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.

Summer Adventures Part One

I haven't really blogged lately.

I've been having a great summer so far. In fact, the other day I realized that it was almost July and I kind of got a little bit of anxiety realizing that the summer is going really fast and that it will be over before I know it! Luckily I've been doing some fun things!

Annalie and I went to the redwood forest. Luckily I wrote about that trip. I would have forgotten a lot about that. I finally am able to add pictures so here's a few.

I went camping with Lynsie, Annalie, Brittni, and her dogs in Southern Utah the last weekend of April. We went to Sand Hallow Reservoir and had a blast. We tried out my huge new tent, spent some quality time in the sun, and played in the water. I was still in the throws of my stress fracture, and my right leg started swelling quite a bit during the trip. That was unfortunate. But we had fun. We had camp fires, we played some games, and had a good time being friends again. We went in my baby little car and somehow we fit everything in the car. It was quite the Tetris game, but we did it. I am so glad Lynsie and Brittni came. I love them so so much.

I went fishing with my brother and brother in law on memorial day. We woke up at 5:30 and were out on the water from 6 until 2 or so. We fished at a park in Highland, at Vivian park at the handicapped park, and then at Deer Creek. They caught two fish at Vivian park and nothing else. But I had fun reading and floating on my boat for a while. I sure love being in the sun.

I had 10 days off at the end of May. I was originally planning on attending a wedding that week, but it was postponed, so I had a bunch of time off. I ended up going to Bryce Canyon National Park with my mom and my dad. We camped for two nights, spent time by the fire, in the little lake on my boat, and trying to warm up in our tent because it got pretty cold. My dad ran in a race. It was a fun weekend. The campsite we were at was perfect. Hardly any people, forest, by a lake, and peaceful. I would definitely go back again.

My latest adventure was to New York to visit my mom's side of the family. I'll write about that one in more detail. I was excited to go on an airplane somewhere. I went with my sister and her little son to meet up with my mom. Super fun times.

I can't believe that June is over in a few days. I still have a few things left on my summer to do list and I am really excited about doing them. I just hope summer lasts long enough to do them all!

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!

a week

hung out with mom and sister.
beat jon at settler's of catan.
i applied for 5 jobs in one day. got a headache.
was surprized with a present and awesome cake for becoming a nurse.
made a pie.
had snuggle time with brittni.
rode my bike to annalie's.
did tae bo.
and zumba.
went camping! at red cliffs.
skipped a rock 7 times.
balanced a spoon on my nose.
got depressed while playing the game of life.
got maybe 4 hours of sleep while camping.
jumped off a rock into some water.
hiked.
forgave.
took a deep nap. so deep i forgot where and who i was when i woke up.
bought boy shorts at walmart.
went grocery shopping.
cleaned my closet.
drove to manti.
watched the manti pageant with brother and sister-in-law and the world's cutest nephew.
drove home by myself in the middle of the night.
our house was deemed "unsafe" due to carbon monoxide. no more gas for us.
witnessed truly bipolar weather.
made dinner.
got addicted to "private practice."

i liked this week.

Graduation time!

I can't believe that it's finally time to graduate. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't fantastically excited about moving on and getting  into this next phase of life.

As of now I don't really have a plan for what I'm doing. (Scarier for me than for you, I assure you.) When people ask I tell them that I'm staying in Cedar for a while. (Don't really know how long.) I'm staying at least for the month of May so that I can study for the NCLEX (scary nursing boards) with classmmates and not be distracted by moving and family and things. Plus, May is a good time of year to go camping. And I'm pretty sure I'll get a lot of studying done when I go camping. Then I'll take my test. (I won't know what day I can take it for another week or so. I'm hoping in a few weeks.) And then I'll beg for a job somewhere. For now I think I should try to stay in Utah. But that means anywhere in Utah. I'm considering it all. Or I've even looked at Arizona. Just keeping my options open. I could really do anything and go anywhere at this point. Kind of scary. But exciting.

All in all, I CAN'T WAIT to be a nurse. I love it so much!

camping is my boyfriend

Friday morning, after showering, I get a text from house mate Brittni. "We're going to need you to get on messanger." So I pull up gmail, go online, and Britt and Chels start talking to me.
"This is an intervention."
"A spring break/weekend intervention."
It was decided pretty quickly that we needed to do something this weekend. And that something would be camping.
First off, I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. Second, I was so happy to finally be camping in southern Utah since I never have before. Third, I welcomed anything that would give me  yet another excuse to put off writing papers and studying.
Before our adventure started, I met up with Annalie and we took some pictures of each other for our graduation announcements. We kind of just aimlessly walked around campus and said, "Oh hey, take a picture of me doing ....." We're not professionals. But some of the pictures were awesome.

