida weather is back... Running hasn't been so cold anymore, and life continues to go on.

Deleted

I am so sad, i wrote a whole bunch of different entries with pictures about the cruise, It took me three days, and i accidentally deleted it! I'm so sad. I'm just having a hard time getting up the guts to start again. Don't worry though, it will be coming!

New Years Dance

This was our new years dance. I had so much fun! I'm actually surprised i did too. The colors where blue and white, so i threw on my soccer shirt and white pants thinking that would be perfect colors. Ha ha, i was a little wrong for doing that when i got there because i felt very out of place. I was so uncomfortable, but luckily for mom being there she gave me a pep talk about not caring what anyone else thinks and just going and having a blast. She said people watch me and will admire me for that. I'm so glad i made the decision of not caring and just having fun, it really payed off. I was able to really enjoy myself and turn around and experience that could have been really bad and embarrassing! Also, mom encouraged me to go say a prayer on my own somewhere in a different room, so i did, and i am so glad i did because i really felt like that gave me the strength and courage to take on my embarrassing task.
Its funny to me how insignificant it really is as i look at the pictures. i look like i was having tons of fun (which i am), and you wouldn't even know there was a dress code or anything. With a mix of our silly minds, and the adversary, something so small and unimportant can really effect something meant to be good.
I love those testimony building experiences! Church is true!

Personal Progress Auction

All year the young woman have been saving up tokens from doing personal progress, and reading the Book of Mormon. How it worked was for every chapter in the book of Mormon that you read you got a few tokens, and for every person who finished the Book of Mormon , they got so many more tokens, i think that was a big one. then for every experience in our personal progress handbooks, and for every project, we would get so many tokens as well. It was fun to see how well i actually did. i was really surprised to see that i actually did get allot accomplished, and when i look back on all of them, i feel like i have progressed as well . i have to admit i liked seeing my progression in tokens. In all i gained 400 tokens from a years worth of work. i also admit, i could have done allot better than that. my friend Jessica did great, in all she gained about 600 tokens. she completely finished her personal progress book, and she just turned 16. she amazes me! she is going off to college next year when she is finished her grade 12 work (she is home schooled like me), so that's why she was in such a rush to get it done. this year is the year that it got serious for me. its funny cause i looked at the dates of every project and experience that i did, and they all date 2008. My new goal this year is to have 4 values completely finished so i can get caught up to where i should actually be as a laurel, especially because we just had another value added onto the 7 we have, now it is :Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth, Knowledge, Choice and Accountability, Good Works, Integrity, And the new one, Virtue. I have only done Faith, so its time to get crackin for me!

Anyway, we had all sorts of fun stuff to bid on, one girl got a little red Ipod shuffle... that was the biggest thing. i got a watch that changes color in the sun, a cute little scripture case one of my leaders made (I totally want to learn how!), a little calender to put beside my bed with temple pictures, Mike and Ike candies, and a bunch of little book marks. it was so fun. our miamaid leader made those little sticks with the circles on the end and a number in them to add the the effect. it was all so cute.
We are going to do this again next year, so it was really good for us all to see how it worked and how much more fun it would have been if we had more tokens to bid with. Now I'm excited for next year to do better, and i think the other young women are too. woohoo!



These were some of the items being auctioned... Now that i look at it, i got that pink poco dotted scripture case, mike and Ike's, calender, and some of the book marks.