Summer 2014

Guys. It's been nuts, and I have possibly been the worst blogger ever. For some reason, whenever summer comes blogging always goes down the drain (so hopefully that means it'll pick up again in the next few weeks!).

It has been a summer of bandanas in my hair, skirt and dress-wearing, video-making, weddings, cute kids (at the daycare), way too long of drives in my non-air conditioned orange car (kill me!), snap-back hats, traveling, face-painting, and great memories. Honestly, it's been a really good summer and I would like to credit that to me just feeling really good. Life is just good right now and nothing is really wrong, which feels awesome. I know that probably means something bad is coming, but I'm enjoying this good peace in my life for as long as it's here. :) This is going to be kind of a long post, but if you'd like to bear with me, enjoy the rundown of my awesome summer (also, there are many videos, all of which are pretty fun, but if you have to pick, watch the Cali one and the Fancy one--both are definitely my favorite videos I've ever done!).

I don't think I ever posted this video so I'll lump it in. My roommate Lizzie got married back in April and I didn't finish her video until like July haha! I'm really happy with how it turned out, I think I am starting to get the hang of this thing a little better.


At the end of May, Sidney graduated high school...


And the next day or two Cee Ryle had his Eagle Court of Honor for getting his eagle scout award! Kind of a big deal since he's the only boy in the family. We all just love him so much, he's such a great kid. :)

So my sister Sidney and I do face-painting for our aunt's business, which is super fun. Last year we face-painted at an event for Jet Blue and they paid us each with a round-trip ticket to Long Beach, California. They expired a year later, and we never went, and then it was like a month before when we realized, oh crap, we need to go! I might not have gone, except I wanted to get all my fabric for my October Provo Fashion Week show, since fabric is amazingly cheap in the LA Fashion District. Sidney was way too busy with Senior year stuff to go, so Carina paid her for her ticket and we went on a really quick trip (Saturday-Sundy) to California! Super fun! I got a lot of fabric, we did some fun shopping, went to Venice and Huntington beaches, and also stopped by the grounds of the Newport Beach temple on Sunday to get our spiritual fix for the day haha. I had a great time and obviously made a video of it. It's my favorite video I've ever made so if you have the time, feel free to watch!

Sidney had her last ballet recital at Clytie Adams, which was a big ordeal (to me, at least) because it felt like the end of an era. Carina, Sidney, and I all danced ballet there pretty much until we graduated high school, so it was really cool, yet sad, to see her at her last recital. Happily for us, Gracie is still dancing there and since she's only seven, we don't have to say goodbye anytime soon! Gracie was in the recital too, sorry forgot to mention that!

One Sunday I went to temple square (one of my favorite places ever!) in Salt Lake City with my family and that was pretty fun. I always love going to that place.

We went on a fieldtrip to the Hutchings Museum with the daycare kids. I got moved to the preschool/school-age class after being with the two year-olds since June. It was a really good change and I've a lot of fun being with the older kids!

At the end of June, my uncle got married, so we drove to Cheyenne, Wyoming where all of my dad's side of the family lives for the wedding. It was super fun! I don't think I have any good pictures with me in them, but I made a video for this too so feel free to watch. We had a lot of fun at the wedding and so much fun in Cheyenne that we decided to go again in July (more on that later in the post).

By awesome chance, our Texas cousins happened to be in Colorado at the same time we were in Wyoming so we met up with them for a few hours, which was lots of fun.

We had dinner at the most delicious Italian buffet in Denver called Cinzzetti's that you should probably try if you are ever in Denver! We went years ago and have been begging to go again ever since. It's really good and we had so much fun!

We also had fun upholding our second annual candy poker night. :)

July brought more business and more weddings haha! Katie, one of my old roommates, was in town for the 4th, so she, all my old roommates and their spouses, and I got together at Gurus for some yummy food (like their sweet potato fries!). I always love getting together with my old roommates, it really is the best.

July 4th was an AMAZING DAY because it was the day of Stadium of Fire which Carrie Underwood, my absolutely MOST favorite singer and person in the world ever, was singing at! In the morning I went to our hometown parade and then face-painted with my aunt at a festival for a while and then we all went to Stadium of Fire!

And let me just tell you, it was really soooooo great. Wow. Obviously of course! Carrie Underwood is amazing and I love her! I was dying the whole time. It was my fourth time seeing her live and it was just as great as all the other times. She really is so good. We got a picture with all of us (my family minus Gracie, plus our cousin Shayden, plus my friend Jenna who came and sat by us) and my mom and I had to get a picture because we've gone to every Carrie Underwood concert together. I love sharing that with her.

We went to see Mary Poppins at Hale Center Theatre and it was SO good! We got a picture with Mary (who was actually in my BYU ballet class like five years ago, but the picture taking happened very fast so I don't think she remembered me) and Bert. Gracie especially loved it, she wanted to listen to all the music afterward haha!

Volcano making day at the daycare! The girl in front was in a bad mood at the moment. ;)

Meetup with my best friends at the Chocolate in Orem!

My roommate (well, old roommate now) Stephanie got married on July 22! We threw her a little bridal shower the Saturday before the wedding. Jessica pretty much planned it all, but I did do the decorations! I was especially proud of that star banner.

Stephanie's wedding was beautiful and so much fun. I'm working on a video for it. They were married in the Provo temple, we went to a delicious luncheon at Magleby's, and the reception was really gorgeous in the Provo Library Ballroom! Sorry, not a lot of pics and I only posted the one so you could see a picture of me at the wedding.

