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The past six weeks have been an ineffable ebb and flow of overwhelming emotion and numbness. I have found so much joy in noticing Spring and the new life it breathes into my surroundings. I remember my art professor once saying that a rose is the most beautiful in the moment it gracefully bows its head to die. In that moment, it has flawlessly fulfilled the measure of its creation as a beautiful rose and can shamelessly bow its head and wilt gracefully.

My grandpa sent me these beautiful flowers while I was in the hospital with Abby.

It was a beautiful bright bouquet that sat cheerily among my many others that kept showing up over the weeks following Abby’s short life. Eventually the meals, treats, cards, and flowers tapered off and eventually each bouquet dried up and died. On the day I finally decided to throw away all the dead flowers, I noticed that some bouquets wilted much more beautifully than others. While I still ended up tossing most of them, the orange roses that my grandpa had sent me seemed even more beautiful and strangely vibrant in death. I separated them from the rest of the bouquet and put them in their own vase. They now sit on my dresser and literally become more lovely with each passing day.

“To understand the meaning of death, we must appreciate the purpose of life. The dim light of belief must yield to the noonday sun of revelation, by which we know that we lived before our birth into mortality.”

– President Thomas S. Monson

“They are raised to dwell with God who has redeemed them: thus they have eternal life through Christ, who has broken the bands of death.”

“And little children also have eternal life.” – Mosiah 15:23 and 25

On this beautiful Easter Sunday, I am grateful that no matter how cold and dark the winter, spring time always follows. JJ and I have loved going on walks and feeding the ducks at Fairmont Park lately now that the weather is warming up. Here are some snapshots of the Springtime beauty that has been popping up in abundance. There is something very healing about walking outside and being surrounded by blossoms of new life.

Spring has officially sprung and new life is blossoming and/or waddling everywhere! Love is old, love is new.

And the beat goes on.

I’ve sort of been meaning to start a blog since I got married two years ago, but never thought my life was interesting enough to blog about. I don’t sew my own clothes, I don’t bake from scratch, I’m not an awesome photographer, I am politically moderate, and I regularly consume red meat, corn syrup, gluten, sugar, and all things non-blogworthy. I don’t have a baby and I can’t even drive a stick. Plus I have been devoting a vast majority of my waking moments to being a full time college student, having a part time job, and being a wife, which leaves little time for the luxury of blogging.

However, while still adjusting to my awkward post-student existence, I’ve been browsing the endless blogs of the blogosphere and I’ve realized something. 80% of all bloggers have absolutely nothing of consequence to say (and neither do I) so I might as well hop on the bandwagon, right? I have a college diploma, a diamond on my left hand, and a blog. I must be an adult. I have lived in Virginia for almost 11 years and somehow I ended up here in Salt Lake City.

Exactly two weeks ago I was sitting in my old boxed up basement abode all alone with a sinus infection and a vase full of wilting flowers on the kitchen table. I had been listening to The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips all week because that album reminds me of my best friend and husband JJ who at that time was sprucing up our new ghetto fabulous apartment in west Salt Lake City.

“And it goes fast. I think of the past. Suddenly everything has changed.”

This song has sort of defined my move out here (and is pretty much the theme song to mortality.) JJ and I graduated from Southern Virginia University the last weekend in April and a week later, I dropped him off at the Dulles airport where he ventured off into the blue sky without me.

He’s been out here almost a month now and is doing amazing at his internship with Deseret News where he is the new content manager of the Moneywise section for deseretnews.com. His ability to succeed at new things never ceases to amaze me. I’ve been out here a little over a week and am slowly adjusting and still searching for jobs – not a task for the faint hearted.

Boxing up all our stuff and going through old journals and photographs has made me realize just how much my world has shifted during these last four years of being at SVU. I feel like if nothing else, college has succeeded in poking a series of small holes in the construct of my reality. I have become intimately acquainted with my place in the universe. And even though my place is an infinitesimally small speck among dark matter, the fact that I know this makes it okay.

Lucky for me, I stumbled upon a likeminded speck a few years ago in my sophomore literature class and we have been happily “specking” together ever since. Facing life together lightens the load of constant change and the accompanying overwhelming epiphanies that come at the the most mundane times – like when you’re looking through old photographs or putting all the vegetables away.

Before I took apart our little apartment back home on the corner of Link and Thornhill, I snapped some photos of the walls we’ve been living inside for the past year.