2 month update

I have so much on my mind right now and so much that has happened in the past few months that I feel it is finally time for a blog update. Sorry friends for not updating for a while. My bad.

These past few months have been such great months with so many new things happening. It all started when I finished my class portion of school. I Tessa Brimhall have officially made it through my schooling with a...drum roll please... 3.8 GPA. Holy smokes I worked so hard for this GPA, harder than I have ever worked for any GPA. Once school was over with and I recieved my grades I took a huge sigh of reliefe and thought "wow I will not have to go to school ever again!" That was the best feeling ever at the moment. But unfortunataly my mom had to remind me of the boards test that I will have to take in 4 months that is overwhelming to even think about right now. So we wont think about it.

I want to think more about the experience I have had this past month now. The 2 topics of discussion is my field work and my sisters wedding. I have had the chance to be placed with a lady named Christy Foy Rouser for my internship. She is an OT who works in home health and when I first found out that I was going to be working in home health for the next 2 months, I was so scared. I have heard so many horror storries from fellow OT's about home health and how discusting some people's homes can be and you still have to go into their homes and provide treatment for that patient. I heard stories that as a therapist was treating a patient, she had cockroaches crawl up her leg, and stories where there would be moldy food everywhere in the home and no where clean to set your items down or even to sit on. These daunting stories scared me to death and I did not want to go to work my first day.

When I met Christy though, she eased my fears and told me that you rarely find a persons home that is so horrible like the stories that I have heard. She told me in the 5 years she has done home health she has only walked into 2 homes that she felt a little iffy about being there. But those homes were not as bad as she thought they could have been. After the reasurrance from her, I began my days working and so far I have not ran into a house that I have felt totally uncomfortable with being in. The worst home has been a home where the patient has 10 cats running around her home leaving cat hair everywhere, but that is the worst. I can handle that.

I have really enjoyed going out and working though. I have definitely picked a career for myself that I absolutely love and will love for a very very long time. I am so happy I changed my occupation from teaching to occupational therapy. I have had some pretty insane patients, but those patients make it so much fun when you try figuring out several different ways to make them happy or help them progress and become more independant on how they live every day life. In the end it all is rewarding when they can look at you with a huge smile on their face and tell you "Thank you so much for how much you have helped me" in a very sincere way. This my friends is why I love my job so much. It is so rewarding to see my patients progress from being unable to dress themselves at all to putting every stitch of clothing on their body all by themselves or not be able to move their arm even a small twitch to being able to lif up a finger and smile because of the progress they make. I just love my job!

In the midst of working a very exciting event and a very sad event had happened in my life. I will start with the sad so that I can end with the happy in this blog post. My grandpa Ryan who was the most amazing, loving, knowledgeable, spiritual, kind hearted man passed away November 21st. He had fought a battle of kidneys failing on him, heart problems, diabetes, and in the end onset of dimentia all while trying his best to take care of his wife who had a stroke 7 years ago. He did everything he could do for his wife till his dying day to make her a happy woman and I could tell how much he loved his wife. It was so heartbreaking to hear that he had passed away and I did the ugly cry for a long time that night. Poor Jon had no clue what to do to make me feel better. The funeral service for my grandpa was very sweet. There were a lot of great people who spoke who loved my grandpa so much, and my mom, amanda, tori and I were all able to play a song called Redeemer by Paul Cardall. That song is such a sweet and touching song and I am so happy my family was able to play it for grandpa. At the grave site, the airforce had arrived to fold up the flag draped across my grandpas casket, my grandpa was a lutenant general in the air force, the trumpet sounded, and the riffles shot off and they handed the flag over to my grandma. It was a very cool experience. After the funeral, the family went to my grandpas favorite restaurant to eat at after work, which is sizzlers. It was a great day.

Then 2 days later my sister got married for time and all eternity in the Mt. Timpanogas Temple. It was so great to see my sister in the temple kneeling across the alter from her now husband making a committment to him that I made to my husband a year and a half ago. It brought tears to my eyes seeing how happy she was making this committment and remembering the day I made that committment to Jon and how happily in love I still am to this man. Amandas husband Cody has won big time with her heart. She is one of the best people I know in this world.

