I woke up early to go have my fiance snap a million pictures in front of all my favorite buildings and in all my favorite places. I’m an incredibly nostalgic person, so this was an extra important day. I had so many days and weeks and months of memories all built up to think about and reflect on.

I had a plan. I had started my new full-time job a few weeks earlier, just being trained until I was done with school. I was getting married in a month, and everything was going according to my schedule and timetable.

I rambled aimlessly around the campus after we’d gotten all the pictures, trying to feel like something big and life-changing was ahead. I didn’t need to try as hard as I did, but it feel nice to be a bit dramatic. I swear there were songs ringing through my head about graduation and moving forward. That’s just who I am 99% of the time.

When my parents arrived, we all met at the building where the commencement would happen. I joined my friends backstage. We snapped photos and talked about how crazy it was that we were graduating, nervously laughing and talking too loudly.

We walked to the stage and listened to speakers, who I didn’t pay attention to or recognize at all. There had been another event the previous night with a more well-known speaker for all the students, but I had just wanted to do the walk, get my diploma, and not spend any more time in long, boring events. Classy, huh?

The lights were bright but I could still identify my fiance in the crowd, sitting with my parents and beaming. It was because he was proud of me, but I joked in my head that maybe he was so happy because now he had a “sugar-mama” to get him through college.

The walk across the stage was short. I was wearing heels, but I’d mastered the art of walking in heels in the 7th grade, so I had nothing to worry about. When you’re just over 5 feet tall, you get used to wearing tall shoes early in life, because you’re always fighting to be recognized and seen.

I reminded myself to smile and glance into the audience when my name was called, I shook hands with some of my favorite professors and with some that I had never met, and then it was over.

But that walk changed everything.

Graduating from college is a huge step. It’s the end of something so incredibly significant, it’s an achievement that is insanely valuable and can only help you get where you want to go.

That walk was the end of my life as I knew it.

It was maybe 30 steps.

They were all more impactful on who I was going to become than I could have ever guessed.

That walk was the beginning of a new me, a new purpose, new types of learning.

2 years has shifted my perspective on so many things, but probably more than anything, it’s shifted what I believe about myself and what I’m capable of.

I wish I could go up to that girl who walked across the stage 2 years ago and tell her she’s about to gain confidence she didn’t realize she was missing, that she’s going to let go of caring so much what other people think, she’s going to lose friends and learn how to be OK with that, she’s going to have her plans and timetables and schedules all ruined and not have any idea what’s next, that she’s going to learn how strong she really is, and that she is about to realize who she really wants to be.

There were flowers and more pictures after The Walk. There was dinner at a fancy restaurant and more nostalgia and relief and sleeping in the next morning.

I will forever be grateful for what that walk signified, the days and months and years of hard work and exhaustion, laughter and learning.

It was maybe 30 steps.

And that walk means everything to me.

I’ve spent some time lately thinking about Mary Magdalene.

Each of my siblings and I have a name that is *somewhat* tied to someone in the scriptures. My brother Benson is Ben, like Benjamin. My sister is Olivia like the olive branch. Bethany is Bethany the town, and my name Madeleine is close to Magdalene.

So Mary Magdalene has always been someone I have thought about, looked up to, and been interested in.

My favorite thing about Mary Magdalene is when she came to the empty tomb of Christ. She couldn’t find the body of the Lord, and she wept. He wasn’t alive as far as she knew, yet she wept.

I want to weep when I’m at a party, and can’t feel the Spirit of Christ there.

I want to weep in prayer as I’m searching for Him in the scriptures and in prayer.

I want to weep at any moment when I can’t find Him. And always be searching for Him.

Later, she supposes the gardener is talking to her. But once Christ says her name, she instantly knows it is Him.

He has said my name so many times. I want to always be able to recognize when it is Him calling me. Not wonder, not be unsure, but know without a doubt that that is Christ calling my name.

I think how beautiful it would feel to hear the Savior say my name.

He has, He does. I want to recognize it more quickly, more sincerely.

I want to be more like Mary Magdalene.

Easter is the most beautiful time for thinking, remembering, and growing closer to Christ.

Easter was absolutely wonderful! We drove up to Kaysville on Saturday to attend a funeral for our good friend’s step-father, which was so sad and hard. But also it was wonderful to be reminded on Easter weekend that death is not the end. How beautiful!

We spent the day playing frisbee and basketball, going shopping, and coloring Easter eggs! Randy was SO excited about his Toy Story Alien Easter egg, I have to say I was incredibly impressed. My eggs turned out interesting, but pretty just the same!!

Easter morning we had a great egg hunt, the candy exchange, and got some AMAZING Stadium of Fire tickets from the Easter bunny! We are super lucky!

We went to church, had great lessons and learning about the Atonement, ate an AMAZING meal, played more games, and then headed off to Randy’s parents or another amazing meal, more games and more fun!

