6 fastest days of the year.

I can't sleep. Christmas just ended almost 2 hours ago. It's now "officially" Sunday, which begins the 6 days of the year that disappear quicker than any other days on the calendar. I don't know where these days go, or why they go by so quickly, but looking back I can only remember a couple specific memories of things that happen between Christmas and New Year's Eve (I count New Year's Eve as one of the six because that day doesn't really become significant until it's almost over).

This year will be different. Maybe. As of right now the only thing on my schedule for the next six days is an 11 hour car ride home and a dentist appointment. I will make them significant, though. Maybe not with memories, but now is the time to make sure I'm geared up for the new year.

I always suck at resolutions. Probably because I either A) don't know what I should resolve or B) am not ready to start resolving yet. Usually what happens is I forget about them until January 3rd when somebody mentions one of their resolutions and then I make up a couple of quick ones on the spot. These never last very long. During the next 6 days my task is simple (... but maybe not easy): decide on some good New Year's Resolutions and prepare to do them.

People almost never accidently accomplish anything great that lasts. It has to be done on purpose. New Year's Resolutions are the perfect opportunity for me to get things in gear and to start to make good things happen.

6 days to go... Time to make them count.

A moment re-lived... and not a moment too soon.

It's 1:30 in the morning. At 5:30 in the morning I'll be headed with my family down to Mesa, Arizona to spend Christmas with my Grandparents. Definitely exciting. My family used to make this trip almost every winter from the time I was 10 until I was 18. It has been 6 years since I've been.

I used to hate this trip. When I was younger it was because of all the time in the car (11 hour trip). As I got older it was because of the time away from my friends. Now... I can't wait. I still don't love that I'll be in the back seat most of the way (I would much rather be driving), but I am very, very excited to go somewhere warm with my family and get out and spend some fun time on the road and visiting my grandparents. We don't take trips much, especially now that I don't live at home, so I guess this means a lot more to me now than it did ten years ago.

Grandma, Grandpa, I'm on my way.

P.S. Why am I up so late? I've learned a thing or two after all these years of making this trip. The drive goes by a LOT faster if I'm asleep for the first half of it :-) Good night, ya'lls.

Philosophical question of the night:

Here it is: If a robot from the future tried to kill you in the past... can you trust him to protect you in the present?

BYU-utah @ SLC

Saturday I went to my 4th BYU-utah game, but my first one ever in Salt Lake City. It seemed like a bit of a bold move. Besides, utah fans are all "classless" right? I was ready for some fun.

So, to be honest, I probably didn't start things out on the best of foots. We got to our seats in the north end zone and the bleachers were wet from the snow storm that had hit over the last couple of days. Well that wasn't the best, but lucky for us some sponsors had put some little red ute flags wrapped up in plastic on the seats. Well me and my buddy Garrett unwrapped our flags and used them to wipe up our seats. Once our make-shift towels had done their jobs we balled them up and threw them on the ground. There were still a lot of fans that weren't there yet, but the ute fans a few rows back saw this and weren't impressed. They didn't get confrontational, but they told us sharply that if we didn't want our flags that they would take them. We kindly obliged :)

That was pretty much the worst of it, other than a guy a few rows down and a ways over tried to get everybody in the section to boo us for sitting by them. Only a few joined him, but I thought it was hilarious. After that the fans sitting close to us were pretty friendly and we were friendly back.

The ute fan sitting to my left was one of my favorite ute fans that I'll ever meet. He was an old (70-something) man wearing a red sweatshirt and a black leather jacket. As soon as he started to shuffle down the isle and saw that he'd be sitting by me, he laughed out loud and said "uh oh, we don't have trouble-makers sitting here with us, do we?" in sort of a warm, grandpa kinda way. I told him he had nothing to worry about and patted him on the shoulder when he sat down. The reason this guy was so awesome in my book was because of the comments he made a few times during the game. In the second quarter when Austin Holt went down and the guy who hit him got flagged for a personal foul, all the ute fans started booing. Even when Holt got up and was helped off the field the utah fans were booing like crazy. Well the guy next to me started saying "come on guys, show some class!". Later when the first half ended and the teams were headed back to the locker rooms I could see the fans in the south end zone throwing stuff at BYU's players and coaches on their way into locker room. I leaned to the old ute fan and said "wow can you see what they're doing?" and he said "ya, and quite frankly it's embarrassing." I laughed a bit, and he said "No, I'm serious. They shouldn't do that". I was in awe of his overall coolness.

