Remembering not to forget

I didn't really get to document the little things in my college years very well. When I was in Utah I wanted to try to capture some of the old memories. One of my favorite things that I miss so much was being able to go on a walk and end up in a completely isolated area in the foothills somewhere. Mountains are my favorite.
I decided to relive a walk that I took a lot. One that my roommate and I discovered when we were juniors in college.
It starts....
walking by this beautiful apple orchard...

always seeing at least a few deer...


walking past the state hospital and up a hill and falling upon this...



wandering around the castle ampitheater and feeling a little bit like a kid that just found a super awesome spot to play make-believe in...




seeing a great view of Provo and the greater Utah valley...


Finding great spots to do photo shoots...(I took a lot of engagement pictures over the years at this castle in the woods. It was perfect!)






Seeing where Juliet would have stood...(though obviously this balcony does have a flaw....)


and then we get really adventurous....

you hop this fence...


wander around for a while in the foothills and then accidentally fall upon this...



for some reason the grass was dead this year in the middle, almost like it was intentional. I hope they're not planning on building something there. Catherine and I found this place by accident and I wish the pictures did it justice. A bunch of trees had grown together in a clump and the branches had grown together on top making a tunnel. It was really hot and sunny the day we found it so walking into a shaded, quiet retreat was awesome. Again, I promise it was a lot prettier when we first found it over 4 years ago haha!

Then if you wander around a little while longer you'll make your way out of the woods and onto a surface street in Provo, not to far from....


7 PEAKS!!! I had a summer pass to this after I graduated from BYU. It was awesome. A little gem in Provo. So nice on hot summer days.



Next up: Philadelphia and the running of the Rocky stairs....

This one is for Taryn...and all the rest of my girls:)

I've been super super lucky in that I was able to meet a group of amazing girls my freshman year and we have been friends ever since! Even as some were getting married or moving or whatever we always tried to do a girls' night once a month and we really were able to keep that going until this last year where most of us moved away. But we always still try to stay in contact and whenever someone comes into town we try to get together with whoever is there. My wonderful friends came through and FIVE of us were able to get together while I was in Utah!!! It was so great!! I really wish Erin, Natalie, Angie and Meg could've been with us but we're grownups now and don't all live within a ten minute drive like we used to:)

We all got together at Amanda's cute house. Amanda made some AMAZING cinnamon rolls that were about the death of me. Her little boy Jack is SO BIG! He is going to be a cute older brother:)

Jenny was in town!! Her and her husband had just moved from Minnesota to Texas and she just happened to be in town visiting family. I am a lucky girl!! And I got to see her beautiful new little girl, Maddie (full name Madlyn...and I have no idea on any of the spelling).


I don't even know if you can tell in these pictures, but her children have the most perfectly shaped heads. I know that's a pretty weird thing to notice, but my family makes babies with funny lookin noggins so we tend to notice:) Also her babies have gorgeous blue eyes.


Taryn and Amanda holding down the couch:) Taryn's little girl Olivia is ADORABLE!! So cute. She's got some rockin baby blues too. I'm so glad that all of my friends have really attractive kids haha. It makes my life so much easier.


Ok, so this was hilarious to me. Apparently Jack once had a boo-boo on his nose that they applied neosporan (or however you spell it) too. So now anything that resembles some type of antibiotic ointment he applies to his face. So he also loves chapstick, and was putting it all over himself. We found him outside the door like this:


What you can't see is he then proceeded to get it into his eyes. He was making some pretty funny faces and I had a hard time not laughing as Amanda kept telling him that he can't put chapstick in his eyes. Also when she told him that he's not allowed to pick up poop. Kids are hilarious to me.


My fantastic friends!!!! We are really proud of this picture because it was our first shot of the day with the self-timing camera and we actually all look normal in it!!!! There were some hilarious ones to follow on other people's cameras. Who has those anyway, ladies?

I love that Liz and I are holding down the title of 'cool, single friends' in back:) So wonderful of her to take off work and come down from Treemonton! Seriously those were some of the best hours I've had this whole year. In the over 7 years that we've all known eachother, everyone that has gotten married got married in the temple to GREAT guys, some have had BEAUTIFUL children and all have finished or are finishing school and are being awesome women and moms. They're all such amazing examples! I can look at their lives and know that it's possible to have marriages and families like that and be strong in the gospel. My single friends have been such great examples too and we sympathize with eachother's struggles:) I'm so glad I know all of you!!! Love you guys!!!

Another post with pictures!! You lucky ducks:)

For those of you that have just tuned in, I'm finally updating my blog with pictures! I did a MASSIVE post yesterday so make sure not to miss it:)

I'm realizing that posts covering multiple days and events are just overwhelming...so I'm just going to do one event at a time...so here's Utah!!!!

Dale took me to the Ben Fold's concert at the Deer Valley Ampitheatre as a graduation present. He played with the Utah Pops Symphony that I've seen a couple times, once while they backed up Gladys Knight. So good!!! Thanks, Dale!!!


So this guy kicked me a couple times and then seemed to always find his bum really close to our heads...so of course we captured the moment here....


and here.....


This is the theater. It's a temporary one because it's set up right on a ski hill. So gorgeous!! There are amazing condos to the east of the lodge and theatre that I'm sure you have to sell your first born to own. It's mostly retired people that worked for really impressive companies and now spend their summers vacationing in their condos and drinking wine. At one point in the concert Ben looked up at them and said hey to all the people in the condos, and then said "don't worry--when I'm done you can crank back up your Jimmy Buffett." I laughed. A lot.


