End of May

These final days of May have been hectic.

The good thing about it though is that I've taken lots of pictures.

San Fran. Monterey. Santa Cruz. Etc.

I just haven't had a chance to look through them all and deal with them.

But the reasoning for the pictures was my lovely cousin Mark visiting with his cute wife Danielle.
aka time to be tourists.

Yesterday involved a quick trip to the airport (at 4:30 am) to drop those kiddos off. And then resulted in me having a huge realization: I'm entering the MTC soon. As in three months.

But Charlotte is there now. And that's freaky.
(She's already gotten a letter from me. I'm so great at writing letters.)

Today however, I spent writing my final paper.

Last homework assignment until Spring of 2014. Stoked. (And it feels so great to be done!)

And then I got to hold the cutest little baby for a good hour.

Yeah, it was great. I love little Jane. :)

Tomorrow is another drive to the airport. And relaxation.

plus, life is so great now because I can pinterest all day long and blame it on researching for missionary clothes. 

The real reason for this post was this: I can't believe it's June. 

This summer is going to fly.

There's a bird outside right now whose internal clock is really screwed up.

It's 12:17 am and it's chirping like crazy.
Ridiculous. Can't it see that it's not daytime?

I think it's funny.
Cause I'm sitting here texting Erin but the rest of the house is sleeping.

Silly birds. Time to sleep!

A Magical Letter.

On my birthday, I got a text that said this:

"YOUR CALL ARRIVED!!!"

This was sent to me from my dear mother.

Charlotte and I obviously started freaking out. 

I was still going to be in Salt Lake until Monday so that little letter was just going to be sitting at my house all weekend long. Waiting for me to open it up.

Every so often during the weekend, Charlotte or I would, out of the blue, just say:

"Your/My call is just sitting at your/my house!"

The suspense kept building.

Even friends of Nicole's knew that my call was sitting at my lovely little abode. 

People were excited.

The weekend was full of suspense and excitement. 

Charlotte and I just assumed that I was going to be going to Paris with her. Clearly.

So much chatter regarding it.

Even random people in her ward, whom I didn't even know, wanted to make sure that I would call Charlotte, and that she would tell them where I'm going. Hilarious.

Anyway, the weekend passed way too fast and way too slow at the same time.

Too fast because it was my last weekend with Charlotte until 2014.

Too slow because I wanted to open the letter.

Once I got home on Monday, I had to wait for everyone to get home too.

From school, work, etc.

The time finally came. 

And that sucker got ripped open.

And I read these words:

A letter from President Monson as a birthday present? Sure, I'll take that!

EXCITEMENT.

Although, if we're being honest, I was way shocked. 

I was kind of anticipating going foreign.

And if I was going stateside, I didn't expect Colorado at all.

Especially since it's Jessica's mission.

And I know others who live there too.

[source.]

But it'll be an adventure! And I'm excited for it! :)

See you in September, Denver!

[Now onto the struggle of finding cute missionary clothes. Wish me luck!]

Jerusalem, see?

Somehow, I found this website.

I'm actually not sure how.
Scratch that. I remember.
Adam posted it on our BYUJC Fall '11 page.

It's marvelous.

And I might've spend a good little while (20 minutes?) "walking" from the Western Wall all the way home, up the hill, to the Jerusalem Center.

I never thought I'd say this BUT, I miss that walk.

And I miss this view.

That would indeed be a screenshot of a street view on googlemaps.

I love technology.

:)

Seeing all my Jerusalem friends this past weekend made me miss that place, a whole lot.
I also stalked all my Jerusalem pictures the other day. Bad idea.

ALSO.
I stumbled upon this blog post.
Almost made me cry.
I miss that place. A whole heck of a lot.
(And the author of that blog was one of our speakers at one of our Forum Addresses. He was great.)
I need a Jerusalem fix. Fast.

a farewell & some food.

That was the name of the event that Charlotte made on facebook.
For her farewell, clearly.

I think it very adequately describes the rest of the weekend though.

Friday we made the initial 3 batches of cookies.

