2012 Vacation: Last Day

We woke up the next morning to see this: Port Canaveral. We were back and our magical and happy vacation was coming to a close. That morning was spent busily packing all our luggage and getting ready to leave. I took some pictures of our staterooms before we left. We had two staterooms for our family that were connected, complete with a balcony outside, which was so nice.

We had breakfast at the Royal Palace and since there were such long lines to leave, we took that chance to walk around the ship a little more to see everything one last time and take a few last pictures.

And then, we left..... :( I sure hope to see you real soon, Mickey!! We had so much fun!

After we got off the cruise we could finally turn our phones on again (they don't work out at sea or you'd get charged if you did use it when not in the US) and received a text from our uncle Jefre, who lives in Miami along with his wife and some of our cousins, letting us know they weren't going to be able to visit us as planned. They were going to come meet up with us and spend the day with us but they had too much homework. So we got off the ship, kind of depressed, because there isn't much that beats a Disney cruise. We tried going to the NASA visitors center because we thought it was free but turns out it's pretty expensive so that didn't last long.

We ended up going to Cocoa beach but before went to the grocery store and took forever getting food (Carina wanted something to eat because she hadn't eaten on the ship as she was still feeling seasick) to eat. Finally we got to the beach and mostly just laid there and tanned (something we actually hadn't done much of on the ship surprisingly) while Gracie played in the water a little and found so many shells--she was in heaven I tell you.

After the beach we went to the Orlando temple and just walked around. It was peaceful, which felt good and made up for a little of our sadness of leaving the cruise and not being able to see our cousins.

For dinner we ate at a restaurant called "Steak and Shake" which was so delicious! Maybe we were just craving some burgers after all the fancy food we'd eaten on the cruise, but man was it good. We all got yummy shakes too so that filled us up and made us pretty happy.

Then we went back to our hotel to watch Once Upon a Time (its a tv show and we love it!) and then go to bed. Our flight the next morning left at 7 am, which was 5 am our time! And since it left at that time, we had to get up earlier than that to drop off our car and get to the airport.

When we got to the SLC airport, we were a tired but happy to be home bunch!

I just have to say that I love my family so much, and I'm so grateful that we got to go on this amazing vacation together. I love my parents for taking us and trying so hard to plan fun things for the whole family. I'm so happy to have been place with the family that I did, because they are the best and I really do love them. And boy am I lucky, because we get to spend all eternity together! :)

Vacation 2012: Disney Cruise Day 3 and Castaway Cay

Ok, I am really trying to catch up and be done with these cruise posts! There's just so much to write about that I don't want to forget and it seems overwhelming. But I'll try to finish by today or tomorrow. Day 3 of the cruise we got to go to Disney's beautiful private island, Castaway Cay. Unfortunately for us...it rained all day! One of the employees was saying that in the past 4 months that he's been on the ship, it's only rained for two other times and only for like an hour each at that! But for us it rained all day, which was pretty sad. It wasn't a downpour of rain but it was constantly drizzling down so we were cold. We kept getting new, dry towels to keep us warm. But besides the rain, it was still a beautiful day, and the cruise employees really tried to make it still as happy as possible, which they definitely succeeded.

We'd gotten an excursion package so that we could do snorkeling, a bike ride, and have tube rentals. Unfortunately for us, we obviously didn't use the tube rental because it was too rainy to really want to go out and play in the water. And Carina was sick (seasick) that morning so she didn't come out till later in the afternoon. Gracie didn't want to snorkel so her gear didn't end up getting used either. And since the package was already paid for we couldn't get our money back for those. Snorkeling was fun, though my breathing tube kept letting in salt water which made me get behind as I had to stop to let the water out, and I ended up losing my flippers in the water (the lifeguard said just to leave them there, because I guess people just go out in the water later and get anything that was left behind). But it was so coo to see in the water because there were all kinds of fish everywhere and they had put cool looking ship things under the water as well, for the people snorkeling.

After snorkeling, we went to the barbeque area to eat delicious food and get our energy up. After we ate the rain died down a little so we decided to do our bike ride. I actually hadn't ridden a bike for about 10 years so I was a little worried, but it was SO fun! We went on a beautiful bike path around the island. It was so peaceful and gorgeous to be riding a bike around on a private island! It was incredible and gorgeous. I loved my purple wrap that I got in the Bahamas, but man was it a bad day to wear it! It got all wet from the rain and it was a struggle to ride the bike in it. Still love it though.

Cold and huddled up under the umbrella so we wouldn't get rained on!

