Memorial Day: Part II

So right now I am at work. And it is extraaa quiet. But that is only because the baby is asleep and the others are with their grandma. It's so weird though because I am not used to quiet, and when it is quiet, that's when I start to worry. Go figure. 

Anyway... here are the promised pictures from my awesome California trip a few weeks ago. I got there Friday afternoon and Bry picked me up from the airport and we went to lunch at this way good wrap and burger place. He was able to take a little time off to eat before he had to head back to work. So while he was at work and I was at their apartment waiting for Nereida to get off of work, I took a test. Go figure. School just NEVER ends for me. Nereida and I went shopping for some supplies for the Bridal Shower we are throwing for Nathalie next week and then we all went to dinner at this Bar and Restaurant (what is with me... I can't remember the names of anywhere today!) where we had amazing spicy avocado rolls, pizza, their specialty rootbeer, and pizookies! 

Saturday Bryan had to work so we had girls day at the beach with Nereida's friends Liz and Kim. They are seriously hilarious and I had such a great day. We started at Venice Beach and walked all around for awhile. We stopped at some sun glasses shops and tried on a thousand pairs, at least I did... until I found just the ones!

Just kidding. I did not buy either of those. I got sweet blue sunglasses though. All along the beach front are people selling medical marijuana. It was kinda crazy how many there actually were.  

We spent a long time walking around and laughing and then after getting henna tattoos we decided to lay the beach for awhile. Oh I love love love the beach. 

We then attempted to find a gas station to go to the bathroom but apparently gas stations in California don't believe in bathrooms so we ended up at McDonalds. Then we went to Santa Monica Pier for some good lovin' fun.... where I rode a ferris wheel. Now, if you don't know me that wheel then you don't know how horrible terrified I am of Ferris Wheels. Like terrified. It's bad. But I got on anyway and actually enjoyed it slightly. Probably because we could not stop laughing or because people kept changing seats while it was moving or because we were taking awesome pictures or maybe all of the above and then some, but either way, I survived. We walked the pier a bit and took more pictures and then we were off to dinner at Roscoe's where the serve waffles and chicken! What a combo. We waited outside on the curb like true Hollywood bums for about 30 minutes and then enjoyed a really awesome meal and tons more laughs. Then we spent the rest of the night walking Hollywood Blvd. Oh what interesting people you see there..... Including the creepo guy who hit on me, invited me to have beers with him when he got off work, gave me his number, and proceeded to kiss me. All while everyone else was petting a dog a ways off and while Nereida was taking pictures of this little incident! Such a sister thing to do ;) hahaha. Anyway. I had an awesome time but here are the plethora of pictures to prove it. 

Yes, we did part on Ocean Avenue. Just like the song :)

Ferris Wheel!!!!

This picture makes it look kinda like I am floating in the ocean, but it was on the Pier :)

Just chillin on the curb in Hollywood waiting for dinner, all of FB, nbd.

Memorial Day, Part I

This one time, I went to California.

But first, I stopped in St. George to visit my sister and her family.

And then I went to Vegas...

Good thing I don't live there....

More pictures coming soon of my awesome Memorial Day weekend in California :)

Life, unexpected

I have never liked death. I have never been one to feel comfortable at funerals or willingly go to viewings let alone say 'goodbye' to people in their caskets. It honestly creeps me out to see dead people. So the first time you witness someone die, and die unexpectedly, it does weird things to you.

Last Saturday I was hiking in Provo Canyon at Stewart Falls. A friend had recommended the hike and since I had never been, Laura and I decided we would go up there while she was visiting for the weekend. It was a beautiful hike - everything was so luscious green and peaceful. We made it to the waterfall and decided to take the very steep hike down to the bottom were you could actually get in the water and walk around a bit. We took in the whole experience of the place and then soon after taking some pictures decided we wanted to go up part of the fall where you can actually almost go behind the water. I'm sure that when the trail was created, this was not meant to be part of it, but over time so many people have gone up it that it was become someone of a trail - a crazy steep one at that. There were some other people up there so we figured we would be adventurous and go up.
After maybe 10 minutes or so, the other people went down and it was just me and Laura up there. We looked down and saw a group of people looking up and we thought they were looking at us since we were the only ones up there. Little did we know that someone had decided to climb up even further.... There was no trail above us by the way. It wasn't until after the fact that we realized what they were actually looking at. A short time later we heard some of the girls scream and right as I looked over to my left, I saw the man literally fall right past me and land 50 or so feet below us.