Went to Wyoming again with my family for Frontier Days! We had a lot of fun with cousins going into the park, the indian village, and the parade. We spray painted shirts the night before the parade and all wore them the next day. We'd also all won free sunglasses and hats at the park so we were wearing those too.

On July 31st (Harry Potter's birthday!) I ran the Potter Run! It was just a 5k, but my first race that I trained for a total of two times. I walked and ran it, but it was a lot of fun and I'm proud of myself for doing it. I'm only posting the picture of me after the race as proof that I ran it, I swear I look way better than that normally! Also, thanks to my awesome family for cheering me on.

The only picture I got of when Alyne, Jessica and I got henna! I got a really cute flower on my foot and never got a picture of it unfortunately, and now it's almost all gone. I loved it though.

Bowling with some girls from my ward!

My best friend and old roommate Heidi got married two weeks ago in the Manti, Utah temple and it was one of the funnest days ever. It meant getting together with all the old gang again and we just had a blast. Earlier in the week we had a bachelorette party where we went and got pizza, caught each other up on all our m&ms (holding hands) and ice-cream (kisses) stories, and watched Austenland.

The Friday before the wedding, Katie, Meghan and I went shopping for a bit and then ate a lot of big food, I kid you not haha! We got a 24 inch long crepe at The Roll-Up, realized we were still hungry so we went to Slab and got delicious pizza (they give you a quarter of a huge pizza, so also big food).

The morning of the wedding we had breakfast at Kelsey and Scott's and then went to the Manti temple for the wedding, and to Leamington, UT for the luncheon and reception. Leamington is this really REALLY middle of nowhere town like an hour and a half south of Provo. It's cute, but there isn't much to do there. We had two hours to kill in between the luncheon and the reception so we thought, "hey! let's make a music video!" So we did. And it's really great. We did it to "Fancy" because we were in fancy clothes. I know, we're a creative bunch. Really though, the video is quite hilarious if you wanna watch.

And guess what, I'm going back to school this fall! Finally! I'm so SO excited. I'm definitely sad to be leaving my daycare job though. I love all those kids so much. I'm trying to really enjoy my last few days, I will miss these kiddos like crazy.

But man, bring on school. It'll be a new adventure after not being in it for a year and a half. I will hopefully graduate in the spring so I can't wait. :D

[California Trip] Day 2: Beach Day!

We woke up the morning after Las Vegas (don't worry, no drinking or hangovers in our hotel room haha) we packed up our stuff and got ready to head out on the road again towards Cali! The hotel gave us breakfast vouchers to use at the Denny's connected with the hotel, so we had a yummy breakfast there and then headed on our way.

It was about a five hour drive to San Clemente, California, which was where we were headed. The drive consisted of more Harry Potter reading (we read and finished the first Harry Potter book on this trip--we are trying to read them all this summer because Meghan has never read and finished them all! An abomination if you're living with me) and lots of music listening (like to the Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato albums). We were planning to camp on the beach that night and had reserved a camping spot and everything, so we went and got some camping food and supplies and then headed back to the beach. We played in the water for a while and then all just laid on our towels under the sun. I think I fell asleep, and it felt absolutely wonderful.

We stayed at the beach for a while and then decided to drive back to our camping spot at around 6, since (we thought) it would be on the beach still and then we could hang out more there. When we got to our camping area, we were in for a nice surprise (sarcasm intended here) and saw that it was an actual camping place on a bluff about a hundred feet up from the beach. There wasn't even a trail down to the beach or anything. We had gotten the recommendation from a friend who had said they'd loved camping on the beach, but obviously their definition of camping on the beach was different from ours haha. Since we thought we'd be on the beach, all we had brought were our sleeping bags--no tent or sleeping pads. Oh dear.

We made the best of it though, and it was actually one of the funnest nights of the trip. We used the campfire at an unused group campsite and roasted pigs in a blanket, starbursts, and s'mores, and did crazy things like dancing around the fire. Super great.

When we went to bed, we laid our towels and blankets out underneath our sleeping bags to get as much padding as possible. We put them so that we were all facing the middle and then read some Harry Potter before we went to bed. In the middle of reading, Heidi started laughing, and as none of us knew what about, we asked her. She made us finish reading the chapter and then told us that a baby skunk had run out of the bushes, stopped at my feet, sniffed around, and then ran back into the bushes. Ohhhhh goodness no. She hadn't told us when it was happening because she knew I would have freaked out. Anyways, we went to bed and tried to forget about the skunk, figuring it would be gone. I buried myself in my sleeping bag so that my head wasn't even sticking out.

The next morning, we woke up to find Katie's sleeping bag gone with her sleeping in the car, which was really weird considering the fact that she's definitely the most adventurous of us all. We tapped on the door and she proceeded to tell us that an hour after we had gone to sleep the night before, she woke up to a skunk sniffing her face! She was so freaked out, but Katie thankfully stays calm in these situations and just shut her eyes and pretended to sleep while it sniffed her! After a few minutes or so, it went away, walking in between Meghan and I. She tried to go back to sleep but was so freaked out that she ended up just going in the car.

And there you have it. Camping on the beach was not actually camping on the beach. If you ever go, it was definitely a nice place to camp and a really pretty beach, but I would highly recommend bringing a tent to protect you from animals (dangerous and smelly haha). At least we got a funny night and great story from it though, right?

If you would like to see the video version of day 2, it starts at about 4:30 and goes to 9:00 :)