He sang a song he wrote about a town he once drove through called Effingham--That's totally by my home town!!! I may or may not have yelled, loudly, 'I'm from there!!!'. It was awesome. The town really is hilarious. Besides the fact that it's called Effingham - seriously - their high school mascot is the Flaming Heart - seriously - and when I was in high school they were the only school in our entire division to have a guy cheerleader...and he was EXTREMELY homosexual. Your mascot is a flaming heart and you're their gay cheerleader?? You can't make that stuff up....





His voice was a little under the weather but overall it was still an awesome concert!!!!! He played some of my favorites that made me so happy. He likes him a little bit of colorful language which I think made some of the symphony members extremely uncomfortable. I don't support bad language at all....but some of their faces were a little funny to watch :)



More to come!!!

The moment you've all been waiting for...

I'M UPLOADING PICTURES!!!!!!

What's bogus is they may not be that exciting, but now everyone can know what's going on in my year of being twenty five and fabulous....

This will potentially be a really long post so I'll try to dispense with a lot of wordiness, though I make no promises :)

We'll start from oldest to newest...well, as old as the pictures on my camera get...which is around May. And actually this may not be truly chronological because I can't remember certain dates of when some stuff happened and I'm not sure why I'm even going into detail explaining this because none of you were really there....so it doesn't matter!!! N E WAY--

GRADUATION, June 14th commencement:

We had full cap and gown...I also had gold ropes to indicate I was graduating with honors....didn't get those at BYU :)
This is Julio the hairdresser. We both won special awards. His was for looking put together and saucy every day.....mine....was NOT. I got mine for highest GPA. There was no way on this green earth anyone was gonna give ME an award for getting ready for school. Just ask my sister Sarah. She saw me leave every morning...

This is Kim Vo. I LOVE him. He came and spoke at our commencement. For those of you that watch reality TV at all he has the show Shear Genius. He has 4 super high end salons throughout the west coast and his own product line and a bunch of other stuff and is genuinely a really nice person. He didn't toot his own horn at all during his speech and tried to give really helpful advice on job searching and all that. I walked up to him afterward and told him I was born in the west and would love to move back and if I move to the Bay area would he hire me?? :) I think he liked my boldness so he told me to come look him up because he would remember me. Woot woot!!!!

CLOCK OUT Jun15th, my official leaving of hair school:


This is Linda, my very first client. I love her!!!!! She came to me at least twice a week for 6 months. She is a flight attendant and likes her hair teased and stiff but doesn't like to do it herself. I totally respect that. I shampooed and styled her and colored and cut when she needed it. She was the funniest and super thoughtful. She appreciated that I was a responsible adult, or that I was at least trying to be. She tried to give me dating advice a lot. I think we had a few different opinions but I still was grateful :)



Linda brought me this cake as well as balloons and a gift certificate to New York and Co. because I love that store. She was wonderful.

Gina clocked out the same day as me. People bought us some swag to wear.

Clocking Out!!!!
Tradition is to run through streamers in the hallway. No, I don't run like that normally. I was just trying to make sure to get them all.

I got them all :)

This is my friend Jessica from the single's branch out here. I am so grateful for this girl!!!! She is really upbeat and we got to be pretty good friends. She started hair school a couple months after me and it was so nice having a friend there that didn't do crazy drugs or a million other uncomfortable things!

Jess (from above) and my buddy Jason decorated the entry way to my house while I was at the commencement ceremony to tell me congrats. I thought that was so nice of them! They didn't want me to come home to an empty house haha.


LADY ANTEBELLUM AND TIM MCGRAW CONCERT, June 26th (I think):

In the car on the way there!! Jason and Jess, the same friends that decorated my house. Great kids:)
This is the lead male singer for Lady A. You may not be able to tell in this picture, but this man is extremely attractive, tall, AND can sing. I support him.

Workin the crowd.

Up-close shot. Is it sad that I took a picture of the big screen? We had lawn seats that were actually pretty good but cameras don't do justice.

OK I know that this is probably a gross picture but I was laughing pretty hard. Lots of women come to these concert trying to look all foxy as if somehow Tim McGraw is going to leave his absolutely BEAUTIFUL and successful wife and be with them. Anyway, it was a really hot and humid day and these girls did not plan well. The chick on the left has crazy back sweat, and, well, it's obvious what's happening to the girl in the middle ahahahaha. Oh bless her heart.

The dramatic curtain drop on Tim.

And here's Timmy. I got in a discussion with a girl a few weeks before the concert about the attractivness of Tim McGraw. I just didn't see it and she was so convinced that he was super good looking. I thought she was crazy. I take it ALL back. He was doing just. fine.


Yay for concerts!! The two other people in here are my other good girlfriend from the branch, Emily and our friend Jake. I'm trying to take the picture and I'm lookin awkward.


FRONTIER DAYS, or actually it might have been prairie days...eh. July 3rd:


The significance of this?? We were listening to the lead singer of Stix. All the classy mid-west people were rocking out. It was awesome. I think his name is Dennis DeYoung. He was actually doing the robot to the Mr. Roboto song...maybe the worst robot I've ever seen. So funny.


FIREWORKS! July 4th:

So I hung out with Jess and Emily's families on the fourth of July and we walked to a park to watch fireworks. They were pretty good! This is more evidence of the fact that I'm just not very good at taking pictures of people when I'm trying to be in them...

Try again....
And I still fail....oh well!

And I think that gets everyone up to date on what's been happening...in Illinois. I haven't even touched my Utah and Philadelphia trips yet, but I've been on this thing FOREVER so I should probably try to go accomplish something else today...like a shower. More to come tomorrow!!!!