Adventure July

One of my old roommates used to have "Adventure" days with a bunch of our friends.  They would dedicate one night a week to be their "adventure" day.  One year it was Wednesdays.  Another year it was Thursdays.  Then if there was something cool happening on another day of the week, they'd change the evening for just that week.  I wasn't able to, or didn't go most of the time.  Not that we didn't like each other, but we just did different things with our free time.  Although some of their adventures sounded pretty great... :)

My month of July of this year has reminded me of Heather's "Adventure" days.  But instead of it being a day every week, it's been every weekend and 2 of the 4 weeks.

At the beginning of the month, my family had a mini reunion of sorts.  5 of the 8 kids in my family live on the east coast (4 of us in Virginia), so we all rented a beach house down in the Outer Banks for a week.  There were 9 adults and 9 kids, including a one month old baby.  It was fun to see part of my family and just have a week to relax.  Until the last year or so, we've never had many girls in my family.  Now that there are a bunch of baby girls, my Mom made them all matching dresses and we took some pictures.  Here are a few:

The day after I got back from the beach, one of my good friends from BYU came to visit me for the weekend. He's in Connecticut for the summer, so he took the bus down and we spent most of the weekend just catching up and having fun.  It was also my brother's birthday that weekend, so I had to make him a cake!  I think I'm going to have to try that recipe again.... Mmmmm, it was good!

Ryan and me by the Washington Monument.  Sometimes I do love being in DC... :)

This past weekend was awesome!  Thursday night a few friends and I went to the midnight showing of Batman.  I still think I liked the second one best, but this one was super good!  I LOVED the ending.  On Friday a bunch of friends and I went to upstate New York to go see the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  I haven't seen it in over 10 years, and that was probably the most recent out of anyone in the group.  Some had never seen it.  It was a super fun weekend.  We split into 2 different groups.  One went to Niagra Falls and the other went to Hershey.  We ended up being in 2 minivans and just drove around everywhere in them.  It was great and SUCH a fun weekend!  I'm kinda tired now, but it was so worth it. :)

This is what 3am looks like

The group altogether in Palmyra!

The biggest adventure of the month is yet to come though!!!  This next Saturday I am leaving for.... wait for it... BELIZE!  If you don't know where that is (I didn't until a friend went there 2 years ago), it is in the Caribbean just south of Mexico and east of Guatemala.  It has the second best Scuba diving in the WORLD (too bad I don't have my scuba license...)  But the snorkeling should be fantastic!  I'll let you know ALL about it when I get back.  

Sounds like a fun July, right??? :)

Almost Dying

I wish that the title of this post was not serious.

First things first.  I'm ABSOLUTELY fine.  No injuries or scrapes or anything like that.  Not even any resounding psychological trauma.  But there was a serious chance that I could've died or been seriously injured about a week and a half ago.

This is a short story.

My roommate and I were visiting her hometown of Princeton for the weekend.  It's a really cute town that just has that country charm.  Seriously, it reminded me why I want to not live by a city for most of my life.  I hate traffic...

Anyway, after church on Sunday, we were driving around seeing some sites.  The road we were driving on on our way back to her house was this normal country road.  Two lane, no shoulders, 25 mph speed limit.  As we drove down this road, we saw a car coming from the other direction.  Not thinking anything about it (because let's be honest, who normally thinks about it when a car is coming in the other direction?), we just keep driving.  The other car swerves, and in my mind they were attempting to miss something.  No.  That wasn't it.  They swerved completely into our lane and didn't move.  And they were going at least 45 mph, if not over 50.  And they just kept coming.  Head on.

Luckily, I was not driving.  I have no clue what I would've done.  Bekah had her head in tact a little more than I did and slowed waaaaay down and laid on the horn.  At the last moment the car swerved back into their own lane and kept driving.  We thought that they may have fallen asleep or something, but as we looked at her face, there was no surprise or shock or anything like that.  She had the most dazed look on her face.  I hate to accuse anyone of anything, but I seriously think she was super high.  I really wonder sometimes...

Bekah and I were definitely dazed for awhile after that.  She would've pulled off into the ditch if the lady hadn't have swerved back into her lane when she did, but the end of the car probably still would've been hit and who knows what that would've done.  Or we could've been hit head on.  And seen it coming.  I feel that that would not be fun, to see an accident coming and not be able to do anything about it.