Saturday morning, we wrapped lots of forks in these napkins. So cute. :)

Then after Astrofest, we made two more batches of cookies (or maybe one? I honestly don't remember) and then we attempted to decorate them. That was an adventure.

 They just got swirly-squiggily lines of delicious chocolate and a sparkley silver ball on the top.
  

 And oh yeah, we made a lot of cookies. It was a little out of control.

 There were also lots of cute little flowers everywhere too. Such a good little party.

 I LOVE these vases. So cute.

After our crazy evening decorating cookies (i.e. burning chocolate, fighting with the decorating bags, getting chocolate everywhere, gaining 10 pounds from eating the cookie dough & frosting), the next day was a big day!

Charlotte gave a lovely talk in church! I would say one of the best pre-missionary talks I've heard. It was good.

The whole meeting was good, actually. Super presh. And I like being her little shadow. haha

And it was fun because her farewell prompted a few of my favorite Jerusalem friends to drive up to Salt Lake. Lovely.

Taylor B., Eliza, Charlotte, Katherine, Suzy, Me and Nicole.

After church, of course. :)

Nicole, Eliza, Suzy, Charlotte, Me and Katherine after some delicious food.

Our last picture of the three of us for who knows how long. So sad. :(

But so exciting! :)

It was a marvelous day and a perfect ending to the weekend. 

Astrofest.

When I landed in Atlanta on Thursday, I started texting Nicole about my plans for that weekend in the SLC.

She told me that on Saturday she was working at Astrofest. Intriguing.

I told her that I would be there. Although it was semi-sarcastic because I wasn't entirely in control of my weekend plans.

Fast forward to a few hours later and the next day.

I tell Charlotte about it and we both talk to Nicole on speaker phone while driving to our hiking location.
Charlotte sounds interested but we both know that there's work to do for the farewell the next day.

But, they were giving out eclipse glasses to anyone who came AND it was free.
So, we decided that we would go in the morning and then head back to Salt Lake in the early afternoon to get ready for the next day and so Charlotte could finish her talk.

Well, the next morning, things didn't go as planned so we spent the morning making some preparations for the following day and then we headed out to P-town.

We made some rockets (and launched them).

We got our glasses.

 Literally the greatest moment.

 Just looking at the sun, no big deal.

 In front of "the Dome of the Rock".

(We all know that this picture was only taken because Lottie wanted to use the "clicky" camera.)

Played in the jump house.

 Before the race.

Winner!

And had an overall marvelous time.

(The day also involved going to various shows, seeing Suzy & Amy, relaxing in the planetarium seats, and then eating some delicious froyo at spoon it up with Lottie and Suzy Q.)

Good day in Provo. 

And good almost final day with the girls (mostly Lottie and Suze).

A Very Happy Hippo Birthday.

The trip to Mexize was good.
But it was so exciting to come home to America.
Even though I knew I wasn't coming home.

Charlotte and her mom picked me up at the Salt Lake Airport and took me to their lovely home.
Charlotte fed me ice cream for dinner while we caught up. Perfection.

The next day, May 18th, was my birthday but we woke up to a stormy day.
So we made Eiffel Tower cookies and hung out around the house, waiting for the storm to pass.

At 3 or so, we ventured out on our birthday hike & picnic.

We hiked Bell's Canyon which was lovely.
A pretty easy hike although it was all straight up or straight down.

Our fearless leader.

We got to the lake, found the little bench and had our picnic.

Bench of perfection.

Birthday Picnic.

As you can see from the above picture, our picnic included lots of goods. Poprocks Chocolate, Happy Hippos, peach rings and sparkling cider. Just like Jerusalem? Of course. :)

 It was actually pretty funny & freaky because once we sat down on our bench, and started getting out all our treats, these geese made a B-line for us. Obviously humans normally feed them treats and they expected the same from us. They congregated around us the entire time we were there.

 Birthday Toast. Of course.

 We then decided that we wanted pictures of both of us. And since there was no one else there (except for some sketch teenage boys) we decided to take the picture taking into our own hands.

