Nothing Great

Why hello there! Today I listened to one of my favorite songs...of. all. time. I hadn't listened to it in a few months and almost forgot that it is one of my favorites. I thought I would share the lyrics with you. They are written by a band called Late Tuesday. My cousin Marci introduced me to the band years ago. They are a Christian group from Bellingham, WA. I am in love with the lyrics. If you like them, look up the song on itunes because it's even more powerful with the music. The song is called "Nothing Great".

Nothing Great-Late Tuesday

Same old stuff i have to do

over and over and over again

each day it seems

Nothing great to show off my abilities and my worth

Show me my purpose

in the midst of this routine

Because I am trying to understand why I am here at all

with so many guesses and

too many simple answers

could it be that life is not what I think at all?

It's not the big things

but the ordinary in-between

and

Maybe this is not the time to be waiting for

any better reason to be glad that I'm alive

at all

So help me take this day

each simple thing that I must do to

bring glory to you.

And I could search out a lot of ways

to keep me doing things

an attempt to make my mark

but then maybe I'd miss the mark of your desire for me.

So I will trust in you

and in everything I do

do it

as

for

you.

And I am learning to understand why I am here at all.

There's no need for guesses when

you are the simple answer.

And you show me that life is not what i think at all

it's not the big things but the ordinary in-between

and maybe this is not the time

to be waiting for

any better reason to be glad that I'm alive

at all

so help me take this day

each simple thing that I must do

to bring glory to you.

We can take each day

each simple thing that we must do

to bring glory to you.

So I thought I would write about a bunch of little things that happened this week…nothing big :)

Cupcakes: So once I experimented and mixed pudding in with my cake batter and baked it and it turned out AMAZING. So I decided this week that I would be a good little visiting teacher and bake cupcakes for the girls that I visit. I even bought these cute pink and purple cupcake liners with white polka dots and borrowed the pans from my neighbor. I mixed pudding in with the cake batter and baked the cupcakes and….they sunk in the middle!! It looked like a big crater was in the center of every one of my cupcakes. Well…they tasted great but I was too embarrassed about them to bring them to anyone. So we kept them around and whenever people came over and asked what they were I pretended that they were supposed to be like that and we started calling them "Crater Cakes". Bahaha. I'm a dork.

She & Him Concert: If you haven't heard of the band She & Him, it is comprised of the actress/singer Zooey Deschanel from the movie 500 Days of Summer and the musician M. Ward. They are just fabulous. I went with some good friends and then ran into some familiar faces while I was there. Free concert. It was a hippie fest. I loved it. There were so many great food stands there, really culturally diverse and it was hard to choose because I love trying new types of food. I went with Tibetan food and it was sooooo yummy.

Temple: So one night this week I was sitting outside and realized that a beautiful sunset was about to take place and without really thinking I grabbed my scriptures, jumped into my car and drove to the Provo Temple which is approximately 3 minutes away from my house. (I know, I know, it's amazing to have it so close to me). I just sat on a bench outside and meditated. Ah it was so peaceful and I just love the temple! I wish I could live inside of it. Seriously.

Computer: I bought a Macbook! I have been contemplating this purchase for quite a while now and finally decided that I was just going to do it. It was the most expensive item I have ever purchased, except for my tuition, of course. LIfe is too short not to have some of the things that you want :) And I got a great deal on it at the BYU Bookstore. I can't stop using it!!

Sick: I caught a cold this week which seems to be going around. So on my day off I didn't feel like going anywhere or doing anything. But I didn't' want to just sit around at home. So I deep cleaned my house. I'm talking, scrubbing floors and showers, washing walls, using WD 40 in various places, re arranging furniture and pictures on the walls, pulling out the screw driver to do some repairs, etc. I realized during this excursion that I become attention deficit when I take on a big project. I would start one thing and then when I would get up to get something from another room, I would notice something else that needed to be done. So I would start doing that. And the cycle continued until I was cleaning all of the rooms a little at a time. I'm glad that no one else was here because the process probably would have been annoying. But, it looked way good when I was done! I also discovered that the smell of WD 40 reminds me of my dad :) Being home alone all day was strange, and it got me thinking, "Is it bad to be alone? Would I start to be weird if I was home alone all of the time? What about stay-at-home mothers who only have little babies around who can't talk? Do they start going crazy?". I literally did not have any human contact until my room mate came home at 11pm. I listened to music a lot but I spent quite a bit of time in silence lol. It made me think of the song "It isn't good to be alone, it isn't good. So if you find someone to love you really should…." But I dunno, is too much time alone bad? Just curious what you think.

