Arriving in the Big Apple

Yep, that's me in Central Park my first day in the City! I moved here May 2, the day after Emily's wedding. My mom came with me to help me move in and figure everything out! We checked into our hotel and did a lot of exploring for about 5 days.

We spent some time in Central Park, of course, and one day we woke up early and waited in line for the Regis & Kelly Show! We ended up getting to be in the audience and got a picture of both of us with Kelly. I look super disgusting, though. The guest on the show that day was Tom Selleck and we were pretty excited about it.

While my mom was here we also did some of the New York musts such as: getting frozen yogurt from Bloomingdales, celebrity spotting(we saw Leslie Mann in Barney's), shopping at Zara, and most important...moved into my new apartment! My apartment is so adorable. It's on West 4th st. in between 6th Avenue and McDougal. It's half a block from Washington Square Park and NYU.

My mom left and on May 7 I started my internship at FamilyTravelForum.com. It's a travel website geared towards helping families find fun places to vacation. Some of what I do includes writing current event articles on things like the BP oil spill, protests in Thailand, and the Nashville flood; feature articles on resorts, hotels and other vacation spots; grade essays for a teen travel writing essay the website hosts; go to press events and get to eat delicious food. Overall it's pretty much a dream come true. I'm finally fulfilling my dream of living in New York City as a working girl! :) That is a picture of the people that work in my office.

As soon as I moved in I met my roommates Bryndee and Hyeku. They are both working in NYC in Finance and Advertising full-time. I spent a lot of time with Hyeku, her younger brother, and his friend my first week in the city. They took me to Grimaldi's Pizza, across the Brooklyn Bridge, to the MoMa to see a shocking gallery of Marina Abromovic, to La Esquina tacos( the most delicious tacos and grilled corn I've ever had in my life) and a lot of other fun things. After a week they all left, and my new roommate Louise moved in! She's from Denmark and we had a lot of fun while she was here!

Hello San Francisco!

The day we took our last finals (aka the day i bombed my humanities final), Eric and I took off on a legendary road trip to his home town of Vacaville, California. I met his rad family and fell in love with his sister's dog Tippy (whom I sadly have no photo of).
The next day he took me for my first glimpse of San Francisco! It was so beautiful I loved it.
We took a little boat to Alcatraz, which was EXTREMELY interesting. We spent the whole day there and ended up randomly meeting up with my parents for dinner because they just happened to be in San Francisco that weekend. They took us out to a delicious dinner of oysters and other fancy foods.

The rest of the time I spent in California was awesome. We went to Dillon Beach one day with Eric's sister Becca and her boyfriend Nate, but it was too windy so we didn't stay very long. After a wonderful visit to Vacaville we drove back to Provo and said our goodbye's so I could be off on my own adventures.
My next stop was in Ohio where my dear, dear friend Emily Pena became Emily Roemisch. I couldn't be happier for those two. I had an amazing time at their wedding and am so extremely excited for them to FINALLY start their life together. For three years I've been listening to this girl talk about Dave and how she can't wait to marry him. So adorable.

From Ohio I flew straight to New York City: my new home for the summer! Yep! Thats right! I did end up getting an internship and finding a place to live, so i packed up my life and moved to New York not knowing a single soul (or so I thought). My real adventures are yet to begin.

Winter Lovin'

Ok, I'm trying to catch up on everything that's been happening in my life. For thanksgiving I stayed in Utah and everyone came to me! Yipeeee. So my dad and stepmom Teri came out and we all ate at my uncle Randy's house. Here's a picture of the gang. My nephews Aden and Tristan and niece Tarin are ADORABLE.
I honestly don't remember where I spent Christmas. My mom and stepdad Chris were in the process of moving from Dallas back to Highlands Ranch, CO so I think I spent a little time in Dallas and then the rest of my Christmas break in Colorado? Anywho, here's a picture of a bunch of my Dallas friends. I have no idea when I'll see these people again :(
After Christmas break I started yet another semester at BYU. I can't believe this is my 8th semester in college! At the end of fall semester I decided I really wanted to move to New York City for an internship. I attempted to get an internship with Martha Stewart Living magazine because my mom had a friend who used to work there, but it didn't end up working out (AKA they never called me back haha). But anyway, to my chagrin I ended up staying in Provo, which turned out to be a really really good thing! One thing that was good is that I got to hang out with my adorable roommates for 4 more months. Here we are, minus Molly who skillfully avoided our roommate photoshoot

Emily, Me, Suz and Brenda

We had so much fun living in our Yellow House. Some of my fondest memories include: watching endless episodes of "Bones," killing swarms of ants in our laundry room, Halloween parties, Emily's GIGANTIC birthday bash where hundreds of people were packed in our tiny house, fighting about dish washing (not the fondest memory, but very prevalent haha), all of our boys, Emily and Molly's month long hip-hop obsession where they would move all our furniture out of the living room and play the same song about 100 times trying to learn a dance, all of our pets (duck, chicken, dog, frogs), any countless more amazing memories. I love these girls.

