And the semester begins.

I don't know why, but I really feel like blogging right now! So I'm going to.

Yesterday, I was super-productive.

First, I went to my stats lecture. I started out this semester really apprehensive about my stats class, but I am actually really liking it. I got there a little earlier than usual this time so I got to sit wherever I wanted and I randomly sat down next to this guy who happens to be in my lab! So that was cool. I have an hour break between my stats lecture and lab on Fridays, so in my spare time, I went to the library and got a little homework done for other classes. When I went to my lab, I met up with a girl who was in my ice-skating class last semester! That was so fun. We are going to have a study group :) After lab, I was done with stats for the day and I headed off to the Eyring Science Center to try and add a class. Unfortunately it was all full, but I stayed because it was so fun (oh, also because I am just going to try to add it at another time).

As soon as I was done with that class, I went to the library, did some more homework, and then hurried to catch the next bus back to my apartment. I got home at about 2:00, ran around grabbing everything I wanted to send to Jake in his package, and then caught the 2:12 bus back to campus. It was pretty impressive. Here is what I sent in this package:

1. shark fruit snacks. (since he's a fisher of men.)

2. chips ahoy. (since who doesn't love those.)

3. flyswatters. (He's in Mexico. So there are probably a few flies down there. Haha I had to bend the wire handles to fit them in the box....so hopefully he'll be able to unbend them....)

4. Immunity Crystal Light. (so he doesn't get sick.) Also Live Active Crystal Light. (in case he doesn't feel like being lively or active. or his companion doesn't.)

5. antacid tablets. (so he doesn't feel sick.)

6. sidewalk chalk. (so he can be the most popular. lol)

7. a box of pastaroni. (we always used to make that and I told him he can make it with his companion and have good bonding time.)

8. my "I Love to See the Temple" book I made with Caitlin and Kelly!

9. junior mints. (since he's the Jr. companion.)

10. crazy core skittles. (so he doesn't go crazy.)

11. insect bite relief. (to relieve his insect bites.)

Anyway so I was reallyy excited to send this package. I don't know how long it will take to get there, but hopefully not tooooo too long.

Right after I sent my package, I had to go to this powerpoint class I'm taking. I have to take all these tests for the elementary education major that test your knowledge of microsoft products, and I don't feel like I know that much about PowerPoint, so I figured what the heck, and signed up for this two-week long class. Last class was soooo boring, but I came back, and this time, it was actually really enjoyable.

When I finished with that class, I got ice-cream with Andrea and Victoria. I love these girls :) They just sent off missionaries too, who were really good friends with Jake, which is how we know each other. It was so nice to sit and talk and eat ice cream! We sat around for like an hour just talking and it was lovely.

After ice cream I went to Kelly's apartment and we started getting ready for Fall Fest! The theme this year is superheroes, and I have wanted to dress up for this event since the beginning of the school year. It took about 3 hrs and multiple costume changes, but finally we were suited up and ready to go. I was a blue power ranger (costume courtesy of Kali, who wore my costume for Halloween last year), Kelly was a Fantastic Four, and Kali was an Incredible (costume courtesy of me, from spirit week my senior year of high school). Jordan was our makeup artist. And if I do say so myself, we looked extremely super when we showed up to that Fall Fest!

BTW. When I first got to Kelly's apt, I was sitting on Kali's bed and she looks over at me and goes, "Are those my flipflops?" I was wearing a pair of pink flipflops that I had, in fact, gotten from Kelly's apt earlier in the year, but I knew that they were Kelly's, not Kali's. So I said, "No, they're mine." Then she goes, "Did you borrow them from Kelly?" So then I didn't know whattt to say. For whatever reason, I didn't bring any flipflops to college. Oh, except for the dark blue ones which I can only find one of now. Also these really cute ones that Caitlin gave me but that's beside the point. The pointtt is, when I was helping Kelly move in, I saw a pair of pink flipflops on her floor, and I thought to myself, I didn't bring any flipflops out here. I need those! And I took them back to my own apartment. Apparently, they weren't Kelly's. They were Kali's. And I had stolen them. So that was pretty funny and I immediately returned them.

The activity was pretty fun, but it was largely dominated by freshmen, so we left pretty early and went to Red Mango in our awesome costumes. We ate our frozen yogurt, took a few pictures inside, and then went outside to expand our photo opportunities. A few minutes after we had started jumping off tables and punching the air, we realized that there was a couple parked in their car in front of the Red Mango who was thoroughly entertained by our antics. Unfazed, we went on to produce a fantasticcc line of photos.

It is nights like these that I absolutely lovvve Kelly. She is the greatest sister! Who else would spend three hours trying on outfit after outfit, throwing all their clothes on the floor, googling superheroes, and considering every possible alteration to a piece of clothing in order that they could dress up like a superhero....any! superhero....just because I really wanted to, but I didn't want to do it alone? I love that she lives so close to me and we can do fun things together like this!

I also adore Kali. When I suggested that we do this, Kali at first laughed at me, but then she totally caught the vision and helped me find costume pieces for me and for Kelly. The power ranger costume, as I mentioned earlier, was her Halloween costume last year. I'm not sure how she came to have it in her possession in the first place, but somehow she had it, and she had made several alterations to it. It used to be one piece, with the top and the legs connected. When it came to me, they were two decidely separate pieces. The pants had no waistband, and the top covered about half of my torso. The sleeves, which used to go all the way to the wearer's wrists, went only a little bit past my elbow. The legs, which should have gone all the way to my ankles, went a little bit past my knee. So, clearly, this outfit was not exactly intended for someone of my size. Or any bigger. Still, Kali valiantly tried it on, all the time saying, "I don't think this is gonna work, Heather." Despite her completely justified skepticism, she was totally willing to try it, if for no other reason than to show me that it was not an option for her outfit for the night.

Actually while we're on the subject....this costume really was in poor condition. There was a gaping hole in the arm pit of one of the sleeves, which was especially obvious when I raised my arm. There was no waistband, as I said earlier, which created problems whenever the pants came out of my leggings (I was wearing gray leggings under the pants and I had just tucked the tops of the blue pants into the waistband of my leggings to hold them up). Anyway, whenever the leggings loosened their grip a little bit, the blue pants got this nice little pucker in them that looked STUPID. So I told everyone to keep an eye on my butt for the whole night to avoid that ever happening.

Back to all the people I love. Jordan Lee was the besttt makeup artist! I usually don't do crazy makeup, and I think I was wearing more eyeshadow than I ever have in my life, but I just thought it was fun! I think that Jordan is hilarious and she was so fun to just walk around the Fall Festival with. Whew, good thing she was Kelly's roommate freshman year or else I might not know her!

I ended up falling asleep on accident at Kelly's apartment last night, on Kali's bed. I can't imagine that she appreciated that very much but apparently she let me stay there and she slept on the couch instead of waking me up to move me. This morning, Kelly woke me up and I said, "why are you in my house?" But it turns out I was in her's. So I got up, ran back to my apartment in my super-cool power ranger costume....which wasn't embarrassing atttt allllll, don't even worry about it.....and got ready for the football game!

Kelly, Christine and I all went together to the party at Glenwood. It's just down the street and Raintree residents were invited, and there was free food, so we figured why not, and went. It was so funny how many random people I saw there. In the first minute after the pizza had arrived, I saw 1. James, this guy who randomly sat down and had lunch with Kelly and I last year in the Cougareat, 2. Jeff, who was an intern in DC this summer and went to our singles ward, 3. a guy who used to date one of Kelly's roommates last year, 4. A guy who was in our country dance class last year, and 5. another guy who randomly sat down and had lunch with Kelly and I last year.

