Utahpalooza

Last month my little sister came out to Utah to visit me for her birthday! She was only here a few days but I can say it was the best few days I have spent in Utah, hands down. She's my bff and I miss her so much! No one really understands how close we are. We have been inseparable ever since starting homeschool together 11 (YIPE!) years ago.  We just have done everything together for the last decade+. We have been a constant in each other's lives while other friends have faded, moved, gotten married, etc. So it was SO super hard to say goodbye to her when I moved here almost 5 months ago!

I am SO grateful that she got to come visit. My roommates asked me what I planned for us, and most of our plans, to be honest, revolved around food. HAHA! So many yummy places out here that aren't back east. We were reunited with Kneaders, fell DEEPLY in love with Fiiz, devoured pizza at The Pie, nibbled on Yogurtland, and more. Such a yummy, gluttonous few days. We were seriously sick by the end haha.

In between eating we explored and I got to show her some places I have been wanting to since I've come out here. We went to The District and caught a movie, saw the UP house in Herriman, took in the Bountiful and Ogden Temples, saw The Finest Hours (SO GOOD) at Station Park which she fell in love with like I have. We projected some quality chick flicks and disney movies on a screen at my house while we savored Fiiz and pizza, and more. It was just all so perfect and we had SO much fun! Take me back! It was incredibly hard to put her on a plane to fly back home.
When I moved out here, and had to drop my mom off at the airport and hug her goodbye, I think the Lord was seriously shielding me from the sadness and fear I could have been experiencing. I was just so happy to be starting my adventure and excited for the possibilities. I didn't really feel anything, because it didn't feel real.

But since then I have had the some of the hardest days I never knew were coming. I have felt absolute, thick & gripping loneliness that has gripped me so hard at times that sometimes I feel like I will lose my mind. There have been many solo trips to the movies, to grab food, go shopping, church events, etc, many days and nights spent alone.Because of these experiences, I had a very different time this trip to the airport. I barely pulled away before I burst into tears. The feeling of utter and completely loneliness was staring me in the face and I didn't want any part of it. I knew what was waiting for me this time. There was no naiveté.

I am so grateful that even though I can feel and be completely and utterly alone, I never truly am. Heavenly Father and His Son live. They are there. They have been my comfort, solace, and Best Friends this whole time. I am grateful I can pray and receive comfort and peace, and a feeling of love that takes over, even in the dark, lonely times.

I am so grateful my family that God has given me. I don't think I could ever fully express how much they all mean to me. I am SO,SO,SO blessed. And I am so grateful for a little sister that has been my sidekick all these years. It was so wonderful to have her visit and celebrate her being alive for 25 awesome years! Heaven knows I needed her all this time, and this amazing visit.

This is what happens when we have the house to ourselves

In a very rare occurance last weekend, my sister and I had the house to ourselves.  And this is how we spent the afternoon....it was epic.

Keep the Change You Filthy Animal

I am SO excited for it to be 2013.  2012 was definitely not what I expected, but looking back it was SUCH a blessed year.  I am SO grateful for the wonderful people in my life and these wonderful memories and experience I am able to have and cherish.   These were some of my favorite moments from 2012:

-January- started this blog!-February- started nannying, celebrated my little sister's 21st birthday, made some awesome new friends, and smashed the living daylights out of a heart pinata.  -March- Went to the Baltimore Aquarium with one of my best friends and sister, and experienced Cheesecake Factory cheesecake for the first time.  -April- Went to the re-release of Titanic and totally fangirled, went to an All-American Rejects concert, and day-tripped down to DC with 3 of my best friends. -May- Chopped off 5-6 inches of my hair and dyed it brown, went to the Mayfair and saw Boys Like Girls.  -June- Went on my first vacation in over 5 years down to the Baltimore area!  -July- My Grammy (my grandma) turned 90!  -August- Won tickets to the Mixtape fest and saw 98 Degrees, Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, LL Cool J, and MANY more awesome old groups! Also house-sat and enjoyed hot-tubbing. And I was hired to photograph my first wedding! -September- Went to see Switchfoot just miles from my house! -October- Went to Atlantic City to celebrate 2 of my best friends birthdays with them and my sister! Also saw There For Tomorrow in concert and had an epic time!  -November- My baby niecey was born! Little Maggie! And I flipping saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt LIVE and in person and almost touched his butt! -December- Turned 25! Christmas celebrations, spent time with my family, sewed some awesome ornaments and had a WONDERFUL holiday.

Apparently, I have a life

I can't believe how long it's been since I've blogged! The last few weeks have been flying fast. This year is flying by sooooooooooo fast.  I cannot believe it is mid October already, MID OCTOBER PEOPLE! 

