The Time of Thanksgiving is Here...

Well, it seems that another Thanksgiving is upon us---but let us not forget the reason why we celebrate this most gracious holiday. Though the food and company are more than delightful. It is more than that. It is where our hearts are. It is about the smiles we share and the laughter that rings through the comfort and joy of family and friends. It is the prayers and kind words that are given. It is about being humble, and most important: Grateful.

I am most grateful for an abundant list of things that could go on for millions and billions of years about. But, instead of listing them all, I will simply share a few:

I absolutely love my family and there is no doubt whatsoever about it. It is wonderful knowing that no matter how old I get, I am still my parents baby girl. That there could ever be so much love in this imperfect world that I am worthy of. My parents are so dear and precious to my heart. They are my ultimate best friends and they will be forever and ever. And my sisters are the sweetest angels anyone could ever encounter. Oh, how their voices, their smiles, their laughs, make me feel like I have died and gone to heaven! They too, are my ultimate best friends and I am so blessed to know that with my family, I will never be alone.

My faith in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is tied for first place alongside my family. No one can even begin to imagine the pain, and suffering that My Heavenly Father, Mother, Brother (Jesus Christ), Prophets and many others went through so that I would be able to be a part of this gospel, and have it in my life as a guide and be able to know exactly why I am here and where I am going. It is an incredible feeling to know this, that is so sweet that it is hard for me to even begin to describe in mortal words. My whole heart and soul is embodied in these most marvelous of marvels.

Everyone I meet and come into contact with, is important to me. They mean the world to me. They teach me things I would have never thought of before. I feel what they feel and they trust me. I am so grateful that there is trust, and love, and friendship in this world. It is what I thrive on and what makes me the most happy. Especially when all three are active at the same time. I love everyone, no matter where they came from, who they are, or what they have done. I forgive because hate and grudges are ugly, and destructive, and that is not my nature. I am very grateful for the friendships I have made and how my friends love and trust and care for me and I know that no matter what I am going through, they understand me and they support me.

Now, I hope I haven't bored you out of your mind. I just have been seriously thinking the last few days about life and meaning, and it got me thinking about the season that we are in and I wanted to share this message and my thoughts before I let it slip by. I am so grateful to my followers and readers and fans and random strangers that mistakenly wander onto this page. Thank you so much for your love and support. Without you guys I wouldn't be doing this and expressing what I love to do which is write! I cannot even express how much each one of you mean to me. So in the most simplest of words....I am grateful to you!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

xoxoxoxoxo

Inspiring Quote Day:

"The only way to get positive feelings about yourself is to
take positive actions. Man does not live as he thinks, he
thinks as he lives."

-- Vaughan Quinn

Letters!!

In the last 2 days I have received 5 letters!! Thank you so much Makenna and Brynlee and Mom!! You guys are the greatest! I love my family, and my wonderful friends too! I am so grateful to my support team! And I can't wait to come down to Utah next week and spend some time with everyone I love!! Soooo, in honor of thanksgiving next thursday I will be posting one thing a day on what I am thankful for until Thanksgiving! And then after Thanksgiving I am going to start Grateful Friday Posts because for some reason those are my worst days, so to keep smiling I will think of things I am thankful for! I feel that music is huge in my life, I can not live without music playing constantly (even when i am sleeping) so Mondays i will post the song of the week. Also I am starting Quote Wednesdays where i will post a quote, scripture, song lyrics, any short little bite of inspiration to get us through the other half of the week :)

So here is my Posting Schedule:

Monday: Song Of the Week Day

Tuesday: Regular Posts

Wednesday: Inspiring Quote Day

Thursday: Regular Posts

Friday: Grateful Post Day

Saturday: Regular Posts

Sunday: Spiritual Insight Day

A New Addition!

Hey guys! If you love me, will you go check out this blogs sidekick, The Food Scientist? It is a blog I just created to show case my love of healthy food. It is going to be great! It will have recipes and pictures and you can email or comment on the posts with questions or requests for me and I promise I will answer them all! I would love to hear from you!

ALSO, Please, if you haven't already, become a follower of this blog as well as my food blog and you will make this girl very happy. As well as share these blogs with people you know and would be interested in reading my stuff, that would be great! Thank you so much! Hope to hear from you guys on your input, suggestions, and comments! Love you all!

P.S. The sidekick blog is linked on the right side of the screen!!!

Thinking of Someone Very Special...

(Me and My Missionary)

(Saying One Last Goodbye)

Lately the thought of Eric keeps coming to me and I feel like the image of his smile, his eyes, and the sound of his laugh won't go away. I fall asleep wondering how he is and hope he is well and working hard! A few nights ago I finally felt like I couldn't take it any more and I wrote my missionary for the first time. I couldn't sleep because I wanted it perfect, so i didn't go to bed until about 2:30am and when i climbed into bed that late night, I felt that what I had written was silly so after church the next day I rewrote it. Then, I stuck it in the mail, and ever since i have been really nervous for his response, if it will be a good one or something other. I am so anxious and now he really isn't leaving my mind, I don't know why i can't let him go. So this song is for him because when I hear this it reminds me of him.

100 Workout Challenge....Experimental Food

Okay so I absolutely love Saturdays because I get the whole day to myself where I have no homework and my day is very relaxed. I woke up fully rested and decided that I didn't feel like leaving the apartment very much so the entire day I spent in exercise clothes and I did what I called the 100 Workout Challenge. It consists of:

100 Jumping Jacks

90 Crunches

80 Squats

70 Leg Lifts

60 Jumping Jacks

50 Crunches

40 Squats

30 Leg Lifts

20 Jumping Jacks

and a 10 minute run.

