he did it!

My little brother graduated last week...!!
Congrats Bucky!
We love you!

This week was fall break which means that BOTH of my sisters came home!! Unfortunately, thanks to work and due dates for school projects, the time I was able to spend with them was limited.  But sometimes that is better because we only get along for a few hours at a time anyway. Sarah already had to head back to St. George because of work but Kelli is here for a couple more days.  I wish they lived closer...

i'm thankful for......

...my dad. he always scrapes the ice off of my car and warms it up for me in the
    winter.
...my mom. she makes sure i don't starve. and we always get ice cream together.
...kellipirelli. for always making me laugh and making yummy treats.
...bucky. for making fun of me. we always a good time :)
...sarah. because we are almost complete opposites.
...alex. because he is the only one that can calm sarah down.
...andy. just because :)
...Jesus Christ and my church.
...the old gold toyota camry with the carpet covered dashboard.
...ingrid michaelson, rocky votolato and coldplay.
...the internet. because, lets be honest, i couldn't live without it.
...my education. even though i complain, i know i'm lucky to have the
    opportunity to go to school.
...my grandma's quilt.
...a job where i learn new things every single day.
...prayer.
...my health.
...the treadmill at the gym. the one i ALWAYS use.
...the christmas decorations i'm going to put up. especially the little white lights.
...the person who took their picnic basket to the thrift store. you don't even know
    how incredibly happy you made me.
...the color yellow.
...creative people.
...happy people.
...the pumpkin pie i'm going to be eating later today.
...pretty much my entire life. yes.

i am blessed.
the list could go on.
really, i could do this for hours.

happy thanksgiving everyone! :)
be like me and eat until you are miserable!

...jump in your car like you're ready to ride.

St. George was so much fun.

The drive down there was so much fun (I never thought I'd say that).


Being with my sisters (and Alex) was so much fun.


Eating ice cream cake was so much fun.


Playing Mario Party was so much fun.


Zion was so much fun.




Dancing on the side of the mountain was so much fun.


We took lots of pictures (...you can see more here) and videos.
Videos are pretty much my new favorite thing.

WARNING:

DO NOT WATCH if bouncing and bumping and jerking make you sick. Because if it does, you will become sick immediately. I apologize for my amateur video shooting skills and the editing skills. :)

And I'm off!

I haven't seen these two in over a month so I'm taking a roadtrip down South to see them.

And I'm picking KelliPirelli up on the way.
The next couple days are going to be filled with adventures, laughter, and food (yes, lots of food!).
Oh, we're gonna have so much fun, I just know it!

I love pumpkins and sugar cookies.
So since these sugar cookies are shaped like pumpkins, they're pretty much my favorite.

My mom made pink frosting. I laughed and asked her why. She said she didn't know.
So we had pink pumpkins, pink moons and pink leaves. I guess they turned out pretty cute anyway. 

I've been keeping really busy lately. Working, doing homework, and eating lots of sugar cookies and ice cream.
And I'm exhausted. I slept in until 1pm today. Yes, I slept for 13 hours. And yes, all I've wanted to do since I woke up is crawl back into bed. Maybe I'm coming down with something? Or maybe I'm just lazy...

The main reason for this post was so I could give a quick update on the boy:

He just had his last transfer. He will be finishing up his final two months in Bratislava. Final two months! Ah, I can't believe it!

a new post.

Finally. About time.
I've been meaning to update this forever but just haven't gotten around to it.
Me and Sarah were going to have a blogging contest to see if we could blog at least twice a week. Yeah, didn't happen.
Hm...where to start.
Andy. Andy is a great place to start.
We're in the double digits now. Only 95 more days to go. The last 9 months have gone by super fast. He'll be here before I know it! He sent me this picture last week and I just loved it. That watermelon looks so yummy, right?

Okay, this past weekend was Peach Days. It was filled with sunshine, walking, peach cobbler, pulled pork sandwiches, kettlecorn, snowcones, a 10k, and Kelli. I took a few pictures of the festivities with my holga so once I get the film developed I'll share the pictures.


My dad ran the 10k too. This 10k was a first for both of us. I wanted to get under 45 minutes. My time was 45:37. Crap, huh? My dad's goal was to finish in under an hour. He did it in 58 minutes. Sweet, huh!?




Kelli and I also went to a show last night at Kilby Court. We had so much fun. We always have so much fun. Anyway, it was cutest little place. It made me happy.




I had ultrasound school on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We scanned each other abdomens in lab on Friday. So much fun! But its tough. And then I took 4 tests Friday night. Not the greatest way to spend a night. And a Friday night at that. I'm still buried in homework so if you don't hear from me for awhile, thats why.

