over the border and onto utah

WE GET TO SEE MY FAMILY SOON!!!!!!!!!

I MISS THEM SO FREAKIN MUCH!

it was seriously last august since we've seen them.

it really sucks i don't get to see them very often.

i get a little teary eyed when i think about seeing my family.

brett and i will be making our way down to utah this weekend to meet up with them at my aunt's house. my sister kyla is getting sealed to her husband in the manti temple so its a great reason for the fam to get together. except our youngest sis erin won't be able to make it cuz of band camp. maybe next time erin...

my parents are driving out to utah from west virginia and it's not a big deal at all. when we were younger we took long road trips all the time. and thats one of the most memorable things i remember from my childhood.

my mom and my sister kyla had been texting each other saying how its a little weird that its just my parents driving across the country and us girls aren't with them. and my mom texted me that and i started to cry. i thought about our numerous road trips together to all these exciting places all over the country. we've been to palmyra, NYC, most of the american history sites out east, mt. rushmore, niagara falls, kirtland, nauvoo, almost all the church sites, etc etc. yeah we've been EVERYWHERE. and i'm so grateful for that. yeah i was a bit of a brat on a lot of these trips but all those trips helped me to love my family even more.

and since being my married i appreciate my family so much more now. and i can't wait till brett and i have a family so we can go on lots of roadtrips and create our own fantastic memories.

so ttyl blog, i'm gonna be hangin with the family.

lumpia lovin

i may not be able to speak my mom's language but i sure make some bangin lumpia. and for those who don't really know what it is, it's a filipino eggroll filled with simple stuff like ground beef, carrots, celery, garlic, onion, special lumpia seasonings found in asian stores, and lots of love.

absolutely delish i say.

a change

welp,

i don't work at jamba anymore...

it's a little bit of a long story.

as i like to call it, "i accidentally quit."

and i'll leave it at that.

being jobless right now i picked back up my first role of being a domestic housewife. i've been cleaning, keeping up with laundry, and cooking home meals for once in my life. it was so hard while working cuz i would plop my tush down on the couch after work and not do ANYTHING. poor brett. we've been living a bit like slobs due to my laziness. i'm just not really good at balancing work and home. but whatever, we'll deal.

of course i'm looking for a job, but here in crappy rexburg, pickins are very slim.

i've also been getting to spend more free time with my husband, yeah we don't really have money to go out and do whatever anymore but i just love spending time with him. my hands are also healing really well which is a HUGE PLUS! i'm gonna do my nails.

we ate some cherries which i always cautiously eat due to an undiagnosed allergy to certain fruits. they were SOO good but alas....my lips and gums swelled like a botched botox procedure.

no, you can't see the complete damage b/c i actually have fat lips in real life but i sure did feel lotsa swelling. but you can see a bump on my lower lip and there were red streaks. suckssss. it was SO worth it though. i finally looked it up and turns out i have a certain allergy syndrome (along with my severe pollen and cat allergies), where i'm allergic to certain FRESH fruits and veggies. it varies so i really can't pin point as to what exactly i'm allergic to but when its cooked, canned, blah blah blah then i'm fine.
one day earlier this week while brett was in class i was feeling really stressed about finances and i was a little bored so i took our big picnic blanket, a book i've been taking a long time in finishing, and my big sunglasses and i went to the park and sunbathed. people tell me all the time i don't need to tan but i love getting really dark and sucking up the sun. it was so relaxing and wonderful. i needed that. when i got home i felt a little heat exhaustion and got myself a huge glass of OTAI. i didn't make this, we got tons of leftovers from a ward we performed for. but one day i shall make it. otai is a refreshing tongan drink that is from fresh fruits, usually watermelon, mango, apple or whatever you want. in this case it was fresh shredded apple in its own juice. i eat it with a spoon and drink it with a straw. i still have lotsa leftovers you're welcome to come over and try some!

ta ta for now!

T-shirt project: Frozen Dead Guy Days

i love my t-shirts. i don't have a huge collection, though brett might say i have too many, but i really don't. i just have a few that mean a lot to me, maybe its my coheed shirt i bought at my last warped tour, or my cute rainbow bright shirt my friend gave to me in high school, or my AWESOME wolverine T-shirt i wear to every X-men movie. i die. so i found this T-shirt project blog through a friend of a friend and they showcase entries submitted by regular peeps like me who want to show some of their prized t's and the story behind them.

and i had to submit this baby i got in nederland CO.

whenever i wear it people are always asking me, "what the devil is that shirt about??"

here's the story i submitted to the blog...