I love fall.  I love boots. I love scarves.  I love warm fuzzy socks. And I love any excuse I can get to drink Hershey's Hot Cocoa fresh from the stove top.  

I have had some exciting things happen over the last few weeks.

I went to Six Flags again.  My sister's friend scored us some free tickets, heck yes! 

Then me and my sister went to see There For Tomorrow. Um...AMAZING!!!! So flipping good.

And this past week me and three of my best friends went to Atlantic City for two days! More to come on that.

Overall, I have been SO blessed, and blessed to be too busy to blog, and I have some more exciting things coming my way!

A requirement for my future home...

A hot tub.  Heck yes.  A hot tub.  I think I would rather negotiate on things like food, clothing, and a kitchen table to be able to have a hot tub.  I have my priorities. haha.

The other week my sister and I house/dog sat for my aunt and uncle and they have one of these glorious inventions.  Seriously.....I rate this invention right up there with indoor plumbing.  

And as I have said every year after we house sit...."I am getting one of these when I have a house!"

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Heck Yes I Was A Teeny Bopper

Last week I wrote about winning tickets to the Mixtape fest!! And this week I was able to be a teeny bopper all over again and experience two days of awesomeness!!  The tickets I won were to both days of the fest and it was EPIC.

I got to see tons of people I wanted to...and some I didn't....

 (ahem... Steel Panther/ vulgar 80's hair band, DJ Pauly D....cough cough) ...

 but there was Kelly Clarkson, LL Cool J (NCIS LA anyone?), The Fray, The Wanted, Carly Rae Jepson (so call me maybe!), New Kids On The Block two times, The Ready Set, and who I came for..... 

THE BACKSTREET BOYS and 98 DEGREES!!

And there may have been some girly squeals, serious booty shaking, swoons, and major Nick Lachey crushing going on... it was a BLAST! And now, I will let the photos speak for themselves:

thanks to my little sister for stealing the pictures from her camera!

That One Time I Dyed My Hair Brown and Went On Vacation (Part II)

The second day of vacation my sister and I went to Six Flags for the first time ever....and let me just say...AWESOME!! I died over all the Batman, Superman (Smallville/Tom Welling anyone?), and Coke paraphernalia. 

And this, my friends, is called "Supreme Funnel Cake" and can I just say that it's strawberry chocolaty goodness was TO DIE FOR.

And this was my little sister after experiencing her first upside down roller coaster:

I was seriously hoping Tom Welling or Christian Bale would be there walking around,  but no luck. Maybe next year...

That One Time I Dyed My Hair Brown and Went on Vacation (Part I)

First of all, I cannot BELIEVE that it is almost August. Seriously, I have no clue what happened to the past two months. 

Therefore, it has been nearly 2 months already since my vacation! My first vacation in 5 years, yo!

And it was glorious.  My sister-aka my best friend- and I went to the Baltimore/DC area for a 5 days and went to many, many places and ate at many,many more. haha.  

Our first day we went to the National Geographic Museum in downtown DC and saw the Titanic exhibit. If you know me at all, you know I LOVE the Titanic.  The history of it, and the movie. This exhibit was incredibly well done! And BONUS...it had real props used in the movie! AH! 

Observe:

To the right of this picture there is the real cherub statue the used on the bottom of the grand staircase on the set of the movie.  Of course I had to walk down the staircase like Rose:)

 Here is my sister (and then me) standing next to a lifeboat the used in the movie!!

 And this is a model that they used for shooting some underwater scenes in the movie:)

And this is me geeking out over Leonardo DiCaprio :)

We thought this was fitting....

I'm flying, Jack!

A Kind of Perfect Wednesday

Some of my favorite days are rainy ones.

And some of my favorite, favorite rainy days are ones spent at the movies. 

And favorite. favorite, favorite days for me include eating at one of my absolute favorite places in the world: the Juice and Java....a little hole in the wall that my friend's mom introduced me to a few years ago and I have fallen in love with. Seriously....SO good.  The BEST smoothies in the world and the Chicken Popper Fajita is TO DIE FOR.

Last week my sister and I had a favorite, favorite, favorite day and went to the Juice and Java on a rainy day and then went and saw People Like Us at the theater.  (Chris Pine anyone?)

(me sis and me )

This picture sums up my sister and I's relationship PERFECTLY!

The Hot German Life Guard Who Gave Me Sun Poisoning

I just got back from my first vacation in 5 years!!! (9 if you don't count that "vacation" driving across the country 5 people to a 5 passenger car in the middle of the summer in 2007)

  I had SUCH a good week!! I feel so refreshed,  that is, when I am not moving...

because every move I make hurts...

and this is why:

(right-me, left-my sis. pardon the immodesty, it hurts to wear anything but tank tops and even that is pushing it)

Yeah, painful. Real painful. And this picture doesn't even begin to do it justice, haha. I am seriously red. I look like  I am wearing a white bathing suit top over a red jumpsuit.

