the history of the fab five.

lately i've been thinking about my best best best friends and how much i love them, and how much i miss them, and how lucky i am to have them, and how much i want the world to know my love for them. so i am dedicating a whole blog post to my four favorite girls. together we make the fab five. after trying to sort through the 300+ pictures i have of the fab five on my computer, i realized it would take hundreds of posts to capture our favorite memories, hobbies, and stories. they were my whole life in high school!

let me introduce you to the fab five:

first, we have alex.

i have so many fun memories with her. there are SO many crazy rap songs i hear and i think "this reminds me of alex!" half of my high school memories took place in her car. we drove that thing around like mad women. i think im still suffering injuries from those tenaya bumps. we would do the stupidest, craziest things together. alex is the least judgmental person i know. she is amazing at hair and make up. and i love her.

next is angeleah.

this girl is my life saver. problem solver. late night caller. secret keeper. oprah watcher. i love her guts. we've always been there for each other- whether it was a phone call, a sonic run, stuffing our faces with coldstone, or just calling in tears to vent. i've never trusted anyone more than i trust leah. we bought matching pinky rings because oprah and gayle have them. we had "special bonds" with teachers together, and butt-kissed like you'd never believe. she is my ultimate advice giver, and i dont know what the crap i'd do without her. "meats for life"

then we have kami.

even though kami and i got off to a rough start because i asked her where she got a shirt and then went out and bought it, she came to love me :) kami and i love miley cyrus. we love getting lost on the way to nordstrom rack. we love high school musical. we LOVE justin bieber and his hair. and we love talking like borat. we are the babies of the fab five so we may be a little immature at times haha.

last but certainly not least, is my dear kristine.

kristine is so funny! i just love the crap out of her. she's always making me laugh. kristine is my shopping buddy. we love a good froyo. i think i recall a week last summer where we went to yogurtland almost every night together haha. i'll never forget our precious national honor society days. we went and helped at an elementary school every week!

words can hardly begin to express my love for them. we grew so close together i think of them as my sisters rather than friends. in fact, we got so close that we dressed like each other

ALL THE TIME

matchy matchy.

we did a lot of random things like midnight twilight/harry potter book parties
and lots of movies. our favorites are mean girls, sisterhood of the traveling pants, moulin rouge, and the twilight series. oh, and who could forget pine valley horror?

we LOVE nordstrom.
say the words "half-yearly sale" and we're so there.
our favorite places to eat all together are cafe rio, BJ's, and cheesecake factory.


but mostly cafe rio.
we LOVE the beach. some of the best days of my life took place on the beach with these beauties. i love spending time with them, and they are so fun to travel with.

sometimes i look back at my high school experiences and i think that we owned bonanza high school. we had every teacher wrapped around our fingers. we left for lunch every day, we had teachers sign our hall passes so we could screw around, we pulled the "it's for student council" card on a weekly basis, and we did what we wanted.
we would tell our student council teacher we all had to go to the bathroom and then walk around until class was almost over. we took this opportunity to make faces at friends that were in class, terrorize teachers, and make weird noises in bathroom stalls.
we loved setting up for assemblies, and we loved making quick trips to farm basket and sonic.
and then, in june 2008, my heart crumbled to pieces as i watched them walk across that graduation stage.
i cried throughout the entire ceremony.
it was hard watching my best friends grow up and move on to their exciting new lives while i was stuck in vegas for another year. i had to send them off to college, one by one. and it's never been the same since. luckily, some of us are reunited for summers, but once again it's just not the same. i miss seeing them ALL DAY and EVERY DAY. we had school together, and then we would hang out together and we had mutual and church and weekends and every single thing together!

i think i'd die if we didn't have skype and occasional visits.
and since we all have the same exact phone, it's easy to group text.

but when all three of those fail us, we always have cheesy pictures to look at and keep us company.
see for youself:

someone should have told me not to wear stripes.
and yes, it is exciting to see how everyone is growing up and what we are all doing with our lives, but there are still nights i wish the five of us were in my parents living room passing around a bowl of rice krispy treat mix and watching mean girls. i miss my friends. 

"god is love, rev run."

