Thanksgiving Break

Everyone on campus is so excited for Thanksgiving Break! However, I think this has less to do with Thanksgiving and more to do with the break and a chance to catch up on homework. I am no exception to this. One of my goals to catch up on has been my photography class. I needed groups of 4 and 5 so I threw together my parents, Courtney, cousin Madison, and good friend Will. We had so much fun taking these! Half the time I was laughing so hard I could hardly take the picture! Here is a sampling of the fun:

As fun as it was, I am still not the biggest fan of taking portraits. I think I'll stick with Photoshop :)

I learned this year that my family doesn't like Thanksgiving! Who doesn't like Thanksgiving!? Actuall, I guess it's just the food that they don't like, but that's like 90% of the holiday! Anyway, after I talked them out of doing a potluck or having chicken pillows we decided to have an Iron Chef Thanksgiving Pie Competition. We went all out and recorded all the drama and excitement that went along with it. Here is a little snippet of the action:

We went to the Mills for dinner and they judged our pies. The results? Drum roll please.........

4th   Courtney - Pumpkin Cheesecake
3rd   Mom - Chocolate Pie
2nd   Dad - Ice Cream Pie
1st   ALLISON!!! - Apple Pie

If you can't tell, I am just a little bit pleased with myself  :)

Anyway, Thanksgiving ended up being a lot of fun, and I don't think I'm ready to go back to school again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Faith

Life is SCARY!

There is so much changing in my life right now and so much that I do not know. I am so afraid of the unknown. I am afraid to commit to anything because I do not know the end result. What if my choice is bad, or I change my mind. I can't even commit to taking pictures on Saturday! I have always known this about myself, but I am just now realizing the impact that it is having in every aspect of my life. Fear is the mental block that is paralyzing me from moving forward with my life, and I know that it is something that I must overcome very soon or I will be in a world of hurt.

Then I remembered -- Faith and fear cannot exist together.

Faith is something that I have learned about and talked about my whole life, yet somehow never gave it much thought until recently. As I have studied the topic, I have been reminded of some very important things:

     -God never told us to make plans, he told us to prepare and if we are prepared, we can follow his plan

     -Heavenly Father has more confidence in me than I have in myself

     -Faith comes before the miracle

     -Weak things can be made strong (Ether 12:27)

The Bible Dictionary says of faith: 

“To have faith is to have confidence in something or someone. The Lord has revealed himself and his perfect character, possessing in their fulness all the attributes of love, knowledge, justice, mercy, unchangeableness, power, and every other needful thing, so as to enable the mind of man to place confidence in him without reservation….

Faith in Jesus Christ is the first principle of the gospel and is more than belief, since true faith always moves its possessor to some kind of physical and mental action; it carries an assurance of the fulfillment of the things hoped for. A lack of faith leads one to despair….

Although faith is a gift, it must be cultured and sought after until it grows from a tiny seed to a great tree. The effects of true faith in Jesus Christ include¹ an actual knowledge that the course of life one is pursuing is acceptable to the Lord a reception of the blessings of the Lord that are available to man in this life; and³ an assurance of personal salvation in the world to come. These things involve individual and personal testimony, guidance, revelation, and spiritual knowledge.”

For now, I am focusing on having more faith in my Savior and more confidence in myself. Heavenly Father has blessed me with agency so that I can use it, not sit around waiting for Him to tell me every little move to make.

I have been soo blessed through every step of my life!

Why should I be scared now?

To Will: Experimenting

This post is dedicated to Will Gierke. Thank you for making me a blog :)  Now people just need to look at it to make it worth while.

Question: how do I put pictures on?

Bennett

Zoey

On second thought, maybe I don't want people looking at this.....