B to the IRTHDAY

Oh my GOODNESS my B-day rocked. I always love birthdays, but for some reason this year was extra exceptional. I was just absolutely taken aback by how sweet everyone was. Linds took me to Bajios (one of our favorites) for lunch before I headed in to work, and it was so fun :) I just love hanging out with her! I got back to work and one of my friends surprised me with 25 balloons and two dozen roses. A little bit later Linds and the kids came back and visited me again which was so fun!

Roxy and Benits planned for everyone to meet at Carrabbas for dinner for me, and there ended up being like 25 people there. It was a blast. I seriously loved having all of my awesome friends around me. Afterwards we went to Roxies house and had treats, and just hung out, and a bunch of our other friends came to visit. It was so much fun. I must be pretty predictable because I walked away with about 5 cases of diet dr. pepper...I seriously can't thank my awesome friends and family enough. I had the greatest day, and I am constantly overwhelmed by how many great people I am blessed to have in my life. Here goes year 25!

year twentyfour

October 20, 2009. This is me on this exact day one year ago. Benits, Cami, & Tanner insisted that we bring in year 24 with a bang, and that we did. Cupcakes and singing included. It's been a good year, I must say.

became bestest buds with the neighbors across the street...

but of course still kept in touch with all of my original besties :)

Enjoyed, yet another, fabulous Halloween.

Traveled to the A of Z's for some family Thanksgiving time.

Had some visits from the marrieds who we love SO much!

(Congrats on growing up guys...)

Welcomed this little guy into the world.

(Yes, my sister did just have a baby, and she looks way cuter than me...the one who did not.)

Oh...and randomly decided to become the black sheep of the fam, as far as hair color goes that is...

Had an awful...but hilariously memorable...New Years.

Hung out with these two lovelies...a LOT.

Managed to squeeze in a THS reunion or two.

Love every single one of these gals.

Accomplished what has been a life-long goal. Running a marathon!

(p.s. this photo speaks volumes of my life. Mom running along side me encouraging me. Dad cheering me on from ahead, showing me where to go. The support I had from all of my friends and family in this event was so amazing. It got me through!!)

Went on a PHENOMENAL road trip to Tahoe with all my best buds.

Celebrated the summer :)

Was visited by a long lost BFF. I love my Trevor.

Enjoyed the beauty that is Utah.

Road tripped it to Vegas to see two of my favorite people tie the knot. An AMAZING wedding.

Watched ANOTHER Best Friend get married. Congrats Linds!

Went on the annual Powell Trip. Yep, as amazing as ever.

Got to hang out with THESE fabulous individuals a lot. I LOVE my family.

Had so much fun in a GREAT ward. I love my ward, love my calling.

Sent this hooligan up to the SLC. :( Roommate/BESTEST friend of 5 years. No longer roommates, but always bestest friends!

Met this guy...whoa...he's tall.

Had LOTS of diet cokes with these fine ladies. LOVE them.

Still loving this girlie. Despite her move north.

Wow. Looking back at these FEW memories over the past year I feel so lucky. SO blessed. I am surrounded by such great people. I have the best family and friends in the whole world. I can't wait to see what year 25 brings!!

A Little Bugged...

Gummy Worms. A delightful treat, happily consumed by children everywhere, and Benita Bates, of course. You get this photo because I couldn't bear to post a photo of an actual worm. Had I done so I may or may not have vomited. Why you ask? Well, you just keep reading...(I'm sure the suspense is probably killing you.)

