I AM a Utah Resident, Thank You!

Once upon a time there was a girl.

She was a basic, boring, run-of-the-mill, white-trash, Utah Molly Mormon.

[Okay, so maybe she just lived in white-trash West Valley]

She grew up in Utah her entire life. Her parents had both grown up in Utah, as had her parents' parents, and so forth. She had never left the state for more than a day until she was 12. She had never even left the country at all until she was 19. 

Then one day she decided to stop being uninteresting, and went to live in Mexico for four months.

Except it really wasn't that interesting. She just got married and her husband toted her around while he did cool things like a study abroad in a foreign Ivy League-equivalent University. 

Then life settled down a bit and she decided that she should go back to school now that she wasn't moving every couple months. 

When applying to go to a cute little college called SLCC, she was asked if she had lived anywhere other than Utah anytime in the last 12 months. Well, she considered herself living elsewhere, but that is entirely subjective and they certainly didn't give her enough information to tell her which was technically right. But, thinking that either way it shouldn't be a problem because she was, of course, a Utah Resident, she decided to give the benefit of the doubt and click "yes."

"Thanks for submitting all the information about you in the world. We've decided that you are humble enough to get into our prestigious poor starter college. Congratulations! Oh, and by the way, you're not a Utah Resident so you have to pay 1,000,000 times what everyone else pays."

Bah Humbug. 

If she's not a Utah Resident, then pray tell, what is she a Resident of????

The state of Utah considers her a Resident, as they had no problem updating her Drivers' License. Why does the school not consider her a Resident?

Because of one simple drop down menu that could be considered a mistake, but was certainly taken simply on the girl's word. 

So, what does she have to do? She has to spend way too much time trying to figure out how to fix it, and then even more time actually trying to fix it. Then, when she gets all her papers in and everything to prove that she is, indeed, a Utah Resident, what do they ask for?

Proof that she was gone at all.

Excuse me??!?? If you can't prove that I'm gone, WHY DO I HAVE TO PROVE THAT IT DOESN'T COUNT!?!

The best part? 

There ISN'T any proof that she was gone.

The ONLY proof that she was in Mexico for any amount of time, let alone for four months, is either total personal correspondence (which could all be complete bull for all they care), or a tourist visa.

A TOURIST visa, people! A tourist visa proves that she was a TOURIST, not a RESIDENT!!!

Also, because of complications with idiotic, stupid, ridiculous, conniving, thieving, corrupted Mexicans (not that all Mexicans are that, but the ones encountered for this purpose definitely were), the tourist visa wasn't even legitimate or legal. 

AND if we had driven back into the US instead of flown, neither the Mexican nor the US government would have any idea or record that she was ever in Mexico at all. Possibly they still don't. That last guy was probably all of those adjectives as well.

Oh, and another great part:

What if she lived in a different state, instead of a different country?

There literally would be absolutely NO hard proof that she was gone. Ever.

Grumble.

Luckily, she is now considered a Utah Resident by all parties.

Thank you. 

JnB Wedding Photobook: Wedding Day Candids

I love this one. I love all the random pictures that capture the feeling of the event. Thanks to Angelo, Brett, and our photographer Joanne for getting perfect candid shots! 

Hahahahahaha...I just realized that I put the wrong date on the cover.

As much as I feel like I just barely got married, it was not just a few months ago. It was last year.

Wedding Day
March 12, Twenty-TEN

To Love

This week, from last Saturday to yesterday, was my family's reunion. We decided to do it "relaxed" this year and do a whole week of stuff but stay at home and such. Haha...it was packed and exhausting! BUT it was so. much. fun.

I LOVE love love love love my family! I am very grateful that I had mostly positive experiences this week, and so many of them, and I was able to remember that I do love them. I never stop loving them, but sometimes I stop having Christlike love for them.

Sometimes I get caught up in the annoying habits and personality traits my siblings and my parents and even my nieces and nephews have. We may be a bit stubborn and strongly opinionated. We may be a bit weird and socially awkward. We may make stupid and pointless comments. We may be impatient with the kids and each other. We may have different ideas of what's important in raising children. We may overlook what's currently pertinent. We may all get so caught up in making sure everything's planned smoothly that nothing gets planned at all smoothly.
But that's okay.

I realized last night that I used to be more loving and accepting to everyone, but somewhere or sometime that ability started getting used significantly less. I started getting cynical instead. I became impatient with people. Those two traits are some I dislike most in other people. So, I decided that I can and will be more loving toward my family, despite how much they may subtly bother me. Or, rather, instead of letting myself get subtly bothered.

