Mistakes

Ok, so I made a big fuss about my newly dyed hair, and I guess I can't go without showing pictures. In my defense, the dye was only $3, so I guess it did the best it could...

 Its ok in the front I guess...a little darker than I would have loved, but I didn't mind too much.... 

Its the back thats a killer!! The dye didn't take to my hair or something happened! 

It is most definitely 3 different colors...sigh.

I learned my lesson. Don't dye your own hair, or else use the good stuff!

 I also dyed my mom's hair, and hers actually did color the whole thing, but it too was way darker than she planned!

Don't mind her pajamas...she's like that. 

So, try not to make fun of me too much. I'm working on it.

Hot Potato

I am a firm believer in a picture being worth a thousand words. It has come to my attention that I haven't blogged in a week! What is that all about? Instead of telling you (which could take up a blog and a half's worth of words) I will show you.

my power balance bracelet came in the mail! yes, I realize that they are 'proven' to actually be a scam, but I bought it online for 99 cents. I call that a deal. 

I hung out with this little guy. He likes to wear weird clothes, but I still love him. 

That's right folks! I drove a real live tractor! Ok, no I didn't . But I washed all the windows. See how you can see perfectly out the front right there? That's because I am a fantastic cleaner. 

So driving a potato truck is a pretty clean job, right? Wrong. 

I come home every day and I look something like this. 

The dirtiest I've ever been. In my life. 

Hour 6 or 7. 13 hour days will do this to you. 

One day we were waiting around while the potato belt cleared a little (sometimes the pile gets too high and we get backed up) so we did some math. We decided that every truck load gives around 30 bags of potatoes, each bag is 100 lbs., and each potato weighs around 1-1.5 lbs. You do the math. That's a lot of potatoes, people.

Ok, why don't I own any food?? What is the point of a cute mini fridge in your room?! It does provide some deliciously cold water though. 

Please understand that waking up at 6 am, going on my run (keeping strong on the cpt5k!), and then going to work till 8:30 or 9 at night, is super exhausting. If you only hear from me once a week, that might be all I can give. I will try to postpone my 9:30 bedtime a little longer to give you some fantastically great updates. :) Also, don't tell me all about your schoolwork that keeps you up till 3 am, and all of your hard days because I require at least 9 hours of sleep. Always have, always will.

sidenote: Pandora, you've outdone yourself! Way cool layout! I like it a lot more than Facebook currently!

Thinking about potatoes reminded me of this song. Yeah, I'm a Wiggles fan, what of it. 

The Return

Internet! Air conditioning! Electricity! (haha just kidding we had power) My own bed!! I am home. And I think I love it. It's sometimes a good thing to go away for a long time to realize what exactly you have and what a good thing it is. When I stepped out of the airport and took a breath of air that wasn't saturated in humidity, that was nice. I had a really great time in Puerto Rico, but it sure is nice to be home. Here are some of the last of the pictures I took, exclusive to this blog, just as I promised.

Gas was only 91 cents! Jealous? 

Thank You for flying Air Delta.

A little view of Atlanta, Georgia. I might live here someday. I like it.

 On the last flight home from Atlanta, I sat next to this little 12 year old girl flying alone. She looked nervous, scared, and a little terrified to be on the flight. I asked her if this was her first time flying so maybe I could comfort her and make her feel better about it. She told me this was her 9th time flying this year. Alone. Poor kid. She didn't really warm up to me until about half way through the flight, but when she decided I was nice, (after I pulled out my coloring book and started coloring) we talked the whole way home after that. I am going to tell you her story because I was intrigued, and also I thought she was a really cool little girl. She had just gotten back from a cruise with her grandparents that left from Florida and went to Mexico, Haiti, and close to Venezuela. It was her 2nd cruise, her first being when she was 8. Her dad lives in Florida, her mom in Utah. She commutes every summer between the two, and she loves Florida much more than Utah (who wouldn't?). I thought it was really sad that she had to fly alone so much, but way cool to be able to have all those experiences at such a young age! Yeah a 12 year old has flown more in her life than I have in my 20 years of life... what of it? Sometimes I like little kids more than adults. The majority of the time they are much nicer anyway.