It was definitely a scary moment in my life.

Addendum

Apparently my strep throat story was not quite complete when I wrote that post.  On Friday night, I noticed a rash on both of my shoulders and my forehead.  Ughhh, really???  Not fun.  So I called the urgent care place on Saturday just to make sure it wasn't something that I should be worried about.  When they called me back, they said I should probably come back in just to make sure.

So I went in, thinking I'd be there for 30 minutes, at the most! 

2 hours later... I had a bruise on my hand and was feeling sick again.  Man, why do doctor's offices seem to make you feel more sick than when you got there?  So they tested me for Mono (luckily that came back NEGATIVE), and couldn't find a good vein except in my hand.  So in went the needle!

They decided that I must be allergic to the medicine that they gave me, so they changed my medication, and voila, 2 days later, I feel back to normal!  No wonder it took so long for me to feel good.  Hopefully I'm done with that debacle!

What an interesting week

Ok.  

So this week started off to be really awesome and has just gotten more interesting every day (an not necessarily in a good way).  It started last Saturday morning.  After arriving at the Outer Banks at 1 in the morning, my fellow road trippers and I decided to sleep outside instead of crashing on the floor in the common room (we claimed it was to get more sleep and have more quiet).  Little did I know, a little creep crawly friend of mine was just begging to sleep next to me.  Luckily I didn't see it, but it definitely saw me and decided to take part of my cheek as a souvenir.  So as I awoke bright and early hoping to be at least somewhat refreshed to be at the beach and hearing the waves of the ocean all night, all I could think of was "wow, my cheek feels itchy and puffy..."  

I turned to my friend Whitney and asked if there was something on my cheek.  Her eyes got HUGE!  Ok, not really, but they did get big and she did say that my cheek was really swollen.  I went to look at it and yup, it looked like I just got my wisdom teeth out.  What a great way to start a long weekend at the beach, huh??

Luckily, I was able to get some allergy medicine (Thanks Chelsey!) and go buy some benedryl cream which helped a TON!  By noon the swelling was mostly gone and most people couldn't tell that anything was wrong.  Whew!  Crisis averted!

Fast forward a few days.

Let's start with Tuesday.  I drove into my parking spot around 1:45 in the morning.  I don't want to do another day of driving like that again anytime soon.  So when I woke up with a sore throat, it just seemed normal to me.  I often get colds/sore throats when I don't get enough sleep.  I just thought that if I went to bed early that night that it'd help to make up for it.  I went to dinner with a friend and then came home and basically crashed since I felt so tired and just ikky.  The next morning I didn't feel any better, but I still got up and went to work.

Bad decision.

I lasted about 2.5 hours and then lysoled everything on or around my desk, and went home and crashed for a few hours.  I tried to loosen my muscles and then as I started to think I felt better, I looked at my throat with a flashlight.  There were big white spots on the back of my throat.  That couldn't be a good sign.  So I went to the urgent care, even though I was sure I wasn't THAT sick and couldn't have a fever.  

Definitely wrong on both of those points. :(

Good news:  The Strep Throat test came back negative.  

Bad News:  There are at least 5 different strains of strep that they didn't test for.

So on the bright side of the week, I had a good excuse to get 2 extra days of sleep and movie watching in.  And I guess I got sort of a 4 1/2 day weekend...

But now I know what strep feels like, or at least what something like strep feels like.  (I still don't know if I actually had it or if it was just something similar)  Who knows???  

My adventures

I want to apologize for my lack of posting. I made a goal this year to have more adventures and to be busier. Little did I know that that would very much come true! I am booked almost every night of every week. Usually it's with the same things each day of the week, but even still. I have things that I should do and then other things that I choose to do. It's kinda hectic, and it's problematic when something else needs to be done (like laundry and getting a tire fixed.) So here's my usual weekly breakdown (after work, of course):

Monday: FHE
Tuesday: Neighboring Stake's Institute
Wednesday: Bowling
Thursday: My Institute
Friday: Usually some basketball game is going on, bday parties, other parties, etc.
Saturday: Also usually some basketball game going on
Sunday: Church