Her reception was super cool too. She had a winter wonderland with a hot chocolate bar that you were able to add fill ins like andes mints, caramel, butterscotch, pepermint, cinamon, different types of creamer, and the list goes on and on with what they had on the table. It was so much fun getting to mix and match to see what my favorite hot chocolate was. I think the winner was andes mints, hazelnut creamer, and a peroette. YUMMY! Her colors were red black and silver and she had roses as her main flower because her middle name is Rose. We had paper silver snowflakes hanging from string lights up ahead to look like stars in a snowy sky. oh man it was such a beautiful wedding for such a beautiful person.

After throwing 2 receptions, one in Heber Utah and one in Gilbert Arizona, the two are living in Logan Utah now and I am back at home continuing the work that I love so much. Life is just so great right now and Christmas is in 12 days. I am so excited about this holdiay season and am so glad that I have such a great family and great friends to share it with. Merry Christmas everyone!

Inspiration

Today has started off as a great day! I woke up, and what better way to start the day than to listen to the apostles talk for General Conference? What I found to be very interesting is that there were a lot of talks this morning about baptism and the Holy Ghost. Now I know baptism and the Holy Ghost is such a wonderful topic to talk about and it is so awesome to hear talks about this topic, but today was an even more special day to hear all about it. 

A couple days ago I was asked by the elders if I could give a talk today at one of my primary kids baptism today. I was very touched that this little girl wanted me to talk at her baptism and of course I said yes. This girl is a very shy girl and so in class she will always sit next to me when I am not teaching and she has felt comfort and been able to start opening up more to the class over the past few weeks. I thought that she was already baptized, but I guess she just barely turned 8 and when I got the call to talk at her baptism, there was no hesitation to the answer. 

When I got there today, her face lit up when I walked into the room and she came and gave me a huge hug for being there and it was so sweet. I got to tell her that today was such a special day to have a baptism because it is the day that we are able to hear from the prophet and apostles and also told her that many of their talks were about baptism and she was such a special girl for being able to get baptized and follow the words of these wonderful men who talked this morning. 

I remember the day I was baptized by my dad in the same font that he was baptized in when he was a little boy. I remember the talk that my uncle Toby had given that day and I remember my sister and dad singing "I like to look for rainbows" (I know that is not the name of the song but I can not remember what it was) and i remember the feeling I had when I was baptized and saw all my family and friends there supporting me in that decision I had made. I will never forget such a special day and am glad that I was able to be washed clean of the sins I had made and am grateful for repentance so that I can be forgiven of the sins I make after baptism to keep my spirit clean so that I can be with Heavenly Father again.

I am so happy that I was able to listen to the talks given this morning and for being able to go give a talk for this sweet girls baptism. I am so happy to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints and will always hold my baptismal covenants close to my heart so that one day I will be able to return to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again. 

The Crippling Disease

To start off this post, I am going to give you the definition of the disease that I have and then see if you can figure out what it is. Ready... Go

A crippling disease that strikes "students". Symptoms include: laziness, an over-excessive wearing of track pants, old athletic shirts, sweatpants, athletic shorts, and sweatshirts. Also features a lack of studying, repeated absences, and a generally dismissive attitude. The only known cure is a phenomenon known as Graduation.

Have you made your guess yet? Good, if you guessed Senioritis then you are absolutely correct! DING DING DING! This definition came from the urban dictionary with a slight modification because I did not agree with the beginning when it said it only affected high school seniors. If seniors were the only ones who are affected from that, then I sure do not know what I am suffering from. 

My blog is proof that senioritis has officially kicked in for good and is snuggling up in the fold of my brain making itself comfy and setting its alarm for graduation day. I have always wondered how everyone makes their blogs super cute, so last night I decided that I was going to do some research on how to make mine cute like I have been meaning to do for a while but always had school research and homework in the way of doing so. Despite the fact that I have 2 research papers due in a week, a homework assignment due on Monday and a test on Monday as well, I let my senioritis take over and spent 2 hours playing around with my blog and finally came up with the final results.

I also found this cute little picture on the internet that I wanted to share.

