piece by piece and bit by bit, i will break this down for you real slow.

ahh. how i love something corporate! i got to see them in concert friday night! they've been my favorite band since 8th grade and the last time i saw them live was t10th grade... they sound as good as ever, and i got to go with the lovely elaine. :)
i don't have any pictures from the show, but i just wanted to express my love for this awesome band. if you haven't heard any of their stuff, i suggest you look them up!

so right about now, i really miss provo. everyone's back up there, starting school and having fun. of COURSE i'm soo excited to go to hawaii. but i had such a great semester there and i can't help feeling a little sad that i won't be going back. i miss my roommates! and i miss living by annie!! -sigh- oh well. i probably won't miss it once i'm settled in laie. :)

on a random side note, i really really love it when my friends burn me cds. i've gotten so much new music this summer and it makes me super happy!

annddd i think this is the end of my really random post! bye!

summer ending.

so! as promised, i went to yosemite and to my dad's house. i was in jen's wedding too, but my camera was dead so i don't have any pictures of that. :(

HALF DOME:

without a doubt the hardest physical test i have put my body through. 17 miles, 4,800 ft elevation increase... insanity. so hard, but definitely glad i did it. :)
the three of us on top of the dome! love them!!

on the way home from the lovely yosemite, we spent the night at my dad's house and woke up early to take the boat out on lake isabella. the water was PERFECT. so glassy, and warm. got some great wakeboarding in!

(2008)

(2010)

i love this girl. erica, thanks for being my best friend. :)

let's see. besides that trip, mostly i've just been working and hanging out. having a great time meeting new people and hanging out with old friends. it's been a really great summer and now i'm almost off to hawaii! two and a half weeks and i'm outta hereeee.

more summer

so! it definitely has been awhile since i've posted anything.
well, let's see. since last time, i got a job, went to the river, went to my dad's house, took a road trip to san francisco, worked a lot, and went to the beach a little. river= freakin awesome. dad's= fun. road trip= highlight of my summer so far!

the river trip was with the saddleback ward. it was so much fun! hot, relaxing, great friends, great wakeboarding- couldn't have asked for more (except maybe one more day there!) hanging out at my dad's for the weekend was really nice. we rode his motorcycle up into sequoia national forest, and went out on the lake- i got to do some more wakeboarding!

now for the road trip...aryanna, erica, and i drove up to san francisco to see our friend madeline, who goes to school at sf state. on the way up, we stopped in santa barbara for lunch, san luis obispo for dinner, and stayed the night at our friend sutton's, in santa cruz. the next day, we backtracked a little bit and went down to the monterey bay aquarium! that was so fun. i'm obsessed with the sea horses and penguins :)



we got up to san francisco later that night, and spent the next 3 days exploring the many faces of this fabulous city.






it took awhile to get there, but it's turning out to be a really great summer.
coming soon: camping trip to yosemite, jen's wedding, and possibly wakeboarding at my dad's again. ohh yes. :)

summer!

hi! well, it definitely has been a long time since i've posted anything new!

last semester was great: classes were tough but i did pretty well. missed california at times but got used to utah. got accepted to byu and byu-hawaii. had my first calling as a teacher. had wonderful roommates (whom i miss very much). and lived next door to my best friend (miss her too). such a great four months!

i learned so much and i definitely know i was supposed to be there last semester. i am transferring to hawaii in the fall... which is of course WAY exciting, but it's also hard. i mean i just got used to provo, had a wonderful roommate, lived 2 seconds from one of my best friends, finally got into the school i've been wanting to go to for 2 years... and now i have to start all over.

