Recap of past travels.

I went to the UK last summer.
This is one of those things where time got away from me and it was never blogged about. But that trip was most assuredly the highlight of the last year of my life. And my parents are currently in Scotland picking up my brother from his mission *insert high pitched squeals of jubilation* and all of their pictures have made me reminisce about my own trip. So I will take you through some of the most highlighted parts of my lovely holiday with my lovely friends.
Two of my roommates were going to be in England last summer for academic trips and there was a bit of overlap between when one arrived and the other left, so I decided to join them for some frivolity across the pond. Jenna and I flew over together and had a day just the two of us exploring Kensington Gardens and seeing the sights.

Then we met up with Andee and Jonathan and all of their friends from their program in Oxford. We spent that day exploring the main attractions and then saw Phantom of the Opera that night.

And then it was off to Scotland! We dropped Jenna off at the University of Glasgow for her study abroad, took a quick stop at Loch Lomond, and then headed to Edinburgh. Oh how I wish we could have stayed in this beautiful country for more than just the two days we were there. It is by far my favorite place I've ever visited in my life. So much beauty and so many hilarious, sarcastic, and genuine people. 

One train ride back to London and we arrived at Kings Cross Station. Maybe this was one of those moments of my trip that I was most looking forward to: finding the entrance to platform nine and three quarters. It's fine, I found the Hogwarts Express.

Then we went to freaking Wimbledon! It honest to goodness just so happened that we were in London during the Wimbledon Championships, so obviously we had to take the opportunity to try to go. We had to wake up at 4:45 in the morning to take a train out to Wimbledon and then sit in the standby line (the English call it a queue) to get a ticket. The first 6000 people in line were allowed in first thing int he morning, and we were afraid we wouldn't make it - that's how many people were in this ridiculous queue! But we made it and we got into Wimbledon, never again will I have such an incredible opportunity. And I thought Andee was going to die of excitement/anticipation/happiness.

And we also went to The Harry Potter Studio Tour. Let me run that by you one more time: THE HARRY POTTER STUDIO TOUR!!!!! This is where the filmed most parts of the Harry Potter movies and it is where all of the sets and costumes and other props are currently housed. I almost died of happiness during this tour. Jonathan and I were like little kids at this place and Andee graciously allowed us to geek out as much as possible. I think I will do a blog post about this tour one day, so just one pic will suffice.

And then here are some more pics from other random moments of the trip. Like Camden Lock, one of the coolest markets I've ever been too and where I bought the most delicious orange juice in the entire world. That one time when we went to Abbey Road and were the Beatles for a day. And the Tower of London. And watching MacBeth in The Globe Theatre. And St. Paul's Cathedral. And Tower Bridge.

This trip was the real deal. We had a complete blast and we pushed ourselves to the point of exhaustion to see everything we wanted to in the 9 days I was there. You may notice that our group of people we were with was constantly changing, and that was so fun. I was able to meet some fun new people and meet up with some good old friends. Overall, best trip ever. I know it's been nearly 9 months since I was there, but I just had to share the love and the pictures. I am so blessed that I was able to go. And don't you worry, I will be going again sometime in my life.

Time for a trip? YES!

Guess what I'm doing this summer?!?!

Taking a nice little trip to LONDON! I've decided to spend all of my money and give myself a graduation trip across the ocean. And I'm absolutely thrilled!

I'm spending about a week in London and taking a train up to Scotland for 2 days. I can't think of anything I would rather do this summer. Sadly, Ryan just got transferred further north in Scotland and I won't be able to hunt him down. Up until this past Monday, he had been in Kirkcaldy which is only an hour away from where I'm staying in Edinburgh and I was going to try to meet up with him and his companion for lunch or something. But alas, that is not meant to be, which could possibly be for the best. Anyway, I digress.

London! I'm so excited!
Seeing the sights, eating the food, staying in hostels,riding the tube, just being there and getting experiences outside of Provo. I can not express to you how thrilled I am. I'm going with some amazing old friends and some fun new friends. This will be such an adventure! It's only about a month away!

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.

Toniiiiiiiight. We are young.

Toniiiiiiight. We. Are. Young. Gonna set the world on fire. We can burn brighter than the suuuuuun.

Don't worry that song has been stuck in my head for a solid 4 days. It was definitely the theme song for the weekend, and it would appear that it will also be the theme song for my week. High quality music, if you ask me.

What did I do this weekend that would make it require a theme song? Why, I only had the best weekend in quite a long while, of course. Took a little tripsy to St. George with some wonderful friends. Did some food eating, game playing, sun enjoying, angel's landing hiking, and wonderful laughing. It was rockin.
Here's a little photographic evidence of the hike (as stolen from Andrew's fb):

There's 7 of us, in case you missed one in your counting. We're all artistic and stuff. No big deal. Anyway, so this hike may or may not have exhausted me and made me sore even now, more than 2 days later, but it was SO worth it. I might be terrified of heights, so I might have been more terrified on this hike than ever before in my life, but I survived! Angel's Landing was beautiful. If you're ever in Zion's, I would highly suggest taking the couple hours to go on this hike. But make sure to hang on to the chains. We wouldn't want anyone taking a little tumble off the cliff.
Favorite part of the weekend? It's so hard to choose! But I think I'm going to have to go with nerf wars at 3 in the morning. SO FUN. Except for the part where we woke up every person in the house; that was embarrassing.
In summary: It was a perfect weekend and I have amazing friends.

Lever's are Funny

If you know me, then you most likely know my family. And if you don't know my family, well then you're missing out, but I can assure you that you pretty much already know them because they are exactly like me. We just plain crack each other up all the time. Probably the most accurate description of them would be this:
My family is the funniest group of human beings I have ever met.
Really though.
I just spent the last 3 days on a stay at home vacation with them. This was most likely the best thing that has happened in a while. I wish that people could just follow us around and see the ridiculous things we do and say. I am always entertained by my family.
We saw some Asians, a lost goat, and a huge tire at Kennecot Copper Mine. We fit 6 humans in a tire at the Copperton Park. We made a spontaneous stop at an arcade, stuffed our faces with pizza, and I played more than my fair share of skee ball. We hiked Ensign Peak and got THEE most beautiful view of the valley. We sang/made up songs while being accompanied by the subtle sounds of a uke. We alpine slid down a mountain. Twice. We laughed a ridiculous amount. We took a brief reprieve from each other about halfway through the vacation. Half of us nearly died while hiking up to Timp Cave (ok.. mostly Dad, Adam, and Kade practically ran while I nearly died. Still fun though.) We became airborne via an outrageous number of trampolines. We cheered for the Bees of the baseball variety; we don't appreciate bees of the insect variety. We celebrated Christmas in June, except the celebration was only in the form of cheesy Christmas music and a skinny Santa in red shorts throwing candy at us. We were attacked by gnats while viewing a spectacular fireworks show (really, it was incredibly splendid). And most of all we enjoyed the fact that we are the most entertaining family. All in all, I say it was a successful weekend. Well done parents.
I adore my family.

And now for the photographic proof:

This tire was not as big as it appears. It was a squeeze.

Sometimes we pose on tires.

We are unique.

I win at skee ball.

The reward of the hike.