I laughed when I saw this because the unaffected Tessa would not accept this as her motto. She would give 500% through the week trying to be the best student that she could be. After a LONG battle with Senioritis though (12 weeks), she and senioritis have agreed to only put 100% effort into school.

Oh dear. I am glad there are only 16 days left of school or else I think that Senioritis would get the best of me. I hope that everyone is doing well in school and avoiding Senioritis as much as possible. If you are not in school and have gotten rid of senioritis, I will soon be there with you and we should all have a celebration for defeating the "crippling disease".

The scare of my life

Nothing much lately has happened in my life hence the reason why I have not posted anything for a while. This past weekend I was getting tired of always doing the normal clean the house, do the laundry, and study and gladly welcomed the idea of going to a ranch in Klondyke Arizona to go and brand some cows with Jon. This branding experience was much different than a lot of other experiences I have had in the past.

It all started Friday night when we were trying to get out to Klondyke. Jon had asked me earlier if I could have everything packed and ready to go by 7:30 p.m. so that I could just come pick him up at work and take an hour off of our long drive there. I told him no problem but I guess I spoke too soon because come 7:10 I start taking things out to the car so that I could head out and pick up some dinner on the way to his work and lots of problems start to arise.

The first thing was that as I was driving out of my apartment complex and got to the exiting gate, I realized that I had forgotten something at the apartment (my cord to plug my ipod into the car) so I had to go back and grab that cord because for the past couple times we have forgotten my ipod and this time I finally remembered the ipod but not the cord and that was not going to happen this time. We were going to have music and so I turned back. Well after getting the cord, I started to exit the gate again and once again I remembered something that I had forgotten. This time it was my boots and I was not riding a horse all day without my boots. So I went and got those. By this time it was 7:25 and I was running a little late trying to get to Jons work on time and I still needed to get some dinner.

So on the way to Jons work I stopped by McDonalds because it was the easiest accessible restaurant on the way there and I pull up to the drive through. Now I do not go out to eat much and I never really go to McDonalds so I have no idea what is on the menu to order and when I get to the drive through line, there is a huge semi truck off loading supplies that is blocking the menu. Great! I had no idea what I wanted to order but there was some advertisements on the little ordering screen so when the lady asked me for my order I had to tell her I would order what I saw on the screen. Probably not what I would have ordered for myself but what else could I have done. So that was a bit frustrating to me. I got my food though and it was about 7:35 and it takes about 20 minutes to get to jons work so I was doing good I thought until I got lost trying to find his work at night going a way I never have gone before. So this set me back some and finally after getting directions from Jon I showed up ten minutes late. Bummer.

Jon jumps into the car though and we head our way over to his parents house so that we could pick up our gear (saddle, chaps, ropes etc.) but when we got there he realized that he did not have his keys on him. UHOH! He had no idea where they were either so we started searching frantically for his keys but they were no where to be found. Jon had to call his work and ask them if he had left them there or if they were out in his car but they could not find them so we were forced to drive 45 minutes back to Tucson to search for his keys. GRRRRRRRRR!! We were getting so frustrated. Nothing wanted to go our way that night. After our journey back to Tucson we pulled up at his work and looked around and found them sitting on an AC unit outside his work where he was waiting for me to show up.

Now that we are happy that we found the keys we get back into the car, have to fill my car back up with gas, and then hit the road so that we can get to Klondyke. Remember though how I had said earlier that I went in to get my ipod cord so that I could plug it into the car and listen to music? Well I did have the ipod, and I did have the cord this time and I was super excited about all this and then I turn my ipod on and go to the playlists, and I find out that all my songs have been erased off of my ipod for some unknown reason while it was charging earlier that day. Oh I wanted to throw my ipod out the window I was so mad. So much for remembering the ipod and the cord this time right? So we were forced to listen to the radio and trying to find stations that play out in nowhere land as we traveled.