-sigh-

oh well. i am excited for what my new adventure has in store for me. :)

it's so good to be home!!! i just love southern orange county. a lot. it's been gorgeous; between 70 and 80 degrees and perfectly sunny and breezy for the past three weeks. no more worrying about a freak snow storm. yay! i'm just hanging out with friends and looking for a job right now... i need a job, bad!

that's it for now.
i'm off to the beach. <3

burnt out.

oh, i am so tired. so so so so so tired. i have two more finals tomorrow and i don't know how i'm going to get through them. well, biology won't be too bad. but math, ughhh math. math is gonna be the death of me! i did some extra credit, and there's a curve at the end, so i'm banking on that to help my grade. without those things i'd be toast. in 24 hours i will be done with the semester. (21 actually). oh boy. that is exciting.

on the bright side, i've had a nice relaxing day with my roommates... becky, whitney and i went out to lunch (britany was already on campus studying so she couldn't get sucked into our plot to not study). then, whitney and i went and laid out by the pool. it's such a lovely dayyy! we laid out for almost 2 hours, got some color... and studied a little bit.


as a nice study break, (okay i'll be honest i wasn't even studying) I GOT TO SEE ELDER HARDER! yep, cody's been set apart as a missionary for the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints :) he was up on campus today so i got to see him for a few minutes. how exciting.

and then, i bought us some german chocolate fudge from the byu bookstore. since he's going to germany i thought it was appropriate. and i just wanted chocolate...yeah. it was delicious.

so, now that it's 7:30 and i've done about an hour of studying all day, i'll wrap up this blog post so maybe i won't fail my finals tomorrow...

(disclaimer: despite all this complaining, i really am happy. no worries :) life's great.)

oh, you know.. just.. going crazy.

Hello!

so last weekend was general conference. and easter. and some friends from home came up to utah. it was a great weekend! saturday, i went up to salt lake for conference. saw both the saturday morning and saturday afternoon sessions, and hung out with drew, cody, and our new friend louie in between the sessions. it was great fun. my favorite general conference talk was "You Are My Hands" my President Dieter F. Uchtdorf. It was about love, and how we as disciples of Jesus Christ are called to love and serve others. watch it! it's a two-part video on you tube, or read it at http://www.lds.org/ :)


on easter, i watched conference at home, and then went up to salt lake to have dinner at drew's grandparents' house with a few friends. it was way fun. it was nice to be with a family on easter; this was the first easter i wasn't with my family. it was a great weekend and a great holiday, though! cody code is going on his mission in t-minus 9 days! how exciting. he's gonna be so great, but i'm gonna miss him tons!! here's a picture of our last hug (for two years)!






(okay i lied. i actually snuck in one more after this was taken.)

this past weekend, i got a whole lot of nothing done. i did go to the temple twice, to a volleyball game, and saw the last song and alice and wonderland... but not so much homework or studying. oops. yeah, it's good now and then to have a fun, relaxing weekend... but i start finals on thursday so maybe this past weekend wasn't the best time to take a break. ha. i'll make it through finals.... i think.

i have a 7-page biology paper i just started today due tomorrow, two math assignments also due tomorrow, two finals on thursday, teaching a lesson in relief society sunday, and two more finals next tuesday. hahaha. crazy 9 days. but after that i am done!

okay. i should probably stop blogging and get back to all the stuff i need to do!

seven things!

Okay so my wonderful best friend Annie tagged me (do you call it tagged? well, she linked me, or something) in this award thing... Which is kinda cool...

Here are the rules: List seven things about yourself. Link back to the person that gave you the award. Pass the award on to seven bloggers.


Okay so, seven things about me, here i go.


1. i'm pretty much obsessed with planning. i have a little day planner that i would not live without. i say would not, because technically i guess i COULD live without it. but i would just go crazy and not know where i was or what i was supposed to be doing, it would be ridiculous! any chance i get to write something down in my planner i do it. it's kinda a bad habit, especially cause when i'm bored in class, i look through the upcoming weeks and see what i need to do and write it down. ha. i do plan on channeling this weird passion of mine, though. i want to be an event planner! i do it on a daily basis for myself, and i did plan a bunch of the high school dances for my group, so why not do it for big corporations and get paid? i'm hoping to do mostly corporate planning. but maybe some weddings on the side :)

2. i'm an only child. yup, boring, huh? i don't think i'm spoiled... but i guess i would have less things and attention if there were 3 or 4 or 10 more kids in the family. i love family, and i wish i had siblings. but it's not too lonely, cause i have a lot of really good friends that i pretend are my family. my parents are so great. they're divorced, and they have been since i was four, but they are still best friends. i know, weird. i'm so lucky, though! i love being close to both of them. although they are different, and by different i mean like polar opposites, i truly admire them both.

