secrets...

sometimes i do things that make me feel accomplished. things such as going to the temple, painting my nails, thinking about cleaning my room and wearing my bands that fix my jaw/bite. but today i may have done something uber accomplishing. and this may be the secret i have been waiting to reveal...

i am going back to school!

i know. i swore i wouldn't go back, but thanks to the man upstairs for putting it in my patriarchal blessing and sisters who constantly nag on me... i am officially a uvu wolverine. as much as i had a love for byu and the people there... it is an event in the past that will never be revisited and for that, i am calm. it is by miracle that i am even going to school this upcoming fall semester. who would have thought all of the signs would come at once, two weeks before the deadline and i would have everything completed by the day before? not me! it almost didn't happen, but the lord does work in mysterious ways and by that i mean through little Ambry.

what will i be studying? good question! at byu i was in the Family Studies program and i loved it. of course i assumed it was only a degree offered at byu because... well its byu. fortunately i was wrong. they have a behavioral science degree with an emphasis on family studies at uvu. i told you. MIRACLES. i meet with my adviser next tuesday and i will then be all registered and ready to go.

things i have learned about this experience?

• don't ignore things in your patriarchal blessing
• put your big girl panties on and just do it
• don't be scared of student loans
• pray and go to the temple
• don't be dumb like me and get your education

to the max

The past two weeks I can honestly say have been the most stressful weeks of my life! So please excuse my broken out face, excessive eating and moody attitude... i just need a moment.

Thank you to the temple, prayer, my family and my Heavenly Father because I am finally finding clarity and direction. There are many changes going on with me and I am not ready to release them all but stay tuned... there could be big news!

As for my sweetheart, I still love him more than anything! We are happy and in love. And here comes the big BUT.... he is stressing me out just a little with all the wedding stuff. Don't get me wrong, I want to marry him more than anything, but I am learning that I just don't deal well with things that are rushed, and I don't see why we need to rush anything. Plus I can't handle the stress of planning a wedding right now, there are things I still need to figure out. I wrote him this week letting him know that we both need to still focus on ourselves individually and then we will work on us together when he gets home and just being happy and having fun as a pre-married couple :) It will all be good and the end goal is still being sealed in the temple, and it doesn't matter when that is!

Today I am going to let go of all the stress and just get my life back in order. Today, I am getting back to HAPPY!

life is hard.

please excuse me while i express my feelings for a moment.

at one point i knew exactly what i wanted and was sure that i was making the right decisions. and now, im back to being lost. i feel like every decision that ever felt right, now was the worst decision ever. this is why i hate making decisions, because right now i feel like i have messed up my life. i know that isn't true of course, but i think about all the decisions i have made and just feel so lost again. ugh. 

i know what the Lord is doing. he is teaching me a lesson and telling me that i can't tell him how my life is going to go. only he can do that. and being a control freak does not help! 

there is only one decision that i am absolutely certain about at this point and that is Cameron. I have absolutely no doubts about him and us. 

everything else though... Heavenly Father help me :(

mrs. deeds

President David O. McKay made this statement: “Man’s greatest happiness comes from losing himself for the good of others.”

And President Thomas S. Monson said, "My brothers and sisters, we are surrounded by those in need of our attention, our encouragement, our support, our comfort, our kindness—be they family members, friends, acquaintances, or strangers. We are the Lord’s hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift His children. He is dependent upon each of us."

I honestly believe that you cannot be truly happy unless you are serving others! Today, that is my goal. Today is going to be a really good day! And what a better way to start it off than with some Daylight Dounuts? :)

sometimes the lights go out at the temple

yesterday i went to the temple by myself and learned a lot of things by pure observation. i've always seen the temple as a perfect place, where everything is perfect in there, everyone is quiet and so organized. yesterday... not so much. as I am getting changed, two girls come in just giggling their little hearts away and being super loud. it made me wonder if they didn't know they were supposed to be quiet in the temple. that led to so many people at the temple being pretty noisy and the temple workers being pretty unorganized and things just not going as perfectly as i wanted them to be. i almost wondered how it was that the temple workers were allowing all of this and if we were being disrespectful to the Lord. but as i sat down in the room where we did the confirmations things changed. everyone was quiet, our little temple worker man was seriously the cutest thing in the entire world and would just get himself all confused. during the middle of one confirmation the lights went out, the ordinance was completed and the lights went back on. one kid had accidently hit the light with his head. we all had a good laugh. it was then that i realized that we are all still humans who aren't perfect. we  get confused, make mistakes and enjoy being in one another's company. we aren't expected to be perfect, even in the temple, but there are things that are perfect. such as the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the ordinances performed in the temple. while waiting, Brother Patterson said something that really stood out to me, he said "your life may not change after you leave the temple tonight, you will probably go back to your regular life, but those whose work you are doing tonight, their lives will forever be changed. this is a big day for them" i will always remember that each time i go to the temple and that no one is perfect and that it doesn't matter if you don't say a word, or if you have a good little talk with a friend, maybe even hit the lights, you are in the temple as a worthy son or daughter of our Heavenly Father and you are saving lives!

