cabin thanksgiving + a classy black friday

so basically most of these photos are blurry and not that great but i decided to add every photo i felt like adding so love it or hate it - it's happening. 

john was sweet to drop me off at five am (like he has the other two times i've gone to utah) and baby stella was nice to greet me hours later for the first time. she and i are in love. 

 have i ever showed you our cabin before? if not, there it is. they just cut down a bunch of trees so you can finally take a picture and see more than 20% of it. after we arrived i somehow fell asleep way early and woke up at five am. at first this saddened me until i saw the sun start to rise through the blinds. it was beautiful. 

the following photos happened the next two days as we lounged around and enjoyed each others company, watched duck dynasty and the thanksgiving parade, loved being at the cabin, scouted out spots for family photos, shared what we are grateful for, ate forever, and danced our (mostly lilly's) hearts out. it was fun to be around so many kiddos and meet not only stella but baby lyndsey as well! 

 i sure love this family of mine! 

(and the other half of us not pictured that we missed dearly)

(..and can you believe this is only half of us?)

thanksgiving night i decided to do some black friday shopping with kim, sean, and janie. somehow we split up and it was mostly just sean and i. we enjoyed the live dj at express, the one million 14 year olds at forever 21, the one million 12 year olds (not pictured) at aero, peter b. playing a concert in the middle of the mall at 2 am, and of course the naked/uncomfortable hollister boys. 

..and each other of course

i did not, however, enjoy eating mcdonalds at 4 am or staying up forever for some sock sale at smith's market place everyone was obsessed with. but i did like spending time with my moysh fam and i especially enjoyed the boy above who threw a tantrum in the middle of walmart. 

i went to the district of columbia : day five

or should i say day last day. :(

day five docket:

eat a nice breakfast provided by the one and only dot chon

a session at the DC temple 

CAFE RIO

unique thrift store, again

some random mall

airport 

..i think we had big touristy dreams of going back into the heart of DC but we were just too tired. 

this breakfast was such a little treat. beth is the best planner and puts so much thought into the smallest of details. she threw the best parties at the yellow house! i miss those dang parties. 

anyway. the temple was SO good. so so good. i usually don't go wild over the inside of temples (kind of feels like if you have seen one you have seen them all) but the inside of the DC temple is probably my favorite.  from the long window from floor to ceiling hallway to the malificent's castle looking stained glass to the paintings of some moments in america's history, everything about it dazzled me. yes, dazzled. and the stadium seating in the endowment room helped me not fall asleep so good! i'm very glad we made this happen, it was easily one of my favorite things about my trip. 

just your classic picture of a utah girl with her sweet pork salad. it was delicious, and definitely worth the drive. but for the record, i'm still a costa vida lover through and through.

had to go back to the biggest thrift store of my life. beth and i had such a nice time going through all of the treasures. i don't know how people gave this stuff up!

you better believe bought that wolf carved sling shot for her boyfriend. 

(YES i just said boyfriend. and NO i didn't ever meet him and 

YES, beth, i'm still upset at you because of it). 

there is no picture of our time at the mall because we were maybe there for twenty minutes but boy was it a success! for some reason they had lots of great shoes on sale at urban (that i found out later shouldn't have been on sale) so this girl splurged and bought three pair! 

i was happy until i remembered our next stop was the airport. so this is us being sad but happy inside that we got to see each other! my trip to DC was really so much fun and i'm very grateful for my sweet friends who pretty much dropped everything (even took work off a few days!) to be my tour guides. 

love you lots dc girfs!  

oh just everything else we did in california

*feel free to not actually read the captions because they are boring

soooo..

after this blessed occasion kalie and spencer arrived and we all stayed at shealee's for the night then packed up the next morning to head to vegas

(but not before leaving money for the milk we used! i know. so thoughtful.)

when we arrived (not before sitting at discount tire for an hour though) 

we ate at the oh so classy sweet tomatoes

(ps it wasn't even as gross as i remembered that place to be!) 

upon entering vegas we really only had one priority:
to go here.

which was a fairly successful shopping trip for all of us.

after a few hours we were back on the road to go to LA!

(worst picture ever but maybe it is the only one i took during this part of the trip)

that night we arrived at brynne and tanner's apt at about 9pm to say hello then headed to our old friend rachel's to stay the night to rest up for.. 

..this happy place!!!

(i only took like 5 pictures (this being one of them) besides those taken at club 33 so i have to get others from ryan and kaaaaalie)

so..disneyland happened friday, it was the best ever.

then - saturday we did the following things:

went to the beach!

(more pictures of the beach found heeeere)

mmmmm

ryan and ellie just loving the waves!

(okay so you can't tell from this picture but trust me, they were)

bnotd = ellie came up from huntington to be with us!

(ellie was my roommate freshman and part of sophomore year)

and was kind enough to take a picture of the four of us

(could my hair be any more out of control?)

and this of course wasn't awkward at all.

the beach was really great and so were the shops and everything else around it!

we felt sad to leave but we were happy we could go be with b&t!

dinner with the frei's and other friends was delicious and much appreciated after eating out for days

mhs pride!

what is not to love about this brynne and this apartment?

or this guy.

afterwards we headed to third street promenade which brynne did a nice job of talking about here.

and saw a girl (whose name i can't remember) that plays sometimes with ryan's brother ben!

stripes for life! or maybe i should say stripes 4 lyfe.

and the award for keeping your eyes open in a picture when you usually have a hard time doing it goes to tanner!

after we parted ways and said goodbye to b&t (which was sad sad sad) kalie and i snuck into forever 21

(literally. like we slowly walked behind ryan and spencer, ducked, and then ran into the store. who knew they would hate shopping so bad by the end of this little trip?)

then we actually had to head back to rachel's because we were all so tired!

and take a picture with her before going to bed. we are so grateful she let us stay with her!

(sunburn anyone?)

the next morning we woke up bright and early, packed up the car, headed back to vegas, changed into church clothes in a walmart bathroom, went to sacrament meeting (which was the best thanks to all those cute young women talking about girls camp!), went back to walmart and changed into regular clothes, headed to st. george, dropped kalie and spencer off at their car, waved goodbye to them and to the little mermaid, then drove all the way to murray (passed two cars that had rolled off the freeway!) without stopping and got there at about 8:30 pm.

it was a fast yet very delightful trip!

and in closing,

 it only seems appropriate to end on this uncomfortable note:

...