pumpkin patch.

Apparently I have a thing with pumpkins this season. It could be that I didnt do anything last Halloween and so now I am making up for it double time. On Thursday, Laura, Mom and I and the kids headed over to the Pumpkin Patch. And anything that involves celebrating and taking photos--count me in!

i love this photo. i love this little girl.

 and i swear she loves me...

PIGS. i love pigs.

Pumpkin Party.

Through my college years my roommates and I loved throwing a pumpkin party. 

Festivities including: carving pumpkins, eating pumpkin treats and watching Hocus Pocus. 

This Halloween season was no exception. I invited my NR3 friends over for my own Pumpkin Party.

Festivities were the same, just now in true GH fashion we added hot tubbing to the list. 

I bought the pumpkins.

 Made lots of treats.

And invited all of my favorite people.

  

 We carved our little hearts out, made a mess of my house, laughed, took tons of photos and ate lots of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. As my first official party in the NR3 ward, I think it is fair to say it was a success. And many more will be happening in the future. Ive gots to become the Queen of the ward somehow. Might as well be through throwing fun parties. 

oh hey utah!!

I made my first trip back to Utah this past weekend. I went for my cousin Brooke's wedding, but decided to make a little trip of it and visit Provo and see some of my old crew. 

Since I have lived in Provo for basically the past 4+ years, I have never visited that place since pre-college. Which was a completely new experience. 

It was so weird to not have an apartment. to not have a car. to not have that place be my home. 

Definitely a weird feeling to have to lug my suitcase with me for every pit stop that I went on during my weekend. 

Throughout the weekend I kept thinking that it felt like I lived in Provo just yesterday, but then also had my moments that it already seemed like so long ago. However, it was a fabulous trip and I had so much fun!

It was a busy weekend!! It was short, but I wanted to see all of my P-Town peeps while I was there. 

And with that, here is my recap...

Thursday. My first stop was to see with Ms. Dixon!! My DC roommate Jessica. I miss this girl like woah!  Im pissed that we didnt get a photo together! How could we have missed that!? We did go on a great drive around Provo to see the fall colors while catching up on our lives.

She dropped me off to see Amanda Gedicks Moore. My UAC roomie. We ate RIO and it was goooood. She is recently married and I loved hearing about her new life as a married. She is stinkin cute and I miss her.

Amanda then dropped me off to see my lanai crew! Trent and Ronnie were nice enough to let me sleep on their couch for the night (I aint under no honor code these days). But the night was still young so we went to our favorite spot. YoZone. It was so great to see the Barkers and Drewbie too. At this point in my trip I was feeling real sad for not living in Provo. My other lanai friends that have moved on from Provo (Allie, Amy, Nick, Chanel) have all commented on that we have been extremely spoiled with our group of college friends. As much as I love all of my new ward friends here in LA, nothing will come close to my lanai friends. 

Friday. I hung out with Kurt! 

I have failed to mention that Kurt and I hung out a lot on Thursday. He was awesome enough to pick me up from the airport. I hadnt seen him in months and it was so great to hang out since he is such a great friend. We had lunch at El Gallo Giro. Kurt introduced me when I moved back to Provo and its one of my favorite places. He also introduced me to his van. aka his home.

Yup. Kurt is homeless and he loves it. He showed me where he parks his home, and I felt like I had been transported to the back woods of Kentucky. It was hilarious and I loved every second of it.
  

Kurt then dropped me off to see Cortney and Caitlin. 

Cortney was one of my first friends in college, my first college roommates and still one of my very best friends. She had a baby two months ago and I have been dying to meet her! It is so weird to see one of my BFFs as a mom, but she is already great at it. Caitlin is adorable! And I loved holding her while chatting it up with Cort all day long. Seriously a highlight of the trip.

 We then went and got dessert with Whitney and Morgan. Great to all be reunited again. 

Saturday. Wedding Day.

 I have been dying for Brooke and Derek to get married!

I met Derek a few years ago in a Psych class we had together. I thought he was a funny kid and we became friends. Coincidentally I found out he use to date my cousin Brooke, when she came home from her mission they started to date again. I told Derek I wanted them to get married because then he would be my cousin. Good thing he listened to me! It was so great to be with my whole family as well as see my extended family as well.  And to enjoy some of the fall weather that we miss out on here in California. 

my beautiful sisters

and my uncle who NEVER smiles. i was lucky to catch this gem of a photo!

Brooke and Derek are such a good looking couple! And I am seriously SO happy for them! 

The wedding was absolutely beautiful. We lucked out with avoiding the rain and had a great time at the Provo Temple and Sundance for the reception. I loved it and took lots of notes of things I want at my future wedding, whenever that may be. 

Sunday. Family time in Ogden. Although my family isnt that big, I feel like with the distance its sometimes hard to all be together. So when we are, I absolutely love it. It was great to spend Saturday night with my sisters and brothers in law and then to have Sunday to be with all the kids. 

And hence, it was a great trip. Ive got lots of BFFs, and so it was fun to see them all. To see Provo and to see my family and my cousin who I adore get married in the Temple. 

am i bad luck??

Laura and Matt swear that I am bad luck when it comes to Dodger games

just because every time i go they happen to lose

L & M have even gone so far as to tell me not to go to games for the sake of the team.

On the other hand I will fully attest to the fact that I am bad luck when it comes to flying.