complete

my heart is full today. 

mckenzie did an amazing job on her farewell talk. she is going to be an amazing missionary! i love her so much and i was definitely touched by the song that was sang by her and noteworthy. beautiful.

i got to go over and see cam's sd card today. he is amazing and simply completes me. i am scatter brained and he gives me structure. i have anxiety and he calms me. i get upset and he makes me the happiest woman in the world. he is my better half.

i read our patriarchal blessings one right after the other today and its amazing the blessings that are promised in both blessings. his is simply amazing and i am so blessed to be able to read it and see these promises come true. mine is perfect for me. cam's is pretty complex, then there is mine, simple and straight forward. i wouldn't want it any other way! 

there is one part i am thinking about. it talks about how i am blessed with a talent of writing and to write down all of my experiences. i have off and on written in a journal, but i wanted to share everything i wrote in there. hence, my blog. i know that some of the things i write in here are very personal and maybe not what a normal person would write for the public to see, but i am an open book and probably will end up just telling you about what i wrote in my journal anyways so i might as well just put it here. i hope ya'll don't mind. 

the lord loves me. life is wonderful. my family is amazing. my sweetheart is coming home soon.

and i am happy :)

temple :)

i have no idea why it took me so long to get my butt back to the temple! But I am sure glad I did!

what an amazing place that the Lord has given us. the trials i went through and experiences i had in the process of getting my recommend was all worth just this one visit. my heart is definitely full!

i have started the countdown. 191 days till I go through the temple and 196 days before I am sealed to the love of my life!! :) I seriously just can't wait to go through!

Church lovin days :)

Sometimes I just have a really good church day. Today was one of them :) not only was I able to go to ward council, listen to amazing talks, get caught up in paying my tithing, finally understand the allegory of the olive tree and have a great talk with bishop, but I also finally got my recommend renewed!! :) temple here I come!!

my immortal best friend.

just when you think no one understands or could possibly know what you are going through, the Savior always steps in. It is so comforting to know that he does care and understands and that he shows us exactly what we need to do and gives us the courage to do it.

things are definitely looking up in my life right now. im just happy and i couldn't have made it here without the Lord, my sweetheart and my wonderful family. life gets hard and satan is working overtime, but God is winning and will be winning forever. :)

its been a great day :) goodnight everyone, i'll tell you about it in the morning! read your scriptures, say your prayers and sweet dreams!

Miss Kylie

I am so blessed to be the visiting teacher of one of the most angelic and sweet girls on this earth. Her name is Kylie and anyone who knows her absolutely loves her! She just has a spirit about her that is admirable to everyone. She loves with an infinite love and her smile will brighten your day. She is slightly handicaped, although I am not exactly sure what she has. She is high functioning though and has no problem with communicating.

Last night she called me asking what we were doing for FHE, because she wasn't able to make it to church. I let her know we were having a dance and she got so excited! I picked her up and she was dancing before she even got out of the car. She was loving every moment of the dance and everyone included her. People are so amazing! I caught her dancing with a boy and when I finally brought it up to her she got all giddy and giggly... it was the cutest thing! She giggled all the way home as I kept telling her how cute he was :) She wore herself right out but had such a good time. I could not be more grateful that I have the opportunity to be the visiting teacher of such a special daughter of our Heavenly Father! I truly love that girl and she is my biggest example of what true happiness is.

the church is true.

today i asked Heavenly Father to spiritually punch someone in the face.

.... it was almost as if he looked at me with a little smirk and said, "my pleasure."
And that is how wonderful my day at church was :)

blessings

the Lord teaches you so much about how to live your life to be the happiest you can be through the spirit and its amazing how different accepting and believing what you are taught is compared to being tested on what you learned. I truly believe that He doesn't want to give us trials and tests that make us sad and uncomfortable sometimes but it the only way we can truly grow and learn the real lesson we need to. there is opposition in all things, therefore to know true happiness, you may have to know sadness. I cannot express enough how blessed I am for the trials in my life and the lessons I have learned. It seems like the closer it gets to Cameron coming home, the more I am being tested and tried, but I know he is preparing me for the amazing blessings that are to come. I love him with all my heart!