Speaking of little kids, at the terminal to get our luggage, I overheard a little boy talking to his sister. He said, hey do you know what WWF stands for? She thinks about it for a minute, then shakes her head no. He emphatically said 'World War Fuzzy!' then cracked up about his own joke for at least 5 minutes. Little kids are such dorks.


Now it's time to get back to real life. Anybody got any suggestions about the next step I should take in my life? This whole being an adult thing and making my own decisions isn't actually any fun.

Islanders

Only getting to use the internet one time a day is kind of hard! I get on fb (yeah, still can't break that habit) and I have a bazillion notifications so I spend my whole time going through those. I promised pictures, but I feel like since they are on Fb, we can just call that good. Maybe I will save some exclusively for the blog, to make your time here worth it. I am so exhausted it is hard to think of something to write. The heat makes it really hard to sleep, and the places they cram me in are also a deterrent of sleeping. So far I have slept on a couch, a hard wood table, and currently a blow up raft for the pool. But, it's just one week and I have the rest of my life to sleep. We started out in San Juan and then yesterday traveled to Cabo Rojo and spent some time there. It took around 2.5 hours to cross the island and the drivers are crazy! They really don't care about using their blinkers or brakes, but they sure do love the horn!  We are now somewhere else (I just get in the car and fall asleep so the drives aren't so miserable) and I think we are staying here until Saturday, so I will definitely get some good pictures of the area. I am having the time of my life and I am so excited that I will actually remember this trip! The last big trip I took was to Paris/London, but I was only like 10 or so, so I don't remember very much of it. I will definitely be coming back here. I am told that more than half the island is related to me! It's our joke that whenever I see someone cute or someone doing something interesting that they are automatically my primo. I have a lot of cousins around here in that case. It is really interesting to learn about the family history here and I had no idea that I had so many relatives around! I guess it will be easy to find a place to stay in the future! Well its time to go watch some telemundo! Not really, thats just the only spanish phrase I have on hand. Nos vemos mañana a mis amigos! Te amo!

Paradise

The network on my phone is down for the moment, so I can't get any pictures up yet. This is the first time I have had interent, so I will give you a rundown of what's happened so far. We left Monday morning at 2am for a 7am flight in SLC. We arrived in Georgia around 12 and had to wait till 3 to leave to Puerto Rico. We got to PR around 7pm and my uncle and grandpa were waiting for us at the airport. As soon as I stepped outside my hair grew about 7 feet in fluffy-ness. They don't joke around about the humidity here. Monday night was really hot and muggy for awhile, and then there was a lightning storm for the rest of the night. I woke up this morning at 5 and it was raining. It has been raining ever since. Hurricane Maria has been working her way through and she has not left very happy people in her wake. Most of the roads that we drove through today had pretty intense amounts of water on them. Sometimes it just drizzles outside and sometimes there was a full blown avalanche of rain happening. I wasn't aware it could rain that hard. It wasn't scary or anything, no houses were blown down that I know of. It has been very warm outside and the breezes feel really good. Just now, at about 6, the sun came out for the first time that I've seen today and that feels different. The roosters are going crazy outside because they are confused that it has been dark all day and the sun is just now showing. They are vocalizing their concerns in the backyard. I almost prefer the rain just because it cools it down a little. We drove from one side of the island all the way over to the other side (which took about 2.5 hours) and we are at this really nice house on top of the mountain that shows everything. I wish my pictures would cooperate. I found a coconut in the backyard that had fallen awhile ago so it was nice and big. I, having never opened a coconut in my life, found a pick ax, and began working on it. I wasn't aware their was a method of opening such a monstrosity. My 84 year old great uncle came over to me and he took out a machete that was hanging up near by and chopped that thing open like he was born in the jungle. I was majorly impressed. It was super tasty and we have little plates of coconut sitting on the counter and we just eat it whenever we feel like it. I won't go into detail about the lizard problem here, I will save the pictures for that. I will try to get my phone to stop being so emotional, and see if I can get some pictures on here tonight. Buenos tardes muchachos!