Since I started that train of thought last night, I have realized how much happier practicing love instead of annoyance used to make me. Life is beautiful when you don't harbor negative feelings toward others. Those negative feelings don't have to be big, even. I haven't stopped believing that there is no one I hate. I always still loved my family. But so often it is the small things that make the biggest difference, especially as they build up.

So, I will begin again to look for the good in people. I will love them because they are humans with weaknesses, as I am. I will give help and encouragement. I will accept others, regardless of our differences. I will try to be humble so that I can learn from those who can teach me.

JnB Wedding Photobook: Family Groups

Made a few more photobooks. :)

This one is quite simple, though I put some of these up sideways. :)

And yes, we got married in Two-thousand TEN, not 2011. Ugh. :)

 Lynn and JaAnna Nelson, Brin and John, Cindy and Nathan Coulter, Carol and Angelo Gianelo

Entire Wedding Party 

 Nelson Family

 Coulter Family

 Nelson Adults

 Nelson Parents and Children

 Nelson Brothers with Bride and Groom

 Nelson Sisters

 Coulter Siblings

 Coulter Brothers

 Brin's parents

 John's parents

All four of John's parents 

Each with own parents 

I Should Be Packing...

We are going camping tomorrow until Sunday. To quote my facebook:
"Camping alllllll weekend! Hello Torrey Pines, dirt, kiddies, worries over food, a soon-to-be frustrated sister-in-law, lots of pictures, and some good times. Goodbye my normal world of glowing rectangles. Except the handful we will bring with us..."

Sleeepy...
I just took out the garbage. It's strange to have it full of garbage instead of weeds. The recycling is also full. I said I just took out, but actually Johnny and I fought over it. We compromised with me taking out one and him taking out the other. We didn't fight over the work, but the service. If that makes sense.

Johnny has been super good to me...always, but especially lately. Today he came home from work and insisted that I needed a relaxing evening. Baby, I may have had the supposed two-year-old terror that is Carson (who was practically an angel) for two days, but really I've just been watching Heroes all day. Okay, so I did that while finally getting down the insurmountable mound of dishes, doing the laundry, and dancing around Carsy, but still. I'm a lazy bum, or I feel like it. I don't need no relaxation. But the thought was nice.

Regardless of his desire, we both ended up..where? Staring at our glowing rectangles. I may have made a necessary and wonderful choice to marry a techie, but it means the computer is an addiction that both of us crave, even when we've had too much. :)
He just wanted to finish a couple things from work, and since he was on it I had to get on it. :) So my excuse is lame. John's isn't, actually. He never does work from home, except the one time he was supposed to. I don't blame him this time. He took the holiday on Monday and he's taking a vacation day tomorrow so that we can go camping. So he's only had three days of work and his project is due soon and they're nowhere near done.
I'm glad hubs loves his job. Everyone needs to, but so few do.

Haha, so while he was doing that I went searching for something to do. I've never been good at web surfing. I usually just go to my 4 regular sites about a million times, waiting for something interesting to happen. Facebook is really not that entertaining, but I'm addicted, regardless. My calendar is not going to suddenly get packed with super amazing things to do no matter how long I stare at it. I wait around for a juicy good letter in my inbox, but when they come I'm too lazy to read them. Netflix will always have something to entertain me, which is horrible because then I become a zombie.

So that leaves Blogger. There's usually a new post from someone every day, but that takes about 2 minutes to read and I'm done. I could catch up on all the posts I've been meaning to finish...but that sounds like work.
This.is.my.life.

Anyhow, today I was mindlessly clicking and found myself on my favorite blogger's site. I don't know her, but she's hilarious. I purposely do not follow people I don't know because then I really could be sucked away forever reading about things that have nothing to do with me. But she followed me first, and then I got sucked in.
Anyhow (again), I was wondering how she started her blog, so I went to the beginning...and kept going. And 2 1/2 hours went by before John was finally done with what he wanted to do so I stopped.
I am now nostalgic. And a little disoriented. She's still in High School and I realized that she was 15 when she started the blog, which started me thinking of when I was 15 which was six years ago. (How did I get so old so fast?) And I started thinking of things I was saying and doing back then. Holly and I were best friends, boy crazy, bored out of our minds, counting down the days to our birthdays, writing notes constantly...
those were the days.
Seriously, High School is SO fun. You get to see friends every day, you're always doing stuff, summer doesn't feel like a waste of time when you don't do anything, you don't have to worry about anything but yourself. All except that annoying thing that is school.
Now I'm all grown up and married. We own a house. I have housework to do and I'm not getting paid for it or fighting/avoiding my mom about it. There's no such thing as summer break, which means when I'm a lazy bum my life is a lazy bum. We live "out in the boonies" so I can't go do stuff with friends. Even if I lived closer to friends, all our schedules don't mesh so spontaneity is a thing of the past.
What I would give to be spontaneous.

