Leaps & Bounds

Life can take you by surprise! Throw you by leaps of faith with a few trials and smiles in between. The last four months I’ve struggled with some of life’s surprises. Dealing with severe depression, and anxiety.
I took a leap of faith and moved in September of 2009. I moved to be closer to mom, and to have more beneficial activities closer me. I left a lot of Great friends from my previous town to gain more activity. Things started great when I moved. in fact the leap was awesome! I was doing AWESOME Fun things with mom and going on GREAT Adventures with mom, but all of the sudden Depression just kicked me in the butt and I literally slept for four months. I got a great companion named Tuff who is a short legged pure bred Jack Russell Terrier between Tuff and my mom, dad and family I had the help that I needed with my depression. I spent a couple weeks in hospital last month for depression, and between hospital visits was able to slowly regain enjoyment to life. In fact I am still trying to gain enjoyment.
I am now living with a couple of roommates who are helping me extremely while my foot heals. They do a lot for me and I am grateful for it.
Now a brief look on the spiritual side of things. Even though lately I’ve had my struggles and dealt with everything I have, Why I used to think that the Lord loved me and because of that, wouldn’t let anything happen to me. But I was wrong. He still loves me and has given me trials in my life because he loves me. I believe that going through trials and tribulations with the help of the Lord’s tender mercy is the only way that we can overcome our weaknesses and move on. I’m grateful for the chance that I have to change my life daily, and accept the gospel in my life and how it has helped me overcome my struggle and give me the comfort I need to carry on.
I’m sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile but I promise I’ll try and make more of an effort to blog more. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more.

Just Had To Share;

Just a picture I took that I thought turned out ok and I had to share it with you guys. Hope your still having a nice summer. Happy Days!

Studying Up On Cow Tippingology:

IT CAN BE DONE!!! On our trip to Billings we got into a cow tipping conversation and one of the youth and I decided that we were going to go cow tipping. Kim had warned us that it was intirely impossible to achieve, In fact he bet us $100.00 if we could do it. So with me and my mind I am determined. So I have been studying up on my cow tipping and this is HILARIOUS with what I found. So stay tuned because after more hours of study I plan on going cow tipping by the end of this summer. Remember the most important tip. "IF THERE IS AN UTTER, NO NEED TO SHUTTER" HA!HA!HA! HAPPY DAYS!!!

Pictures From Another Fun Drive:

Well today I went on another fun drive with a newfound friend. I can't tell you how many wonderful friends I have made since I've been in this wonderful place I call home. It has truly been a wonderful experience living in this area.

We had a wonderful time. We talked about what we like to do in our spare time and found we have quite a few things in common. For instance one of our main things in common is that we both love taking pictures. Our drive was long but very enjoyable. We spent the whole morning from the start of 7:30 until 12:30 in the afternoon looking at scenery and enjoying eachother's conversations.

Here are some of the pictures I took. You can tell as you've seen in some of my other posts that wild flowers are some of my favorite things to take pictures of. I just love how they turn out. I think it's so much better to take a picture of a flower and leave it for someone else to enjoy rather then to pick it clean. Besides, you know what the say, 'A picture has the potential of lasting a lifetime " OK, so maybe I added a little bit to that quote. Anyways, I hope you enjoy my pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them. Happy Days! :)

Temple Trip:

Temple trip was awesome! I won't go into details as this was a spirtualy personal experience, but I will post pictures and a video on here. I can't begin to tell you the fun, neat time I had yesterday.

This is funny. Watch how Aaron teaches me to make the noise of the donkey from Shrek. We were doing it as a joke to try and bug Kim. He was a great sport to have that day. It was neat he could be there as part of my experience. I finallly learned how to do the donkey noise. Ha!Ha!Ha!

OUR VERSION OF THE MOVIE SHREK:

100th BlogPost, & A Big Thank You:

(Please listen to Amazing Grace while reading and looking at this post.)There are many people I have in my life to be thankfull for. I'm grateful to my church and to my family for loving and accepting me for who I am. I am also very grateful for the wonderful friend I have. These are just a few pictures of people that I am thankful for. Just because your picture isn't on here doesn't mean you don't mean anything to me. It just means that you need to let me take your picture more often! Ha!Ha! Anyways, I've been doing a lot of thinking and pondering over how much I've accomplished over the past few years and I don't think I could've done it without the amazing grace of my Lord and Savior, and my wonderful friends I have. I also appreciate those who read my blogs and even comment on them. It gives me motivation to keep going and an extra goal. It's also a secret tip to get me to continue to do journaling. It's like a scrapbook and journal in one. Anyways, I just wanted to express my gratitude for the amazing grace that everyone has shown to me throughout my life. Hope everyone is having a nice summer. Happy days to all.(Disclaimer. I am not responsible for about 2 or 3 of these pictures.)

Clouds, & Using Your Imagination:

OK so the other week when my Niece Jessie was visiting we had this great idea to lay under the clouds and see what we could find. Here are a couple of pictures that we found. I tried to outline the pictures through paint program and even saved it but I can't find it in my files so you'll just have to use your imagination like we did that day. Let me know if you can see the same things. Happy Days. "Pinocchio with his hat tipped down."