Not only is my Savior right there by my side guiding and directing me, but so is my sweet Cameron. He is the most amazing man I have ever met. Yes, he may be on a mission and is spiritual mode all of the time to the max, but how intune to the spirit he is inspires me. He always knows what to say that goes along with what I am going through and is always there to be my strength. I am so blessed to have him by my side for eternity. He encouraged me today to get out my patriarchal blessing and to read all of the amazing things I have going on and have to look forward to. So here it sits, right next to me.

I want to just testify of the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is real and I KNOW that Christ suffered and died for me, that when I take the wrong path, he will guide me back and bring me to peace. He wants me to be happy and I can't even imagine the love he has for me that he would bleed from every pore to feel exactly how I am feeling. It is comforting to know that I can talk to him because he knows what I am going through. The amazing thing is that the Atonement is for everyone and can bring happiness to everyone, if you really try and change to be better. I want to be better and will strive to be better every single day. Each day is a new day to start out fresh and be better than the day before. So I am grateful for tomorrow and the lessons I will learn!

conference weekend

i love conference. it is such a wonderful time to refocus and get back on the right track.

it also makes me think about my cam and it just another confirming witness to me that he is the man i will spend the rest of my life with. he knows it too, don't worry.

you know what else is the best? letters after general conference. they are so spiritual and each time we have ended up saying almost the exact same things that we liked and felt. so amazing. confirmations like i told you.

tomorrow i get to go up for the morning session and i couldn't be more excited! cam will love hearing about it. and i will for sure let you all know how it goes!

i hope you all are enjoying this wonderful weekend! :)

lessons that you learn in life

it's not that i don't enjoy blogging anymore, because i could never stop loving it, but i have had way too much on my mind the past few weeks to both gather my thoughts and refrain from saying things i may regret. lets be honest, i was not a happy sky the past almost two months and its been very difficult. but the lord definitely works in mysterious ways and this time he had to bring me at an all time low to really learn some life changing lessons. i learned a lot today.

i know that he sent me to my family for a reason, because he knew what i would be facing in this stage of my life. he gave me them for examples and guidance throughout the hardest, yet best years of my life. and the one saving angel he gave me, my mommy. she is undeniably incredible. she sees the bigger pictures when i know i don't at all. she loves me although i make mistakes and she is there with such a pure love. no other woman could have taught me better than her, because she gets it. she knows the realities of life and she is so close to our heavenly father that she knows what will help us best enjoy life and get back to live with him. today i was able to talk with her and figure out what really makes me happy in life and how i am going to really have the best life. she is amazing.

god loves us. he always has and always will no matter how hard we try to push him away or simply ignore him for a while, he welcomes us back with open arms. its hard to think that there were times when i forgot he was even there. but i know he understands and will bring us down, so that he can lift us higher. he loves us with an infinite love. and i love him.

i saw this quote today that summed my entire morning up. "challenges are events in life, not life itself." i used to think that way. but after much conversation with my amazing mom and the dad upstairs, life is good and is going to get so much better :)

Heavenly Father loves me.

I left work five minutes early because I had to go grocery shopping and get dinner ready for when Tazz gets home from the Temple. I hit the freeway and was on my way home pretty fast because there wasn't too much traffic. I usually take the PG exit but for some reason I didn't get over to the lane to exit. I could have but didn't so I missed it. I would just get off the Lindon exit now. Once I passed the PG exit the traffic slowed way down. I saw the police cars race past and thought I would be stuck forever. It moved slowly, but kept moving. I finally got to the exit, after really only about three minutes, where there was no crash, nothing holding up traffic and it was now moving smoothly. Dumb. So I get off the exit and it is heavy traffic on the streets so it still takes me a while to get through. I could have taken a back road that would have been faster, but I decided not to and made it up to the intersection by Albertsons. I turned onto State Street and then made it home. Gosh that took forever. I went inside and grabbed some money, checked the mail and headed back to state street to go to Albertsons. I reached the intersection by Kneaders and noticed the police men directing traffic. I looked towards Albertsons and there had to be about 6 Ambulances, firetrucks and a billion police cars. They were shutting down half of state street too. It looked bad but I really couldn't see all that was happening....