By the 4th quarter, BYU was really killing Tulane, so we went back home and Winnie took us grocery shopping. Which was so good! I get most of my food with my meal plan, but I need some things like Toaster Strudel, hello, that I can't get at the Creamery or on-campus, so I have to venture to Walmart to get it. I also got some white flipflops today, which I really have been needing. Anddd I bought Kelly a present. She is alwayyys giving me presents. It is so nice! So I got her a present this time. I bought her a pineapple :)

When I came home from Target, where I got my flipflops, I called my dad since he marched on Washington today. Sometimes I think my dad is so adorable. He lovvved it. He said it was the most inspiring thing he has ever done. He said everyone was so polite and he liked meeting as many people as he could and just talking to them. Apparently there was a really great turnout. So I'm glad he got to do that. I really love my dad. I can talk to him so easily at college. I think he is a wonderful individual, I think he is the nicest daddy, and I always always know he loves me.

When I got back to my apartment from doing that, there was a bunch of people and we all played games and had suchhh a fun time.

And now it is way too late and I really really! should be getting to bed.

I just want to say, that even with all the stupid stuff that goes on, I do love being a college student. I love it.

Shoes. omg, SHOES.

Today I wore a really stupid outfit to my classes.

No really. It was so stupid that I was a little bit embarrassed to be myself.

Here's what it consisted of: my bangs back in a poof, a tealish-blue polo, blue and red and teal plaid bermuda shorts, and baby blue flipflops. Maybe this doesn't sound so bad to you....or maybe it sounds inexcusably horrendous to you. In any case, I feel the need to offer some sort of explanation. Starting with yesterday.

Yesterday I was mad productive. I finished unpacking (I know, a little late. Whatever.), did all my homework, laid out at the pool with Kelly, reading for our Marriage and Family class, went to my ward's FHE, shaved my legs, hung up all my freshly done laundry, went to Kelly's ward's FHE, and assembled stuff for the best package a missionary could ask for. This morning when I woke up, the first thing I did was carefully examine my new tan. I love tanlines. Most people hate them. I like them a lot. They remind me of how far I've come. Anyway, I was a little sad to discover that half of my forehead was pleasantly sunkissed, and the other half was pleasantly untouched. I guess my bangs were covering it up when I was tanning yesterday. I figured this was ok, since I could just keep my bangs there until it went away.

So that's a really nice plan, but it's not exactly helpful when you promptly forget about it as you're getting dressed for the day. Especially when your thoughts are occupied by other things, like, how am I going to dress my feet today? And then as you try to figure that one out, and you decide you might as well do your hair while your brain works on the shoe problem. And the next thing you know, you're running over to your sister's apartment, barefoot, with 6 minutes before the bus arrives, hoping that she will have a pair of flipflops that matches your color scheme a little better than your hot pink and black flipflops would, and you've completely forgotten to even think about your two-toned forehead. Any thoughts of your forehead that may have survived are pushed even further to the back of your mind as you discover that your sister had the same problem yesterday, and the flipflops she ended up wearing match your outfit about as well as shiny black dress shoes would match with a pair of basketball shorts.

But the bus is coming. And you ran to your sister's apartment barefoot, trusting that she would save the day with her enviable collection of footwear. So you have no choice but to wear the baby blue flipflops.

Really. Who honnnnestly thinks about their hair at a time like this?

So all day, as I was walking around, I imagined up things in my head that people were thinking about my flipflops. No one even really looking that hard at them. But I knew. All day, I knew that my flipflops clashed horrendously with my outfit. And it bothered me to no end.

Immediately after getting off the bus with Kali, who is lovely btw, we marched into the BYU bookstore, I filled with an impressive determination to buy the first pair of shoes I could find that would match acceptably. But alas, this determination faltered under the greedy eyes of the BYU bookstore, and my baby blue flipflops slapped the floor dejectedly on my march out of the bookstore, deterred by the $20 price tag on the white flip flops I left behind me, mocking my resolve. For the rest of the day, I avoided standing up and walking anywhere as much as possible because I was so disgusted by my flipflops.

And to those of you who think this is ridiculous, that my shoes affected my day to such an extent, I would just like to challenge you to walk a mile in these shoes.

PS I am back in Utah. NYC was great. I love my new roommates. I haven't taken any pictures since I've been here and it makes me sad. I wish my friends would get nice boyfriends. I'm kinda sad I missed Blue Knob this year. I like my classes so far. I'm going country dancing tomorrow. I love seeing random people I know around campus. Aside from the shoes, life is pretty good, all things considered. :)

Goodbye summer??

In 5 days, I will be leaving Maryland to go back to Utah. I amm really excited....I love Utah, and I love school....but I am also starting to get kind of sad about leaving! It looks like this weekend will be another bittersweet time.

This whole week has been totally crazy as we try to cram everything into the last two weeks of the summer that we kept putting off earlier. On Saturday, we had a sister day at Six Flags. This was an absolutely necessary trip because Six Flags is going bankrupt and so clearly we had to go! We left at about 10:30 and rode all the rides that we wanted to right away, which was such a good decision, because after lunch at Johnny Rockets it started raining. At first it wasn't so bad, when we were on the octopus ride, but then it just started pouringg. We were soaking wet so we decided to just get a funnel cake and call it a day. I was pretty much ready to go home anyway, but the rain just reiterated this.

Today Caitlin, Kelly, Jenn and I all went to single's ward for the last time this summer. That ward has really been good for us this year. I've always learned a lot from the lessons and I've gotten to meet a lot of really cool people. A lot of them are going to BYU so that will be fun to know some random people there.

Then Holly and I had a piano recital for our students at my house. This summer I just taught my brothers, sisters, mom, and the 7-yr-old neighbor boy across the street (who is literally a child genius and so cute) and Holly had two students who were there. So right when we got home from church, Kelly and I had to get the house ready and prepare some refreshments. It was a very good recital which started out with my Uncle Jacob and Aunt Devon knocking on the door unexpectedly during my introduction and welcome. I don't think anyone minded but it was still pretty funny timing. All of the students did a very nice job but I don't know if anyone did their whole song without a single mistake. I remember when I took lessons, instead of just teaching them, and I would get sooo nervous before recitals. I only remember one recital that I did my whole song perfectly and other than that I made at least one mistake every time.

At this recital, probably the award for Most Memorable Performance would have to go to Jacob. Apparently he missed the memo that recitals are a little more fancy than your everyday pickup baseball game, and he performed in shorts and a t-shirt. I guess he also missed the memo that both my mom and I told him to change. Either way, he decided at the last minute that he wanted to sing his song while he played. It was a lovely demonstration of all his musical abilities. Both Jacob and I had to have tubes put in our ears when we were younger so that we could hear better, but I think the tubes worked better for me, because Jacob is still a little bit tone-deaf. He sings songs very deliberately, sticking loyally to one note the whole time. Hearing him sing and play was certainly an experience. He is turning out to be quite the class clown!

My mom was the last performer. She took lessons for a short time as a little girl but other than that, she just started this summer. I was a little nervous about teaching her...I mean, she's my mom....but she was suchh a good student. She listened to every every everything I said and practiced really diligently every week. It was really cute I thought :)

Anyway this was her first recital and I know she was so nervous for it. Sometimes at her lessons she will mess up and get flustered and explain to me that she's usually so much better at this song, and that's just with me there. So considering this, and the fact that I remember feeling nervous before my own recitals, I was feeling some sympathy anxiety as she sat down, about to play. Joseph has swine flu (.......yeah. i know! Kinddd of ridiculous. We are all very irreverent about it. We call him pig, pigman, and piglet every time we address him and oink at him whenever possible. We've also started referring to his room as the pigsty. A few nights ago at scripture study, he read a scripture that said, "I say unto you, Nay," and I whispered to Julie, "Did he just say nay? I thought he was a pig!" She replied, "Oh, he's just confused." We thumbed up our noses at him and oinked appropriately, reminding him of his true biological identity.) The reason this all is relevant is because Joseph performed right before Mom, and she insisted that he disinfect the piano keys before she played. So we had a brief intermission while he wiped them down and she introduced her song.

There's something about being a piano teacher at a recital for your students that makes you feel a little like a lifeguard tied to their chair. During lessons, you can jump in and save your student if they make a mistake. During a recital, you just have to sit back and let them fend for themselves. If they make a mistake, you just have to send them telepathic encouragement to take a deep breath and pick up wherever they feel comfortable.

