the epitome of selflessness

there aren't very many things that suck about being home. i like my bed, i like my family, i like my mother making me dinner every night. but there is one thing that just plain blows.

there's nobody to make junk food for.

i like to cook. i like to bake. and sometimes i like to make things that just aren't very healthy. at school, somebody will always eat it. and even though everybody's all "ohhh i really shouldn't be eating this.." they do anyhow.

at my house, everybody would rather just not eat junk food. of course everybody's a little bit happy, because who doesn't like the occasional cookie or brownie or slice of cake? the only problem is, i would like to make things a lot more than occasionally. particularly when i'm home and have nothing that i need to do except drag my butt to my computer and work a few hours a day.

rumor has it that when my father and my mother were first married, my dad would ask my mom every once in a while if she wanted to split a girl scout cookie for dessert. and by "every once in a while" i do not mean that he was cutting back on the girl scout cookie day. i mean that was his splurge of the week.

and that is why i will never be a heart doctor.

anyhow. in desperation, i decided today to make food for my little sister's young women's activity.

so, you're welcome, girls. it had nothing to do with my need to bake something and then get it out of my house where somebody would better appreciate it. it was all for you.

i want.

i think sperry's are attractive. especially on boys. but also on girls. and that is why i want these shoes:

cute? i think yes.

two more things.

number one. my father is so classy he uses a knife and fork even while driving.

okay, not really. but i really and truly love this picture. he's a shockingly good driver while cutting his food.

number two.

this is what i am one hundred percent grateful for:

attached garages.

living in an apartment in the windiest place in the world (that also happens to be freezing cold and snowy), aka rexburg, (and particularly on the top of the hill at the ridge), has opened my eyes to the beauty of attached garages.

and as i got out of the car at 1:30 in the morning when it was c.o.l.d. after driving home from the airport sunday night, i was immediately flooded with the thrill of excitement that i wouldn't have to walk across a snowy, cold parking lot.

freaking love attached garages.

and then i went back to utah.

i'm about done with all this traveling. :)

but utah was fun, too.

dad and i packed up the rest of my stuff in utah, and then hung out with cristina and dan, as well as my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandma.

love this girl :)

and i can't wait for april 25, when i'll live less than five minutes away from them!! (at least for a few weeks.. until they move :-/)

virginia is for lovers

frankly i have absolutely no idea what that means. and i never have. so that's cool.

once upon a time we went to virginia last week.

and it was magical. even though it was supposed to be warm. and it most definitely was not warm. we're used to it.

anyhow, we did some cool stuff.

like going to williamsburg,

visiting university of virginia,

hiking a mountain,

hiking another mountain (during which bee wore ballet flats through the snow.. don't even ask),

going to monticello,

eating dinner at the boor's head inn,

and having the most wonderful time ever.

mom and dad gave bri the camera at monticello. it was like when parents give a camera to the little kid so they stay interested and involved. and it worked. ha. bri was yelling "photo op!" every ten seconds.

statistics.

i love lists. so here's another one.

this semester i have:

flown 9392 miles,

driven 5378 miles,

spent 19 hours on an airplane

and 66 hours on roadtrips,

spent 7 weeks not in rexburg

and only 5 weekends in rexburg.

i discovered that i'm allergic to strawberry milkshakes,

watched 62 hours of gossip girl with chels and quincy,

had my wisdom tooth removed,

spent $911 on my car,

went to both the east and the west coast,

transferred to byu,

got two new jobs,

and used four boxes of bandaids.

happiness.

driving around virginia for a week meant a lot of time to think. (okay, okay, that's not true. bri and i fell asleep almost immediately every time we got in the car. i felt like a kid that conks out as soon as the car seat is buckled. but still. i've had lots of thinking time lately.) i've thought about a lot of things: life, dreams, relationships, friendships, family, career, learning, school, work, what i like, what i don't like.

and i thought about the times in the past year that i've been most happy. not the long-term, life-is-great kind of happiness that happens every few months when everything clicks just right for a few weeks, but the momentary, this-is-what-life-is-about happiness.

this is what i decided.

1. summer days with paige. also known as jpm. it was exactly how summer is supposed to be. every day after class was done, either i'd go straight to paige's or she'd come straight to my place. we did our homework and made dinner and ate nilla wafers and went for long drives and sang loud and talked about boys and life and dreams. and every day i just thought, "yes. this is it."

(ps my biggest regret in life is that i will never have paige's lips. that is all.)

2. sitting on the sea lion beach at la jolla last march. i could have sat there all week. i had everything i could ever have wanted that day, including an invisible dog named benjamin, and i just couldn't keep my smiles inside. and i freaking love those sea lions.

3. running friday afternoon errands with chelsea. somehow it turned into a bit of a tradition this semester--i pick her up from class, we run random and usually entirely unnecessary errands (e.g. buying craft supplies or hunting rexburg's grocery stores for just the right kind of cheez-its), and then we go home and dispense with our friday night activities. i could never have made it through this semester without that girl, straight up, and even though this semester was a crazy weird time for both of us, friday afternoon errands were just happy.

4. the cabin. i don't know if it's the location ( a gorgeous tree-surrounded lake in wisconsin), the skiing (there are usually at least a couple days during which the water is a perfect ten), or being with my family in a place where friends, school, and jobs just don't seem to matter as much as laying on the dock, but i am almost always blissfully happy at the cabin.

and after making this list of my top four happiest moments in the last year, i realized: there is a really, really good reason that this kind of happiness doesn't happen very often. i'm glad it doesn't. i'm glad that i'm not one hundred percent on every second of every day. because then when these happy moments strike, i can just stand back and think, "yes. this is it."

(also i would like to point out that three out of four of my happiest moments occurred in the sunshine. so if anybody would like to buy me a ticket to the sun, that would be just fine. please and thank you.)