gina prescott

At the end of this month I will have been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 5 years.

It seems like such a short amount of time for all the growth that I have felt in my life. But still I feel like I have so much further to go.

I was thinking this week about the scriptures and about how I am continually struggling to grasp their many stories. I grew up with a general knowledge of Adam and Eve and Noah and some of the Savior’s parables but that was as far as my knowledge went. I certainly didn’t comprehend the stories for the lessons within.

Over the past five years I have gained access to more and more scripture stories and have gained the ability to actually study them versus just reading them. But I want to KNOW them. I want Max to ask me about Ruth or Captain Moroni and I want to be able to tell him all about God’s servants and the examples they set.

So long story short I have decided to start now. Every day I have been choosing a story from the scriptures to tell to Max. He sits on my lap with those gorgeous navy eyes looking up at me and I tell him as much as I can about Noah and Nephi and Queen Esther.

There is always so much learning to take place and I am grateful that my Heavenly Father has placed in me a desire to learn and expand my knowledge. Not just for the sake of knowing but for the sake of understanding.

Ignore the cleavage going on…he is getting really good at pulling on his own shirt. Mix that with drool and it gets pretty stretched out during the day.

I wore this to church a couple of weeks ago and felt like a grown-up. Especially when I was holding Max.

I literally stared at myself in the mirror for the longest time. I physically felt a transition in my life.

It was wierd.

Growing up is kind of a funny thing. Sometimes you notice the changes, sometimes you don’t, and sometimes you have to push them out after carrying them for 9 months.

Not this past weekend but the one before that we watched General Conference. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is a worldwide broadcast from Salt Lake City where the inspired leaders of our church talk about issues facing us today. They aren’t given topics or anything, it is purely based on prayer but it is always one of my favorite weekends of the fall. In fact this past conference marked the 5th year I have heard a prophets voice. The fifth year that I was able to hear inspired messages that have helped me guide and direct my life so that I may have peace and joy.

There are a number of ways to watch conference (on BYUtv channel, online, live, or at a local stake center). We don’t have internet (collective gasp!but how are you posting? my phone can be a hotspot when needed, but isn’t fast enough to stream video) and we don’t live in Utah and we don’t have a television either (I know we are like neanderthals or something). Saturday morning some friends from school invited us to come over and watch it on their laptop with them (so nice of them to do so btw) but they weren’t going to able to watch the Saturday afternoon session so we headed over to the stake center. We also watched Sunday’s sessions there as well.

The main difference between watching it at home and at the stake center.

Dressing up.

It took a couple of weeks but slowly I stopped calling Mongoose, Mongoose and he stopped calling me Gidget. It was much easier to introduce him as Kyle and avoid having to explain why I referred to my boyfriend as a rodent.

My birthday was coming up. I would be turning 17. I always hated my birthday because no one was ever around to celebrate it. It falls at the end of August and everyone is always taking their last vacation of the summer before school starts. I try to avoid creating expectations for the night but it was always hard not to hope for the birthday of your dreams. I never knew exactly what that was though.

Thankfully Kyle would be in town. Unfortunately my mother had planned my birthday dinner on my birthday, so Kyle and I would be celebrating the night before.

He told me to get dressed up and that he would be picking me up around 5pm to take me to dinner. I wore my denim skirt and a nice shirt and put on a little more make-up than usual. I waited for him, excited to see what he had gotten me. He showed up looking extremely handsome in a blue and yellow plaid button down shirt and slacks. He had been growing his hair out since I had asked him too and the bleach blonde boy was really starting to look like a surfer. His smile stood out the most though. He was so genuinely happy and it made me happy just to be around him.

He pulled a small wrapped gift and a small yellow sunflower from behind his back. He always brought me a small sunflower when he came because they grew on the side of his road. He handed me both gifts and I squealed with excitement.

“Can I open it now?” I asked.

“If you want.” He smiled reassuringly, definitely giving me the go to open away.
I sat down on the couch and slowly began to unwrap his gift.

