Nose

I blow my nose at LEAST 1,000 times a day. 

everyday, even if i'm feeling perfectly healthy. i think i have single-handedly cut down an entire fifth of the amazon rain forest just to make my tissues. 

Here's what ya missed

I didn't really blog while i was home during May and June. kind of. but not really. 

This is a MAJOR photo dump.

but as i have mentioned one billion times before, this blog is like my photo/online journal, so i want these to be documented. with captions and such. 

HERE YA ARE!

April:

AGES ago there was a lunar eclipse. this is me and the moon.  My whole family and i all waited up until like one in the morning to stand out on the front lawn and watch the moon get red and then kind of dissapear, and then come back. It was actually really cool. My dad eats that stuff up.

I had just gotten glasses not long before this, and i remember staring up at the stars, and they were all so CLEAR. and i could distinctly see the tiny star above the middle star in the handle of the big dipper. i could always tell it was there, but i could see them completely separate. and i told my parents that, and my mom felt bad that i didn't tell her my eyesight was bad earlier and yadda. haha. no worries, mom.

One Family Home evening, Jacob mentioned the movie Ephraim's rescue, WHICH I LOVE and asked if i liked it. I responded by holdign up my key chain, which is  little leather strip that says, "I am ready now!" (a quote from the movie. the best quote.)

and then he freaked out and held up his wrist to show that he had a bracelet that read the same inscription! i actually teared up, haha. Jacob and i have been friends since we were little kids, and we've been through our ups and downs, certainly, but he has always been there for me. and he's going on a mission and i'm proud, so this little moment was a cool reassurance that we, two good friends, are on the same path, and we're both trying to be our best. 

it was happy. 

MAY

• The Romance of Jonathan Hansen ;)

I'll spare the details, or else i'm pretty sure he'd kill me. but there is a girl who is currently prominent in his life. They're really good friends, now. and i'm not gonna lie, i am super hoping that someday they're more than friends. hahaha. because i loved her way before Jonathan knew her, and I've been hoping for a while that they might become close.

This was the night he invited her over to make smores. adorbs. 

• Youth Conference!

I got to be a counselor at my home stake's Youth Conference at Shaver Lake one weekend. 

I regret not blogging about it right away because now i can't remember all of the things i was going to say. I remember, when we were rushing to pack the car after Dad and i got home from work, that i felt like we wer running away on an adventure. haha. and i remember feeling at peace as we drove up the mountain, me, Jenae, Dad, and the Beatles. 

the workshops were wonderful. I never tire of hearing my Bishop speak. He's one of my heroes.

My friends Mark and Jennifer taught a workshop as well, about faith. Jennifer was my sunday school teacher for several years, and i've always loved Mark's talks in church. I am always impressed and inspired by their unity. 

read that sign, yo. i'm a rebel.

• the sister missionaries are my best friends. 

When i came home at Christmas, i was hoping to be asked to be a teacher in Relief Society or sunday school. I've done both before and loved it.

Instead, I was asked to be a ward Missionary!

that jsut means that i help the full time missionaries in our ward find people to teach, and sometimes i go teach with them. honestly i was a little disappointed. not because of the calling, but because i wasn't going to teach. oooooor so i thought. 

I was wrong. so wrong. 

I did a whole lot of teaching, it was just mostly teaching myself. 

how to love people and how to see people for their potential. how to study the scriptures and how to keep my mouth shut. how to discern what the Spirit is trying to tell me about someone. How to help, how to serve.

And i did go teaching with the sisters, a whole lot and i LOVED it. love love loved it. so much that i started to doubt my decision to not serve a mission. so i prayed about it again. 

the answer was the same:

"You could be a great missionary, but it is your choice."

I chose again, not to go on a full time mission while i'm young. 

but Sisters Crandall, Blackham, Guzy, and Bateman, have all taught me how to be a full time member missionary wherever i am. and i love this.

I LOVE BEING A WARD MISSIONARY. 

Dear bishop mitchell, please keep me in that calling whenever i'm home, k thanks.

and i loved these girls. I'm sad i don't have a picture with Stephanie. (sister blackham) because she and i were together the longest, so we were the closest.

I made this cake for sister Blackham when she was going home. it's a cardigan! yay thank you Krista Holden for the idea :)

• This gem made me real happy on Mother's day. thanks, bub. 

• I was a Long-term Substitute Para Professional Aide at my old Elementary School!

it seriously rocked. i loved that job.  you can't see it, because the picture is sideways for some reason but this girl was constantly testing my patience. and a day that i was especially exasperated,  she wrote, "I need help" on her whiteboard and i couldn't help but laugh. so i took a picture.

On reduced days, i worked in the library, which was incredibly therapeutic.

also, i hardly got to help in Mrs.W's class because i was in there everyday during their class reading time. so there wasn't always something for me to do. The teacher gave me these number circle things. I LOVE THIS JUNK. love it. haha this kind of thing is my jam. she let me print off like 20 to take home and i did them all with different patterns and colored some. yeah, i know, i'm cool. 

I taught ONE GIRL in ONE CLASS how to do this hand game, and then literally the entire rest of the school year, whenever i was walking from class to class and kids were out, a group of girls was doing MY hand game. one of my teachers actually reprimanded me, haha. she was annoyed because it was distracting and obnoxious. OH WELL, the kids loved me. 

during the last week of school, the fourth and fifth graders went on a field trip to a baseball game! i'm not a huge baseball fan, but i had to go, haha. so i brought a book. it ended up being pretty fun just because it was the end of the year, and i knew a ton of kids by then, and they're funny. 

the kid on the far right in a black shirt was like, my legitimate friend. haha. he and i like all of the same things and we'd just talk and talk. haha. he's a cool little kid. 

some of my students weren't too fond of me. 

but other kids LOVED me, and i loved them.

overall it was a good, happy time. and i made enough to pay fall tuition! woot woot! blessings, blessings.