My mom sat down and lifted her hands to the keys. She went through the first few measures beautifully, fumbled a little, and stopped. "I'm going to start over," she said, smiling. Everyone smiled back. I noticed her hands shaking a little and I quickly remembered being a student about to perform and being absolutely positive I would mess up and completely embarrass myself. Going through her song the second time, my mom made a few more mistakes and I know she wasn't very happy with her performance. That made me sad because I know how hard she has worked and I know how well she is able to play that song. As a piano teacher, you see all the little struggles a student has with their songs. You learn how their mind works as they correct their mistakes and you being to root for them when they get to a part of a song that has always been tricky for them. My mom stopped having piano lessons as a little girl because her first teacher was old and smelled bad and she just didn't want to deal with that. Now, years later, here she was, coming back and wanting to learn something, wanting to improve herself. I admire that so much. Even if she can't be proud of this particular recital, I want her to be proud of how she picked something for herself to work on and then really did work on it. I know it must have taken a lot of courage for her to go up in front of her children, the most important people in her life, and her peers, and perform in a situation where it was possible that she would make mistakes.

After this final performance, which actually was quite good, Holly and I each said a few words about how much we enjoyed teaching, etc., and then we invited everyone to the kitchen for refreshments. At each recital I like to give my students a Symphony chocolate bar and this time as I was passing them out, I discovered that I had one extra. I stood there holding it for a minute, trying to figure out why I had gotten one extra, and then I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to include Julie in the program! She had a song and everything and I just completely forgot to put her on the program, so she never got a chance to perform it! So I felt a little bad about that but she didn't seem too concerned. People milled around, snacking on the refreshments, and then when everyone had left, we had dinner with Charlene.

Charlene babysat us when we were younger and we can all very clearly remember laying with our butts to the wall, flailing our legs and arms and singing at the top of our lungs, "Charlene the famous babysitter, whoo!" No one knows how this got started but we loved when she came to babysat and enthusiastically advertised her to all of our friends. At any rate, she was kindly able to overlook our childhood devilishness and come over for dinner and is always sweet and fun when we see her now.

After dinner we moved into the living room again to give Julie a chance to perform her recital piece. She did a lovely job and then we were paid a visit by Ecoli Imishi (pronounced Ee-cull-ee Ee-mee-she).

This is where my family gets weird again.

Ecoli Imishi is Nicole's alter-ego opera singer. Nicole likes to read Nancy Drew mysteries to my mom when they are driving in the car together and one day while they were reading, Ecoli Imishi was born. Nicole decided to announce the Nancy Drew Story Hour with a song by her and she's been a frequent visitor in our home ever since (when she is not otherwise detained by world tours, etc.). Ecoli Imishi is best known for her shrillness of voice but the shortness of her temper is also legendary.

Needless to say, we were delighted to have such an esteemed guest in our midst (once again).

Following her performance, the rest of the family felt that this would be an appropriate time to reveal their alter-egos as well. Sarah made an appearance as the famous salsa dancer, Senora Sali. After she burned up the dance floor with her never-before-seen tricks, Delia and Edeline graced us with an impressive rendition of the long-lost vocals to Tchaikovsky. At this point the small extension on the recital that everyone had been expecting was just spiraling out of control and taking on a new form as an impromptu circus. I was glad when no more unexpected special guests showed up and we could all go our separate ways.

On a completely different note, I recently realized that I go to great lengths to protect myself from feeling sad. I try not to put myself in situations that will make me sad. I avoid them at whatever cost. A few nights ago I went over to Caitlin's for a movie and she wanted to watched P.S. I Love You. I have only ever seen previews for this movie and I know it would make me cry. I know it. I picked Win a Date with Tad Hamilton instead but the whole thing made me think. I am so afraid of feeling sad that I wonder if I miss out on a lot because of it. Is it just sadness that I am missing out on?

Anyway I realllllyy should be getting to bed. Good night all :)

My nose is defective. (Also, more on my job.)

I have come to this conclusion kind of gradually, and now, after several years, I am able to just say it. My nose is pretty much the most dishonest part of my body. (Sometimes I smile when I'm really mad, so I guess my mouth is kind of dishonest too, but what can ya do. My nose still takes the cake.)

I've always really likedd my nose. I mean it's not huge or embarrassing, I don't have terrible allergies, and I've never broken it so it's still the same nose it's always been. But I've started to realize over this past year or so that my nose is just very unreliable. You know how people say things like, "Just follow your nose" and "Your nose knows," etc.? Well they've obviously never met my nose. Because it hardly ever knows what it's smelling.

For example. One time in September or so, I was in some friend's apartment across the street from where I lived and suddenly I smelled French toast. I knew I was smelling French toast. I was sure of it. And they were using cinnamon which is the best way to make French toast. I was in a boys apartment and I thought it was very admirable that one of them was doing something so domestic as making French toast. I decided to commend them on this by saying, "Oh! Who's making French toast?" and then praising the chef. But no one came forward. In fact, everyone kind of stopped and said, "No one's making French toast." So then I thought they were joking because they didn't want to share. Then I discovered that what I was actually smelling was fried eggs. UM. Howww did I mix these two things up?

Another time I was nannying, just hanging out with Malan. She had these little "Magic Grow" sea creatures that we were going to try out. You just put them in warm water and they grow to 4x their original size. I was wondering how they do this, and so, being the scientific-minded person that I am, I took one out and smelled it. I immeditely identified the smell as tanning lotion and gave myself a mental pat on the back (even though this still gave me no clues as to why it grows in warm water). Then I handed it to Malan, who smelled it as well and said, "Why does it smell like play-dough?" I hastily retracted the pat on the back and told her I didn't know why. Seriously, why is my nose so inept?

In other news, I am at telemarketing today and I would just like to take this time to describe a little bit what goes on in this office. I work in this executive park in Columbia; it's very nice and even though I'm just telemarketing I have to dress up and look professional. I work Tuesday nights all by myself, Wednesday nights with just me and Dave, and Thursday during the day with everyone. I guess I should start out by introducing the characters.

First of all, there's Dave. Dave has been doing telemarketing for about 15 years, so I'm assuming he's in his 40's. He is about 300lbs, likes gardening, and is incontrovertibly political. He could talk about politics............forever. I have sat in my chair dialing numbers for literally 45 minutes while he tells me his take on anything and everything remotely related to American politics that has taken place in the past 2 decades. He gets himself all worked up about it and needs hardly an encouragement from me to just keep talking for however long I will give him before someone answers their phone and I have to talk to them. He's like a car with really good gas mileage in this way. When I first started working here, Dave trained me. He had all these catch phrases that he would try and teach me, his favorite being: "fair enough?" We practiced that one for about a half hour because, apparently, there's a right way to say it and a wrong way to say it. (The inflections, I guess, make a difference.) When I would get on the phone with someone Dave would get really excited and wheel out of his cubicle to watch me and whisper helpful little things, like, "Go get 'em Heather. You're a good telemarketer. Fair enough? Say, fair enough?" Rather than encouraging me as I'm sure Dave was intending to do, it only got me more flustered. So someone would be telling me that they had Type 1 diabetes and I would respond stupidly with, "Fair enough?" Eventually Dave calmed down about that and now he just offers advice and direction when I specifically ask for it.

I sometimes feel like I am Dave's life coach. He is dating this 28-yr-old girl who has a baby, several drug addictions, and like 5 other boyfriends. He's broken up with her about a hundred times, but somehow he keeps getting back together with her and buying her new clothes, food, baby diapers, etc. He's convinced that she doesn't really like him, she's just using him for his money, but for some reason he answers the phone when she calls. She's very white trash, from the sound of it. One time when Dave broke up with her he did it by emailing her a poem called "Heart's Door." Every time he used the phrase "Heart's door" in it, he had gone through and made each letter a different color. He read it to me just before he clicked send, beaming the whole time. So my job, whenever Dave talks about this girl, is to tell him how bad for him she is. I remind him that they are broken up. I tell him to stop buying her things. I tell him not to answer his phone when she calls, wanting him to take her shopping. Dave's job, as it turns out, is to get back together with his girl whenever possible and then report to me how stupid he is being.

