I can't believe April is just about over ... only four more hours.

I am way over due on the fill you in on what is happening in my life type of blog, so here goes. My life is mostly consumed with work. I am still at the Bank and have been mostly enjoying my job. Some days (such as today) are more stressfull than others, but I feel like I am constantly learning new things and becoming better at what I do. One of the things I love the most about my job is that it is in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City. I spent my lunch hour on Thursday walking around Temple Square taking pictures of the flowers. It was beautiful!

I have really been enjoying the warm weather. This past winter has been pretty tough on my body. I have been fighting colds and most recently a case of bronchial spasm which is similar to asthma. I have to use an inhaler which helps me breath better.

This past term I have been taking an institute class at the University of Utah. My teacher was S. Michael Wilcox and his lessons were amazing. The class ended last week and I can already tell how much I am going to miss going and being enlightened.

I guess the most exciting thing to happen recently was that I made contact with my father for the first time in my life about two and a half weeks ago. We have been talking via e-mail, and trying to get to know each other better. This experience has been some what overwhelming but I feel truly blessed to be given this opportunity.

That is my life in a nutshell. I am looking forward to May as I feel it is going to be a great month full of many more blessings.

Today in my ward my mission president and his wife spoke in our student ward. I was happy to see them, but I felt as if they were speaking directly to me as they shared their lesson. Something Sister Walker said really stuck with me. "You have the ability to be anything you want to, if you are willing to pay the price."

In one month I will be turning thirty years old. The idea absolutely terrifies me. I have never dreaded a birthday, to me getting older is part of what life is all about, yet this year something is different. I can't entirely put my finger on it, but something is there taunting me. I have figured out that part of it is that I feel as if I have let the past thirty years go by and not done so many things I wished I could have done. Yet if I am really thinking about it I could ask myself, "What are you doing about it?"

Tonight I attended the Days of 47 Pageant to support a good friend of mine. The theme of this years pageant was Pioneer Courage -- A Beacon to the World. This got me really thinking about pioneers. Then on the way home I was listening to my Ipod when the song "One Good Woman" by Cherie Call came on and my mind really started to think on the words.

... in a hundred years from now
Will there ever be someone who reads my name and wonders
If I laughed, or if I believed in Jesus,
Or if my heart were ever broken
They may never understand
What I go through
But I will live
The best that I know how
For one big lifetime
It's not too much to ask
Of one good woman

I am blessed to be surrounded by not just one good woman but by many. There are many pioneers in my life. Starting with Stephanie who is only 19 years old but is wise beyond her years. She is a pioneer to the many people she is in contact with each day. She teaches me about courage and being the very best you can be to achieve the goals and dreams in your life. She is one good woman.

Then there is her amazing mother Sally. She is a pioneer to the family she has raised. She is a woman of faith and integrity who motivates and encourages. She is strong and passionate. She helps her family to be the very best they can be not only teaching them to excel in the various fields they study and work in but also in the gospel. She is one good woman.

Betsy is a great example to me of faith and integrity. I enjoy discussing the gospel with her and watching her teach her children about our Savior and His gospel. I have watched her endure the hardest thing any parent could be asked to endure and watched her draw closer to the lord through that trial. She is one good woman.

There is one woman who is my pioneer, my strength, my example. My mother is a woman who has sacraficed much to give me the life that I have. She has been the one constant in my life. She taught me to be the best I can be amongst the trials in your life. She taught me to be stronger and to want to be better. She has taught me to develop the talents that I have been given and to share them with those I come in contact with. She is one good woman.

I may never know all that these women do and all that they go through, but they have taught me to be the best that I can be with the lifetime I have been given. And I hope that through their examples I can be one good woman too.

This morning a friend and I were talking. She made the comment that she didn't believe in accidents or coincidences. She believes that everything in our lives is carefully planned out. I believe this. I believe that there is someone that loves us so much that He has carefully planned out every piece of our lives. He knows us as only a parent can and plans out the path that our lives will take based on that knowledge.

I have the blessing of being taught by S. Michael Wilcox once a week at my institute class. I listened to his talk The Fourth Watch on my ipod on my way in to work. He mentions in his talk about the desired good verses the needed good. Often times through out my life I have desired for things and prayed fervently for them with what I thought was no response. At the end of this week I received the answer to a prayer that I have held in my heart for many years. And as I have pondered this answer I have realized just how involved in my life my Father in Heaven has been. He knows when the right time and the right place is. He knows what we need better than we do. We just have to remember to turn our lives over to Him and have the faith that He will provide for us in the way that is truly best for us. I am so grateful to Him and for the guidance and direction He has in my life.

What is friendship? Why is friendship such an important part of life? What kind of people are a part of your life? What kind of a friend are you to others? Which friendships mean the most?

These are things I have been seriously thinking about lately. I have been trying to figure out why friendship is such an important part of my life. Trying to decide what kind of a friend I am and in which ways can I be a better one? I decided to get some of my friends thoughts on this subject. Here are somethings they shared with me and my thoughts about them.

I think friendship is a relationship you have with someone, either male or female, who you can talk about anything with and have them be totally honest about everything. They don't care what you look like, how much money you have, or anything else.
Friendship has no boundaries or prejudice.

Friendship to me, is someone who loves you unconditionally, someone you can cry with, laugh with, and just be yourself with. No matter how much time passes between friends, when you do get together, it is like no time has passed at all. You just pick up where you left off.
Friendship is constant. Friendship keeps going even when you are busy, even when you are struggling, friendship is there.

