stuff

i remember my sixth grade teacher, mr. sain, had a thing about the word "stuff." he thought it was hilarious or something. he's also notoriously psycho. he wears mocassins and turtlenecks every day. he always wears a creepy wig with long bangs in the yearbook every year. his vocab tests included words like juxtuposition and other garbage that i didn't use as a twelve year old and i still don't as a twenty one year old. and his best friend is the author of the "bathroom book", who, every year, dresses up as a weirdo and comes into mr. sain's class to freak the kids out and then give them all copies of the bathroom book. i know, right?

anyway. sorry. that was a long-winded way of saying that mr. sain would probably read the title of my post and laugh until his face turned purple. i don't know why. sorry, mr. sain, that i forgot all your ridiculous vocab words and that my blog title reflects the reading level of a four year old. but.....

can we take a second and rejoice that it is march, which is the month that spring officially starts?

i had the most excellent night on monday. it was unnaturally warm and i went to pick up emma from a friend's house right as the sun was setting. on our way home, we decided to stop at a park which is right above my house and has the most amazing view of salt lake. whenever i'm able, i hop in the car barefooted, and drive to the park to watch the sun set over the great salt lake and the capitol downtown. those kinds of moments never come enough, ya know? (one night last summer, my brother and i hopped in the car with my ukulele and drove to the park to play while the sun was setting. when we got there, there was just a man standing towards the city, playing the bagpipes. how cool is that?! so we three just sat, looking at the city, playing our music. joseph and i always laugh about that night.) anyway, emma and i drove to the park on monday and kicked off our shoes and swung on the swings so high that our bums were lifting off. and then we went to the playground and reenacted the scene in lion king where scar lets mufasa fall into the herd of wildebeest. spring makes me happy!!!!!!!! i used to think i was a cold-weather person.

then i moved to rexburg.

 HAHAHA.

anyway, march...i love you! i can almost take my beach bike out of hibernation! this is my baby, daisy. i bought her after graduation. she also has a wicker basket and a pink metal bell. isn't she beautiful?

also, i just read over this post and it's not very coherent. it's late. i'm tired. maybe that's why my post is titled "stuff."

goodnight.

if you say "awkward" ten times, the word starts to sound awkward

on saturday, i went to a birthday party for a friend that i hadn't seen in a long time. her family has moved since the last time i saw her, so i was driving up the street that she told me, looking for the house number, which, by the way, was hard to find because there were no street lamp...and now i am trying to remember why i was squinting to see her house better because it most definitely was dark. ok, anyway.

i found the house number, walked up to the door and rang the doorbell. it was kind of dark inside the house and the lady who peeked out the window looked just like my friend's mom. so when she opened the door and said "hi!" i said hi and walked right on in. it wasn't until i was standing in her entry way and the door was closed that i realized she was not my friend's mom and i was standing in a stranger's house. but i was really confused because the house number was right and thought that maybe she was a sister or a family friend who was greeting guests. 

she just awkwardly looked at me, the random girl who just invited herself into their house, and asked who i was looking for. i confusedly told her my friend's name and she confusedly told me she didn't know who that was. and then her teenage son came out and invited me to eat pizza, and i felt even more weird. 

then we figured out i was on a street over from where i was supposed to be and we laughed about it. i left after apologizing like, sixteen times, and the woman and her son waved me goodbye and told me to come back for pizza if the party was a dud. 

and then i got in my car and drove away, still not even knowing what just happened. and came to the conclusion that you should not invite yourself into strangers houses. 

the seatbelt strangle

i love st. george.

my family has been going there at least three times a year since i was born. we have a house in bloomington that is older than my dad and has the most hideous home decor you can imagine a la my grandma 40 years ago. the roof is leaky and the barstools are way too high for the counter so you get those line marks in your legs after eating lunch.

but it has the most comfortable recliner that i like to curl up in for hours and read a good book--or maybe one of my brothers' calvin and hobbes collections. there's a ladder in the back hallway that leads to a loft that has a king and a queen bed in it, along with a tv, so it's the ultimate man cave. and when it's warm, we like to drag the mattresses on the roof and sleep out there. the stars are pretty bright in bloomington and in the summer, you get bats that fly over your head.

i love the mountains that are literally right outside the back door. you hike up the first part of the mountain and then the very last part, you have to literally rock climb to the top. i still get a teensy bit nervous doing it, but it has the best view of st. george up there!

