New Layout! New Outlook!

It looks great right?

I'm IN LOVE with the new look of my blog! It's all thanks to my friend Ashley Ziegler over at  From A to Z. She is a talented, beautiful and inspirational person to me, and I'm so glad that she was willing to help me make my blog look like me!

With this new layout, I'm looking forward to a new year! I'm going to be writing a lot more often, and about a lot of new things! I'll be writing about new recipes that I try, my scripture studies, new fitness plans (I have to be accountable somewhere, amiright?)  memories I create with my family, and parties/activities I'm planning! As I look forward to 2015, I have a lot of goals for myself. Most of these I will talk about in a later post. However, I want to be more Christ-centered in my life. I want to be more open about my testimony and come closer to Christ. So really, why wait? I'm starting now and I'm looking forward to the journey! I can't wait to share this holiday season and coming year with you! Thank you for coming along with me!

Looking Forward.

Well, Christmas has come and gone and New Years is on it's way. As always around this time of year, my mind reflects on the past year and what's happened and what I want to do better. I have to say, I feel like I improved. I can at least remember this year, whereas 2012 is kind of a blank. I feel like I didn't let myself get stuck in a rut this year and that I worked hard to be happy, and you know what? It worked. :) I feel that I was a significantly happier person this year. Obviously, there is still room for improvement, but I can take what I've learned this year with me into 2014 and be better. :) So What are we looking forward to in 2014? Well... Ryan and I made leaps and bounds regarding Project: Burton Baby. Enough so that we have updated our mission name to Project: Burton Baby 2014. So we are eagerly preparing and looking forward to that. Ryan has done a fantastic job in school, and we look forward to May 2014 when he will graduate and hope and pray that he will find a good job that he will be able to start quickly, so that by next fall we can hopefully move into a house. :) I am looking forward to starting online classes somewhere over the summer. It's been a very long time since I was a student but I am looking forward to finally being ready to get an education that I care about. We've been incredibly blessed this year as we have learned to lean more on Heavenly Father and truly depend on Him. We look forward to becoming more dependent on God and our Savior Jesus Christ and learning what He has to teach us. What am I going to try and improve on in 2014? Ryan and I worked really hard in 2013 to remain financially solvent. We did really really well. So this year we are going to continue to improve on it and start to save and get out of debt. I want to be a better recorder. This is going to be helped by the fact that I got 3 sets of journals for Christmas. :) I'm not really sure if I got them because people think my life is worth recording or if I'm just that hard to shop for. but I want to be a better recorder. That means journaling, taking pictures, and well, blogging. I want there to be a record of ryan and I's life together, so that means I need to be more in the moment and more involved so that I have something to write about. I want to be a better spouse. I love my husband. I want to show him that more. I want to read the Standards Works. (For those of you that don't speak Mormon speak, that's the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants) I am excited to see what making scriptures a part of my every day life does for my spirit and my life. :) I know it will bless me. So here's to 2014. May all of us find beautiful things to look forward to and make better, as we receive the chance to begin again. See you soon. ~Cheryl

What Kind of Life do I Live?

First off, I suppose I should apologize for my absence. Sorry, I'm lazy. lol. Secondly, I want to wish anyone that reads this a very happy valentines day. but neither of those are what this post is about.

This post is about my life.

Those of you that know me personally, may have noticed (or maybe you didn't- I don't really know) that I've been in kind of a funk lately. I've been pretty restless with my life and the way it's been working. My house was a dump. My job, while mostly enjoyable, was sucking the life out of me. My calling (which I normally love) had even begun to go stale for me. The result was (and still is) me being short and contrary, Ryan and I started to argue more, I started to function less and less. Usually when I feel like this I know I have to make a change, and that change usually means some kind of hair cut.

But not this time.

In Young Women's on Sunday, we were teaching the lesson "Finding Joy in Life Now" and we started by discussing what the difference is between Fun, Satisfaction, Happiness, and Joy. How we are responsible for our OWN happiness in this life, and how we don't have to wait. *I* don't have to wait for Ryan to graduate to be happy, *I* don't have to wait for us to have a baby to feel like my life has a substance. *I* don't have to work at a job that makes me feel useless. *I* don't have to do that.

My mother use to tell my sister and I "Bloom where you're planted" and she was right. I have to find happiness where I am, in the situation I'm in. but at the same time, if there are things in my situation I don't like, I can change them. That's my choice.

So. I've talked to Ryan, and we've decided. at least for now, We aren't keeping anything in the house we don't love. We're getting rid of almost everything. Furniture, Crap, Clothes, Everything. We are going to go through it a bit at a time and decide what to keep, and what to chuck. :) And we won't replace any of it until we've found something we love and we agree on.

I'm so incredibly excited about this. I think I could bust. I think.... I might be happy. :)

I know this post kind of rambles, but I don't care. I hope you understood it, not that that's important, because I did. :)

Happy New Year!

Excuse my absence, it's been awhile, but really nothing has been happening. 2011 was maybe the most boring year EVER for Ryan and I. Honestly, I mean things happened that I guess were big: I started working, Ryan got his graduation pushed back another semester (oh yeah, did I tell you? Now he graduates May 2014. *sigh*) I got to meet my nephew (cutest child that ever existed--no really) but other than that, I don't really remember anything, at least nothing good.

But now it's the third day of 2012,

and I refuse to let that happen again.

Have I ever told you that I don't believe in resolutions? I don't. I'm not even sure when I stopped really believing in them, but I don't. I believe in goals for sure. and I believe in improving yourself. But stick resolution on there and for some reason one becomes-ironically- less resolute.

So I have NOT made a resolution to photograph everything I do (although, I should take more pictures)
I will NOT make a resolution to blog or journal more often (because let's be honest, how well has that gone over in the past)

What I WILL do, is decide that I want to remember this year. I want to do things that are WORTH remembering, not only that, but I want to do things that I WANT to take pictures of, things that I WANT to share on my blog and in my journal.

That's what I WANT. I want to REMEMBER. Don't tell me that we don't always get what we want, I'm aware of that, but this time I am. THIS want, I'm allowed to have. Because it's something I can give to myself.

So as I sit here, watching "Z" (one of the kids I watch) play with a balloon-- she has rubbed it all over herself so now it's stuck to her head and she is running around seeing if it will stay on. It's cute-- I think that I can do this. I really really do.

See you in the funny papers!