Work: Most of the time my job just flat-out rocks. Today I got to work at 6 am and woke up the girls (I work in a residential treatment center, in case you didn't know already), the got dressed, grabbed breakfast and then I drove 10 of them in a big white van north to a military camp where we did all kinds of cool things. We broke into teams and had to overcome different obstacles…and then we repelled down a 75 ft wall! I was SO excited to do it. I got harnessed in and then while I walked up the stairs to the top of the wall I got nervous. Then the military guy told me it was my turn and i changed my mind and wanted to go back down the stairs but he grabbed onto my harness and hooked me up to the rope anyway...laughing at me! And he pulled me over to the edge. So i just did it even though I was scared out of my mind.

Well that was my week! It was a good one.

American Idol/Austin, TX

Many of you have been asking about my trip to Austin, TX and my American Idol audition so I decided to blog about it :)

I flew from Salt Lake City into Austin with a lay over in Denver, and took my first taxi from the airport to the North Austin Plaza (it felt wrong to get in the back seat of a car with a male driver that I didn't know at 1am...but he was a talker and I learned all about the years he spent as a bouncer in a bar before he got into the taxi business lol. It was strangely fun to travel by myself...is that weird? I loved being in the airport by myself because I kind of like people watching. And I had lots of time to sit and think and write in my journal. Nowhere I needed to be.

My good friend Mandy Cooper drove down from Dallas to stay with me and go to the audition with me. It was great catching up with her! Her husband, Geoff, came to stay for a few days with us as well and it was great meeting him.

The Audition:
Monday the 9th we went to the Frank Erwin Center and registered for the audition. Some people arrived there at 3am to stand in line! We got there at 9am and walked right up to the counter to get our wristbands and tickets. So our timing was perfect! We had come prepared to wait in line all day but it took, literally, 5 minutes.

We spent Tuesday shopping and having a grand time.

Wednesday the 11th we took our time getting there because we wanted to miss the crowd and were not interested in standing in line (especially because we already had our seat assigned to us). Some people, we found out, had arrived at 11pm the night BEFORE the audition, which was a completely ridiculous thing to do. We got there at 8am and walked right into the building, and right to our seats. No lines. We had fabulous seats, right in the middle, close to the front. They started the process about 10 minutes after we arrived, so again, fabulous timing!

Ryan Seacrest was there and they spent some time filming the crowd...they would tell us to all scream and throw our hands in the air and flash our cameras while they filmed. Then they instructed us to shout phrases in unison like, "Everything's hotter in Texas!", etc. They pulled a couple of people from the crowd who were dressed like cowboys and moved them to the front near the camera.

After they filmed us for a while, they set up 10 booths in the middle of the auditorium. At each booth were 2 judges. They called down one section of the auditorium at a time and lined us up. 4 people lined up in front of each booth at a time. Each of the 4 people sang 10-30 seconds of a song. Then after everyone sang, they would tell you if you made it or not. Then you would exit the auditorium through a "winners" door or a "non winners" door which exited the building.

While waiting in my seat to audition I went in the hall to use the bathroom and...oh my goodness...it was a crazy mess of singing and fixing hair in the hallway. I don't know how anyone even heard themselves singing, it was so loud.

There were several people who wore 'crazy' costumes. And every single one of them made it through the "winner" door lol. There were a lot of very very talented people there so it was really fun to hear all of them sing.

While sitting and waiting to audition I debated with my friend, Mandy, whether I should sing "I can't make you love me" by Bonnie Rait or "Feeling good" by Michael Buble. So I was practicing them for her. While singing "Feeling good" a guy turned to me and said, "That was sexy" haha. So I decided to go with that one.

I did not get to walk through the "winners" door :) But like I said, I don't feel bad about it at all because there were so many talented people there and not all of them made it through. It was a really fun experience though! And I am very glad I did it.

I met a guy at my hotel who did make it through so look for him on tv! His name is Cory Levoy.

I got to spend an extra day in Austin though and did lots of cool stuff: Ate at an outdoor Indian restaurant called the "G'raj Mahal", shopped at some awesome vintage stores and a great music store where I bought two new cds by "Warpaint" and "The XX", saw the movie "Flipped" (quite possibly a new favorite), and watched all the bats come out from under the bridge at dusk.

Anyway...it was a great trip! It made me want to travel more.

Here is a video of one of the new bands that I've discovered: The XX. This song is called Basic Space.