I came home after walking around campus and packed in an excited frenzy. I kept saying "We're going CAMPING! I'm so excited!" Because I was. SO. EXCITED. We filled the car with blankets. Literally. And headed out of town.
We made it to Red Cliffs and were saddened to see the "FULL" sign next to the campground entrance. We drove around a bit and decided to try somewhere else. Chelsey drove us down to Sand Hollow and we pulled up to the entrance and found out that it would either cost us our first born child to camp there or the other campgrounds were closed. So dang.
Chelsey did some quick thinking and called her brother. He knew of a campsite in middle of nowhere aka Hurricane, UT and led Chelsey down some roads until we got to this dirt road that looked like it went on forever.
I think technically we could have camped anywhere, but when we thought about stopping to make camp we felt like somehow we were trespassing.
We all agree that the best part of the trip was when Chelsey all of a sudden took a different road and ended up having to use her four wheel drive to get up some of the steep four-wheeler trails. OH MAN it was so much fun! Like a roller coaster in a Jeep! At one point we were laughing so hard I could hardly catch my breath. Chelsey said, "I'm not sure if it was that safe for the driver to be laughing that hard." We bounced all over the place and had fun times seven. I don't even know how to describe how awesomely exciting it was to off road in her Jeep.
We decided to get off that road and go on the main one again. The sign at the entrance of the dirt road said that there was a Dinosaur track site somewhere and we liked the thought of sleeping near where dinosaurs roamed.
So we finally decided to stop at a spot with some rocks. We felt good about the site because there were a few other campers within eyesight. Our campsite was awesome. We quickly dubbed one of the rock piles the bathroom and then got to work putting up our tent.

Whoever said you need a man when camping should be shot. We rocked that tent.

We made our bed for the night. Two cushiony layers, a sleeping bag, and 9 layers of blankets. We were NOT going to freeze to death.

We played a game in that tent and then decided to make a fire. We picked a pretty great spot for the fire. And within minutes it was a blazing success. Camping tradition dictated that we roast bratwersts over the fire. I think my favorite part of that was being able to call it a "Werst" all night.

"Hmmm.... This werst is best!"
Another favorite part is that I burned mine within the first 2 minutes of cooking it. Ah well. At least mine was cooked all the way through. Chelsey got a little surprise from the pink meat fairy. We're praying she doesn't get any pork worms in her brain. Anyone who would like to add their own prayers may do so. Thanks.
We roasted marshmallows and starbursts. It was pointed out that I'm not patient when it comes to cooking food over a fire. Who cares. I loved my burnt marshmallows and that burn I got from the starburst was worth it.

We went back into the tent after I watched Brittni and Chelsey stomp out the fire like a man. We played the rest of our game. I lost. So yeah, I was angry. Haha.

We took a bathroom trip in the full moon.
And then got underneath our blanket straight jacket and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of coyotes howling. At first my sleepy brain thought it was really cool. But then my sleep imagination ran wild with the thought of coyotes being nearby. I first thought, "I need to remember to ask Britt and Ches if they heard the werewolves." Then I thought, "Coyotes are like werewolves, right?" Then I thought, "No, they're a different species." My brain then went through every thing I might possibly know about coyotes. In Arizona there were coyotes in the desert behind our house and they ate our cat and one of our puppies.
Then I imagined about six coyotes howling at the full moon and then running towards our campsite. They run fast. I sat there in my blankets getting scared to death. I could swear that I heard one sniff outside of our tent, and I thought for sure that they were going to attack. But then I reminded my brain how silly I was and imagined the coyotes far away, snacking on puppies in the full moon light.

I woke up and Britt and Chels were awake too. I told them the story of the werewolves. Oh, we laughed.
It was windy. So we packed up, ate muffins in the car, and then went to see the dinosaur tracks.

We were all "t-rexing" above one of the foot prints.

Our next adventure was a little bit more of the off-roading. Yeah! It was a lot of fun bouncing around. But then one of the hills bounced the car around a little TOO much and afterwards Chelsey's car was making some strange noise. We figured out that it made the sound only when she turned left. We ventured down to St. George and after a little shopping we stopped at the dealer and she got her car looked at. They popped a peice in place and viola! Fixed.
Our last adventure was heading home. Chelsey forgot to get gas, and we knew we couldn't make it to Cedar. So we got off and headed to Toquerville.

The end.

Oh. Another favorite part was our soundtrack. Brittni made a cool playlist for us to listen to with such favorites as:
Music is my boyfriend,
Set fire to the rain,
and other favorites from Lykke Li and other awesome girls.