Our day on Castaway Cay wasn't ideal, just because of the rain, but props to Disney, because we still had a super fun day and they really tried hard to still make the day fun. Of course, now this makes me want to go on a Disney cruise again so that I can go to the island when its sunny! ;) When we got back on the ship, since we were already wet, we hurried and rode on the aquaduck, which was a clear waterslide that went around the ship. It was pretty fun, and Gracie especially loved it! Then we went to hurry and shower and change for dinner.

That night we dressed up for dinner and we went to the Royal Palace, the fanciest dining place. It was kind of sad because it was our last night, but we still obviously ate great food and had a blast.

We saw another show that night, called Disney's Believe (it was great and made me cry because I was so sad to leave), and we also went and took a lot of character pictures and had a few family pictures taken by the professional photographers there. While we were waiting in line, there was live music so my dad danced with Gracie. Also, some of us changed because we didn't want to wear dresses anymore. It wasn't an official formal night or anything so it was fine.

I love this picture so much!

I feel like I'm going to cry all over again writing about this! It was time to say goodbye that night so they had a small show with the characters dancing and saying goodbye. We were so happy and so sad to leave the next day!

I love this picture of Gracie and I. We took it right before I dropped her off at the Oceaneer's Club for one last time.

After that, the rest of us went to the stores to buy some souvenirs (I got a Disney cruise line t-shirt) which took a little while, and then we went back to our stateroom to watch tv and go to bed.

Goodbyes

Ok, its about time I did some catching up on here! The past 4 weeks have been some of the busiest of my life and I don't want to forget them, so today and probably the next few days I'll be updating on all that. Stay with me!

The last few weeks of school were packed with finals and goodbyes with so many of my Provo friends, some of which I'll see in the fall again but others who graduated and I might not see again for a while. :( And honestly, I really REALLY hate goodbyes. Like if I do them I just cry, so with basically everyone I was just like, "This is not goodbye!" Even though really, it probably was. And it was only goodbye for the summer with most people, but it still made me so sad to leave! I don't know why, but I get emotional over that stuff. I think some of the fact of all of this is just that I've really grown over the past few years and made so many really good friends who I have lots of fun with and who I can be myself around. And those are the best kind of friends, right? :)

Anyways, I'll just try and quickly recap the events of the end of the semester. I went with some of my roommates (and Scott--Kelseys bf--but he's practically a roommate too ;)) to Divine Comedy's best of show, which was hilarious!

So there are these girls that are pretty much my best friends in the world, and I have SO much fun with them. Their names? Alyne, Sarah, Lauren, and Jessica (except Jess is on her mission in California right now). We became friends in many random ways, through school and having other friends in common and just hanging out lots. But basically we like getting together every week (well, when all of us are in Provo) and a lot of times we hang out in the No Shh Zone of the library (aka the NOSH).

On this particular day, we were loud and laughy (who does homework in the library?) and also made a meme. See below:

Who would you choose, Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling? So basically it was just a fun night with fun people in the library. :)

One of my roommates and my favorite pastimes is to go hot tubbing and we were lucky to have a hot tub right there in our apartment complex. This was our last time going hot tubbing in Park Place, so obviously it was picture worthy.

There were other people we didn't know that were from the other complex there, but they didn't mind smiling for the photo.

On our last Sunday in our apartment, we got a friend in our ward to take our roommate pictures. We took some last summer as well. I think they turned out so cute! (from left to right: Katie, Olivia, Heidi, Talya, Kelsey, and me)

Apartment 12!

These girls are awesome! I seriously have the best roommates ever. :)

For our last Sunday dinner we made cornbread and...chili? I don't remember but it was delicious. We just had a lot of cornbread mixes we all wanted to get rid of.

That night I went to Alyne's place when she and her bf Cameron, Lauren, Sarah and her now-fiance Devin, and I all made lots of headbands. This was inspired from the fact that the day before we'd gone to the Bijou Market (basically a place where lots of vendors were selling stuff...it was a lot of items that I feel like I've seen on pinterest before--a pinterest inspired market haha) where they had knit head bands for $15. Way too much for us! We went to the fabric store and bought some of all the knit fabric there was in the store. And then we made headbands. And I have to say that I love them! So comfy and they work in every single way. Call us...sisterhood of the traveling headbands? ;)

Every Sunday night our ward meets for what we call ward prayer (most singles wards in Provo do this) where you get together and talk, announcements are made for the week, you write "nice notes" to people in the ward, and obviously have a prayer together as the ward. These are pictures from the last ward prayer.

Also that night it turned out that another complex was floating lanterns so we all rushed out to see them float off into the night. It was really cool.