That guy was awesome, but to be honest all the ute fans sitting around us were pretty friendly. I definitely didn't tame down my fan-nes during the game. I cheered like crazy when BYU scored and made big plays. But that didn't alienate anybody around us. We tried to be respectful to those around us and those around us were generally respectful back. Immediately after utah blocked Payne's kick a bunch of the fans around me were way gracious about the win. In fact the guy in front of us turned around and said "wow. sorry guys. BYU definitely deserved this one. I'm way glad we won, but this one was a gift. Good game, guys". I have heard that other people didn't have quite the experience I had and were met by some pretty dumb fans. There was 1 other BYU fan sitting close to us and he said just after half-time that he almost got in a fight in the bathroom because some idiot started bad-mouthing the Book of Mormon and making fun of BYU fans, and he stood up to him. Obviously there were some of the uglier sides of the rivalry present on Saturday, but I do want to acknowledge the decency of the fans that I sat by. They were pretty good folks.

After what I experienced on Saturday I will never miss another BYU-utah game in person again as long as I can afford to go. Especially in SLC. It was way too much fun. Here's 2 reasons why:

Reason 1: It was awesome wearing blue in a sea of red. It is a pretty hard-core feeling. In my section there were 2 of us in blue. Me and my friend Garrett. The BYU fan sitting close to us was wearing grey. As nice as people were, we did catch a few dirty looks from people as we were walking in and taking our seats. I liked it, though.

Reason 2: It is awesome cheering for BYU while being absolutely SURROUNDED by utah fans. When Jake Heaps threw his TD pass to McKay Jacobsen, when Jameson Frazier intercepted Cain, when Shane Hunter also intercepted Cain and every other big play we were going nuts. It was a bit jarring at first because I noticed that nobody was cheering around us. I thought the play had been whistled dead or something so I kinda hesitated, but then I remembered "oh ya!HA! Everybody else is ute fans!" It was an awesome feeling.

Anyways, it was a great experience. It sucked watching BYU lose, but everybody around me kinda left with a look of relief rather than joy. They barely squeaked that one out. For me, I was upset about the loss, but I feel like I got to see a small portion of how great things can be next year. Jake Heaps showed that he's got what it takes when the game is on the line. He got the team in position to win it, in one of the most chaotic environments he could have possibly have been placed in. He is going to have an incredible career at BYU. I definitely think BYU will beat utah the next 2 or 3 times if not more. utah has some problems to work out. No doubt. Their qb situation is pretty sorry. Wynn is not a good qb at all.

ZzzzZzzzZzzz

I have been sooo freaking tired lately. I have no idea what is wrong with me, but I am exhausted. and. can't. quite. snap. out of it!!! Last night I went to bed at about 11:30 and still couldn't get up for my 9:00 class. I don't feel particularly sick. I just feel sleepy. I can take an hour long nap in the middle of the day and still fall asleep just fine at night. I have even taken a 2-3 hour nap and been just fine. I love napping, but this is getting weird. I need to just be normal now.

4 A.M. Blog.

I'm not a good blogger. I never know what exactly to write about. I want to sound smart and profound for all 3 people who may stumble upon this... but I'm not an overly profound guy, and I don't have a lot of deep answers to life or even my own set of problems and situations of life. Or a lot of the times when I do I just don't think they are all that interesting and therefor don't write about them. Tonight (this morning) is no different, but I'm going to write anyways and just get some thoughts out of my head and into the blog. Here goes:

One of my favorite things to think about is choices. Last year I was in a class where we were learning about communist Russia. The professor told a story about a man who was pretty high up in the USSR government and he defected from communism and came over to America for protection. Apparently in the USSR the people were all issued the same food, the same clothes, the same cars, the same everything. There was no real room for choices to be made by the individual. Well this man who came over to America for protection was brought to the Washington DC area and was set up with a new house and a new life. The CIA agent who was assigned to help get him acclimated to his new home was showing him around his new town and took him to the nearest grocery store to let him know where he would be able to do his shopping. The russian man walked into the grocery store and was overwhelmed with the amount of choices of every different type of food and item in the store. He told the CIA agent that he thought this was a lie. He couldn't believe that there was anywhere on earth where that magnitude of choice was available. He told the CIA agent that he didn't believe that this was real. He thought it was a set-up by the United States to try to make America seem more appealing to this man than the USSR. The CIA agent told the man to point in any direction and he would drive to any place and show him as many stores as he needed to see before he would be convinced. They drove for 2 hours and about 75 miles to a whole bunch of stores before the Russian man had seen enough. He began to break down in utter disbelief. His brain literally couldn't handle having that much choice available to him. After crying for a bit, the russian man told the CIA agent that he wanted to go back to Russia. He didn't care what happened to him there, he only knew he couldn't handle life in America. So they sent him back. True story.

