Balance, Alignment, Follow Through

In my marketing class, my teacher was talking about three of the most important things for everything in life (and as usual, lessons in life can be applied to business). The lessons are:

• Balance
• Alignment
• Follow Through

Balance - In sports, you need balance to hit a ball or run in a straight line. In life, you need it so you don't get burned out. You need to find that balance between family, religion, business, recreation, and everything else in your life.

Alignment - In sports, alignment helps you drive a golf ball straight or swing a baseball bat. In life, alignment is important so you put your priorities in order.

Follow Through - Follow through. Swing through the pitch. Keep running through a tackle. Finish your golf swing. If you start a project, finish it. If you make a decision, stick to it. There was a picture on pinterest that said "If you're tired of starting over, STOP GIVING UP."

And then he showed a video, which is about baseball. And families. And a father playing ball with his daughter. And oh my gosh I was on the brink of tears because I want this. But the time isn't yet. But I still can't wait. I'm just really excited for the future, when I get to play ball with my kids. And then hope they remember the things I taught them when it really matters. More than baseball. You know. The really important stuff.

Hope you enjoyed it. :)

Pioneer Day Parade 2012

I'm not gonna lie. That was a little disappointing.

Or maybe I just didn't do it right. Which is a real possibility. Let me explain.

When Isa and I went to work on Monday morning, at 7:45am (AM!), there were already people camping out and staking out their spots for the parade the next day (today). People don't even come out to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade that early.

And then last night, when Isa and I got home from work and school, we went for a walk up and down 2nd East to see all the people. It was packed full of families with air mattresses and tents. It was something they must get excited for all year. Our favorite was a family that brought a projector and was showing a movie against a building wall to entertain their kids (and parade neighbors). I called my cousin that lives up the street from us and he assured me that nothing (crime-wise) ever happens and it's a good time had by all. Crazy.

So needless to say, we were super excited and Isa was really upset that she didn't get the day off. So I went down there for the parade, and I'm not gonna lie, it did not live up to the hype. I was expecting huge balloons and a jet fly over and clowns and stuff. Why else would people be sleeping out for more than 24 hours for a parade?

Although there were some creative floats, the parade as a whole is like little league compared to New York parades (or even Carnival parades from the Caribbean). But you know what the absolute worst part of the parade was? They didn't throw out candy! Nothing! What kind of parade doesn't throw out candy? Boo.

Here's how the parade went, for the most part: Cops on motorcycles. Float. Band. Beauty queen from some random city in Utah. Float from some random Mormon Stake. Some more cops on motorcycles. Band. Madagascar 3 float (I started to think they sponsored the parade or something). Get ready for a pic explosion:

Madagascar Float #1

Mormon Royalty

Cops on bikes. People loved it when they revved their engines!

A train. For you, Dad. :)

Beauty Queens #1

Old Firemen. For you, Chris.

Jasmine and Aladdin

BYU's float. This is the best angle so it doesn't look like a.. Well something else.

Beauty queens #2

Charly. Why don't you just tear my heart out and stomp on it already? Huh?

Haka!!

Lego People!!

Look at their hands!

Beauty queens #3

Tall People!

Beauty queen #4

Jesus!

Jesus and his posse.

My favorite part of the parade.

I love chinese dragons!

Get the ball! Eat the ball!!

Throwing the dynamite in the cave.

Fire in the hole!

Twin temples

Sometimes I think my bag is heavy. This dude picks up people.

Madagascar float #2

Family. Isn't it about... time?

Not one piece of candy.

But I spent the rest of the day reading a book for History and writing a 6-page book report on it. So maybe there were parties and festivities the rest of the day that I didn't get to and maybe those are what makes Pioneer Day as amazing as everyone makes it out to be. But if the parade was any indication of later festivities, I didn't think I'd be missing anything. Maybe there would have been candy there.

Pioneer Day Concert

For those of you who are not from Utah, Pioneer Day is an actual holiday. As in, I get the day off from work on Tuesday. Woohoo!

Pioneer Day (I had to just look this up) commemorates the day (July 24, 1847) that Brigham Young and the first group of mormon pioneers came into the Salt Lake valley.

I've never been in Utah for it, but I've heard it's kind of a big deal. And tonight was just the start of it. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir put on a concert with Katherine Jenkins, who you may know from Dancing with the Stars. The concert was held in the huge and awesome conference center across from Temple Square. Muchas gracias to our friends Cat and Doug for hooking us up with sweet tickets. You're the best! Check out the pic I took from our seats.

It was a great show, and if you want to hang out here for the next 90 minutes, you can watch it in its entirety, thanks to MormonMessages' YouTube channel:

We enjoyed it. And if you had all that time tonight, I hope you did too.