I am also Dave's diet counselor. The only thing he likes talking about as much as politics is his garden. He is very proud of his zucchinis, corn, peppers, and carrots. He's trying to eat healthily for his diet, and you would think that with such an enormous amount of pride in his garden this would be a piece of (metaphorical) cake. But somehow, the drive-through worker at the local McDonalds still recognizes Dave on sight....so that's how his diet is going. However, a few days ago, Dave informed me that he's stopped gorging and he only ate half a pizza and two hamburgers the night before. So no need to worry.

So that's Dave. Then there's Veronica. She is the secretary and, really, she's in charge of a lot that goes on around here. She has bright red hair, her own office, a jar labeled "Prozac" that she keeps filled with chocolates, and a deep-seated, unadulterated hatred for Dave. He kind of bumbles around, and his wide eyes and sloppy manner combined with his loud, irrelevant comments create a person that Veronica can barely bring herself to be civil to. Every word that she directs at Dave is biting and acidic. She picks on everything from his grammar, to his food, to his work ethic, to his social life. When Veronica talks to me on the other hand, she has always been very nice. When I started working here, she introduced herself and offered a standing invitation to her Prozac jar. Now our interaction is limited to when she gives me checks, I enter numbers into her computer for the Do Not Call list, or she's yelling at Dave and she looks to me for agreement. I think that Veronica has a sad life and she takes it out on Dave because she doesn't respect him. But she can be so nice when she likes you.

So even though Veronica is in charge of.....um everything, technically, Steve is the boss. He is the nicest boss you could ask for. He has never asked me anything about my erratic hours. He doesn't say much and I only see him when I come in on Thursdays, but he has alwas been pleasant and I think his even temper is good for the office.

The agents who actually go out and try to sell insurance will pop in occasionally and it is always nice to meet them, I think. When I meet a grouchy agent, I just don't make as many calls for them. When I meet a nice agent, I loveee making calls for them. It's very simple with me. Sharon is my favorite. She is this 50 or 60-something black woman who is an aMAZing sales rep. She could sell hymn books to an Atheist, I'm sure of it. She is super-knowledgable about the insurance and whenever she talks to me after going to an appointment I set up for her, she tells me what a great job I'm doing. So whenever I get to pick the agent I give an appointment to, I almost always pick Sharon.

Sue comes in every Thursday morning and she makes everything so much fun. When I first met her I thought she was mayyybe in her 30's at the oldest, but then she said that her favorite age was 29, and she has a teenage son. Her face just looks very young. She is super-tan, super-toned, and super-funny. She is the smoother-outer when Dave and Veronica get into a tussle. She will come and make a joke about Dave (usually about his weight) that makes both Veronica and Dave laugh and then they'll each go back to work. My first time meeting Sue was when Lizzie still worked here, and she was telling us how much she loved the feeling of being naked. It was an interesting first impression, to say the least.

Anyway I really should be getting back to work. If that's what you want to call this.

Kelly............yap :) this one's for you!

I just got home from a most fabulous girls' night with my favorite girls in the whole world: my sisters! We went to see The Proposal and then did a little shopping at the mall. I lovvved. The Proposal. It was so funny and even though I didn't think Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds had super-good chemistry, it's actually like one of my new favorite movies now. I also love my new purchases! We saw one little sign for a sale at 5.7.9. and we walked in to check it out, and all of a sudden, it was like an explosion of sales! So of course I had to buy two necklaces, a dress, and two shirts. Actually, we all spent an admirable amount in our excitement.

I would just like to take this moment to blog about Kelly. She was reading my blog the other day and noted, a little bit distressed, that she wasn't mentioned at all in my blog about things that make me happy. So I told her I would write a blog all for her :)

I don't think it's any secret that Kelly and I are really close. In fact, she is my best friend in the whole world. I think we are very complementary together! For example, I love driving. Kelly hates driving. So whenever we go anywhere together, it's pretty much a given that I will be the driver.

But besides just driving, our personalities mesh really well together. We genuinely enjoy one another's company, so we always have fun when we're together. We have so many inside jokes and since we've known each other our whole lives, we have so many stories and little things we can laugh about. I always think it's so much fun to go on double dates with Kelly because that way I know I will have fun, no matter what.

Kelly is the nicest older sister a girl could ask for. Or a boy, for that matter, in my brothers' case. Sometimes, I kinddd of feel like I am the older sister, just because Kelly is so easy-going and she's willing to let me make decisions on things like, where we should live next year, how we should spend the weekend, things like that. I mean she'll totally plan things when she sees something she really wants to do, but for the most part she will just happily go along with whatever I want. So sometimes it feels like I'm older. But at the end of the day, it is obvious to me that Kelly is the oldest.

All throughout my life, Kelly has been a great example for me to follow. I watched her go to kindergarten first, then go to middle school, go to girl's camp, go to dances, start high school, graduate high school, and then move out and go to a college 2,000 miles away. We're only 16 months apart, so I've been close behind her all along, but this situation has always suited me. I love knowing that whatever I'm about to do, Kelly has already done it. I have been watching her for nearly 19 years, and having someone one step ahead of me at all times has made a huge difference. Just knowing what is about to happen, from the point of view of the one person who knows me best of anyone else in the whole world, is something I am immensely grateful for.

I remember one year when we were at Girl's Camp together and for one of the activities with the young women in our ward, we passed around this rock, and then everyone said what they liked about the person holding the rock. When I was holding the rock, Kelly said something like this: "Well I love Heather because I think she's really nice, she's like the nicest sister, and I like talking to her.....and that's all I'm going to say because I don't want to start crying." Which I thought was a joke at the time. But it actually wasn't, because then when I started saying what I loved about Kelly, I started crying. We had always been best friends, but I guess actually trying to put into words how much I appreciated her made me realize how much I really did.

I can remember only a handful of times that Kelly and I have fought in my life. Looking back, one of them was actually really humorous. We were little, probably like 10 and 11, and it was bedtime. "Bedtime" meaning "bonding time!" We used to talk for literally hours when we should have been sleeping, about absolutely everything. We got in trouble countless times for talking too long and laughing too loudly hours after we had been put in bed. For some reason, tonight, we got in some little argument, and one of us....probably me.....got mad at the other and poured water on them and then stormed back across the room and into their own bed. Of course this escalated and got a little out of hand. What started out as a little sprinkling of water turned into chunks of ice being thrown on beds, then whole glasses of water, and finally I found myself marching determinedly into our room with a huge pitcher of water, past the bathroom where I could hear Kelly filling up her newest container with water from the faucet in there, and dumped the whole pitcher of water on her bed. Feeling some sort of sick satisfaction at myself for this horrendously bratty act, I stood by my bed, wringing water out of my night shirt and waiting to defend my own bed against Kelly, the obvious villain. Before Kelly could extact her revenge on me, Mom intervened. I heard the water in the bathroom snap off in a distinctly un-Kelly like fashion. I can remember how my heart jumped to my throat as I crashed down on my bed and scrambled to get under my covers. I frantically squeezed my eyes shut just as I heard Kelly come skittering into the room and dive into her own bed. I heard a small gasp of surprise and the squish of her soaking-wet matress, and then I heard my mom say, in her meanest, hoarsest voice, "It is bedtime. I am trying to sleep. If I hear another word out of either of you, if I hear a trickle of water for the rest of the night, I'm going to come in, and I'm gonna make you take a cold shower. Go to sleep." Then she left. When we finally worked up the courage to talk again, it was in our quietest voices possible, and I was standing next to Kelly, helping her flip her matress over so she could sleep on a dry bed. I think we probably ended up going to sleep that night pretty quickly after Mom's terrifying threat, but I have no doubt that the next night we were back to our old tricks again. Although it was a few months before we had water in the bedroom again.