After a LONG ride though, we end up arriving at the ranch at 12:30 a.m. Yay! We head into the cabin and find a bed to sleep in but the bed we were going to sleep in had a surprise inside it that freaked me out! I pulled the blanket down and saw that there were little worm like things crawling all around in it. I think they were weeiles or something. It grossed me out and I told Jon there was no way I was sleeping in that bed. So we went to another room that looked better and I slept on the couch while Jon slept on a small single bed. We finally get to sleep about 1:00. That night I kept falling asleep and waking up every hour and it was getting so annoying and 5:30 rolled around too quickly.

I was exhausted when I had to wake up but I did and we started our day rounding up the cattle from off the mountains. We were accompanied by 2 other people who came to help us out that day. After gathering all the cattle we penned them up to start the branding. I was scared the whole day though while branding because a lot of these calves were kind of big and they were intimidating to me more than most of the calves that I have branded before. So my job that day was to give the calves some shots. Let me tell you, it sounds like an easy task, but cow hide is so thick it is so hard for an amateur to get the needle into his skin to inject the shot. It took all day before I was sort of getting the hang of it.

We get finished with our first bunch of calves and I feel the effects of heat stroke. So I was sent to the cabin to drink lots of cold water and cool off while they were bringing the second batch of calves in to brand. I eventually cooled off and was back to normal and started giving shots to the calves again only these calves were bigger and I was much more scared. I felt like I was the one being herded around as the calves were scrambling out of the way of the rope being flung at them. I did not want to be trampled by one of these monsters and I sure did not want to be the one having to tackle those things to the ground. Luckily though, I did not have to. :) After an hour and a half we finally get to the last calf and I got to brand my first cow! This thing was a monster of a cow, but I pulled my courage together, grabbed the iron, positioned myself properly and branded that cow like a pro. I was so scared that the cow would knock me over as I was branding it making me brand myself, but this cow was very calm and did not kick one bit while I was branding him. It was pretty amazing that the cow just took the pain for me. But my brand turned out so beautiful. I think everyone was impressed with how well it turned out. :)

We branded a total of 32 cows that day. Not bad for a full days work with 4 people working. But when it came time to quit and drive home I was very happy. We started driving home at 7:30 but we had to drive about 45 minutes to fill up on gas before we could drive straight to Tucson. The drivers side window had bug guts all over it so I decided to get out and clean the window while Jon filled up the car and then off we went.

When we started for home, I looked over at Jon and told him I would be amazed if I made it home without falling asleep because I could barely keep my eyes open any longer and he just laughed at me and how pathetic I was because he was not tired at all. But about 5 minutes down the road I had fallen asleep without even knowing that I fell asleep. Now here comes a funny story so brace yourself.

Jon did not know that I had fallen asleep because we were just barely talking to each other a couple minutes ago but I was and I was dreaming. In my dream the cow that I had branded earlier was mad at me and wanted revenge for what I had done to it. So this cow was charging at me trying to hit me and hurt me in my dream. I was so scared that I tried to run away but right as the cow hit me in my dream, Jon had put his hand on my leg and I let out a scream and threw my hands up in the air and Jons face was priceless when I looked over at him after figuring out what had happened. I started laughing so hard because of how scared I had gotten and I told him about my dream and how his hand was the cow that had hit me in my dream. We laughed for a good 5 minutes about how scared I had gotten and I felt bad for Jon because he only wanted to thank me for cleaning the window yet I gave him such an interesting reaction when he touched my leg. He says that he will never thank me again for cleaning the window. LOL. So this was the scare of my life. I do not know if I have ever gotten so scared because of a dream and woke up screaming but now I can say that I have done that.

I was so happy to get home take a shower to get the nasty cow poop off of me that was flung around all day and lay my head down on my nice soft pillow. I think that was the best nights sleep I have had in a very long time. I was happy for the adventure of the weekend, but when I finally got to lay down in my own weevil free bed, I was glad the weekend was over and for a good nights sleep.

recent events

Well I am proud to say that I have successfully made it through 3 full semesters of school! YIPPIE!! I am now writing this blog in my 6th week of 4th semester. That means I have... wait for it... 10 more weeks until I am done with the learning part of school!! Then it is on to the fun and exciting part, field work! I get to spend a whole semester being and Occupational Therapist Assistant with a field work educator watching what I do and teaching me some inside skills of being an amazing OTA. I have looked forward to this part of school for the LONGEST time it feels like and now it is so close I can almost taste it. I am way excited!

