#6: Go 3 months without using my phone at church (except Gospel Library App)

I started this goal when Christmas fell on a Sunday and we only had one hour of church. Pretty easy to sit through one hour of Luke 2 and pretty choir songs, right?

After that it was harder. Sometimes I cheated and used it between hours of church. But the more weeks I went on, the easier it was.

I am glad it's over, though. 

#96: Have an ice cream cake for my birthday

Katie made this dreamy homemade salted caramel ice cream cake. Twenty-six, baby.

#44: Go to a cathedral

One of our first weeks in Washington, D.C. some of the other interns from the University of Utah mentioned going to mass. I was on board, since going to a cathedral was one of my goals, and I was genuinely interested in the service.

I had it vaguely in my mind that I might attend mass on Ash Wednesday, but I didn't plan specifically to. The D.C. life is brutal--waking up early, spending all day at work, commuting home, and only having enough time to eat something, exercise, and watch an episode of The Bachelor before it's time to go to bed and do it all over again.

Luckily, Kaitlin was going with a friend of hers, and she invited me to come. I wore a skirt to work and went straight to mass afterward. We went to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is on the campus of the Catholic University of America (really close to our apartment!).

It was just incredibly beautiful in there, and the organ music was unreal. I loved art history in college, and Chrisanne and I especially loved church architecture from the Middle Ages. There everything was: the nave, the apse, the chapels all along the outside, the long aisles of beautiful space whose only purpose is to stand and walk in and feel the grandeur of the place.

We felt a little out of place, but it wasn't too hard to catch on to what we were supposed to do. The program helped us follow along to see what part of the service we were at.

I liked the repetitive, almost dronelike singing of little prayers and songs. My favorite part was, during communion, kneeling on the fold-out bars built into the pew in front of you, listening to the music, vaguely praying, waiting for everyone to have their turn. In my religious tradition, we never kneel in our services, so that was really special.

We also got to receive the ashes for Ash Wednesday. To my delight, the choir sang a piece I love, Miserere Mei, while we all lined up and went to the front and received our ashes. Again, waiting for everyone and having to approach the front and doing things one by one was really nice.

I rode the metro home and then went to the grocery store. It was a cool experience to have the ashes on my forehead and see people's eyes linger on them. I remember my fourth grade teacher coming in on Ash Wednesday with ashes on her forehead. In my religious tradition, we don't often wear outward, visible manifestations of our faith. I liked having that for a few hours, and being part of a religious ritual that is so well know and loved by so many.