La Vida Es.....

....messy
The past several months have been full of heart break and disappointment. It's been a rollercoaster with very few ups but a lot of downs. It's amazing how your heart and soul and body cope with all the things that you throw their way.
I'd like to make an apology to my body. Not only does it run on an average of 4-5 hours of sleep a night, but I just started training for a half marathon and my body is definitely not happy about that. If I die at the age of 35 we'll know why.
But I'd also like to make an apology to my heart. I've put you through a lot and there's a good chance that I could have avoided some of it. Red flags were popping up left and right, but for some strange reason it doesn't matter what your head says, your heart always leads the way...and then it usually leads you to where I am now. You find yourself by yourself at the movies, you decide to go see the Fault in Our Stars that way when you're crying people will think it's somehow related to the movie. Hint: It's not.
And now for an apology to my soul. I'm sorry for having doubted you. I'm sorry for not continuing on when things have gotten the hardest. The struggle is real and it's not just a saying. They say everyone struggles with being who they are but what happens when you don't even know who that is?
But here's to new beginnings. Here's to the thought of an ending not being an ending, but just another page to be turned, another story to be told and another day to be lived. Life is never going to always be this beautiful experience, but I'm learning that you can always find beauty in any experience.

Year Long Recap?

Welcome back fellow followers...if there's any left. It's been almost a whole year since I last posted.
And I sit here looking at this blank post, wondering how to condense a whole year into one post. Where do I start? How deep into details should I go? Day by day, I feel like not much has changed, nothing exciting happening in the life. But looking back, I wonder where did that life go?

I had just finished my 3rd year of college last post. Living back up in SLC with the fam-bam. Working, still at Rubio's (still there, just for those wondering, surprise surprise). Went on a family vacation with our dog up to the lake, which if you know my dog means an adventure. I gained a decent amount of weight over the summer and by the time the school year started, I could hardly fit into my pants and had to wear flowy skirts to camouflage the rolls that had begun to appear on my body.

School started and I began dancing again, which luckily helped with the start of the weight loss. But along with school brought stress and trying to figure out my life. I continued with geography as my major and the Spanish minor that I've done all along. Random fact? My favorite class was Spanish linguistics. Grammar and I aren't besties, as I'm sure you all know from my posts.

Finals passed and I was faced with the decision and stress of whether to attend school winter semester or not. I ended up dropping classes and working full time at Rubio's. Since then I have gotten a second job. For about 3 weeks I was working a good 80-85 hours a week and killing myself! Since then I've cut down to 65 hours a week and I'm feeling alright. I have the worlds weirdest sleeping schedule since I start my morning job at 6 am and don't get off of my night job until after 10:30 pm.

But without school, it's been interesting. The first couple weeks when I wasn't enrolled in school I had dreams about taking classes, being in the testing center, studying my textbooks. Oh how badly I missed school, especially the first few weeks! Until I do return back to school I'll be taking a few online classes, playing Sudoku and reading as much as possible so my brain doesn't turn to mush.

Well if you wanted the boring overview of my life for the past year, you got it. Don't worry, if there's some important thing that happened I'll let you all know.

In the meantime, I'd say I follow my tagline of my blog: "Sometimes we don't get the whole story, but we do get bits&&pieces."

The Average Day

Have you ever noticed how when there's things that need to be done and events to happen, they end up on the same day? Always. Well Cece had a busy day a few weeks back. It was a madrigals performance and then about 10 minutes later was the award from the mayor for having a high GPA and ACT score. (Yes I do brag about my family because they won't brag about themselves. I may be a dancer but I definitely don't have a crazy dance mom.) The performance went well and it was a beautiful and hot day out! Middle of May and already 85-90 degree weather? That to me sounds perfect. She's gonna hate me for posting these pictures, but then again she is about the only person that reads my blog, so that's my argument and it's okay.

Then as soon as the performance was over, it was a ten minute run to find a bathroom for her to change and head over to City Hall. We got her looking beautiful and she got her award from the Mayor. Lots of other student got it too and one of them was her best friend Rachel. Alex, who is Rachel's little brother, couldn't be left out of the fun of taking pictures after. Isn't he so cute with his missing teeth? And PS: Cece really isn't that tall, she's just wearing high heels in this picture. 

Part Two I Guess

Before I forget, run out of time and never post about Florida again here's the last of the recap pictures from a month ago. (Does that show you how busy/forgetful I can be?) Well here's the last of the Disneymundia pictures, the number 1 beach in the United States and the Rays Baseball game where I actually got to touch some sting rays! (And I was so brave I only screamed about 4 times.) 

A Disney Recap

So I never really got the chance to tell you all how Disneymundia was. But all I need are a few words to explain it: magically amazing. We went crazy hard core and ran ourselves ragged and tired just on the first day, riding every single ride in two parks. We decided to take it a little bit easier the next few days otherwise we'd probably die before making it to the beach. About 15 minutes into Animal Kingdom on our very first day I had a fan girl moment when I got to meet Russel and Doug from UP!

Other highlights from the day include our very first Disney ride- Dinosaur, like the movie. Probably one of the slowest not very actiony rides, but since it was the first ride Carli and I had been on in probably 5 years at least, we were scared out of our minds!

We also went to Disneymundia at the right time of year because the lines were so short! The whole trip and our longest wait was 30 minutes. I waited longer in the testing center lines at BYU than at Disneymundia. But since the lines were so short, we were able to go on rides 5 times in a row if we wanted to. Expedition Everest? You can bet that we did that one at least 5 times. 

And you can't forget about the wilderness exploration that we did. Don't mind me, I'm just 40 feet away from a baby elephant and making friends with the wildlife (if goats can count as wildlife, that is.) 

Pinterest Fail

I've been back from Disneymundia for about 3 weeks now and I've been craving some Dole Whip. You know that yummy stuff that you get over in Adventureland (or maybe that was the giant turkey leg in Adventureland). So what does one do when craving something over a thousand miles away? Look up the recipe on Pinterest, duh! (Also this post is for all those whose Pinterest inspirations don't come out the way they had hoped.) 

I checked every single pinterest pin from different websites to see comments from other bloggers for their suggestions and they all said their Dole Whip turned out delicious and that this recipe was the best and easiest... I'm not really sure what that means about my ability to cook and follow directions.

 

Well folks that is the look of a very dissapointed person. And yes that hand mixer is older than me, thanks for noticing. It's vintage. It's in right now. And I don't wanna go buy a new one. So what do we do late at night when it's 10 PM and your Dole Whip creation turned out...not like Dole Whip? We go to to the store and buy things for guava cake for dessert the next day, because you know you can make that. And luckily that one was delicious. So maybe I'll never get married because I can't make Dole Whip but my dog loved eating it and he's the only opinion that matters to me. He'll never say I burnt the chicken for dinner. Thanks Samson for always being there for me.