Parade people.

I know I say my family is the best a lot, but I only speak the truth.
We are a type of people that you might not have encountered in your life, at least not at our level.
We are parade people. Weird, I know. But that's what we do.

I've grown up always going to parades and I didn't realize that this wasn't normal until I was in high school. I also didn't realize that it wasn't normal to lose your voice every time you go to a parade. You see, we cheer for EVERYONE that passes by, whether or not they are interesting or even in the parade. I mean, we cheer our lungs out for the little kids pulling the wagons and selling popsicles just as much as we cheer for the scottish pipe band or the sweet floats.

And when I say my family, I mean my WHOLE family. This is a lot of people. It's not surprising when we have a solid 40 people there on the street with us at any given parade. Uncle Frank is always shouting in the back with his wooden noise-maker that makes us all deaf. There's some specific cousins that I can always rely on for witty, hilarious comments shouted at the floats, particularly those with the pretty girls on them. The youngest brother pulls some ridiculous dance moves in the middle of the street  in the long spaces between floats. It's just plain fun.

July is prime time for parades. The Pioneer Day/24th of July/Days of 47 Parade is the ultimate of all parades. For 35 years my family has been going to downtown Salt Lake on the night of the 23rd and setting up camp on the street to save our spot for the parade in the morning. Sleeping out for the parade is my favorite extended family tradition. Like, we legitimately sleep on the streets.

Lay the blankets out in the gutter, and then party all night. We play all sorts of games, we talk, we laugh our heads off, we walk about down town. And we don't sleep. Some people try to sleep, but aren't particularly successful.
This year was a strange one at the parade for me. For one, I was missing some brothers. Ryan is on a mission. And Kade was at scout camp. Also, just lot's of other relatives weren't there. On the positive side: I brought friends. This was a new experience for them and I was thrilled. Sadly, they thought it was a good idea to go to sleep at 2 or 3 in the morning. Luckily, my cousin, Jason and I remained stalwart and stayed up the entire night, talking about absolutely nothing and it was hilarious. We were unashamedly the only one's that did not sleep a wink, though Jason did sleep through the entire parade, but that was to be expected.
So this years' parade can be marked off as another supreme success. I got zero sleep, cheered my lungs out for all 120+ parade entries (particularly the BYU float which contained my good friend and future roommate, Jessica), and just had the time of my life.
I love being parade people.

Phoneless.

Let me tell you a funny little story:

Once upon a time I went to California and it was awesome.

My phone decided that it just loved California so much that it was going to stay for an extended vacation. Much more extended than my own trip.
Yes, you heard right. I have been without my phone for about 11 days now.
How did my phone get left behind in California, a solid 12 hour drive away?  Well, I certainly did not forget it... it just happend to get stuck in an unlocked house. I know, this just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. I realized that I had left my phone in the house we were staying at and luckily we had left the front door unlocked, so I went to go open it and much to my horror, the door wouldn't budge. Something was wrong with the handle and it just plain wouldn't open. We worked on it for a solid 15 minutes, with no success. So I had turn my back on my poor phone, leaving it in an unlocked house. The poor dear.

I didn't realize how much my everyday life revolves around the quick messages that phone provides to me. I am constantly talking about my plans later that day with my roommates or deciding where to meet someone or answering quick, simple questions via text. Not to mention the fact that I call my mom everyday. And my phone keeps me in contact with my lovely friends that I don't get to see very often. I bash on our culture's extreme dependence on cell phones sometimes, but let's get real, they really do help and can be a good thing. However, it's been a bit of a blessing in my life not have a phone. Though I haven't thought so the entire time.
This is my process of emotions since the loss of my phone: Frustration, Relief, Freedom, Annoyance, Irritation, Acceptance. Yes, I think that portrays exactly how the last week has gone for me.

Here are some things I've learned while I have been without a phone:

• Who the most important people in my life are. Even when I don't have a phone, I still find a way to talk to the most important people.
• My roommates are amazing. They put up with my borrowing their phones all the time.
• Patience. In a world full of fast-paced, at your finger-tips information and answers, I have had to learn to be patient. When I need to ask some one something, I have to wait until the next time I see them or when they answer my email, it is not an immediate response, and it is ok.
• To listen and observe. I always call my mom when I'm walking across campus, and if I'm not talking to her, I'm probably texting someone. Not being able to do that has allowed me to enjoy the beauty that is Provo and has given me more chance to look around and better observe the fascinating people that I am surrounded by everyday.
• Facebook gets really old really fast. I've been relying a lot on fb messages to talk to people, but now I am so sick of fb. It's not even funny.
• Simplification. Technology overwhelms my life. I sit at a computer all day at work, I am always using my laptop to take notes or do assignments or catch up on tv shows or really do most anything, I listen to my iPod, I always have my phone with me. It gets to be too much sometimes. So it's been incredibly nice to take a break from at least one aspect of technology and kind of simplify my life.
• To take a deep breath. This could have been an incredibly upsetting situation to not have my phone, and at times it was, but overall I learned to just take a step back, breath, and reassess the situation and realize that it's fine. True, I don't have communication right at my finger tips at all time, but it's ok and I can make it work.

Overall, I'm thrilled that this happened. It's not very often that one can take such an extended break from their phone, and it has truly been a blessing. I know it sounds like something really small and dumb, but I really did learn so much from not having a phone! But I must admit, it will be SO nice to get it back and be able to communicate with the rest of the world again.


Side note - 
Talking about phones just reminded me of a sweet little tune you may be familiar with (this does not actually apply to my life at this very moment in time): 
Call me, beep me, if you want to reach me. 
When you want to page me, it's ok. 
Whenever you need me, baby 
Call me, beep me, if you want to reach me.

