Death is Not the End

Last night at 3:50 am my mother's father, my grandpa, Lorenzo, passed away. He was old, after he was in his 90's. He had lived a full life, if we will all be so lucky. Not that its luck. He as a good man, with good genetics, and a large family. His death due to a combination of old age and complications due to a fall that occurred sometime on Sunday. He had been living in an assisted care center for a couple months now. But he had been doing well, most of his pain was due to arthritis.
I am sorry if I sound insensitive to my own grandfather's death. Everyone deals with death differently. Most of the time I deal with death by being matter of fact about the situation. The second set for me is usually to be reflective. At some point I will start having regrets, and eventually I will cry. The tears are almost always because I know I will miss them and it will be a long time till I will be able to see them again. But my tears are never because I don't know if I will see them again. I KNOW that I will. I know that death is only the end of this test of life. After this we return to our Father who made us, who loves us (Alma 40:11). In the next life there is not going to be all this "stuff", everything will be better. Death can be scary, the idea of dying before being able to live life fully, but I have come to realize that death is a blessing. It is a blessing to the one who is found ready to return home. Have you ever been home sick? Well I get homesick, not just for being back in Mesa with my family, but to be back home with my Heavenly Father and family. There has been times in my life were I was ready to go Home. Although there were still a million things on Earth that I wanted to do, they didn't matter, I could have moved on without them, if it had been my time. However, I would have a hard time now. Unlike my grandfather who has lived a very full life, I have not. I only got married 2 1/2 months ago, there is still so much I need to do.
Death is hard on those who are still alive. I started this book, "Anybody Out There" by the Marion Keyes. I was almost half way through the book when we realize that the husband didn't just leave his wife and she is trying to get him back, instead he died in this car accident. He died and she lived. They had only been married a few months. I can't get myself to finish the book. It hits too close to home. I don't know how I would pick up the pieces of my life if that happened to me. I waited 27 years to find the guy I could marry and be happy with. There is the comforting thought that we have been sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. He would still be stuck with me. But to not have children, or if we did have children to raise them alone... death is always hardest on those who didn't die. But its a blessing to those who do.
I regret that I didn't get to see my grandpa one last time. The last time we went up to Mesa I took the Phlebotomy class and my family went to go see him, I didn't have time to go. I wish I had found a way to make time. I know my grandpa was proud of me. He loved science and was so happy to finally have a grandchild take interest in biology. He did a lot with his life. I know he still had his regrets. I hope that although I know I will have regrets, I hope that I can live a full life to, make the best of the time I do have and I pray I can pass the test.

Facebook

Since I am still unemployed, I have found a lot of time to do stuff I have been avoiding. Yes that means blogging, and Facebook. But I finally did it. As you read I now blog, and I set up a Facebook account today.
Why have I avoided them? Well, it has to do with all the "tado" about my space. And the fact that you have to keep them up, along with who would really care about what I want to say. Also I can get on a soap box a lot and I didn't want to be on a soap box all the time.
So I am on Facebook and we'll see how that goes.

Favorite Way to Waste my Time

I had tried to tell myself I was not going to talk about television shows, but sadly that is the only thing I've done in my life the last couple of days. July 8th Monk (season 6) and Psych (season 2) were released. So upon purchasing, I have spent much to much of my time watching episode upon episode. The have to be among my most favorite tv shows ever. Their mysteries are so well written and cleaver. I guess that is all.
Everyone have a great weekend, still haven't found a job yet.

Phlebotomist for Hire

So life is busy when you don't know how you are wasting your time. To try to stop the pointlessness because finding a job has not been ideal, I took a Phlebotomy course. Since I already have a degree in Biology, I qualified to take a course that is one all day class and you are fully certified at the end of it.
I was nervous out of my mind about it, but I did it. I passed and now have a Phlebotomy certificate. Granted I won't have it in my hand for 2-3 weeks or at least the official copy. I have a copy that says I have one coming and that I have completed the certification course.
I just hope that this does open some doors for me and proves to be a good choice.