"it's been real, it's been fun, it's been real fun."

fab five for life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzm8SFGsd_I

my place.

you know that heart-tickling, overflowing feeling of love you get sometimes?

like when you hear the star-spangled banner?

or when you've just spent an entire saturday morning cleaning your apartment and right after you throw the last clorox wipe away, you stand back and look at the whole place as it sparkles?

or when you're watching the sound of music and you see maria running back to the von trapp's house? 

or when it's the last day of school and you're so proud of yourself and your classmates for all you accomplished together?  

i get that same sense of pride and love when i see pictures of BYU. 

aren't those pretty?

i can't take credit for any of them. 

but i thought they were too good to not share! 

sometimes i walk around campus silently making fun of the nerdy mo-mo freaks around me, counting the weeks until i can graduate and leave. but most of the time, i walk around feeling so happy and so blessed. i love my school. 

happy 4th of july!

... 20 days later. 

listen. i know i'm late, but our independence day wasn't exactly "festive and blog worthy."

but then i thought to myself, how could i not document our first married 4th of july? 

what if i'm 85 years old and a little granddaughter sitting on my knee asks, "gramma, what did you and grandpa do to celebrate your first fourth of july as a married couple?" and i am forced sit there with furrowed brows, scratching my forehead trying to recall that historic event from decades and decades past? instead, i will pull out a very thick book compiled with all of my blog posts, flip right to july 2012, and read her this ancient account: 

for our first ever married fourth of july, scotty and i both had the day off of work. we could do whatever we wanted! we have passes to seven peaks burning a hole in our pockets, a pool in our apartment complex, friends and family galore. what did we do, you ask? 

well. we started off with a delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and potatoes. scotty has been quite the experimental chef lately. we traveled off to home depot and target. (what kind of "day off" is it if you don't go to target?) and for the whole rest of the afternoon, we painted our dining room table. 

... and it looks great! 

it sure is a wonderful feeling to have matching things.  

we rented a movie, didn't see a single firework, and didn't even smell a bbq. 

it was a little unorthodox, i'll admit. 

but i also admit that sometimes you just need a catch-up day! 

i promise we love our country.  

animals

i've never been much of an animal person. 

we didn't have pets growing up.

i wasn't really even around pets growing up. 

my extreme fear of dogs up until age 12 didn't really help. 

sure, we had a pet turtle for a couple years. but once my family gave her away, my heart was broken and i decided i will never have room to love another animal. (click here for that sad saga) 

every time someone pins this on pinterest i laugh. 

... because, yeah. i don't like dogs. 

and people do question the existence of my heart and soul. 

i don't like horses, cats, birds. i HATE snakes and lizards and slimy things. 

i'm not one of those people who wants to go save abused or orphaned animals, i don't get emotional about animal deaths, and i yawn through animal movies. one time i told my mom that i would be fine if every other animal was wiped off the face of the earth except for cows and chickens. i love my burgers. and you can't have a cafe rio chicken salad without the chicken! 

with all of that being said, can i contradict myself and show you this picture? 

SERIOUSLY? how am i supposed to stay strong in my animal-boycott when i come across pictures like this on pinterest? my current hobby is googling "baby bulldog" and forcing scotty to look at every single picture with me. 

vegas highlights

last weekend we went to vegas!
and when i say "went to vegas" what i really mean is...
spent friday at the lake with family, sandwiches, and surprisingly wonderful weather,

had a delicious BBQ with marx fam (the burgers and company did not disappoint!),
surprised my mom friday night and listened to her laugh out of complete shock and happiness,

took my parents for a joyride in our new car,
(they approved)

purchased four boxes of red velvet cafe chocolate chip cookies,
(mouth is watering as i type that)

tried to alleviate our lake burns with an aloe vera plant my mom has growing in her kitchen,

and watched my 45-year old mother open her 45 presents.

 this was one of them:

 and 6 others were tickets to phantom of the opera.

 scotty was obviously so excited to go!

sunday i woke up and drove over to leah's house. we needed some quality catching up time! we didn't take a picture because we were half sleeping which meant no makeup/unbrushed hair. plus, there was no time to take a picture. too much to talk about. so here is a classic one of us :)

on the drive back we made a pit stop in st george to eat dinner with our favorite cruise friends! we enjoyed a delicious roast, a quick loud pouring rainstorm, card games, and lots of laughs. once again, i failed to take a picture. but here is my attractive husband sitting outside of their apartment

 and the grand finale, on the last stretch, just under 20 miles away from reaching our home,

 we were pulled over by a bored police man and his trainee.

 "you had a hard time staying between the lines back there!"
"do you not realize we've been driving for 6 hours and we just want to go home and sleep in our own bed and take a shower and prepare ourselves to wake up at 6:00 AM tomorrow to endure a whole week of work after a fun-filled family weekend in las vegas?!"
... okay maybe that was just a thought going through my head.

but we got off with a warning, which meant that the entire trip, start to finish, was a complete success!