my best friend in the world is getting married in ten days. there's a chance i'm more excited than she is. ten days, people! and that means i'm flying out to utah in 8 days. i like that a lot. this is the longest i've gone without a trip to utah since last august. i miss utah! and i miss amy. i'm excited for her to become mrs. amy demke. that sounds like a pretty solid name i think.
also, 35 days til i get lasik! it seems really far away, but i'm looking so much forward to never having to wear glasses or contacts again. i've needed vision correction since i was in second grade. 13 years later and i'm gonna be free of it! happy happy day. and happy late birthday to me! thanks mom.
speaking of music (just go with it), i thought the last concert i went to before my mission would be parachute, but it's not! i'm seeing the maine with taylor tomorrow night and i'm seeing a rocket to the moon with my sister in two and a half weeks. i'm gonna be missing juelaine though, she's my concert buddy. hooray for live music.
i've finally gotten into a bit of a routine. i work about 35 hours a week at serendipity, and i'm babysitting about 5 hours a week, so i'm working fulltime and i'm glad to be busy. especially since the kids i watch are pretty much the cutest little humans i've ever seen.
anyhow, enjoy the instragram from lately
see? he's absolutely precious
hadley had an awards ceremony
free ice cream at work >>>
hooray for this article on the kansas city temple being in the kc star!
ladies and gentlemen, it's march. which means it's my birthday month. which means that in just 17 days, i'll be turning 21 years old. and i couldn't be more thrilled. i get a sideways license! you don't understand how much i want a sideways license underneath my picture. this is exciting. also, the only two things i want for my birthday are this tshirt and a plane ticket to amy's wedding. please and thank you.
thanks to my mom and stepdad, i'm moving out of here on the 15th, flying out of slc on the 17th, and my car is getting picked up to be shipped to kentucky on the 20th. i'm finally going home! two weeks from today is my last day of work, and then it's on to bigger and better things.
i've started counting down the days until i'm outta here. valentine's day is going to be my last day of work and then i'm headed to utah the following day. cassie and chris have so graciously agreed to let me stay with them in salt lake for a day or two until my flight to kentucky. i just wanna be there already! i'm so excited to get to spend a couple months with my family, and i'm even more excited to start my mission papers! so many exciting things are on their way to me! let's go ahead and fast forward to summer :)
i can confidently say that i am happy. and i really truly love that. i have incredible friends, cute roommates, a great guy, an amazing family, a fun job and i am so very blessed. i work a lot. but i'm not even mad about it because i don't dread going to work!
last night a bunch of guys from corporate came to eat and some of the head honchos supervised and checked on things to make sure we were doing it all right. one of them grabbed me in the kitchen and told me he had a couple of guys that wanted to meet me. i met chris and tim who told me they just so happened to have eaten lunch with my mom last week! i miss that woman.
okay, on to tumblr thursday. there's not too many this week, but they're good ones. so love me through it.
4 days til halloween (i hate halloween)
8 days til juelaine and i head to vegas for kyle's wedding
i have been busy. like the busiest i've been all summer probably. and as a result, i haven't paid much attention to my blog. so last night i was all "ugh i didn't get to tumblr thursday" but then i realized i can do it today, cause this is my blog and i make the rules. so, without further ado, tumblr goodness...
love me some tumblr. anyways, so on wednesday i took kate up to her new middle school to get her locker and stuff set up with pictures and such (she even chose a picture from this day, awwww). here's the neat thing. kate and i went to the same middle school (prms). so i've always been bugging her about teachers that still teach there that i knew, and what's changed, blah blah blah. the first one i asked about was mrs. james, my middle school choir director. and guess what, she's still there.
so this year, because the school district is getting so huge and expansive, they opened up a new middle school (abms), and took some of the prms teachers with them. one of which was the fabulous mrs. james. on our way to abms i told kate that we were not leaving until i had seen that woman. i loved her and she changed my liiiiiife. can i please just show you this beautiful school? kate is so lucky. this place is incredible. i'm jealous.
after kates pictures were up and she had tested her locker out a couple times to make sure everything was right, we walked all over that monster of a school on a hunt for the choir room, and mrs. james. we passed the band room, we passed the orchestra room, and then WE FOUND MRS. JAMES. best day of my life. we talked for half an hour about the 7 years it'd been since we had seen each other, choir directors, my old classmates, my future, her beautiful new choir room, and it was the absolute greatest thing. it completely made my day and i rambled on about it for the next several hours (sorry kate).
this is my last weekend in kansas! i'm still having mixed feelings about it, but it'll probably go by so fast that i won't even have time to decide exactly how i feel. i don't work again until monday so i'm planning on: dragging brent to see glee in 3D with me, my last saturday pilates class, lake time with brent's family, a party at church for my little 7 year olds, and maybe a skype sesh with my mother dear whom i miss so very much. i can't wait.
watch this...