We are so lucky to have amazing family and that we got the chance to have a great Easter celebration!

So, we drove home from Disneyland on Saturday, and then Sunday at 6:50 AM I got to the airport to head off to New York.

I went for work and it was SO insanely hard to be away from Randy. To be honest, we both absolutely hated it. But it was still really cool to be in New York and my company had a great event, so it was all OK in the end!

The flight to New York was uneventful, it was cool to come in over the city and see everything. I landed and grabbed a taxi, and then spent an hour and a half in traffic trying to get to Manhattan. When I finally got to the hotel, I was already late to the first event! So I just threw my stuff upstairs and dashed around the street to Grand Central Station, where we had our opening reception.

Grand Central Station was BEAUTIFUL and it was so awesome to see all the people and be in the middle of things.

Our opening reception went well, I helped clean up and then dashed downstairs for a Magnolia cupcake which was TO DIE FOR. I was utterly exhausted so I just went right to bed.

Monday started early and was an entire day full of the conference my company was putting on. I did interviews, checked in guests, met with the Keynote speaker, worked with vendors on their workshops, and barely had time to eat the whole day!

After our closing reception in the lobby of the hotel, I figured I had to get out and see the city before I left the next morning.

I walked a few blocks up to Times Square and was in awe of everything! It was so amazing and I had the best time strolling the city.

I grabbed some soup for dinner from the Yankee’s Official soup restaurant, and was so tired I fell asleep!

Tuesday again was early morning meetings, and then it was time to go!

My time in New York was quick, but I was SO happy to get home and be with Randy again! Boy, that husband of mine is fantastic. It’s nice to have someone to miss.

Hopefully Randy and I can both get back to New York sometime, I’m crossing my fingers!

After Conference weekend, Randy and I had a two day week!

On Wednesday, we hopped on a plane to LA! We had some Starbucks, a great flight, got on a shuttle with a bunch of crazy characters including a 72 year old Canadian who looked like he was 50, a driver who wasn’t afraid of riding tails, and a man who would not stop coughing.

We got to Anaheim and went to dinner with my family, who had already been there for a few days!

We crashed, and woke up early to go to DISNEYLAND!

My parents have a little tradition of going to Disneyland with the family during each kids junior year. Since my sister is the youngest and didn’t have the rest of the siblings to go with her, Randy and I figured out a way that we could go with her and my parents!

We hit all our favorite rides on day 1, Space Mountain, Indiana Jones, Buzz Blasters, Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, and more! We ate lunch at Randy’s favorite place, Rancho del Zocala, enjoyed some Disney churros and Dole whips, and just had a blast. We finished out the night with a turkey leg, a parade, hot cocoa, the fireworks show, and I may have gotten so excited on the Carousel that I ripped my pants and had to go buy some Disney sweats. So embarrassing.

The next day was another early morning in California Adventure where we went to Radiator Springs, Toy Story Mania, the new Soarin’ Around The World, and all of our other favorites. We enjoyed the bakery tour and some Ghirardelli ice cream for a late breakfast. We then headed back to Disney to catch the few rides we hadn’t gotten to the day before, like Peter Pan and Splash Mountain (which left us soaked!) We ran back and forth between parks for the rest of the day, eating clam chowder, corn dogs, spying characters and seeing half of parades here and there.

We had such a blast taking pictures and laughing, telling stories and talking about our lives.

Saturday we spent the day driving home with the family, listening to music and having a blast talking and joking around!

We had a fantastic vacation and it’s all thanks to my awesome parents and sister!! They made the trip possible and helped us have a great time.

Normally I post some of my favorite quotes from conference here, but then I found THIS LINK that has a powerful quote from every single talk!

JACKPOT.

So I’m sharing that link so you can go check it out, in case you missed conference.

We had a fantastic weekend hanging out with family and feeling the love. Conference was simply amazing and it always is so inspiring and rejuvenating for my soul! I went to conference with a specific question…and BOOM the first THREE talks seemed like they were just for me!

There were lots of talks on being kind and loving, trusting and having faith, strengthening and keeping your testimony, and working to be better.

God is good, life is good!

I was scrolling through Facebook when something popped up in my feed. It was an article about Mike Pence, and how he doesn’t have dinner with people of the opposite gender alone. I thought instantly “Wow, good for him!” I clicked to read the article, and was shocked about how many people were disgusted and said it was “sexist” for Pence to have that rule in his marriage.

So I’ve compiled a couple thoughts.

1. It’s not really any of our business. Pence and his wife have the right to make absolutely whatever rules and boundaries they want to in their marriage. Randy and I have boundaries in our marriage that other people may not get or agree with. And that’s totally fine. If both husband and wife agree, really nobody else gets to have a say in it.

