You're so vain

K, so this is probably very vain of me to say, but I love this painting.
It's the last one I did, and I did it for my very dear friend Brittany, who is the reason I had such an awesome summer. And probably the reason I made it through Young Women's and still turned out normal.
Oh, all the times we stopped at her house and ate all her brownies and oreos, and talked and talked for hours...
Anyway, it's probably a really poor way of paying her back, but I'm only human.
And I really liked it.
That's all for now.

Dear World,

You are beautiful. And full of beautiful wonderful smart funny people. And so very full of possibilities. At this point, I could take my life pretty much anywhere.
And I'm grateful.
But I do have one teensy weensy little complaint.
I keep hearing this rumor that millions of dollars in scholarship money go un-given every year.

TELL ME WHERE TO FIND IT


and nobody will get hurt.

Spiritchal Stuff

So if there's one thing I love about BYU, it's the united admiration of the Prophet shared by the entire student body. Everyone loves President Monson.
Example: President Monson came to give the Devotional on Tuesday morning in the Marriott Center.
Devotional starts at 11:05
I joined the line at 8:30, and it was already wound halfway around the building.
The people at the front of the line had sleeping bags.
By 11:05, there wasn't a single empty seat in the house.
The Marriott Center holds 22,700 people, and I don't know if that counts the people on the floor.

You could feel it in the air, we were all waiting for something.
I don't know about anyone else, but I needed something profound, some secret tips about how to go about life. I couldn't wait to see the Prophet. I felt like I'd be safe once he was there.
President Monson has a way of making everyone feel comfortable, making everyone feel like everything will be ok, that the things we worry about today will become the things we can laugh about tomorrow.

His message wasn't a secret formula for being better, it wasn't a pulpit-pounder.
But it was so funny. He talked about 9 of the prophets he's worked with.
(9!! Has anyone else been friends with that many prophets?! Geez louise.)
He made them seem like real people.
He told funny stories about them, he made funny faces, he told us all their favorite foods.
For anyone who didn't see/hear it, I recommend finding it and watching it.
It made me want to be good just so that in the next life I can meet all these men.

But never fear, for those who wanted a direct, rousing message, there was the CES Fireside on Sunday with Sister Elaine S. Dalton. The topic? Leading the world in a return to virtue.
(Sorry this is a long post! So much good stuff going on, ya know...)
I was writing furiously the whole time, so
here's a few of my favorite thoughts:
You have what it takes, and now is the time for the run of your life
This journey will take everything you and I have
Zion was then, and is now the goal. Lay hold of EVERY good gift, and TOUCH NOT the unclean thing.
NOW is the time to return to virtue. At the core of virtue is chastity. Return to purity.
Virtue is having the strength, power, ability to heal.
Virtue is the golden key that unlocks temple doors and the temple is the point of everything we do in this church. A return to virtue is a return to the temple. A return to the temple is a return to the Savior.
YOU have a great work to do. YOU matter. Your decisions matter. If you can be distracted or delayed from entering the temple, Satan wins.
You have been prepared, called, chosen. This is your time. You must act on the faith you already possess.
There were no neutral spirits in the war in heaven, and there can be no neutrality now.
You are the generation to prepare the world to meet God
A return to virtue can save this nation from the social, emotional, economic crises. If we don't lead that return, who will?
This is your work. This is the run of your life.
Have a strict training program--include daily prayer and scripture study.
If we all commit to read the Book of Mormon for just 5 minutes every day, in 5 years this world will be a different place.
Smile, and remember who you are.
Press forward with a perfect brightness of hope
and " I will prepare you against these things"
"My angels shall be round about you, to bear you up"
...............

I dare you not to act differently after hearing that.

Oh gems

So, yesterday there was a CES Fireside, and I couldn't find anything anywhere to take notes on. As we rushed out the door I noticed my old, old journal from when I was like, ten, so I grabbed it.

Oh what a treasure.

I was such a verbose child, really.
Here's one entry:
"Dear diary,
Today is what some people might call a beautiful day. I hate it! (the word hate is outlined in green marker, just in case the reader didn't catch the weight of that word) For some reason, I hate blue sky! I like stormy weather much better than sunny. In Primary mom did a great sharing time. She held up some pictures."

Yup. That's how it ended.
I just needed to keep the reader in suspense.
Then there's some torn out pages (I'm so sad about those! I wish I knew what I wrote there!)

Then a few pages later, there's a page marked "First Entry"
Apparently every six months or so, I would feel guilty about not ever writing, so I would try and start over, and pretend it was a new journal. And I would re-introduce myself each time.
"I'd better tell you about myself first. My name is Chelsie Larsen, I am 12 years old, and the oldest in a family of 5 kids. I am the first counselor in the Beehive Presidency. I turned 12 in July, and I almost have my Beehive 1 Award."

In my next entry, I had turned 13 and was about to try out swim team for the first time.
Then my grandpa died. That entry was about 3 sentences long.
The next three entries or so I was 14.
And that was the end of my journal.

How sad is that?
Ok but the cool part of the journal is that the first part of it was my mom writing about me, from my birth until I was about 4 years old.
It was eye-opening and fun to read, to see which things are different now, and which things stayed the same.
And I want to do it for my kids someday.

Like, apparently my eyes were bright blue when I was born! I wish they'd stayed that way.
And I guess I had an "uncanny memory". That would come in handy right about now.
By the age of 3 I could quote "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" verbatim.
If only I had such worthwhile skills now.
THEN I'd be employed.

I hope you guys have better journal entries than I did.

Why Marriage Matters

So, I'm planning on making a career of studying marriage and trying to convince married people not to get divorced. I remember getting into this because once, when I was unsure about what to major in, someone asked me, "what is it you think about when you don't have to be thinking about anything?" And the very first thing that came to mind was relationships. I love analyzing relationships, watching married couples interact. And I hate divorce. I've seen it tear people apart, and I've seen the numbers rise, and I'm tired of it.
Anyway, so lately I've been reading anything and everything I could about marriage, what makes marriages work. (Which reminds me, you should all read the book Project Everlasting. It's about these two guys who went around the country interviewing people who've been married for several decades, people they called Marriage Masters. So good!) And my mom showed me this article from Time Magazine called "Is There Hope for the American Marriage?", and I just thought I'd share because I think everyone should read it.
Here's a few of my favorite parts:

"As sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin observes in a landmark new book called The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, what is significant about contemporary American families, compared with those of other nations, is their combination of "frequent marriage, frequent divorce" and the high number of "short-term co-habiting relationships." Taken together, these forces "create a great turbulence in American family life, a family flux, a coming and going of partners on a scale seen nowhere else. There are more partners in the personal lives of Americans than in the lives of people of any other Western country."'

"How much does this matter? More than words can say. There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass."

"The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it — given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized — simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren't many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness."

"Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation's own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can't be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children's lives — that's the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old."

"What we teach about the true meaning of marriage will determine a great deal about our fate."

Yeah baby.

Aww, for cute.

Do you ever hear a song or something that just makes you go
"aww...."
I love this song, it's so cute. It makes me happy.

If we were a movie
You'd be the right guy
I'd be the best friend
That you'd fall in love with
In the end
We'd be laughing
Watching the sunset
Fade to black,
Show the names,
Play the happy song

Whoops...

Do you ever feel really stupid?
Like, disappear forever stupid?
or if that fails, get on your knees and beg for forgiveness stupid?

Yeah.
Have you ever thought you were on top of the world, and things were going alright, everything under control, and then you discover that there are people who have been neglected or hurt by you, on accident?
While you were going around in blissful ignorance?

Yeah, I did that.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it.
But I really wish I could press rewind.