the final hurrah

ew.
another summer has come and gone.
it's hard to accept the fact that in 1 hour, it will be monday.
as if mondays aren't hard enough already, tomorrow is my first day of school
and the busiest day of work imaginable.

... "first day of school" is not as thrilling as it used to be.

awkwardly running into old friends,
seeing old makeout buddies,
being overwhelmed with homework,
trying to remember how you know people,
rolling your eyes at everyone else's excitement,
paying for tuition,
popping pills for the headaches,
having 0 hours of free time,
it's just not fun anymore.

so scotty & i tried to make the most of our last weekend of summer.

yesterday we had a beautiful night up at city creek and visited with my aunt cathi and uncle kris who were up from arizona. it was a blast! we laughed, gossiped, and ate until we couldn't move. (and then after we stuffed our stomachs full, we ordered a slice of cheesecake)

we love them and we are so glad we got to enjoy their company for a few hours!
today, we went to church. the usual.
then we came home and i whipped up a lovely fruit pizza to take to a little dinner date in provo.

we spent the whole night with our dear friends jen and tony castagno!
we love them!
i am so freaking happy they finally moved back to utah.
we mourned over school starting, we talked politics, we surfed pinterest, we ate, we watched half of a documentary on mitt romney, we talked books, we shared stories, and on top of all that, we almost beat two worlds on super mario brothers.

talk about a successful night! 

let's hope this week runs as smoothly as our weekend did, 

and that we'll survive the chaos! 

bring on the books. 

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

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!

here's why.

can you believe i haven't blogged in exactly 20 days? 

i know. 

i am so disappointed in myself. 

this morning, i reflected on the past 20 days in hopes to find a reason or excuse for this unintentional blogging boycott of mine. i've had perfect wifi connection. nothing is wrong with my computer nor my fingers. and i certainly haven't been slacking on picture taking!  in fact, i probably took over 100 pictures in the friday, saturday, and sunday that we were in vegas. 

then it hit me! our small "vacation" to vegas put us both in a soft-core state of depression. it's taken two weeks to mentally recoup. we had so much fun. about as much fun as you can have in the 53 hours that we were away. it was a big eye opener to us- we have always been open to moving anywhere after graduation. endless possibilities! but now we realize that we both long for that city of lights. 

i spent the whole week preparing for our 3-day adventure: packing for myself and my husband, buying & wrapping presents, stocking up on treats & dr pepper, buying new shoes for the wedding, etc. 

the drive was a bore. it always is.  

but the second we popped over that last hill and the whole valley was laid out in front of us, we couldn't stop smiling. 

 seriously. it was a little bit ridiculous.

friday/saturday morning were filled with some of our most favorite people. we had a fun temple/outback steakhouse session with the marx clan (can't believe we didn't take a picture!), and swimming/bbq party at the barnes'. 

the new graduate! 

saturday afternoon was WEDDING TIME! 

i am so happy for my sweet friend jen and her new husband! 

everything about their wedding was perfect. the flowers, the colors, the sealing, the weather, the reception, everything was beautiful! i'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. 

congrats jen and tony! 

as we were rolling into town, i started making a list of all the things i love about vegas. the list grew and grew and grew in a matter of minutes. i couldn't stop writing! so here it is. careful, it may bring a tear or two to the eye. 

we love our families, our wards, our friends, no construction, lanes clearly marked, nelly and 50 cent on the radio, we knew exactly what to pack because we knew exactly what the weather would be like, the radio simply bleeps out a swear word instead of rearranging the whole song, 

there are original/unique names for streets, we saw blacks and mexicans for the first time in 7 months, graffiti art, palm trees,

even the nevada license plate is better. i love seeing the limos and taxis, i love the bustling sound of the strip at any given hour of the day, i love how i drove for 20 minutes and i was still in the same city, 

 the shopping, the style, the people,

 this was the low of the weekend, 

i love swimming, laying out, and seeing the pure blue sky with not a single cloud in sight. 

so, yeah. we were a little bummed. a little depressed. a little anti-social.  but now we're alive and trying to find the positives about utah. while we do that, you should be preparing yourself for more consistent blog posts!