Between Here and There

I love June. I think it might be one of my favorite months of the year. The days are long and the evenings are lovely.

We are thoroughly enjoying our summer in Logan so far. Logan is really gorgeous in the summertime! Although, it feels like we spend almost as much time in Salt Lake as we do here. This past weekend was our first weekend in Logan in almost a month! The weedend before that was Memorial Day weekend. We went with my mom and step-dad, Todd and his three daughters, and my grandparents to Schofield Reservoir.It was a really fun trip! It is a rare moment when all of my step-sisters and I are together these days because of our busy hectic schedules. It also gave Jayson and Todd

PAPA TODD

some good bonding time while they fished off of the shore. On Memorial Day my Grandpa Norm turned 85! He is still going strong too. It was also really great to see my grandparents. I don't get to see them as much as I'd like.

JAYSON AND SHELBIE

The weekend before Memorial weekend we were in Salt Lake because our cousin (on Jayson's mom's side), Jordan, gave his homecoming talk! It was a really fabulous talk and it is always fun when that side of the family gets together. There are so many of us that there is always something interesting going on at the get-together. That whole extended family is really close and I absolutely love it! That same weekend was also the end of Birthday week. Birthday week begins with May 13th, Justie's (my step-mom) and goes as follows: 14th, my dad's, 15th Jana's (Jayson's little sister), and 16th, Todd's. Whoa buddy. My dad also had a taxidermy show at Cabella's. It was really fantastic! He got first place in the master's division, which is as high as you can go. He did a peice where a few ducks were hanging from a shelf type of thing and then there were shot gun shells and lots of random stuff at the bottom. Justie says it won because it was her birthday present. Cabella's is also a really cool store. There's real fish there! Tons! If you haven't gone yet, you should.

The weekend before that was when Jordan came home from his mission, so we were in town for that as well. It was also Mother's Day. Man oh man, I can't belive how May has flown by!!!

Jayson:

He finished all of the Harry Potter books, and well, of course, his life is changed forever. We are looking forward with great anticipation to the upcoming movie! Jayson also decided not to work for Cutco Knives. He went to the training and decided it sounded a bit fishy. So, he is currently being homemaker and looking for a job. I think I should take homemaking lessons from him. He's a much better cook than I am. He's really being so good about it though, he always has been. When I'm in a terribly busy state (which I all too often am) he's always so willing to help out. He had an interview to be an ESCROW agent, which basically means he'd be looking at and overviewing documents from property transactions, today. So...we are praying hard and keeping our fingers crossed! He said the interview went really well and should know sometime next week. It involves A LOT of talking to people too! So, naturally, he'd love it.

As for what I am up to on an everyday basis, I am doing my online classes. I am doing really well in my Social Skills Intervention class. I haven't started much yet on my apprentiship class, but for it I have to do two huge projects. That's basically all that the class is. I have to do an applied project and a research project, 45 hours of each. For the applied I am going to be working with a group called CAPSA, which stands for Community Abuse Prevention Services Agency. That's the one I was doing all of the training for. The training was really excellent and very informative. Parts of it were SO hard to listen to. You would honestly not believe how much abuse and sexual assult happens every day. Did you know that 1 out of every 4 women will be sexually assulted in her lifetime? ONE FOURTH!! It is also estimated that these numbers are actually higher because many sexual assult instances go unreported. It is also estimated that 42% of all murdered women are killed by their husbands. I can't even imagine how it would feel to have your home be the most dangerous place in the world for you. Hearing and seeing all of the facts on domestic violence and sexual assult and realizing how hard it really is for people to cope with these things was heart wrenching. I am almost positive I had tears in my eyes just about every night of training. Near the end of it this quote was shown to me:

"The way to fight the evil of domestic violence is to expose it.......to shine the light of day on it.

And the best way to do that is by having the entire community take responsibility for the problem"

-Sgt. Mark Wynn

This quote truly ispired me. From the moment I heard this quote I knew that now that I know what I know about this I can't turn my back on it. It's something I'll fight for the rest of my life. I urge you all, do something, anything you can for this cause. Volunteer, give donations to organizations like CAPSA. Do all you can. It may seem like we can't stop such a huge thing, but we HAVE to try.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, comitted citizens, can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

-Margaret Mead

Durning my training there were so many times that I thought to myself, "What am I doing here? How can I do this? I'm not cut out for this." But something an officer said when he came in to speak to us really struck me. He said something along the lines of, "this will probably be one of the hardest things you ever do, but if you don't do it, who will?"

I don't know how many of you remember, and any guys that read this probably didn't hear it, but a couple of months ago in the Visiting Teaching message there was a quote that talked about how we all really need to pull together as a community. It is our duty to do all we can to correct the wrongs we see in our community. Unity is the answer.

For my research project I am working with one of my favorite professor's, Dr. Bates. I'm helping him with a study on academic success in collegiate athletes. He has found that a lot of the people that don't end up finishing their higher education are ahtletes and he wants to know why and how intervention can be put to use on the problem. I might even get to help him conduct a study on it next semester, so it should be pretty rad.

Work is going well, I'm really starting to love the participants. I'm actually not doing the summer program at BRASC like I thought, but I am doing a different program there where I stay with a couple of the participants after their day activites (or school) is over because they're parents work a little later than their activities go for. I was a little dissapointed with this at first because it means that I won't get to go out and do fun stuff with them during the day, but it has actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because of this, I actually have been able to start working earlier than I thought I would (I wasn't suppose to start until two weeks from now!) I have also acquired a lot more hours than I was originally hired for. Because Jayson has had trouble finding a good job this has truly blessed our lives. What also makes it wonderful is that it's actually a job that I enjoy doing!

Other than that we're just having a great time spending our time with our friends! We sure are going to miss that when we leave for Logan.

Upcoming:

We still have our vactaions ahead of us (except for havasupai, which the Kim family had to cancel because we're all trying to be smart about our money spending in the down economy. However, in lou of that we may be venturing to a gorgeous fishing place in Montana.) One of my dearest friends Daniel Clark is also returning from his mission next week. In one month from now, we're going to have a new nephew! Plus, at the end of July our cousin Josh (on my side, Jayson hasn't met him yet!) is coming home! I'm so excited. This summer just keeps getting better and better.