Blahhhhhh...I need sleep. I don't want to.

Puppy is with Grandma for the weekend. It is seriously weird not having my shadow. I'm sure she misses me more. Silly dog.

I put up stuff on the walls today. It made my house a home, even with the half painted walls. I'm happy :)
My laundry room is now crowded and I know John hates that so I was worried. But he likes it, and said that's what laundry/mud rooms are for. To be filled with all the junk you need that isn't for show. So yay :) I now have my big cork board, our big white board, a clock (it's green to match the someday-to-be green walls), a mail basket, a calendar, and my note roll/corkboard/key hook thingie, not to mention three doors, one of which is covered in magnets, all in the 6x6ft mudroom side of the laundry room. I'm in love. I need my crowded spaces in this spacious home. There's too much emptiness here.

I have the Harry Potter theme song stuck in my head.

We're still not packed.

Funny how that happens. Me not packing gets us still not packed. Unless John's been working on it...that's nice.

I have the best Johnny in the world!!
Even if he didn't do any packing.

Brin's Sacrament Meeting Talk

July 10, 2011

Introduction

We are the Coulters. My husband's name is John, my name is Brin. Mine is a little less common so just remember Brin likes to Grin. To give a little background, John grew up in Sandy. He's the youngest of six. John went to a private middle school and had a hard transition to public high school so he quit. I enjoy saying I married a high school dropout. But as our new friend Brother Orwin has pointed out, that hasn't stopped John from being successful. John graduated with his Associates from CEU about the same time his friends graduated from High School. He went on to USU to start on his Bachelors before leaving on his mission.

I am from West Valley and I'm the youngest of ten. As you can guess both John and I, being the youngest, are spoiled rotten. I was the last one of my siblings to get married. Between John and I we have over 40 nieces and nephews. Unlike John, I thoroughly enjoyed High School, but I was glad to move on to USU.

John went on his mission to Phoenix, Arizona, Mexican speaking, which is where he decided he wanted to marry a Latina girl. I'm from West Valley so I guess I'm good enough. 

John and I met at USU in November 2008, but it took him 6 months to ask me out. It's okay; we both had our eyes on other people. We started going out in May 2009, got engaged that November, and got married last year on March 12. So we've been married almost a year and a half. We do not have any kids yet. That will come.

For John's last semester of college he did a study abroad in Monterrey, Mexico and dragged me along. I now consider myself at a Jr. High level of Spanish, unlike John who aced top-level courses in it. We returned form Mexico in December. John graduated from USU in Management Information Systems (business and computers) and got hired by the church's Tech department in Riverton, where he started working in January.

Since married, we've moved all over the place, but we most recently lived in Draper. We bought the house on the corner of Clubhouse and Greenbrier the end of May and we couldn't be happier to live in this gorgeous city of Eagle Mountain.

How Studying the Scriptures Helps to Strengthen our Testimonies

This is a great topic because it's centered around a very basic principle of the gospel. We all know the Primary answers, and I think many of us have realized the real reason we keep going back to them. They are the most important, and everything about the gospel clings to these repeated answers.

Prayer, scripture study, going to church, keeping the commandments, going to the temple. I think any one of these, if looked at by itself, could seem overwhelmingly important -- so important that it must be more important than the others. But each of them still needs the others for us to be complete.

I think all of us can look back on a time in our life when we went to church and did our best to keep the commandments, but didn't practice daily scripture study and prayer. Our lives may still have been blessed, but I'm sure we didn't feel whole. Even if we do read the scriptures but don't pray, how much can we really take in without the humility that is necessary for us to ask our Father's help? If we pray but do not read the scriptures, from where is the Lord to give us answers?

Everything we learn as we grow in the church is essential. If we do everything else, our scripture study will be so much more meaningful.

In the October 2000 General Conference, Elder Russel M. Nelson gave a talk titled: "Living by Scriptural Guidance." The tag-line put with it in the Ensign says, "We all need guidance through life. We obtain it best from the standard works and teaching of the prophets of God." Elder Nelson begins his talk with a story from when he and his wife visited Denmark. He explained how he clung to their road map as they navigated such unfamiliar territory. When they got lost is when they took the time to stop and diligently search the map to figure out how to get back on course.

He, of course, was making a comparison of the map to the scriptures. He asks, "Many people travel through life without good guidance, lacking knowledge of a desired destination or how to get there. But if rapt attention is paid to a road map for a day's journey, isn't it also wise to pay attention to authoritative guidance on our journey through life?"

