i guess either smoke signal or email me

august began with finally snapping a picture of the cutest old man who sits and watches the cars go by each day by work and getting my very first manicure. so glad nat had a birthday so she could get a free one and then not want it (because she does that shellac stuff) and give it to meeeee.   

i was so inspired by how girly my nails were that i french braided my hair for the first time (or anyone's hair for the first time actually hahah)! i've always been really bad at most girl things so i'm just becoming more of a girl all over the place! next on my becoming a better girl list is to get my haircut more than once a year and buy more high heels and start being an avid pinterest user. kidding. 

shakespeare in the park was really great until we remembered it was shakespeare.  

booooooooooooring 

so twenty minutes into it we left and walked over to chinatown and bnotd found this taiwan cafe!! 

i was in asian heaven with my ginormous bowl of soup and pot stickers. 

(and loved being with my favorite maren and mccall)

sometimes the rain ruins our plans for days on end but that is okay because lots of rain means lots of puddles! so maren and i had a great time jumping around in them while it just poured and poured. 

and one time gravity had a fight with my face and won. 

not pictured would be my post puddle jumping run which was actually really nice 

..until mascara rain water burned my eyes off. 

the next day we headed to six flags which is about 2 hours away from boston. we were about thirty minutes ahead of the group so i whipped out my phone to see what we could see in springfield, ma since we had some time to kill. 

AND LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

who even knew there was a dr. seuss national memorial?!? 

i sure didn't and i was so happy when i realized we were only two miles away from it. 

photo proof of how much i loved this place:

yes, i made maren take a picture of me with everything and yes i felt five years old and yes it was probably my favorite part of the day. spontaneous hang out with dr. seuss was the best.

six flags was nice. i mainly appreciated our time in the waterpark when it rained really hard so we sat outside in our bathing suits and just waited patiently for it to stop.

 so many people ran to places that were covered so they wouldn't get rained on and i wanted to yell WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT? YOU ARE ALREADY WET YOU SILLY PEOPLE!

I went to berklee's school of music to see my friend's senior show and felt so happy to have noticed this sign below:

and also to take a picture of these lamp posts that i love. such pretty pink flowers hanging from all of them all over the city. 

drummer friend just drumming his life away.
 such a good show with so many talented musicians! it was nice to be at one again, just weird to see jordan (drummer friend) play and not have ryan up there too (they were in a band together once upon a time). i kept thinking about how we met two years ago in provo at their band practice and now i was at his senior show in boston two years later..funny/random how life works out sometimes.

next i would have told you about martha's vineyard but it will definitely need it's own post (or five) so get pumped for THAT

korby is having a boy

but my sister/his mom is having a girl!!!!
and my other sister is having a boy!!!!
and my sister-in-law is having a girl too!!!!
babies!!!!

way to start having babies again while i'm in boston! great timing as usual*




*this references the time when all my siblings/sibling's wives had babies while i was in taiwan. all six of them. that was fun

nice december happenings

via

phone photos

 

do you remember our dear friend we met in this post?

well we tried to visit him and were so happy to finally find his apartment door but sadly he didn't answer. my smile is deceiving, we were bummed.

what would christmas be without an ugly sweater party?

(or a sweater that has "i heart kevin" on the back or a jackson hole trap club hat?)

i'm glad savers pulled through with another winner this year. santa in a stocking! who would have thought.

we didn't really have set plans one night so we decided to go just check out some toys. we loved finding all the toys we would play with when we were little and the books that we would have loved to receive. and you can't forget that classy cat vest i wanted so badly to buy for ryan's dog. 

afterwards ryan was really nice to let me get a personal pan pizza. i don't know why i love those things so much and i know eating them at 11 at night is the grossest but i'm fairly certain i'm addicted.

bnotd = zane gray was home and let us come in and visit! we had a lovely time watching tv with him and trying to fit in a question or two about his life. I don't really know if he remembered us or even if he liked our visit but i was happy to see him again and had to refrain from shouting "we love you zane!" as we walked out the door.

the picture above and below would be us appreciating the decor at the courtyard at jamestown assisted living center, where zane resides.

this pretty lady got married and had her reception at the gallivan center stage. who knew that was even possible? she looked gorgeous and it was so nice to see her and be around so many chinese speaking people! (her mother-in-law is taiwanese and her now husband served a chinese speaking mission as well)

we wanted to stick around and see the lights but temple square was being nuts so instead we headed over to the grand america hotel. ever since my interior design teacher raved about the fabrics, furniture, and overall style of the building i've wanted to check it out and i'm so happy we did!

i don't know how i've never made it to that place but i was glad because it was fun to experience something new. everything was just so nice and fancy! and everyone there just loved looking so nice and fancy, i felt like i was in a movie of some sort and kind of felt slightly under dressed.

buuuut i didn't even care because i was too busy loving everything about it and taking pictures of that GREAT jou jou toy store, self portraits (together portraits? what would you call that with two people?) in every fancy mirror i could find, and being obsessed with the window displays and finding the star with maurice the penguin.

aaand being with this ryan fellow who i'm almost certain loved it as much as i did and who was such good company.

my brother bought a puppy!!! i'm not a big dog fan but i loooove puppies.  his name is kato and we are in love.

we decided to give temple square another go and went last friday. might i say it was perfect!

