Hello from Utah!

Hello Everyone!

I feel like its been forever since I've seen all my AZ friends and fam.

This is just a quick post to let you know that I am officially a resident of Provo, Utah. It's true. I don't think it has really sunk in yet that I live here, but I do. After an adventure filled week seeing the sights with my family, I have been left here on my own to suffer in Mormon-ville. Alone. (Kidding, kind of)

I have ridiculous stories and pictures and tons of randomness to post soon, but just want to quickly remind you all that I do still own a cell phone(with the same number), I have unlimited access to a computer and email, and I am jobless, friendless, and life-less for the next few weeks until school starts.

If that hinting wasn't enough, let me be more blunt: I am not dead--I moved to Utah!!! I realize this may seem like death to some of you(especially my family, all week most of what I've heard is "this is the last time you'll ever...{fill in the blank with anything}), but I assure you I am still here and as lame as ever.

I miss you all already and expect to hear from you often!

Catching Up

So I'm basically a failure at this whole blogging thing. Its been forever since my last post.
So what, you may ask, have I been doing in all this time that I have been neglecting my blog? Not a lot to be perfectly honest. Mostly I've been avoiding packing, cleaning, or anything else even remotely associated with my moving in three weeks. I prefer the avoid-at-all-costs-until-its-absolutely-necessary-and-I'm-having-
a-panic-attack approach.
That being said, in order to fully avoid, I have:

*seen a lot of plays:

• The Wedding Singer (with my mom)
• My Fair Lady (with Lindsay)
• Aida (with Chelsie)
• Children of Eden (with Cassie)
• High School Musical (with my little sisters-there is no way to describe in words the sound of literally thousands of little girls screaming their lungs out when Troy Bolton walked on stage)

*Watched a lot of movies: To make a list would take all day, so we're not going to go there.

*Gone to see a lot of movies: Even if there was nothing new out, I would just see something I had already seen.

*Hung out with my fam at the Diamondbacks game at the Gardner family reunion:

Our view of the field

I have super shaky hands, so my pictures are always blurry :(

My parents

Doug & Stacey

My adorable cousin Emma



Around the 6th inning, with the score 0:0, boredom set in:

At this point, my lame-o camera died, and i took no further pictures of the remaining few days of the reunion. Anyways, on with my list:


*Chelsie came home from her mission in Brazil

* Kalia got her mission call to England

* I bummed around with my cousins and played games at Geronimo

*Read some amazing books: Right now I'm reading Twilight and getting ready for Breaking Dawn to come out. Only 13 days!!! The thought of actually having it in my hands makes me want to squeal like a little girl who just met the Jonas brothers.



*Went to a couple of card classes with my cousin Hillary and made some adorable cards. And in the continuing style of the cruel irony that is my life, during the Christmas in July class, my ticket was drawn and I won the $20.00 August class free. Too bad I am moving to Utah the week before the class. It worked out good though, cause at least Hill will get the free class and I can steal the card ideas later.

*Never missed an episode of So You Think You Can Dance or Project Runway

So that's basically the story of my life, or at least the last couple months of my life. Other than that, I'm still working(only five more days to go{insert rejoicing choir music here}), spending time with family & friends but not actually thinking about leaving them, trying to figure out how I'm going to fit my entire life and my 1,000+ books into my little Cavalier(j/k,actually trying to decide which books to take, and which to leave-which is no easy task, mind you as they are all my dear friends), hanging out with my cute Mia Maids, and bummin around livin the good life.

Drama, drama, drama

I nearly died this weekend.

Not kidding.