My whole life I have been taught that agency is a great gift. I had no idea. The more we use our agency and use it wisely the more choices we will have available to us and our ability to use it will grow. I've hard that a lot, but I never knew how REAL that is. I am so grateful for the gift I have been given to be able to choose. Some choices are kinda small and stupid and are probably insignificant, but having heard that story about the russian man, I am so so so grateful that I get to choose. And that I can choose. It makes me look at all the phases in my life I have the ability to have choice in. Choice is in everything. It really is. No wonder we fought a war in Heaven to defend it. We can choose who to follow, we can choose what to do, we can choose what to eat, we can choose what to read, we can choose what we say, we can choose friends, clothes, shoes, tooth paste... anything. Well, almost anything.

We don't get to choose what happens in life. Life will happen. Good or bad. The lesson I am learning right now is that I can choose how to react, and I can choose what my attitude will be. I can choose to be happy. I can choose to be optimistic. I can choose to be grateful. I can choose to be content. I can choose to be confident. I can choose to not let things get me down. I can choose to focus on my blessings. I can choose to look for the good in all things... and best of all, I can choose to mean it when I do.

I'm not profound. Somebody has thought and said these things waaaay before me. But I believe it. I won't be perfect at this, but I can also choose to not give up if I make a bad choice. I can choose to not give up on myself.

Being "me".

Today I was thinking about being "me". I noticed that sometimes I feel more like "me" than other times. It's stupid but I'm sad to admit that sometimes I don't feel like I'm being myself very much. Sometimes being around certain people or certain places at certain times can just take me out of my element and comfort zone and put me in a situation where I am just forcing a personality that isn't quite "me".

Isn't that the most ridiculous thing ever? How could I ever be less me? I'm the only person I've ever been. I've never been anybody but Brad Lee Rhees. I don't know. I can't explain it. But this morning I was teaching an early morning seminary class and at some point, I'm not sure when it happened, but I just noticed how comfortable I felt. How confident I was in what I was doing and how I felt- to put it in words I've heard my dad use: "comfortable in my own skin".

I'm not necessarily saying that I thought that the lesson was amazing or that I think I'm an awesome teacher. Hopefully that is a byproduct of what I am describing, though. I definitely think that good lessons and good teaching come from being comfortable and confident in the class room, but I fully admit I have a long way to go with my teaching skills.

Anyways, I just felt like me! I don't know how else to say it, but it felt good. It got me thinking about other times and situations I feel like me... or more like me anyways. The big one that I thought of right off the bat was at EFY.

I don't know what it is about EFY (the polo's maybe?) that makes me so "comfortable in my own skin"... but I just am. Teaching and spending time around high school-aged kids talking about the gospel and just talking about life feels so natural to me. I feel like I just get to forget about me and focus on helping others understand and learn and feel better about themselves. That could be the key. But I kinda wonder if there's something more to it than that. As seen above I'm obviously not afraid to be a dork at EFY. The picture above is me posing as the lesser-known nevertheless extremely powerful superhero QualMan from the TV show Doug. I had no fear walking around, hanging out with these kids... with a cape on. This isn't exactly something I feel comfortable doing in the "outside" world. Honestly, though, I wish I was. I'm getting there, though. I guess the the most important thing is just not worrying how I appear or sound and just focus on building others up. That's what I'm going to do.

Being a fan

Sometimes it is rough being a fan. I hate losing. I hate it when my teams lose. I hate it when the teams that I hate win. All of that sucks. And that happened this weekend. BUT my little brother came up and hung out with me this weekend, and went to the Utah State football game with me. It was really cool to spend time with him up here at school. My brother is a stud.

As far as being a fan goes... I think I'll still cheer for the teams I cheer for. But I think I just want to care less. Games are just games. This will be hard to do. But I'll give it a shot.

My 10,000 mile summer: Part 1 "P-Town"

Insanely bored.

So far this summer break has been incredibly uneventful. I knew it would be bad, but I didn't know it would be like this. There's not a lot to do in Heber, because there aren't a whole lot of my friends left who are still around. On top of that I thought I would be off working in Rexburg, Idaho for a bit, but that didn't work out the way I'd hoped, so these last two weeks I've been left to entertain myself. That can get crazy.

I'll go ahead and chalk this post up to randomness, but one of my favorite things in life is the BYU-utah rivalry. One of my random ways of entertaining myself so far is to find funny things from the internet. A lot of you are probably BYU or utah fans, so hopefully you'll like this little gem that I found.

Here is a guide on how to be a utah fan. Feel free to share your thoughts:

You probably can't read if all from this size. For a better view of what it says click here.

Mamma's Boy

"I have the best mom ever!" - Billions of people.

"You're all wrong. I do." - Me

Seriously, though. I love my mom. I love mother's day. There's nothing quite as awesome as spending an entire day, hanging out with the family, telling your mom how great she is, and enjoying one of the top-5 meals of the year (which I would designate as - in no particular order - : mother's day, christmas, thanksgiving, new years day, and the 4th of July). Seriously, what an amazing day.

