Disneyland

Bryce and I went to Disneyland on Thursday (8-20) and had a lot of fun!

It was also Bryce's last day of radiation. I think we did a good job celebrating! Apparently he got a certificate and was given an award for being upbeat or something like that.

He kicked my butt on the new Toy Story ride in California adventure and then we headed over to Tower of Terror. As we got into the line, there was a family of 5 in front of us (all dressed alike in orange t-shirts) and we noticed that they were speaking a different language. So we got closer. And Bryce decided to experiment with their personal boundaries by basically standing on TOP of the mom. Anyways, he figured out that they were speaking German! I told Bryce he should talk to them and freak them out since he served there. So he did! They weren't really freaked out, or anything, but they had a good chat while we were in line and I just stood there, smiling, since I don't speak or understand German.

The row of orange shirts behind us is the family from Germany!

As we were walking toward the exit of California Adventure, Bryce asked me if I had done the Animation Studio. (There's a few things to do in there, but we headed into the room where they teach you how to draw cartoon characters.) I hadn't, so we ran in and they were just starting a new session. That particular session was about how to draw Pluto. Mine came out looking like Baby Pluto - but whatevs.


We headed over to Disneyland park and ran straight to Indiana Jones. We made our way around the park and ended at Space Mountain.

We left early (like 6 pm-ish) because Bryce had other plans for us, i.e., a party in Beverly Hills. But that's for the next post...

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today:

1. The video of Dr. J playing Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite on guitar.

2. The dirty looks we got from the folks around us in line as they overheard our cancer jokes.

3. Disneyland churros.

4. Getting scared on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Stupid cannons.

5. Naptime in The Haunted Mansion.

6. Having such a fun friend!

My New Headband

While at the Scottsdale Fashion Center, we wandered into ForLove21. It's all of the accessories that Forever 21 sells, and nothing else.

As I was meandering, I came across a headband that I liked. A lot.

Here it is:

Alli, Shauna, KP and Natalie all liked it, so I bought it. (It was cheap, for everyone who's freaking out...)

I was going to wear it to Shauna's farewell, but it was a little much when combined with my totally rocking new dress.

When I got back to California, I threw it on and went into Grannie's room to show her and my mom. My mom thought I had a fake tarantula on my head, at first. Grannie's reaction was my favorite though. I knealt down so she could get a better look at it and she laughed at me, patted my cheek and said, "You're such a nut," through her laughter.

It was good to come home!

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today:
1. Cancer jokes.
2. Finishing The Hunger Games again. The sequel comes out in like 2 weeks. Hooray!
3. Getting my refund check from The Ridge.

Roommate Reunion 2009!

I'm sorry it's been a while, but it's been madness - as I'm sure you'll realize throughout the next week as I'm posting.

Let me start with my trip to Arizona! I went to Phoenix for Shauna's farewell and stayed with Kellie and her family. Alli came down also and stayed with Shauna. It was great. We all got to be together for the first time since Winter semester 2008! I definitely think it should be an annual reunion.

KP picked me up from the airport on Thursday 8-13 and we headed over to ASU to get her books and find her classes. It was fun to see the campus and REALLY fun to help KP find her books. (I love bookstores...)

After that we went to KP's house and I got to meet Betty and Doug before I got to meet KP's boyfriend, Kyle. He's super nice, in case anyone wanted to know. Then we headed over to Shauna's house to visit them and get us all together.

On Friday we did some shopping at the Scottsdale Fashion center and then went to dinner at BJ's. Kyle and his friend Curtis met up with us and then we went back to Shauna's to watch Elf and hang out. On Saturday, Shauna and Alli came out to Gilbert to meet up with me and KP and we went shopping again, and then grabbed quick bite at Paradise Bakery. It was KP's sister's birthday that weekend, so while KP and her family celebrated on Saturday and Sunday together I went with Shauna and Alli and Shauna's family to dinner (thank you so much Jayne and Paul!).

