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.