twin pop syndrome

it's when you break your twin pops in half against the coffee table corner and you have to eat the first one pretty fast so the second one doesn't melt, thus making the first one less enjoyable than the second one because you are more concentrated on not letting the second one melt than noticing how yummy the first one is. 


it's kind of confusing. but so is eating a twin pop. 

colter bay

....is a magical place. it's a little campsite an hour outside of jackson hole that my whole family goes to every july. i seriously have grown up going there and it's one of those family traditions that will most definitely keep going when i have kids! this summer (since i was actually in school), i had to hurry up with my finals and high-tail it out of rexburg. but colter bay did not disappoint as usual!

jackson lake

my champion grandpa who started the colter bay tradition more than 50 years ago

throwing the nerf around on the rafts 

it's hard being three

our whole group

trying to imitate boys will be girls

missing ben :(  

yellowstone falls

ely boy tradition

 next up is one of those dude ranches where we'll just ride horses and swim every day. I LOVE SUMMER!

neville 2.0

remember my neville longbottom stupor the other day?

well, i showed those pictures to a bajillion of my friends and they were like, "duh. that's neville longbottom."

and then i randomly stumbled on this today!

HA!

p.s. i've made up my mind.

hotbottom, indeed.

(i know, it's the age-old turn on. hottie pants wizards who behead giant snakes. yummy.)

"of course this is happening inside your head, but why should that mean it's not real?"

today is a stormy, gloomy day. i don't mean in the real world; it's freaking hot outside right now. i mean in my soul, also known as the parallel universe of harry potter land. i know, you would think my soul would be a multi-faceted, complex thing. it's not. harry potter land pretty much sums it up.

here's why i am sad: today is the day that harry potter ends. done. i felt like this when the 7th book ended (except for a lot worse) but there were always the movies to look forward to. i have always thought about how i would feel right after seeing the 7th movie. let me tell you how i feel: not good. this is the day that harry potter officially shifts from a present phenomenon to a past phenomenon. there are no more midnight book releases. and now there are no more midnight premieres. new books will come out and new movies will show at midnight. but not for harry.

so yeah, i'm feeling kinda crummy today. but you know the upside? the movie was fantastic. everything it should have been. straight from the book. tender. emotional. epic. and mrs. weasley's famous line wasn't even edited out. how secretly happy is everyone?

and i don't care if some people forget about harry fifteen years down the road (i call them fair-weathered muggles). i will always be loyal to harry. we started our journey together in 3rd grade, and now here were are in college. it's been a wild ride. but it's not the end. my brother and i always talk about how we are going to read the books to our kids from the time they are in the crib. i want their childhood to be as magical as mine.

p.s. last night i was a death eater. no, seriously. sometimes i say i'm a death eater when i'm just really cranky, but this time, i was only a death eater in the truest sense. my permanent ink dark mark didn't wear off today, so when some boy said he didn't really like the harry potter books, i had no choice but to conjure up the dark mark in the classroom.

where it all began

been there, done that

look who grew up

ok. my mind is blown. everything that i thought i knew about the world seems fake. please look at these pictures and tell me who this is. 

no? will this jog your memory? 

i know. neville longbottom. 

neville longbottom. 

i feel like someone stupefied me. 
(i can't decide what to think about new neville...but i think i like him!) 

back to pooh corner

I WANT TO CRY THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY. 

watching this makes finals seem less icky.

isn't the power of pooh magical?

july 15th. 

can't wait!

the philosophy of peaches

life is a peach. and by that i mean life can sometimes be rude, but little happy things make up for little rudey things (and i don't mean rudy the movie, because that's a happy thing). like today was one of those days where the old man in the parking lot tells you to roll down your window and gets mad at you for parking somewhere you shouldn't and then makes you almost cry by yourself in the car. it was also one of those days where the crossroads worker is really short with you when you ask about closing hours and you just think that everyone should be a little nicer. but it also was one of those days when your favorite professor in the WHOLE WORLD remembers your name and says "see ya next time, rach" and you forget all about those grumpypants who are not very nice because your professor is very nice and didn't even realize he made your day with one teeny-tiny comment!

so basically, every day is just one big ebb and flow of the good and the bad. fortunately, the good always makes the bad ok, and i think that's pretty peachy.

london calling

this is where i will be in a month.

london, yo!

hurry up, ya dumb finals.

dear sarah

i love the 4th of july. isn't it the best? how can you not feel american when spending a whole day at parades, eating hot dogs, swimming, and watching fireworks? i had a much needed break from school in salt lake this weekend and it. was. amazing. i love rexburg. but sometimes i just need some salt lake lovin'.

anyway, i spent most of my weekend with sarah. in case you didn't know, sarah is my oldest friend. not old as in she's 35 and i'm 20. old as in, we've been besties since preschool. sarah remembers the first time we met. she thought that my family was black (only in my dreams...) i don't remember meeting her but that's only because my brain can only hold so many memories, and when it comes to sarah and rachael, there are a lot.

in kindergarten, sarah, ben, and i would go to her house behind the mortuary and eat macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and jump around the swing set pretending the ground was lava. we also turned my swing set into the poop machine, where different ladders and ropes were different parts of the digestive system and the finale was the slide pooping us out (don't judge.) later in elementary school, we spent many hours roaming around the gully and reading scary stories in her closet with a flashlight. we sometimes skied together, but mostly we just fell down the mountain together. in middle school, we wrote notes in class and fell in love with michael phelps. in high school, we laid in her bed and read scriptures or sat on my roof and talked about life and first kisses (they are synonymous subjects, you know.) we had some really unforgettable experiences together.

my favorite story to tell people about sarah is from when we were in mexico painting houses together. i was rolling ceilings and she was cutting edges. one day, everybody was done with one of the houses except for me. everyone was exhausted and taking a break to eat lunch while i was finishing. i was being so dumb and irritated because i had the biggest knot in my neck from rolling all day and i was hungry. sarah could tell i was in a bad mood and ran in to roll with me, even though she hadn't done it before. even though i was still cranky, she was understanding and stayed to help me roll while everyone was eating lunch together.

now sarah is at utah state and i'm at byu-idaho. we don't see each other every day. so it was really good to have a sarah/rachael weekend. we played at the park, went to the temple, jumped on the tramp, watched twilight zone with her family (obsessed!), sat on the roof almost every night with my family, and decided it was the ideal summer weekend.

i love you, sarah! thanks for this weekend and the past 15 years :) we better have a good future ahead of us together.

(this picture is so pitiful...and yet it captures the essence of us so well.)