My Bucket List

1. Publish a book. October, 2015--one of my research articles was included as a chapter in the textbook Family Life Education: the Practice of Family Science.
2. Ride the London Eye.  July 15, 2016
3. Eat gator meat.
4. Visit Walt Disney World.
5. Learn to horseback ride.
6. Visit a castle in Europe (I'm not picky about which one!).

• July 17, 2016--saw the outside of Buckingham Palace (the Queen was in residence so we couldn't tour)
• July 18, 2016--Tower of London (where I saw the crown jewels)
• July 21, 2016--Palace of Versailles

7. Visit every continent... except Antarctica. I'm not a big fan of cold. :)
8. Kiss in the rain.
9. Ride in a hot air balloon.
10. Go to the Floating Lantern Festival in Thailand.  Okay, so I didn't make it to Thailand. But I did go to a Floating Lantern Festival in Colorado Springs on November 7, 2015


Hmmm... More to come. I think I'll add to this as ideas hit me... and mark things off as I go!

Provo

Tonight I went on a long walk around Provo. It's beautiful here. The days are still warm, but the nights are starting to get that autumn crispness to them... Just a touch of it. It's still safe to go out without a jacket.

I remember when I first came to Provo, I had a hard time. I was the first kid to leave home. I didn't know anyone here. It took years for Provo to start to feel like home.

But now it does. I claim this place. It will always be a part of me. I'm grateful I haven't had to leave it just yet. Walking around BYU campus brings back so many good memories!

It's been great having both Shauna and Jason here. Shauna and I still live together. Jason is off in the dorms, but we meet up once a week for sibling lunches. We got football tickets together too, so we see him at games. I can't believe how grown up that kid is getting! Before I know it, he'll be off on his mission. I'm going to miss him like crazy!

There are times when I wish I could freeze everything as it is, and we could all stay this way forever! But then I think about what adventures lie ahead for all of us and I know we have to keep going.

It'll be interesting to see where we all end up.

Opposites

So many of you know that as part of my job, I am running the Facebook and Twitter pages for Healthy Relationships California and California Healthy Marriages Coalition. (So fun! Who knew that social media would be a job skill?!?!?) Every day, I do 4 Tweets and 3 Facebook posts on each page. That means that I've spent a lot of time lately looking at relationships/dating/marriage articles online, trying to find good stuff to share.

Today I stumbled across an article on the Huffington Post called "The Athlete Mixed Marriage." Basic premise: non-athletic woman marries super athletic man, she ponders the irony that one spouse cannot live without something the other spouse would never dream of doing. One quote in particular stood out to me: "John and I are out of step with the marriage times. Hyper-compatibility between spouses in temperament and lifestyle is one of the strongest marital trends of the last decades. By 'assortative mating,' we're marrying people with almost the exact same educational background, earning potential, job experiences, ambitions, hobbies, interests, class background, and values. In other words, we're marrying ourselves."

It's true. In the modern world, there is very much a focus on marrying someone a lot like you. And, now that the barrier between genders is not as concrete as it used to be, spouses are more like each other than ever before. Back in the day, Johnny liked sports but Mary liked sewing... Now Johnny and Mary can do sports together.

I remember in my classes at BYU, we learned several times about the benefits of marrying someone a lot like you. In my Marriage Prep class, we read a book by Neil Clark Warren (the man behind eHarmony) that said every similiarity between you and your partner is money in the bank; every difference between you is a withdrawal. Study after study suggest that partners who are more similar to each other (in background, in belief, in values, in personality, etc, etc) do better.

I came out of all this with the idea that I needed to find a boy JUST like me. I realized that this would be a tall order, because a lot of my interests are pretty girly. Heck, we took a personality quiz in one class to see how "feminine" or "masculine" our personalities were, and I scored in the 100th percentile for feminine traits, 0th percentile for masculine (I didn't even know that was possible!).

But then, as an intern for Forever Families,  I had an opportunity to write an article on dating. It was reviewed by Dr. Jason Carroll (a Marriage Prep professor at BYU, though not the one I took a class from). I had a whole paragraph in there about the value of marrying someone a lot like you. He commented on this that I needed to remember, some differences are inherent in any relationship. Men and women are different, after all! But those differences can actually play off one another, compliment one another, to result in a stronger relationship.