Thats when it hit me. If I had taken the PG exit or the back roads, possibly just used my card instead of getting money, or even not checked the mail, I would have been right in the middle of what had happened. I missed it by a matter of minutes. The Lord is really looking out for me and my family. It was even better that I knew my parents were safe, Tazz was safe at the Temple and non of my loved ones would have been in the area.

That moment when you could have gotten off the correct exit but didn't because you had a simple thought not to.... that is feeling the spirit.

life's long day

you know, at the end of the day family is all that really matters in this world. those you love and love you back unconditionally. i happened to be overly blessed with a family who is strong in the gospel and all gets along for the most part better than any family i know. we forgive, forget and love. we may be kind of dysfunctional at times, but we are pretty above normal when it comes to the world we live in. my parents were the best teachers and parents to raise us in love and righteousness and really we owe everything thing we have to them. what amazing examples! my family is absolutely everything to me. i was also blessed with a family that is not blood but is just as much family to me as those i was raised with. i feel so loved by all around me and so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. im not saying that we are all perfect. we fight, get sick of each other and sometimes can be quite mean to one another, but the love overcomes the struggles and i am so happy to be a part of such a beautiful thing. i am so blessed with the knowledge i have of eternal families and the sealing ordinance. what peace it brings when loved ones pass on. also knowing that i will be with the one i love and all of our family for eternity, what could possibly be better than that? absolutely nothing!

Scriptures

I sure love my scriptures :) This is what I do all day now!

Prayers

Tonight I got a text from one of my dear friends from Edinburg, TX that two missionaries had been killed and one in critical condition. My heart immediately dropped. They were hit and ran over by a car, whose driver fled the scene. This happened in Donna, TX which calmed my heart a little bit, knowing Cameron was not involved, but this is still so so sad! I called Cole, Cameron's companion that just came home, and he called Cameron. They didn't even know about it yet. It was no one that Cole knew and I don't think Cam knew them either but it is still so sad!

So here is my plea.... Please Please Please pray for the missionaries! I don't care what religion you are or what you believe, we have loved ones out there who need as many prayers as they can get so we can get them back safely!! I love my missionary with all my heart and I can't even begin to imagine what the families of these two missionaries are going through... So please! Always keep them in your prayers!!

Please also pray for Elder Walker and Elder Strong's families during this hard time! They need all the comfort they can get! And pray for Elder Harris to get better!

To read more about this click here.

Following the Spirit

Today in Relief Society we talked about the spirit of revelation and listening to the spirit. In that lesson I was reminded of a precious experience I had a girls camp one year that still has an impact on my life.

We were doing a trust/holy ghost walk in the mountains. The leaders had tied a string trail throughout the forest and blindfolded each of us girls, taking us one by one through the obstacle course. We had one voice that was the holy ghost and many others that were trying to distract us and lead us in the wrong direction. It was very hard at first knowing who to trust and some times it even took me being led the wrong way to know who the true "Holy Ghost" was and what I needed to be listening for. Once I knew the voice it got a little bit easier, but was still difficult. The trail seemed like it lasted forever until I heard my dad's voice "You are at the end now, you can take off your blindfold." I remember asking if it really was the end or if I was being tricked again. Then he said something I will never ever forget and will stay with me all of my life, "Skyler, you know who I am, you know my voice and you know you can trust me, you have reached the end and you can take off your blindfold." As I took off my blindfold I got the biggest hug from my loving daddy who was so happy to see me at the end of the trail. This experience still brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it.

The older I get, the more I see how much this is exactly how my life is and how the spirit works. At first it is hard to recognize the spirit and you are led astray a few times, but the spirit never gives up on you and will try over and over again to get your back on the right path. It will never leave you. Soon, as you recognize what the spirit is and how you know it is the spirit, it gets easier to hear and follow. You still stumble along the way, but you keep enduring the long journey. Then at the end your father in heaven is there with open arms ready to greet you! And although you never heard his voice during the journey, we know his voice and know him as our daddy from the premortal existence. I can only imagine what that reunion will be like, but for now I will live my life in a way that will help me make it back to him again. Listening to the spirit and personal revelation is key to our salvation and growing spiritually, closer to our Savior and Heavenly Father. I am so grateful for the knowledge I have of God's love for me and the help he gives me each day to return back to him and live in happiness for eternity. I love my Savior and I love my Heavenly Father and am so blessed to be a part of this beautiful gospel!

The Lost Purse

This really made me think about what I am carrying around and what others can tell about me just from looking in my purse or really, just at me. Such inspiring words from our church leaders.

https://lds.org/youth/video/the-lost-purse?lang=eng