It was a picture of the two of us that had been taken on my camera at the last camp dance of the summer. It was the counselor’s “formal” dance, basically an excuse for us female counselors to use our homecoming and prom dresses again. In the picture I am wearing a red strapless gown with camp bracelets and my hair curly like usual. Kyle is wearing a blue dress shirt with a yellow tie. He has his arm around me and we both have huge smiles on our faces.

The picture was matted on some scrapbook paper with stickered words like “magic,” “together,” and “first moment” all around. It was perfect. I turned the frame over not thinking really and saw huge letters spelling out “Gina and Kyle” and a small sticker that said, “I love you.” My heart fluttered and I looked up to see Kyle smiling at me. I smiled at him and thanked him nervously for the perfect gift. I was a master at avoidance.

“Where are we going to dinner?” It was too early in the day and too bright to be talking about love already so I brought up a new subject.

“Olive Garden.” He smiled. Yakima doesn’t have much variety as far as food goes and Kyle wasn’t made of money. I was happy with the selection. I loved their breadsticks and salad.

We went to dinner and had a wonderful time. Kyle even let me order some cheesecake for dessert. We laughed and talked over dinner and I realized that this was the first time I had ever been one-on-one with a boy at a restaurant. I had done group dates for dances and Kyle had been to some meals with my family, but this was the first time I had been on my own. I loved it. There were no awkward pauses or uneasy moments. We twisted noodles onto forks while chatting about college and childhood memories.

Kyle had plans for after dinner but wouldn’t tell me what they were. Instead he drove to a park near my home where you can sit on these terraces and see the huge sky before you. He parked and opened the trunk pulling out his guitar. I smiled and blushed astonished that this was actually MY life.

“Sit.” He prompted me to kneel on the grass and he sat down making the guitar comfortable in his arms.

“I have a song for you,” He spread out a few pieces of yellow lined paper. On it was his small quick script.

He strummed the guitar and started singing an original song he had written, just for me.

It was about freezing time. How we always said that we wish we could invent a time machine and just stay in this summer forever, that we could always feel the excitement of learning about each other and falling in love.

There was that word again. That word made my whole body tremble. It made my palms sweaty and my my heart beat fast. I think it’s your body’s fight or flight response kicking in. Do you face love head on knowing that you might get broken or do you run away avoiding any pain that may come?

He kept singing and smiling that knowing smile. He knew me so well. He knew that he was going to have to ease me into the idea of love just like I ease into a hot tub. Dipping my feet in first, acclimating to the burning temperature until I can slowly submerge my body until what was at first scorching is actually relaxing.

The sun set after the song and we just talked enjoying our time together. Then it was time to take me home. I still wanted to watch a movie and so he stayed claiming that I could have whatever I wanted for my birthday. After the movie he said he needed to go home. Home? I didn’t want him to go home yet. I wanted him to stay until it was actually my birthday. I wanted him to give me a kiss right when the clock struck twelve. He claimed he was tired but he let me drag out minutes of kissing into an hour. He let me drag out seconds of pleading him to stay into even more minutes until we were sitting in his Kia at 11:50pm. He had finally resigned to stay until midnight. But he was leaving as soon as he could after that because it was late and he was very very tired.

We kissed. It was 11:55pm.
We talked. It was 11:57pm.
We sat gazing at the stars in the sky. It was 11:58pm
We kissed some more. It was 11:59.

Then he stared at me and I stared at him. I started rambling about how I was going to get a kiss on the first minute of my actual birthday.

12:00am. He kisses me and pulls away resting his forehead against mine.

“I love you.” He quietly states.

“I love you too.” The words slip out of my mouth like I had been saying them my whole life.

Then we kissed again and my whole body was electrified with the excitement of a first love.

He stayed a few more minutes where we discussed how long we had both been wanting to say “I love you” and how I had decided he would have to say it first and how he knew that I wanted him to say it first and how he was waiting for the perfect moment and realized my birthday would be perfect.

And I realized my birthday had turned out exactly how I wanted it.

