hello?

I haven't posted since January 1st.

I probably should have kept up at this because it's going to be hard to do these last 9-10 months justice.

January sucked. What with work being crazy and them forcing me to work overtime. It was really depressing. And I got really burned out for the next couple months. I'm not looking forward to that time of year again. (SOON! UGH!)

In February I went to Disney World! I fell in love with the place and had the most fun I've ever had. We went to the beach, to Universal Studios, to Downtown Disney, to every park in Disney World. SO FUN. I want to go back every day.

March passed by without much out of the ordinary. I started to like work a little bit better again. And I started to be better friends with people at work too. I have some amazing co-workers.

April brought with it some personal changes. I started reading the Book of Mormon again. I mention this because it really impacted my life a lot more than I thought it would. I owe every good thing that's happened this year to my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Reading the Book of Mormon  again helped me draw closer to them and helped me change my life.

In May I welcomed these sun with open arms. I LOVE summer. I LIVE for the summer. My roommate and I also decided, rather quickly, to move from West Jordan to Cottonwood Heights. It was the best decision ever. We moved in with Chelsey and Lynsie to a house and I've loved every minute.

Ryan and Courtney got married in June! It was a really fun and awesome day. I'm happy Courtney is a part of our family. I couldn't ask for a better sister-in-law. So far the two that I have are AMAZING. So lucky. My brothers are crazy lucky too. I also went blonde in June. I was blonde for all of summer. That was fun. I took at trip to Manti with my ward and roommates. I started and ended as a temple worker at the Oquirrh Mountain temple. Then was set apart to start as a temple worker for the Salt Lake temple in August.

July was crazy busy. I went camping with my family one night, got sick for a week, had a family reunion, flew to New York with my mom and Annalie for 8 days, came back, worked a little, and then Cyann and Justin came in from New Mexico to visit us! LOTS of jammed packed days with lots of fun. New York was incredible. I just love my family out there. Hi-lights include Niagara falls, Hill Cummorah Pageant and the Sacred Grove, the finger lakes, hiking in the Adirondacks with Aunts and Uncle and cousins, and our day in Philadelphia. So much fun!

August started out busy as well. Working full time in the summer is a joke. It's SO hard to want to go to work when the sun is out and the world is beautiful! I went to Yellowstone with my ward. It was a blast. A lot of driving. But a blast. I started working at the temple! It's so incredible to spend 6 hours a week at the temple. I'm learning so much, even if it is SO difficult to wake up at 4am those days.

And now, September. It's the end of the month. Everyone went back to life and school and jobs. So life sort of slowed down a bit. I have a capstone student at work, so I get to have a student almost every shift from now until the end of October. It's teaching me patience, that's for sure. But she's great. Smarter than I was in school. I've been hiking a few times here and there. Don't see my family as much as the summer, but that's life.

So sorry it's been so long. These are the goings on. I really want to blog soon and write about my thoughts about my goings on. Like I sort of mentioned, my life has really changed this year and I am just in awe of how great these changes are and how they came to be.

But I guess stay tuned for those thoughts.

Yellowstone

I was able to finally get more than two days off in a row.
I actually managed to get four off! So Annalie and I went on an adventure to Yellowstone.
I admit I was most excited to just drive my car and find out how the gas mileage did on just highway. (32 mpgs.) in Yellowstone, just going 45 and using cruise control I got 39 mpg! Rock on!
Anyway....
I picked Annalie up from her house after she had worked the night shift for 12 hours. I was so proud. She lasted until about 2pm and even then only slept for an hour and was recharged for the day. The drive was great. It seriously felt like it was just a nice afternoon drive and we made it up there by 3. We started exploring Yellowstone right off and went to a few geyser spots and then saw old faithful.
The best part of old faithful was the visitor's center. We went around and we bored until we found the kid's section. We learned a lot from this little diseased looking girl. The next best part was watching all the people wait for old faithful to erupt. Chinese people taking pictures, people asking dumb questions. And this one guy with a disposable camera that kept taking the crappiest pictures of the geyser. Entertainment at its finest!

That first night we went back to West Yellowstone and ate at a restaurant where we both ordered Bison to eat. We were so sick of the bison crossing the road and causing too many tourists to be idiots, we thought it would be great to eat one to show them who was boss. Delish!
We slept in a hotel that night. I slept great, Annalie was up at 2 and never fell back asleep.
We paced up in the morning and headed up to mammoth to reserve a campsite for the night. Lots of bison crossings later we made it and found a nice spot and put up our tent. We then decided to go on some hikes. One hike we went on had some crazy warning signs about bears that kind of freaked us out. We hiked in a little bit then got too freaked out and turned around. Haha.
We then drove around to the geysers again, ate lunch at a pretty riverside place, and continued on the "loop." Annalie fell asleep almost instantly every time we were in the car. Haha. But I woke her up when we got to cool places. Like West thumb, where we saw a bear! And Yellowstone lake. And then stopped at the mud volcano and did that little hike. Tired and worn out, we drove back to our campsite and made dinner.
We went to sleep fearing bears. I brought this book called "death in Yellowstone" about how people have died there. The chapter on bear attacks was terrifying. I thought it would be fun to read in the tent for scary stories but no! I was too scared. I didnt sleep much that night.
We ate, packed up, and started on our way up to Tower. I think this part was my favorite part of Yellowstone. Gorgeous. And hardly any people. We saw this beautiful waterfall. I kept asking Annalie what she would do if I fell of of the cliff. Basically she would leave me to die.
We did a couple more hikes. One to the "lost lake" that was so quiet and pretty. Again, scared of bears we returned right afterwards. And one to a waterfall. Then we went back on our way to see the grand canyon of Yellowstone. That was pretty and wow, I didn't pretend to fall off that cliff. Crazy.


We drove down to the Teton National park. We decided to camp there for the night. I'm so glad we did. It was breath taking. So gorgeous. And I was so happy to get out of the car and stop driving for the day. We set up camp and went down to the lake side and had some good talks about how amazing nature is and God is to create it all and how we are so glad to understand that and our place in the world. Deep conversations.
We ate a ton of food and then cleaned up in a hurry before it started pouring rain. That made me less scared of bears, luckily enough. We spent the evening in our tent, texting Cyann and reading about more deaths by lightning and falling off of cliffs. Annalie made a bracelet. And we fell asleep.
The next day we explored the Teton park a little bit more and stopped in Jackson Hole for lunch before setting out for our drive in the middle of nowhere Wyoming back home. It was a boring drive. But Annalie got some good sleep in and I jammed out to my iPod tunes.
We made it home. I was so tired.
It was a great trip. I miss it up there already. It was just a great trip to remember all the beauty in the world and that there is a world outside of work.
Can't wait to go back again!