Reason to celebrate...

So, apparently it’s been such a good 6 months that I’ve completely forgotten to write ☺ Just got back from St. George where we met up for a family reunion to celebrate my mom and dad’s 50th anniversary (the actual one is in January). With a family our size, you always feel lucky to even have a majority, but it was amazing that everyone was able to be there! First off just have to say how amazing my parents are and how they always have been and continue to be such great examples to me. All throughout the reunion, I kept thinking, how did I get so lucky to be born into this great family? I’m so grateful to have parents who always made me feel loved and special and who exemplify everything they taught us. We were all set to roast this weekend, but amazingly we had the best weather, a little rain when we were indoors and nice mild temps when outside. We packed a lot in: rounds of golf, pool time, dance offs, a family dinner to celebrate my Mom and Dad, seeing “Aladdin” at Tuacahn, a family temple session followed by lunch at Brick Oven and family pictures at the amazingly beautiful Red Rocks. The time went way too fast! One of my favorite things was seeing how all of the cousins just couldn’t get enough of each other, there were spying games, sleepovers and lots of tears when we all had to say goodbye.

Tis' the Season

So December is in full swing and I love it!! Thought I'd post a few pics of some decorations I have up. I put my tree up the day after Thanksgiving and probably would've put it up sooner, but didn't own one to put up. My fav decoration this year is my little red Nutcracker man, I love the shiny red and because I'm obsessed with the Nutcracker, it means even more. Also had to include a pic of my darling little nieces. Not to brag, but really aren't they darling? Words cannot even express how much I'm going to miss them when they move to Dallas next month! I am going to have some serious withdrawals.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

So this has been a busy year and since I haven’t been too faithful about maintaining my blog, here’s my update. In the end of June, I applied for and was offered a job back home in Salt Lake. Woo hoo!!! So, after 9 amazing years in L.A., on to a new chapter. Basically, it was packing up and moving within a few weeks, and then I had the whole month of July off, and then started up my new job Aug. 1st.

Of course I will always love my experience in L.A.: the great friends I made, my job, the travel, the beach, all of the fun events and becoming more self reliant, but, it’s crazy to me that you can think you’re happy, but not even realize how much happier you could be. That’s what this move has done for me, I can’t even tell you how fun it is to be close to my family again and to feel like I’m experiencing Salt Lake all over again.

Things I’m thankful for this year:

1) To be back home
2) The Gospel
3) Friends and family who always make me feel loved
4) A healthy body
5) The view outside my bedroom window
6) The mountains
7) Halloween candy on clearance
8) Finally being able to move into my house
9) To not only have a job, but a job that I really love and working with great people
10) The prospect of finding great love
11) Prayer
12) My home teachers
13) The change of seasons
14) To live in America
15) To work with kids
16) Music
17) To be able to speak Spanish
18) Good books
19) To have been raised in a happy, loving home
20) That it’s never too late to learn new things

Sweet baby Allegra...

My sister in law Ali and my brother Mitch had the most beautiful baby girl, Allegra, on May 18th. She was born with Trisomy 18:which unfortunately due to the multiple complications consistent with this disorder cut her sweet life short. She passed away this morning and I have just felt so sad to not be able to see her grow up and sad for everything my brother and his family are going through. I feel so blessed that I was able to go out and spend time with Mitch, Ali and the kids and to hold and fall in love with Allegra. I don't know how Mitch and Ali do it, they gave Allegra the most amazing experience of life and have continued to be the most amazing parents and examples to everyone. This experience has taught me to always be grateful for every person, every opportunity, every challenge. It has shown me that Heavenly Father does know each of us and what we're capable of and loves us. Love you Mitch, Ali, Cairo, Levi, Cameron, Klein and baby Allegra!

Good times, good friends...

My cute friend Kim and her darling daughter Brooklyn came out for a Girl's weekend to L.A. and stopped by to see me. We never have enough time together! I was so sad to see them go.

My friend Cara and I went to an L.A. Galaxy game (our major league soccer team). So fun!!! I love going to them. It's just a fun crowd of people and the perfect amount of time to catch the action. Too funny though, so at the Home Depot Center, where the games are held, every seat is a good one, but I happened to bring my mini binoculars. Of course I didn't need them, but pulled them out anyway and must've looked like a total stalker taking in the "scenery" on the benches :).