After every semester of school we only get one week of break before our new semester starts, so this past break I was able to spend it well. My family had planned to go to San Diego to enjoy a week camping along the Silverstrand beach. The last week of semester 3 could not go fast enough because vacation was calling my name so loud that I could not focus on anything else. Alas the day came, and my mom and Amanda came to pick me and Jon up to travel to San Diego and six hours later we were swimming in the frigid, salty ocean.

The ocean was so cold and the sky was overcast so the sun was not doing any good at keeping the air temperature hot, so Amanda and I decided that the best way to enter the ocean was fast like ripping off a bandaid... I am not sure if that was the best way, but we did it and it was numbingly cold. Jon would not run in with us so I had to coax him out into the water slowly but he eventually made it in and had fun.

After about an hour playing out in the water, Jon and I were headed back in to shore and we stopped with the water about ankle deep to watch all the people still playing out in the ocean. We were standing in that place for about a minute when all of a sudden Jon starts saying "ouch, ouch, ouch" and I look down and see a jellyfish stinging his leg. 

 He has never been to an ocean and an hour after finally going to one, he is stung by a jelly fish. Poor guy. He was a trooper though, and we tried a couple ways of relieving the pain but nothing was helping out so my mom took this spray used for sunburns and sprayed it onto his leg and it took the rash and pain away in minutes. It is called Lanicane just so everyone knows what to use the next time they are stung.

We spent the rest of the day just enjoying the water, boogie boarding, and playing games all night until we all decided to get some sleep for the big day ahead, Sea world!

 These are some fish that we saw in the aquariums at sea world. The one above was gigantic it could probably fit my whole leg inside its mouth. I would not be a happy swimmer if I saw one swimming next to me. Then below is a nice little turtle. He was cool dude.

 And then we were able to watch some amazing shows. The dolphin show called Blue Horizons, and Shamu. I did not get any picture of shamu because I did not have my camera on me since we were in the soak zone, but it was so cool to see such pretty animals so close up. It was insane to see how much water the wales could throw at us with their tails too. I am just glad the whale splashing our section only sprayed us twice. Another whale in another section sprayed them about 5 times drenching them. It was funny. 

 This my friends is me after the log ride they have at the park. I had been cold all day long and my family thought it would be funny to place me in the front of the ride so I was the one who got drenched and was cold again and stayed that way until we returned back to camp and I changed into dry clothes. The park was so much fun though and I loved every minute of being there. 

 The last day there, we started the day off with swimming and building a sand castle. It was fun going back to the childhood days. Our sand castle turned out pretty good, but we kinda forgot to take a picture of the finished product because we wanted to go play in the water some more. 

 After a little bit of playing in the water we changed into street clothes and went for a bike ride through san diego which lasted all day pretty much. It was funny as we were riding around the streets because some of us would be split up from the rest of the group and the people walking along the street told us that our crew turned the corner ahead assuming we were part of that party. 

 We came across this tree at the end of the ride and wanted to know how many people it took to get around it. So here are the first 3 people...

 and here are the other 3. It was a very cool tree for us Arizonans seeing how our trees do not normally have ginormous trunks like this one. 

 All in all, we had a lot of fun spending time in San Diego. It was cold the whole time though so when Friday came around, we were looking forward to returning to Arizona to defrost our bones and warm back up in the hot desert. 

Brimhall Bowling FHE

Well last night I was invited to go hang out with my in-laws, James, Wendy, their kids and Bridgette. On Monday's at Lucky Lane bowling the kids get to bowl for free so we all went to the bowling ally and played a little bit. It has been a while since I have bowled so I was pretty excited to go. Here is the picture of the Brimhall Bowlers!

What a great crew! We had many adventures starting out with little Timmy below squatting all the time while watching the ball roll towards the pins. Sorry for the blurry picture. The lighting made it hard to get good pictures.

 Jon is very proud of his niece and nephew. They wanted to play the hunting game more than bowling at the end of bowling. Silly kids.