Velcro

My hair is velcro. And this is serious business.

True story: the other day while studying in the library, my earring fell out of my ear and I realized that it was because the back had fallen off. I searched around and around and couldn't find the back of this earring and just chalked it up to yet another lost earring back in my life. It was sad, but I wasn't too heart broken about it, at least I still had the earring. THEN seriously 5 hours later, I'm sitting at work and pull my hair back into a ponytail. I felt something and asked myself: What is this strange, hard, hidden object in my hair? Oh look, it's the BACK OF MY EARRING! How did this happen?! How had it not fallen out while walking all across campus and being my normal flailing self and just daily flying about that my hair goes through?

Answer: My hair is velcro. I don't even need pockets anymore, I'll just stick all of my belongings up in my hair and it will be fine.
This is a great plan.

Roommates

Sooo I have these people in my life called roommates. Mine are kind of the greatest in the entire world. I have always been blessed with AMAZING roomies. Always.
This is the original six of us:

The freshman roommates. Kaylee, Alyse, Andee, Mandy, and Kendra. We were together through so much and were best friends. I could take an entire blog post, scratch that, any number of blog posts to recount our adventures together that year. It's not often you get 6 girls randomly thrown together that just bond and get along as well as we did. We were CRAZY back then (not that we aren't still crazy). We were together through half of sophomore year too. Then Kaylee went to London, and Michelle moved in. That was lovely. Here we are:

Then this past year, Kaylee returned to us. Mandy decided marriage was probably a good idea. And Alyse went off for some new, wonderful experiences... but let's get real, she's still practically a roommate! But that semester I was blessed with the experience of having new roommates, something that I hadn't really gone through in my two years of college experience. There were four of the originals and I was again blessed with great new roommates. Krystal and Amber thought we were insane at first. Let's be serious, they were terrified. But they learned to love us. I adore those girls with all my heart. Here we are:

The next semester, we had a plethora of sister missionaries. Kendra and Krystal both left us to go serve the Lord in Phoenix and Tokyo. I love them. And so we got two new roommates. Kate and Kellie. I love them both. Let me tell you, Kate is the most outrageous, wonderful, silly girl I know and I cherish that semester I got to spend sharing a room with her! She's engaged now, which is thrilling. Sadly, I don't think we ever got a picture of all of us together. But here's Kate, she's great. Though this picture is not so much:

And now it comes to the current arrangement of roommates. There's me, Kaylee, and Andee. We've been roommates for three, going on four years and it's been complete madness nonstop! And we've added three of the most adorable females I've ever encountered. Jenna, Halie, and Cebre. This is 5 of the 6 (Cebre was with her fiance, a noble excuse if I do say so myself.):

I love these girls more than you can know. We've only all lived together for a couple months, but we've bonded deep and it's been fantastic. Halie is currently rocking the piano in Italy, and I miss her immensely, but she'll be back in a couple weeks. And this is us all on our last day all together as roommates. Now Cebre is all married and the like and Terra is moving in any moment! I'm thrilled!

So there you have it, folks. All of the roommates I've ever been blessed with, and it seriously has been a blessing. I've never had a roommate I didn't absolutely adore. I have learned so much from them and they've helped me to grow. And I am still best friends with all of them. They accept my crazy and they bring some crazy of their own. This is why I love them. Every single one of them.

California. Here we come.

I do cool things in my life. Like take awesome road trips to Northern California.

I seriously have the best friends in the world. And we had more fun in those 5 days than most people have in a full year. We left Tuesday night, right after work and got back to good old Provo Sunday night. 4 solid days in California.

The initial reason we went on this road trip was to go see the wedding of dear Cebre and Hiram Jacob. And the wedding was INCREDIBLE. On top of that, we made it a full on vacation. We celebrated our nation's independence by watching many firework shows through the beautiful fog in Santa Cruz. We spent an entire day in San Francisco. We bon fired at the beach. We made more memories and inside jokes than I can count.

I love those girls more than anything. It was the 4 of us girls: Kaylee, Kaylee, Jenna, and Jennie. Yeah, we confused everyone that we met. And is was great! I learned so much about myself while talking to these girls this week, and I think we all reached a new level of crazy. Upon calculating it, we spent more than 36 hours in the car over that 5 day span, so it's a good thing I like these girls. We kind of took up some usual spots in the car. I drove. Most of the time. Jenna directed me. We sometimes got lost, but overall, she directed me exceptionally well. And the Kaylee's sat in the back. They cuddled, they slept, and they kept us entertained. We had a pretty good system set up. I was a pretty big fan of it. I really do love driving.

We stayed at Terra and Cebre's house the first night. We were SO excited to see them!

Best part of all of San Francisco: Tandem biking across the Golden Gate Bridge! It seriously was the most fun thing I've done in my whole life. It took me and Kaylee a couple of blocks to get the hang of it. Let's get real, those first few blocks were completely terrifying and we screamed our heads off and were plenty of free entertainment to our fellow tourists. But by the end, we were pros. And once we got to the bridge, we ate PB&Js in the middle of the GGB. It was so cool!

We went to China Town. It was radtastic. And I bought awesome things: a glow-in-the-dark Buddah, a mustache ring, and a wooden sword. I realized that I find great joy in incredibly random objects.

We went to Carmel-by-the-Sea, this adorably quaint town full of little shops and cute things. With a beach.
We went to a giant bon fire on the beach. And we wore our matching tourist San Francisco sweatshirts. That beach was beautiful. And the surfers were exciting.

Then we weddinged it up on Saturday. This is us and the beautiful bride. It doesn't get much better than this. Cebre and Hiram are so lovely and happy and perfect for each other.

Summing up the trip: We maimed the schmeagle Jack.