I Am so sore now because of it but I know I am building muscle and creating a healthier and stronger body!

Then for dinner I wanted to try a new Vegetarian Recipe now that I have completed 5 days to being vegetarian :) It is called Polenta with Mediterranean Vegetables!

Here we have the sliced Yellow and Green Squash...

And the sliced Eggplant and Sweet Red Bell Pepper...

Making the polenta with the broiled veggies in the back ground...

Layering the polenta, spinach, and roma tomatoes in a pan...

the finished product, straight out of the oven:) ...

A yummy helping!

After eating the dish I concluded that it was better than I expected but the recipe needs some modifications and alterations. But in all it was pretty good! Then, I was still feeling adventurous so I whipped up a "dessert" of some sort (still off sugar) which was made of:

Dates

Almond Milk

Yogurt

Ice

Frozen Banana Chunks

AND

Nutmeg

The finished product:)

Now this was a SUPER delicious, healthy, and sugar free "treat" that even my skeptical room mates LOVED!! It smells and tastes like Autumn... yummy in my healthy tummy!!!!!!

A Fresh New Start

My whole life I thought that I wasn't any good at sports. That I couldn't achieve success in any sport. No one would pass the ball to me, and I thought that it was because my team mates thought I was terrible which only made me feel that I couldn't do anything-- that I was no good. So as I grew up I just accepted the fact that I was no good. You may be thinking to yourself right about now that this is a sob story, but don't worry, it has a good ending.

Well, fast forward to five days ago, I am in a Personal Achievement class here at BYU- Idaho and the subject is one that I have never thought much about: "Self-Talk." Which is where we are in a constant conversation with ourselves 23 out of 24 hours a day. Think of all the messages that are being sent!! Any way, one thing hit me, and it was that our sub-conscious will believe lies the longer you tell your self them. So for this story, it was the fact that I kept saying that, "I am bad at sports," which led to me not being a lazy non- exercising, no sport playing girl. And now I am see effects of that. So from that moment on, I decided that I really wasn't like that, and that I was going to reverse what all my self-talk had done to me. Now, I am on my way to a fresh and wonderful new clean start! I have dedicated myself to being the best I can be to my body, because as a matter of fact, it is the only one I get and I want to treat myself well. So I have completely changed mentally and I have prepared and studied out what it is that I need to be my very best self.

I have become vegetarian (with the help of TONS of research), I have gone completely off sugar and soda, and I am going to start running. I promised Shaelie I would run a Half Marathon with her next Halloween and I really want to do it and be able to say that I finished something that I never thought that i would be able to accomplish. I want to do it for myself, NO MATTER if people say I can't do it, because inside I know that I can do it. I can do hard things. I just want to feel alive, and clear and free from all the bad that I was doing to my body. I want to know what the healthy Alyssa feels like.

** The picture that I put with this blog post is a quote that kind of gave me my main source of inspiration besides my college class, Personal Achievement.**

A List of All my New Favorite Songs:

(In no specific order)

I Found a Reason-- Cat Power

*Raindrops-- Regina Spektor

That's Beautiful to Me-- Jaron and the Long Road to Love

Almost Paradise-- Victoria Justice & Hunter Hayes

*Holding Out for a Hero-- Ella Mae Bowen

*Never Alone-- Lady Antebellum

Angel by Your Side-- Francesca Battistelli

Carousel-- Iron & Wine

Swans and the Swimming-- Iron & Wine

The Day I Fall-- One More Girl

Hold On to Me-- One More Girl

Hey Princess-- Allstar Weekend

*Domino-- Jessie J

With Your Love-- Cher Lloyd

Perfect-- Hedley

*The Prayer-- Celtic Woman

Spanish Lady-- Celtic Woman

Someone like You-- Adele

Stealing Cinderella-- Chuck Wicks

Cinderella-- Steven Curtis Chapman

*God Gave Me You-- Dave Barnes

See No More-- Joe Jonas

*Superman-- Joe Brooks

Listen To your Heart (Slow Version)-- DHT

Just a Kiss-- Lady Antebellum

I Want You-- Fefe Dobson

Ghost-- Fefe Dobson

Broken Arrow-- Pixie Lott

Need-- Hana Pestle

Skyscraper-- Demi Lovato

*My ALL TIME favorites, as of right now :)

Hope you like the list. They are all great songs for different reasons to me.

Once Upon a Delicious Weekend...

My Room Mate Amy and I Cooking Dinner

Italian Stromboli

Mexican Tamale Pie

Oh the Joys of Thunder Storms on Sundays...

Today has been a marvelous day!! I made chicken salad for lunch, helped taste test my roommate Kaitlin's greek cookies (because i am off sugar--again-- so I could only "taste"), I made sugar free white chocolate pudding (to distract me from all the sugary treats laying around our kitchen. We had a 5 minute thunder and lighting storm and I got to wear my cat hat :) So it has been basically great!!

..............................................................................................................

Also this weekend I didn't have much homework so I decided to bake and cook A LOT so I will post pictures of all the yummy goodness that I made :) But now I am off to the Smith Building on BYU-I campus so that I can play around on the pianos in the practice rooms because i have missed playing so much. I just wish I had my Jim Brickman and Sheet music binder with me so i could play a lot more songs sight reading! But oh well!! Tchao!!