"My husband (fiance then) and I went to visit my bro in law in CO and they live near nederland, a super small town that celebrates the "Frozen Dead Guy Days." Jist of the story is that in 1989 this Norwegian guy brought his dead grandpa to the US and got his body cryogenically frozen. During the grandson's and his mom's plan to build a cryonics facility the grandson overstayed his visa and got deported back to norway in 1993. His mom, however, kept her father's body frozen in a shack right behind her house keeping him frozen. She was faced with eviction and told a local reporter about her problem being that she doesn't want her father's body to thaw out. The city made an exception for her and built the frozen old man an even better shed for him to rest in. And since 2002 the town celebrates every March their interesting resident. I just had to get the T-shirt."

the website is also having a little bit of a giveaway and the winner gets a T from this sweet website! Threadless

check it out.

les trois tetons

my last major assignment for my photog class was our final project of course. it was to take a series of pics with a theme of some sort. my brain was farting for the last 2 weeks as to what i could do. i thought i had this one really cute idea but the more i thought about it the more i realized how dumb it was. brain fart. i asked brett to help me with some ideas and we talked it out...he came up with the idea of taking pictures of the teton mountains but from many different angles and places. to be honest i thought that was going to be a little boring but brett made me realize that it'll be actually cool cuz there really are many areas that show the tetons amazingly. brett comes up with such good ideas. i did marry him for his brain after all.

we picked a day and seriously woke up at 3.30am in order to make it to the other side of the tetons for the sunrise. how sick to be up at such an ungodly hour. thank freakin goodness i have brett, he actually loves driving really early! here are some of my fav pics of the tetons from our adventure.

during our drive over all creation we were STARVING. and it was about 7am. it was really crazy thinking that i'm usually not up by then. as much as i think mcdonalds is really disgusting i'm in LOVE with their breakfast. we stopped at mcd's in jackson and binged.

and they have the breakfast bagels!!!!!!!!! everything here in rexburg sucks so i guess everywhere else has the good stuff. i really want another one right now.

i was still surprisingly hungry after savoring the bagel and got my ultimate fav, egg mcmuffin...which i ended up regretting after. :S

what a fatty. sorry for my ugliness but for real, it was early.

i couldn't help but think of my darling daddy the whole day. he's in love with the tetons and when he last came out here he wanted to get as many pics as he could up close. but didn't get as much as he'd like. so in a way i dedicate this project to him.

love ya daddy!
and thanks a ton brett for well, everything, esp for being my husband.

holy cheese.

my girl rach and i decided to go on a girl date since our men were either really busy with work or with homework. we felt we were in the mood for a cheesy chick flick and saw "letters to juliet" at the cheap theater and we sure got lotsa cheese. after the movie was over rach and i left laughing. it was just terribly predictable and overall sappy. sure glad i only spent $3 to see it! i learned that the older actors who play claire and lorenzo are actually married in real life! how freakin adorable! they met while making the film, "camelot" which makes me wanna watch camelot instead of watching letters again. despite the cookie cutter layout of the chick flick i fell in love with the location being in sienna, italy. i got really in the mood to eat pasta and when i got home i made brett promise me he would take me to italy.....and he better....

haha thanks rach for the date, it was hilarious.

happy birfday america!!

what a busy 4th of july weekend we just had celebrating America's birthday!

well on thurs. july 1st it was my girl gwen's birthday and what a fab birthday it was!

and steve had a little bit of a birthday party surprise for her, whatta nice guy!

she's such a cute pregnant woman, they're gonna be having a baby girl in oct and she's gonna be a DARLING half tongan baby!

on friday the next day steve and gwen decided to have a little cookout and also invited our other friends sana and marco.

we roasted hot dogs and made smore's.

pretty much a perfect combo.

poor brett can't aim for his mouth though. haha i think he looks adorable.

i also tried roasting peach rings....but ended up tasting like a leftover burnt marshamallow peach ring.
that night was so fun! we came home really late smelling like smoke and the smell permeated throughout the apt. good thing scentsy killed it off!

the next day being sat. the 3rd the cities of rexburg and idaho falls celebrated America's independance day mainly b/c they're such highly populated LDS communities. and i had to work, it wasn't too bad but still...a few of my co-workers and i had to get up early in the morning and get to the store and start making jambas and oatmeal like crazy to sell to the people at the parade and such. and we even enlisted our husbands' help to go up and down main street yelling, "JAMBAS for $1.50!!!!!" yup thats how brett and i spent our time at the parade. and while we were selling the goods we got free hot dogs, free jimmy john sandwiches, little discounted items, and even some candy the floats were throwing. hey we need to enjoy ourselves too at the parade.

after all that we went home and took a freakin long nap.

that evening brett and i didn't have anywhere to go for the firework festivities. we don't really have family around to party with so steve and gwen invited us to go with them to gwen's cousin's house in IF and we were so grateful for that. yeah it wasn't our family but it felt so nice to be with people just hangin out, sharing laughs, and eating good food.

where gwen's cuz lives in IF we just had to walk just a little bit and got an almost perfect view of the fireworks. afterwards going home traffic was so horrible it took us about an hour when the drive from IF to rexburg usually takes 20mins-ish....

sunday the 4th (today) we were so exhausted from the weekend we literally didn't do anything. simple as that.
HAPPY 4th of JULY EVERYONE!!!

and HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

I LOVE YOU!!!