Keep Up

Ok, here is a whirlwind tour of what I have been doing this past 30 days. I cannot help that I am a wandering kid and I hate commitment. I'm working on it, promise.

-On February 2nd I moved to Beechgrove, Tennessee. I was living with my grandparents and looking for a job so I could hopefully earn some money. I looked for 3 weeks and nothing was happening. No one was calling me back, no one was hiring, and no one cared that I am almost broke. I put in something around 9 applications, and only 1 person got back to me, but they said no. While I was there I met a friend of my grandpa's who became my running partner in the mornings. She is an ex-marathoner so basically she kicked my butt every day and made me feel like passing out multiple times. But it was good and we went from neither of us running at all to the end of the week running a mile and a half. That was some serious commitment but I loved it.

-Then, I realized that I truly was not getting a job in Beechgrove. It is barely a town in itself, so real town was 20 minutes away anyway, and I wasn't super thrilled on the idea of driving that much. So even though I really liked catching up with my grandparents and getting to meet that little area, I decided to move on. I had a half of a plan to move to Falls Church, Virginia which is right outside of DC, and I hoped that some family would take me in for a couple months. But before I made that 10 hour drive, I quickly plotted with best friend Cassie's mom and surprised her! Buena Vista is only 3 hours from where I live, and I was not interested in driving 10 hours anyway. For more details on that, you can just go ahead and read Cassie's blog yourself. I spent the weekend in Buena Vista and left on Sunday for Falls Church.

-Fast forward a couple days and here I am. I love it here. I haven't been back to Virginia in probably 6 years and mostly everything is just the same as I left it. My aunt gave me this awesome, amazing, huge room to myself and it is really even better than my room in Burley (sorry mom). I can't wait for it to warm up so we can start taking advantage of the huge pool in the backyard...probably the thing I am most excited for.

-I applied for 4 jobs today. My other awesome aunt emailed me a ton of job listings for people around this area who are looking for nanny's so I called and wrote to a couple of them so we will see what happens in the future. Hopefully I can get a job, earn back the money that I spent on this 'vacation' and see you all in 6 months before I leave on my mission! Life is looking pretty awesome right now.

Lessons

Today, as I was sitting in Sunday School, I was just kind of people watching and getting to know the ward a little better. I wasn't paying as much attention as I generally do to lessons, being as this particular one didn't grab my attention. But I happened to focus on the teacher right as she taught us that Yoda was modeled after one of the President's of the church because the writer of the film was a big fan of him. (wasn't paying enough attention to remember who it was) She then dove into Star Wars and somehow tied that to her lesson. This is why I go to church.

Old People

My grandparents' friends came over tonight and we all hung out for awhile. As we were talking, the guy looks over at me and says, are you color blind? Taken aback by that strange question, it took me a second to process where that came from. I said no, why. And he said, well, it appears you don't quite know how to get all of your fingers the same color. I was just wondering if you couldn't tell the difference.

Ha, yes I can tell the difference! I didn't even think that was a weird thing I did until he pointed it out. No one gets our generation. Or maybe I am just a weirdo.

back me up guys...does no one else do this??

Mail Time!

I ordered a new camera charger so I could stop taking wimpy pictures on my iPod and it finally came! You would think I would go outside and start taking pictures of everything in my life, but I didn't. I did go down to the lake and take some pictures of that so you can enjoy that. On my quest for something to do this afternoon, I found a really old bike in the backyard so I decided to take that out for a ride. It was seriously hard to pedal that thing, but I managed to get some good speed on it. Between dodging neighborhood dogs, I came close to losing my life to a pit bull, but luck was on my side and I have expert skills at fast peddling when I am scared. I outran that thing by at least 20 feet. I wish I could say that these were friendly neighborhood dogs that like to run along side you happily and territorially, but these dogs just mostly want to bite you, bark at you, and show the other dogs that they aren't scared of anything. The little white fluff ball that likes to chase me would be a good candidate for a reality check to show him that being 1/2 a foot tall does not give you the authority to act like the king of the road. Anyway...

my cute room

general excitement 

the lake!

see those birds up there? all 90432798423 of them? yeah they made SO much noise I thought I was in a horror movie for a moment. "The Birds" has ruined me for life.

Tennessee take 3

Go ahead and wipe the tears from your eyes because I have some more pictures to share. These are exclusive to the blog and not on FB as a little treat to you all being so loyal to me. I am kind of getting sick of myself so don't feel obligated to look at them or anything... 

Eli learned how to ride the lawn mower. It is all he does these days.

E bonding with grandpa

I met my first penguin at the aquarium. Love him.

Cute dive show at the aquarium

Redemption

I was told my last post was so much like the album on FaceBook that it wasn't even worth looking at. So here I am to redeem myself. I pretty much have settled in here in Beechgrove and everything has been going smoothly. I am unpacked and ready for adventure. Today I took Chester (my grandpa's dog) on a walk to tour the neighborhood. We met about 30 dogs on the way. Apparently it is an unspoken rule that if you live here you must own 2-5 dogs and leashing them is optional. We pretty much led a dog parade through the streets. Chester is getting on in his years of life so we couldn't do anything more than a little bit of a stroll. He loves me though so I can't actually complain about that. I can't wait for summer to be able to swim in this huge lake that is literally 100 feet from the house. (well, maybe more because I have never been good at the metric system, but it is really close)

Eli rode on my grandpa's school bus route today and he came home with many stories. He said (his words) that everyone loved him and the girls kept wanting to sit by him. My brother is a player. One little girl told my grandpa that if Eli would sit by her tomorrow, she would be good for the rest of the week and she would behave on the bus. Apparently that kid holds some sort of power over 4th graders.

Well, tomorrow I guess is the big job hunt. I made 2 friends already so maybe they can help me along. Ok, I suppose the post office employee and the guy that delivers meat aren't actual friends, but they were the only people that have talked to me so far. Being in the south is fun. People talk super funny and its hard to not accidentally mimic them when you respond. I honestly can't count how many times people have called me ma'am or miss or young lady. Its a totally different experience from Idaho. Every one is super friendly and always waving as you walk past, or saying howdy (is that a Texas only thing? nobody has really said that here) or just being nice. And I will spare you the boring details of the day to day things that have happened, so hopefully this made up for something.

Road Trip!!

I am pleased to announce we have finally arrived in Tennessee! It was touch and go there for awhile. Mostly I am car-lagged (is that a thing?) and I want to make this post super organized and tell you detail to detail what we did and where we stopped, but that's just not my style, and I am super tired. So instead I am going to dump a bunch of pictures and make you figure it out yourself! Also, I apologize for not having a real live camera. Sometimes an iPod is all you have in life. 

the very beginning of the trip

people would drive by and give us weird looks. we didn't care.

Glen Canyon Dam

way more impressive than our little bridge in Twin Falls

drinking caffeinated water in hopes that we could make the whole trip awake. 

it was disgusting 

watch tower at the Grand Canyon

we didn't arrive until about 5:30 so it was getting dark. but still impressive

it was also freezing cold and snowing

engagement photo option #1

#2

happy family

bowling in jammies. coolest hotel ever

bowling cheering section

south rim Grand Canyon

soooo windy and freezing cold 

we love each other

some of the states we passed through it was pitch black outside. we did the best we could. 

about 5:30 in the morning. way too much car time

Tennessee!!

Memphis