Saturday night I was driving home from Chandler, singing along to my Wicked soundtrack, and thinking about what I was going to do when I got home. I wasn’t tired enough to go right to sleep yet, so I decided that I was going to go home, get ready for bed, get all comfortable and put on the movie that I’ve been wanting to watch for a couple of days, then watch that until I got tired enough to fall asleep.
It was a great plan and I was excited.
Now, you have to understand something about my bed. I am the proud owner of a queen size princess bed. I inherited it from my Aunt and Uncle when I was like 15 and we have been nearly inseparable ever since. I seriously love my bed! When standing, the bed comes almost to my waist and is covered with a down mattress topper, six pillows, and a huge down comforter(hence the “princess bed” title). It’s basically amazing. My very favorite thing is to get all the fans blowing on me and curl up in my huge bed and watch a good movie. It’s fantastic!
Anyway, so I went home, got all ready and popped the DVD into the player. I began trying to locate the DVD flipper among the blankets on the bed and during my search picked up one of the pillows that was lying on the bed near the wall. I lifted the pillow, spotted the flipper, and sitting right next to it looking perfectly content and sinister was a huge cockroach! I’m not talking about one of those wimpy little half inch ones, I mean, this thing was A BEAST!!! And not only was it huge and revolting, it was in my bed!
I saw that revolting little spawn of Satan sitting there so casually and an involuntary scream escaped my lips as I dropped the pillow and jumped back a few feet.
I was panicking. What was I going to do? There is nothing I despise more than roaches – especially a monster like this one. Halfway to my bedroom door in search of help, I heard my sister Cassie's voice from the other side: “Leash? Are you ok?” I flung the door open, and in near hysterics told her that there was a roach in my bed. Knowing my love for my bed and my extreme loathing of roaches, she sprang into action. “I need the spray and a cup or something!” I ran to grab the necessary roach destruction items, and upon delivery went to find my Dad in case she needed further assistance.
I explained the emergency to him, and he went to help while I sat impatiently on his bed lamenting the story to my Mom. After what seemed like forever, he returned and informed me that the crisis had been averted.
Halfway up the stairs, I was greeted by the revolting smell of roach spray and entered my room to find my sister putting things back under my bed and attempting to arrange the bedding in a way that it would not appear that she had just chased a roach all across it.
She then informed me that she and my cousin had been sitting in their room watching a movie and as soon as she heard my scream through the wall, she paused the movie, informed my cousin that there was a roach crisis, and came directly to rescue me.
She then relentlessly chased that little devil around until she ended up on her stomach under my bed, where she attempted to drown it in bug spray, before chasing it towards my dad, who squished it. This had been no easy task, but knowing that I would never sleep in that bed or room until the little sucker was dead, she persisted.
I love my sister! Not many girls would be willing to go through what she did for me. What would I have done without her? She quite literally saved me from a fate worse than death.
Not only did she correctly interpret my scream, but she gave the problem everything she had. Can you imagine if I had crawled into bed to go to sleep before finding it? The mere thought makes me shudder! Who knows what could have happened? Dang I love that girl!
Who could ask for a better sister?

The bane of my existence:

What exactly is a bane anyway?

Drawing on the poetic meaning of the word "bane", this means that the subject is a perpetual thorn in the speaker's side, a chronic cause of trouble and difficulty and even suffering. A useful phrase to pull out when you're all out of swear words to describe a certain coworker, roommate, or college professor.

Originally referred to a kind of poison, and as Webster 1913 points out, an especially deadly one at that. Today the poisons all have obscenely long names straight out of a chemistry textbook, so "bane" has moved on to a more poetic meaning. You may sometimes hear of someone describing another person as "the bane of my existence"; the toxic metaphor has not been misplaced.

Ya. That describes it.

I. Hate. Full. Moons.

For some reason that is beyond me, I get insomnia when the moon is full. I know, I know, sounds ridiculous, bizarre, peculiar, and a little creepy, but all werewolf jokes aside, its true.

Its been this way for as long as I can remember. Whenever the moon is full, I lie in bed for hours, and no matter how tired I am, it takes FOREVER to fall asleep. And then when I finally drift off, it is not into peaceful slumber as one hopes for, but rather, I spend what is left of the night tossing and turning and having ridiculously strange and disturbing dreams.