Just wanted to quickly share a couple of photos that I came across while going through my grandparent's photo albums. old photos are the best.
The first one is my grandpa with my mom.
The second one is my grandpa with my sister kelli.
I just love how similar the two photos are.



Well, its time to get crackin' on that homework again.

xo

i think its safe to say that this was the most boring summer ever.

Okay. I'm totally throwing a pity party for myself. I need to cheer up and quit feeling like this. So I apologize...the following is just me complaining:

This last week has been awful. And the week is going to continue to be awful until Thursday afternoon. I've been an emotional mess since...oh...probably last Sunday. I don't know why. Its a myriad of things I guess. The biggest issues being the fact that Sarah AND Kelli left me to go to college and the fact that not only is my summer over...but my life is over for the next year and a half...school started.

Sarah left on Wednesday and I'm terribly sad. More so than I thought I would be. She is the only one that would ever give me a hug. She is back at Dixie. I couldn't move her down because of my ultrasound program orientation. I'm really mad about that because I wanted In-N-Out Burger sooooo bad.


Kelli left yesterday. She is at Snow. With "my" car. And my hair dryer (I was a little mad, actually furious, when I went to use my hair dryer yesterday afternoon and it was no longer in my drawer). I was bummed I couldn't move her down there either. I had to work. Come to think of it, I didn't even get to tell her goodbye. I realized today that Sundays are not the same without her. We'd always watch tv and listen to music together and she always made pizza pockets at night. And cookies. And pizookies. And popcorn.
Now all I have is Bucky. He eats all the food and he isn't very nice to me sometimes. But I love him.


School sucks. I had orientation for my ultrasound program last Thursday and Friday. Its going to be tough. We have class once a month which means this is pretty much a teach-yourself type of program. All the money I'm paying for tuition and I'm teaching myself...? I've started on the homework for my pathophysiology class. The book itself is like 12 inches thick (okay, so thats an exaggeration...but only a little bit). We have to have seven tests taken and all the assignments handed in by the 13th of September. Yeah, and thats just one class. I have five more on top of that. Luckily, clinicals don't start until next semester.

I was on call last night and worked this morning so I'm pretty much dead. I need to clean my bathroom, craft room and bedroom but I'm tired and feel like being unproductive so I will be.

very busy week.

This week has been busy busy busy. Monday was just nuts and I was super tired by the time I got home from work that night. On Tuesday Sarah and I went shopping at the Gateway and then went to Matt (Matt as in Andy's brother) and Ashley's wedding dinner. Matt looked so very handsome and Ashley was gorgeous. They both looked so happy and cute! It kind of made me want to get married. Just a little bit. :] And it made me miss Andy. A whole lot. Wednesday was Kelbel's graduation. On Thursday I observed some more ultrasounds. I actually got to do the first part of a couple of the exams. So fun! I'm going to love it! That night me and Kelli were going to go to the Owl City/Classic Crime concert but we didn't because I'm too scared to drive in Salt Lake. So is she. Today I worked and then went to Matt and Ashley's reception. It was beautiful! It was almost EXACTLY what I have imagined mine looking like! It was an outside reception, Nate's (another one of Andy's brothers) band, Lokalgrown, was playing, there were cute litte white chairs and tables, cute flowery centerpieces, a yummy lemon-lime drink, delicious cake aaaaand her wedding video rocked.

Oh! I got my holga pictures back. Um, only about 5 of the 12 pictures turned out. The rest were either double exposed, too bright, too dark, or didn't work because I left the lens cap on. :] This one was my favorite.


I wish I would have known that I put black and white film in there! I have a lot of practicing to do obviously. I've already started on my next roll so everyone, please cross your fingers!
This also reminds me...I need to get a negative scanner....

I've had some time to squeeze in a little scrapbooking this week. This is a page I made celebrating our 5 year anniversary. And the next picture is of a card I made. Felt and buttons are my favorite. :]



I'll be finishing up my busy week tomorrow by running 13.1 miles, hitting a couple estate sales, going out to eat for Kelbel's graduation celebration, and working.

Now I'm off to move and organize my crafting supplies. Wish me luck!

this is random.

Yes, this post is filled with random, useless information.

I thought that now that I was through with school I'd be great at updating this. But I think I've actually gotten worse. Oh well.

Mother's Day was last Sunday so I wanted to give a shout out to my mom and to all the other wonderful mothers out there!