I have always been able to talk to Kelly about absolutely everything. At BYU this year, I remember her calling me one night at like 11 so we could figure out what time we would have lunch together the next day, or something like that, and we ended up talking on the phone for about 2 hours. We see each other every day at college, but somehow we still had so much to say to each other.

Another time, we met up for lunch and both of us had so much to talk about. We had about 15 minutes before Kelly had to go to her class. In that time we had to eat and discuss everything that had happened over the weekend and everything that was coming up. It was a very difficult task we had ahead of us, but we were determined to rise to the challenge! So for 15 minutes, we talked back and forth as fast as we possibly could. We had made up a list of things we needed to discuss, and we would yell out one of the items on our list, babble about it for about 2 minutes, and then yell out the next item. While one person was talking, the other person was frantically eating and trying to process everything the other person was saying. It was a little draining, admittedly, but we talked about everything we needed to and Kelly was on time to her class.

One of my favorite games to play with Kelly is the "What if I smiled like this?" game. Origin: unknown. It's very simple: one person just says, "What if I smiled like this?" and then twists their face into the most grotesque, ridiculous smile they can muster. Then the other person tries to match it. The smiles evolve, and the game would not be complete without head rolls and shoulder shrugs in all the appropriate places. It isn't a competition. No one is the winner or the loser. Showing one's teeth is optional.

I am fiercely protective of Kelly, and she of me. One time at the beginning of my freshman year at BYU, I went to a sports event and met up with some friends I hadn't seen in awhile. The company and the game turned out to be devastatingly less than I had expected them to be, and I left in the middle of it, fuming. Kelly had been planning to meet up with me there with some of her friends, and we ran into each other just outside the stadium. I guess I was just feeling stressed by the newness and disappointment of everything, and when I saw Kelly and started to tell her what had happened, I almost started crying, I was so upset. Kelly listened to my pitiful little tale, gauged my level of distress, and asked me if I would go back in the game with her, promising that she would take care of everything. I told her I didn't want to go and that I would just see her later. She made sure I got to my ride and then walked resolutely into the stadium where she found my friends and told them exactly what she thought of their behavior.

I think one of the things that makes me more mad than anything else is when I find out that someone has been talking about Kelly, or being mean to her. Furthermore, when people mistreat her, specifically boys, I will fondly nurture a personal vendetta against that person. I will think of the stories Kelly told me about things they said, or did, and I will spend time considering what I could say to them. It seriously makes me so mad. I think I spend more time thinking about how mad I feel at the people who are mean to Kelly than I spend thinking about the people who are mean to me. When people are mean to me, I typically will just want to talk about it and then get it out of my system that way. When people are mean to Kelly, I mull over the situation and work up this indignation until I am more upset about the whole thing than she is. I wonder if, maybe, this is because Kelly doesn't really get mad, so I feel like I need to compensate for her apathy with however much annoyance I think the situation warrants.

When I see people who aren't really friends with their sisters, I honestly feel sorry for them. I used to wish that I had an older brother, one who could be protective of me and have hot friends and tell me what guys were thinking when I got confused. But ohmygosh! I adore Kelly and I wouldn't trade her for anyyything!

We have way too much fun.

We laugh way too hard.

We have way too many good memories.

We share way too many clothes.

and I love her way too much.

Olive juice <3>

My Recipe for Happiness

I had the best. Day ever yesterday. Looking back on it, it was a pretty mediocre day. But I felt so insatiably happy for almost every single second of it. Therefore, I am now going to compose a list of all the things that happened yesterday that made me happy. I figure if I do this, I will be able to pinpoint all of the things that make me most happy and then it'll be a little like I've discovered my own personal recipe for happiness!

When I was a senior in high school, I did a year-long research project on Abraham Maslow's theory, which basically states that there are 5 different categories of needs, and if a person has all of their needs met in one category, they will move on to the next level and try to have those needs met. From the most basic needs on up, the categories are: physiological (having enough to eat and drink and enough time to sleep, etc.), safety (having stability in your life and routine), emotional (gaining the approval and acceptance of others), esteem (feeling good about yourself), and self-actualization (doing things just because you want to do them, not because you need to for any reason). I am going to put everything happy from yesterday in one of these categories just to see if all of my needs were met.

1. I got an email from Jake! Of courseee this made me happy. So, okay, I'm going to put this under two categories: safety and emotional. (Safety isn't really as drastic as it sounds. I just get an email every Wednesday so it's apart of my routine, so every week that I get an email, the security I feel in that routine is reinforced.) So okay, those needs were met.

2. Owen took a long nap. Which is always so nice. Poor Owen, he had a huge doctor's appointment earlier this week and they gave him an anesthesia to put him down for whatever tests they had to do. He came back all loopy and tired and he hasn't been hungry since then. I've tried feeding him throughout the day but he has only eaten a few puffs, a couple handfuls of cheerios, and about a jars worth of baby food from me from Monday afternoon to Wednesday evening. Aside from being sluggish on Monday, he has been happy and alert and hasn't seemed to wantt food, although he has started drinking juice and milk like a champ. Anyway this isn't a doctor's report, so back to his long nap. I think this belongs under physiological. Since Owen's naptime is my naptime :-) and I need my sleep. Like, holy cow. Sometimes my day revolves around naptime a little bit.

3. I got a letter from Jake!!! This never happens on Wednesday! He only writes me on P-day, so I get an email and then the letter usually arrives on either Friday or Saturday. Occasionally it'll be really late and arrive on Monday, but typically, I only hear from him two days a week. I guess this would go in the emotional category, but I just want to say it's a surprise. Surprises make me happy.

4. Winnie texted me and told me a really funny story. I don't think she thought it was as funny as I did. But I laughed when I read her txt. It didn't have anything to do with me, but I'm going to say that belongs in the esteem category. Just because when your only contact with people for several hours of the day is the two kids you babysit, it's nice to know that you still have friends, and it's easy to know that when they txt you random little tidbits that you thoroughly enjoy.

5. I had a, ehm, fantasticcc day at telemarketing. After nannying I went home, got dressed in nicer clothes, ate dinner, and drove down to telemarketing. I called lots of people and I set up two good appointments, and even though this sounds pretty boring, when I make appointments, I feel great. I get paid hourly and by appointment, and when I don't make any appointments, I feel incompetent and undeserving of the money I am paid just to be there. I guess I will say that this goes under the category of esteem, because I would get paid whether I made the appointments or not, but I feel better about myself because I did make them.

6. I shaved my legs. Today is Thursday and I do telemarketing all day on Thursdays, so I have to dress up. Otherwise it's just me and Dave in the office and I hate dressing up just for Dave. Especially since none of the customers can see me...I mean, I'm talking to them over the phone. But on Thursday, I see my boss, and the agents come in and out, and I have to look professional. I like to wear skirts on Thursdays, so I had to shave my legs. I like having a reason to dress up and look nice. This summer has been kind of frustrating in that way because I am nannying all day, and Malan and Owen don't care what I look like, so why should I care? Then I go to telemarketing, and I feel about this much need to impress Dave. So the only times I really try to make myself look nice are when I hang out with people my age, which is every Sunday and random days throughout the week. Anyway, my legs. I did a really good job this time. When I was done I watched Rush Hour with my sisters and TJ (a frequent visitor now) and I just kept touching my legs the whole time because they were so smooth haha :) This will probably go in the esteem category. No one else really cared. Just me.

7. I exercised. It was like midnight, and I found myself getting ready for bed. Deciding quickly that this was entirely too early, and noting that Kelly was still not ready herself, I started doing some little exercises in the living room. Just, you know, toe touches, and squats, and a few crunches, and some plies. I really like exercising. I feel sore today, which I love! I just feel like soreness validates what I did. Maybe this goes under physiological needs, since everyone needs to exercise, but it could also be esteem. I feel better about myself when I exercise.

8. I ate Belgian waffles with syrup and cool whip, standing on the table bench in my kitchen at midnight. I just wanted to. I was a little hungry, but my main motivation for doing that was because I just thought they would be good and I wanted to do it. The minutes I spent in that kitchen I will definitely classify as self-actualization.