It is beyond annoying. Its my dads fault though. He's the same way, but no one else in my family seems to suffer from the same ailment. In fact, hes the only other person I've ever met who complains of something so strange. Although, its probably not something people generally admit to.

And its not just one night, oh no. When its a full moon, the agony usually lasts for about three nights, and no matter how exhausted I get, there is nothing to be done. Sleeping pills? Bad, bad idea. I shudder at the thought. Seems logical, but makes it soooo much worse.

So, if you see me with dark circles under my eyes, frazzled hair, and a grumpy expression, check the phase the moon is currently in, and chances are good that it will be nice and full and mocking me with its bright and sinister...fullness.

By the way, anyone seen the moon lately?

777 1/2

This has been the longest weekend of my life!

My Mom & I left early Thursday morning and drove for eight hours to Hurricane, Utah where we stayed the night at my cousins adorable house. Hurricane is basically the smallest hick-mormon town I have ever seen, but its cute and seems like a nice little place.

Friday morning we left my cousins house and drove the four remaining hours to Provo where we promptly got a hotel and I cleaned up to go to my appointments on campus.

I wandered for awhile around BYU's huge campus looking for the right building and room. I finally found what I was looking for, and met with an academic adviser who was very kind and sweet, but not a lot of help.

I left her office much earlier than anticipated and set off to find my next appointment location. I very quickly realized that it was in the next building over and that I had some time to kill before my next appointment, so I called my friend Chase who got me into this in the first place, and luckily, he was on campus at the time, just a couple of buildings over and had some free time, so he came to meet me. It was really fun to see him and catch up for a few minutes(love ya Chase!).

I then met with a financial adviser who was about as much help as the academic adviser had been, and I started feeling a little discouraged as I tried to locate my car, but soon realized that it was not a completely wasted effort, because I at least got to see and get a feel for the campus and talk to my old friend Chase.

That night, my Mom and I went to dinner and two movies(ya, two movies in one night is not that unusual for us. What can I say? We're movie people).

The next morning we drove around for a ridiculously long time trying to find the SLDC(It's a long story). We drove all the way to Bountiful because the dumb girl who gave us directions told us to get off the freeway on 90^th street, which apparently is Utah slang for 9000 South, which is the actual name of the street. She knew we were from out of town, why would we know that 9000 South is sometimes referred to as 90^th Street? We ended up driving way out of our way and having to come all the way back, but we found it in the end. The point is, we spent all morning long doing something that should have taken an hour or so, at the most.

That afternoon I called a few places trying to find somewhere to live. This being the main purpose of the trip, I began to get discouraged when the first few places I called were no longer available, or would not become available until later than I am hoping to move.

After a few tries, I talked to a woman about a duplex and made arrangements to see it that afternoon. When we pulled up to number 777, this is what we saw:

Cute, huh?

I loved it, but was still a little unsure.

We went inside and checked everything out and found that it was small, but cute, and should work for what I need. I was pretty sold, but then I was informed t hat I would actually be living in the back duplex rather than the front, which I had seen.

I was informed that it was the exact same layout, and was taken outside, where I saw this:

Apparently there was more to this house than I realized.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered this:

How cute is this? It was love at first sight! I know its cheesy, but 7771/2? I love it! We didn't even look at any other places, I told the lady I had to have it, paid the deposit, and as of July, I will be living in 7771/2!

I'm so excited! Its a really cute little place and the other girls that are living there seemed nice, and its really close to campus so I can walk, and I'm so happy and relieved to have found a place!

We returned to the hotel, bummed around all night, and left early this morning for the twelve hour drive home, feeling pretty good that although the trip was not exactly all that we had planned or hoped for, we accomplished our main goal.

So, to sum up: We found me a placed to live, but basically accomplished nothing else. On the plus side, we laughed a lot, sang a lot, and made a lot of U-turns. :)