I was checking out the new BYU racquetball site and it made me REALLY miss being on the team. In fact, it’s funny because when I was on the team, I played with the assistant coach (Paul) and the head coach’s brother and sister (Brady & Tawnya). Those were the days. Besides the competition and the awesome feeling of being part of an athletic team, I also just miss the workouts and being in shape all the time.

Here’s a flash back in pictures I pulled from the old team website:

The Team:

2003 Collegiate National Champions

Men’s Team

Women’s Team

Tawnya

Paul

Paige and Laura

Oliver

Mike

Marci

Eileen

Audrey

Brady and Nat

Champions! (I didn’t have a solo pic of Karen – top left)

The Workouts:

0600-0800

Running Stairs

Running Hills

Running More Hills

Personalized Coaching – Thanks Fisher!

Morning Instruction

More Morning Instruction

Lunge Walks

Line Sprints

Ladder Drills

Court Practice

Ball Toss X-Over

So, there you have it. I’ve just decided that once WE is done with school, we are going to move back to Provo, I’ll go to grad school at the Y and you guessed it – play racquetball again! There’s no age limit for competing at Nationals, you know. You just have to be a student.

Sounds like a plan stan.

I read this article in the nytimes and and can’t help but comment. For a few years now, I have lamented the fact that the average joe can’t seem to differentiate a great actress from her cleavage. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Scott about the talented Ms Streep. By far, she is my favorite actress of all time and I couldn’t have said it better than he did. Think about it, unlike many of the other idolized ‘actresses’ of our time that seem to play the same role over and over, she has nothing left to prove.

QOTW:

“But real movie stars know no such limitations of context. They belong to everyone. The genius of Julia Child was to demystify her art, to insist that anyone could cook the way she did, and Ms. Streep does something similar. Not that any of us could act with such consummate skill, resourcefulness and dignity. We can’t be Meryl Streep. And yet, whoever she is pretending to be at the moment, however she is, with sublime calculation and faultless craft, being herself, we can’t help but feel that she is one of us.”

I’m a 3/4 member of the CIA. I only have one more part to pass since I passed my third part yesterday! Whaahhoooo!

For my birthday, my grandma got me a Buddah Board. WE and I first saw one at the Japanese-American B&B we stayed at in Connecticut and I determined then that I wanted one for my own. I was fascinated by how perfectly this board portrays the concept of living in the moment. It ‘magically’ evaporates leaving a clean slate moments later to be lived again.

I also love the parallel idea that words of kindness like ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ have a ‘best if used by’ expiration date and last only for the moment. These are words that should consistently be shared and re-lived over and over and over again rather than assuming that your spouse will remember when you said that yesterday or last week or last year.

My college roomie just wrote a blog about her hubby’s juvenescence – it was exactly what I was thinking of when I consider the benefits of the zen concept.

If you are like me and wonder how to better live in the moment, here are a few ‘starters’ for the week (one for each day):

1. Take notice of the world around you

2. Focus on whatever it is you are doing

3. Smile when you wake up

4. Commit random, spontaneous acts of kindness

5. Minimize activities that dull your awareness of the moment

6. Be thankful for what is

7. Forgive

Well, last night for the first night ever in our 11 months of matrimony… (more…)

WE and I finished our vision board last weekend when we were snowed in with nothing else to do. It hangs in our bedroom so we can look at it everyday.

It’s simply a picture version of the “Stuff we want to do in 2010″

After a week of surprises and snow days, I just want to say here’s to My Valentine!

I love you way past the moon, WE!

I’ve been on hiatus from blogging for the winter But now that I’m back I want to hit you with a big one. As I like to put it, “Go big or go home!”

Over the past month, I’ve had something on my mind and I’m going to try and put it in words. I want to write about God as a Father. I haven’t written much about religion on my blog – not because it’s not important to me but it’s sometimes fairly difficult to verbalize – especially to the impersonal, faceless land of bloggerdom. But I’m going to try and if anyone reads this, I hope they have a chance to pause and consider their own understanding of God (existence, attributes, character, role, etc.) as I have had the chance to do the last few weeks.

This all started one morning when I was listening to NPR on the radio (as I often do) on my way to work. Only this time, I was struggling to see the road as my eyes welled up with water. I was listening to a detailed report about the death toll in Haiti and the destitute survivors left to fight for food and shelter. I heard about tens of thousands of bodies piled in the streets and chaos everywhere. I asked myself – where is God in all this?

That night, WE and I went on a date to the DSO. As if my morning wasn’t enough, we then experienced Franz Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4, otherwise known as “A Requiem for my Daughter.” Schmidt, a widower, wrote this haunting piece shortly after the death of his only daughter – who died unexpectedly giving birth to a grandchild. Almost as a metaphor for life, the piece starts how it ends with the mourning cry of the trumpet. In between, there’s 40 minutes of beautiful orchestra – nonetheless heavy, including a more upbeat funeral march in the middle.

I don’t necessarily blame anyone who may at some time wonder if there is a God. And if so, why so much pain and suffering? What could be so great about life for the innocent child who just lost his mother and father? Surely, if God exists, what I’m experiencing now must be punishment because an all-powerful Being could have stopped this from happening, right? And if God loved me, wouldn’t He have made some way to stop this?

Last Saturday, I attended a baptism of a 16-year-old girl I know. She had decided that she wanted to enter the waters of baptism and thus, be associated with the name of Christ promising to her unseen God a life different that the one she had lead up until then. I asked myself – what made her want such a drastic change and commitment? Could this be one of the most proud and happy moments a Father in Heaven could have for his trusting child? After the ceremony as the guests waited for her to finish changing into dry clothes, we listened to an audio clip about Jesus Christ. It covered the ministry, final week, and resurrection. I found online a portion of the clip that seemed to be etched in my mind as I listened:

In that most burdensome moment of all human history, with blood appearing at every pore and an anguished cry upon His lips, Christ sought Him whom He had always sought–His Father. “Abba,” He cried, “Papa,” or from the lips of a younger child, “Daddy.”

This is such a personal moment it almost seems a sacrilege to cite it. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night–together.

I  remember my mission president kneeling in prayer with me and offering up to God his desires in Bulgarian. President Johnson rarely used the formal word for Father – rather he preferred to say  ’татко’ – meaning ‘Papa’ especially mid-sentence when he seemed to be pleading more than just asking.

I came to the conclusion that some children trust their parents and some parents trust their children. This trust allows for the relationship to withstand it’s fair share – and it’s trust, or faith, or hope, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it that allows us to make it through the night together.