 Hot, I know ;)

I ended my awesome vacation getting incredibly sick with sun poisoning...i.e. chills, hot flashes, nausea, aches, etc. Not fun.

So the moral of the story is: WEAR SUN SCREEN YO! Especially if you are fair skinned, and NO MATTER how distracted you are by the hot,blonde, German life guard watching you at the pool.

Fried Oreos Will Save Your Life

On Friday my sister and I went up to a festival called Mayfair on kind of a whim to see one of her favorite bands, Boys Like Girls. It was a free concert, so why not?! 

 It rained...like, a lot.  Thank goodness there were different giant tents to sit under. We got there and right away met Martin from BLG.. SUCH a nice guy, and easy on the eyes too;)

Then, we definitely got a...wide variety(to say the least).... of entertainment while we were waiting for the show to begin. Like...

 kids performing songs from Fiddler on The Roof, a band playing who were no older than like 17, and a DJ and a huge dance party. And let me tell you.... if you know any white boys who actually can dance, cherish them, because it is a rare, rare thing. 

Then we had to sit through a rapper name Chiddy Bang. 

Then finally there was Boys Like Girls.

And in the midst of all the rain, weird entertainment, and white boy arm-flailing, my sister bought us fried oreos. And THAT made it all worth while.SERIOUSLY. 

If you haven't had any, I beg you..go change your life and partake at your nearest fair/festival right now.

Never Trust Parking Attendants

About 2 weeks ago my friends Amanda, Christi, sister Hannah, and I all went on another mini road trip...this time down to Washington DC. I LOVE road trips. They are just awesome, period.

And even though I used to complain about where I live, it's actually pretty cool because I can take day trips to SO many different places...Philly, DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, etc...and they are all within 2-3 hours away and you can just make a day of it without having to drive forever. 

Well we looked all over the place for a parking garage close to (where we thought) the museums were knowing we would have to be paying $25 stinking dollars to rest your vehicle in between 2 dinky white lines for a mere 2-3 hours...(seriously, who came up with the whole "paying for parking" concept, and THAT stinking much?!)...and we thought we were within like 3 blocks of our destination...and we see a sign for $10 parking...HECK yes. We thought before we parked we would double check with the attendant to make sure we weren't too far away...and he said

"Oh yeah, you are only about a 5 minute walk from all the museums."

 Boy, he played us like a fiddle in the middle of a country dance in Mississippi.  

Try a FIVE mile walk through the city!! Ugh. We were so ticked. Good thing we brought the GPS with us walking.

But the museums we went to were really awesome, and the company was even awesomer. We went to the ones with pop culture and real artifacts from movies and stuff. AWESOME! Like, we got to see Dorothy's ruby slippers, and the scarecrow's hat and shoes...for real!

I was totally thinking about Night At The Museum 2 the entire time.... 

"why these aren't real rubies at all..." LOVE that movie...haha

And you KNOW i had to reference Titanic when we came to a part about ships...the railing was just screaming my name.

Amanda, Hannah, and Me in front of the Washington monument (you can kind of see it in the background).

Christi, Hannah, Amanda, and Me 

Sisters! Hannah and Me

And guess where we stopped on the way home...

heck yes, the Cheesecake Factory!! 

I am in love.

Me and Christi!

Seriously, when are they gonna build one of these closer to me???

I stole all of these pictures from my friends facebooks...I totally failed and lugged my heavy SLR through the city and when I went to take the first picture...no battery! FAIL! Oh well, maybe that made it lighter to carry around through 5 miles of city?? Haha, yeah, I didn't think so.

Swimming With The Fishies

I mentioned in one of my last posts that a week or two ago my sister Hannah, my friend Amanda, and I all went on a mini road trip down to Baltimore. It was a GLORIOUS day!! We had SO much fun.  There were some majorly good heart-to-hearts, belly laughs, picture taking, and good music and food shared that day.

We ate at The Cheesecake Factory (only the 2nd time I have ever been in my life, the closest one is 2 hours away!!) OH my. I have no words to fully describe its deliciously wonderful mouth watering goodness:) 

and, it was RIGHT on the beautiful harbor.

Then, we went to the Aquarium. SO much fun. I love, love, LOVE the ocean and it is just so amazing to look at all the beautiful (and some scary) creatures that God has created.

And we took lots of pictures, being our incredibly smooth selves:)

(hannah and me)

(me, hannah, amanda)

and I kissed a fish...picture...or, picture of a fish...

and then we took pictures out a the beautiful harbor and city at night.

VERY good day.  I love friends. And road trips. And cheesecake. And laughing. And all those put together? HECK yes!