We propped my 'clicky' camera on the backpack and set it on 10-continuous self timer mode. It would just fire ten in a row which was hilarious. This is the first and last one of our first attempt. I love the second one because we're both laughing at how ridiculous we are.

 Cute & Smiling.

 Laughter.

We then decided to get a little crazier. i.e. take jumping pictures and the like, while using self timer. 

Oh, and I have mentioned how adorbs we are because we're wearing matching shirts?

(I'm 98% sure that was the first time we've worn them on the same day even though we've had them for 9 months.)

 Somewhat successful jumping picture.

 Close up with our drinks.

 Our secret lake getaway.

I think Lottie looks supes cute in this picture.

Driving home. Obviously this was safe.

View of the Valley. 

During this little jaunt, I realized how beautiful Utah is.

After our hike and treats, we went home and it was dinner time. Unfortunately, Bro Searle was at work, Matthew and Peter were fishing & hiking so dinner was just Sis Searle, James, Charlotte and I. Since it was already a 'reminisce about Jru' birthday, we added to that. 

With falafel and hummus.

And while it was no Damascus Gate falafel or hummus from Lina's, it was still pretty good.

The sauce with the falafel tasted like the normal shwarma sauce and the falafel wasn't as crispy as I would've liked. But it was still delicious and filled us up.

First falafel since December 14th. Wow.

 Falafel. In Salt Lake.

They were also so great and got me this chocolate cake, which we ate once we got home (after we also ate baklava after dinner). It was delish. 

 I've never had such a crazy little birthday adventure before but it was marvelous. :)

I'm 21 now. Weird.

(post coming soon on the rest of our exciting weekend which included Astrofest, cookie decorating and a farewell.)

The Miracle of Life.

Yesterday, I had an experience that was absolutely amazing. And so very unexpected.

After we got back from dinner, Kayla and I decided that we should go stargazing 'since it was our last night together...

We always go down to the beach and sit in those chairs so Heidi and I got ready and got E. Silva and started walking down the beach, towards Kayla's bungalow.

We were laughing and being crazy as we walked along the beach, which is typical.
We were approaching Kayla and some others when a kind of notice a large mound in the sand. It is an object that looks like a rock.

But then someone says the words: "Be quiet, there is a sea turtle nesting"
What?

Heidi kinda freaks out (because of other things and not the turtle) and she screams. Not a good thing for turtles.
We cautiously move around it and meet up with others nearby (because we almost walked right into it...) and we start watching.

Mother Nature is amazing.

I was completely mesmerized by this sea turtle.

Unfortunately, words travels faster than lightning in groups like this so after a few minutes, there were lots of people, making lots of noise.

I did see the turtle laying it's eggs, covering them back up and then heading back out to the ocean.
It was all really fast though because she started a while before we got there. We even thought that we scared her off and that she didn't lay her eggs.

But once she left, the Turtle Man in charge came over and did his job, with an eager audience.
He showed a turtle egg, explained his job and process (he adds a little vial thing with his name and number in with the eggs so people know he's in charge) and then he built a little sand mound and roped it off with caution tape so people can't disrupt the little nest.
It was his first nest in his beach area so he was pretty excited.
And the whole time, I was absolutely jealous of his job.

Seeing that reaffirmed my love for aquatic animals and my want to study them.
It was such a lovely evening. Especially since it was so random.

And because it happened to be Mother's Day here in Mexico.
Best part of the trip, I would say.

(Even though people were rudely annoying during it.)
Such a splendid way to end our time in Mexico. :)

Cinco de Mayo

In America, we assume that the 5th of May is widely celebrated in Mexico.

It's not.

Only in Puebla is is actually celebrated.

Ironic that we celebrate it more in the States than they do here.

But, regardless, I'm in Mexico today so we're going to pretend like it's exciting.

Great.

So here are some fun numbers for you.

4- number of bug bites I have.
4-LDS temple grounds visited.
6- number of ruin sites visited.
7- the number of hotels I've stayed in in the last 13 days.
13- how many different roommates I've had, in 13 days.
50+- hours spent on the bus (maybe that's an exaggeration...)

I can't think of any other exciting things to share. Time to do homework. Woo.