Oh Sweet Summer!

I know we are already in December, but since I have been horrible at keeping a journal I really want to document all of my events from the year somehow. Thus, I am starting with everything that happened this summer. Once I get this out of the way I can start keeping my blog updated with things that are currently going on in my life!

Graduation (por fin!)

• Yes, I graduated! And it was a great feeling! I now have my degree in Music Education! Whoo hoo! (what I ended up doing with my degree though is a whole different story).
• My parents came down to Tucson and I graduated Saturday, May 16th. Sunday, May 17th, I loaded my car with my things (well basically just my clothes and stuff) and drove to Salt Lake City to move in with my grandparents. Monday, May 18th I flew to Spain to visit my mission!

España (Home Sweet Home)

• Spain was great. I spent the first couple of days on my own just visiting various places and people from different areas.
• Katie Whitlock, a very dear mission companion, flew over and met up with me in Madrid. We traveled and visited places such as Alcalá and Salamanca. Another companion, Estefania Torres, from Barcelona, also met up with us. It was a lot of fun.
• On the very last day of my trip, my trainer from the mission, Randilyn Nordstrom, flew in and we were able to spend the day in downtown Madrid together.
• During my 10 days there I got to visit with my mission president and his wife at the mission home, visit recent converts, attend church in two of my old wards, attend a special fireside celebrating the 40th year anniversary of the church being in Spain, go salsa dancing with some of my friends, and several other memorable activities. It was a great way to remember and in some ways add closure to the year and a half I spent serving in that wonderful place!

EFY (My Oh My!)

• Saturday, May 30th, I flew back from Spain to Salt Lake. Sunday, May 31st, my EFY team came and picked me up from my grandparents' house and we all drove to Montpelier, ID.
• I honestly had absolutely no idea who I would even be working with this summer until just one day before we started our 8 weeks together... could I ever have imagined a better team though! Heck no! Our team this summer was a total dream team... no our team was more than that... we were family! The team consisted of David Kidd (good friend from the previous summer) Staci Meacham (girl I definitley didn't know, but we shared a bed our first week together so I got to know her real quick!) Christian Hong (no one knows more about Disney than this kid) Brooke Betenson (we shared a dear mutual friend and now we're dear friends ourselves) Ryan Stewart (1. He's a Stewart 2. Is his best bud one of my favorite peeps? You betcha) Elle Bray (one of the biggest & best surprises of the summer, we worked together the summer before & she was the only person in the history of EFY who was too young to be hired as a counselor but still met the BC qualifications!) Oh how I love my team!
• We worked a grand total of 8 weeks... one in ID, three in Sandy, three in Taylorsville, and one in Ogden. All glorious, each with it's own funny moments, random experiences, awesome youth, (a few annoying kids), interesting challenges... but overall there was nothin but good times!

Backpacking Bliss

• Who doesn't love a few days in the mountains with just your best buds, a back-pack, millions of mesquitos (ok well that part was unfortunate), surprisingly good camping food, gorgeous mountains, beautiful lakes, and fly fishing rods! We only had one week off of EFY and boy did we use it wisely... our little camping crew consisted of Ryan, Ryan's freshly returned missionary cousin Carson (super swell kid), Staci, Elle, Chase (one of our favorite summer counselors), and me!
• Were scary stories told, do I now believe is Sasquatch, did we see an actual UFO, did I de-hook a fish all by myself in a rescue mission, did we play in the beautiful but ice cold waterfalls?... yes to all of the above and I loved it!

California Dreamin'

• It's our annual family vay-cay! One week + 7 Kids + Newport Beach + Marriot Resort = Endless Adventures... because let's be honest... we put the fun in dysfunctional!
• This year there were obviously only 6 kids because my dearest sister Whitney is still enjoying an amazing time as a missionary in Southern Italy... we missed having her but are still oober proud of what she's doing.
• This year's activities included the X Games for the boys. Wicked for the girls (plus dad). Deep Sea fishing like every year. And lots and lots of beach and pool time!
• Did I wear sunscreen the first day like a good girl?... oh yeah sure thing! But did I forget to re-apply that sunscreen during the day like I should have?... sadly I did not :( I got so sunburned day 1 that it really made it kind of rough the rest of the week, but it's okay... I'm over it! (now that the flesh eating pain is no longer fresh in my memory) :)
• Other than the bad sunburn (of which my brother Jon was also a victim of) everything went pretty smoothly (no lost children, no sting ray bites, etc...) Oh yeah, exept for the fact that when I plugged in Newport Beach into my GPS, and without me realizing it, it did not register as Newport California. And since I've never driven to California from Utah before it never registered in my mind that I was driving in the wrong direction. I didn't even know I was going the wrong direction till my mom called to see where I was and I told her Wendover, ID. I then spent the next few hours driving across Idaho to get me back on the correct route to our condo. I honestly have no regrets though. It was a beautiful little desolate freeway and I saw a whole lot of Idaho that I probably would have never seen (EVER!) in my entire life if it weren't for the destination GPS mess-up.
  

Wild White Water With the Ward (if that's not alliteration I don't know what is)

• That's right... my little Single's Ward is so cool that at the end of the summer we all went up to Jackson Hole to do some camping and white water rafting. It was great fun & made some great friends.

Well folks, that really is all I can recall from this summer. Of course I'm sure there were a ton of random, awkward, potentially funny moments that would have been great fun to blog about... but alas, since it's January 1st and I'm finally just getting around to blogging about my summer, those memories have faded like dark denim jeans in sink of bleach.