usually it is freezing so being there for a long period of time is painful but it wasn't very cold so we ended up spending hours enjoying everything about it. we loved going to the visitor center to see the Christus, the short film about Christ's birth, and to check out the fairly new "families are forever" interactive movie. then we headed over to the other visitor center and stared at the miniature replica of the temple and talked about how badly we wanted to go to all the rooms that we will never have access to.

then we checked out the family search area and i was excited to show ryan the fake ellis island i had discovered while doing some bridals around there a few days earlier. free picture taken by cute little senior missionaries in fake ellis island? yes please.

we decided to dine at the nauvoo cafe and got the best view of the temple! i just wanted to sit there and stare at it all night. it was all so lovely, even if we did have to wait an hour in line to get our food and make up a christmas a to z game to pass the time. and let's talk about that guy playing the piano in the joseph smith memorial building! i wish i had the time to just sit in that building the entire month of december and listen to all the free concerts and enjoy all the other nice things happening on temple square. we (and by we i mean those of us who live in utah) are so lucky to live so close to such a wonderful place! it really helped me feel like Christmas inside and reminded me what Christmas is all about.

and just when i thought the night couldn't get any better we headed over to a festivus celebration! i was a liiiittle disappointed that no one was really there but we did arrive at ten pm so perhaps we missed the crowd? with that being said it was still so fun to catch up with mike and ryan (aka clay..still can't bring myself to call him that), enjoy the chocolate fountain, and die over the best russian dolls i've ever seen. all in all it was a wonderful night.

christmas eve with the margetts was a delight. wendy got a brand new table which fit us all so nicely, dinner was delicious, the re-creation of luke 2 was a hit, and everyone's christmas dreams were fulfilled through wendy's impeccable shopping skills. i really love that family.

and i really love that yesterday russ had to fix some things at their cabin and invited us to come along!

i had not been there foreverrrr so i was happy to go for a little bit.

we enjoyed watching the rise of the planet of the apes in our pj's which is weird because a. i really did enjoy it! i thought for sure i would hate it and b. it was like 4 in the afternoon and we were still wearing pajamas.

 then, sadly, we had to actually finish the movie in the car because we needed to get back in time for game night with the becks. but even just the short amount of time we spent there was so nice!

aaaaand there was even a little snow! which made me very happy.

my sister brought it to my attention that today is

walt's birthday!!! 

this is very exciting news and i'm glad she told me! also sad i didn't know that on my own.

happy birthday walter elias disney!! 

i did however know his middle name was elias

..so that should count for something

and speaking of my sister - natalie is her name - she so happened to make some appearances in some ensigns back in 1993 and my mom being the good saver that she is kept the issues! 

*to my knowledge she was just posing for this article and in fact did not have an eating disorder haha

i have no memory of seeing them before so it was a real treat when my mom showed me today.
as i looked at them i have to wonder if she was my subconscious inspiration for the photo taken below?

i mean it has been known to happen in the past. 

*disclaimer: i am not being serious in that photo above! i hate that i have to explain that.

i just have a thing for my sisters and how they worked the early 90's i guess! and walt of course.

guys bnotd!!!!!

so i guess i'm retarded and it really was my fault i couldn't have comments! 

i got so desperate that i finally just put my problem on the help forum and this nice person knew exactly what was wrong:

"Here is the first place to look. Edit your post with the missing comment box and click Post Options, or (Options in the new interface.) It is possible to turn off comments on a single post, and I think that you will find that you somehow did this on this one. Change the setting and republish (or update.)

Let us know if this succeeded. If not, we will have to investigate other possibilities, but since it is only on one post, this is most likely."

I went and looked at that option and sure enough i had it on "don't allow" in the post options even though my overall setting said allow. thank you kind person who saved the day! i don't ever remember changing that and now i have to just click "allow" every time because it is defaulted to "don't allow" (perhaps google still secretly hates me) but who cares commenting is back! 

 i went back and fixed the last few posts so if you were just dying to comment on this, this, or this - now you can! and this was waaaay more information on this than i'm sure any of you wanted to know but i just wanted to post it in case anybody does the same thing in the future. okay love you bye!

i felt so sad! and then i felt happy again.

so i enjoy walking to work because it helps me feel less sad

about sitting at a computer all the days and as i was walking i saw this:

(which makes sense because it snowed the day before)

and this:

and was so sad.

but then!
 i got off work and it was nice outside somehow!

and i was happy again. so we went for a little walk.

why have i never utilized slash walked on this bonneville shoreline trail?

it is five seconds from the mtc and the view is gorgeous! i'm really mad we never walked on this trail before this day and feel way dumb to say i've lived in provo on and off for 5 years and didn't know it existed!

we only had like thirty minutes before ryan's meeting but it was a perfect little activity to do in between him picking me up and me dropping him off.

i'm really hoping that we can go again today! but with daylight savings it will probably be dark by the time 5 o'clock rolls around. that makes me sad.

but even if it can't happen this week i sure am glad it happened last week.

i'm so grateful for nature and so grateful for every last moment of fall we can get!

thank you fall for remembering it is still your season! and thank you ryan who actually went up there twice with me because i couldn't get enough of it the first time.

and thank you moroni and sky for always looking so great together.

and thank you friends for not hating me for always thanking inanimate objects.

*and it has been brought to my attention that you can no longer comment on my blog even though all my settings are the exact same. i echo the words of ashlie in saying blogger! fix thyself!!!