Rate Our Weekend Trips from SLC

Isa and I have compiled a list of 15 possible weekend trips that we could take from our current home-base in Salt Lake City. There will probably be many more that we haven't thought of, so if you know of a weekend adventure that you think we would love and it's not on the list below, please leave it in the comments. That would be much appreciated.

Because we don't have the time to do every trip, we need help deciding which ones are the best and which ones are not worth doing. That's where you come in. We would love it if you could help us by rating the 15 trips below in order of awesomeness: 1 being amazing and an absolute must-do, and 15 for something we could skip and not think twice about it.

If you haven't done something on the list, go by your gut feeling on coolness. You know us, what do you think we'd want to do the most? And if you get bored, just rate your top 10, or top 5, or whatever. Any ratings at all will help. The survey will fill in the rest for you. So, here goes. Thanks so much!

You're the bestest! Thanks for the ratings. :)

Isa is Crafty

Before Isa started working, she had quite a bit of time on her hands. Almost as soon as we arrived here in Utah, I started working, and then the next week I started school, too. So I've been busy for a while, but she had three or four weeks of job hunting and free time until she started at TDAmeritrade. Normal people would have watched tv or wasted hours away on facebook or pinterest. Not Isa. She was crafty.

Her first endeavor was to reupholster a chair. She had seen it on pinterest and she knew someone who had done it, so she thought, 'Why not?' We picked up a green armchair at a furniture consignment shop a few blocks down the street from us (literally picked it up, I carried it home on my head). She ripped off all the fabric and turned it into this work of art:

Seriously, how cool is that? She reupholstered a chair! And I love it and I have claimed it as my throne. She can have the couch.

Next, she moved on to our walls. We're not sure if we're allowed to paint, and as you can tell from the background of the chair pictures above, the walls are an ugly taupe color, and Isa is very colorful, so something had to change. So not being sure if we can paint or not - and not wanting to pay for all that paint anyway - Isa found another fun idea on pinterest. So we went to Home Depot, Walmart, Lowes, and a few other places and started collecting paint chips and she's in the process of taping them on the wall, like this:

It's not done yet, we've made several trips and we have LOTS more paint chips. That colorful collection is going to spread clear across the wall. :)

And last, but certainly not least, we bought two $15 nightstands at Ikea. You know, this one:

And she turned it into this:

She painted the whole thing blue, then drew the pattern and painted the design on top by hand.

Yeah, she's pretty darn cool. And way talented.

I Rocked My Midterms

For those of you who don't know me, I've never been one to study. Or care much about school. I've been fortunate enough to be able to go to classes and absorb enough information to get at least a B on tests. But apparently that's changed. I can't bring myself to be lackadaisical enough to not do the work necessary to get an A. Maybe it's because Isa got straight A's, and although she said it's ok if I don't (I made sure she knew that I'm not as diligent of a student as she was), I guess it's not ok to me.

So because the BYU's Salt Lake Center's testing center is closed on Saturday (and if you're reading this, BYU-SLC, that needs to change. For those of us who work 8-5 and have a full-time class load, there is no other time to take a test), Isa and I had to drive down to Provo so I could take my two midterms on campus. I've never taken two tests in a row. I feel like even in finals week, they're spread out or I had a few hours between them or something. But nope, I took the first one, walked out and around, studied for 30 minutes, and then took the second one.

And I rocked them both. 97 in Marketing and 94 in History. Booyah.

That's really all. I just wanted to brag and I felt like this was a decent forum for that. :)

Brisa is on Pinterest

Hello Bloggers.

You've heard of Pinterest, right?

Well, if you haven't, here's a quick crash course (if you have, skip to the next paragraph). Pinterest is the newest kid on the social media block. Basically, you create a profile and you think of topics you like. Each topic is a separate board. Let's say, travel. As I browse the internet, if I ever see a picture of a place I want to go to, I click a "Pin It" button in my favorites bar, and it pins that picture onto my board. So you Pin things that Interest you. Get it? Graphic designers, wedding planners, chefs, and all crafty people love it because they can browse other crafty people's boards and re-pin their ideas, so we can do them in the future.

Isa has lots of boards. Some are for crafty ideas, some are for recipes, some are for our dream home. You should go follow her. She's really interesting. She's been on Pinterest for a while. I just started because I felt left out. So if you are interested in traveling to cool places, go follow me, because that's pretty much all I'm going to post. Ever. Come to think of it, my pinterest is probably better suited for my alter-ego perfectlittleplanet than for "me" me. But whatever. It's already created. There's no going back now. :)