 We were all proud of Trevy for getting a strike that night. I don't think she was as excited  as we adults were but the adults all cheered making up for her lack of excitement over it. 

 Landon was such a stud. He picked up those bowling balls and threw them all by himself "just like the big adults do it". He was proud to be like a big adult while bowling.

 Timmy loved to push the ball down the ramp. He makes such a cute little bowler!

 Callie was so cute. She would delicately push the ball off the ramp and patiently wait to see what pins she was able to hit. She loved every minute of it.

 and now for the scores...dun dun dunnnnnnn.

 the picture above is the kids' score. Trevy then Landon, then Callie, and then Timmy. The one below is the adults, James, Bridgette, then me. What is sad is that Landon won me in his first game and my 86 points below was after my second game. ( I did worse my first game) It is sad a little 4 year old beat me, but I took it like a champ:)

 A picture of me and the Twins. I love them so much they just make me laugh. Landon was being a stink but gotta love him anyways. It is fun to be an aunt! I can not wait till my side of the family has kids so I can have nieces and nephews there too. 

After bowling we went and had homemade peach ice cream. It was so yummy! Thank you James and Wendy for inviting me to have a fun night with you guys!

New Tricks!

I was in Thatcher visiting a friend of mine from High School and she rents a little trailer house in the backyard of her land lords house. This landlord has a horse in a corral behind where my friend Kylee has and Jon and I took advantage of having a horse around and started messing around with her. Her name is Snowy. She is such a mellow horse (and way overweight) so Jon took that opportunity to teach me a new trick...

Pretty impressive right? That horse was such a sweet heart though and did not move an inch as I was standing up there. It is a good thing too because I would be cleaning dirt out of my teeth if she had.

Oh, and now Jon can officially say that "we are riding off into the sunset on a white stallion". He has a little beat up car that heaven knows why it still runs and he calls it his White Stallion. He always tells me we are riding off into the sunset in his white stallion when we are driving in it so he was pretty excited that he finally could say it and really be on one. Silly Jon.

After Jon and I rode around a little bit on her, Kylee and her husband Tim got their turn to ride off into the sunset and hopefully now that they know they can ride this horse without a saddle and bit, they will start riding her more often. We are a little jealous that we don't have cool landlords who let us ride their horse. :)

1 Year Baby!

Soooo, Jon and I have been married for a whole entire year as of May 28th! All I can say is where has the time gone! I still remember being so nervous the night before we were sealed in the temple, the amazing reception that my mom and other loved ones decorated for me, and Jon stuffing cake in my face and up my nostrils. It feels like it was all just yesterday that all this stuff happened. But alas, it has been a year and a wonderful year it has been!

I have been taking lessons from my husband how to toughen up and become a cowboys wife, and he has been learning how to deal with a more sensitive female figure than he has had to deal with in his life. It has been an adventure both trying to become tougher or more sensitive to each others needs, but through all the bumps in the road, we have been able to lay down some pretty great memories. 

As you have read in previous posts, we have been living in an apartment which we hate because of the crazy neighbors we have been surrounded by, but as of May 15th we were able to move to another place. So May 26th we moved out and into a new apartment which was the best anniversary present I think we could have given each other. We LOVE LOVE LOVE this place so much more and we could not be happier. So a new place to live in our 2nd year of marriage is amazing!

Since Jon had work off and I had school off (memorial day) on our anniversary we took advantage of that and left terrible Tucson and headed to St. David to enjoy a nice ride out in the country side away from people and other obligations. It was very enjoyable to just be out there riding right alongside Jon having an enjoyable conversation as our horses did all the hard work for us. We rode an hour down the river (dried up at this time of year) and stopped to enjoy a little picnic together. After, we rode back to unsaddle our horses and head back to Tucson so that we could get ready to go to dinner.

Jon and I had a deal that since we went out and did the activity he wanted to do that day for our anniversary, I got to choose where we ate that night for dinner. So I decided I was in the mood for Olive Garden. Their bread sticks and amazing salad was calling my name!

