Endless Love

I have been chastised for my lack of blogging lately.... My bad.
Life is going wonderfully, school is insane but awesome, I love my life.

One thing that I had not been looking forward to happens next Wednesday. March 21... yup that is my birffday. Don't get me wrong, I love parties, I just dislike having all that attention on me. Call me odd, but it just makes me feel like a selfish brat. I realize this is a huge double standard since I love to celebrate everyone else's birthdays. Get over it.
Turns out, as fate would have it, I was able to meet the love of my life. I've decided is my birthday gift to myself. Being 21 is going to be awesome with this sweet ride! Not only is having a truck awesome, but hanging out with my brother, customizing our trucks is awesome as well. (Ryan has a '94 F150, so our trucks are dang similar. It is so exciting!)

I have fallen in love. I'm committed.
Here's how it happened-
           Step 1: Save money.
           Step 2: Wait until Ryan (the all-knowing, deal-spotting, guru) comes to Idaho.
           Step 3: Stalk Craigslist continuously and drive all over East Idaho looking at glorious Fords.
           Step 4: Meet some awesome grandparents who don't know what is wrong with their seemingly awesome truck.
           Step 5: Bargain them down to half the asking price.
           Step 6: Buy that glorious Ford.
           Step 7: Spend a couple evenings in the shop with Ryan.
           Step 8: Have a perfect running truck for an absolute steal of a price.
           Step 9: All your wildest dreams come true.
           Step 10: Deck the crap out of that beauty.

I am now on step 10.
Long story short, I saved an insane amount of money. When I bought the truck, the tranny was in safe mode and their appeared to be a slight issue with the starter. We bought it for dang cheap, expecting to have to rebuild/replace the transmission. I am the luckiest, most blessed person on the planet, all of the time, so naturally all that turned out to be wrong was a big blown maxi fuse. I now have a glorious 1995 F150 with only 130,000 miles, and loads of potential. Incredible. Seriously, who gets that lucky?! This means that my truck budget is not even close to being maxed out, which means I'm going to have the sickest truck ever.

My plans:
- Take out the plastic bedliner and Monstaline the bed and rocker panels, grill, and light casing either black or charcoal
- Build the custom bumper for the front and rhinoline it and the rear bumper.
- Build the light rack and rhinoline it as well.
- Tint the windows to about 20%.
- Lift it a few inches and big bog tires tires (285s or 33s).
- Line the middle portion of the hood.
- Install a new stereo
- Have the best summer ever!

Basically it is going to be legit.... all white with black/charcoal accents.














I realize that very few females care about this. Call me a white-trash red-neck if you want, but I am so excited. It is funny to me to see who cares about trucks and who definitely does not. All I gotta say, is that come summertime when we are taking my lovely truck to play in the sunshine, you will probably start appreciating it more. Life is better with a truck.

The love of a penny.

So you know all the sayings..... A penny saved it a penny earned; A penny for your thoughts; Penny wise, pound foolish; Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck; etc.

I am here to inform you that I FOUND A PENNY THIS MORNING! Yeaya! :)

(**Note that is NOT my hand....that pic is courtesy of google....hence the knarly man thumb.)

So my wayward mind took to some pondering on the penny.....

Why love the penny? Better question, why NOT love the penny! I mean this shiny little chunk is larger than a dime, but worth only a tithes worth of that same dime. It is fascinating. Then I remembered a teacher once told me in chem, (while doing a lab where we destroyed helpless pennies,) that awhile back it costed more to make a penny that $0.01, so they had to re-vamp their formula and take out part of the copper. (I believe, unless of course I am lying right now.) Anyways. How awesome these little buggers are. I mean, excluding only one while naming a price makes you feel like you are paying an entire dollar lense, (EX: $19.99 looks so much less than $20.00).

I wikipedia-d the whole penny action as well as the saying, and pretty much all it said was that the 'Find a penny' rhyme is strangely similar to the 'Find a pin' rhyme. Suck. All I'm saying is that I would way rather have a shiny penny to a pokey pin any day! Dear Wikipedia, for once you have let me down.

While in my 'pondering of the penny' state I happened to hear the song 'If I Die Young' by The Band Perry (fantastic song, exactly what I want if I die young, LOL)...anyways in the song Kimberly Perry sings,

"A penny for my thoughts, oh no I’ll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more after I’m a goner
And maybe then you’ll hear the words I been singin’
Funny when you're dead how people start listenin’"

Intriguingly true, right?! I mean my man Mikey Jackson made way more $$ in the 6 months proceeding his death than he did in the decade preceeding. Say what?! Gotta love the craziness of life!

This lucky penny of mine, proved its luck throughout the course of my day. :) I got to spend time with my lovely fam, and do my adorable sister's hair all fancy. I was graced by the beauty of rain and thunderstorms with a magnificent lightening show to boot! Got to see and talk to old friends. Got to spend time with the lovely Sister Larson and Sister Whetton who never cease to make me smile. Got to go to an awesome FHE with an awesome ward. Got to see amazing friends and people whom I love. Got phone calls from my 2 besties in the whole wide world. And the list goes on and on...... :) Twas a mighty fine day! :)

So to wrap up this entirely too lengthy post about a simple penny, I hope to challenge us all to live each day as if we have just been graced by a 'lucky penny'....maybe then we will see more of the blessings God grants us all each day, the beauty that surrounds us, and the opportunities we have to become better day by day. :) I'm going to try this gratitude exploration and I'd invite you to do the same. :)

-Thank you, dear penny, for greeting me with the lovely Lincoln Memorial this fine day!

Peace.Out_MK