He's Going To...

BRAZIL! South Sao Paulo mission to be exact! My cousin Trevar opened his mission call on Sunday, and we were all so excited that we got to be there for it. Mission call openings are always so exciting and I love them!

We realized after everyone left that we forgot to take a picture (this happens so much in our extended family gatherings--the forgetting to take a photo haha) but we took one with my family (sans Carina who was in Provo, and Gracie who had a sleepover with cousins). Notice how well our dog Buster posed. He's a goofball :)

I'm still getting used to my camera, so when I put on the self-timer and did "5," turns out it wasn't 5 seconds, it was 5 very quick pictures in a row. Haha! We decided to use this to our advantage when someone cried out "funny picture!" I love my family.

Trevar leaves June 17, and though I'll be sad when that day comes, I'm super excited for him and know he'll be an awesome missionary. Congrats Trevar!

Movie Making!

I've recently found a new hobby of mine in videography. It's a different way to document my life and it's fun to look back and watch them. I kind of wish I'd gotten into it earlier because there are so many things I would have loved to document this way. I'm not professional or anything but I definitely love it and would like to get better. I got a new camera in November and it takes way better videos so it's been fun to use. I figured it was probably easier to put them all in one post, since there are so many. I have a lot of stuff to update on that I might not get to, but these videos sum up the big events, and they may have to do.

At the end of June/beginning of July, I went on a vacation with my family to Moab in southern Utah. We've been on vacations to a lot of places outside of Utah but none actually in the state we live in, so it was fun to go and see all the arches and stuff.


August was a sad month because it became the end of an era for my old roommates and I. A few of us had gotten married and graduated and we were all going our separate ways and moving to different places. So to commemorate it I made a little video to our favorite theme song for ourselves. I love these girls to pieces..I will seriously never have better roommates.


I work at a daycare in the toddlers class and in December we had a little Christmas program. We practiced Jingle Bells A LOT but I knew that once the program came around and my kids were up at the front, they'd freeze and barely sing (I was right). So I filmed them a bunch over a couple of weeks and made a music video to show the parents at the program. It was way fun and the parents (and the todders--they kept wanting to watch it over and over again) loved it! Success. :)


At the beginning of December I went on a trip to NYC and Boston with my family. My aunt and uncle take their family every year since my aunt works for Jet Blue and her whole family gets to fly standby for free. So we decided to tag along this year. We had some trouble getting there, but we had a BLAST. We have relatives in Boston too so it was great to see them.


One of my old roommates and best friend (featured in the 22 video above) Olivia got back from the LDS mission she served in Brazil in December, and since all my old roommates were back in town for Christmas break (a plus of all of us being from Utah) we were able to go get her from the airport! She had a five hour layover in the Salt Lake airport before going home so we took her out to lunch and got to see her before her family! It was definitely one of the best days ever. And now I feel pretty lucky because Olivia is living in my apartment complex and I see her almost daily. Its great.


If you want to see any other videos of mine that I already put on this blog, the link to my youtube channel is here. I am working on getting a link on my sidebar and putting them all in one place for easy viewing. Let me know what you think! :)

Mission Goodbyes

Today was an exceptionally bittersweet day. My cousin Alex has been preparing to go on a mission pretty much his whole life, and today was the day. My uncle and him flew out and then me, my mom, my aunt Zildy, my sister Gracie, and my cousin (Zildy's son) Tayevion were all able to go drop him off at the MTC today.

Eating lunch at Rubios before dropping him off

haha Alex's last request was to get a jamba juice...hey and apparently if you go there the day you go to the MTC they'll give you a free jamba! sweet!

best cousins :)

My uncle Derick (Alex's dad) gave Alex his name tag from when he went on his mission. It was really cool.

Studly mish

Father and son

our whole group :)

final goodbyes

And then there he goes... :(

Alex is my closest cousin, because he's only a year younger than me and there aren't any other cousins really close to our age. We grew up together and we've stayed close. I love him so much and I know that he's going to be an awesome missionary in the San Fran/Oakland California mission.

Then...

In Guatemala together

And now...

Love you Alex, and I can't wait to see you in two years! Go share that gospel!! ;)

Loss

I just said goodbye to one of my very best friends for a year and a half, and dang it is so sad. :( Don't you wish you could sometimes just make life stop? Especially other people's lives, because then they could never leave you.

The thing about loss is that in a way, it's good. I mean say someone is leaving your life for a time, or even forever, and you don't really care that much. You never really got to love that person. But if you really miss them or if you truly feel pain and sadness over their being gone, then it means that you at least loved them and you got to experience times that made you happy while you were in them. It's hard but good. I feel like that's how most good things in life come--you have to experience the hard side of them if you really want to appreciate it.

So to Jessica, I'm gonna miss you so much but you are gonna be the best missionary ever. A year and a half isn't forever, right?? :)

Other June Activities

Just some other random things I did in June:

My friend Josh Timothy had his farewell! I've known him for such a long time, so it was sad to see him go (he's in Lima, Peru by the way), but he'll be an awesome missionary!

The arts festival. I went with Courtney and Laura. All the artwork and stuff was way cool. But of course the highlight of the night was not the festival... The last thing we did at the festival was go see the films, which was like at 10:00 at night. By 11:00, we were still in the theater and there were like three films to go. We had come on the frontrunner so we kind of lost track of time. We needed to get back on the trax but got on going the wrong way. So then, we went back and waited for like 45 minutes for the right trax to come and it never did. So we just started walking towards the frontrunner. Along the way, we came across some Asians with ramen noodles, a guy who worked at the arts festival, a druggie named Trevor, and some college aged kids trying to break in some old building. It was quite the eventful night. When we decided we had probably missed the frontrunner, Courtney called her parents so her dad would come pick us up. In the end, we got home at about 1 in the morning. It was great! :D And this was the only picture we took the whole day.

Reading books. My goal was to read 80 books by the end of the summer. No such luck, because I think it will end up being about 45-50. I'm a failure (to me anyways).

Disney did this cool Christmas Carol tour thing where they're going to all the states to advertise their new Christmas Carol movie. We stood in line for a loooong time because there were a billion people there, of course. It was lots of fun though!

Father's Day. Me and my sisters playing a musical number (O My Father) that we played in church the next week. I played piano, Carina did the violin, and Sidney did the flute. It was pretty much amazing! ;)