• The Chiropractor became my frequent friend. 

• I visited my sister and her family for Memorial day. 

Bub has reached a "I'm tired of you taking one million pictures of me, Aunt Melissa" stage. 

too bad, too, because he's getting so handsome. 

Jenna Lee, on the other hand, cannot get enough of my camera. I dont' mind. 

and LOOK AT SETH, YOU GUYS. look at those EYES. ugh. he's adorable.

I love these little souls.

Natalie had this video all planned out to make :) 

she decided everythign, pretty much. i just filmed it and put all the clips in order.

• I said farewell to this little friend:

haha i got this Nixon Peabody pen while working as a receptionist at a law firm the summer after high school and it always reminded me that i felt professional once. the ink finally ran out two years later. it was a good pen. got me through many a Sudoku puzzle and journal entry. 

• we all love Virat.

I have mentioned him before: Jenae's 'not' boyfriend.

although they really aren't' dating, they're pretty much married. 

we're all, as her concerned family members at home, supposed to be against this little union, seeing as she's still a baby and such. 

but we love him. 

It's actually kind of bad, hahaha. 

we really do love this kid. 

He's just so good! 

and they aren't' doing anything physically inappropriate, so it's hard to oppose their relationship. 

they're just so dang cute. 

last last monday, we were helping Jenae tie vines at her vineyard for Family Home Evening. and Virat came. nobody even bat an eye. haha

hashtag virat is indian, so he's too dark to be in the back of the picture

you know, my dad is pretty picky about the people we associate with. he rightly says that our friends have huge influences on our character, so we should be careful who we choose. 

because of those admonitions, though, my dad is like, Virat's biggest fan. haha

Virat's family owns a feed store, and Virat is in the process of taking over for his dad. Virat also has his own ranch. no big deal. like, he planted an entire almonds orchard by himself, so that's cool. and he's been handling all of the business and ranch matters while his dad's been in India for the past four months. 

he's also just about the kindest and most polite boy i've ever met in real life. 

and i mean, just to be clear, we're all still encouraging Jenae to not have a serious boyfriend in high school, because it's emotionally rough. especially after graduation. and serious relationships that young an lead to physically intimate situations real quick.

but because they're being clean and good and smart about things, it's hard  for me not to love watching them haha. but trust me, Jenae and Virat both know how i feel about high school relationships. 

He and Jenae made me this vine wreath. i loved it. 

• randoms

I got new crocs! holla! they look like flats, so i can wear them with more things and still be comfy :)

once i finished work, this sight was lovely for the week and a half before i left:

"titus the Conqueror is a lecherous fellow" tagged in purple on the sharpie box. huh. i have no idea who did that. 

I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THESE. ALWAYS. 

poor kids don't get to buy 3 dollar ice cream from the ice cream man. 

BUT TWENTY YEAR OLDS DO, OKAY?!

love me. 

i bought one from our sketch ice cream woman. 

and it was delicious. 

until i was helping mom make dinner while eating this, and i dropped poor Leonardo in the cooking hamburger meat. that was gross. I rinsed him off and kept eating but it was definitely not as worth it as i thought it would be. 

THE LESSON TO LEARN HERE:

don't eat hamburger meat with 3 dollar popsicles.

• Father's Day!!

Allison and Kent came up and refinished our poor table as a father's gift! what a service! it looks amazing!! and Dad was so surprised!

and i forced everyone to take pictures, as usual. 

I finally finished the Redvines that Jonathan gave me for my birthday. ha. 

the two bulbs in my room cast alf my room in yellow and half my room in white!

speaking of my room, i waited until THE last minute to pack and left everything out :) sorry not sorry, mom. you can just throw it all on my bed. 

I'm getting tired of this post. haha. 

HANG WITH ME, WE'RE ALMOST DONE.

• I went to San Fransisco!

to see "Once" the 2012 Tony winner of "Best New Musical" and my own personal fixation.

we giggled at this sign on the bathroom, because it was a literal personification of the play we just did, Urinetown. 

"it's a privilege to pee!"

the sun + i didn't know Teddy was taking the picture yet = unintentional Asian eyes

THE SHOW WAS INCREDIBLE. i already loved it, but golly. live musicals are like literally nothing else. the only complain i have is all the language. ugh. totally unnecessary. there were like verrrry few mild swear words, but countless F bombs. disappointing.
but the music is perfect.
I've shared this before, but i will share it a million more times:

• I painted 

I paint a lot. some of them are awful. actually most of them are awful. so i don't share them. but these ones, i like. I did my first self portrait. that was weird. haha. my chin is impossible.

Tori & Taylor

Ian & Jess

oh hey. yours truly. 

Bret & Dallon

Bret & Morgan

•  I DID ALL OF MAH LAUNDRY. ALL OF IT. THE HAMPER WAS EMPTY, MAHM. 

And my FAVORITE part of the transition from Spring to Summer was this little one:

My newest neice!! Maris Amanda. what a doll! haha that tongue kills me. 

i got to actually meet and hold her this past weekend. 

she's so sweet and tiny and perfect. 

way to go, Rebecca and Eric. haha. she's a 10.

i'm avoiding homework by blogging, again.