5 days until my last day of work
6 days until chris comes
8 days until we leave kansas
9 days until i'm in provo with aims baims and sassafrass
10 days until death cab for cutie with amber
17 days until vegas with juelaine
20 days until california/disneyland trip
27 days until i drive up to idaho
and then most likely i'll stop the countdowns for awhile
oh! one more thing before i leave you. i would just like to say that my application is in, my references have been sent, and my interview has been completed. which means, now it's just time to wait to hear if i got accepted for china. this time last year i was getting my acceptance for ecuador. so crazy. i'm such a little traveler. i love it. sorry for the longest blog post ever. i just had lots of catching up to do since my mini hiatus from blogland. have a happy friday!
three weeks from tonight, i'll be in provo, probably laughing and talking and being a 10 year old girl with my best friend in her twin sized bed. i'm pretty freaking excited about it, to be perfectly honest. she turned 20 last week. i wasn't with her at the stroke of midnight, but i was the first person to wish her a happy birthday when she turned 20 in the midwest, thanks to skype. and that was pretty neat i think.
so here's what's weird... i work monday through saturday this week, then monday through saturday next week, and then i work monday through wednesday, phil comes on thursday, we're going to a royals game on friday, and i leave for utah on saturday. that's gonna go by so fast. i've had the best last couple weeks thanks to a certain someone. i'm finally really happy being in kansas. and i'm finally kind of sad that i have to leave this place (and this someone).
first of all, listen to some john mayer as a soundtrack to this post
i love this song. i love john mayer. i woke up with it stuck in my head. and i think it's because i got a text at 4:19 in the morning that said, "My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room." good start to my morning. thank you, mike schwartz, for putting that song in my head. anyways, moving on.
my 4th of july weekend was kind of lame. i had thursday through monday off. and i honestly don't even remember what i did on thursday, friday, or saturday. i'm entirely pathetic. but sunday morning i went to church to teach my little babies.
and then my stepdad's family had a going away party for us...
dan grilled burgers and brats
everybody ooh'd and ahh'd over josh and melissa's new baby burke
my mom posed with my grandma (aka, the potato salad queen)
we let little logan charm us with that face
and logan's sister lilah told my family to "go away"
(minus hadley cause she was at the lake)
i mean, i probably gained a couple pounds in the matter of that three hours. but hey, i didn't want to be rude and refuse all the wonderful food that took so much work to prepare (including the brownies with oreos in the middle). that would've been disrespectful. aaaaand then we came home and put our fat pants on and watched beastly. alex pettyfer is yummy. so that was sunday.
monday we had cheeseburgers on the grill again, pasta salad (made by me), watermelon, and potato chips. i feel like we probably watched another movie but i couldn't tell you what it was. then we piled in the truck and went to watch what came to be the most pathetic firework show i've ever seen. no offense, america.
so that was my weekend. not too terribly exciting. but it was a quality 4th of july spent with family, family, and more family. i'm not complaining though. i'm probably not going to be seeing them too often anymore. i guess maybe that's part of growing up.
i'm so happy to finally be back to work. it feels weird not getting to play with kids all day. ha! i seriously have the best job. why didn't i start nannying sooner? yesterday sam and i decided to prepare ourselves for the 15th and start a harry potter marathon. so we popped our popcorn, got some blankets, and curled up on the couch to start harry potter and the sorcerer's stone. it's kinda cloudy and not really feelin' like a pool day today, so we'll probably watch the second one! oh and my lovely mother finally had time to highlight my hair. yay for mom's that don't have work for the next six weeks!
and here's for the ultimate countdown...
16 days until i move out of my house
43 days until phil flies to kansas city
45 days until our trek to utah
54 days until i'm in vegas
57 days until disneyland with juelaine and ashley
and 64 days until i drive up to rexburg
i'm getting so giddy and excited and weird about it :)
usually, i absolutely positively am completely excited about christmas for the entire month of december. usually, i'm listening to/singing christmas songs starting the day after thanksgiving. usually, i'm just as giddy about the holiday as i was when i was 5. but since i've been at school, it's so hard to get into the christmas spirit. idk if it's the stress of finals and packing, or the fact that i just don't have time to think about christmas, but it's pretty unfortunate.
yet, thanks to the massive tree in my living room, stockings hanging on the fireplace, the smell of christmas yankee candles and christmas cd's played on random throughout my house, i managed to finally be in the mood for christmas.
since my mom and stepdad tom got married 8 and a half years ago, christmas has been different at my house. we swapped old traditions for new ones, and now we start the festivities on christmas eve at my stepdad's parents' house. the whole family is there. and by whole family i mean my stepdad's 3 brothers (mark, dan, and paul), 1 sister (patty), their spouses (danielle, debbie, tamara, and allen), and their children (and grandchildren), amounting the 28 people we had there this year. that's a lot of people.