So although Basketball is ending next week, I'm sure my weekends will still be busy. And in the spring I'm on a softball team, so that's going to start sometime soon. I somehow never have free time to just relax. I haven't had time to watch a movie in a loooong time! And I LOVE movies! But I honestly do love constantly having something to do. It is a big difference from my last year in Provo when I felt like I never had anything to do. Anyway, this is my apology for never posting about the adventures that I've had. Mostly because I'm never home to grab the pictures of said adventures. Besides that schedule, I do make time to do some random things and have fun with friends. This last week I basically lived and Shauna and Bekah's house. That was fun! Anyway, hopefully I'll get a bit more time to write about my real adventures, but for now, this will have to do!

President's Day Birthday

So before it gets too far past my birthday (and it was a month ago... oops), I figured I'd write a little bit about my day. I am officially a quarter of a century old. Weird... Anyway, I don't know why, but I've always loved my birthday. No matter what I have on the day, it's always been fantastic. This year was no exception!

It was honestly a pretty chill day. I slept in (Yay for birthdays falling on a National Holiday!), made chocolate cake, played racquetball, ate a fantastic dinner at Benihana, and had some friends over for cake in the evening. It was just a fun day that I was able to spend with good friends!

When I lived in Utah, I had a tradition of going to Tucanos on President's day for my birthday. For those of you that don't know, Tucanos is a Brazilian meat buffet. It's making my mouth water just thinking about it... Since there isn't one out here in DC and those types of restaurants are super expensive, we went to a hibachi place instead. So we got dinner and a show! Fantastic! The only thing was that Steve wasn't able to come. He had to work... :( Oh well. That's life, right? He made it for cake later, so at least I still got to see him!

My friend April was super nice to me and spent all day with me. Seriously, she's so great! She also made my birthday cake. It was a 6 layer chocolate cake. We recreated P.F. Chang's Great Wall of Chocolate. If you haven't had it, you need to go try it because it's absolutely delicious. She was so great to do that for me!

Anyway, it really was a pretty chill day and I was able to rest and relax and just enjoy talking to some old friends. That was probably my favorite part. I talked to some of my best friends in the world, who, unfortunately for me, don't live by me. So it was good to talk to them and catch up. It was a fantastic day!

Groundhog Day

Ok, so before February ends, I need to write about one of, if not my FAVORITE unappreciated holidays. GROUNDHOG DAY! I think there are two main reasons that I like this day so much:

1) It's in February and I just love February (mostly because of my birthday, I think)
2) It's in Pennsylvania! Yay for my home state!

In case you hadn't heard, Punxsutawney Phil predicted 6 more weeks of winter. Although seeing as how on the east, we've only had a few days here and there that have even FELT like winter, I'm still waiting for it. Here's to hoping that we'll have the snowstorm of the century in March. Anyone with me???

Anyway, back to Groundhog Day. The groundhog website says that he's always 100% correct (of course) but in all actuality, he's usually wrong. But we should still celebrate the day, right? And what better way to do that than to watch the movie that made the day a phenomenon, Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day"

And along with watching the movie, I thought I would recreate some cute and yummy groundhog cookies that my sister and I made last year. We got the idea from our friend Mandy. Sad that Sharon couldn't be here to make them with me this year though! Not the neatest things ever (when I make them at least), but super cute. And what is the best part, you may ask? Eating all the messups and scraps... Yummy!
I got kinda lazy with the "grass" this year, but you still can get the idea. Anyway, it was a fun night filled with yummy treats and good entertainment and great friends. Till next year Punxsutawney Phil!

It's a SMALL world

Most of what I post on here is going to be about the fun and random things that I do, seeing as how life is too short to not go on adventures. I will, however, occasionally post things that I've been thinking about recently. This is one of those posts. It has been amazing to me how small this world really is. It seems that everywhere I go, I find people that are connected to important people from my past. And even if they're not connected to people in my past, there's some story there from before. I know this isn't true with every single person that I meet, but it just seems to happen a lot. Here are some of the crazy connections that I've made over the last few years:

-My freshman roommate was in my older sister's ward in Boston, and we first met when we were 14.
-Another friend freshman year used to live in my stake for a few years while we were teenagers.
-My best friend's older brother and my older brother became best friends in the dorms, which is consequently where we met and became best friends as well (as well as I met all of her best friends when I was 15 at EFY).
-A good friend's great uncle (or some strange relation like that) was my grandma's good friend and I met him on several occasions.