Management

For some reason lately I haven't been keeping a close eye on my bank account. I haven't been working for a couple weeks, so I haven't had checks to deposit. I just spent money whenever I wanted, without a care in the world. That came to slap me in the face today. I went online to see how much money I could take out for my trip, and I found out that my account had 0 dollars. It had been taking money from my savings, which luckily I had something in there, and each and every time it took money, it charged me $20. If I would have paid more attention, I could have stopped the overdraw I did 3 individual times, costing me $60. I. Am. Livid. It isn't fair that even though I have money in a different account, it charges money for running out of money. Isn't that a little counterproductive? Charge money because the client is out of money? I think so. I guess that's why everybody loves the bank, huh? I guess all there is to do is work extra hard next week. But for now, bye for awhile!!! I will try to update my blog whenever I have internet, but I'm not exactly sure how often that will be.

Here is a little sneak peak at what I will be doing.......

Notice how they are all at the beach?? Yeah, that's where I will be spending 98.2% of my time. :)

The Energizer Bunny

Holy cow! What a day. I am so exhausted I can't even know how much longer I can hold out before I just crash to the floor and never move again. As I mentioned yesterday, I went to the Viking Man race today to help my aunt out with the massage station. All the triathletes came to us after their run and flopped down on the table for awhile until we got their muscles worked out. I got there at 9 this morning and I just now walked in my door at 6:30. I have been giving massages non-stop for almost 10 hours. Throughout the day, the actual massage guy who knew what he was doing gave me all sorts of tips and tricks for massaging all parts of the body so I am almost a professional. He said if I come over to his office he will give me a massage at a reduced price. That means I am loved. All in all, I can pretty much say this day was a success.  The best part was the very last guy to finish. He and his brother finished way after every one was done, all the tents were put away, the timers had left, and the finish line had been taken down. I went up to him and offered to massage him and he said he would love that. His feet were so blistered and some of the blisters had broken, so my aunt and I dragged the massage table over to him and worked on him for awhile. After he was done, his son (college aged, pretty cute, non married) said hey dad, don't worry I got your tip money, and handed me a 20 dollar bill! That was incredibly exciting for me. I do think all this exercising I am doing is paying off in the long run! (haha  pun intended)

Very important side note that I forgot to add: If you have never massaged runners who have trained for months and months, you are missing out on a special kind of person. I am speaking of the guys in particular. Those bodies are in dang good shape! The race rules are that your number is written in permanent marker on your calf and thighs (a very great job that I got to do last year) and your other calf has your age on it. It is a little humbling when the 56 year old guys run through in the beginning and they smoked everyone else. It is the greatest when the 25 year olds come with no wedding rings and big smiles and even bigger 6 packs! Granted they are married to working out 6 days a week for 7 hours every day, but once they finally realize that running isn't everything I think we'd be good to go. Ok, yeah, sure I was focused on the job and not on them. We'll go with that. I love having connections and being one of the volunteers they turn to every year!

The Family That Jogs Together Blogs Together

Today I ran my very first marathon!!! 26 miles! Ha just kidding I did the kid marathon that is a pre race to all the stuff that is tomorrow. So actually it was 1.4 miles. But I ran the whole entire thing and I won a medal, a chocolate milk, and a pencil! It was kind of humiliating to be beaten by 12 and 13 year olds, but we won't talk about how many of them came before me. I beat my mom, Jared, Corinne, and my cousin Jordan, so I felt pretty good enough about that. Also, I spray painted the lines on the country roads for the bikers to know what way to go, and that was 56 miles of country road so that took quite some time. We also put up the signs to tell them when to turn, go straight, and pot holes and such. It pretty much took 5 hours in the blazing heat and it was really tiring, but I got a cool free shirt so I'm ok with that. Tomorrow I am going to work at the massage booth, and we won't even talk about how excited I am to do that! I am going to practice for my major in school (massage therapy and sports medicine) so maybe I can learn a thing or two and get some experience. I've heard I'm pretty good at it.

the cliché bathroom picture. But, I love my cool new shirt.