That's when I realized that I didn't need to marry my clone. :)

Coming across the article in the Huffington Post brought that all back. In an age when gender differences aren't so prevalent, I think we may have become too fixated as a society on finding our one, perfect match-someone very much like us. What we need to remember is, variety is the spice of life. While we don't want to marry our polar opposite, some differences are okay. We can be very happy with someone else who doesn't share our passion for reading, or sports, or llama herding.

Living the Dream

My cousin Natalie always "It will all work out." My parents always say that when you look back in life, you'll see that things did work out. I think I'm finally getting old enough that I can really start to have that experience. :)

If you asked me a year ago where I wanted to be now (you know, in the midst of my quarter-life crisis as I tried to figure out what to do after grad school), I would have told you that I really wanted to stay in Provo. I wanted to stay at BYU, I wasn't ready to give that up. But at the same time, I wanted to be done with school. I wanted to get a job doing research. If I could have picked any topic to focus on, I would pick marriage education, like what I'd studied in my program, but I realized I would be lucky to even get to research a family topic. I didn't even think there was anyway I could use my writing skills in the relationship education arena, besides an occasional post in the blog I made for my family life education class.

But here I am. Living in Provo, working my absolute dream job, researching marriage education and also having the chance to write for a marriage ed blog (and even run social media on the topic!). It occurred to me yesterday that I really am living out my dreams right now. I could not have designed a more perfect situation for myself, and I am so grateful that God guided me to this position. Looking back, I don't think it was a coincidence that I was nudged away from family therapy and onto the marriage education pathway. I don't think it was a coincidence things lined up so that I learned how much I loved research and self-directed methods of education.

Things really did work out. They always do, eventually. I need to remember this in the other areas of my life, too.

Adventures in Florida

This last week I had the chance to go to the American Psychological Association's national convention to present a paper on work-family issues. One of my co-authors and friends Jeffrey Hammond came with me. We flew into Orlando on Wednesday, presented Thursday, and flew back on Friday morning. It was a quick trip but we still managed to have fun. :)

First, the conference. It was HUGE! I couldn't get over how many people were there, and it was spread out over multiple ginormous conference center places.

 Our presentation went pretty well, I think! It was my first paper presentation at a professional conference, so I was a little nervous going in, but it all worked out. :)

After the convention, we headed over to Cocoa Beach, which is near Cape Canaveral. We could see the NASA building out in the distance as we drove along. First we stopped at Ron Jon's Surf Shop to pick up some trip souvenirs. (I got a cheap pair of flip flops since I'd forgotten to bring any... and a cute little sand dollar pendant necklace too). Then we headed to the beach! I wish I had pictures to share... Maybe I can put some up later. We got some, but they were all on Jeff's camera. Jeff taught me how to play paddle ball (kinda like ping pong or tennis but just on the beach, and the ball doesn't really bounce on the sand so you have to keep it in the air). I'm not the most athletically gifted person but I got better as we went along. Jeff told me I did pretty good for a girl, haha. Turns out paddle ball is especially fun to play if you're out in the water.

When we got hungry, we drove over to Downtown Disney. It was PACKED. I can only imagine what the theme park is like this time of year! We went to Rainforest Cafe for dinner. We got there around 9 I think, but we didn't get in until 9:40 (I guess that's not too bad). Rainforest Cafe is fun. It's decorated like a rainforest (okay, okay, I know, duh, right?) with leaves and flowers hanging from every inch of the ceiling. There are displays of animatronic critters here and there. Every so often they move around and make noise.

We sat by the elephants.

Every twenty minutes or so there is a "rainstorm"-the lights dim, thunder roars, and all the animals freak out. It's pretty cool. Oh, and also there are some giant aquariums scattered around... We got to sit right next to this one. Since we were at a Disney park (well, I'm guessing that's why...), all the "Finding Nemo" kinds of fish were inside. We saw Nemo, Dory, Bubbles, and Gil.

 I could never get over how green Florida is. There are SO MANY tall trees every where! I felt like I was in a jungle. The beach was so beautiful too! The water is a lot warmer than the Pacific Ocean (Jeff says it's about 15 degrees warmer on average) which is nice. Also the beaches tend to be flatter, so you can wade out farther before you get to the really deep ocean part (a big plus if you're not the strongest swimmer, like me!)