Quick shout out to how awesome my mom is. I am so lucky. My mom does so much for me. I can't believe how much she still does for me. I still get phone calls from her every few days of school where she just checks up on me and makes sure that I'm doing ok. She always makes sure that I've got enough money and food and everything... I love her.

Don't think I'm one of those crappy sons who only says how much they love their mom online so that other people will think they are a good person. I also told my mom in person, a lot, how amazing she is. But let's not kid ourselves here, I'm definitely posting this so people will think I'm a good person ;) .

Also, it was cool for my family to be able to talk to my brother Nick. He is on his mission in southern California, and has been out for like 7 months or so. In my mind he is still "little brother", so it's kind of weird to think that he's out there on his mission. But he sounds so great. He really sounds like a full-blown, door-knocking, bible-thumping, real, genuine missionary. My testimony of how powerful being set apart as a missionary is has grown significantly. In my time being home from my own mission I guess I kind of forgot about that, but listening to my brother today brought it right back. He speaks with an awesome presence. I can tell the Spirit is with him and when he teaches, he teaches with power and authority. I am so jealous of him right now... kind of. Missions are way hard, but you get to feel some of the most amazing feelings of your life as a missionary. I miss it. I'm way happy for him.

Moving day.

Wow. Weird to think that this school year is already over. That. Flew. By. To be honest, I have loved my time up at USU so far. A lot of people close to me might not believe that because it seems like I came home every weekend, but I am a proud utah state student.

To be honest, this year at school has been one of the best growing opportunities that I've had. My natural predisposition is to not want to grow, because growing can hurt, but now that I'm at the end of the school year I get to look back and think about how "worth it" it was.

To recap: when I got home from my mission I went straight to UVU. Why? Because it was only 20-something miles from home, because all of my friends went there, I was really familiar with the area, it was an easy place to be, but to be fair it was also because it seemed like the right place to be at that time. I don't regret my time spent there. However, at that time I didn't have any huge academic or professional goals. I didn't have any huge life goals (still really don't... but they are coming soon. I am in the "thinking about them" stage of that process... which I've decided is an important stage), and for all intents and purposes (I love that cliche`) I was just kind of 'there'. Well, a little over a year ago I started to realize that I wasn't satisfied being a UVU student, because I realized that I was just there because that was the easy place to be and not necessarily because that was the best place for me to be. So I started to consider where the best place for me to be was. Anyways, long story short (another great cliche`) I decided that place was utah state, so I followed my gut and got myself up there even though I knew it might not be the easiest place for me. I was right. All of the things that made UVU easy made USU a bit more difficult. I was now 100 and something miles from home, none of my close friends went there, I wasn't overly familiar with the school or area or anything. I'm not a person who loves to step out of my comfort zone... at all, and this last school year put me in a situation where I had to push myself out of my comfort zone on a regular basis. I wasn't perfect at this, but I got a lot better at it than I was.

Now that we're caught up... the other night while I was packing up all of my stuff I had some cool movie-like flashbacks of some of my memories from the last year and it gave me good time to think about the lessons I've learned over the last year. I won't go into detail over all of the things that occurred to me but I'll put it this way: I've learned that some of my favorite moments in life are the times when I can look down at the trail I've just climbed and realize that even though it was a tough climb, there's no doubt I was guided to get to where I am right now. I'm so grateful to have our Heavenly Father, and I'm so glad that He hasn't forgotten me. I really appreciate the times in life when I get the chance to slow down, look back and recognize that He's been guiding me along this path the whole time. This gives me faith that the direction I'm currently heading in is the right one. Life is an awesome journey.

Kind of almost found it!

K, so this isn't the song itself, BUT this is the same band that does that song. This is the band Colors at a reunion concert doing some freestyle rap. 3 mormon white guys doing freestyle rap. That's right. It's pretty fun to watch. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClEsVL0AyZE&feature=related

P.S. If you don't want to mess around with watching them pick all the words they are going to freestyle with, then just skip ahead to about 3:35 or so.

Backpacks and Breath Mints.

Hey, so what is with the name of the website of my blog? "Backpacks and Breath Mints?". This comes from one of my favorite songs ever. I used to listen to it a lot with my friends growing up. Here are the words to the verse that my blog was inspired by:

"We both grew up in the same neighborhood, sometimes crossin lines but mostly doing what we should. Shootin BB guns and sippin lemonade, hey. This is the way that friends are made.

Before long we moved on from the times of innocence to backpacks and breath mints, hoping maybe some young miss would notice us... ha, yeah right!"

This song is mainly about enjoying the good times in life and the people you were able to enjoy those times with. I want this blog to just be a place where I can talk about some of the cool things I get to experience and the lessons I get to learn. I wish I could find a link of where the song is played, it really is a way cool song. If I can find it, I'll post it later.

Other than that, welcome to Brad: The Blog. :) This is gonna be fun.