Journaling

I struggle so badly with journaling, it's not even funny. I often justify not writing in an actual paper journal by saying that this blog is my Martin journal that documents most of the important things in my life, but I'm not doing it daily. When my little sister Jaycee was in town, she was looking for journals and one of them had daily prompts in them. I loved the idea but I didn't want to spend 20 bucks on it. So I went to trusty ol' pinterest and looked upjournal prompts and found a set that I could answer a different question everyday for a wwhole year! For free too! I started doing these daily on August 5th, and I've done 34 out of the 40 days so far.

I bought this journal about 700 years ago (actually about 3 years ago) because look how cute it is!

But I only wrote in it a total of 9 times. That's not putting this adorable journal to enough use, which is why I chose this one to hold my daily writings. I have been loving it so far!  I love that the questions are not the normal "what did you do today?" questions, but that they're weird and allow me to answer questions that I normally wouldn't.

These are the questions for September that I'm trying to stay caught up on. I usually try to fill a whole page with my answer, but sometimes I run out of things to write so they end up looking like this:

Anyways, if you're struggling with journaling and want to get better, try this approach!  And if something noteworthy happened that day and you don't want to answer the assigned question, it's your freaking journal! Do whatever the heck you want! Like thee day that our car hit 123456 miles, you bet I didn't answer the question for the day!

PLT: 8th Edition

You guys, I'm just barely making the cut off on today's PLT! I actually thought it was Friday, so I was very much prepared to change the name. But, it's only Thursday, so here we go! I was able to get in a few weeks worth of pictures put in my book and finished and I'm so glad that I don't have to catch up as much as I did a few months ago!


I actually don't like this first spread, as the pictures are quite boring. But I really wanted to document the progress of our room, so I'll just flip past this page when I look through it later.

I love this one! It's only a half spread because I ran out of pictures. So now I'm looking through my pictures to send to Costco. More pages coming next week!

Things I'm loving lately

• UVU's free parking lot + shuttle
• You guys. If you go to UVU, DON'T pay $80 for a parking pass! There's a free lot, that's free, and UVU even has a shuttle that takes you all around the campus and stops at almost every building so you will be just as well off if not better than trying to find a parking spot for half an hour. You might have to wait 5-15 minutes longer to get to class, but if you just plan ahead, it's such an easy way to save money!

• Men giving up their seats on the UVU shuttle
• Speaking of the shuttle, I saw 5 guys stand up and give their seats to girls today! There were tons of people on this bus, and they all did it within 5 minutes of each other, and it just made me so happy that there are still considerate men on this earth! (Just for the record, this is not in anyway affiliated with Cody, as he is thee most chivalrous man I've ever met. It's just nice to see OTHER men doing it for complete strangers too (: ) <Haha, smile sandwich!

• Men still opening doors for me
• This goes along with the last one, and this also makes me very happy. Way to go, dudes!

• Renting textbooks
• Yet another way to save money while going to school. Chances are, every class you take isn't going to be 100% beneficial to you for the rest of your life, so you really don't need to buy it. Especially since you can get it for less than half the price by renting it from somewhere OFF CAMPUS. Your school probably rents textbooks, but try looking on half.com, chegg.com, amazon.com, bn.com... You'll save even more!

• Feeling like I belong at my job
• This is the first full week of preschool, and we've had a handful of kids that aren't doing very well when their parents leave.. Meaning they're bawling, screaming, etc. I get off work at 12:30, and the afternoon class starts at 12, meaning I get to see the afternoon kids for just a short time before I go. Yesterday, a little girl was having a complete meltdown that her mom was leaving her, and I went over to her and was able to calm her down in about 2 minutes. You guys.. this is the first time I've ever been able to do that! (Partly because most of the other kids having meltdowns are hispanic and only speak Spanish.. it's not very easy to comfort a child when they don't understand you!) I felt like I was just totally in the right career and that I was a valuable asset to the classroom. I might be overreacting a little bit, but it made me feel so good!

• My new phone
• I got a smart phone on Tuesday! Cody and I have been talking about getting me one for a while, but that would mean Cody would go back to a dumb phone (because we can't afford two data plans a month..) and I wasn't eligible for an upgrade yet, and a million other reasons. Well, we finally did it! It's a Samsung Galaxy S3 and it's beautiful, wonderful, amazing, and so fun! The battery dies a lot faster than my dumb phone, but that's understandable. My old phone could text and make phone calls, where this new one does just about anything you can think of. I know I didn't absolutely need it, but it was so so so very nice of Cody to give up his luxury to let me have a turn with a smart phone!

• A growing garden!!

  

  Our little cantaloupe!

  
  
  
• I just about jumped to the moon yesterday when I went out to our garden and noticed that we have two baby watermelons and one cantaloupe growing!! Our garden consists of two watermelon plants, one cantaloupe plant, one squash plant, and one gray pumpkin plant. We planted 20+ seeds, but these were the only ones that lived. Anyways, we're not too excited about the squash and pumpkin plants, but have been on the edge of our seats waiting for our fruit to grow!! I can't wait to eat them when they get big enough!