My mother and I after the race. Wish my camera showed how tired we were! 

So excited to have finished my first 'race' without stopping! It felt pretty good. 

Little Jared proud to have 'wan' his first race! (walk-ran) :)

The chocolate milk made it all worth it!

Cute is as Cute Does

Tonight I got to babysit this cute boy

He wasn't too sure about me at first, but we warmed up to each other by the time I left. I even got a wave and a kiss from him. I mean, we are cousins after all. We should love each other. 

This is all I have to show for my day. I literally did nothing all day and then babysat for the rest of it. I did have a killer lunch at Angela's today with my mom. She was kind enough to mention the whole time we were eating how awkward it was that one of my old teammates from soccer was serving us. I love that restaurant with all my heart. 

Well, since I have nothing to show or tell (haha show and tell) for my day, I guess we'll call this good and I will see you all tomorrow. 

Somebody Call 911!

I was late to work today. Why you may ask? Because I was blocked in my driveway by a police officer. As I walked out the door, she (I never have liked girl cops, nothing against them its just I like the guys better) informed us that Eli's new birthday present (electric scooter) is illegal to ride in the streets. We have no sidewalks in front of or near our house so I don't really see how it is fair that he can't ride in the road for a second. She was having none of that nonsense. Then, to make this moment of coming face to face with a police officer at 7:30 in the morning, and the fact that she startled me and I didn't really expect to see a cop car pulled up behind my car, all together made me drop my bagel. In the grass. Face down. Mornings are hard.

It has been brought to my attention that I am a creepy person. As I have been following my strict CPT5K running schedule, I am a fairly predictable person when it comes to where I will be at exactly what time. I wake up at 6:13 to start my run and I usually get home about 6:58. The other day, we decided to sit on our lawn for a minute after we ran to enjoy the morning because it was a holiday and there was no school or work. As we sat watching the sun rise, 2 guys ran past my house. I recognized one of the guys because I had seen him running around the same area of my block, except with a dog and a 6 pack. 2 of my favorite things. But despite my best efforts, I cannot find him again. All I want to do is meet him and maybe go on a run! People bond over running, right? I have intentionally lagged when I get to my house in hopes that he will run by again, but it is to no avail. I need another holiday just to find out what street exactly he lives by. Creepy, I know. But I will not give up until the day I move away, just in case.

When I got home from work today, my dad was talking to me about our trip. My little sister was nearby and she turns to me and asks me where I am going to change my money from US dollars to Puerto Rican ones. I told her that it is the same here as it is there, and I can just use normal dollars. She looks at me really confused, and she asks where exactly PR is. I tell her just below Florida. Her whole entire face lights up as she finally understands that we are in fact not going to the middle of China, where she believed PR was located. What a dork. Someone is not teaching 7th grade geography right....

Well, day 3 of being a farmer is complete. I am a professional driver and people respect me on the road. There isn't a truck that you can pass without getting a wave or 'the nod' from my fellow truckers. We bonded. I am no longer a menace to myself and others as I try to navigate a fully loaded truck off the field and onto the road. I never knew how chatty the grain bin workers were, and I had a lifetime of conversation with the guy that unloads my truck for me. Kind of awkward at first, but you learn to love them.