ScAreDy CaT

I am going to back up a bit, a couple weeks ago I woke up to my husband, hugging me tightly. He was asleep or about to be asleep, calmingly saying in my ear "its okay, everything is going to be alright, it will all be okay." I was confused. I surmised two possible reasons for this strange behavior:
1- I could have possibly been thrashing around in my sleep and making scared noises, it woke him just enough to try to comfort me. The only thing is I felt perfectly calm and I can't remember anything from my dreams that would have caused me to act that way. But I wouldn't put it past me, I do strange things when I sleep, just ask any of my roommates from college.
2- It had to do with his dream and I just woke up to it. The morning after it happened I asked him and it is just as much a mystery to him too. So since then, hugging the other and saying "its okay, everything is going to be alright" has become a joke.
Well last night, I had stayed up, in bed writing in my journal, while my husband slept next to me in our bed. When I was done writing, I turned off the lamp and laid down, still too awake to fall asleep. I laid for a few minutes and then I started to go into the sleep stage where your thoughts begin to wonder uncontrolled, but you are still aware of the world around you. All of the sudden I felt a pounce on my legs. I screamed like a helpless blond in B- rate horror flick. My husband flinched then hugged me tight, "its okay, everything is going to be alright." We both busted up laughing.
The rest of the story for the pounce: it was his cat, Shiva. First of all, I had woken my husband up a little when I was laying down, so he was aware of his surroundings and was just beginning to fall back asleep, so to him I screamed for no reason, I just went crazy. Shiva had been on my vanity (across from the bed) and had jumped onto the bed, landing on my legs. It had startled me because normal she gets on the bed and walks around before she gets on my legs, and I am very picky about what can touch my legs and a jumping cat was not authorized. So she made a scaredy cat out of me. But its okay, everything is going to be alright.

Vintage Wedding- I did it my way

Weddings are fun- Aren't they????
My husband and I are both 27. Granted he was 27 when I met him, but I was still 26. In the words of our sealer we "just found each other later in life." I didn't think of myself as an old maid.... at least not yet. But our sealer was partially right about one thing... by LDS standards we did get married later in life. Especially compared to my sister (20) and her husband (22) or our friends who got married three weeks after we did Laura (20) and Ken (21). Yes by LDS standards we were getting old. I don't regret getting married "later in life". I have been able to accomplish so much more then the 20 or 19 year old. After all I have a degree in Molecular Biology, I served an 18 month mission in the Florida Tallahassee Mission, I have been to England and Thailand, I worked for about 1 1/2 years in my field. So yes I have done a lot. I am honestly "accomplished". But that doesn't mean that I didn't want to get married. The right guy was never around. That was until I was introduced to Cory by my friend Kristina, with assistance from Laura. They thought Cory and I would "hit it off" and they were right. So after an generally speaking short courtship (was not my first choice) we were engaged and then I had a wedding to plan.
Now when a girl is 27 and getting married and she is the last of all her friends remotely her age to be getting married- she has had a lot of time to think about what she wants in a wedding and reception. Of course for an LDS girl the wedding itself is taken care of, I had at least never put any thought into what I would want for a ceremony, except that I was going to ware my temple dress and my great great grandmothers temple apron. And of course, any time you share an idea with a friend, "you know doing such and such could be a really cool idea," everyone reminds you that your groom is going to want a say.
So then I was engaged, we were unofficially engaged 27th of Jan. (for those who don't remember, that was the day President Hinckley passed away). I had from then to May 10th to get a decent reception together. Lucky for me Cory was in school trying to finish this semester so he passed all choices on to me. My sister's only advice after she got married was "don't let mom do anything." This was for a few reasons 1-they had had many disagreements about how things should be 2- my mom can have a hard time letting go 3- she stresses a lot and doesn't handle a lot of stress. So in taking my sisters advice, I tried to assign things that were varies people's responsibilities, that way I wouldn't be doing everything and neither would my mom. Well I did leave too much to myself but that was my choice.
I wanted a 40's/50's feel to the reception. From my dress to the hanging lanterns for light, and my vintage cake topper. I knew almost exactly what I wanted. Amazingly everything finally came together. We had a lot of hang-ups on the way, such as having the tables at the ramada I wanted to use bolted down and in the end we moved the reception inside.
The other big issue was the ring ceremony. Cory's family are not members of the LDS church. They are all active Catholics. I can't say they were happy with our choice to be married in the temple, but they were happy for us and requested we at least have a ring ceremony for them to be apart of. I agonized over this. His parents had also requested that we walk do the aisle so they could at least see that. Since there is NO walking down any aisle in the temple I had never put any consideration to this. I didn't know what I wanted to walk to. We really fretted over his family feeling that it was acceptable enough and not being upset by it being a sorry excuse for a wedding. In the end, we choose to add musical numbers to increase the sentimental attachment to the ceremony, also my Bishop officiated the ring ceremony with beautiful words of the meaning of becoming one. His family were so happy with the ring ceremony. They cried and everyone said the nicest things about it.
To dress of the cultural hall, since I felt it was an ugly cultural hall, I created/made draping swag curtains for drape from the over hang. They then hung about a yard away from the wall and we placed lights behind the curtains to illuminate them. They really added a special elegance to the area. Along with the curtains I purchased many strings of light bulb lights and strings of Chinese lanterns. That was the majority of our lighting.
Although there were some things I would have liked to do differently, overall I am really happy with how I did do everything. I took a lot of criticism from all sorts who thought I was doing too much, who thought I was getting too extreme, who thought I cared too much, who thought I was spending too much money. But it was all worth it. The room was beautiful and it turned out almost exactly the way I imagined it. So yes I did it my way, I had my vintage wedding.

