I Am So Pumped...

...To see these two people right here:Yes, of course I still want to see everyone else, but I've already talked about them. Now it's time for my Colter and Codi rant. Tomorrow I fly home for Colter's missionary farewell on Sunday, so I get a long weekend to hang out with my Kirtland family and friends again! Yay!

So Codi here:
Is one of the three girls my family is currently fostering. And she is the most adorable 2 year old I have ever met! Apparently she's been quite the terror since I've been gone, going through her "Terrible Two's"... but I don't care because at the moment I miss her like crazy!
I'm sure this weekend once I do something she won't like she'll throw a little fit at me too, as two years olds often do, but until then, I am very excited to see this little cutie.

Speaking of cuties...
WARNING: I am about to go on a girly rant, so if you don't want to read about it I suggest you log off my blog now :)

I AM SO READY TO SEE COLTER AGAIN.

I have not seen this kid in over a month and it's driving me crazy! The worst part is he's been hunting since the 12th, and therefore out of cell phone service, so I have not even heard from him for the past two weeks, with the exception of a surprise phone call on Saturday.
I really don't even know if I get to see him tomorrow when I fly in, because there's a good possibility that he'll be hunting til Friday, but I'm coming home for his farewell, so pretty dang better show up before too long. :)
When he wasn't hunting, we discovered the miracle of Skype, and this little innovation has been the coolest thing since grape jelly in my opinion. When you have fairly good webcams, the conversations on Skype are so much better than cell phones because you can talk and see each other and it costs nothing! I've used it to talk to my family too, and lemme tell ya, Skype definitely makes distance easier to handle.

So as I've said, tomorrow I fly home! I'm a teensy bit terrified though because I have never been on a plane before. The scary part isn't the airplane though... It's the airPORT! I am so scared that I'll get lost or I'll miss my flight or somehow manage to get on the wrong plane and end up in Costa Rica (wait... maybe that wouldn't be so bad....) or something. AND to top it off I have a 2 hour layover in Denver for two hours before I even get where I'm going.
It should be quite the adventure... But I'm still very excited. I will write all about my trip home when I come back, so until then, wish me luck!

Mark Weekend!

So this weekend Mark came to see me!!! He's in his senior year in high school right now and since I have school here in Arizona we only get to hear from each other every once in a while.. but this time he got to come here for the weekend!

He came on Friday and stayed til this morning for Labor Day and we had a lot of fun. Friday afternoon after he got here we walked around campus and got frozen yogurt from ZoYo. Since it was Labor Day weekend, the kids who didn't go home got a little party-crazy, so his first impression of college wasn't exactly the most common but we didn't stick around any of those kinds of people if we could help it.

The next day we decided to go to the Tempe mall and do some shopping. The hardest part of the day was the public transportation, just because I've never used it before and I was in charge of getting us to the right buses and metro stations at the right time but we eventually got it.


He hates taking pictures so he never smiled (agh!) but he was mostly a good sport anyway. We walked around Arizona Mills for a while which was a lot of fun, and this mall I actually kinda new my around already since I'd been here a couple times before when visiting Tempe. He also let me pick out my early birthday present since he won't see me for my birthday and I got a few feather hair extensions! I've been seeing them in a lot of people's hair lately and I thought they were the coolest thing so Mark let me pick out some and the lady put them in my hair :)

On our way back to campus after the mall we got on the wrong bus but eventually made our way home and then decided to go to the Mesa temple! I completely forgot to take pictures while we were there but I have this one with the temple in the background :) This temple is quickly becoming my all-time favorite, it is just so beautiful and very close to home for me.
Also, I am NOT a tree hugger... I just really like palm trees, they remind me of summer.

On Sunday we went to church and then hung out with my friend Riley from my ward, and I made the boys too many pancakes for them to eat (I'm used to cooking for a big family, whoops!) And then we just sat and talked and watched YouTube videos for hours. It was so much fun and I'm glad I got to finally show off my new home to someone, it made me feel sort of grown up :)

"Givin' Em Hell"

This weekend has been extra crazy and fun so now it's time to update!

Thursday I went to my FIRST Sundevils football game!!
It was so much fun and I love that football games never change, other than get funner as you get older :)

At first I didn't know if I was going to have that much fun because I didn't know anyone else who was going to be in the same section as me but decided to go anyway for the love of the game... and I'm so glad I did!! I ended up quickly making friends with the students sitting around me and we all got super pumped and excited together throughout the whole night.

This was my view of the student section from where I sat (more like stood, you were scorned for ever resting your feet in the student section) As you can see everyone is holding their pitchforks up, this is kinda like ASU spirit fingers and a much cooler alternative in my opinion ;)

I know this picture is really blurry but I don't care because it's SPARKY our mascot!!! I was really really lucky because I just so happened to have an empty spot next to me the one time Sparky decided to come find a place to stand in our row. He came and watched the game next to me for a good two minutes it was so awesome!! And it kinda gives me more perspective on what it must have been like for little kids when I would go stand by them in my Bronco mascot uniform back in high school. AWESOME FEELING.

Oh and I suppose I should mention how good my seat was... I had one of the best seats in the student section by far. I waited 3 hours in the blistering hot sun to get a spot in the second row of the stands, 50 feet from the 20 yard line! And I was on the jumbo screen twice!!

I had no idea the student section was this ginormous until ASU Sports posted this picture on Facebook.. See all the gold? That's us!! In the "Inferno" aka the student section, if you are caught wearing ANY colored shirt that isn't gold, you're kicked out. That even includes maroon! I now understand why they're so strict, because we looked awesome.