Sorry for my scattered thoughts. That's just how my brain works! :)

No Pain, No Gain

Sometimes, well actually a lot of the time, I find myself doing things that at the time appear to be a good idea, but with a little more thought turn out to be those not so good ideas. I was thinking to myself that today would be a good day to go get my legs waxed so I wouldn't have to worry about shaving while I was on vacation. I will say if there are any guys out there that aren't so much interested in hearing about my experience with this fun adventure, I'd tune in to another blog. Anyway, I make the appointment and go in to the beauty college (which at the time seemed like a good idea because its cheap there because half of their 'students' don't know what they are doing).... After an hour of pain and torture, the girl finally finished both of my legs. They are bumpy and rashy and sting like crazy but I leave. As I am sitting in the car with my mom headed to WalMart, I happen to run my hand down my supposed-to-be-smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom legs and find that in fact there probably was more hair there then when I started. So we head back. I tell the lady at the desk that I think my wax was ineffective and asked if she could look at it or something. She did, and agreed with me that it did indeed look like nothing at all was done to my legs. SO, I get 2 more girls who are supposedly more experienced and they take me back and begin again putting the painful hot wax on my legs. Another 45 minutes rolls by and I just mostly want them to stop ripping strips of fabric off my already tender, rashed, beat up legs, so I tell them they look great. After tweezing some of the more stubborn hairs (which was a new experience for me...who knew you used tweezers on your legs), I was set free. I am now sitting at home looking at the hamburger meat that used to be a pair of legs attached to my body. There is a small fire inside them, and whatever lotion they put on the bumps and redness, well, it hasn't so much started doing its job yet. I think I will just stick to using a razor from now on. Celebrities can keep their perfectly smooth legs and I will be just fine with my shaved ones.

Bonds

There are no shortages to the amount of fun and adventure that my life holds. Well, actually that is probably slightly over exaggerating. Nothing spectacularly exciting happened today. My little birthday brother and I shared a special moment when we went to the store to get his cake ingredients and ended up getting soaked. We got across town the exact moment that Burley decided to have a flash flood. The rain was so hard and so excessive that by the time we ran into WalMart both he and I were drenched. Well not really, but its fun to think of a really bad rain storm and getting really wet in it. We were normal amounts of wet. Myth busters taught us both that walking through a rain storm will make you less wet than running through it. And if myth busters says its true, who are we to disagree? Anyway, after that bonding experience, not much happened around here. Tomorrow school starts back up and sometime in the future I will begin working again. As a farmer. Don't anyone worry, still in love with it. And in 5 short days I will be on a plane headed to Puerto Rico. Feel free to be jealous. All the applications are in though, I will not be accepting any more friends and lists of presents you may want from there. :)

Technicalities

I like to post every day because some people like to read about my life apparently. I feel bad that I missed Sunday, but it is only 12:23 so I feel like it could still count. We did in fact do Eli's birthday present early, so the big secret will be released. He got an electric scooter. I don't have any pictures because I use my cell phone for that and my cell phone has been kicked underneath my bed today because I was mad that no one was texting me. And also I let it die in hopes that maybe it would feel punished for failing me. Yeah, rational thoughts sometimes aren't my strong suite. But, I did capture the masterpiece that me and my mom made today. Yeah, we do have a little time on our hands every now and again.

What you see here is the most juicy, ripe, best tasting watermelon on this planet. Some people may know that this is my favorite fruit in the whole entire world. I could live off of this stuff. I thought it would be boring to cut it into the traditional little pieces and so I convinced my mother to spend about a half an hour carving this beauty out. We decided that for my wedding we will offer an arrangement of watermelon bowls. Probably we could get someone else to sculpt them for us, but we are perfectly capable as well. Just looking at this picture makes me want to go upstairs and eat some. Also last night we made 2 loaves of the yummiest banana bread I have ever tasted in my life. We happened to be at the grocery store late Saturday night and saw their overly ripe bananas were on sale so we got some. Turned out they were so ripe the cashier didn't even charge us for them. So we had free banana bread and it was delicious. Feel free to be jealous of my life.

Can You Move It Like This?