There are many details of the next hour that I witnessed as so many people tried to revive this 22 year old BYU student, but there is really no way to put in to words that hour of my life. Rescue paramedics arrived maybe 40 minutes later, and then a chopper came and left - without landing. The whole thing seemed surreal, but in fact it was very, very real. A man, one year older than me, had fallen from 20 or so feet above where I was. And died right in front of me. He was just a college student living out of state trying to enjoy his summer with some friends.

This incident made me think about life throughout the afternoon and made me question some of my own actions. But, at the same time, as horrible of an experience as it is to watch someone leave this mortal life, I feel so unaffected by it. I woke up Sunday and went on with my life, and don't think much differently or feel very different or anything.

What does that say about me though? That I can watch someone fall and die and not really be affected by it, aside from the initial shock of it. What kind of person does that make me? Life is precious. And it is meant to be lived. This is what I intend to continue to do.


*To read the short story and view pictures of the area, click here.

To a once again bright future

I am so far behind on blogging it is insane. Later this week I will be blogging about the rest of my trip to Colorado at the end of March. But for now, I have to brag about myself. Go figure, right? ha.

A little(lot) background first:

In high school, I played basketball. Due to this very physical sport(who knew right??), I suffered a few concussions/TBI's through my sophomore and junior years. I didn't play my senior year. My grades suffered - the last year especially. I had always taken pride in the fact that I was fairly smart and could get could get good grades without killing myself with nonstop studying. School had always come fairly naturally to me. But then it didn't. Life got difficult quickly, very quickly. I don't know how much people noticed it before college because I would like to think that other than the crazy headaches I would get constantly, I was pretty good at hiding how I was feeling about not playing basketball anymore, about failing in school (at least failing to meet my standards and expectations for myself), about losing my memory about so many things and having a now horrible short term memory. I think I was in denial enough about it that I was able to pretend that so many of these things did not matter or were not really happening. That all changed when I went to college. 

I moved to Logan, Utah at 18 years old. I lived with 5 other girls. I thought I was at the top of the world, that I was invincible and that college was going to be a breeze. HA! Talk about running in to a brick wall at full speed. By the end of my first semester, I had failed one class and was close enough to failing the rest of my classes in a 16 credit semester that when the semester ended, I received a letter of impending academic probation due to the scholarship I was receiving to attend school. Me and my denial though just brushed it off and the next semester I took 18 whopping credits, hard credits that nearly killed me. I had classes from human development to elementary education to international politics. Throughout this semester, even though I was finally getting a couple of A's, I still failed one class and came out with a very low GPA. What had happened to me??? I hated the fact that I was failing school. I hated that I wasn't the same "me" I used to me. And on top of not getting the grades I wanted, I had to go home to have surgery, and I was having more and more headaches that were really starting to get bad - being that I was getting them everyday and they were harder and harder to just get rid of. Life was spiraling out of control and I couldn't stop any of it. 

After spending the summer in Colorado, I moved back to Utah, but this time to Provo. I was transfering to Utah Valley University and living with Nana. Living here has proved to be one of the best decisions I have ever made though. As tough as an adjustment as it has been. Everything seemed to be working out - instead of having to pay the out of state tuition that I expected to pay, 10 days before school started I received an email saying I had been accepted for the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) scholarship, even though when I had looked at the list at the beginning of the summer I was number 272 on the WAITING LIST which meant waiting about 2 years. What a blessing that was. I took this as a sign that things were going to be completely different here than in Logan. At the end of fall 2010 semester, I had a 2.10 GPA and was still struggling to function and thrive. Keep in mind, in order to maintain the scholarship, a 2.0 GPA is required. Talk about cutting it close!!! Spring semester I failed another class but managed to bring my cumulative GPA up to 2.62. I was still having headaches and major memory problems and was still so frustrated with myself. More than once I considered just dropping out of college all together. Things got so hard for me to deal with that I just wanted to give up because it would be easier than trying and failing as much as I have. My brother convinced me to stay in school and tough it out though because it would be something I regretted if I quit. I knew he was right, so I stayed, as much as I dreaded it. It never is a good sign when you wake up every day dreading going to school. Summer came and I went home to Colorado again thoroughly unhappy with myself and where my life was going in what was supposed to be some of the best years of my life. 

