the white house

today we ventured out to the white house after church. it kinda took us awhile to get out of the apartment which kinda drove me crazy. i can definitely see dad's influence on me since i have been here. i just want to go go go and see everything and READ everything! i saw a monument today and i just wanted to run over there and see what it was. total dad moment. we really enjoyed seeing the white house. even though ive seen it before it definitely is a must see.

we came back to our apartment and made blueberry pancakes which turned out to be quite the adventure since we literally still do not have anything in our apartment! no measuring cups, which means we had to guess. no mixing bowls which means making it in a cereal bowl. no whisks which means using a spoon. luckily we got a spatula. but it was pretty funny. luckily we had cups since chanel did not approve of me drinking out of my milk carton. the pancakes were very good as our first meal as roommates in our new apartment.

days 1 and 2

i have officially been in DC now for two days. and i LOVE it!! it has been so fun. it is just so crazy to me that i am living out here now. i seriously say to the other girls like all day "i cant believe we are living here" it is a pretty great feeling. here is a little recap of what i have been doing the past two days.

Yesterday. I went out with one of the other girls Naomi to begin looking around at our new home. first destination the mall. we got on the metro and immediately got lost. which is ridiculous because we were looking for the Washington Monument. how can you not find that thing? luckily we found it. after some brief rain (just wait five minutes and the weather changes) we headed in the direction of the Capitol. The girls that are here have never been to DC before so i have been able to tell them about different things that we are seeing. we wandered over to the supreme court and the library of congress. then we went off to Georgetown. loved it! it was the first time that i ever cursed myself for going to BYU. that place was amazing!! the city is really really cool and looks very colonial. i was hoping general Washington was going to ride around the corner on his horse any second. we walked around the university and they had such amazing enthusiasm for the school and for the new students moving in. they were dancing everywhere and so of course Chanel and i couldn't resist to start dancing too. which then led us to scream things such as "yay Georgetown! cant wait for freshman year to start!" so that we could blend in. we walked around entirely too much yesterday and ended the day by sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and just chatted for a bit. very cool.

Today. Started the day off by majorly sleeping in. its the whole time difference thing. then i went off with my new roommate Jamie to find a grocery store (hopefully this makes Laura and mom super happy as their only advice to me for the past two days was that i needed to find a grocery store. thanks guys.) its not too far of a walk and we got to pass nordstrom on the way! the grocery store is LEGIT. it totally showed me that we are living in a really nice area. it is just way nice and they have all these free samples of like cut up apples and bread and cheese spread. i love that place. after hanging out at the apartment for a bit too long we took off to Arlington National Cemetery to catch a glimpse of Ted Kennedy's funeral. this took entirely too long as we thought the procession was going to be quicker but since we were there we didn't want to leave. then we invested so much time into being there we figured we had to stick around to see it. we decided to ditch Arlington and walk across the Potomac so that we would get to the procession faster. it was a bit of a disappointment (sorry ted) but definitely a cool thing to be able to see on a first hand basis. then off to the Lincoln Memorial. I'm super excited being at these places and taking my own photos to use them as resources in my classroom. i cant wait to show my students all of my very own photos of these places. our next stop was to get some food. we have a growing problem of not taking a map with us. so needless to say we get lost a lot. and that definitely happened today. we walked around so much trying to find places to eat and found nada. but it was still nice walking and seeing everything. we stumbled upon The George Washington University which also looked amazing. its so cool that it is just right in the heart of the district. we haven't been the most on top of things to seeing everything but we definitely have time to in the next few months. so far i love being here and the girls in my apartment are great too.

next on the agenda is church tomorrow. its at 9. boo. my days of sleeping in are pretty much over. oh and our church building apparently looks over Mount Vernon. OMG. no big deal.

the DC life.

thats right. living the life has changed again. last night i arrived in my new apartment in arlington, virginia. my flight went great and when we were about to land we flew over the washington monument, memorial and the capitol building. i couldnt stop smiling. my apartment is awesome and i can even see the lincoln memorial building in the distance.

i can not wait to start living the DC life.

the bucket list.

if you know me at all the first thing you should know is that im fanatical about the dodgers. i dont know why, i cant explain it. ive sometimes wonder why i care so much. how would life be like if i didnt care, if i didnt have to watch the games, or read every article in the paper. i just cant NOT do that , i cant just not care. i have to. which just shows that my love for the dodgers is just a rather large part of who i am. i know every player, their number and position. their stats and the usual line up. I dont know when this obsession began but thats how its always been. i remember in middle school quizzing my dad on the starting line up. those were the days--hollandsworth, mondesi, karros, piazza, NOMO. I still have my Nomo shirt which i bought circa 1996 right as he won rookie of the year--and i still wear it proudly. i even get emotional about the dodgers. i cried, literally tears rolling down, when they traded ceaser izturis and dave roberts. cried when we beat the giants in 2004 to clinch the NL West division with steve finley's grand slam. now the point of sharing all of this is to explain my recent achievement of doing something on my life list.