2. Randy and I actually hold that same rule. I don’t have dinner with someone of the opposite gender alone, and neither does Randy. We try to avoid riding in the car with someone of the opposite gender alone. It’s something that we discussed when we got married and I was in the professional world. It’s something that’s important to use, and for our lifestyle. You don’t agree or don’t like that? Good for you, you can have whatever rules or boundaries you’d like in your marriage and relationships as well!

3. Not everything is about sex. It’s not about that at all, probably not for the Pence family and not for Randy and I. I’m not concerned that having dinner alone with a woman would cause them to immediately need to kiss each other. It’s about the appearance, the boundary for our marriage, the things that are valuable for us and how we live our lives.

4. You need to respect marriages. We have this thing in the world today where we think we don’t need to respect each other’s marriages. Whether that’s some girl in Randy’s class that found out he was married and said “that’s too bad…”, or someone encouraging a married friend to lie to their spouse about anything, or someone saying that boundaries and rules that a couple has made are incorrect. I hope that you haven’t decided to have things certain ways in your marriage, only to see people come up and tell you how wrong it is. I’m certain that Mike Pence finds ways to be professional and have professional meetings in ways that work with the boundaries he and his wife have set. Now we need to respect those boundaries, and their marriage.

5. If you don’t think that inter-office affairs do happen, you’re wrong. They happen all the time. Now, am I saying that having dinner alone with a co-worker automatically leads to an affair? Of course not. But for my marriage, why would we even put ourselves anywhere near that situation? We just have decided not to even go there. Regardless of the fact that I know Randy and he knows me, and we know we wouldn’t ever do that.

6. Mike Pence still hires women. I work in an industry that’s mostly dominated by men. And I don’t ever wish that a woman vs. a man is hired or anything like that, just because I won’t go to lunch or dinner alone with them. I get along really well with most of the men I work with. The fact that I’m not going to go to lunch alone with them doesn’t change that. What it does do is give me a personal boundary, that’s been extremely easy to keep. Sure, sometimes I excuse myself or invite another colleague, but in all honesty it’s not difficult.

The bottom line here, is that someone in their personal life has established a boundary for their marriage. We don’t know why, and to be frank we should all butt out. It doesn’t matter. Is he still getting his job done? It appears so. And if nothing else, I certainly have so much more respect for him now than ever before.

So if you view a man and his wife determining something together, and him sticking to that, sexist…I guess I’m entirely wrong about what that word means.

Ok friends, I’m going off on a new limb that I haven’t really done a lot of. And I’m pretty nervous about it, but here we go!

I would consider myself insanely fashionable by any means, but Randy is always SUPER fashionable and I’m pretty happy with the outfits I do manage to put together.

I love seeing fashion bloggers and makeup YouTubers, but I can never afford all the decorations, clothes, and makeup they have. SO I’ve decided to go into a little bit of a budget version of all these things. We’ll see if it works, but I think it’ll be great!

Now I’m not some teeny, tiny perfect haired person. We don’t have all the money in the world. So maybe us doing fashion ideas isn’t a good idea. BUT I do think there’s value in showing that real people can still get cute clothes, and be happy with how they look!

So today, we have Randy and I’s outfits:

Who remembers this YouTube video series? Great, hilarious stuff from my high school years.

But lately, the words “look at your life, look at your choices” has been running through my head.

I decided to take a look at my life, and take a look at my choices.

Most of them, I’m happy with. But I saw a few things about my attitude, my faith, my dedication to relationships, and I saw the things I wanted to change and improve. I wanted to be a happy person, even in the messiness and complications of life. I wanted to trust God and move forward with things even when I’m scared. I wanted to put time and effort into important relationships, let other ones go. I wanted to make better use of my time, find hobbies, and grow as a person.

It’s one thing to post on social media one day that you have seen the light, that you want to clean up and change your life. It’s a totally different thing to actually change. To start making different choices, rather than just posting about the “new you.”

We all make stupid decisions. We all see the ways to improve and be better.

But we can’t complain about the hard things that we’re dealing with, when they’re directly a result of our choices. Sometimes things happen that we have absolutely no control over. People have family issues, mental or physical health issues, financial situations, struggles with relationships, etc. These are all valid, and are things we have to figure out how to cope with. A lot of the time, however, we make decisions that lead us to be unhappy. We decide to get in with the wrong crowd, date the wrong person, make wrong choices, be lazy, ignore the support or help from other people.

We decide we know best, or that this is just who we are, nothing will change it.

That’s all a lie.

I know the feeling of losing control. Of wondering if you are in the driver’s seat and if you really are the one making decisions. I know the feeling of running on auto pilot and wondering if you can ever snap out of that.

And oh my friends, you can. Look at your life. Look at your choices.

See what choices work and which ones don’t. Which choices are leading you to be a better person, and which ones aren’t.

There’s no reason to despair or think you can’t change who you are. There’s no reason to think you’re a bad person.

People are good.

And when we look at our lives and our choices, we can see the good and the not so good. And then we can work hard to be the best.