we start with dinner (honey baked turkey, ribs, mashed potatoes, homemade bread, yorkshire pudding, broccoli & cheese casserole, green beans, and pie) and then move onto gifts. now, my mom's a lawyer. and tom's brother dan is a police officer. so a couple times in the past, their paths of crossed in the workplace. also, tom's entire family is big into hunting. like borderline obsessed. and their gifts to eachother are always a big deal. let me try to explain...
one year dan got my mom an orange hat and camo sweatpants with a hunting instructional video. one year my mom got dan a set of drinks that tasted like thanksgiving dinner. i can't remember many of the other gifts, and it probably doesn't sound that amusing to anybody else, but it really is an ongoing joke in our family and everybody always looks forward to what dan and my mom get eachother.
so this year, my mom, being the creative devil she is, got him a camo snuggie. and made all the pictures on the box of him and other family members from christmases past. soo funny. it was the hit of the night, as it always is.
say hello to little lilah (patty's daughter jenny's daughter) and the baby she got, along with her matching pajamas. adorable right? jenny's kids are the cutest kids on the planet.
hadley and i got matching hat/scarf/mitten sets from mark and danielle. pretty fantastic. they make me wanna go caroling. lalala la la lala :)
i was woken up at about 830 on christmas morning by my sister running through the house yelling "saaaaanta! santa! saaaantaaaa!" ...she'll be 16 in two weeks, so i'm not sure why she's still screaming about that guy, but it's whatever. when i was like 13 or 14 i would sit in front of the tv for hours watching the magic bullet infomercials. i dreamed about the day when i would get the deluxe 25 piece set including the bonus 10-second recipe book. and that day, was yesterday. i got my magic bullet. along with lots of other fantastic things.
and today i went to my home ward for the first time since april. i thoroughly enjoyed it. aaaand in just 4 short days i'll be on my to ecuador. and i can't wait to get out of this place, to be perfectly honest. 9 days is too long to be home. i hate that i feel that way. but it's whatever.
well, the semester is oooooover! finally. i've been looking forward to this since about september 6th. no big deal. but i'd like to apologize for my lack of blog love lately. finals have been kicking my butt. however, i'd like to address some very exciting things...
i am officially done with school for the next 9 months. and i couldn't be happier. also, i'm just really excited about the fact that i went into my natural disasters final with a 78% in the class, got a 67% on the final, and ended with an 80%. how does that happen, you ask? i honestly don't know. but i'm thrilled about it, to say the least.
on friday morning, we had the dedication of the i-center and the re-dedication of the manwaring center. president eyring, elder bednar, elder nelson, and a member of the seventy were all there. it was incredible. i've met elder bednar (and shook his hand) twice, and he's my absolute favorite. also i really enjoy president eyring. i don't think i've ever been in the same room as so many general authorities. i really enjoyed it. the spirit when they walked into the room, was incredible. i was singing in the choir, so i was literally only like 20 feet from them.
elder bednar spoke first. i think the first thing he said was "brothers and sisters... it's good to be home" and started to tear up. call me a baby, but i bawled. his talk was incredible. then elder nelson spoke. and then we sang "come thou fount" which is one of my very favorites. every second that i wasn't singing, i was crying. i felt super lame. but not really. because i'm a crybaby. and it was a pretty fantastic occasion. i'm so happy i got to be a part of that. elder bednar's wife kept turning around to look at us and once she smiled at me and then i cried harder. no big.
then president eyring got up to speak and then offer the dedicatory prayer. seriously the coolest thing ever. on their way out they waved at us. and then at everyone in the auditorium. and we all waved back. it was seriously so cool. i wish i could think of a better word to describe it, but it was just... awesome.
and lately, everything is making me want to stay at byui. i thought i had decided to transfer to kstate, but now i'm not so sure. i'm hoping that maybe ecuador will open my eyes and help me figure out what is best for me. but i know that if i do decide to leave, i'll really miss it.
i'll miss the spirit of ricks that you can truly feel all over campus. i'll miss teachers (bro. riggins) that know me by name, invite me to their house for waffles, hug me instead of shake my hand, and tell me they love me. i'll miss starting every class with a prayer to invite the spirit. i'll miss weekly devotionals. i'll miss not feeling pressured to drink or party or do things i know i shouldn't. i'll miss having classmates and friends that hold the priesthood. i'll miss it all. i really will. because to be perfectly honest, i honestly love byui. i may not be a big fan of the depressing crappy weather in rexburg for a good portion of the year. but i am a big fan of byui.
basically i'm just trying to say, that despite all the stress, finals and packing, i had a pretty fantastic last week of the semester. i'm happy to be gone for the next 9 months, but i love my school. and "come thou fount." and president eyring. and elder bednar. and the new i-center. and getting B's in classes that i never attended. and and and i just really love my life.
Twenty-four. Kansas City native living in Utah. Returned Madrid & Provo missionary. Lover of college basketball, Thai food, the Spanish language, fall clothes, loud music, and a boy named Michael. This is my little life.