Elder Nelson went on to explain that God gave us life so that we may learn what is necessary to obtain eternal life and exaltation. We cannot learn if we do not have guidance. The guidance does us no good if we never turn to it.

In the April 2010 Conference, Elder D. Todd Christofferson's talk "The Blessing of Scripture" centered around the scripture in Alma 37:8:

         "And now, it has hitherto been wisdom in God that these things should be preserved; for behold, they have enlarged the memory of this people, yea, and convinced many of the error of their ways, and brought them to the knowledge of their God unto the salvation of their souls."

Elder Christofferson said, "The scriptures enlarge our memory by helping us always remember the Lord and our relationship to Him and the Father. They remind us of what we know in our pre-mortal life. And they expand our memory in another sense by teaching us about epochs, people, and events that we did not experience personally." Elder Christofferson says the scriptures remind us of mistakes of generations past, which we should learn from: "Those who either don't have or ignore the recorded word of God eventually cease to believe in Him and forget the purpose of their existence."

That quote hit home for me. I have watched far too many friends and family members leave and reject the church. This is not because they were doing everything they were supposed to and realized the church is not true. That doesn't happen. They left because they were not doing what they were supposed to do, and wanted a release from the guilt and from supposed "restraints."

Elder Christofferson goes on, "In the end, the central purpose of all scripture is to fill our souls with faith in God the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ -- faith that They exist; faith in the Father's plan for our immortality and eternal life; faith in the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which animates this plan of happiness; faith to make the gospel of Jesus Christ our way of life; and faith to come to know "the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He has] sent."

I bear my testimony that studying the scriptures and feasting upon the word if God not only strengthens our testimonies, but is essential to obtain eternal life.

I know that this church is true and I am eternally grateful that I have been blessed to have it through my whole life. I know that as I, and each of us, follow God's teachings and do our best to learn and grow, our lives will be blessed beyond measure.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

HPMM Cleanup

So yesterday finalized the Harry Potter Movie Marathon. It was a blast! Only one friend came, though, silly busy people. But I did have lots of family come. Because my family is awesome like that. And we like Harry Potter. Perhaps a little too much. Hey, when they get more excited to come for Harry Potter than to play games or simply to talk with family, there has got to be something wrong. Or I just plan things the wrong dates. Always the wrong date.

Anyhow, on our blog I will tell you all about the marathon, because it was an event and it included John. That's the criteria for the other blog. This blog is dedicated to rants, and other such things.
I said I liked details. I know what posts go to which of my blogs. How can I have two blogs if I don't determine what goes where?

But don't go rushing there yet. I haven't written about the HPMM yet. I don't have time yet.
I have dedicated today as cleanup day. Luckily for me we did a little pickup here and there throughout the weekend so it's not a complete tornado.

Sarah rinsed some dishes after lots of food was made and before the movies were started Friday. That was nice. They've been hidden in the dishwasher so I could forget about them. I don't use my dishwasher because the top rack washing part is broken and we don't have a water softener so all my dishes come out looking filthy anyway. And I enjoy washing dishes by hand :)

Joy, Hillary, John, and I did basic pickup yesterday.

I took out the garbage all weekend. We went through FOUR garbage bags in three days. FOUR! John and I fill up half of one in a week. Oh, and then the recycling was spilling all over my pantry floor when I finally took it out. Luckily there was a door to smash it all behind so I could wait that long :)

I condensed the kitchen Sunday before church. It was a disaster, but I didn't have time to do dishes. But it made me feel much much better when I had them stacked neatly in the sink corner. Not in the sink, mind you, because that's a no-no.

I don't believe I have any useful dishes left in my drawers and cupboards. Utensils are down to a couple serving and plastic ones (which is funny to me). Even though we used plastic plates more than half of my flatware is gone. Not a single mixing/serving bowl, cutting board, knife, pitcher, or bite-sized bowl is clean. Many were used over and over.

Bowl is a funny word. Bowl bowl bowl bowel bow wow
hehe

Yesterday was Christmas in July, right? Well it sure feels like the holidays. I thought I had a complete kitchen with more things than I could ever use at one time. I think I better stock up a little more before the real holidays come :)

We even used up all ten of my parings knives!

The best was when we tore down the window covers yesterday. I kind of liked the adventure of putting all the poster boards and blankets up. John was going crazy living in a cave. When we took it all down it was amazing. We do have a gorgeous house! And there is so much light! It was kind of strange, actually. :)

It makes me even more anxious to paint, though. Ugh I cannot deal with all this orange. It's awful.
But that's a post for another day.

I think I've ranted on about the cleanup I get to do today. I'm excited. It's going to be fun :)