The other benefit of my staying in Provo is that I met this guy!
Isn't he so handsome? Yes. We fatefully sat next to each other in Humanities class and one day he told me he liked my hat, the next class he very politely shook my hand and introduced himself, and that was it! Haha. We bonded over our love of snowboarding and went almost every Wednesday or Friday night to Sundance, and a month or so later we were off on a road trip to my homeland of Colorado for a ski trip with my parents!
We had sooo much fun. We were only there for a spontaneous weekend and we were so sad to leave because that meant no more delicious food and parents taking care of us. But we survived. Another fun adventure we had was the Hindu color festival that happens every year. It is one of my favorite things to do. It was so out of control. We almost suffocated from all of the chalk. Literally. I was scared for my life at one point I'm pretty sure and we both got crowd surfers dropped on us. Fortunately, Eric was having back problems before that and he claims that when the person fell on him it cracked his back and fixed it completely, haha.
That whole winter semester I was an extremely busy girl. On top of taking 15 credits, being in the BYU Bluegrass Band, working at BYU Broadcasting 20 hours a week, doing Provo Youth Mentoring 2 hours a week, and wanting to spend all of my free time with Eric, I was doing everything I possibly could to build up my resume, find an internship in New York, and move out there! It was incredibly difficult to do all of these things. I didn't have a spare moment in my day. One thing I did to try to get work experience and make my resume look more impressive was to participate in the annual U of U Counter Terrorism Simulation.
For the simulation, Law Students at the University of Utah are chosen to act as world leaders and are expected to react to a series of crisis's over a 10 hour period. I was part of a team of journalists reporting on the events as they unfolded and giving the law students a hard time in the process. It was incredibly fun. It was EXACTLY like being on the show "24." If you've ever seen that, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I had so much fun and i really encouraged and motivated me that I was in the right field. It also sparked an interest in me to maybe look into getting a political science minor or something. Who knows. Anyway, that experience was extremely beneficial because I got a bomb letter of recommendation from Matt LaPlante there on the right, and when I was interviewing for internships in New York later I had a lot to pull from experience I had in pressure situations and so forth. I'm definitely participating next year.

As the semester came to a close there was a lot going on. One of my best friends Emily Pena got engaged, to everyones delight, to her high school sweetheart Dave Roemisch. It's pretty much a fairytale romance. This was her bridal shower that Sarah threw. It was a tea party theme and was so much fun.
I also attended my old roommate and best friend Lauren Woodward's birthday party. She is moving to D.C. in the Fall so it was kind of a birthday/going away party. I'm going to miss her so much!
Well, there's an update in a nutshell of my life for the past 4 months. I'm having tons of fun and loving BYU

Summer and Fall 09'

Here are some highlights from the Summer and Fall semester. I came back from Japan at the end of June and moved into a big yellow house in Provo with a bunch of my friends. Thank goodness for that because my boyfriend at the time Danny and I broke up and without all of my friends I would have died.

Emily, Suz, Sarah, Me

This is an interesting picture but it's the only one I had with a majority of us in there.
My best friend in the whole world got engaged shortly after I returned from Japan, so I threw her a bridal shower! The theme was pajama party :).
This is my duck Duke and my chicken, Chicken. They pretty much occupied most of our summer. Unfortunately, Duke died tragically when I dropped him on his head. The summer ended without a bang and Fall semester.

Most of what I remember from August, September, and October is moping around from my breakup with Danny. Boo! But Sarah's wedding was amazing.

She got married in the Denver, Colorado Temple in October. We all took a road trip out there for her wedding and it was a blast! Doesn't she look so beautiful? This was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. For some reason it was extremely hard for me to accept the fact that she was getting married. Unhealthy attachment anyone? Haha. Well you can't blame me. We were attached at the hip for 6 years.
For Halloween I was Old Greg. If you don't know what that is, look it up on Youtube. You won't be disappointed.
Mike Earl came back from his mission in Paraguay in November! It was sooo good to see him. We had a lot of fun going to BYU basketball games and hanging out like old times. My good friend Nato also came back from his mission in Montreal.

Study Abroad in Japan

This is most of the study abroad group in our hotel robes during the first travel week

The whole group at Daibutsu (the Big Kamakura buddha)
This is us in the Tokyo/Edo Museum

So its been a really long time since I've updated this thing. Right now I'm in Japan for a BYU study abroad. I was in Kyoto for a month, and now im in Yokohama/Tokyo for another month. I have been staying with Japanese host families, which is pretty hard but my Japanese has improved a TON. I only have two weeks left here, but here are some pictures of my adventures

Thanksgiving in Dallas

This Thanksgiving two of my older sisters and older brother came to Dallas with their families. It was a blast! Oh, also i dyed my hair brown. I'm the short one in the middle if you didn't recognize me with my new do. I really can't understand why I'm the only short person in my family :( Whenever my family gets together the week usually consists of playing multiple games of Mormon Bridge a day and spending at least 2 hours in the hot tub every night boiling. We switched it up a little this year, though and went country line dancing one night...which was fun. I talked the family out of going to the rodeo again...phew! Haha. Also, can I just say I have the cutest nephews in the world? Oh how i love Thanksgiving. I actually helped make pretty much everything this year which was different, and my mom sent me back to Provo with about 8 bags of leftover stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, and sweet potatoes....So basically I've been having a Thanksgiving feast every night for the past 2 weeks. Delicious!

You need to see...

This is definitely the best movie i've seen in a long time. If you're into foreign films, I highly recommend it. Its basically a rags to riches love story but it has a lot of action and its really intense. I can't stop thinking about it and i'll probably buy it when it comes out. Ahh i love good movies....