What a Blessing!

September 10

Wow! What a storm! First of all, I love rain and that was amazing.
(Also, the lightning was not too shabby)

Today, I was supposed to go running with Tabitha
& then probably watch Netflix at my house.
Our plans were interrupted when my uncle asked me to babysit.
I love my cousins.
They are all so cute and always have something funny to say.
Tabitha & I went running, but it was way earlier in the day,
and for significantly shorter amount of time.

I went to my cousin's house at 5 and around 7, I piled all the kiddos in my car to go pick up their brother from a party. It was raining pretty hard, so we ran to avoid getting soaked. Just as I started the car, we saw all the lights on the street go out.

POWER OUTAGE!

This would have been fine if I were at my house. I know where all the flash lights are at my house. Also, we had just locked all the doors with the intention of going in through the garage. Suddenly, it started raining harder and it became VERY difficult to see the road. We picked up Dall & headed back home to figure out how to get in. Luckily, one of the back doors was open, so we made it in. Safe and damp. Now to find lights. The kids didn't know where flashlights were off the top of their heads, so I asked them if they had any light-up toys. We used my cell phone to go upstairs to look. Dall found his Harry Potter wand. He used a "lumos charm" to help us find flashlights.

With flashlights in hand, we sat around on the couches down stairs
playing "Truth or Dare". The dares consisted of "run upstairs and sit in complete darkness for 30 seconds" and "run around outside in the rain". After the power had been out a while, I got a call from my mom. She said that the power was out at her house too and wanted to make sure we had found lights. My mom wasn't home when the power went out. She was out shopping with my sister. She was only gone for 15 minutes. When she came home, not only was the power out, but there was also half a tree where her car goes in the driveway. If she & I had been home, we both would have had to call insurance and be carless for a few days.

What a blessing it was that I got a random babysitting job on a Saturday night.

p.s. the power came back on just in time for the kids to go to bed. Another blessing because Ruthie was refusing to go to sleep without a night light.

The best of the Summer 2011 Pt. 2

Layover in Austin, catch up on what's "In Style",
chill with my unicorn, read Confessions of a Shopaholic.

July 13 - 19

New York (n) - Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.

New York was seriously the greatest part of my summer. I am officially a New York addict. But, as with every trip there were pros & cons. We'll start with my very short list of cons.

CONS

• New York smells a little bit like garbage.
• The apartment I stayed in had little to no internet access. 
• New York serves too much food, (it is delicious, but there is too much of it) which is great for presentation, but I could never finish a plate and I felt like a loser/picky eater.

PROS

• The temple. The set up for the temple was very cool. The temple itself is pretty small. It is within another building to block out the noise of the crazy hustle & bustle of New York.

Manhattan Temple

• Everybody in New York dresses cool. So, I had to buy cool clothes leading up to & even on the trip.

Cool guy on the subway had ALMOST the same shoes as me.

• New York has some of the most delicious food in the world. Including (but not limited to) an entire restaurant dedicated to Macaroni & Cheese. S'mac! I got the Alpine Mac & Cheese. Super yum.

S'mac!

Also, there is Serendipity 3. Where I got a Peanut Butter Frrrozen Hot Chocolate.

CANOLIS & BEN
My friend Ben was in New York for an internship. We hung out a few times to do cool things like eat cool food and go to Harry Potter 7.2 at midnight and New York-y stuff. In Little Italy, we found a cannoli stand that claimed to have the "Best Cannoli on Planer Earth". It looked pretty promising, and I was not disappointed. Ben had one too, so if you don't believe me, go ask him.

BAGELS & JEREMY
Ever since I decided to go to New York, I started consulting with my New York expert, Jeremy. He served his mission in The Big City, so he had some insight on a few things. Jeremy swore that I needed to have a bagel with lox. I was not really sure what I was signing up for when I agreed to it. Randomly, Jeremy ended up in New York with his buddy from work, Norm. He asked if we all could go out for bagels. Umm... OF COURSE! So, this is when I discovered what exactly a bagel with lox even is. Turns out it is Jewish food. Bagel & salmon. Was it good? yes. Was it breakfast food? not in soo many words. But, whatever.

The one & only Jeremy Pager and I eating bagels with lox

Still on the topic of food in New York. I found a piragua cart down the street from my apartment...

• The "I'm a Mormon" campaign is ALL over New York. It was very cool to walk around and see the ads on taxis and busses and bus stops and even a giant billboard in Times Square.

Anyway, I stayed in Harlem a block North of Central Park in an apartment that I found on NYC LDS Housing. Harlem was a "Cultural Experience". On Sunday, on my way to the subway to get to church a.... well, I guess we could call him a hoodlum... yeah. A hoodlum walked over to me and told me "Dang! You look beautiful!" "Really Beautiful". Flattered, and in shock that a random, semi-gangster looking guy approached me, I was slightly distracted on the subway and I missed my stop. The church building was cool. There were like 3 levels in the building and there was a Spanish Branch going on simultaneously with the Singles Ward on the floor below.

