21.

Well, today I turned 21. Weird. But this year has been good to me. Life has been good to me in general. I've learned a lot in my 21 years of life (I know, I'm super experienced........). I have learned a few important lessons, though. So, in celebration of my 21st birthday, here are 21 things I have come to learn, or appreciate, in my wisdom-filled life so far ;).

1. Friends come and go, but family will be with you forever!
2. Do your best and be satisfied. Your best is all you have to offer-if you've given that, there's nothing to regret or feel bad about.
3. Attitude is everything. Think happy, be happy!
4. Always, always, always trust in Heavenly Father and his timing. He knows what's best for us and his will is going to be done no matter how much we try to control our own lives. Trusting in Him will bring us more peace than we can find any other way.
5. Exercise. Aside from keeping you healthy it's an instant happiness boost.
6. Make new friends and meet new people.
7. Service cures bad hair days, ugly outfit days, and days where everything seems to be going wrong. As soon as you think outside yourself and serve others, your problems seem trivial and you may even feel stupid for having your own little pity party.
8. When you are scared to do something, do it.
9. Mom is always right. I don't care what anyone else says...she's always right. And it's kind of freaky. ;)
10. Integrity is more important than fear or a bad grade.
11. There is no such thing as a "coincidence." Everything happens for a reason.
12. Know when to have fun and when to be serious.
13. Everybody loves to talk about themselves, so make people happy and ask about their lives. No one likes a self-centered chatter box :) (and I mean that in the nicest way possible).
14. Appearances only matter to an extent-a very small extent.
15. Happiness comes from living the way we know we are supposed to live.
16. When your room is clean it is much easier to get things done...whether they be in your room or not. Something about a dirty room irking the back of my mind prevents me from doing anything productive.
17. Music is medicine.
18. Everyone deserves respect-we are all children of God.
19. The Gospel doesn't always make sense, but it is ALWAYS true. It always has been and it always will be.
20. There is something good that comes from being busy. I don't quite know what it is, but being busy makes me happy and I feel accomplished.
21. Life can be hard, but if it weren't, it would never be good.

Here's to another year!

Happy Birthday Hannah!

The day has come. Hannah turned SIXTEEN today. So crazy. I love Hannah. We have so much fun together...I forget she is only 15 (well...16 now I guess haha) sometimes because we get along so great. She is such a sweet girl--and she has like 1 million friends to show it! Not to mention her adorable style--she borrows my clothes all the time. HAHA just kidding. She has such cute clothes that sometimes I actually copy her outfits or even buy the same shirts...whoops! We always have great times...like, for example, one time we got in trouble by the Costco manager because we snuck in without a card and went around to get all the samples (what else is Costco good for, right?). The workers apparently saw us sneak in and started getting on their radios, giving descriptions of what we look like and they all started searching for us until they finally tracked us down. It was great. And awkward. But mostly great. We can spend hours on end going shopping together, talking about Fashion Week, bike-riding, talking about good music, eating, driving, scooter-ing, and planning our half marathon goals (that WILL happen. Snow Canyon 2012 baby.). Oh, and we even got to spend a week at EFY together (I was a counselor, she was a participant...obviously)!! It was the best. What can we conclude from this? Doing things with Hannah is great. Hannah is just great. Yep.

I love you, Hannah! Thanks for being so smart, talented, beautiful, kind, and amazing! Happy sweet sixteen! Don't date too many boys! ;)