i even love the ride down to st. george. we always leave salt lake in the evening and don't roll into the grocery store parking lot till eleven or twelve, because of the dinner stop, the occasional bathroom stop, and the "we're pulling over until everyone can get buckled and get along" stop. speaking of buckle, i just came up with the perfect name for my biggest car pet peeve...."the seatbelt strangle." you know how when you lean forward in your seat and the seatbelt won't give you any slack, so you lean back a little and then forward, but the seatbelt has only pulled tighter, etc etc, until you are literally trapped against the seat? that happened to me, like, eight times this weekend! but anyway, i really like the smell of skunks on the side of the road because i only associate the smell with fond memories of driving to st. george late at night. my favorite part is when we finally get off the freeway exit and the engine suddenly goes really silent, which is everyone's cue to wake up because your body knows that feeling--it means you've arrived! and then everyone drags their suitcases into the house rosy-cheeked and bleary-eyed and face plants into bed.

it doesn't matter that you fall asleep without changing because you were in your sweats to begin with.

and so begins another trip to st. george. 

love notes

at the expense of sounding cheesy, i would like to welcome february by telling you all how much i love love. it is magical. it lifts you, expands you, makes you happier than any scientist can explain, and has mystical powers on the glow in your skin. i'm talking about every kind of love. just knowing that you have people in your life that love you is the best confidence booster out there.

i really like valentines day. i like that for weeks before the day, you see pink and red and glittering hearts everwhere. i like all the shmaltzy love quotes that float around the internet and hallmark cards. i like that papa murphy's makes a heart shaped pepperoni pizza that somehow suspiciously tastes better than it's circlular counterpart. i like how even if i'm not in love on valentines day, i can think back on the feelings of love and giddiness and infatuation and get excited for those feelings again in the future. i like how my mom always gives me valentine presents (one year, it came with a card that said "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince!") and how it's the only day where i can pull off wearing a pink bow in my hair.

have a great february! it's an awesome month. always has been.

i love getting voicemails at the gym

i got a phone call this week.

april 24th-august 9th.

heeeyyyyy jerusalem!

christmas break!

my christmas break started off with a family council. in all honesty, i usually don't see many people over christmas break other than my family. it really is the best time to do family things, am i right? but this year, i did an unmentionable thing and decided to leave my family for a week to go to san diego. i know. i had to have my mom tell my brother because i was afraid he would get mad at me. i'm not lying. so we had a family council to make a list of things to do before i left. among them were go to temple square, see the window displays at the grand america, ski, go christmas caroling, and watch it's a wonderful life, charlie brown christmas, rudolph (the original), the grinch, polar express, mr. kreuger's christmas, and elf. busy week? i think yes.

on christmas eve, we have a tradition of pushing mine and emma's beds together and then all five of us kids sleep in the mega-bed. we had ben rejoining us this year (plus we've all grown a little fatter) so it was just as comfy as can be. the beds always slowly drift apart during the night and we almost always wake up to find that someone has been pushed in the crack. jolly fun. i'm pretty sure that when we're all married, the spouses are going to be exiled to the basement or something so we can keep the tradition going. 

christmas was as eventful as always with good food, the traditional christmas jammies, church with elder ballard, and new toys. my favorite new toy? a nice electric toothbrush. have you guys tried them? they are magical. 

on the 26th, my boyfriend and i woke up super early and spent all day driving. we were welcomed into san diego by the smell of the ocean....hello, that smell alone is heaven! can i just say.....I LOVE SAN DIEGO. the weather was so beautiful and sunny. i felt the tiniest bit of pleasure calling my parents from the beach because it reminded me of when my entire family left me to rot in rexburg this summer while they went to hawaii and called me every day to tell me about snorkeling in waikiki bay.

aaaanyway, i'm an awful blogger and should be cast into the fiery pits of a negligent blogging abyss, but i would rather post a few pictures than describe everything we did in san diego. i will say this: we did the "san diego stuff." seaworld, the zoo, balboa park, mexico for two seconds (obvi), the beach, coronado, ya know, the stuff.....and it was amazing! you know it's a good vacation when you don't want to go home. i'm pretty sure when i'm making millions of dollars in the non-profit field (ha ha), i'll move to san diego.

if you try to steal the neighbor's life size baby jesus, you will be doomed.

happy new year! i hope it's a good one for everyone :) 

i hope mine brings me a crazy adventure in the middle east.
and better blogging habits...

my week in videos

can we please talk about the new hobbit trailer? i watched this last night, right when it came out and almost died. "can you promise that i will come back?" "no. and if you do.....you will not be the same." seriously? if the hobbit trailer and the hunger games trailer ever met in a dark alley.....just....yeah. anyway, when i watched it, there were 309 views. then i watched it again when i woke up this morning and there were 3 million views. 

next up: did anyone see david archuleta's announcement at symphony hall? i didn't, but my mom told me about it and i almost cried. 

seriously, david is amazing. i went on a little rant about how i would marry him in a heartbeat and then finished with "but i probably won't." and my mom laughed for like, 5 minutes straight, because the "reality" is that i definitely won't. and then i asked her if she ever had a dream that she wanted so much she thought she could do anything? 

and then she understood.