Once the night was over I was SO flippin tired I don't even remember climbing into bed, but it was so worth it because we beat UC Davis 48-14. Next week is the game against Missouri and everyone is expecting big things, so I guess I'll be back here next week at 3:30 to get my good seats again!

Am I Homesick?

So I've never been homesick before, and I've never really understood how you catch it, but I'm pretty sure this is what homesickness feels like.

Today Colter is hanging out with my family and last week my best friend Mark hung out with them too, and it just feels weird that my everyday life is going on without me there.

I talk to my family at least once a week, and Skype them on Sundays.. Life in Kirtland sounds as crazy as always. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving that I'm no longer babysitting and cleaning (as the big sister) all the time, but I do miss some things:

LIKE THIS KID.
He's starting to grow out of that obnoxious-little-brother stage and I miss the talks we've had that have really made me grow close to him. He and I always had late night talks when he'd come sit on my bed and talk about school or girls or whatever drama he was in at the moment, and is really good at making me laugh when I've had a long day.


Secondly, and very especially, this guy right here.
I miss hanging out at his house, watching the spanish news channel and talking for hours.
I miss singing to blasting White Boy music in his truck when we're procrastinating going home.
I miss taking twice as long at WalMart because he tries putting extra items I don't even need in the cart.
I miss how easily he can ruin a potentially good movie, without fail, every. single. time we go see one.
And most of all, I just miss having my best friend around that can always make my day better by just making me laugh and reminding me it's okay to be completely retarded sometimes.


Even though it makes me sound completely crazy, I miss my chaotic, hectic, drive-me-up-the-wall family. (John not pictured) The two adorable girls my family is fostering are cuter and cuter every time I see them, and it feels really weird not to have kids running around everywhere I go.

I know that things will get better again once I have a job and start getting more busy myself, but until then I thought I'd just add a small tribute to the "other life" I don't intend to leave in the past. :)

Meet Colter.

This would be my handsome man.
At the moment, he is home with his family in New Mexico, while I am 400 miles away at ASU for school, majoring in English. It's been a really complicated summer, because although we've talked every single day that we've been together, actually SEEING each other has been a little hectic with both of us traveling and preparing for our new lives to start.

When we are together, he's always loved taking me on walks and being a huge brat anytime he had the chance. In some ways, we are so completely opposite it's ridiculous, and he drives me crazy as often as he can. But in the end there's nothing that makes me happy more than knowing he is my absolute best friend and I can go to him about anything, even if sometimes I feel really really dumb for whatever I did.

On October 12th he and I will be officially going our separate ways, and although we are already trying to maintain a long distance relationship, it will definitely not be the same when I don't get to text, call or Skype him everyday. That part is probably the only sad part about it though.. Because now I get to be a girl happily in wait of an LDS missionary!

I've been picking up on ideas from other MG's of what to do while I wait, and I am so excited to start my countdown calendar and to send him packages and learn and do so many things to help myself grow while he's out saving the world.

He has to leave home so other people can have their families for eternity... so when he comes home we can have ours :)

News:

So I sort of have an announcement.
I am now preparing to wait for a missionary.

It feels really weird to be saying this, seeing as four months ago I did not see myself in this situation at all. However, God had other plans for me and now here I am. Sitting here typing about my soon-to-be missionary, wearing the promise ring he gave me three weeks ago.

We started dating June 3rd. We'd known each other for about a year, but we never really talked much because he was dating a girl I knew from another school. But... they had broken up last winter and we ran into each other at summer institute, and started talking.
It didn't take long for our rendezvous to begin, by the third week of class we considered ourselves a "couple" and so did everyone around us.

We've known from the beginning that our fun would have to end with the summer, because the night of our first date he opened his mission call to find out he was leaving October 12th for Panama City, Panama! However, our love has grown quickly and I have decided once and for all that I am willing to wait for him to come home from his mission, so we can marry each other for eternity in the temple in 2013.

I know I'm a huge dork for saying this but I am so friggin PUMPED to be a Missionary's Girlfriend! I have been reading blog after blog of girls who are currently waiting for their missionary boyfriends and all the different ways they are making the longest 2 years of their lives a fun experience.... And have decided to start my own. I figure this is also the best way to journal my life for the next two years, something to keep me sane when the days are long.

I will now use this time to tell a little bit about my boy and all the fun we have had and are having!

It's only the beginning.

After 1,374 days I finally get to say that I am graduated from high school and so happy! I have made great friends that I will keep forever and learned lessons I could never have learned without all the amazing people in my life.

The girls:
RyAnne, Meleah, Alyssa, Krista :)
The woman who has inspired me for the last 18 years.
Graduation was very wet, it poured the entire time, but still fantastic. We didn't stick around for hugs or pictures at the end, but headed straight for the Project Grad for the fun til 3 :)
We had a combined graduation party for me and my cousin Cameron, who graduated from Aztec, and it turned out to be an awesome idea! We had it at my Grandpa's place, so there were people eating and playing frisbee and boating out on the pond and S'more roasting and TONS of food being eaten all night!

I'm so glad I got to have so much of my family together all at once and I thank everyone for coming and everyone for their amazing support!

I'm so excited that the end of high school is just the beginning. Now is where the adventures start. I will be attending Arizona State University this fall as a freshman to major in English, and I can't wait to see what Tempe holds for me.