Our ward had a Lasagne Throwdown activity a la Bobby Flay from the Food Network. It was really fun, there were 3 categories: store bought, vegetarian and traditional. My friend had asked if I would be a judge and asked all 5 of us judges to dress "Italian mafia style". Let me tell you, it's ridiculous how much I stressed over what to wear. In the end, I borrowed a wig from my friend Janet, ran to Goodwill to pick up an Italian looking shirt, put it with a skirt and pointy heels. Bonus, I'll totally wear the shirt again, probably not the wig :)

Family Happenings...

After I got home from my trip, Amber came out for a visit a few days later. She was here for about a week and we had such a great time together! It made me really miss living close by each other. Something I love whenever we're together is how easy it is and just fun, plus it was so great to have the built in company. Since I couldn't take any time off, she was a great sport and came to work with me one day. We had some great weather and enjoyed a day on the beach and running the Santa Monica stairs and a tour of the Fox Studios lot. My friend Christi was singing in the Orange County Mormon Chorale, so we went to their concert and it was amazing, they are all so talented! We also went out to Simi Valley to the Reagan Library. I love that place so much! It was my 2nd time, but I totally feel like I could go back. The views are so pretty and I love all of the neat insights into Pres. Reagan, love him! A couple of my favorite things: a very cute video about how he met and fell in love with Nancy: yes I admit, made me cry and the tour of Air Force One: so cool to see how much technology has advanced in 20 years or so. Last but not least, in commemoration of our trip, we hit up a Thai Massage place a couple of blocks from my house. So funny, I'm not normally a huge massage person, but I am sold on this. It feels so good, they way they stretch you out, I don't think I would ever do any other kind of massage. Just makes me regret that we didn't get 2 massages a day when we were in Thailand...and to think $6.00/hr!!

After Am flew back to S.L., I flew out a couple of days later for her graduation from the University of Utah. She graduated with her Masters in Education. We were all so proud of her, she was selected to be the student speaker and as a perk was able to reserve the first 2 rows for family and guests, very cool to be up so close. She did such an amazing job! She was funny and real and her talk was so inspiring. I don't know why but I still get chills whenever I hear the graduation march, it made me wish I could do it again :)

I felt so lucky that I was able to not only be home for the graduation, but also to celebrate Mother's Day and a tiny bit of my Dad's birthday. Oh and not to mention a huge highlight of my trip...getting to meet baby Emmy for the first time. She is so cute!! I'm going through major niece and nephew withdrawal since being home! and of course family withdrawal in general: Mom, Dad and brothers and sisters too!

Spring Fling!!

Last week I was on Spring Break from work, so taking advantage of the weekends on the front and tail ends, my friends Misty and Alison and I headed to Europe. We had such a great time together. We started out in Prague, then took a train into Vienna, next stop Salzburg and lastly onto Budapest. Oh, and one of the days we were in Vienna, we took a train into Bratislava, Slovakia (turns out they’re the 2 closest capitals in the world: 40 min. away), so we couldn’t be that close and miss it. So, it was a jam-packed trip but super fun.

Every place was so unique and beautiful in their own way, so it’s hard to pinpoint which one was my favorite. Prague was everything I expected and more. The history and the architecture were so cool. I definitely want to go back. Vienna was a really pleasant surprise. I don’t know why but I had been told by several people “yeah, it’s nice, but it’s just another big city”. But, it was so, so pretty and clean, and the people were really nice. I think Salzburg is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life: just like I expected from seeing “The Sound of Music” and of course we had to do the tour. It was so great! We got to see all the sites: the gazebo, the cathedral where they were married, the back of the house on the lake where they filmed, etc… I really liked Budapest too; I loved the great views of the Danube and the mix of old and new.

We had some great memories from the trip: getting lost over and over and over again on all of the great public transportation (I think we finally started to get a hang of it in each city on the day we were ready to leave), enjoying the Hungarian baths: lots of beautiful and not so beautiful sights to see ☺, our extremely flamboyant tour guide on the Sound of Music tour, the ATM encased in a giant pig in Vienna (we searched forever for the ATM and am amazed they didn’t just say “oh yeah, it’s over there in that giant pig), our near police run in for “forgetting” to validate our tickets on the bus in Budapest and many, many more.