I had a blast on the trip! I just wish it could have lasted longer. Someday I hope I can go back again and stay for a while and just play!

Hired!!!

Yesterday I was hired for my first official post-grad job! I will be working as a researcher/writer for Healthy Relationships California. HRC is "a non-profit organization that provides skills-based Relationship Education programs; conducts Relationship Education facilitator trainings; and creates innovative public awareness campaigns and marketing materials to increase the general public’s consciousness about Relationship Education." HRC is one of the biggest relationship education companies in the nation (if not the biggest!). I will be assisting with research studies (mainly program evaluation-figuring out which programs work the best and for who), as well as doing some writing for them (research briefs, blog posts, and press releases, I think). Initially I am hired on a temporary part-time basis, but if they like me they will keep me on (and Patty Howell, the vice president/soon to be president, says she thinks they will probably keep me. :)

I am very happy! I don't think I could have designed a better job for myself. I get to do my two favorite things (writing and research) on my favorite topic (marriage and relationship education). :)

Quotes

One of my favorite things about the Kindle is that it saves everything you've highlighted in all of your books in a special file called "My Clippings." I am a big fan of quotes. I am always trying to find new places to store them for easy access. This feature of the Kindle is great because it stores so many quotes for me and provides references so I know exactly where I got them.

Today I was going through my clippings reading through some of my favorite quotes and I decided to share some of them here! Hope some of you are quotes fans too.

From Alexandre Dumas' Count de Monte Cristo:

• "...we frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it."
• "Youth is a flower of which love is the fruit; happy is he who, after having watched its silent growth, is permitted to gather and call it his own."
• "Have you never experienced for any one that sudden and irresistible sympathy which made you feel as if the object of it had been your old and familiar friend, though, in reality, it was the first time you had ever met? Nay, further, have you never endeavored to recall the time, place, and circumstances of your former intercourse, and failing in this attempt, have almost believed that your spirits must have held converse with each other in some state of being anterior to the present, and that you are only now occupied in a reminiscence of the past?"
• "God is merciful to all, as He has been to you; He is first a father, then a judge."
• "'Alas,' said Monte Cristo, 'it is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!'"
• "Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope.'"

From Kathryn Stockett's The Help:

• "No one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens."

From Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl:

• "The tales tell us what they can. The rest is for us to learn. The question is, are we smart enough to figure for ourselves? Now, that's what I'd like to know."

From Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief:

• "You have gifts you have only begun to know."
• "Go with what your heart tells you, or you will lose all. Hades feeds on doubt and hopelessness. He will trick you if he can, make you mistrust your own judgment. Once you are in his realm, he will never willingly let you leave. Keep faith. Good luck, Percy Jackson."
• "The gods have their reasons, Percy. Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing."

From Jane Austen's Mansfield Park:

• "'I pay very little regard,' said Mrs. Grant, 'to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.'"
• "There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere..."
• "We do not look in great cities for our best morality."
• "He had not faults but what a serious attachment would remove."
• "That is what I dislike most particularly. It raises my spleen more than anything, to have the pretense of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as to oblige one to do the very thing, whatever it be!"

From Edgar Rice Burroughs' Gods of Mars:

• "The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most."

From Edgar Rice Burroughs' Warlords of Mars:

• "It is strange how new and unexpected conditions bring out unguessed ability to meet them."
• "...right was on my side, and I think that that must give a man greater confidence than though he knew himself to be battling in a wicked cause."

From Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone:

• "For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve-like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable."
• "'I have no strategy,' said Zuzana. 'I just want to skip all this and get to the part where he's my boyfriend. Not to mention, you know, the part where he's aware I exist.'"
• "Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic."
• "You'd have to have, like, a lentil for a soul to hate wiener dogs."
• "'Beauty,' Brimstone had scoffed once. 'Humans are fools for it. As helpless as moths who hurl themselves at fire.'"
• "Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength."

From Frank Beddor's The Looking Glass Wars:

• "An undisciplined imagination is worse than no imagination at all. It can do more harm."
• "'Even in that world,' the caterpillar said, 'where no one knew you were a princess, you were to marry royalty. It seems that destiny will not let you deny who you are.'"

From Lauren Oliver's Delirium:

• "You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?"
• It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed."
• "The one good thing about being kind of shy is that nobody bugs you when you want to be left alone."