As I asked myself the questions in goal #2 of Integrity I realized I was failing almost all of them.
Do I avoid gossip, innapropriate jokes, cussing, and making light of sacred things? Am I completely truthful, moraly clean, honest, worthy of trust in my studyies and other activities?
I realize that I have a lot to change, a lot to progress, a lot to do. I'm so thankful that I am able to serve in the Young Woman presidency because it has given me motivation to work harder to live rigthously and to have the help of the Young Woman Personal Progress.
As I went over these questions I realized that I am not living with Integrity. I really want to try harder to break my bad habits that make me not worthy of answering these questions without guilt. I really want to focus on not gossiping as much as I do. It's sad but it's a habit that is deeply woven into my daily living. I easily critize others and in turn gossip about them. I really need to learn to keep somethings to myself, even if I think I'm right I need to just stay quite. I know it's going to be super hard, but I'm going to try to remember my goal wheneve I'm tempted. And I will try to pray whenever I'm in a situation where I might gossip, even if it's just a prayer in my mind but I will ask for strength to overcome this temptation.
I also need to work hard at not laughing or joining in on innapropriate jokes or taking sacred matters lightly. It's a habit I picked up when I became inactive and I haven't been able to quite rid of myself of this habit. I will try very hard to remember that such things are an abomination to my Heavenly Father. I need to remember my goal and the type of person I want to become.
I need to have true faith and not have one ounce of doubt that I can do this. I need to truly believe that through my effort and Heavenly Father on my side I can overcome these flaws of mine. Perfection will not be reached in this life, but I know that I can make it so that I can be more good than bad!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Good Old Days of Halloween
When I was a kid, Halloween was almost as cool as Christmas. I loved it. It was perfect. It meant the beginning of my favorite season, FALL. With the air feeling crisp, the trees starting to become bare, colorful leaves all over the floor. Then we had our cool Halloween party at school to look forward to. Free candy galore. Even church parties were fun.
A lot has changed since then. Mostly for worse. Schools banning candy for so called healthier choices! WHAT? Really people, this seems logical to you? It's like banning presents on Christmas. I mean I'm all for healthier kids, blah blah blah, but do you really think that taking candy away from the one day dedicated to candy, is really going to change anything. It's so sad how the days of taking your costume with joy to school are gone. The days were you could wear some paint on your face (example. clown make-up), and wear your costume for most of the day, and then pass out candy to all your classmates. Now they only get to wear their costumes for like the last 15 minutes of the day, do a parade outside, and then that's it. NO CANDY, only trinkets! Really? Yeah cause what they love is pencils and erasers for Halloween!
Second complaint, I don't ever ever ever remember anyone in church complaining about Halloween or making some big deal or statement against it when I was growing up. If someone didn't agree with it or didn't like it they simply didn't participate and that's it. I always remember sometimes having church costume parties and they were so much fun. Now all of a sudden these past years, there seems to be such a contreversy among the members against Halloween. What?! Yeah, we all know we shouldn't encourage devil costumes, or ghosts, or evil things, blah blah blah.......but what if we love dressing up as angels, clowns, doctors, etc. and then getting FREE candy!!!!? And I'm sorry, if my bishop says it's okay with him that we celebrate than why should YOU attack me for celebrating it. As long as our Prophet doesn't come out and tell us that we are NOT to trick or treat or that we are not to have ward costume parties than darn it, I'm going to get my Halloween ON! BUt don't come and attack everyone else who chooses to celebrate.
Phew, feels nice to get it off my chest. Now moving on, the only good thing that has changed is the weather. Well hopefully it's not Global Warming cause then I guess it's not a good change. But I'm loving that my kids get to show off their costumes while trick or treating. I remember the cold, breezy, and sometimes rainy days that we had on Halloween. Not that it stopped me from going. But hahahaha, I remember my mom telling me to put my coat on, and my gloves, and my scarf and sweat pants over my costume. To the point that you couldn't see a piece of it, you could hardly make out what my costume was. Now they get to prance around with their costume all out!
This Halloween was one of the best for my kids. It was so funny how Jaime was excited about it all day. He had been wearing his Green Lanterns Costume for over a month now and today was no exeption. He wore it all day and was ready to go trick or treating since early in the morning. I had to keep reminding him that we had to wait for Natalie. Now this costume comes with a ring that we had very carefully watched so that we wouldn't loose it for the big day. He actually amazed me how watchful he was of his ring, whenever he was done playing he would put it back into his costume bag. But ofcourse, life has a way of playing with us, that ofcourse he had to loose it hours before going out to trick or treat. Well this boy would not leave without it. He was crying up a storm for it. Here we were, two crazy parents looking for a needle in a haystack. We looked and looked, and moved everything and nothing. I had given up and was ready to just call it a day, when like a hero David comes down with it. It had been hidden in our closet inside one of my shoes. And like magic, Jaime's tears were gone and off we went.
Him and Natalie were quite the scardy cats though. They were pretty much scared of all the scary costumes. But unlike other years they did last longer and walked until it was dark. We came home with two full bags of goodies. Still, they can compeat with their mother's record of walking all of Blue Island and filling tons of bags of candy with her sister Alma.