Eventually I jumped back on the horse, headaches, memory issues and all, and headed back to school. Last Fall I was insane enough to take 18 credits again. Somehow I managed to come out with a 3.2 GPA and things were looking up! Then this last Spring, I pulled a crazy 3.6 GPA.Surprisingly enough, this includes both semesters I have taken math/statistics. Another upside to the past year? My headaches have decreased enormously, both in intensity and how often they occur. So maybe there is hope after all? I think yes. Absolutely. Maybe the effects of multiple TBI's are not as long lasting has I had imagined. Sure I will have to deal with headaches and memory issues I'm sure the rest of my life, but at least I now know that it will not always be as bad as it has been the past 4 years. Now going in to my senior year of college I have higher expectations of myself, similar to my pre-TBI days. So yes, I am bragging about my grades now, which is not something I have done in a long time. But, I am overly proud of myself right now and am once again looking brightly to my own future. :)

And a quote that I feel somewhat fits this topic as well as just makes me think.....

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves"

Surprise!

As you all probably know by now, I am the queen of surprises. I pull them off often and well. I am exceptional at surprising my mom. Since I am the youngest, my parents are now empty-nesters. Going strong for three years now! Ha! Anyway, life is so much different when you don't have 4 kids around anymore plus I love being at home so I make it a point to go to Colorado as often as I can.

This year was my mom's 50th birthday. She was adamant that she was NOT going to be celebrating. Little did she know that my dad and I had been in cahoots since November about it all! We planned a surprise party with some of her friends and coworkers and Bryan, Nereida, Heather, Zach, Nana, and I all flew in to surprise her as well. And boy was she surprised!!! There were a few times in the weeks leading up that the secret almost slipped, and it got so difficult to contain my excitement that I avoided talking to mom except via text for almost 2 weeks. Little did I know that Bryan and Nereida were in the same boat! So we all flew in Thursday afternoon and my dad, who told my mom he was driving to work, came and picked us all up. There were just a couple of slight issues, but nothing that was solved quickly. The biggest thing was my mom stayed at work much longer than I had anticipated. So I got Bryan to get a hold of her and tell her he needed a recipe so he could make dinner for Nereida. And then BAM! There everyone was to surprise her when she came home from work. We talked, laughed, and enjoyed family and friends the rest of the evening. We were all betting that mom would cry, but instead she was so utterly surprised she was speechless. She could not believe that we were all there; that Nereida was able to get time off from her new job, that I was able to miss class, that we were all there. It was the best surprise I have ever pulled off. And it was SO great to be home with the whole family as well. 

How adorable is my nephew??

SURPRISE!!!

Happy Birthday!

The cake, made by the one and only Lynne Martin!!

Now for the videos. My dad recorded mom coming in, but she saw him with his camera before she walked in so so got really confused as to what was happening. But, the videos are spectacular! They show how truly surprised she was. The second one is from my camera. Heather, Zach, Nana, Bryan, Nereida, and I were all hiding in the kitchen so it was like a double surprise. The best part is when Zach starts crawling away and almost gives us away! Ha

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!!
3-25-2012

Birthday lovin'

So last Wednesday I turned 21.

 

It was a splendid day AND I didn't have to work, although I still had to go to school...

After classes, my dear friend Bekah took me out to lunch and I had this amazing burger from Chili's...

 

A guacamole bacon burger.. just to die for. The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful, but it was nice to just have a day to do nothing. I didn't even do any homework, even though this was 4 days before finals started. Ha! Then I went over to Amber's house and we proceeded to go to this sweet restaurant/bar/lounge place with Jenna called Spark. It is on University Ave and it way cool.

When we got there there was literally no one else there, but after a little bit people started coming and filling the place up. 

Love this girl.

And yes, that sure is cotton candy on my straw haha.

Jenna love

The drinks at this place were seriously to die for. So good.

After a very fun eventful evening, I went home, had birthday cake and ice cream and then just crashed. It was such a great day and I really do have such amazing friends and family. And then to add to the birthday fun... Saturday I went to lunch at Olive Garden with Nana and then that night went shopping at City Creek with Camille. We had such a great time, and then had an entertaining experience trying to get out of the parking garage. Let's just say it is very difficult with a clutch because it is extremely steep and there was a lot of traffic for some reason. The car in front of my kept rolling back and I was really afraid he was going to roll right in to me at one point. Then we paid a dollar to park there. Talk about cheap parking! She then took me to this amazing place, Leatherbys for dinner. Holy crap this place is amazing!!! It's also where I got this amazing concoction...

Melted peanut butter and hot fudge on ice cream, what more could you ask for??? 

It was such a great birthday and I could not have asked for a better time. Now that I'm all "legal" to do anything except rent a car, I need to find something crazy to do.....