Monday, November 11, 2013

Something that makes everyone in our house smile...

Except Steve.  In this house we are all pretty obsessed with High School Musical.  All three of them.  Always have been.  We just love them and today when we watched the third one (Senior Year) Mom and I found ourselves talking about the characters and their actions in such depth that you would have thought we were discussing something so much more.  I said, "Aren't we just so amazing, Mom, to find so much meaning in something so cheesy and meaningless?"  We connected how loving and forgiving Troy is.  In the second movie Gabriella and his friends totally got mad at him for taking a new job that payed more than theirs, missing dates and being so successful just cause Sharpay, who has lots of connections, made him so.  In the third one, Gabriella does not tell Troy that she is up for an honors program in college and will have to leave halfway through their senior year, therefore causing her to miss the musical she asked him to do with her and then doesn't come back for prom like she promised, but Troy never gets mad or accuses her of anything.  At one point Mom said, "Troy's my favorite.  Not just because he's the cutest, but because he's so good."  She cracks me up.  Once when we were watching the second movie a few weeks ago (our favorite, btw) and during the last song that Troy and Gabriella perform, Troy would do a particular move, a toss of the head, move of the eyes, or flick of the hand and Mom would go, "I just love it when he does that.  He's so adorable."  She also says that Gabriella doesn't deserve him.  Haha. : )  Of course I agree with her, I'm just not as expressive about it. ; )  These movies are watched very regularly in our household.  The music is also listened to very regularly while we do the dishes.  It's just a constant high school musical here.

So, did that make you smile?

Sunday, November 10, 2013

All the Little Things

Definitely time to post.

So, we borrowed The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants at the library this week.  Love that movie.  Before I get to the point of why I brought it up I want to add: the part when they're making the rules for the pants they say you're not allowed to tuck in the shirt and wear a belt or do the double cuffs at the bottom because that was super tacky.  Well, I decided to wear their entire tacky outfit to a dance last night and it was actually pretty cute.  It's so funny how styles change.  Skinny jeans are hardly ever worn all the way to the ankle anymore, they are almost always double cuffed.

Anyway, in the movie there's this 12 year old girl, named Bailey who has leukemia that says that being happy isn't about having your life be perfect.  It's about stringing all the little things together and making them count for more than the bad stuff.  I thought that was really profound. Our life as a total can be looked at as one big mission, one big journey, one big anything, but really it's made up of lots of little things.  The little things are what count.  In my saddest moments, it's usually set off by something so little it shouldn't matter, like having my schedule for the day ruined or ruining a batch of cookies, or spilling water all over a beloved book.  There are so many of those little things that can make our lives miserable if we let them.  But we shouldn't let them.  Since there is opposition in all things there are the little bad things and the little good things.  The little good things such as getting asked to dance by someone who likes to talk ;), or going to bed early, or the day the plant you have been diligently caring for starts to look a little greener, and especially all those many gentle, soft, and little promptings we all receive everyday.  Though we may miss a day talking to Heavenly Father because "we're just too tired" He will never use any excuse to avoid speaking to us, or miss any opportunity to speak to us.  Once when I went to the temple with the youth in my stake someone gave a brief talk to us before we did baptisms.  He said that he thinks sometimes people, especially youth, make receiving a prompting too complicated.  He said all it takes is a thought and a feeling.  You may ask yourself, "but what if it's Satan prompting me to do this?"  We all have the gift of the Holy Ghost.  We can tell if that action would lead us closer to God or closer to Satan.  With all the little blessings, we shouldn't despair.  After all if your schedule's ruined one day, does that mean that the next day won't be as fresh and new as always?  If you burn the cookies does that mean you will never make a yummy cookie again? I don't know what to say about spilling water on a beloved book because that would really break my heart.  There are some bad things that you can't overlook.  Some of them aren't so little.  So you've just gotta string all the good little things together and make them count for more than the bad stuff, just like Bailey did.