Nicole and Julie joined me in the kitchen and we just chatted and pranced around, eating and laughing, just being sisters. True to form, Dad came in to put an end to all the nonsense going on in his house. He told Nicole and Julie that they had to go to bed because they slept in until 1:00 in the afternoon today and that was unacceptable and blablabla. Right when he said this, they both earnestly protested, "I was up at 9:30....." to which my poor father had no response. Which, I'm assuming, means it was true, but he just didn't want to say so. His point still stood! He wanted them in bed. I guess we were all feeling really silly after watching Rush Hour, and when Dad turned to Julie to reprimand her for her sleeping habits, Nicole suddenly shouted, "Huh-DAD!" and then started laughing uproariously. Apparently when she did this my dad jumped, startled, and then tried hastily to regain his composure. Unfortunately for him it was too late. There in the kitchen stood a ruffled and slightly disoriented father, surrounded by three daughters who all found him hilarious rather than intimidating as he might have hoped.

As I joined in the laughter, a piece of Belgian waffle caught just the right way in my throat and I kind of started choking. I still thought the whole situation was quite funny, but instead of laughing, I found myself coughing and stuggling to catch my breath again. I guess choking isn't that big a deal in my family because the most anyone did to help me was when my dad put down the watch he was holding in case I would need to have the Heimlich maneuver performed on me. Julie and Nicole were still cracking up laughing and this only made it more funny. Julie, who had sat down on the floor because she was laughing too hard, looked up at me and kindly demonstrated the universal sign for choking and suggested that I use it if I felt like I really was in an emergency situation. Nicole started blaming Dad for my current state, but she was still more helpful than him, in my opinion; all the time that I was choking, Dad watched my face with interest as it change colors and made comments like, "Whelp, she's choking." "Look at that, now that's what happens when you eat Belgian waffles at midnight on the kitchen table bench." "It's all funny until someone starts choking." "Julie, you should stand up off the floor." "She might have gotten a piece of Belgian waffle stuck in her throat." "Now you know you should listen to your daddy, see what happens when you don't?" etc.

My dad has terrible bedside manner. I guess I've known this all my life--when one of us was being born, he brazenly asked the doctor where an outlet was so he could plug in his laptop and finish up some work. When I went in for a surgery on my ear when I was 7 years old, he off-handedly asked the nurses where another bed was so he could get some sleep while I was having the procedure done. I remember another time, when we were on vacation in Florida, and I threw up suddenly after having drinken like 2 1/2 bottles of water. (Ohmy, thattt's another story.) While I sat miserably outside the car, trying to recover, my dad came over and started questioning me on what I thought it could be that triggered my sudden sickness. I don't recall him asking how I felt now, but whatever. He's still the best daddy.

So in conclusion, here are the things that make me happy:
1. Jake makes me happy. Even when he is 2,000 miles away, he still makes me happy.
2. Naps make me happy.
3. Surprises make me happy.
4. Also mail. Mail in general makes me happy.
5. Professional success makes me happy.
6. Friends make me happy.
7. Looking nice, or feeling like I do, makes me happy.
8. Belgian waffles make me happy.
9. My sisters make me happy.
10. Laughing until I choke makes me reallyy happy :-)

A comfortable spot

That's where I am right now. I feel very content with life in general. School will be starting in less than a month, which is so exciting, but I'm happy to have that month, too.


Before I came home I fully anticipated this summer being the worst summer OF my life. During March I started getting really worried, just thinking about how terrible it was going to be, and in April I had pretty much worked myself up into a frenzy about it. And when I came home, let's be honest, May sucked. ughh. I was very annoyed to be home. I just wanted to be back in Utah. I couldn't wait for school to start again. But in June, a couple things happened that I think made all the difference.


That is when I got my nannying job and my telemarketing job, and suddenly I started doing much better. I really consider myself very blessed to have these jobs. As much as I sometimes hate telemarketing, it is a good job for me. I choose my own hours, which is pretty much whenever I'm not nannying. So I have only been getting in like five hours of telemarketing a week....which really, how many places would actually think that's acceptable, for an employee to come in 5 hours a week? And admittedly it gets pretty boring, and it's kind of mind-numbing when I don't talk to anyone for a few hours, but it isn't super-strenuous and I actually do enjoy it when I make appointments.

I also consider it a blessing that I am working for Merriweather this summer. Working the Taylor Swift concert honestly made it all worth it! I love how disposable I am there because I don't need to work when I don't want to, but if I want to work a concert I'm totally welcome to.

And then of course there's piano, which I teach to my across-the-street neighbor, my little brothers and sisters, and my mom. We will be having a little piano recital at the end of the summer. I really should be more consistent at teaching everyone, every week but believe it or not, I think it's harder when you live with your students. Anyway my point is I'm excited for the recital because I don't know when I'm going to teach piano next. I'm planning to stay in Provo next summer and every summer from now on, so if all goes well with that, this could be the last recital I organize in a long time. Which I'm kind of okay with, but it's still a nice little way to end my last summer at home, I think.

Another thing that happened in June is Jake going into the MTC. The weeks leading up to his first day there were prettyy terrible. I just felt distraught and achy. But I am absolutely amazed by how happy I have felt since he's been in the MTC. I read his letters and I can tell he is a fantastic missionary. I know that he is exactly where he is supposed to be and knowing that makes me so happy. I never imagined that I would be able to feel this much happiness from something that is honestly the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I thought that it would be so so hard, and I would just feel comforted knowing, deep down, that Jake is doing something that we both believe in, but that's not really the case. I really cannot bring myself to feel sad when I think of him. I know this is such a great blessing and I am so grateful for it.

So I've gotten into a routine that I really really like. I wake up, I go to nannying. At some point I usually take a nap while I'm there. Then I either go home or I go to telemarketing, depending on the day. During my free time, I write letters, scrapbook, talk to my sisters, read, work out, or facebook. On Saturday, I always figure out something fun to do. On Sunday, the pesticide boys come over for dinner. I love Sunday dinner. Now Joshua and Troy are gone :-( but we still have Jordan and TJ!

I guess technically, I work more than 60 hrs a week. Holy crap I just now took the time to calculate that....and it sounds like so much but it doesn't feel like it! Especially since I have naptime during the week and Saturday and Sunday off :-) Anyway, I need this last month at home. I just figured out all my money stuff and I am so excited because this summer I'll be earning enough money to pay my tuition for fall, winter, and spring term. I'm planning on getting a job during the school year anyway, so that works out perfectly! But, I do still need to work this last month.

At the same time, while I'm enjoying this summer, I am excited for school. I love BYU more than I can even express. I love my friends out there. I am thrilleddd that I get to go there and I'm so excited for the classes I've signed up for for next semester. So when the summer ends, I'll probably feel a little sad, but I'll get over it pretty quickly I think.

And that is why I'm in such a comfortable spot now. I love where I am. I am happy to be going at the pace that life is going.

In other news, Troy and Joshua are gone....whattt??? They left on Wednesday morning :-( It was a sad day for all. All the boys in the Sunday dinner crew came over to our house for a Belgian waffle breakfast at 7 am and then I headed off to nannying. I guess I wasn't too too sad because we decided that we (Kelly, me, Joshua, and Troy) are going to have regular lunches when we are out at college. They're going to LDSBC so we won't be able to take any classes together, but we are determineddd to have lunches. So I'm excited.

Last night I witnessed something in my home that I think does a splendid job of describing how things work in my family. Everyone was gathered downstairs in the basement for scriptures and prayer and all was going well. Anyone looking in might have mistaken us for a normal family, calmly reading the scriptures together. Then all of a sudden, my dad made some comment involving a hippo, and that was the cue for Nicole to burst into singing "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." Everyone caught the spirit and she successfully led the whole family in a rousing rendition that was not even cut short by our dad. (I still don't really know why. He is usually staunchly opposed to such displays of musical talent disrupting his scripture study. But whatever, apparently not tonight.) No one so much as batted an eyelash when Nicole started singing. And when the chorus finished up, we resumed our scripture study as though everything was normal.