"Fire Breathing Dragon"

Pretty Montana Flowers:

My collection of wild flowers, plus a bonus:

Hiking: Up Kooteni:

Well on Friday, us girls went for a hike up Kooteni creek trail. It was beautiful. The creek follows the trail the whole way up there. Although we only hiked a little over a quarter of a mile, it is a total of 7 miles and at the top I guess there is a beautiful lake. So, if your out and wondering where to hike Kooteni Creek would be a wonderful place. It's nice just in the fact that it's not all the way steep. It's up, down but actually mostly level. Anyways, here are some pictures of Kooteni. Happy Days

Quick Blurb:

Just a quick journal entry on what I've been up to this week. I have been enjoying some fun quality family time with Mom and my niece Jessie. It has been fun to spend time with them. Over the week we have done many many things together. We went to the Disney Movie "Up", We went to Georgetown Lake, We went to Missoula together to do some shopping. And then we went hiking up different trails. I am going to post more on our adventures in detail. Happy Days.

Free To Hunt:

So, for a long time now I have been wanting to overcome something that I couldn't achieve before. Circumstances in shooting before were made in such that I just could not do it. The trainer I had the first time when I was at my job only allowed for 8 hours of training on three different guns, and then wanted and expected us to qualify to shoot the next day. (I don't think that is a long enough time frame for someone who never touched a gun.)That being said and being at the end of the line of 14 students, I was at the end of the line with a very impatient trainer. So, to make a long story short, I had to resign. Now I know I was nervous and full of anxiety, but somewhere deep inside me I knew that I could accomplish this task, it was just hard to accomplish with the trainer I was working with that day extremely impatient. I just needed someone who was willing to help me.

So here we are about two years later, and I have lived where I live now and made great friends in my Latter Day Saints Church. One couple of which, (Matt & Carlee) when the subject was brought up to them were willing to help me. They are such great people. It was wonderful news. I have been spending time with them for the last while now and have enjoyed their friendship. It has been nice to be able to develop so many wonderful friends where I live. So the night was great, I was nervous and worried if I would even be able to shoot due to my prior experience. But since Matt and Carlee are such kind patient, and just very sweet people I was able to accomplish my task. They made things so easy on me, and explained everything in a clear and understandable way. They never once rushed me, which I thought was awesome!! In fact they even said. "If your not comfortable wait until your ready then you can take your shot". It was such a wonderful event. It totally wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact I was shooting a bottle cap and a box and I shot it all around the mountain I hit it so many times. I was a regular James Bond with a hint of Clint Eastwood, A dash of John Wayne, and Laura Croft off of Tomb Raidar (ha!ha! I hope that's the right name of the movie) Now only if I had Laura's figure I'd be set right? hahaha!!! Just kidding. Anyways, thanks for true friends who were willing to successfully help me acheive one of my goals I am now "Feelin Lucky"!!! In fact I think my new nickname is Rambo!! Ha!ha!ha! Thanks again to my wonderful friends. I am so lucky to live in this beautfiul valley that I live in and to be among many wonderful friends who help support me. Hope you all have a nice week. Happy Days.

Watch this video of my very first shot and the surprised look on my face after I took the shot I said "Well that wasn't so bad"

Georgtown Lake & The Heart Of The Mountains:

Well what a blast I have had yesterday. On Monday,6/29/09 I went to my Grandma's house and hung out with my mom, Grandma and Grandpa and my niece, Jessie. We had fun. I was sitting in the living room and Grandma comes out and says "What do you think of my hair? It took me a few hours to do." I noticed something was different about her but couldn't quite pinpoint it. Then it hit me. She had a WIG on!!! HA!HA! She said why are you laughing ? Your mom even helped me. So then we did a photo opt., and she is just too cute. I love her and she is so sweet. Then we took off and headed up to a cool mining camp,and Georgetown Lake for the day. It was fun. I enjoyed my niece's company and just simply enjoyed spending time with family. It was super. We found lots of spots to take pictures. I even found the heart of the mountains on our way there. It was cool. So then towards the end of our trip we decided we had enough time to go around the whole lake, and that was when it got a little interesting. Mom was going at a perfect speed but sometimes when you turn around a corner my mind thinks the corner comes up faster than it should so I asked her to slow down, she said I'm only going 40 miles an hour.. So I, being my smart self said, "Yeah, "Only" That's like when I used to say it's only fourty dollars mom." Hehehe! We all got a kick out of it. Anyways, it was super fun and very enjoyable to spend such a wonderful time with the family. I hope there are many more memories to build.

Sunrise & An Early Morning Drive:

Well today has already been nice. I woke up at 5:30 was at my destination by 6:30 this morning. Just in time to get a few pictures of the beautiful sunrise. I drove up the mountains a little ways, but didn't find much, other then the pretty greens, and the pretty sounds of the birds. Kind of interesting how the sound of the bird always seems to sound so much sweeter in the morning then any other time. Happy days.

Sunset:

Just a picture of Friday's Sunset.

Coming back home from a friend's house one night. I thought the sky was Beautfiul. This is the after effects of a rainbow. Happy Days.