The Happiest Place on Earth

I just got back from California!! It was FANTASTIC. We left Thursday night and drove through the night. We stayed with a member family there because Mariah's boyfriend, Kyle, went on his mission there and knew some people. We arrived around five in the morning on Friday and slept in. Then we went to South Coast Plaza (if you don't know what it is, look it up :)  ). Next we hit up Newport Beach. It was drizzling a little bit, but it wasn't too bad, so Lauren and I wandered away from the rest of the group to climb out on some rocks. The rain really started picking up, so we decided to head back to the group. We had to jump over this little barrier thing to get back, so I jump over it and wait for Lauren while she adjusted her towel when I suddenly felt like I was being stabbed by a million tiny needles. I screamed at her to hurry up and she was just like "whatever" until she jumped over and yelled. We had to run from dumpster to dumpster to avoid the tiny sand devils. Until the boys brought the cars to us. :)

Saturday was Disney Day! We got cheap park hopper tickets, so we got to go to California adventure as well and they included fast passes. The weather was kind of cloudy, which was fine with us because it meant the lines were way short! We didn't meet many of the characters, I think they were avoiding the rain, but we still had a blast! We actually saw a TON of BYU kids there. I guess its because we don't get a Spring Break. It was funny that we knew some of them were from BYU because of shirts/hoodies, but some of them we called before they even yelled "BYU" like any good Mormons (JK) because they looked young and had kids or looked like fresh RMs, etc.

 Right before the Indiana Jones ride!

Sunday we hit up the local singles ward, took pictures at the beach and had a delicious dinner with a member. My stomach seriously just growled, probably because I was already hungry, but that dinner was good...

 My bad...I'm not very good at jumping pics....

Sadly, we had to leave on Monday, but we still went to a delicious joint for lunch (The Hat, famous for their pastrami) and BJs for their famous dessert, a pizookie! They are not overrated at all. It was amazing. Awesome, not my mouth is watering...It's a pizza sized cookie (hence pizza and cookie combined for the name) with ice cream on top. Somehow they make the cookie the perfect amount of doneness (of course it's a word.) Yummy!

Sharing the pizookie.

V- Day!

So...I've never had a boy on Valentine's day, but I lurv it anyway. Sometimes I do get kind of down that I don't have a boy right now (other than my sort-of-missionary who sent me a flower and candy through his sister today :) ) but I honestly could care less on Single Awareness Day. Hanging out with my girls is way fun! Last year we started a tradition of watching The Hot Guy Slide Show. My roommate filled a power point with our favorite celebrities (and the boy I had a crush on last year) and we watched it making the appropriate noises when a new one popped up on the screen and eating chocolate. We also went to the hot springs last year. Today we are planning on the slideshow and candy and then joining our favorite apartment of boys and watching a thriller. Hopefully it will Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock movie. I'm pumped! I've been eating so much chocolate all weekend. And I only regret it a little bit. :)

I love this tie skirt. I got it from the Mustard Seed. (It's like my hometown's 10,000 Villages)

New Dating Theory

So it seems like a lot of people I know, particularly in our ward have recently started dating, as in this semester. However, most of them have been here the whole year. I have to theories about this:

1) They're settling. They got stuck in the rut of hanging out with the same people all the time, (I know I have. I love the boys we hang out with, but I wouldn't date them and I don't really get out and get to know more people. It's kind of a problem...we should make some goal about that as an apartment...) and then they just decided the first girl/guy to come along in the way of romantic interest they should date. They haven't been meeting other people and this person seems pretty nice. Plus they haven't got some in a while (Mormon style.)

2) It took them at least the semester (or twenty something years) to realize not everyone is perfect. This is technically another form of settling, but this is actually healthy. Your significant other isn't going to be perfect and it's high time the no-longer-in-Young-Women girls and the recent overly zealous RMs realize this. We could all do with a little self-improvement.

Unfortunately it seems like a lot of people I have seen fit into category one. Oh, Glenhood kids. I just realized this post sounds kind of bitter. Honestly it's not. I was just looking around in Sacrament meeting today and thinking about things. And this is what I have come up with...so far. And it rather amuses me. :)

*Disclaimer: this does not apply to all couples, obviously...

Catching Up (w/pics!)