Friday night Linds and I had a shopping/dinner date planned, as we often do. We seriously had SUCH a fun night, and made some great purchases, might I add. We originally planned on going up to Park City to shop, but decided on the University Mall instead. A few hours of shopping left us with tired legs and growling stomachs, so we decided to head over to one of our favorite locations, Jason's Deli, naturally.
Linds was super nice and bought my dinner in lou of my upcoming b-day. After we got all settled with the three kiddos and drinks and everything else we started eating and were just laughing and talking as per usual. I dove into my favorite menu item, the turkey wrap. Linds and I were in some involved convo when I looked down at my wrap were I had just bit, and out crawls a FREAKING CATERPILLAR. Yes, it was alive. Yes, it was in my food. I thought I was going to die. I showed it to Lindsey...well more like I shoved it in her face as I dry heaved repeatedly and she just kept motioning for me to go take it to the front whilst trying not to vomit. So, I ran up to the counter worm-wrap in hand, and showed the first worker I could find. His reaction was pretty funny. He like, freaked out and started saying things like, " THAT IS SO GROSS!" while profusely apologizing, and trying to get it out of my hands as fast as possible. He asked me if he could get me another and I couldn't say, "No," fast enough. He comped my meal, and explained that, "sometimes bugs just come in with the sprouts," Yep. That helped a TON. SO GROSS.
We all had a hard time finishing, post worm excavation. Yikes. This experience was all to familiar to my Mi Ranchito experience a couple years back. I don't do well with bugs in my food.

I'd also like to add that I've killed four spiders this past week in my shower. Now, I understand Halloween is upon us, and even I love a good trick every now and then, but if the Arachnid/Insect population could take their jokes elsewhere I'd really appreciate it.

love you so much xoxoxo

T H A N K S

I have awesome family and friends.
Yep, being sick this week was NO BUENO.
But thanks for the meds, and the tweets, and the phone calls, and the chauffeuring, and the Diet Cokes, and the time off, and the texts, and the treats, and the movies, and the LOVE.

You guys are the best.
and, boy am I OH so glad to be feeling better.
xoxoxo

ummm....what?

If I were to say I had 19 pillows on my bed you'd be like...whoa...that is a lot. Or if I asked you if you wanted 19 cupcakes. Or if I told you, you had to stay awake for 19 days straight...you'd probably tell me that 19 was too many. Why? Because 19 is a big number. But seriously. 19 children? In one family? I'm sorry, am I the only one that thinks these people are borderline crazy? I mean they have enough children to form opposing basketball teams...although the girls might have a hard time playing in their dresses. Slow down Duggar family...slow on down.

Monday Muck and Mama's Big Day

I LOVE to curl up and watch a movie. It's one of my favorite things to do. It is not so fun, however, when it's all I feel like doing. I rarely get sick, and I rarely miss work. Today I'm doing both, and I don't like either. If I'm going to be missing work, I feel like I should be on a beach somewhere...or shopping at least. YUCK.

MORE IMPORTANTLY...

HAPPY B-DAY MOM!!!

My mom is the greatest...really, she is.

She is extremely talented in SO many areas.

Her thoughtfulness boggles my mind.

She loves Holidays more than anyone I know. She always made even the smallest holidays a big deal, and she has instilled the same love in all of us kids.

She is SO optimistic. Despite all that she has been through, she has always managed to stay positive and keep a happy outlook on everything. It amazes me.

She is so healthy, and manages to stay in AWESOME shape.

She is an incredible cook and entertainer.

She is so genuinely friendly to everyone, and everyone wants her as a friend!

She has an incredible testimony and has set such a positive example for me of how to live th gospel!

I want to be just like her when I grow up! I love you SO MUCH Mama Cita!!! I hope you have a great B-day!

Oooooh Boy.

He's gone and done it again. How Michael Scott manages to make me feel so awkward each time I watch, The Office, is a mystery to me. On the other hand, Jim's speech to Pam...adorable.

We Thank The O God For a Prophet

It is a shame conference weekend only comes around twice a year...because I REALLY love it. I felt like this weekend was especially exceptional. I was able to go to the Saturday morning session with my roommates, Whitney and Krissy. There were so many things I LOVED about it.

(Please excuse the fact that I look BALD in this photo...early morning did not call for washing my hair)

- Singing "We thank thee O God for a Prophet.," with an entire conference center full of 21,000 saints. Chills.
-"What we love determines what we seek. what we seek determines what we do. what we do determines who we are, and what we become." - President Uchtdorf
-Hearing the MoTab sing "My Heavenly Father Loves Me." Couldn't manage to keep the tears from coming on that one.
-The message of LOVE in all forms...The love of our Savior for us; the love we need to have for each other. It reminded me of LOVE being my theme for the year.
-Having the spirit testify to me over and over of the truthfulness of this gospel. I was reminded of how blessed I am to be a part of something SO incredible.
-running into so many friends! (love these girls from my ward pictured below)