I went to the NBC Studio tour, which was awesome because I got to see where they film SNL. The stage is a lot smaller in person, but still super cool.

Like I said before, I went to the Harry Potter 7.2 movie on opening night at midnight, but what I didn't say was that it was a double feature with 7.1 at 9:00 and we had to go up like 3 sets of escalators. I met new friends! and we all shouted, "mischief managed" when the movie ended. Oh, Daniel Radcliff.

Speaking of Daniel Radcliff... he rocked in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I saw it in the Al Hirschfeld Theater. Even the bathroom was fancy.

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, I went to Ground Zero, and the MoMa, and Times Square, and Grand Central Station, and Magnolia Bakery (try the banana pudding), and to Central Park, and Toys R Us (which has a ferris wheel and a life-size Barbie dream house) and to FAO Schwarz to play on the Big Piano, and lots of shopping.

Overall, New York was the highlight of my summer. :)

The best/worst of the Summer 2011 Pt. 1

Ok, so here's how summer went down...
After a most laborious semester of slaving over projects for ART283 and losing artwork and flash drives, I looked forward to relaxing all Summer. (Because I deserved it, right?) I did work for 85% of the Summer. Here is what I did with the other 15%


April 29th-30th
The single's ward I joined in March went on a trip to the Snowflake Temple. We stayed at a cabin & had a blast. I planned on driving up by myself, but was thrilled to have 4 gentlemen join in on the trip. We all got to know each other almost too well. Once we made it to the cabin, we decided to have a friendly game of Phase 10, which quickly turned into "Truth or Phase 10". Basically, if you didn't get your set in during a round, you would have to tell the group something about yourself. (Mind you I was playing with all boys) Things got interesting quick, and what we didn't already know about each other from the drive up, we quickly learned from equal-opportunity-losing-of-rounds.


The next day we went to the temple and it was a wonderful experience. I got to do twice as many baptisms and no confirmations, to make up for one of the girls who only did confirmations. I love the temple!


May 20th-22nd

The Three Amigos

Rachel's family has some farm property up in Woodruff, Arizona. "Where is Woodruff?" you may be asking yourself. Well, to be honest I had no idea either. It is up by Snowflake. Next to nobody lives there, but we were excited to go "road tripping". 

Milking "Leche". What an appropriate name for a milking goat

Upon arrival, I was offered goat's milk. Who could turn that down? For the record it tastes just like regular milk, if it is really cold and you drink it really fast. The weekend was full of horse riding, goat milking, discovering a fake crater (I'm gullible), traveling "into town" (Holbrook), being scared to death of the dark and nocturnal animals flying at me, exploring a cemetery, delicious food and spotlighting.

Dead Rabbit

Spotlighting sounded like a fun idea - Drive around in a car in the dark and look for animals, namely, jack rabbits. Rachel left one detail out of this adventure. THE BOYS DRIVE AROUND WITH GUNS HANGING OUT THE WINDOWS TO KILL SAID ANIMALS.


Let me back up and say that there were 8 of us in a 6 seat truck. The driver, who will remain unnamed to protect his good name, took us to the middle of nowhere. He drove around in circles as fast as the car would allow and caused this huge dust cloud from the dirt as to make the already scary-dark evening more frightening. He seemed to know where he was going, so we let him take us to wherever he felt like. Many dead rabbits later, we called it an evening and shot at soda cans with a shotgun. Apparently, it is really difficult to miss and I am surprisingly good at the "missing the target" business. 


At the end of the weekend, Rachel, Jacob and I had a million inside jokes and Rachel's brother, Seth, was in on maybe 12 of them. He felt like he missed out on a bunch. Probably because he was online chatting with Asians. (He served his mission in Taiwan). Seth decided to be more social after this weekend. Which really helped as we got home and decided that we had so much fun that we NEEDED to do that again really soon... keep reading.


May 26th
My buddy Andy pretty much dared me to eat a twinkie wiener sandwich and told me he would take away my fun card if I didn't do it. Ladies & gentlemen... I am sad to say that I am still in possession of my "fun card"

Twinkies & hotdogs

Twinkie Wiener Sandwich

Mmmm delicious.... kinda
I ended up eating 2 of these bad boys.
Not my proudest moment

May 27th-30th

Lo, and behold. We did it. We planned an insane California trip in a week. We went to Knott's Berry Farm, Shopping, Church, and New Port Beach.


Rachel had some sweet connections so we got SUPER cheap hotel rooms. The second hotel we stayed at was gorgeous. Our view was to die for. 13th floor cityscape. I love cityscapes at night.


I feel that pictures explain best what happened. (by the way, this was the start of Jachel or Rachob, whichever you think sounds better, but it was still on the DL)

The Best of...

Me, Rachel & Jacob at Knott's Berry Farm

Me & Rachel wearing matching-ish swimsuits.
Cute? Yes. Planned? No.