The Christmas season is finally here!

Last Thursday was a great feeling. I finally turned in all of my assignments for the semester and now I can finally start focusing my attention on two things: (1) Christmas, and (2) Finals. This past week Jill and I journeyed across the street, over to Smith's grocery store to buy our first Christmas tree. We also drove to a couple stores to get a tree stand, lights, and some ornaments--it's finally starting to feel like Christmas! What really made the season feel more like Christmas though was going to the annual Bonneville stake Christmas concert to see Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband, Sam Payne, and many other famous LDS irish music ensemble musicians. They performed many traditional Christmas songs and hymns while also adding their "bluegrass" flavor, which made the performance all the more better. It was a great show that helped me really start feeling the Christmas spirit this season.

The hard part of this time of year is trying to balance the joy of the Christmas season while preparing for a stressful week of finals. Christmas is associated with love, service, giving, gratitude, and peace while finals week is associated with stress, hatred, frustration, and...well...anything BUT being happy...except for when the week is over. When I compare these two opposites, it's hard to focus on the positive but I've decided to anyways. I've realized that it's such a huge blessing to be a student at BYU and to be able to further my education and become a better person. Finals is a stressful time but I'm becoming a better person because of these tests--and isn't that what life's all about--become a better person? I've said goodbye to Jill for the week because I'll only see her for a few hours at most but when the week is over, It's Christmas time..and let the joy begin!

My Grandma

Tonight Jill and I went to Salt Lake City to see the First Presidency Christmas devotional and it was amazing. And as great as it was, my favorite part of the night wasn't the devotional. It was being able to visit with my Grandma, who lives in Salt Lake, a couple hours before the devotional and being able to catch up with her.

My Grandma is such an amazing person. She treats everyone so respectfully and wouldn't say a negative thing about a single person. She's had some pretty difficult trials this past year but it seems like she is still loving life and living each day with a full heart of joy one step at a time. Even for the sweetest, kindest, and most patient person, there are still times when life can be stressful and we wanted to make sure that she wasn't going to have a stressful start to her Christmas season. I feel like I am pretty much at the peak of my stress level when it comes to finals (which are right around the corner) and Jill and I thought it would be a good idea to focus on my Grandma instead of focusing on ourselves.

Jill makes DELICIOUS no-bake cookies so we decided to take a few of the cookies to my grandma before we went to the devotional, along with a Christmas flower arrangement that I made in my floral design class earlier in the week. When we arrived at her house she answered the door with a pleasantly surprised look on her face and anxiously told us to come in. We sat in her living room and talked for about 45 minutes before we had to go but it was so fun to see her reaction to our surprise visit and little gifts. She was so happy to see us and loved telling us stories about the family and how well everyone is doing. I love my grandma for the amazing person that she is and the example that she gives me of being a Christ-like individual--full of love and patience. I'm glad that we could spread a little Christmas cheer to her and hopefully get her holiday season off to a good start