New Year

• I have an "I can conquer the world" attitude lately that I hope doesn't go away. I have not been this confident since I was a toddler.

• I love the movie Frozen, I really relate to Elsa. 

• I am planning on spending the year painting and drawing hundreds of paintings and drawings, and I really believe it will happen.

• I'm converting the kitchen into my art studio... as soon as I get the parts to the baby gate to put up in the doorway  (we got the gate out of storage at Ryan's parents house, and forgot to ask for the parts that secure it in place). It is nice to have family dinners at the table, however both Ryan and I agree that we can easily have them in the living room, as we both think it is important and necessary that I have a place to do art. I am grateful that Ryan agrees and supports me. I find the more confident I get in myself, the more her supports my ideas that once sounded crazy.

• We are in a tiny two bedroom apartment that doesn't have a washer and dryer, is drafty, is a basement type apartment, and doesn't have any insulation in the outside walls of the kitchen--therefore allowing a lot of moisture to build up inside the cupboards (we found this out after discovering puddles underneath our packaged and canned food)... yet we are perfectly happy and content. I think we will actually even stay here for at least a year. It is interesting how you figure out through constant moving and trials what you really want and need to be happy, and for us we have discovered that we don't need or want a big place in order to be happy. We don't want to live here forever, and when we do move we hope we can move into a home we have built (the options for housing in this area are so expensive, that we would rather build a home for the same price it would take to get into a cruddy old home). It won't be a huge home--It will be around 1900 sq ft at the most. I have a friend who is currently living in a very tiny log cabin style home that has a loft for one of the two bedrooms which overlooks the living room and kitchen, and despite the very cozy conditions they and their two kids are the happiest and most content people I have ever known. I want to be the same way.

• I'm doing a large oil painting this year, and I have very high expectations for it. I have the composition planned out, and I am waiting for some reference photo's from one of my models.

• Ryan bought me a new fancy camera for my graduation, and I love it and have no idea how to operate it. I'm going to have to take time to read the manual, because I want to use it to take reference pictures for my painting and drawings, as well as use it to take pictures of my artwork--instead of relying on others to do it for me.

• People continuously ask us at church how we like Lander, as well as if we think we will stay. The truth is that we decided before we moved here that it didn't matter what Lander was like, we were going to love it simply because it has been such a blessing for Ryan to get this job. Honestly, Lander isn't too impressive in winter time; it's pretty boring and cold, and very isolated. We are okay though, and happy simply because we had prayed so hard and for so many years for this job. We are going to therefore be happy regardless of our surroundings.

• It is hard to explain why graduating from a four year university was so important to me, as well as how something so simple could inspire so much confidence in myself. Ryan was surprised at how emotional I was over my graduation; he said that the only thing he felt over his graduation was surprise at school being over. I am the first person in my family--including among my grandparents on both sides, my parents, and my 8 siblings--to get my bachelors. I have some cousins who have graduated, but no one in my immediate family has received their bachelors. I also have many friends who wanted to go to college and could not for financial and confidence reasons. Many feel stuck in cycles of poverty as a result of the poverty they were born into. Others feel they are not smart enough. Sometimes I think that the value of school is beyond what most graduates understand. When I first went to BYU-I after high school I felt that there was no way I could really succeed because I didn't think I was smart enough... I did my best to pretend that I was going to graduate, but I didn't really believe it was possible. Therefore, finishing school built my confidence tremendously, and I will always be greatful that I was able to go and to get a degree that I had worked so hard for.