I have this list of things that i want to do in my lifetime. i only have about 15 things on this life list, which is rather a small list of things that i want to accomplish in my whole lifetime. but about 6 or 7 things on my list all revolve around one topic. now after reading the previous paragraph you know what that is. yup, the dodgers.

life list #3--get a tour of dodger stadium. CHECK.

last week my mom and i bought tickets and showed up for an 11.30 tour of the beautiful dodger stadium. it was so amazing!! our tour included going into the press box, the suites, the fancy restaurants, walking by the clubhouse...and the best part....hanging out in the dugout!!! i literally almost cried when i found out we could go in the dugout. and it was all i could talk about for the rest of the week. much to the dismay of my family. thanks to my mom for going with me and becoming my official photographer as she willing snapped tons of photos of me.

now this past week i was able to start to chip away at life list #15-- visit every major league ballpark in the country.

this goal is really going to be a life long project. matt and i decided a few years ago that we wanted to do this. and that maybe every year we should pick a city to visit and try and hit one or two stadiums while visiting. when mom suggested going to san diego for a little vaca i immediately did my research and discovered that the padres were going to be playing at home during our visit. petco park. done. it was awesome to be able to experience another stadium. had an oldschool/ modern vibe nestled into downtown san diego. we had a great time and great seats (ive got talent for buying great seats to baseball games). although it was hard cheering for the padres. chase was especially confused as he kept asking "where manny go?" and sang "lets root root root for the dodgers." that kid is already die hard.

for more on our trip to san diego, read my sisters blog here. note that i took most of the photos provided for this blog spot. apparently another good talent i posses. good photog skills.

california dreamin

Ive been back home now for about 2 1/2 weeks. the time has literally flown by. i cant believe that Ive been back home for that long. ill admit, the first week was kinda hard, i definitely had a hard time leaving provo and all of that that entails. so what have i done the past few weeks since being in California. mostly this...

DODGER games.

lots and lots of dodger games. last summer my first week back i went to three dodger games. now that, i thought was impressive. little did i know i would beat that record. my first week back i went to four dodger games in five days. three of which i went with different boys. its not hard to constantly get asked to go to games when you are hands down the biggest fan. and for the first week i was batting .500 as we won two of the four games i went to. which isnt bad, although my family constantly reminds me that im bad luck. the other game i went to the first week was Mormon Night at Dodger Stadium.

pictured: celebration after Ethier's walk off home run on Mormon Night. posted for Laura and Matt who left early.

Mormon night has always been one of my favorite games to go to each season. I love watching Dodger Vision, waiting for the sign to read "the Dodgers Welcome the Granada Hills Stake." It was also an exciting night since it was Mia's first game!! Although she will never remember it, it will be exciting for her that she went to her first game at just two months old! its never too young to start cheering for the boys in blue.

i also went last night with my dad. going with my dad was definitely the best date of all! and if im not at the game, im watching it every night. this brings my grand total of games this summer to 7. not too shabby for the fact that for a majority of the summer i was living in provo and for half of august the dodgers have been on the road.

YSA conference. I didn't go to dodger games that first weekend because i went to a California statewide YSA conference. the state was broken up into 7 sections based around the 7 temples in California. I was not looking forward to this conference. especially since the LA section was broken into age groups and i was going to have to go hang out with boys right off the mish and girls that just graduated high school. On the agenda for the conference: speed dating. wow no thanks. my parents wanted me to go and so did jessica. i told jess that she was going to have to cheer me up on the way down to the conference cause i was not in the mood to go. the two day event turned out really fun in the end. besides the long hours of talks, once we were able to meet people and socialize it was way fun. i met a lot of great people, and one in particular, that i became great friends with and subsequently hung out with them the next couple of nights.

BEACH. i haven't gone to the beach as much as i would like to this summer, but i have gone a few times with the GH kids. i would like to announce that every time i have gone to the beach i have gotten in the water. shocking.

just a little run down of what ive been up to. all of this and getting ready for DC. 9 days. crazy!!

im hanging up my crown.

i left lanai this week. for good.

which means im no longer the queen of lanai.

or the queen bee.

lanai was my HOME for three years

and im going to miss it

A LOT.

my life revolved around lanai.

my only friends are from that place.

i only associated with people that lived the lanai.

im gonna miss walking up the 5 flights of stairs (ok kinda miss)

im gonna miss hanging out in C1 and D1.

im gonna miss ward prayer and two ball.

ill miss bardi's sunflowers.

ill miss the peaks!! and the wave pool.

ill miss my bike...i mean chanels bike.

ill miss my parking spot! which i may or may not have written

L ROB ONLY over it.

ill miss the dance parties in the parking lot.

i miss the bonfires.

im pretty much gonna miss everything. its the end of an era, and if i said i didnt cry when i walked out of K4 for the very last time, well that would be a pretty big lie.

oh lanai, you have been good to me.

i have now officially entered the ranks of a lanai legend.

pioneer day

So pioneer day this year ended up being such a great day! I went up to Salt Lake and hung out with M'kynzi as we went to different places that reminded us of our amazing time together in London. Our first stop--Fish and Chips. We have been trying to investigate and find a good place that served fish & chips. The best place we found was Virg's. A little greasy and definitely no where close to good English pubs. Our next stop was to the London Market to buy treats and the Elizabeth Cafe for some tarts. Unfortunately these London shops also celebrate Pioneer Day, so they were closed. That didnt stop us from taking a photo outside, showing off our love for London. Since we didnt get a treat at the cafe, we drove over and got crepes. It was seriously such a great day! Kynz and I were able to catch up and seriously talk about how much fun we had last summer for hours! Kynz and I were such good friends in London and miss walking up and seeing her in the next bunk bed and being able to hang out every day.

But my day got even better. I was driving over to Rick and Brenda's, passing the MTC and I ran into one of my best friends. ANNIE.

omg i was so happy! I drove past her and screamed! Hurried and parked my car and ran to her. We were literally running through the field to see each other. We were both so happy! She said she was having a hard day and said she really needed to see me, and that it was a prayer answered. it was seriously so great. i miss her so much but im so glad that i was able to see both annie and christina while they were in the mtc.