Now, these are definitely from awhile ago. These friends and I put the stories together years and years ago and it's something that we always seem to come back to. I wonder why small world stories are so fascinating? Maybe because it really shows that everyone is interconnected and it helps us know that we aren't alone here. I don't know, it's just a thought.

The reason that I've been thinking about this lately is because the last few days I have had my mind blown with small world stories. And that really doesn't happen to me often. But it just happens to be that these particular stories hit closer to home than usual. It's been good friends that I have now are telling me of crazy connections with other really good friends, or people that I was really close to in the past.

There was one recently where a really good friend of mine served her mission with this boy that I sort of dated a few years ago. I had even told her about this boy awhile ago, but didn't bother using names because what were the chances that she knew him, right?? She's in DC and he was part of my Provo life. But we were talking about another random mutual friend that we had and she asked about this particular guy. And I had actually run into his old roommate a few weeks ago too. Talk about coincidence, right?

And the night before we put that together, I had my mind blown with a crazy connection that is just a little too hard to explain without saying names, but I'm going to try anyway. Basically, I had heard about this random boy from one friend and he ended up being really, really good friends with another one of my best friend's fiancee. This boy was planning on coming out for their wedding, but is unable to make it. Just the fact that I heard about this boy previously and knew that he was thinking of coming out for a wedding that I am going to attend was just a crazy connection to me. There are a few more details to it, but that's the basic jist. It doesn't sound as crazy written down as it really is, trust me.

I have definitely made a few others in the last few months that have been so ridiculous. It really is amazing to me how small this world is. I absolutely LOVE it though! I love finding these random connections between people and realizing that I have connections with people that I've never even met before. Or finding out that someone that I am good friends with NOW used to be close to someone that I was close to years ago. Or my favorite is when I find out that one of my friends now is someone that I used to hear about years ago.

It's great, isn't it? What are some of YOUR small world stories??

Martin Luther King, Jr. Present Day

No, that is not a typo. I didn't randomly put the word "present" in there by accident. It is MOST DEFINITELY on purpose. Let me explain. Over Christmas vacation, my brother, Steve, and I were sitting around watching basketball (that's a lot of what we did that week. It was FANTASTIC!) Some commercial for a really expensive car came on or something like that, and here's basically what our conversation went like:

Steve: "You should get that for me for Martin Luther King Present Day"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Steve: "It's the perfect gift to show how much you love me."

Me: "I don't love you that much..."

So a little bit later, towards the end of the game, Martineau came out and played. We were, of course, watching a BYU basketball game, and Martineau is one of the deep bench players. He pretty much only plays when we're up by so much and even then it's usually only for the last few minutes.

So because I refused get Steve a car, he decided to ask me for something more practical:

Steve: "I now want a Martineau jersey for Martin Luther King Present Day."

Me: "Done."

Steve: "Wait, I don't ACTUALLY want one..."

Me: "You should be more careful what you ask for."

So, I got him a Martineau jersey. Of course I couldn't buy one (he's a really deep bench player), so I made one. And we couldn't find a basketball jersey that was his size, so it's a soccer jersey. But it's the thought that counts, right??

Look how happy he is with his jersey! I've gotta be one of the coolest sisters EVER!

We actually ended up having a Martin Luther King Present Day triangle. Steve was telling our friend Bekah about what I was doing, so she decided to get me a shirt. I'm now officially a "Langley Ward Girlfriend."

And so consequently, Steve completed the triangle and got Bekah a Jimmer shirt. Because no one should be without a Jimmer shirt...

Bowling Shoes

Ok, so I LOVE bowling. I'm not great or anything, but it's just so FUN! A little over a year ago, I started bowling almost once a week with a few friends out in Utah, and it continued with different people all through the summer. Once I moved out here to DC, I kinda stopped going. I just got so busy trying to figure out life that I forgot about bowling. Anyway, I've started bowling again, so I finally broke down and bought bowling shoes. I figured it would save me money in the long run.

Nerdy?? Yes. Do I care? Not at all.

I'm excited about my shoes. They're cute, huh? :)