After that we headed to a water park called Sun Splash. We went from 7-11pm, which was perfect because it was still like 90-ish degrees, but the sun wasn't shining, so I didn't get fried. GREAT! Although, I did almost die. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit. There was this one ride called The Cauldron. They shoot you down a fairly steep, straight, waterslide into what amounts to a toiletbowl. You swirl around in there for a minute and theoretically you drop through a hole feet first into 9 feet of water, at which point you can just exit the pool. Yeah. So I'm swirling around for a little bit and then something...happens. I still don't really know what. Somehow I ended up going through the hole head first. It was creepy.

Sunday was Shauna's farewell. I got to meet all of Shauna's family, which was SO fun! (I've got some connections now for when I become an editor!) Everyone is SO nice! Every sibling and their spouse came up to me and wanted to know everything about me. I felt like a Sargent all day. Alli's mom had also flown in, which was fun. I love Suzanne and it was great to see her again! Shauna did so well on her talk and I'm super excited for her to go to Paraguay! She's going to be an excellent missionary! Por Favor (spoken with the valley girl accent and Shauna growl)!

Monday Alli went home, but me and KP spent the day being lazy butts. Kyle and his friend came over to swim and then KP, Shauna and I went to see The Time Traveler's Wife. It was SO good. I loved it. It was different from what I thought it would be, but still AMAZING!

On Tuesday night, I flew home. Before I left though, KP and I went to another mall and walked around for a bit and then perused the shelves at Barnes and Noble.

As a fun little side note, part of the reason for going to AZ included seeing how I liked the state and if I could survive the heat, since I'm thinking of moving there once I graduate. I survived the heat with only 2 full blown migranes out of 6 days (that's a miracle in itself, I tell you) and I loved so much about Arizona.

All in all, it was a great trip and I can't wait until the next Roommate Reunion!

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today (basically inside jokes from the trip...):

1. So Alli...

2. Shauna's growl.

3. Dying the way you came into the world.

4. My headband.

5. People who speak Spanish with a lisp.

6. Pan cookies.

7. omgosh.

8. Getting so many of my favorite people together in one spot.

9. Betty & Doug for letting me for crash their place and being so kind.

10. The Sargents for being so great and letting me crash their parties.

A Day in the Park

The day before I went to Arizona, Chelsea came over to hang out.

I made us tuna melts (thanks for the bread Phish!), and then we headed over to the park.

On our way over to the park, we were talking about how much we enjoyed swinging when we were little. So we hit up the swings first.

We took a blanket and each of us had a book so we could read. But it turned into me reading and Chelsea napping (what else?).

We had so much fun! We were laughing a lot and the weather was beautiful.

The only thing we didn't plan for was being so dang thirsty. Now we know for next time!

Thanks for the fun Chelsea!

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today:

1. The Mountain Man.

2. How offended/bothered people get when they hear me and Bryce joking about his cancer.

3. Swinging so high I seriously thought I was going to go over the bar. I love that feeling.

4. Chelsea's Goofy laugh. A-HYUCK!

5. Popeye.

Stay Tuned

I swear one day I will update this!

It just won't be today!

I promise to do a post about:
1. My trip to AZ (which may come in the form of more than one post)
2. My awesome new head band
3. Disneyland trip with Bryce
4. Upcoming plans

I still have to upload pics and all that good stuff, but I do want to say this - I did NOT want the roommate reunion to end. But I understand it had to...

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today:
1. Making Dan laugh so hard he cried. Literally. (Ashley told me, I didn't get to see it happen.)
2. The 3 different booklists I have to study and then choose one book from each which equals: BARNES AND NOBLE TRIP!! ...I'll explain this on my upcoming plans post.
3. Grannie calling me a nut. Honestly!
4. My bed. I crashed so hard last night it was amazing.
5. iTunes free single of the week. I love most of them, and they're keeping me highly entertained as I type this all up!

The Sign Said, "No Moshing. No Crowd Surfing. No Stage Diving."

I've done it again! Another Blue October concert under my belt and it feels SO good.

This time it was the Crazy Making Tour 2009 with Longwave (still have no clue who they are), Switchfoot, and Blue October.

Chelsea, Nicole, and I got to the theatre just the teeniest bit late - but who cares 'cause it was just Longwave performing and like I said, we don't know them. At all. I'm not super familiar with Switchfoot. Through their performance I realized I had heard 2 of their songs at least and liked them well enough. But all I wanted was Blue October.

I was NOT disappointed.