The other cute and addoring thing that happened is that Jaimito met his heroes. He's been really into all the superheros this year. He's loving Wolverine, Green Lantern, Hulk, Batman, Spider Man, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. But he LOVES Wolverine and Hulk. Well as we arrived to a church costume party he spotted none other than Wolverine. His reaction was priceless. He couldn't believe it, he couldn't stop saying his name and ran over to him. It ended up being one of his cousins. To him this was WOLVERINE. He couldn't stop staring at him. As you can see in this picture, he just stared at him in amasement.
Then cam BATMAN. Another cousin of his. He was in love with him. The funny part is that they were born one day apart, they looked so cute together. He would not leave Batman alone the whole night, he basically became his shadow.
To him he had really met his heroes. It got me thinking how much I would've loved to have experience this too. When I went to Disney World I was already like 8 or 9 years old, and even though I was a very innocent kid, I still knew that these were costumes. Ofcourse, I played along for my dad's sake. Didn't wanna brake his fantasy that I still truly believed in these characters. But I wish I could've been Jaimito's age, cause then maybe I could've felt what he felt. I would've really thought I was standing in front of Snow White or Cinderella. He probably won't remember his experience, but I will and it's priceless.
A lot has changed since then. Mostly for worse. Schools banning candy for so called healthier choices! WHAT? Really people, this seems logical to you? It's like banning presents on Christmas. I mean I'm all for healthier kids, blah blah blah, but do you really think that taking candy away from the one day dedicated to candy, is really going to change anything. It's so sad how the days of taking your costume with joy to school are gone. The days were you could wear some paint on your face (example. clown make-up), and wear your costume for most of the day, and then pass out candy to all your classmates. Now they only get to wear their costumes for like the last 15 minutes of the day, do a parade outside, and then that's it. NO CANDY, only trinkets! Really? Yeah cause what they love is pencils and erasers for Halloween!
Second complaint, I don't ever ever ever remember anyone in church complaining about Halloween or making some big deal or statement against it when I was growing up. If someone didn't agree with it or didn't like it they simply didn't participate and that's it. I always remember sometimes having church costume parties and they were so much fun. Now all of a sudden these past years, there seems to be such a contreversy among the members against Halloween. What?! Yeah, we all know we shouldn't encourage devil costumes, or ghosts, or evil things, blah blah blah.......but what if we love dressing up as angels, clowns, doctors, etc. and then getting FREE candy!!!!? And I'm sorry, if my bishop says it's okay with him that we celebrate than why should YOU attack me for celebrating it. As long as our Prophet doesn't come out and tell us that we are NOT to trick or treat or that we are not to have ward costume parties than darn it, I'm going to get my Halloween ON! BUt don't come and attack everyone else who chooses to celebrate.
Phew, feels nice to get it off my chest. Now moving on, the only good thing that has changed is the weather. Well hopefully it's not Global Warming cause then I guess it's not a good change. But I'm loving that my kids get to show off their costumes while trick or treating. I remember the cold, breezy, and sometimes rainy days that we had on Halloween. Not that it stopped me from going. But hahahaha, I remember my mom telling me to put my coat on, and my gloves, and my scarf and sweat pants over my costume. To the point that you couldn't see a piece of it, you could hardly make out what my costume was. Now they get to prance around with their costume all out!
This Halloween was one of the best for my kids. It was so funny how Jaime was excited about it all day. He had been wearing his Green Lanterns Costume for over a month now and today was no exeption. He wore it all day and was ready to go trick or treating since early in the morning. I had to keep reminding him that we had to wait for Natalie. Now this costume comes with a ring that we had very carefully watched so that we wouldn't loose it for the big day. He actually amazed me how watchful he was of his ring, whenever he was done playing he would put it back into his costume bag. But ofcourse, life has a way of playing with us, that ofcourse he had to loose it hours before going out to trick or treat. Well this boy would not leave without it. He was crying up a storm for it. Here we were, two crazy parents looking for a needle in a haystack. We looked and looked, and moved everything and nothing. I had given up and was ready to just call it a day, when like a hero David comes down with it. It had been hidden in our closet inside one of my shoes. And like magic, Jaime's tears were gone and off we went.
Him and Natalie were quite the scardy cats though. They were pretty much scared of all the scary costumes. But unlike other years they did last longer and walked until it was dark. We came home with two full bags of goodies. Still, they can compeat with their mother's record of walking all of Blue Island and filling tons of bags of candy with her sister Alma.
The other cute and addoring thing that happened is that Jaimito met his heroes. He's been really into all the superheros this year. He's loving Wolverine, Green Lantern, Hulk, Batman, Spider Man, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. But he LOVES Wolverine and Hulk. Well as we arrived to a church costume party he spotted none other than Wolverine. His reaction was priceless. He couldn't believe it, he couldn't stop saying his name and ran over to him. It ended up being one of his cousins. To him this was WOLVERINE. He couldn't stop staring at him. As you can see in this picture, he just stared at him in amasement.
Then cam BATMAN. Another cousin of his. He was in love with him. The funny part is that they were born one day apart, they looked so cute together. He would not leave Batman alone the whole night, he basically became his shadow.
To him he had really met his heroes. It got me thinking how much I would've loved to have experience this too. When I went to Disney World I was already like 8 or 9 years old, and even though I was a very innocent kid, I still knew that these were costumes. Ofcourse, I played along for my dad's sake. Didn't wanna brake his fantasy that I still truly believed in these characters. But I wish I could've been Jaimito's age, cause then maybe I could've felt what he felt. I would've really thought I was standing in front of Snow White or Cinderella. He probably won't remember his experience, but I will and it's priceless.
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