This is my mom and my beautiful grandmother. My mom was so little! :]

Mother's day also means that I got to talk to Andy. It was fabulous. I'm so grateful that his parents called and invited me over! He is doing awesome and I'm so proud of him. Just a few more months and he'll be back and then I'll be with him forever!

I've been having the most messed up dreams lately. Like bloody, gory dreams of people that I went to high school with getting cut up into little pieces and decapitated right before my eyes. So random and so weird. I'm think I'm going to start a dream journal. I need someone to interpret...I think I'm a little disturbed.

Now for a little TV talk...
First, American Idol. Well I'm excited for this coming Tuesday. I'm rooting for Kris. And Adam. :] But mostly Kris.
Adam has grown on me. His music is definitely not what I would listen to but he does have some amazing vocals. I love watching him perform because it is always a surprise. Out of the two, Kris is definitely more my type of artist.
Of course, for me, this season wasn't half as exciting as last season. I LOVED David Cook. Like really. I wanted to marry his voice. I still do actually. I listen to his cd everyday and thats not a lie.

Since I had to work last night I finished the season finales of The Office and Grey's Anatomy today.
The Office was great. It left me feeling a little sorry for Michael. And really happy for Pam and Jim. :]
I'm not going to say much about Grey's because I'm going to make Andy watch this season with me when he gets back home (and he will because he loves me) and I don't want to give anything away. But seriously?! George?! AH!

This song by Iron & Wine is one of my faves right now. Its been on repeat for a week straight.


Well I'm out.
Happy weekend!
xo.

waterfall adventure.

I went on a very good adventure yesterday.
Sarah and Alex let me tag along.
After Sarah got off work we made our way up to the waterfalls in Willard. We didn't know where to go but we found the trail quick enough.

Everything was going pretty smoothly once we got past that first initial climb (Sarah, it really wasn't THAT bad!).
But then Sarah spotted something moving way up above one of the waterfalls. We thought it was a cougar but we weren't sure so we kept going. It was really far away anyway.
Our next challenge came when we reached the stream...wait, the river. I'm going to call it a river because stream just doesn't do it justice. We had to cross if we wanted to keep going. And the only way we could get across was by jumping onto a rock that was sitting in the middle and then wading to the other side. The water was freezing cold, it was deep and it was going way too fast. Me and Sarah sat there forever trying to decide what we wanted to do. I told them to go on without me. I'm not much of a jumper. Alex had already made it across and told us to stop being babies. We looked everywhere to see if there was a different way. Sarah went downstream while I tried my skills at rock climbing, but our attempts were to no avail.

Finally Sarah had a brilliant idea! We made our own bridge! We found a log downstream, pulled it out of the river and carried it back up the trail. And it worked! We were able to get onto the rock! Then poor Alex had to carry me and Sarah on his back from the rock through the freezing cold water to the other side of the river.


Speaking of the river, we found this guy by the river.

He was cute. I would've liked to meet him but he was on the opposite side. I think he would've liked to meet me too.

It was so pretty once we finally made it up there! Very much worth the hike. I only wish we would have been able to get closer.




I want to go hiking again.

happy birthday mom!

I love you!

montana

I've been rummaging through old pictures lately. I've been trying to organize and scan them all. Like I've said before, its some big family history project that I'm working on. And its a very, very long, time-consuming process. But I've come across some old pictures that I love and some that bring back so many good memories.
So I'm planning on sharing some of them as I go.

The one from my last post was a picture of wintertime at my grandparent's cabin in Montana. They never would stay up there for the winter. They'd head South in their motorhome until the snow was pretty much gone. Like vagabonds. Oh, what a life!

My grandparents moved from Washington to Montana sometime in 1992.
We'd go up there every summer and spend a couple weeks. The days were long, carefree, and filled with adventure. We'd spend them outside underneath the towering pines. Laying in the hammock. I remember running around barefoot, wildflowers, garter snakes, feeding the deer, hummingbirds, going down to the lake with our picnic lunch, nightly campfires and roasting marshmallows. I'm pretty convinced that they were the best summers of my life. These pictures were taken in 1992. This baby owl had fallen out of his nest. We happened to come across him and I got to hold him before Rick, a nature-wildlife-forest guy who knew exactly what to do, put him back up in his tree.This picture is of a bear that thought he was a bird. Yes, he is just splashing away in the bird bath that is a little too small for him.I love bears.My grandparents moved to Utah in 1999 to be closer to us. It has almost been 11 years since I've been there. I'd go back in a heartbeat if given the chance. Even though I miss it like you wouldn't believe, I feel so fortunate to at least have the memories.

I hope this is what heaven is like.