Easter 2014 Video

Easter 2014

Went to a great church meeting, spent it with family, ate good food, and did an easter egg hunt for the kids! Isn't my cousins Zuri adorable?! I'm in love with the picture of her looking at the camera! But yes, I love Easter, it's the best. Also, I love how my family is matching in the above picture without trying to (and I love that my brother ruined every picture with a funny face--just kidding, did NOT love that :P). I filmed a bunch so I'll probably post a video of it soon!

Hope you had a great Easter! Also, you should watch this video if you haven't yet. :)

Zuri's First Birthday

I have this absolutely adorable cousin named Zuri. She's seriously such a cute baby. She hardly ever cries and always always smiles. I'm so in love with her! Her first birthday was about a month ago and I made a video to capture all the cuteness. Hope you enjoy!

Easter 2013

I loooove Easter. It comes close to Christmas for the favorite holidays list. Why do I enjoy it? 1) it means spring has sprung, 2) I love the joy of egg hunts (although none of us seem to know the mystery behind why a bunny delivers the eggs--what do they have in common??) 3) Family traditions are the best, but even more so... 4) family is the best, and Easter is all about spending time with them!

We had a yummy dinner of fish tacos and dessert of pineapple cake and resurrection rolls (as per tradition for those). My sisters and I also make a point of doing an Easter egg hunt for all the younger cousins every year, partly because we love them but mostly because it makes us happy seeing those cute kids running around being happy. My four year-old cousin Tayevion was adorable as he exclaimed "This is the BEST Easter day ever!" as he opened all his eggs to find more candy and more money. I love how the simplest thing can make a kid so incredibly happy.

I took lots of pictures, and sorry not sorry but there is an overload of photos of my aunt's children, because let's face it. They're adorable. Especially their new two-week old baby girl Zuri. She melts my heart.

In case you are wondering, I got my dress from Wal-Mart (I know, right?!) for $15 and I love it. So so cute. :)

Most of all, I am grateful for Easter because it celebrates life. The life of Christ and the lives of us that He saves every single day. I'm grateful for His sacrifices and for the atonement. Pretty sure I would be miserable without it. I know that we shouldn't need a holiday to celebrate these things and be grateful for them, but I'm still happy to have a yearly reminder of how important Christ is in my life.

I hope you had a great Easter (if you wrote an Easter post, link up in the comments, I'd love to read it!)! Happy April Fools today! :)

Merry Christmas!!

Me, sibs, and cousins performing the Christmas program we put on every Christmas Eve

I love Christmastime so much. The best part of it all is spending lots of time with family, giving (and let's admit it...getting) presents, and celebrating the birth of our wonderful savior Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful that we joyfully celebrate someone so magnificent, humble, and loving. I'm grateful that we celebrate His birth--something so simple, but made wonderful by whose birth it was. I'm grateful for the amazing family I have and the great friends I have who are always on my side. I'm grateful for all of you, whether you read this blog as a loyal follower or just as a passerby. Thanks to each and every one of you for just being you, whoever that might be.

Have a very very happy Christmas. I love you, you know that? Truly I do. :)

And in case you want to watch, here's a video we made of what Christmas means to us. (I apologize in advance if I look weird in this video...I fell like everyone always hates seeing themselves on screen because it's not their own perception of how they really are. Take it as you will.)

Back to Blogging

Soooo...I haven’t blogged for a month. Haha. Here’s my life summary for the past 30 days…

That night was the party I’d been planning for over a month. It turned out to be a huge success. I decorated when I got back from work, putting cobwebs all over our back patio, setting up a banner, and hanging lights all across. It looked really pretty and I was happy with the result. I made a lot of food for it and had little signs for each of the food items. I had to go to work at 5 so my roommates helped me with making the rest of the food which was great. Party guests started arriving at 9 and by 10 pm, our back patio was super crowded. I was going back and forth replenishing the food and I had to keep pushing my way through everyone because there were so many people there. Someone in our ward brought over gigantic speakers so the music was blasting and everyone was dancing. It was seriously so fun! All the people that came (and out of those people, a lot of them I didn’t know because they were friends of friends. There were some of my friends I saw later in the pictures who I hadn’t even seen there!) told me they had so much fun. Successful night? Yes. Party throwing can be really stressful sometimes and the day of the party when I’m getting everything ready I tend to get super stressed out and wonder why I’m even throwing a party. But then it happens, it’s so fun, and I remember why throwing parties is one of the greatest things ever.