Alaska Honeymoon

Cory's parents were so generous and gave us an Alaskan Cruise for our Honeymoon. It was a 7 Day Princess Cruise, in a room with a balcony.
Alaska is COLD and BEAUTIFUL. If someone would have told me (before I knew I was going to Alaska for my honeymoon), that I would have a May honeymoon, and FREEZE, I would have thought they were crazy, Arizona is HOT already in May.
Cruising is the way to go. I would have never thought I was that type of person. You know the type who takes cruises. I've had friends who took cruises and they thought they were grate and raved about how much fun they are, and I would smile and nod and think they were crazy, after all being stuck on a boat never sounded like much fun to me. However, since Alaska is so remote, I figured the best way to see it would be by cruise and then this came up. Bless were we.
Top reasons why Cruises are amazing....
1- One Price Shopping, ALMOST EVERYTHING is included in the price of your cruise
Your room, your food- all you can eat, and Fun
2- They wait on you hand and foot, Everyone is waiting to serve you
3- There is so much to do or not to do if you decide
4- Completely relax with nothing to distract you
5- Amazing Views and where else would you get to see them
6- Unique opportunities for shore activities
I could go on but that is not what this post was going to be about.
I am here to tell about my Honeymoon in Alaska. Well we sailed from Seattle. I had never been to Seattle before and although I still haven't see much of it, our bus driver got lost from the airport to the dock so I saw a back by the coast neighborhood look at Seattle. Cory and I couldn't help but notice that the houses were mostly painted much brighter colors than houses in Arizona. We determined that is because they brighter colors make the gloomy sky less gloomy. Our first two days (leaving and the next day) were spend at sea, meaning no shore stops. The waves were not bad on feeling on the boat, but were cool to see and watch the white caps on the breaking waves. The stops we had were Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. In Ketchikan we didn't schedule any shore excursions with the cruise because we decided we could see it by foot cheaper and easier. We hiked to the fish hatchery and the Totem Museum. I did a lot of research before we went trying to decide what excursions were deals and which ones were rip-offs. I determined the most of the excursions were actually good deals and when they were more expensive it was only by a few dollars, the assurance that they won't leave without you and having a tour guide is almost always worth the extra dollars. But for Ketchikan we decided not to go with the tour group and it ended up being a really good idea. We had the whole exhibits all to ourselves because all the tour groups had just left. In Juneau we had planed on taking a shore excursion that had a plane ride to a lodge on a glacier (the Teku lodge-something like that) and we were going to have a salmon fish fry. We were so disappointed because when we got to Juneau it was raining really hard and all flight excursions were canceled. That excursion came highly recommended too. But no rain in Skagway meant we could ride the train up the Yukon. We did the Jewel Garden/Train/Yukon Bridge tour. I would highly recommend that one to anyone. All of was so picture perfect. We were in awe over all the snow (yes Arizona kids). Overall Alaska is amazing. We so want to go back and see it all again, but there are a few other places on list before we do that one again. Like the Mediterranean.

Arizona is Beautiful

When I was a child I didn't care for the desert. I wanted to live where my cousins did in Southern Colorado. Compared to the majestic mountains of Colorado the desert was more then UGLY. I dreamed about leaving this state as soon as I was old enough. But I changed. I don't know if it is I just grew up or matured, or got home sick. But One thing I know is I realized that things you like or love don't have to be mutually exclusive. I can still like the mountains and the beach, but I can love the desert and it uniqueness.
My husband and I recently moved to Sierra Vista, AZ. It is spitting distance to the Mexico boarder in southern Arizona. Living this far south is a defiant change for me. I miss my family up north. I miss the busy metropolitan life in Phoenix- the theater, the science museum, the baceball games, the concerts, the temple, the freeways, and all my friends/social life. But I have gained something down here that is amazing. The cactus, the birds (Sierra Vista is known as a Sky Island. Over half of all the species of birds in the United States pass through this area during the year), the monsoons (it is already in full swing down here, I love monsoon season), the mountains (Sierra Vista is at the foothills of the Huachuca Mountains, they reach up to 7400 ft, in less than an hour we can feel like we are in the Colorado Mountains), the wildlife, the San Pedro River, and all the small town life but still an acceptable amount of shopping. Sierra Vista wasn't what I though it would be, it impressed me, and anyone who knows me knows that is hard to do (lets just say Shania Twain's song "That Don't Impress me much" could be my theme song.
Going back to my original argument, there is beauty all around this planet, I don't know if there is anywhere I have been that I could say was just plain UGLY. All of God's creations are beautiful, they are each a different type of BEAUTIFUL. Arizona is just extra blessed. It has the Grand Canyon, the mountains, the rolling hills, the fields of land, and the amazing deserts. Arizona is Beautiful all over.