Maloha.*

Last week was probably one of the best weeks ever. Of my life. Of all time.

Why? Well, because three crazy cool things happened.
1. I went to Hawaii with my girlfriends.
2. I got publicly recognized (even though I wasn't there to give my acceptance speech) at work for my hard work on a big project last quarter that was my brain child and turned out wicked awesome.
3. My sweet love became my fiancé.

I don't really need to say more about #2. And #3 needs it's own post. So, let me tell you (or rather, show you) a little bit about my Hawaii trip.

Day one - Shark's cove.

Turtle Bay.

Sunset Beach. 

Turtle Bay with Danielle.

Polynesian Cultural Center. Amahzing. 

The famous Ted's Bakery Chocolate Coconut Mousse Pie. Holy wow.

Waimea Bay Waterfall. We swam to it. 

A morning at the Laie Temple, hiking to Waimea Falls, eating crepes at the Farmer's Market.

Arriving at Turtle Bay. I call this my Kid Rock picture.

Fat pick. We bought, and ate, an entire pie. No regrets.

Some delicious food joint that I don't remember the Hawaiian name of (Hanapuku?) where I ate the most delicious cheeseburger of my life. 

Crazy waves at Shark's cove.

Drowning at the waterfall.

Amazing sunset on our last night. 

The North Shore was good to us. 

*Maloha is a reference to Jayni, who one day on the trip came into the house and announced that she wanted a picture by a sign that said something cool on it like, "Maloha." ...it said "Aloha" and "Mahalo."

An Open House, Surgery, and a Valentine

A week after my brother's wedding in San Antonio, I found myself back in CA for his open house. It was small, so we hosted it at our home and worked hard on all the decor and food. I think it turned out pretty nicely!

Top: 92 y/o Grandpa and my nieces
Middle: Sister and niece, Me with the bride & groom, Sister & Mom
Bottom: Outdoor decor: smore's bar, cake table, drinks

A week after the open house, I found myself at the Provo Hospital, getting my schnoz worked on...again. When I say "worked on," what I mean is I had a deviated septum fixed and nasal polyps removed so that I can breathe properly again. I had this surgery (minus the septum part) once before, about two years ago. So, hopefully this time is the last time. Luckily, coming out of anesthesia came with some funny stories... like taking my latex glove full of ice and putting it on my head exclaiming, "Look, I'm a rooster!"

Top: Surgery
Middle: The Super Bowl, Top Gun in 3D
Bottom: Valentines Day in Vegas

Now, let it be known, that I had the best Valentine this year. You may think yours was the best, and that's great, but I know in my heart that mine was. For Christmas, Devo got me tickets to see the Cirque du Soleil show of my choice. We were already planning a trip to California for President's Day weekend, so we figured we'd tack an extra day on to that and go to Vegas for the show on the way down. Well, naturally I chose the Beatles Love show, because I heart the Beatles in a major way. And it just so happened that the day we ended up being there was Valentines Day.

Before the show, Devo took me to a really nice and delicious restaurant for a filet mignon dinner inside the Mirage hotel. He also got me a beautiful amethyst necklace and hand made me the cutest, most hilarious, pop-up card. The show was amazing, naturally, and the night was perfect. And we were just so thankful to get out of the freezing cold here in Utah!

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing at my parent's house in California. We had Taco Shop, played games, watched movies, visited my Grandpa, went shopping, and enjoyed 70 degree sunshine and happiness. It was a great long weekend.

Coming up next: in less than 5 weeks, two of my girlfriends and I are taking a chick-trip to Hawaii for a week. Yesssssssssssss. I. Can't. Wait.

The Perfect Thanksgiving

Can I please just tell you how much I love Thanksgiving? 

I mean, I'm not talking, "Oh, I love Thanksgiving like I love puppies or like watching a good movie." That's not real love. That's kid stuff. My love for Thanksgiving is beyond comfort or lust - it's a straight-up romantic, I want to have Thanksgiving's babies, head-over-hills, totally committed kind of love. And that's why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday... and this year's did NOT disappoint.

This year I planned to drive to sunny Southern California with my little brother and his fiance (Oh yes, have I mentioned that my little brother is getting married? In one month? Because he is) for Thanksgiving. Well, a week or two before we left, I found out that the guy I'm currently seeing didn't have plans for Thanksgiving, so I invited him along for the fun... and he came! It was a road trip party, basically.

