Resilience

When I think about the word "resilience" I think of my plant. When my dad and his wife were moving in 2004, my step mom Jean cut a branch off of her huge jungle plant and gave it to me. I put it in a bucket of water and eventually a pot. I don't know why this happened, but I became attached to my plant. When we moved out here to Philly, I just had to bring it. Tyler thought I was a little weird to bring my plant, but I didn't care. When we got here, I thought it was dead after I took it out of the moving truck. I still gave it a chance though. It started growing again and I started getting compliments on my plant again. I thought my plant would eventually stop growing, but it hasn't. It has been over watered while we out of town, and moved again. And it always seems to come back and grow and grow. A friend of ours told me that I should buy a parrot to live in it because it was going to eventually grow to the ceiling.
Most people think my plant is ugly and tell me I should throw it away. From this view I think it looks quite nice.

Maybe they think it's ugly because it eventually stopped growing towards the ceiling and has twisted a few times. I think it still looks like the prettiest plant there ever was. Don't ya think? (see below for possible ugly view)
Well Tyler told me that we are not moving it back with us in a year. I have tried to cope with the fact of leaving my plant here to die (ok, not really but I still am bumbed about it). So I have always wondered why my plant hasn't grown branches like the plant I cut it off from. Well this last week I looked down at my plant and saw a new addition, with a branch!
I don't know what is going on with my plant, but I think it might have started another one next to it. It grows about an inch a day! Now I am thinking in one year I could bring just the little one back to the West Coast so I could keep at least a part of the plant. I seriously don't know why I'm attached to my dumb plant. I don't even know what type of plant it is. Maybe it's because it's so resilient. A friend of mine once said that if you can take care of a plant and not let it die, then you can move on to a pet. If you can handle a pet, you can move on to a kid. Well, I think I've done so well with the plant thing, I could skip right to a kid :). Has anyone been this attached to their plant or is it just my strange self?

A Week of Seminary

This week, I was on Spring Break and Ashley had finals so I said that I would substitute for her and teach Seminary. I have to say that although teaching Seminary was a good experience for me and I learned a lot, it was also the most brutal week ever. Getting up every day that early (Seminary starts at 5:45 AM) was tough. I even was able to go back to sleep after Seminary and I struggled. I have a new-found respect for everything my wife has been through this year. I don't know how she has been able to do it. I have watched her all year get 4-6 hours of sleep every night because she is up late studying and preparing for Seminary. The amazing thing is that she has done it all year without complaining (or at least very little complaining). I was complaining and whining about getting up to teach Seminary every night and I am not even in Dental School. Anyway, I just wanted to say that my wife is amazing and I don't have any idea how she is doing Seminary and going to Dental School. Her finals are over today and I am happy that she will be taking Seminary back over. Now that the tough part of her third year is over, the next year should be easier (of course, we heard that about the third year too, and then she got called to be the Seminary teacher).