And I guess, in my family, maybe everything was :)

Hello, Utah!

So I've been back from the family reunion for about a week at this point. It was a great vacation!!!

Highlights:

1. The Oquirrh temple openhouse. I love temple openhouses like more than I can even say. I think that every temple is like the prettiest place in the world and I love just walking through the temple. Unfortunately, we drove to the Jordan River temple so we were almost an hour late to the time on our ticket, but they let us in anyway.

2. Dinner at Shoots. After the openhouse we met up with Winnie and had dinner at Shoots, where she works. It was so delicious and we had a lot of fun just visiting with each other.

3. Seeing the Crafts! After dinner we got to go visit Jake's family and it was so much funn to see them all again. We were sitting inside just chatting for a while and then we decided to go on a walk to visit the Cooks, too. We made it about 4 houses before we stopped in to see the Lees. Jordan Lee was one of Kelly's roommates her freshman year and they were all sitting outside so we stopped there and talked for a while. Then it turned into kind of a block party as other neighbors showed up. I met Jake's old piano teacher who is now the YW president, held someone's newborn baby, and watched two men race their scooters up the street and back. I love the whole atmosphere of this little neighborhood. Everyone knew everyone else and everyone was super-friendly and fun. It's the kind of neighborhood I want to live in when I grow up. Michelle Cook was at a meeting I guess so we didn't end up going to their house but just as we were about to leave from the Crafts, Michelle drove up. I was really excited to see her, too. Apparently Jake hasn't been sending his family pictures, so I showed them the ones he sent to me and then it was really time to go.

4. Back to BYU! Kelly and I stayed with her old roommates on Thursday night and in the morning we met up with the rest of the family at BYU and we showed them all around. It was fun to be back on campus again. I seriously love BYU, it is one of my favorite places in the world.

5. The Alpine Coaster. Friday was a little bit of driving, as we had to get from Provo to Midway, where the resort was that we were staying at (the Homestead Resort). Before getting to the resort we stopped at this thing called the Alpine Coaster which was really fun.

6. Family BBQ. I guess this is what really kicked off the family reunion because we all met up at this point in Midway for the BBQ. The food was way good and the company was too :) My favorite part was probbbbably when I put on my big gray sunglasses and Nick Poole called me a bug and made jokes about them for like 5 minutes straight. It was sO funny.

7. Meeting Bo. Kelly and I decided to go find the other sisters and Cousin Haleigh at the pool, but no one was answering their phones, and we didn't know where the pool was, so we found ourselves wandering kind of aimlessly along the road. We did manage to find the Homestead registration office, and we saw a worker replacing lightbulbs along the walkway. We asked him if he knew where Bigler Road was, since that's where we were staying, but he didn't know. He had a golfcart and he offered to drive us up to the Registration Center where someone for sure would know where we were staying. When we started talking to him, asking for directions, I had kind of a funny chain of thoughts go through my head. I thought, I know it's late at night, and maybe I shouldn't be asking a total stranger for directions, but here's why I'm going to. This is Utah. Automatically I trust people more when I am in Utah. He works here, so he's obviously not thatt bad, and he only has a golf cart. So what's he going to do, throw us both in the golf cart and go puttering down the road with us to his secret hideout in Midway, Utah? Plus, I was feeling a little annoyed that no one was answering their phones, and I was really supposed to be dancing the night away at Studio 600 with Winnie and Kelly, so if he did choose to zoom off with us in his golf cart, I would kindd of be okay with it. That was my assessment of the risk factor involved in asking this man for directions. At any rate, we got in his golf cart and went up to the office. Bo was a carpenter but there was no work for carpenters anymore, so he had taken the job as a fixer-upper kind of guy at the Homestead Resort in March or so. He said he hated it, but he was very pleasant to us and I liked him a lot. He was smoking a cigarette when we first approached him and as he thought about what we asked he dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his toe. "You girls probably hate cigarettes, disgusting things," he said. I do hate cigarettes but we just laughed when he said that. At the registration office they remembered us and told Bo where to take us. The approximately 2 minutes that it took to drive to our place in the golf cart were punctuated by Bo's half-serious jokes about how he was surely going to crash and kill us all. (The headlights were out and he was holding up a pen light to show the way. But I mean, we were going like 20mph, and I don't think Kelly was anymore worried than I was about crashing.

8. The pool. We went to the pool on the resort several times during our stay. The first time was Saturday day. Practically the whole family was there. I kind of feel uneasy every time I'm in a public pool, just thinking about all the germs floating around in the water, and I wonder if maybe that is why I take so long to get all the way in the water. (I used to think it was because my body just has to get used to the cold water but now I am wondering if it's the germs I keep thinking about.) Regardless, we all had a lot of fun in the hot tub, outdoor pool, and indoor pool.

9. Picture time. We left the pool about 3 hours before it was time to take family pictures to give ourselves enough time to get ready. Uncle Brett made fun of us as we were leaving, saying, "Oh, you better hurry, don't want to be late" etc. but in typical Connor fashion, we came traipsing into the chosen area for pictures slightly late...but prettyy! and handsome. When we weren't taking pictures the girl cousins were collaborating on and practicing the Single Ladies dance for the Talent Show.

10. Luau dinner and talent show. Omg I have never had such good sweet potatoes in my lifeee. The food was all so delicious, provided by the Homestead resort. There was a slideshow going through the dinner in honor of Grandma and Grandpa Hammer (this whole reunion was for their 50th wedding anniversary) and after everyone was done eating we had some time to practice for the talent show. The Connor kids all did a little dance to "I Wanna Talk About Me" which we have actually been trying to get Joseph to agree to doing for like his whole entire life. So this was kinddd of a big deal. Then there was the girl cousin's dance to Single Ladies....we just did the first minute or so and not the real choreography but it was still fun. Grandma and Grandpa gave speeches following the talent show which were very funny and tender. Another of my favorite parts of the show was when Beth told a story about Grandma. She said that the first time she met her was shortly after she had married Nick. Grandma looked her in the eye and very seriously said, "Beth, you have never made love until you have made love in the back of a car." That just showes what kind of relatives I have, I guess :) Gotta love them. Another thing that was funny was that Kelly had one of her FHE brothers, Jordan, come sing "Lucky" by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat (it sounded wayy good) and of course he was teased mercilessly by our family, even though there is about as much nothing going on between Kelly and Jordan as there is between Kelly and one of our cousins. (Kelly I REALLLYYY want to make a joke here but I won't. Just because I'm the best sister ever.) Anyway so they did their number and then we did the girl cousins number of All the Single Ladies and afterwards Cousin Ammon who was MCing the whole event goes, "Do you hear that, Jordan? You better put a ring on it!" And I like, dieddd laughing. I thought it was the best joke of the night. I'm not sure Jordan felt the same way though....oh well!

11. Seeing Christine and Winnie! On Sunday we went to church (Kelly and I sat next to a UofU basketball player in Sunday School =D) and then it was straight to the pool. The weather was perfect for tanning but apparently my skin missed the memo and sadly I am just as white as ever. Christine and Winnie came up to visit and it was great to see them. We talked and tanned and then had dinner with the rest of the family.

12. Movie night! Kari and Haleigh came over for a girl's night movie night complete with bing cherries, triscuit crackers, flip sides, and strawberries. We pushed the beds in the girls room together and all piled on to watch The Dark Knight.

13. The crater. At the Homestead Resort there's this crater that is some sort of natural hot spring. You take this little tiny trail and you end up in this kind of underground pool. They just put in a walkway and a ladder into the water and people can go swimming there. Apparently there are only 2 of these in the world and only one of them in the US. We didn't get to go swimming there, we just went in and saw it for like a second, took a few pictures, and then we had to leave. My favorite part of this was actually when we were walking up to the crater after checking out of the resort. My dad was walking ahead of Kelly, Julie, Sarah and I and was crackingg uppp. He would say a few words, then crack up laughing again. No one could hear what he was saying but just watching him laugh at his own joke so hard made all of us laugh, too. (About an hour later, when we asked about it, we learned that he was laughing because he kept thinking about Joseph's shoes. Earlier this morning, Joseph had lost his shoes and he was now sporting his black Sunday shoes with his shorts and t-shirt. While we were walking to the crater my dad couldn't stop laughing as he thought about what a dork Joseph was going to look like when we went through security at the airport, etc.