They came out rocking hard with a lot of my favorites, including a lot of their older stuff. I think all-in-all they only played 3 songs from their new CD, maybe 4. Seriously, I just looked at my playlist on iTunes with my favorite songs on it that I made a few months back and all of the Blue October songs on that playlist save 2 were played last night. Could I ask for more? ...Probably, but I'll take what I can get.

After they played one of their darker, heavier songs, Justin (the lead singer) straight up walked off the stage. I didn't understand at first cause they'd only played for like half an hour or so. Slowly the rest of the band took off and the stage hands started rearranging. They brought out one stool for each member of the band (Justin, Jeremy, CB, Brian, and Matt), 2 acoustic guitars (one for each CB and Matt), 2 of Brian's violins and one of his mandolins and a small drum set for Jeremy. They had an AMAZING little jam session playing EVERY single one of my favorite slow songs starting with just Justin and Brian (on the piano, this time...I swear that boy - Brian - is liquid talent) on a dark stage playing my all time favorite song. It's an unnamed, hidden track, on the Foiled for the Last Time CD, the last 4 minutes and 21 seconds of the Carmen Rizzo remix of "X Amount of Words." (Did I say I'm a die-hard fan??)

They jammed like that for maybe another half an hour and then decided to rock hard again starting with "Italian Radio" - a great beat and totally fun to sing along to. It was seriously AMAZING. I can't get over how charismatic they all are (even with Brian's stupid new hair-do) and remarkably talented they all are. Justin is a hoot to watch and has a GREAT voice. He can also rock hard on that guitar, I'm not going to lie.

The only thing I would change: I want to hear them play my other all time favorite song, "Sound of Pulling Heaven Down" live. I guess I'll just have to keep seeing them live until it happens. :o)

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today:

1. Justin.

2. CB.

3. Brian.

4. Matt.

5. Jeremy.

6. The totally rocking videos I got of some of my favorite songs.

7. The girl that biffed it and then ran away just before the end of the concert.
8. The YSA conference that Bryce and I are going to on Saturday (yes, just Saturday).

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

I decided to get up and go to my home ward this morning (9 am) instead of going to single's ward (1 pm). I haven't been there in a very long time and it was nice to see the new people and really nice to see the not-so-new people! We've had 5 baptisms since the beginning of 2009 and last night an old friend of the family was baptized, that makes 6, and tonight there is another baptism - a girl named Zela, from Africa - will make 7 baptisms in 8 months! That's really good considering my ward hasn't ever been a high baptizing ward. Good work Elders!

A small family came and sat in the bench in front of us and I watched as the wife sat on one end of the bench and her husband sat on the complete other end with just their 2 children between them. The mother entertained the son but I wasn't watching them. I watched the father and the daughter. I watched him pull out his fancy shmancy pen from his breast pocket and draw pretty dang good pictures for his daughter. He was drawing pictures she could match things the drawings - for instance, on one half of the paper he would draw a baseball and then on the other half he would draw a bat, so she could connect them. He drew a very life-like horse, and a rather pretty flower, but the last paper he drew was what stuck in my mind. He drew a crown first and then a pretty dress and then he started drawing what looked like a very elaborate castle. He leaned down and whispered to her for a minute and she watched his pen scribbling and I noticed that what I first thought of as a castle was actually the SLC Temple. How did I know? I watched them throughout most of sacrament and realized that I love coming home and going to the family ward. I have nothing against single's ward, but I love being around the children and watching them interact with their parents and scream through the sacrament.

Bryce came to my ward and sat with me and my family. It was good to sit next to him and laugh through the hymns again. It's been a while since we've done that. It was fast and testimony meeting today and Bryce bore his testimony. I don't know that I've ever heard him bear his testimony and I very highly doubt he's ever heard mine. He's such a good person and my all-time favorite person (sorry folks, but it's true...).

Like I said, it was a very nice Sabbath.

Things that induce laughter/smiles/happy feelings in me today:
1. I keep learning new things about people I thought I knew very well.
2. Having such a wonderful person in my life.
3. Coming home.
4. My mom. She's my best friend and I love her.
5. Bryce's mom bankrolling our trip to Disneyland (for him, at least) so we can go before he goes to Germany and I go back to Idaho. Thanks Nancy!