Click here for Part 15

“Oh…Hey…Your mom wanted me to look for you. I saw your pile of clothes by the dock and didn’t know where you had gone….” He started rambling like he tends to do. Most people would think he might be in a state of perpetual discomfort but that is just my dad.

“Well it’s getting late so you should probably head up to the house soon…” He finished.

We were already out of the pool and getting ready to hop the fence to get back to the other side.

“Hey….how did you get in there anyway?” My dad was now extremely intrigued with our situation which I think made Mongoose more uncomfortable but I knew that we weren’t in trouble or anything.

My dad wasn’t the bad cop type. He wasn’t the good cop type either. He was more of the non-existent cop. He worked so much when I grew up that we never developed any sort of relationship beyond, “Dad will you buy me that sweater?” “Yes.” He didn’t care one bit that Mongoose and I had snuck into the community pool. He just smirked as we explained that we hopped the fence, giving us a nod of approval for seemingly “living on the edge.” My dad was a 20-year-old frat boy trapped in a 45-year-old lawyer’s body.

After he left we headed back toward our clothes and up to the cabin. Mongoose slept on the floor while I slept on the fold out couch next to my younger sister and brother.

The next day Smalls and Kennedy showed up and Mongoose and I were grateful for the freedom of Smalls’ car. We drove around town getting soft-serve ice cream and enjoying the sunshine. It was a lazy few days where the blinding summer sun blots every picture and memory. The stickiness of skin and the shock of lake water were added to that small trip to Chelan.

Once Chelan was over we started to feel the absence of summer camp in our lives. There were only a few weeks until Mongoose started college and the threat of separation forced Mongoose and I to spend as much time together as possible.
Mostly I remember those summer nights. Mongoose would almost always come to my house in Yakima since he lived farther out of town and there was nothing to do amongst the tumbleweeds. After eating dinner and playing badminton in the backyard or watching a movie Mongoose and I would head to the front yard after the sun had gone down. We would sit on the grass and talk. Oh how we loved to talk.

Eventually grass would get pulled from the ground and shoved down shirts or messed into one another’s hair. We dubbed them the “grass wars” and we would wrestle trying to avoid the itch of green blades that would torment our skin. Of course there was kissing. There was always kissing. There was also star gazing and quiet moments where I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

It was during those nights spent on my front lawn that I realized I loved him. I remember kissing him and thinking in my heart, not my head, but my heart that I loved this boy. I loved this boy who listened to my rambling opinions and who thought that my enthusiasm was charming. I loved this boy who would bare his own soul to me unafraid of any sort of “manliness” that could be lost. I loved this boy who made my my skin prickle and my heart jump just when he looked at me. I could tell he loved me too. It was the way he held my hand and when he would write silly poems or sing songs for me even though he couldn’t really carry a tune.

But how do you tell someone you love them? I hardly even said “I love you,” to my family. They can be scary words but I was sure that I wanted to share them with him. But fear won out and I decided I would wait until he said it first. I just wasn’t brave enough.

Click here for Part 14

I love fall. I really really love it. I walked to school as a kid and I think that’s where my love for fall grew. I loved school so the dropping summer temps and the crispness of the air coincided with my early morning walks where I would wear my fashionable jean hat with a bright fuschia flower. Oh the nineties were cruel to us.

We live by an awesome park here in Spokane and on Monday we took a little family walk to enjoy the scenery.

It’s the tree-lined American dream.

I broke out my moccasins for the walk. I got these a couple of years ago and apparently these shoes are very “in” currently. Works for me.

Max is doing wonderfully. He is sleeping and eating well. Every morning I feed him in bed and then we snuggle. I love how the morning light comes in our room and wakes me up naturally. It makes for great natural lighting too.

Ignore the stack of unhung frames behind him.

Every other morning looks like this.

I am surprised by my diligence. I am doind the c25k (couch to 5k) program although its slightly altered by the hubs because he thinks I am a little more active than the average couch potato. It is an awesome way to build endurance into running. I am actually starting to enjoy it. Gasp.

I also do zumba, a circuit, or a jillian michaels video.

It feels good to exercise.