My New Motto..

“Better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat”

Happy St Patty's Day! :)

A bad diagnosis..

Well I seem to have the most ROTTEN luck with my feet. Somehow they are always injured.. there's either massive blisters, falling off toenails, slivers needing to medically be dug out, or some kind of sprained ankle. Well so as luck would have last week during soccer practice I somehow managed to BREAK my foot. It's not a big break.. just a little chunk came off of my metatarsal. When it happened I thought I must have merely bruised it so I kept playing regardless.. probably not smart. The next day it turned blue and purple and started swelling. I couldn't exactly walk so I told my coach I couldn't come to practice that day. She had me go see the trainers to see what they thought was wrong with my foot. Well the trainers sent me to the Kahuku hospital for an x-ray and it showed my fractured bone.
If you look at the metatarsal of my big toe you can see the little chunk that broke COMPLETELY off.. I was thoroughly disappointed by this point. A BROKEN foot!! How could this happen! It was barely hit and suddenly it's broken! Ugh.. just my luck. Well so the hospital in Kahuku decided to send me to a doctor in Honolulu to see if I had to get a pin stuck in it so it wouldn't move around too much. I went to that doctor today and GOOD NEWS I don't need a pin! Yay! He did however tell me that I can't play soccer for TWO MONTHS!!!!! I couldn't believe it! He said I can't risk having something hitting my toe and stopping the scare tissue from healing between the bone completely. I asked him if I could play if I just kicked with the other foot... he said no. I can't even run for 4 weeks! What am I supposed to do for 4 weeks!!!!? Who really needs that chunk of bone anyway huh?!? I obviously am out for the rest of the season and I am VERY sad.... granted there is only 3 weeks of the season left but still... I am officially the cripple of the team. Not something I particularly ever wanted to become but what can you do.. For now I'm stuck doing cycling workouts with a blue foot!This photo doesn't quite show my foot's true colors, but it looks something like that. What bummer. No more soccer. No more running.

Tsunami!!

Yesterday was an very interesting day for me. It was nearly 6 am and I had hardly slept a wink because I was too nervous for my upcoming soccer tournament. I had to be up at 7 am and was desperately trying to get any sleep I could. Suddenly Michelle's phone goes off and I couldn't think of who could possibly be calling her so early. Well it was our relief society president calling to tell us there was a Tsunami warning and we needed to pack up our valuables and important documents and head for higher ground. Well this news really woke me right up. I began feeling quite freaked out as I checked my phone and saw I had several missed calls and texts from people warning me about the Tsunami. My tournament was obviously canceled. :( At about this same time an eerie sound could be heard outside our apartment. I was the warning siren blaring throughout the city. As I looked out the window at the ominous scene before me everything seemed so surreal. The dark clouds and rain hitting the ground accompanied by the sirens left me feeling scared. Michelle and I hurriedly tore apart our apartment trying to get all we could to a higher place so it wouldn't be destroyed by the water. We live right on the beach and couldn't take any chances. We packed some food and headed to the Stake Center to find out where to go. Our bishop drove us to the temple and told us to climb up to the hill behind the temple where hundreds of people in the community were camping out. I couldn't believe it was really happening, but by this point I was surprisingly calm. As we sat up there for about an hour, I realized this was going to be an all day thing and I needed a book for entertainment. Michelle agreed to walk back with to our apartment to retrieve my book. As we walked the opposite direction of everyone else and towards the oncoming Tsunami, the looks we got from people were priceless. We still had 3 hours before the Tsunami was going to hit so I wasn't honestly too worried despite the ongoing sirens in the background. After getting my book and locking everything back up, we headed back up the hill and sat down to wait with everyone else. Besides answering the calls and texts of concerned loved ones from back home I had nothing to entertain myself with so I was grateful for my book. We ended up sitting on that hill for a grand total of 6 1/2 hours and I really really grateful for my book by then. The predicted time for the Tsunami came and went with no sign of a large wave. We had to rely on whatever we heard from others for updates on what was going on so of course none of it was very clear. We sat in wonder for what turned out to be a pretty anticlimactic day. Although I am SO grateful that nothing did end up happening, I was almost looking forward to seeing the grand Tsunami just to experience it and see what it would look like. As I sat there I struggled to even imagine what it would be like. I think the freakishness of the morning was enough though. Waking up to sirens blaring across the state and rushing to mountains was unnerving enough and gave me a pretty good sense of what it would feel like to really live through a Tsunami. My mom insists she predicted this happening and told me I should learn to listen to her when she says I shouldn't live away from home. Mom always knows best!

Lessons of gratitude

After some prodding from my dear friend Kristin and an interesting experience today, I decided to update my blog once again:
Every once in a while Heavenly Father decides to step in and humble me in life and make me realize the immense blessings I have. I have had the great opportunity this year to play for the women's soccer team here at BYU Hawaii. Playing college soccer has always been my dream. I never thought I would have the opportunity to do it and yet here I am, out playing soccer with an awesome team and coach. I love it! I've never hard to work as hard in my life as I do now. As with most hard things in life, it gets exhausting. I found myself beginning to dread the daily 2-3 hour practices. I would complain and moan and roll around on the floor just to show my disgust. I knew once I got there I would enjoy it and I always felt so great after the hard workout. Well today was no different. I found myself hesitant to go to practice. I show up to practice and as I began warming up my coach comes up to me and says Dawn (the NCAA regulations lady) called her today and told her I wasn't eligible to play.. WHAT? She was working things out but said I might not be able to play in tomorrow's games. .. I was devastated! I couldn't believe that after all this time I suddenly wasn't eligible. I couldn't help but think that I would suddenly be kicked off the team. Today was my last practice with the girls.. so long dream... goodbye soccer.. I realized just how distraught I became at the thought of no longer being able to play whereas just minutes earlier I was griping because I had to practice. I could picture myself bidding the team farewell..Well throughout practice I wanted to make the most of it. I wanted to have the most fun and work my hardest.. after all this was my last practice with the team! Well as it turns out there was no problem with the eligibility. Dawn called back and said I was fine. Relief swept over me. I was safe. I could still play!! Boy what a lesson I learned though! I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to play college soccer. Playing soccer at this level is a whole new experience and I realize I need to embrace EVERY moment of it! I'm so grateful to have a strong, healthy body so I can play and live my dream. I'm also so so so grateful for the little lessons in life that teach me to be humble and grateful. Heavenly Father gives me so many blessings and He is my everything!

Walden- Henry David Thoreau

I'm currently reading this book and couldn't help but post a few quotes from it.

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices"

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

"Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on you own track, then."

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

The Dash

By: Linda Ellis

There was a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end

He noted that first came her date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash stands for all the time
That she spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own;
The cars the house the cash
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what's true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

We'd be less quick to anger
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect
And more often wear a smile
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy is being read
With your lifes actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

Cos that dash stands for all the time
That you spent alive on earth
And only those who loved you
Know what that little line is worth

It matters not how much you own
The cars the house the cash
What matters is how you live and love
And how you spend your dash

What matters is how you live and love
And how you spend your dash.