My mom bought me 'Zumba' for the Kinect. Holy fun! That is the craziest game ever, and I am pretty sure I am in love with crazy dancing. I think it was a better idea for us to get it to use at home instead of going to classes, because not a single one of us is coordinated enough to make dancing look good. We all look like a bunch of loons hopping around trying to stay on beat. Watching my 2 younger sibs try to shake their hips is about the funniest thing I have ever witnessed. When we were required to go to classes in college for a rugby practice alternative, I always stood in the back because sometimes it is hard to look dignified when you do zumba. Maybe now I will get better.

We had a day of adventure. Me and mom went to Pocatello today just to shop around for a bit and have a different change of scenery. I ended up spending all my money, like I always do. But on the bright side I am now the proud owner of my own brand new coloring book! It is titled 'Flitterific', so where can you go wrong with that one? And some crates to make a bookshelf, some cool headphones,  and a new sweatshirt. I am now stylish. We also bought E's birthday present, but just in case he learned how to read, I won't say what it is until Monday when he opens it. I actually am fairly excited for it too.

Can you say excited?!! It comes with over 1000 stickers. I can't wait for church! 

It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

So, yeah, today's my birthday. And what a day it was. I have been sick for most of today, so that was fun. We had a big dinner party with my cousins and my aunt made a fabulous cake. I really love having family that lives close to us. Since all my friends have moved away to college :( I thought that I would be celebrating alone today. But it actually was a lot more fun than I thought with my cousins over and my family.

Today was our last day of week 1 on the CPT5K (running chart thing) and what a run it was! Apparently summer is over and fall/winter has already started to arrive. It probably didn't break 50 degrees the whole time we were gone. The cold just made us run faster I think. I wore my zebra print spandex pants, so that right there made me run faster than anyone. I love those pants.

The weeks are winding down and it is almost time for a little vacation which I am completely and utterly excited for. Just the fact that I get to go to a place where it should be high 70's and sometimes 80 makes me so happy. I love going places that are warm while everyone else is cold. Also, I feel like I will have a legitimate excuse to let my hair do whatever it wants, curly and crazy included. My friends always made fun of me for having the crazed 'Puerto Rican' look, but I think I will fit in just great. Here I come Puerto!

Well, being 20 is a lot easier than I thought it would be. This guy asked me at work yesterday how old I was and I said uh, um, I am.....19. And he probably thought I was weird for taking so long to know how old I was, but I guess I will need to practice saying how old I really am now. So please, ask me. :) Not to get all sentimental and stuff, but I feel like I am just growing up and I am becoming this mature (haha ok not too mature) adult and someday I will move out of my parents house and start a whole new life for me. But thinking about the way far future is not so much fun for me so right now I will just say.......Goodnight guys. Enjoy every moment while it lasts.

Worst. Day. Ever.

I suppose if you have the best day of your life, the worst one has to be right around the corner. I won't go into full detail because who likes to hear whiney, complaining, woe is me posts? I sure don't. We'll just say, being a girl is hard.

I didn't even know I had allergies! I have been fine my whole life. Today, my eyes itched, my nose won't breathe, and I sneezed all day! I think those are like the basic 101 of allergies. The fields we are harvesting are not settling well with my immune system.

I will say though, I love my job. This post will be the ups and downs of my day. I really really am loving driving. It isn't hard, there is a new place to go every time you dump your load, and for some reason I just am enjoying this experience so much. It's hard to explain. I will say though, you have never experienced terrifying until you try to leave a field that is on a slant and as you are turning, you go on 2 wheels and you feel like you are tipping over. That is the scariest feeling in the world and I really wish I could figure out how to exit a field without dying.

These work pants of mine have seen better days. The first tear was from my job mowing lawns and I have since patched them to the best of my mom's ability.

At least I wore my cute undies that day! :)

 Today, I noticed my thigh hole is getting to ridiculous proportions. I think it may be time for new pants!

So, there are the high's and low's of today. Happy news: I get work off tomorrow for my birthday!! :) I love my boss being related to me!