I have 3 kinds of friends. One are friends that I know well and love. I hang out with them often (meaning anywhere from every week to once a month) and know I can count on them for laughs, love and support. I don't have to worry about them judging me. These are true friends.

I think friendship is a warm fuzzy feeling that you need to survive. To know that someone will always be there when you need them for whatever reason, to comfort, cheer and love you no matter how big a dork you are.
Friendship is unconditional. A friend loves you for you.

Friendship is ... being able to cry on someone else's pillow, making each other laugh, knowing which buttons to push and when not to push them, eating ice cream at midnight, giving and listening to advice, a gift on your windshield, a simple text message to say hi, a note in the mail, encouragement to live your dreams, quoting movies, understanding that sometimes people just need to be alone, birthday reminders, inside jokes, sharing the good things you've found, asking the right questions at the right time , helping someone move, prayers unheard but spoken, and so much more.
Friendship is sharing life and growing together. It is the little things that matter. It is caring and giving and laughing.

Friendship to me is about loving someone no matter what. It is forgiving the imperfections of the other. It is about laughing at dumb jokes. It is about holding them and letting them cry when they are hurting. It is about a phone call to say "I am thinking about you." It is about growing. Friendship is honesty. Friendship is life. It is about sharing your life with another person and giving of yourself. It is about walking the road of life and knowing that someone else is going to be there for you.

After a lot of time and effort the gallery is finally completely uploaded. All 14,000 images have been moved. While going through the pictures I was amazed to see how much I have changed the past few years and the more I thought about it the more I decided to do a comparison as to how I have changed physically over the past 10 years. I know I had changed internally ... let's see how the outside reflected that.

There are three things in life that mean more than anything to me.

1. The Gospel
2. My Mom
3. My Friends

I was reminded of that today.

The first time I met Mike was about two weeks after I had started my job at East High School. I had climbed up on top of my counter trying to reach a binder that was on the top shelf. Mike stepped in and joking said, "You are climbing the walls already?" From that moment on I felt a closeness to this amazing man. Mike was one of the most uplifting individuals that I encountered in my daily activities at EHS. He often would appear in my office at the end of the day to talk and share his feelings, experiences with treatments, and discuss how his soccer kids were doing. I always looked forward to these visits as this was a man who truly cared about others and their well-being. He truly believed in his students and athletes and was always there to encourage and motivate. He had a way of seeing in others what they may not have seen in themselves. He always looked on the bright side of life and rarely complained about the pains associated with his illness. My life is better because of my association with this great man. I will miss him.

Articles:
Obituary - Michael Scott Kernodle
Deseret News - East soccer coach Kernodle passes away
KSL.com - East High Mourns Tragic Loss of Student and Teacher
Deseret News- School reeling over 2 deaths

Turnin’ on my son’s Scooby-doo nightlight.
He crawled out of bed and he got down on his knees.
He closed his little eyes, folded his little hands
Spoke to God like he was talkin’ to a friend.
And I said, “Son, now where’d you learn to pray like that?”

He said, I’ve been watching you, dad ain’t that cool?
I’m your buckaroo; I want to be like you.
And eat all my food and grow as tall as you are.
We like fixin’ things and holding moma’s hand
Yeah, we’re just alike, hey, ain’t we dad.
I want to do everything you do; so I’ve been watching you.

They say that the greatest compliment in the world is imitation. This is extremely true in a child. They watch everything you do and want to be just like the people they admire and try everything to be that person. Tonight my institute teacher told us how his youngest son came into the room one night while he was preparing a lesson. He had his scriptures out and was marking the passages in blue and red. He then would make comments in the margins. He noticed his son leave the room and come back with his copy of the Book of Mormon. The son spread himself out on the bed and started marking his scriptures while watching his father. The father was flattered and then went on to continue with his lesson. A little while later he looked over at his son and noticed what he was doing. He picked up his son's Book of Mormon and realized that his son had found the exact pages his father was marking and preceeded to make an exact copy of the markings in his scriptures. He colored the same words in blue that his father had and underlined in red just like his dad had. To this day my teacher still has his son's scriptures that are marked exactly the same.

I have a friend who is extremely close with her nieces and nephews. One night she was spending some time with her niece when her niece commented to her, "I want to be you." What a treasure it is to be admired in a way that someone wants to be like you. How many times have we done that? Do we look up to others and want to be just like them? Do we look up to our Savior and want to be like Him? Do we try to mirror His life and teachings in our life?

I have been thinking a lot about imperfections today. Personally I think that imperfections are an important part of who each individual is. They are the things that add to a person's individuality and give them character and make them unique.

I think we each see our own imperfections a lot more clearly than others do. When we look at others often times an imperfection becomes blurry and unfocused the more we know the person or the imperfections are things that we come to love the most about that person. When I look at my physical self I see imperfections such as the huge scar that runs down the back of my right arm or the extra curves on my body or the point on my nose. When I look at my internal self I think of the way I laugh especially loud or the way that I talk a mile a minute and can't seem to shut up. These things in others I find attractive or fun. I had a friend who was starting to go bald and it was something that he didn't like about himself. Personally I found it attractive. I love it when my one friend snorts when she laughs because it is a part of who she is and when I hear it I know she is happy and enjoying life. I have another friend who has these amazing dimples that he hates and therefore he hates to smile big, I love them and wish he would embrace that part of himself. I feel we need to embrace our imperfections and enjoy the little flaws that we have been blessed with.

P.S. Happy Birthday Spud Butt!