• Hardworking/handsome husband
  
• He's just amazing. I love him more and more every second. He works all day, sacrifices so much for me, and loves me unconditionally. Like I said in the caption of this picture, how did I get so lucky?

• This photo a day inspiration

• I have been thinking about all the cool things I'd do with a smart phone for like a month, and one of the things that I was most excited about was being able to take good photos on a regular basis. I saw this photo-a-day inspiration thing a while ago, and loved the idea of taking pictures based on what the word was that day. So, I started doing it! I decided to start yesterday, but starting on the 4th of September felt weird, so now I'm going back and taking pictures for the first three words. Here's day 3 and 4.

• Preschool
• I love being an assistant teacher, and having some say in what we teach the kids. Today was one of my days to teach, and I was able to switch our lesson plan at the last second because I noticed our kids didn't really know how to wash their hands. It might not seem like a big deal, but it just feels cool. And I love that I'm not nervous to teach here! When I was student teaching, it was so nerve-wracking every time I had to teach, but not here! I love feeling comfortable, it makes a huge difference! Also, I saw one of my cousins today! Her daughter is in one of the other classes in my building, and we just happened to be in the same place at the same time! So fun!

PLT: 7th Edition

These pictures were also taken outside, so sorry for the glare on the pages!

PLT: 6th Edition

I took these pictures outside instead of inside like I have been, so there's a little glare on most of these pictures. Oh well!!

PLT: 5th Edition

I have rejoined society!

I finally went back to washing my hair with shampoo and conditioner! It was a difficult decision, because I'd been working on the "no-poo" way for about 3 months, and I didn't want to wash with shampoo and conditioner only to change my mind, because then the three months of working with different solutions would be all for nothing, as I would have had to start all over again.

This was the only day my hair looked good, and that was after washing with boiled water, and this was the second time with boiled water.

I washed two more times after this, and it looked awful.

The final tipping point for me was last night at the Alpine Rodeo (who knew Alpine even had a rodeo?!) and there were 7 million girls with BEAUTIFUL, straight, shiny hair, and mine was in a pony tail because it looked like a rat's used nest. I knew I wouldn't do no-poo forever.. Especially since some girls were telling me my hair might take up to a year to look beautiful again.

I absolutely love hair, especially my hair! It really is gorgeous! But not for the past 3 months! I'd never wanted to shave my head so badly before this experience. 

So this morning, I broke down and used some left over shampoo and conditioner that I had in my bathroom cupboard. I was still a little hesitant though, because my roots felt so soft and clean! But then I turned around and looked at the back of my head, and decided to go for it.

Oh. My. Heaven! If no-poo did nothing else for my hair, it at least got me to realize how amazing the products are that are in the world today. I pumped the shampoo two or three times into my hand, and when I put the glorious concoction on my head, it was like unicorns and rainbows and cotton candy were having a party on my head. I rubbed it in and the party just continued getting better and better, adding gummy bears and puppies to the party list. 

And don't even get me started on the conditioner... Just putting it in my hair felt like I was walking through a world made out of the softest, shiniest silk.. I could run my fingers through my hair (IN THE SHOWER!!) further than 2 centimeters, and it was as if the Hair People (yes, there are such people) were coming to give me a huge, beautiful medal for the softest hair. 

If you can't tell, I'm so excited to be back in this shampoo and conditioner business. I dumped out my baking soda/water & vinegar/water mixtures down the drain, and did a little happy dance.

I'll just let some pictures do the talking now.. And please don't pay very close attention to my face in the first pictures.. I had just gotten out of bed. Also, I took these with my phone (I don't know why I didn't use either of my camera's.. I guess my brain doesn't work in the mornings)

I washed my hair last night, and this is what it basically looked like then too.. Except maybe a little worse.

These are basically huge knots or traps. You can't put your fingers/comb/brush through them for the life of you!

 And like a miracle, I come out of the shower with amazing hair. This was just after I blow dried it. I didn't even straighten it!

My face needed to be put in time out so you could just focus on my hair.

Consider me one happy girl (: My hair smells good (it had no scent for the last 3 months!), I can run my fingers through it, it twirls (picture a little girl spinning in circles with a big frilly dress on) when I shake my head, and it looks much more blonde!! Which I'm happy about, because I can put off getting it colored for a little while longer!


One more thing: If you are doing no-poo, way to go. Apparently it can work for everyone, if they have enough patience and don't mind the transition phase going for three months (yikes!). Everybody's hair is different, and some of you may be having the best hair you've ever had by doing this, but it just wasn't working for me. There are a TON of different options if you don't want to use baking soda and vinegar, but I'm poor right now and don't want to spend money on a bunch of random things (whether they're cheap or expensive) that MIGHT or might not work.