what an adventure is life

While we're on the topic of blessings that come amidst trials I'd like to introduce you all to my best friend Bandanna Brianna Banana. Isn't she cute? I took this picture one day during lunch while she wasn't looking...

I've known Brianna for a few years, and we really only became friends last year, for a couple of reasons, one of which simply being that people bond tighter under stressful circumstances. They learn to help each other and forgive each other and love each other through every day, whether it's easy or hard or exciting or stressful or some combination of all those things. But that's not really what I want to talk about. Suffice it to say Brianna's just pretty much my favorite.

She has this thing with going on adventures. Our first one that I remember was last summer when we took Ash and her friend Allie to Lagoon and we had a FANTASTIC day. That was back when we were just regular friends and life was more or less one big joke to us. We lived for fun and boy was that day fun, even if Allie did get us in trouble TWICE. We went on one of the spinny rides that goes upside down and Brianna and I shared a car and screamed Disney songs at the top of our lungs. We also spontaneously burst into renditions of the Cat in the Hat theme song that starts off "Let's go go go go! On an adventure!" all day long. And thus our adventure craze was born.

You could say it's turned into a bit of an obsession. By adventures I don't mean going out and doing great big fun things all the time. Heaven knows we don't have the money or time for that. As the year has gone on, we've come to realize that the adventures of life are found in the small, everyday things that make our lives worth living. For instance last weekend we helped her family paint her playhouse. And after a concert we cleaned up the stage and went for ice cream with some of our Orchadork friends. We went to the Museum of Natural Curiosity for prom day and for Winter Ball we built the ugliest snowman you've ever seen. Once I went to a baptism with her family and we spent a weekend in Fayette Utah (population probably around 54). One night we went to her 4 year old cousins birthday party and then watched half a Jazz game at my house. And interspersed with all that are monotonous days of math homework and physics classes, endless rehearsals, runs I don't feel like going on, studying for AP tests I no longer care about and working long shifts at a job I usually despise (although free ice cream is a nice perk). But you know what, all of that is okay because what I have learned is that life, in and of itself, is an adventure. It's new and it's exciting and it's hard. Things constantly change and they're not always the things you want to change. But EVERY SINGLE DAY there is something to smile about, something to look forward to, if you will only look away from the mundane and choose to see the extraordinary. 

Here's our ugly snowman. It has horns, and also a dog. (Pictured below)

This is us with our friend Mikelle in AP Lit last week. We had matching necklaces on accident. What an adventure!