Isn't it calling your name now? :) They have the most amazing Salad and bread sticks there and I wish I could go there and only eat that instead of having to order a meal also. It was funny though as we were sitting there trying to have a conversation. Jon had hurt his eardrum earlier during our ride by firing off his gun a couple times without ear plugs so during dinner I would be trying to talk to him, but he would often times not hear me because of the ringing he heard. I gave him a very hard time about ignoring me while we were eating just to tease him and make him feel a little guilty, but it was all fun and games. 

We then ended our night by going to Barns and Nobles to buy a movie that we both liked and we went home and watched it. We originally went there for Tangled, but we found a couple of other ones (3 others) that all together cost as much as what Tangled would be alone. We settled on watching Robin Hood and settled in for the night. All in all it was a great day of celebration. Thank you Jon for an amazing year of marriage! I love you.

Cowgirl Adventures

So I have not really put any pictures of me trying to fit into my husbands way of life...Cowboy country. It has been very hard trying to be a cowboys wife and learning to face scary situations when it comes to branding cows. I have LOVED the horse back riding though. The horse below is Cruizer. He is the first "non babysitter" horse I have been on and I was a tiny bit scared to be riding this horse. Jon usually puts me on old, slow and reliable horses since I am new at the whole horse back riding which is why he calls them "babysitter horses". I loved riding Cruizer though and definitely know why he has the name he does. He is super fast!

We rounded up a bunch of cows and their babies that day so that we could brand them. I had to learn to stop shaking in my boots as I was fending off some pretty angry mothers while Jon branded their babies. Let me tell you, the look in a mother cows eyes when you are hurting their baby is not the most comforting feeling. It took all my will power not to turn up some dust while running to jump outside of the gate to safety as the mother started stepping towards me and Jon. But a wife has to do what a wife has to do and my job was to protect Jon from the furious mother. Here are some of the cows I think the horns scare me the most.

So I thought I was doing a good job that day with keeping my cool around angry mothers wanting revenge to the people hurting their baby, but Jon thought he needed to push me a little more. He made me learn how to throw a cow. I know this little thing looks harmless, but to me at that time, I felt like he was asking me to tackle a big ol grizzly bear to the ground. This time I was shaking in my boots  and there was no hiding it. Luckily, I was able to face that fear, and I grabbed the baby by his tail and knocked him to the ground and sat on him. Jon tied his feet, but I got him to the ground. YAY ME!! It doesn't look like it in this picture but I think I remember being so scared I had a tear run down my cheek. Amazing what I will do to make my honey proud of me. Hopefully I will not freak out the next time I have to throw down a cow.  

And the last picture I am posting is my battle wound. As we were out riding one day, a tree decided to reach its limbs out to me and strike me in the face. No worries though, I tackled that one to the ground and I won the fight. What adventures we have! I love them and love the man I am married to even more even though I have to go through scary cowboy life situations.  

Day 7- a photo of an animal you want to own as a pet

Definitely a White Tiger! They are gorgeous animals!

The Gift of Love

I know that Valentines day is a very cliche day for everyone and lately a lot of people have said that they hate this day a lot... but I have to say one thing I LOVE THIS DAY. I do not know why someone would hate Valentines day so much when it is celebrating and honoring something completely sweet and tender and innocent. Love is the greatest gift anyone can have and share with others. Not just a love between husband and wife, or girlfriend and boyfriend, but also a love of family members and close friends. Heavenly Father gave us the gift of love so why not celebrate such a beautiful thing! 

I love Valentines day because it reminds me to really look at my life and realize how much love I have for everyone. I realize just how special to me my parents are, how special my sisters and my brother are, my grandparents, aunts uncles and cousins are, and also how special my husband is to me. I get to spend a whole day focusing on how very important these people are in my life and without them I know I would not be the person I am today. I know I should not just focus on how much love I have for others just one day of the year, and I do not just think about it today, but valentines day just makes me remember how blessed I am to have so many loved ones in my life and I am so grateful for all of them. So yes I do love valentines day and I am not afraid to say it. With or without having someone special to share it with, I still think it is a great day. 

So make sure you go out and celebrate the gift of love. I don't know about you but I think that without love this world would not be a very pleasant place to live in. Thank you Heavenly Father for this amazing gift that we have!