Week 1 - Entrepreneur Journal

Lessons Learned

This week’s assignments were very insightful for me.  I found Randy Pausch’s lecture to be inspiring and motivating.  He gave sound advice about following dreams – even the small dreams (like winning big stuffed animals).  I think he taught a great lesson about attitude.  He apologized for not being sad or morose due to his cancer.  He was lively, upbeat, positive, and even mentioned that we should choose to be Tigger rather than Eeyore.  A couple more things that stood out to me are to show gratitude and see the best in others.  Those are two things that I can implement more in my life.  I find myself easily irritated by my husband’s lack of help and support at home and with chores, but if I look for things to be grateful about and see all the things he does do, I would be a lot less irritated.  As I strive to see the best in him, I will have an increased appreciation and love for him.

Lessons Not Yet Learned

 Our assignments this week focused on following your dreams and creating a vision.  I need to figure out what my own dreams are.  I feel like I don’t know what my dreams or life vision are or how to follow them.  I stay very busy at home with my daughter, housework, homework, etc. and feel like I don’t even have time for following dreams, let alone take a shower or have a hobby!  I know there must be a way to balance everything and perhaps better time management would allow me to do more and be able to follow my dreams.  Creating a list of 50 things to do helped me to see what is important to me and gave me some great ideas for dreams to follow.  I also found the Stars and Steppingstones article to be very beneficial in determining how I want to be remembered and what I should focus on now to achieve that.

Summer Update!

I haven’t written for a while since don’t have my weekly religion blog assignment!  My next classes start up in just over a week.  I’m taking a required Family Foundations course and a Business orientation one.  That’s a total of 3 credits, which will be nice since Jasper will be born in just a few weeks!  I had to change my major to Business again since BYU-I decided to discontinue the English online degree program.

Jasper’s due date is just 53 days away!  Here’s a picture of her adorable face from her 20-week ultrasound.  She's almost 33 weeks now!  And she is SO CUTE!!!  :)

Jasper's 20-Week Ultrasound

My mom and Melanie are throwing a baby shower next month on the 29^th, so I got registered for things at Target.com!  It was lots of fun checking out all the cute baby clothes and things. :)  Click here to view my registry!

We moved from Provo just over a month ago.  We live in Sandy now!  Brooke & Taylor moved to Sandy too, so we’re all renting a 5-bedroom house together!  It’s fun.  Michael started teaching Social Studies a couple weeks ago.  I reactivated my 24 Hour Fitness membership and really enjoy swimming lately!  I’m also 10 miles closer to work now, which is awesome!  It only takes me 15 minutes to get to work and I love it!  It’s also nice because I go southbound to work, whereas MOST commuters go north, so I don’t have to deal with the awful traffic as much.  Same with going home!  However, traffic around the Point of the Mountain often has its way of being sluggish for some reason.

We’ve had a hot summer!  It’s starting to cool down gradually, which is nice!  Autumn will be here soon and I can’t wait!  It’s my favorite season.  I love the smell of autumn, the golden sunshine, the colorful leaves, etc.  It’s great!

Thank You + Two Tags!

Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes! I had a great birthday! =)

Here are two fun tag things!

1st tag: Post the 4th picture of your 4th file of photos on your computer
...could be interesting...



Haha! Back when I worked for a sculpture class at BYU-I in 2006!

The 2nd tag: Google...your name and the word "needs"...for me that would be "Alexis needs", for you that means insert your own name....write 10 of them, if you choose.
1. Alexis needs to stop drawing on herself.
2. Alexis needs an angel.
3. Alexis needs a hero. [Lol, angels, heros, what else?!]
4. Alexis needs more guy friends.
5. Alexis needs a middle name!
6.Alexis needs convincing.
7. Alexis needs numbers.
8. Alexis needs to work on that cheating thing more.
9. Alexis NEEDS ATTENTION.
10. Alexis needs to eat some celery.
No go play and find out what YOU need.

Case File: Alexis vs. Klamath Falls

AKA: Why I am Moving back to Rexburg!

