He's too fantastic!*

First of all, I want to wish my brother, Matt, a happy birthday! I don't think he reads my blog, but it's the thought that counts (and if he does read he should leave comments so I actually know that he does). This blog, after all, was started so I could keep my family informed with what was happening in my life. Then...well, I don't know what happened to it. I just have a lot of feelings.*

For those of you who are interested, my life is going pretty well. I've had some rough patches recently, but overall I am feeling pretty optimistic about life. I won't get into details because then this post would turn into a novella, but recently I have come to learn a lot about myself and I may be self-centered, but it's an incredible feeling to figure things out. To begin to see a bigger picture and to realize that you are being lead to better things than what you were trying to lead yourself to.

Anyway. We had the Institute Open House last Friday and I think it went pretty well. We had a lot of people sign in at the front (and then we did door prizes) and on Tuesday we had a few new people at class. It was nice to be able to just wander from room to room and relax and not have to worry about if the food is filled or if the trash is picked up, either because someone else was fretting and I didn't know or because these people are clean and threw away their own trash.

...I ate a lot of Lofthouse cookies. This probably explains why I don't have a substantial memory of the evening. What I do know is that I almost won Foosball.

This summer, for Insti, the students are leading discussions on old Conference/BYU devotional talks. I will be leading the discussion on July 5th and my talk is a BYU Devotional, "Remember Lot's Wife" given by Holland. I am nervous, like when I see people giving a talk in church and I get that sinking feeling that my time is up, any week now it could be me on the stand. So I see the others leading the discussions and think, "My time is coming". I will let you know how it goes.

Kickball is going well. The day of a game I am not in the mood to go play, I think, "maybe I can tell them I'm sick and not go." Each and every week I have thought this. But I go and when I get there I feel alright. Everyone is still super nice and I am finally getting some names down. Our opponents this week were nicer and more fun by leaps and bounds than the team we played last week. The game is much more enjoyable when you don't have die hard kickball players. I mean, the opponents this week had socks (and one had shoes) that matched their jerseys and they actually "warmed up" for the game, but their attitudes weren't as crazed.

In other news, I am working on my query letter to send my story to a Literary Agent. In case you don't know, I like to write. I have written three stories and I am working on a fourth. The first three are a trilogy and this fourth is a new venture. I have to say, the hardest thing to write so far is this query letter. I can make up three books worth of fictitious life for fictitious characters but I struggle with a one page letter. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed, the plan is to send in the query letter and the first ten pages of the first book to a literary agent by July 15th.

That's kind of it for now. Hopefully my adventures this coming weekend will result in pictures, because sometimes that's all you really want from a blog post.