We got to my parent's house late Tuesday night, visited, and then went to bed. Wednesday we woke up, lounged a little, and then commenced a morning of pie-baking. Now, in my family, we believe in tradition. And tradition says that the pies must be home made. And that the pies must be plentiful. So, we made apple pie, cherry pie, 2 pumpkin pies, and then on Thanksgiving, another apple pie and a pecan pie showed up. That's 6 whole pies for 10 adults. Needless to say, I had pie for breakfast AND dessert almost every single day. And I'm not even upset about it. Oh, and don't worry, we aren't such sticklers for tradition that we never let in anything new. This year, mom decided to introduce the fruit pizza to the dessert menu:

Now, usually at my house, things get a little crazy on Thanksgiving and Christmas days (AKA, big meal days). Everything has to be timed just perfectly so all the food comes out hot at the same time and the oven schedule must be stuck to...precisely. This usually results in increased levels of stress, too many cooks in the kitchen, and pure exhaustion at the end of the day. But this year, well... this year was beautiful. It was like the sun came up, the birds started singing, the light shone through the trees, and somewhere in the sky the stars had aligned to make our Thanksgiving beautiful. And it was. And the food was glorious. So glorious. And the company was even better.

Cooks in the Kitchen. 

The Mom.

The 77 degree, most perfect November weather.

The beautiful Thanksgiving Table.

The sweet little cousin.

The only thing(s) missing from Thanksgiving this year, were my step-brothers and their families and my Grandmother, who passed away this July. She always loved Thanksgiving and she would have really enjoyed this one. And, now that I think of it, the deviled eggs! Somehow we missed the deviled eggs. (A dirty, rotten shame that I'm going to try not to dwell on right now.)

The rest of the week included lots of reading, enjoying the perfect weather, seeing Breaking Dawn part deux with my mom, sister, and soon-to-be sister-in-law (and laughing our heads off at the creepy CGI baby and the rolling vampire heads), eating real, can't-get-that-in-UT Mexican food, showing the guy around the hometown that I love so much (the wineries, the Old Town shops lit up at night, Christmas shopping at the Promenade), and playing dominoes with my family.

Oh, and don't forget putting up the Christmas tree. 

All-in-all, the trip was perfect and I have never been more sad to see my holiday time off end.

Group picture, Sunday morning after church.

Lucky for him, my family was on excellent behavior. :-)

And this is where I should probably list all of the things that I am grateful for this year, but that would take too long, so I'll spare you. Just know that the gratitude is there.

Easter Times are Good Times

My Easter weekend was pretty fun. Saturday was full of lots of this:

Which, as you all know, is my favorite.
It also involved some of this:

Slack-lining. Ever heard of it? It's a "sport" of sorts. And it ain't easy!
And then there may or may not have been some egg dying activities...

The two on the front left were my little masterpieces.

And then, on Sunday, I faced my fears and sang in front of our church congregation for our Easter program. I sang as a member of our choir and also in a quartet. For those of you that know me well, this is a big deal because singing in front of other people scares the you-know-what out of me, which usually leads to things like shaking and sweating uncontrollably and a little thing I like to call "voice paralysis." Not exactly what you want to have happen when you're up in front of 100+ people. But, since my theme for this year is "No Fear"... I decided that I need to try and face my fear of this because God has blessed me with a decent singing voice and I feel ungrateful if I can't even use it to sing His praises. So, long story short, I prayed and prayed and prayed this week that I would not embarrass my quartet by freaking out in the moment and that my nerves would be calm so that I could sing my testimony of the Savior. Well, God must love me because I was able to sing all of my notes clearly (without a horrible shaky-ness in my voice - or with crackings or what have you) and actually think the song turned out pretty well (much better than I was expecting at least...). I did have to deal with the fact that my entire body was shaking pretty much uncontrollably (and that everyone could probably see that), but it didn't matter that I looked nervous because I sounded just fine. So, chalk that down as one more fear successfully faced this year so far!

After church, my buddies and I decided to eat the eggs we dyed for a lunch picnic...

I like to call this the "egg" massacre... They fought well, but in the end, we prevailed!

And later that night, my roommate and I hosted an Easter feast for about 20 people (that's not an exaggeration)...

We ate outside on the lawn and then we played ladder ball. Have you ever played that game? It is fun! Mostly because I was sure I was going to suck at it... and then I didn't suck that badly! In fact, I think with some practice, I could be pretty dang good!

Also involved in my Easter celebrations were a FaceTime session with my family and Easter baskets from my roommate and my brother:

There is so much candy happening up in here.

With sunshine, good friends, good food, and an excess of chocolate, how can you really go wrong?