Life...as told by Shaina

Guys, I have to share this, because first of all, I’m super proud of myself. Second of all, it’s a major breakthrough! I was home eating dinner the other night and reading my book. When I read I am very invested in the book. I completely understand the phrase, “Lose yourself in a good book.” That’s what I do. I am completely lost to the world when I read. Micah would completely agree. Which funny story, Micah never saw me a read a book until we were married! When we were dating, I was working in Minnesota and had a crazy work schedule. I didn’t have time to lose myself in a book, because I am the type of person that likes to read the book and read the whole thing. Anyways, I say all this to tell you that when I read I am very distracted. So I had finished my dinner, it was fajitas- they were delicious! (Fajitas are what we have when we don’t know what to eat because we always have the ingredients and I found this homemade fajita spice that is perfection!) I finished m...

So, this is going to sound very ‘English Major’ of me, but I love finding the life-lessons in movies. Or maybe not even finding the lesson, but what did the movie get me to reflect on. I think I can safely blame this on my parents and my background as an English major.  (Side note: I once wrote a paper comparing two Star Trek movies and how the villains reflected world events at the time. It was my favorite paper to write, I just watched the two movies!)  Back to my previous thought, I can blame my parents because after movies we would always debrief on the car ride home. We talked about what we liked and what we thought about the movie (the Avengers series is a lovely conversation starter and I have all the thoughts about those, but to give you a snippet- I’m a big Iron Man fan). Anyways, this weekend we went and saw Ford v Ferrari. It was really good and I was pleasantly surprised! To be honest, I only went because Micah really wanted to watch it and we hadn’t ...

Today I felt like I got my butt kicked multiple times! Not in that, I was physically beaten up, but more of the “Shaina, are you listening? This is for you!” The focus today was: how am I working towards my goals? How am I making progress towards the life I want to live? It all started this morning when I decided to listen to a podcast called #WeGotGoals with my favorite BeachBody super trainer, Autumn Calabrese. Literally, this lady has become an inspiration to me. Single mom, successful, smart, helps others, and looks amazing doing it! In this podcast she talked about how New Year’s goals are important, but why are you waiting until January (which is 2 months away) to start working on them? Why not start now? That hit home! I’ve been working on my fitness since last summer, but actually buckled down this January. The amount of progress I’ve made is amazing, and I’m so grateful that I have documented the changes that have happened! (You gotta take those pictures and measurem...

Hello! It's only been 6 years...a lot has happened since then! I really don't have any excuses to explain why I stopped blogging, other then life happened and I got busy! I'm going to do a quick timeline of events to get us all on the same page: 2013-2016: Had many identity crises trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life 2016: Graduated from BYU with a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Minor in Non-profit Management Accepted a post-grad internship at the University of Minnesota in their Sports Marketing Department. (Yes...a girl from South Carolina moved to Minnesota) Met my now husband, Micah about two weeks after I moved there (I'll share our story one day) Decided I missed working with people one-on-one and looked into advising positions and started applying for master's programs in Higher Education 2017: Got accepted into Ball State University's masters program in Student Affairs Administration in Higher Education (1 year track) Go...

You know when a dog does something that they're not supposed to do and they come up to you with their tail between their legs? That's how I feel coming back to write a post on this blog...I had even tried to only write once a week, but that plan died. Oh well. But hello, world! I still am alive, just slowly being killed by exams, my job, and homework. Ah, the joys of college life. But I'm a Resident Assistant this year, and it's been pretty fun. Minus the not having a social life, but it's been good. So my last post I was starting the list of things about myself...so after a long period of not writing, here's the next part of those series of posts. 3 Legitimate Fears that I have and why: 1. Failing-At pretty much anything, failing at my job, failing at being a good friend, failing out of school, once I get a job failing at that. I just don't want to let anyone down, I don't want to not know about something and have something go terribly wrong with my...

I saw this on a friend's blog a while ago and wanted to do it...and then I didn't. So! Now I'm going to do it! It's a list of 30 things that you write about yourself everyday, but since I'm in college and this is like the busiest 3 weeks of this semester, I'm going to shorten it to every week. (Yes, the reason I'm writing right now is because I finished the easier parts of my homework and I am now procrastinating.) I got this list from a friend who got it from:  Hopes and Dreams . Okay, so the first thing is 20 random things about me. I hate seagulls. (Like seriously, I do. And I'm currently living in Utah where they love seagulls.) I once watched 7 movies in one day. Dedication people! I go Country Swing dancing on Tuesdays. I got to meet Jenny Phillips, Jon Schmidt, Downtown Fiction, and Big Time Rush! I love writing fiction and sometimes poems. My favorite fun-to-read book is the Miss Match series by Erynn Mangum I won a cruise with Taylor S...

Ahh, life. I love how crazy it can get sometimes...and I mean all the time in college! But as many stressful weeks I've had, I've also had a lot of moments of relief. I did have a paper for English due on Monday, but it got moved back to the week after Thanksgiving! I am so excited! I was pretty worried, since I have to study for Psychology this weekend, but now I can just focus on Psych! But also, in my government class we were talking about the involvement of the media in politics, and how the media has evolved from hard news to soft news, and how things can be spread much easier now! Our homework was to read a couple of articles that urged us to do something to promote our beliefs. So I made a mormon.org profile! Yay!  http://mormon.org/me/B4GF  (that's my profile, in case you want to visit...and you should visit even if you don't want too!)  But, I love BYU! Just in case you haven't figured that out yet! I don't have very much else to add, but I just wante...