Twenty-Thirteen

I am so, so excited for this year. I feel like it's in this year that everything changes.

Three months from now, I'll be flying to Spain. How amazing is that? I am beyond excited.

In almost exactly five months, I will graduate high school. I cannot even fathom that fact. I remember first hearing that I was in the class of 2013 while in middle school. It seemed so far away then, and now it's HERE. In the flesh. High school is almost over. Forever. How can that be? How is it possible when I was just a little freshman, having just moved into town? Wasn't that just a few months ago?...I guess not.

So much has changed since then. I feel like a completely different person than I was those four long years ago. Yet, I feel like this year will help shape me into a brand new person as well.

A month later, I'll be starting college at BYU-Provo. I haven't officially been accepted, but that's alright.

This year holds so much in store for me and I hope to love every minute of it.


So, the reason I opened this blog post and started writing again is to share my New Year Resolutions. I have never officially done a list before, but I figure it'd probably be good for me. So, here you go:

• Love Myself
• I have always had a hard time loving who I am and not criticizing who I am. I want this year to be different. I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father who loves me with everything He has. He made me after His own image. How then can I criticize how I look, my personality, without criticizing Him? I can't. So I need to change that.
• Love Others
• I think something that is ingrained into our society and into human nature is to judge others. The first time we see someone, we automatically make a judgement based on how they look, how they speak. I think I heard something somewhere that it only takes 11 seconds after seeing someone to make a judgement about them. I am guilty of this, as I'm sure most human beings are. I don't want to be guilty of this. Every single person is a son or daughter of God, and like I said earlier, criticizing any one of them, or judging any one of them, is criticizing and judging God.
• Do Something Creative Everyday
• I love being creative. It just brings out a good side in me and I love it and, as of now, I don't do it often enough. Whether it's writing or crafting, I want to do it everyday. This also includes blogging at least once a week.
• Work Out Everyday if Possible
• I've been trying to go to the Y everyday if I can (and if I can't, there's definitely some Just Dance action at the Cramer home) for a little while now, and it makes me feel a lot better. Now it's something I almost have to do and I want to keep that going.
• Read 100 or more books
• I love, love, love reading. I have never kept track of how many books I've read in a year before so this is kinda a shot in the darkness as to how much I can read. But I can do it. I'm excited to do it :)
• Project Life 365
• My sister told me about this. It's a project where I take a picture everyday, with a one-word prompt. I feel like I just might not follow those, though, and just take one of what's going on in my life at that time. Throughout the year, I want to make an album with these pictures, too. This will be such an amazing year and I will be experiencing so many amazing things that I think it's a good idea to document everyday. I'll try posting them on here as I go.
• Scripture-study
• I want to develop my relationship with my Heavenly Father further, and so I want to make a resolution to study scriptures everyday. And not necessarily strictly from the four books of scriptures. Either that or talks from general authorities or Preach My Gospel. This will probably be the hardest one for me to follow. But I'm gonna go for it.
• Mormon 5:23
• I found a scripture that I want to kind of make my 2013 Life Motto. Mormon 5:23. The first phrase is what struck me: "Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God?" If I live each day, knowing that God is there to guide me, and to trust in him with all my heart, to follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost, I fill like my life will be so much more fulfilling. This is my most important resolution, I think, because with it, everything else will fall into place.