I seem to always miss flights, have delays and just have miserable luck at the airport. 

here are a few examples:

1. Christmas Break 2007. I have 8am flight out of SLC. I wake up at around 5 to get on shuttle to get to the airport. Its been snowing nonstop all night long, making the roads terrible and it takes 2 hours to get to Salt Lake. I arrive at the airport right at 8am to be informed that I have missed my flight. They put me on a 10am flight, but because of the snow it is delayed till12pm. Four hours later I finally get on my plane to fly home, to then just get straight in the car with friends to drive to Las Vegas for the bowl game. This wouldnt have been such a problem if it wasnt finals weeks. I have a bad rep for not showering during finals week. I dont think I had showered for a few days and definitely hadnt washed my hair for like a week.

2. Christmas Break 2008. Im flying to Burbank via stopping in Las Vegas. Of course we stop in Vegas as the most freak snowstorm is hitting the city. Hadnt snowed in decades and of course im there to witness it. We were delayed for an hour or so as they were seeing if they could deice the plane. They couldnt, leading to the entire LV airport being shut down! Luckily I came across some fellow BYU students. We sat in a long line for about 2 hours trying to get new flights in the morning, then headed to the Exaclibur to spend the night. Im still friends with them after our special bonding night in Vegas. 

3. Summer 2008. Flying home from London. We board our nonstop flight from London to LA to find out that someone checked in bags but hadnt checked onto the plane, causing panic that their suspicious bags were checked but they werent. Although we had an 11 hour flight ahead of us we sat on the plane, in our seats for 2 hours before the flight took off. 

4. Summer 2007. Trip to Boston with the parents. We get to the airport plenty early for our 8am departure, waiting in a horrendous line to then get to the front and be informed that although we were there 1hour and 29 mins before our plane took off, we were not there 1 hour and 30 mins early as is required. They force us to miss our flight. Next flight to Boston isnt until 1pm. 

and now lets add this one...

5. October 2010. Flying home from our trip to Utah with Laura, Matt and the kids. Leave Ogden at 4pm. Arrive in SLC at 5pm, an hour before our scheduled departure at 6pm. Get to the gate to find out our flight is delayed  THREE HOURS. an 8:55pm departure. So what do we do? Walk three terminals over to CPK, let Chase have a grand time on the moving walkways. 

Buy Krispy Kreme donuts, facebook and hang out at the terminal. Arrive at LAX at 10pm and get on bus to take us back to the valley. Due to crazy traffic at the airport we dont even hit the road till after 11 and finally get home after midnight. We almost could have driven back to CA in the same amount of time. 

and this is what 8+ hours of flight traveling looks like....

am i bad luck??

oh and did i mention on top of this we experienced the worst turbulence EVER on the flight. I was regretting not writing up a will before I left. 

perhaps this is why I am a little superstitious and insist on always knocking on wood.

we are just glad to be back home.

up next: trip to utah post!!

happy birthday kelly!!

today is my sister Kelly's birthday! 

and for the past year or so on each of her kids birthdays I have done a dedicatory post to the kiddies including pictures of me and the kids

this year on my birthday Kelly did the same for me and did a birthday post for me with pictures of the two of us.

I absolutely loved it! I loved seeing pictures of the two of us that I hadnt looked at in such a long time. 

And so now its my turn to do the same for my big sister. 

There is a pretty big age gap between my sisters and me. I grew up watching them being able to hang out, go to school together, church dances and be best friends and I was always so envious. 

I dont think they realize how envious I was as a little girl.

 I wanted so badly for them to not consider me as their little annoying sister (maybe if I hadn't enjoyed licking their faces and arms so much I wouldn't have been so annoying) but their friend too. 

However, since Kelly is almost 10 years older than me, I dont remember her living at home with us too much which is really sad to me. With Kelly taking up permanent residence in North Ogden, Utah and me living in Provo for a few years I tried to go and visit Kelly and her family at least once a month for the weekend. I always came up for birthdays and especially when things weren't going well in life I would take off to Ogden for the weekend. 

I am so grateful that although Kelly moved away when I was little I still had an amazing opportunity to spend time with her and her family during my college years. I always looked forward to going to Ogden and having that chance to hang out with my big sister and for us to become friends and do the things that I was always jealous of not being able to do when I was younger. 

Now as I have finally grown up I feel lucky to say that both of my sisters are my very best friends.

and with that...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KELLY. 

i love you so much.

you are such a great example to me

as a sister, daughter, wife and mother. 

i hope i can one day be half of as good as a mom as you are. 

since Kel has a hard time even saying I love you, this is all probably too mushy for her and so with that, here are some good gems of photos that I found.

thanks mom for always keeping great photo albums to supply such photos. 

Although my sisters like to remind me that my mom cried when she gave birth to me (of sadness mind you, not joy) I know that my sisters were excited to have another sister! And i swear, I was a cute baby, although this picture shows otherwise. 

and i seriously just love this one...

saying goodbye to Kelly as we dropped her off her freshman year at BYU. I think i was a little sad.

 Yes, I am a bit of a skank here. Kelly is prego with Seth. And its weird to think that Wade has been in my life for almost 13 years. Thats half of my life. 

 Suprising Laura and meeting Chase for the first time.

 I know this has Laura in it, but this is seriously just one of my favorite pictures too.  

I have amazing sisters and best friends. 

LOVE you Kelly. Thanks for being a great sister.