So our apartment complex was right next to a house with an extended family of hispanic people, which was fine. We'd never had any problems with them before. Our window is right across from their top window and about the last week we were there, we noticed a scope (looked like this) sitting in their window pointed towards ours. A scope is used in hunting so it was kinda worried us wondering if they were creeping on us. I mean, why else would someone just have a scope pointed at another person's window? So we made this sign to "nicely" ask them to take their scope away. We might have been more worried and done something else had we not been moving out in a few days. After an hour of the sign being up, the scope was moved, but then the next day it was there again! What the?! Lets just say, I'm a little worried for the new residents of our old apartment...

I went downstairs to take a picture from the outside while Kelsey and Heidi pretended to creep.

My freshman roommates and I still get together all the time! Our favorite place to get together and eat is the Brick Oven. Its a delicious pizza restaurant in Provo (I think there are now one or two in other locations in Utah as well). We usually get together a few times a semester and whenever we go to Brick Oven we get this dessert that we all share called the Sasquatch. Its a brownie sandwiched in between two cookies, all of which has just come out of the oven so its nice and warmed up, and then they put ice cream on top. It's to DIE for, and it's perfect to share with a group of like 5-6 people, because you get sick if you eat any more than that. Mmmm, so good!

Like I've said before, one of my favorite things about working at the bookstore was making friends with so many fun people. One of these wonderful people is my friend Emily. She was a cashier there until she just graduated and we totally accidentally had Marriage Prep class together this past semester, which meant that I got to see her two times a week and that made class way more fun. We've been wanting to hang out outside of school with our other work friend Ashley for the whole semester, but because we were all so busy and stuff came up, it didn't happen until the end. Ashley ended up not being able to come, but Em and I went out. We went to the mall and ate at Chick-Fil-A for free with coupons and ate for free at Cold Stone with a gift card! Score! This girl is seriously the greatest..there are some people that you hope you always stay friends with, and Emily is definitely one of those people.

For my last night with Alyne, Lauren, and Sarah (as well as Alyne's friend, who I can't remember her name), we went to Ginger's Cafe, which is a vegan-type restaurant. Very healthy, earthy type place. If anyone knows me, I hate vegetables which means I could never go vegetarian or vegan even if I wanted to, but Ginger's Cafe really is pretty good! Alyne, Lauren, and Sarah are all now vegetarian (Lauren has been converted) and we like making that kind of stuff together anyways (and granola bars! We love making those) so Gingers is like our place. Long story short, it was lots of fun, and I already am missing these girls so much this summer! I can't help but have the very best time with them. Oh and when you go to Gingers, get the falafel!

My roommates and I have been wanting to get on the famous picture wall at Sammy's so we finally made a time to go get shakes. But..their camera was totally broken so we just had to get a picture with ours. Needless to say..we are still not on the wall. :/

Also, somewhere in all that busi-ness of hanging out with people and doing finals, I made a dress. I took this man's shirt and converted it into a dress. I bought the fabric for the bottom part from Joann's and tried to match the colors exactly, but the lighting in the store must have been weird because they didn't match later on when I looked at them. It was fine though because they looked really cute together. You can see better pictures of the dress above in the roommate pictures. I just used a small part of the shirt by making the top part of the dress and keeping the buttons intact. I pleated the whole bottom part and hemmed it up with a blind hem (which took forever, but looks really good!).

And then it was actually time to move out of our beloved Apartment 12. Out of all the places I've lived in my 3 years of college so far, this one has been my favorite. I've loved the ward, the apartment, and especially my roommates (who I'm lucky to still have next year as well!). I packed everything up and it was really sentimental to say goodbye to everything.

This was up in our kitchen where we filled it with quotes, dating tallies, and fruit stickers of course. We took this down, but had to keep it for future remembering :)

My bulletin board in my room. I love how I decorated it because it was filled with happiness and it was so me! It was terribly depressing to take this all down.

And...my empty room. I cried when I saw it like this because I kind of didn't want to leave and it made me sad to think that I wouldn't be coming back. This apartment was a place filled with a lot of happiness. It's a place that became my home, something I never thought would happen. Before I left, I just sat on the bed for a second and let myself soak it all in (a little cheesy, I know, but it's true).

It wasn't goodbye forever, because I'll be back in the fall, but it was still goodbye. But I'm happy to say that it was a good bye. I was really sad to leave all of my friends, but in a way, I was glad for the sadness to be there, because if I was feeling sad to leave, it meant I'd had a lot of happy memories. And that is definitely a great thing. :)