14. Cookie-ice-cream exchange. When we checked out of the resort, they gave us enough cookies for all the kids to have one. Nicole, Joseph, Jacob, and my mom were still back at the resort so Kelly, Julie, Sarah and I were holding onto the cookies for the others and we kept wanting to eat their cookie. If we ate both cookies, they would never know we had had cookies in the first place. Then we thought about maybe being nice and giving them each a half of a cookie and saying they had only given us enough for ourselves and then we'd look all benevolent and generous when we gave them their half of the cookie. But dad was all, that wouldn't be right, etc., so he took the cookies so we couldn't eat them. When we were driving back towards the airport, following my mom's car, they suddenly pulled over, Joseph got out out, and came running back to our car with ice cream for all of us. Then we felt really glad that we had cookies to give to them!

15. Seeing Jamie, Aaron, and baby. On the way to the airport we stopped by Orem to see Jamie and Aaron and baby James. We only got to stay for about 20 minutes before we had to get to the airport but it was really nice to see them again. They are doing well and their baby is beauuutiful, he's so cute and sweet.

16. The actual flight home. I don't really know if anyone else in the family would consider this a highlight, but it was one of the most pleasant flights I have ever been on, personally. As a general rule, I hate flying. Every time I've flown I have felt like my head is about to explode. When my ears pop it hurts so bad that the flight is a totally miserable experience, even though I'm sure the flight attendants are funny and sweet and the snacks are yummy and the turbulence is minimal. But I've really gotten better at flying recently--it doesn't hurt so badly anymore and I actually quite enjoy looking out the window as we fly now--so I think it must be because I just wasn't used to it. I took my first flight in February 07 but until I went to college last fall I hadn't flown again since that time. Every time I fly it gets a little bit better. I guess my ears are just getting used to the pressure or something? Whatever the reason, this flight was lovely for me and kind of disastrous for the rest of the family. Kelly left her backpack with her laptop and cell phone charger at the resort. Julie threw away her boarding pass right before we were supposed to board (luckily my dad had printed out two for each of us in a stroke of genius foresight) so that particular disaster was averted. We had to switch planes in St. Louis and on the flight to St. Louis, Sarah managed to spill her burning-hot hot chocolate all over herself, Nicole spilled her water all over Julie, Julie broke her flipflop, and the brothers misplaced the dvd player, all the dvds, and both gameboys. Whereas Nicole's spill on Julie resulted only in mild discomfort, Sarah's spill resulted in a ruined pair of pants, burned legs, and a scream that the people we were flying above probably heard. I'm sure the flight attendants lovvved us on this flight. When we got off the plane, Sarah was wearing a stained shirt and a hoodie zipped up around her legs and tied in front and Julie was stumbling around with no shoes on. Of course, the souvenir stores in the airport had nothing by way of clothing either of them, so we cheerfully boarded the plane back to MD. This was a shorter flight, and less eventful, but when we got out at the airport, we discovered that the boys and sarah each had a bag missing. All in all, it wasn't exactly ideal, but it seems that everything went smoothly for me. Maybe ironically?

In conclusion. I had a really wonderful time on this vacation! I love meeting up with people I haven't seen in a while and I love my family. They are so cute and dear and even with all their silly little quirks that I'm sometimes shocked by, at the end of the day, I am absolutelyy one of them, and I couldn't be happier if I was anyone else.

Hummmumumumumm, Utah, here I come!

I am really really ridiculous excited to be going to Utah in a few days. We're having a family reunion with my mom's side and I just cannot wait. Of course I am excited for all the normal things associated with any family reunion....seeing the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, taking family pictures, etc. But here is a short list of other things I am excited for:

1. The Oaker temple openhouse. I am pretty sure I left my recommend in Utah with all the rest of my stuff, so I haven't been in so long. I used to go every Wednesday with Jake for about a month and a half, and I loved it. And I realize that going through an openhouse is totally different from actually going through and doing baptisms or whatever, but I'm still just so excited to see the temple and be inside one. This is pretty much the first thing we are doing when we land in UT on Thursday.

2. Horse-back riding? This may or may not happen, it just depends. If we do end up doing it, it will happen on Thursday after the temple openhouse. While we were discussing the logistics and where and when tonight at Family Night (which was another circus, in case anyone was wondering), Kelly said she would be fine with going and remarked that she was excited for the pictures. She then went on to say that every time an activity comes up, she bases how much she wants to do it on the number and quality of photo ops associated with said activity. This is pretty much how I am, too. We seriously love taking pictures, as you can probably tell from my facebook, on which I have like 1700 pictures of myself.

3. BYU tour. We are hoping to do this either after the temple or the horses. I lovvve BYU and I am so excited to be going back. And of course, I think it will be so fun to show all my brothers and sisters where I take classes and eat lunch with Kelly, etc.

4. Shoots. After the BYU tour, we will go to Winnie's restaurant, Shoots, for dinner. Hopefully. Timing may be an issue but I hope we can go!

5. Seeing Jake's family! Apparently the only time we will be able to see them is Thursday night after all the stuff I just listed. But I want to see them so bad. I like, lOVe this family. I keep thinking about how much fun I had when I visited them and everyone played cards or ate or whatever. I guess I just love the sociality that exists in their home if that makes sense. Plus I think it's cool how perfectly our families match up. Jake is my age, Mekell is Nicole's age, Cole is Joseph's age, Cade is Jacob's age, and Lilly is Sarah's age. So Kelly and Julie are the only people who don't match up with someone exactly but whatever that is still so cool!

6. The talent show. After many many many years of failed efforts to persuade him, Joseph has consented to lip-synch the song "I wanna talk about me" while the sisters all dance around behind him. How funny is that going to be. Seriously! He is the first boy after 4 girls, all of whom love to talk, so his whole life pretty much has consisted of a lot of listening to girl talk. All the girls, at least, are pretty pumped about this performance.

7. The pool. There is a pool and a hot tub where we are staying and i HAVE to get a tan during this vacation. I can't tan any other time because when I'm nannying, I'm usually inside, and when I'm outside, I have to stay in the shade because Owen has super-sensitive skin and he gets sunburned really easily. I guess I couldd tan on Saturdays but I typically just sleep in instead. So I have to go swimming and get a tan here.

8. Glow dance party!!!! Studio 600 heard we were coming and they got so excited they planned a party just for US. I haven't gone dancing since, like, December. I mean I kind of went in January to the White-out, but I didn't even get in. And when I went to the Traffic light dance on Center St. in February, I don't want to count that either because I was in a terrible mood and yes. So I'm pretty thrilled about this. I'm going with Winnie and Kelly and I guess whoever else and we are going to have an amaaaazing time. I'm seriously like about to pee my pants about this.

9. The tennis courts. I am not sure where they are, but my mom was saying they will be easily accessible to us. I am determined to learn how to play tennis because if I knew how to play I'm sure it would be so fun. I mean think about it. You just wear this cute little white skirt and a white polo and your tennis shoes and your ponytail and then you go play tennis! And you get a nice tan and they have suchh cute tennis rackets, with like pink handles and all, and I think that would be so fun. Plus it's good exercise.

10. The playgrounds. When my mom read this one during family night, I am pretty sure all of the sisters were thinking the same exact thing.....photo shoot! It's gonna be great.

So all in all, I am very excited about this weekend. However, there is one thing I am a little bit sad about. Jake's p-day is Wednesday, and I get a letter every Friday, so this week, I will be gone when my letter comes. Which I think is a little bit sad. But other than that, I really can hardly wait!