I loved ALL of conference, and I'm already excited for the November Ensign to come out so I can reread all of the incredible talks. I already can't wait until April! :)

A con artist of sorts

My sister Nichole is the stealthy one. She has met tons of famous people because she's good at just sneaking her cute lil' self casually on in to wherever they are. I'm not so stealth. I HATE getting into trouble, so I'm always timid about stuff like that. Well, on Friday I would have done Nichole proud.
Benita, Krissy, and I were able to scrounge up some tickets to go to the BYU/Utah State game. I usually go and sit with Rox and company when I go, but their seats were in a not-so-squeezable section, and since there were three of us to be squoze (so what if i made up the word...) we just went to our seats. LUCKILY, we were somehow crammed in between this crazy family who went hog wild at the concessions stand. We're talking, Slurpee's, cokes, cotton candy, popcorn, cinnamon almonds...the works. The good news is the boy in front of us was LOVING his cotton candy. I've never seen anything like it. He would grab huge wad, stick out his tongue, and set the wad on there while it disintegrated all over him. We're talking LOTS of drool. It was phenomenal.

After about one quarter of this we decided these were NOT the seats for us...so...we called some of our friends who had snuck into the high school recruits seats on the front row.
Yes, this view was a bit more enjoyable... (please excuse the photo quality, these were taken with my phone)It's amazing how much more fun a game can be when you are right up close! The only problem was there were about 20 of our friends crammed into theses seats, and it was pretty apparent that we weren't supposed to be there. The security folk clad with orange jackets weren't too keen on our presence. This poor tiny little guy kept coming and yelling to see everyone's tickets and we all just pretended to be REALLY into the game...oops.
Krissy, Brandon and I were standing next to some really sweet girls who actually had tickets there, and we asked them if there were people in our seats. They said that there had been people but they hadn't been there for a while. Once the lone security guard saw that we weren't going to respond to him, he decided to call for backup. All of the sudden there were like 7 orange jackets coming at us. Let me give you a visual...I'm pretty sure most of them weren't sure what football was, needed an on-campus job, and thought this was super sweet. At one point I heard one of them yelling, "We do not taking stealing lightly..." ohhh boy. So, one girl came to us and was like..."let me see your tickets right now." I thought we were for sure getting tossed out, BUT I decided to give a last ditch effort to staying front row. The convo went something like this;

orange power trip: I need to see your tickets
me: Ohhh, well you see we don't have any. The people sitting here before us left and these girls told us we could sit with them.
orange power trip: oh really? well we'll just see about that. I'll go ask her.
me: ok...
...and then she did...and the SWEET girls totally vouched for us.
SO we watched the rest of the blessed game so close we were practically in the huddles, giving the players "good games," and telling Bronco our game tips...or something like that :)
We even got to say hello to our friend Jan #84, who had an awesome game.

Such a fun night!

brrrrrrrrrr....

35 FLIPPING degrees. That is what the temperature read this morning as I drove to the work at 6:00 AM. Yes, 35. You read it right. NOT a type-o. SO GROSS. Is it really time for me to be pulling out the Uggs and the North Face again? This all seems a bit premature.

I'm not ready. I'm not ready for winter clothes, and full blast heat, and getting stuck in the snow in Highland Park on my way to work.
Although...I'm a lil' bit excited for pumpkin flavored everything, my b-day, Halloween, and the slew of holidays that quickly follow...I'm so hard to please. ;)

I'm also SO exited for conference weekend. WOW. I love it. I seriously can't wait.
I've already made my "Conference Question List."

What is that you ask? Well...when I was in seminary my teacher told us a story of a woman who wrote in to one of the apostles expressing some major concerns about the gospel and life in general. The apostle (sorry, can't remember which one...) responded back to her promising that if she'd make a list of questions she had about absolutely anything, and she sincerely prayed that she might have her questions answered, and she listened intently with an open heart, that she would be blessed with the answers to each and every one of her questions. After hearing this story I have done the same thing each time conference comes around. It has been such an incredible experience that I have learned so much from. It has changed the way I listen to conference. Do it...I dare you. It's awesome.

Also...this past Wednesday our Relief Society made all sorts of headbands for Enrichment. So fun...