Premise: Over the past couple of weeks, I have been considering various options involving living somewhere else. For a little while I was thinking it would be way fun to live in the SLC area and be able to visit my BYU-I friends occasionally. But, for some reason or another, I just never really felt like it was a good idea. So I thought, “why not live in Rexburg?!” I love it there, I have TONS of friends, I can walk anywhere in town, so while at work I generated a “Pros & Cons” for staying here vs. moving to Rexburg. Here’s how it went:

Tulelake

Pros:

☼ I have no living expenses here, other than gas.

☼ I have a job at Staples.

☼ I can always be around Mom & Dad!

☼ GOOD FOOD!

Cons:

₪ The gas is killing my bank account!

₪ I spend a lot of time commuting back and forth to work.

₪ The people here are gross and grouchy. That makes me sad.

₪ There is nothing to do here and no one to hang out with.

₪ The occasional getting home from work at 10:30pm, then waking up at 4:00am to go back to work makes me feel like a corpse. It can’t be healthy, lol.

Staples @ unnatural hours of the morning.

Rexburg

Pros:

☼ #1 Pro is the Rexburg Temple is right there - I can go all the time!

☼ I have a job available there.

☼ I’ll be around thousands of young LDS people! Yay!

☼ I have friends there and there are fun things to do.

☼ Once I’m there, I’ll essentially have zero transportation expenses!

Con:

₪ I’ll have to be self-sustaining, pay rent, food, utilities, and any other expenses.

So, as soon as I situate a place to live, and finish out my scheduled hours at Staples (I handed in my memo of notification this morning), I’ll be moving! Hurrah! I might spend a day or so in Utah on the way back up there. I like Utah! And I love my sisters who live there!!!

Has anyone been watching the Democratic National Convention stuff?! What do you think about Joe Biden! Will he help or hurt Obama’s campaign? I certainly don’t think he can be considered an asset, in my opinion. But that’s good in relation to my point of view!

I probably have to go to bed soon-ish. I was sooo tired this morning! I was so unbelievably happy when I got to go home! This was my 9^th day in a row or working without a day off in between. And I’ll continue to work every day until Sunday! Twelve consecutive days of non-stop work! Is that legal?! Jk!

Brooke and Taylor apparently had a heart-wrenching anxiety yesterday! They tell me that their kitten “Hector” is turning into a teenager and prefers to spend time out with his neighborhood cat friends instead of at home! In fact, last night he stayed out ALL NIGHT, causing Brooke and Taylor unbelievable distress and grief! They were soooo concerned! I think they probably secretly cried about it. They walked around the neighborhood for HOURS, calling his name and jingling his cat toy, but no sign of his presence! They hoped that he wasn’t stuck in a tree or found by people who wanted a new pet...lol. Taylor even got up at 4:00am and walked all the way to the Trax station, searching desperately for their missing pet, and still no sign! They were so distraught, they couldn’t sleep, they couldn’t stop worrying about their beloved cat! Then Taylor had to get ready for work, he looked outside – still no Hector. This must have been the saddest day of their lives up to this point! Then Taylor came back moments later, with none other than Hector in his arms! Brooke exuberantly shouted his name and held him in her arms! No words could possibly describe the feelings that attended their reunion! But Brooke says “he’s sooo grounded! No playing outside anymore unless I’m out with him!” Poor cat. They treat him like a human. Did you know that he sleeps in their bed with them almost every night?! And uses a pillow with them and sometimes the covers!

So, enough about Hector. He’s just a spoiled cat anyways.

Tonight we had a delicious dinner (as always!) Mom made some awesome salad with tomatoes from the garden! AND fermented carrot stuff! It was lacto-something, preserved with salt, whey, and ginger! It was good! And gingery! Dad and I got to make fun of Michelle Obama too (no offense to Obama supporters). But, it’s inevitable, she does a very strange thing with her mouth ALL the time! Especially when she’s unhappy about something. I tried to find a picture of it, but none sufficiently depicted the true essence of that priceless expression of hers! If you’ve seen her on TV for any amount of time, you know what I’m talking about!!!

Peace out!