Whew, this week has been surprisingly busy. I'm looking for housing with two of my roommates and we're having a lot of trouble deciding between three. Haha. We just have to decide which advantages are most important to us...Bah. Too much effort!
Is it just me or are there a ridiculous number of couples wandering around campus these days? One of my roommates often bemoans the fact that she doesn't have a boyfriend. I always reply that boyfriends are nice, but I'm pretty content right now. Until yesterday. Nothing actually happened that should have so drastically changed my state of mind, but it did. I feel like there are a ton of engaged/seriously dating people in our ward/around us. And then our home teachers came over and introduced themselves and part of the conversation included love lives. My roommate said that she was dating someone (another contributing factor) and both of the boys said they were getting there...I want to be in love! Sometimes it sucks ("worse...worse than the total and utter agony of being in love?"-Love Actually), but other times it's SO amazing...obviously, since people get married. I'm only 19, I'm not jumping on the marriage bandwagon yet, but I'm definitely getting jealous of some of the couples on campus and in the Glenhood...One of my roommates good guy friends just asked me if he could set me up with one of his friends (I met the guy in like october, but I don't really remember...). My roommate said he's really cool. We'll see if the date actually happens (you know how it is with set-ups.)
Some buys from the Cherry Lane Boutique last week:

It's the hat...

This pic doesn't make it look as good, but I promise, it's ridiculously cute!

SOOOOOO in love with this!

the back!

I got a ton of compliments for it on Sunday! <3

Death by Christmas?

Soooo...my parents gave me some kitchen stuff for Christmas. This included a nice spatula (it's WAY better than any my roommates or me had) and a cheese slicer. Now you wouldn't think a cheese slicer would be that scary, but this is an intense cheese slicer made for chefs. I was used to this one in my parents house:



Here's the one I have now:



Yes, that's a knife on the side. When I exclaimed how scary it looked when I opened it, my mom said that I could trade it for the old, friendly one, but...this one has a case. How can you not pick the one that has a CASE?? Unfortunately this slicer has so far caused three cuts on my hand...



Whew, I need some lotion! I'm not very good with sharp objects...maybe one day I'll write about when I almost cut my thumb off last year...

P.S. This jumper my mom made me awesome! I wanted it tighter, but...mothers...Ignore my weird face...

Scary!

Whew. I had to give a talk today. I was pretty nervous. I don't know why. I think if other people had to write my talks, I would be fine giving them. But I never let people read my writing, even after it's done, I just don't know if it's good or not. And I feel the same way with talks. I had some of my roommates read it last night, though. They said it was good, but I wasn't sure if they were just being nice or not...And people always compliment you after giving a talk, so that's not a good measure. Oh well, it's over and I liked my outfit:

I just got the headband at this cute boutique last night!

In other news, I really want to go to ward prayer tonight just to get to know some of the new people in the ward better. (No, I'm not interested in any of the new boys romantically, but they seem really nice and fun...) But I'm going to Family Sunday Dinner tonight and that's at 5:30 and ward prayer got moved up to 6:15 today. :( Maybe no one will go anyway. Haha.

:)

Wow! Last weekend was awesome! Aside from me having a fever and being pretty sick. Haha. Friday night we went to Soldier's Hollow with the ward. It's a tubing place. There is a toe rope that pulls you up the mountain from a string on all the tubes. You get going down the lanes pretty darn fast, especially when you connect your tube to some other peoples' and you pull each other's ropes. It's normally like 20$ each, but since we went with the ward it was free. (Apparently bishop got a mild concussion, but he seemed fine when we had donuts afterward...)
Saturday night my roommate Lauren and I went snowboarding with our friend Patrick to show us the ropes. It was soooo fun and sooooo hard. My muscles were killing me after the first run. I definitely need to excercise those muscles more. I'm thinking about getting a snowboard, but I will probably wait until next year. It's just another thing to store and I don't have a season pass anywhere this year. But I was talking about going on a study abroad to New Zealand with one of my roommates next Winter semester. We'll see, who knows who will be married and what not...
Monday was MLK day and our friend's birthday, so we went and played laser tag. My strategy was to stay up in the balcony areas and shoot down at the people on the main level who often didn't even see me. I got second place!!! Nice!
I just went to this sweet boutique downtown and bought some new stuff that I probably shouldn't have but did anyway! Pictures coming soon! I have made a goal to be more classy in my dress around campus and at work and having extra cute classy stuff will help me meet this goal. :)