3. i've lived in the same house my entire life. in beautiful southern orange county. my parents bought the house in mission viejo and my mom still has the same house. my dad moved out when they got divorced, so i have lived with him in san clemente and dana point, which i am super happy about. i love it down there! i think that is why i have such a love for the beach: i've lived less than five minutes from it (w/dad anyway) since i was four. i think i'm the only person i know that's been in the same house their whole life... i moved up to provo, utah at the beginning of this year. so i don't technically live there right now. but i will again in 4 weeks!

4. i'm a member of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. :) and if you know me, you know that this is a huuuge part of who i am! i'm a convert, i joined the church a little over two years ago. i was raised catholic, went to a non-denominational christian church for a little bit, and had a lot of confusion in my life until i found the lds church. i always wanted to be really religious, but i felt like something was in the way, something was stopping me from progressing. anyway, long story short, i joined the church november 17, 2007 and my life has improved in every way since then. i'm much happier, i'm nicer, i love and appreciate my parents more, i know what my purpose in life is, and i know my savior jesus christ and my heavenly father so much better! the church is TRUE and i know it with everything in me!!! (if you are not lds and you have questions, i would looove to answer them for you. or, you can go to mormon.org to check it out.)

5. along the same line as that last one, i want to serve a mission for the lds church. i won't be able to go until i'm 21, so a year and a half from now, but i want to go so bad. it would be an eighteen month mission and it could be ANYWHERE in the world. alabama or peru, south carolina or indonesia, you get it- anywhere. there is nothing i love more than my heavenly father, and i want to share the restored gospel of jesus christ with my brothers and sisters, wherever that may be! i've still got some time until then, many things could happen. so i'm not saying i'm for sure going, but i for sure want to! ...i'm going on a mission unless the lord has other plans for me :)

6. i LOVE theatre and dance. i've acted in lots of plays and musicals, and by lots i mean like... 25 ish in 6 years. i haven't acted since my senior year of high school and i miss it soooo much. it's really sad. whenever i see a play or a dance performance i enjoy it, but i get really depressed because it hasn't been ME up there for years! ugh! but i kept up the dancing... until i came up to BYU this semester. i miss that too, and i'm probably really bad now cause i haven't danced in 6 months. i'll get back into it in the summer and i will start taking polynesian dance for sure, maybe some others in the fall. (oh yeah, i'm going to BYU hawaii in the fall, failed to mention that ;) )

7. i think i'm crazy. i think too much, worry too much, plan WAY too much. i stress more than is necessary (especially since i've been going to BYU), i over-think everything, and i'm just weird. like a super big dork. i often wonder why people are friends with me, i dunno, i just think i'm really weird. i'm naieve, for sure, which is bad and probably gonna get me hurt sometime. but i just think since i'm pretty much an open book, everyone is. i assume everyone is nice and has good intentions until their actions prove otherwise. and even then, i'll try to give them the benefit of the doubt. i get distracted easily and there isn't any skill i'm really good at.

but while these things are definitely true, i guess i'll have to give myself some credit... i am a loyal friend who truly cares. i try my best to be nice and to be the best person i can be. i try to show people i care by asking about their lives and i love being the person my friends call when they need help or just someone to talk to. i love my life and i strive to be a good person and to be happy :)


well, now that you've read entirely too much about me, let's pass this on to some others, shall we?



the game said to link it back to the person who linked you, so, Annie, you're first. one of my best friends, whom i currently live across the hall from! it's been sooo nice being able to see her almost every day up here.

her roommates, who have also come to be my friends, Alicia and Lauren . i am really glad they're annie's roommates or else i wouldn't know them! they put up with me.

my friend from home, Nicole . i miss her!! she has a blog that i really enjoy reading. and a smile that i am always happy to see.

Brooke . so her blog is mostly pictures (she's an amazing photographer!), but maybe i can get her to actually post something about herself for once.

Rebecca , this great girl i got to meet back home who has since gotten married and moved off to new mexico. i love reading her blog and learning about all her new adventures!

Sister Starr ! one of my favorite moms for sure. i'm super close friends with her son, drew, and so therefore she sees a lot of me around their house. seeing her blog makes me feel not quite so far away.



well, that was fun :)