November came and was a busy month. Most of it was spent being busy with school, but the good parts were with family and friends. I went to my really good friend Sam's mission farewell. This girl is one of my best friends and as much as I'll miss her, she's going to do great in the California Palo Alto mission! I went with Lauren, another one of my really good friends, who also just got her mission call and is going to the California San Fernando mission! :)

(l to r): me, Sam, Lauren

The Nutcracker came around again, and this year my sister Sidney was the only one in it. At one point in life, Carina, Sidney, Cee Ryle, and I were all in the Nutcracker and I’m pretty sure that year drove my parents crazy. Sidney did awesome though, she had three great parts as a Snow, Reed Flute, and a Waltz. She’s seriously a gorgeous dancer, so much better than I ever was, and I can’t help but be proud of her and be happy whenever I see her dancing. She definitely comes alive on the stage.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful and much needed break. My dad’s side of the family all came from Wyoming so we had a full house of cousins and aunts and uncles. It was the best. We spent a lot of our time making a music video to none other than Gangnam Style of course (which almost has a billion views on youtube!). On Thanksgiving day we got the whole family, adults and all, outside to dance. Haha and our yard happens to be right on the edge of the road, so cars passed by as we were dancing to Gangnam Style. Our neighbors might think we’re crazy…oh well. You can see the video here.

We also spent Thanksgiving just hanging out, going to temple square, and shopping on black Friday of course.

My roommates and I had a little cookie making/tree decorating party with a few friends. We also made a nativity reenactment haha (sorry for the blurry photos).

I went to the Killers concert with Chelsey and some other friends. It was a really great concert—everything you’d want a Killers concert to be and more.

Bridal Shower for my freshman roommate Kelly!

A little over a week after Thanksgiving, I went on a quick 3-day trip to Boston and New York. We got to fly standby since my aunt works for Jet Blue. It was the BEST. I was in Boston over the summer and just love the east coast, so going back for a few days was heaven. Boston was spent hanging out with family and shopping, mostly. My favorite part of the trip was our day in New York. We did so much fun stuff. This is something that definitely deserves a post of its own so I’ll write more about it later.

Kelly’s bachelorette party, spent painting nails, giving each other massages, eating yummy food, and talking about boys of course.

After that it was basically finals week. In the midst of all the business, I got sick with a cold on the first reading day. I get sick a lot, so I wasn’t surprised, but I still will never get used to the unpleasantness of being sick. Thankfully the worst of it was over by the time I had to start taking finals (which are now done, yay!!!).

No pictures of this either, unfortunately, but I got together with my best friends last weekend. It was the best because we hadn’t all been together since April! We keep in touch a lot though so it felt like nothing had changed. We’re going to be starting a blog together here soon, and I’ll let you know when it’s up. Right now we are planning everything about it and still trying to figure out a name.

Last week my roommates and I hung out (the first time all of us have hung out together this whole semester, sadly) to celebrate finals. We went to the mall and got tons of cute clothes, ate at Pizza Pie Café, and finished the night by watching Step Up Revolution. I love my roommates. I’m seriously so lucky to live with the coolest and nicest girls ever.

That’s the update and now that school’s done for now and everything is caught up, expect more regular posts. Blogging can be so much work sometimes! Love it though. :)

Cornbellys!

A week ago I got to go to Cornbellys at Thanksgiving Point with my family and my aunt and uncle's family. It was an absolute blast! I've really enjoyed being able to see my family almost every single weekend this semester. That usually doesn't happen but I've had reasons to go home or we've met up for something on a weekend so it's just been fun. I might not be seeing them again for a couple weeks though which is fine, because I do my enjoy my weekends here at school hanging out with my roommates too. :)

Cornbellys is this cute Halloween festival that they have every year at Thanksgiving Point. I've always wanted to go since it's only about 15 minutes away from where I live and my aunt Zildy has gone every year with her family for a while and just loves it. I have to say that I definitely wasn't disappointed and if I'm still around next year, then I would love to go again! We went on a hay ride, went through a corn maze (made to pick either Romney or Obama haha-see here), took pictures, ate yummy food like popcorn and rock candy, and basically did everything we could there. One thing I liked about it that it was so family friendly, so the kids absolutely loved it and were never bored. We all kind of separated off from each other for a little bit and I just hung out with my sisters Carina and Sidney, which was a lot of fun. Anywho, I'll stop talking and just give you pictures to show you how much fun we had.

I hope you are all having a great week celebrating Halloween, I'll blog about that later this week and hopefully catch up on a few other events but probably not until Thursday because I'm planning an AWESOME Halloween party tomorrow (don't worry I'll blog all about that too! We all know how much I love throwing parties)! Also, my prayers go out to all my east coast friends dealing with Hurricane Sandy (aka Frankenstorm). It's so much more real to me now that I've actually lived out there. Be safe this week whether you are in the midst of a hurricane or just trick or treating. :)