Leaving Washington :(

I have hated saying goodbyes for the past 5 weeks. It started when I had to say goodbye to my friends leaving for school in Idaho, Washington D.C., and many other places. I had very VERY limited time in the last couple weeks to say goodbye to everybody else. So here are some pictures of people I have had to say good bye to. :(

The Mechams. :( This one was really REALLY hard. Those kids were part of me and they left for Texas at the end of July. (Ava, Kiara, Blake and Mercedes)

The Cottam Kids, this is only 3 of 5. I didn't have a picture of all of them. (Maci, Kimball, and Baden)

The Ekins, Emily, Maddie, and Ellie. 

Cassie and Kim, long-time lunch buddies :)

Autumn and Spencer, those kids are TOO cute!

Jake, Tommy, Ben, and Bella. These kids and I had a very special relationship. When it was time for them to say  goodbye Ben was very very cuddly with me and would tell me how much he loved me and how much he would miss me. It was all too bitter sweet. 

My puppies. Sophie and Oliver. This too was insanely hard. Living with Melissa and Brady  allows me to still have a dog for now, but I was reminiscing about these two the other day and had a pretty hard evening after that.  

Jeanelle!!! This was a very sad goodbye. She has been such an amazing role model to me for the past 6 years. She is such a strong example and fantastic friend who is always there for me. Love you!

Mitchell :( another really hard goodbye. He is leaving on his mission on February 8th for Porto Allegre Brazil.

Now for a few HELLOS!!! I only have a few pictures from Utah and none from work yet... but that will come soon :) 

I said hello to the VALLEY. Oh how I love living in Utah valley. 

Isn't it just gorgeous??

And I have said hello to crazy dog Sadie. She is a bundle of energy that is for sure!

She kinda reminds me of Bilbo sometimes. Another dog I miss dearly :(

I have also said hello to a new life at doTERRA. It is the most awesome company ever. I have already made some great new friends there. I would talk about some of the other fantastic happenings at doTERRA... but I don't know who will be reading this blog so some of the information is friend only! But YAY!

Another hello is to a life with Melissa and Brady. We work together, eat together, live together, carpool together but only for a little while... cause my next hello is my new APARTMENT!!! I am so excited!! I move in Saturday, so expect a post a little while after I move in :)

Here's to some goodbyes but some even better hellos!!!!! 

Official Utah Resident!!!

So I am officially a Utah resident!!! I arrived in Salt Lake after a very bumpy flight on this past Saturday. I had a whole bunch of luggage and a whole bunch of embarrassing moments whilst struggling to get from baggage claim across two streets to the passenger pick-up. My 79.5 lbs of luggage were rather difficult to balance by myself and I was determined not to spend the $4 bucks it would cost me to borrow a stupid luggage cart. So I balanced instead, only causing a minor wrist injury. But I did it myself! :D

So far in Utah I have walked Melissa and Brady's dog Sadie. She is a crazy dog but sooo cute. They live right by their stake center which is like a 5 minute walk and it has a big grass pavilion that Sadie loves to run around on. Sadie has almost demolished my computer like 5 times now while I am trying to get stuff done in my room. She is one silly pup, but we love her.

Melissa and I have made dinner every night and it has all been delicious! We have had a salad every night and some of the other things include... spinach and cheese ravioli, bbq chicken on sourdough, chicken/celery/wild rice, and spaghetti. All of the meals are less than a half hours worth of work which is really nice since we often get home from work around 6, leaving not much time for an enjoyable evening. Tomorrow at work we have a pot luck lunch so I decided I would make chocolate covered pretzels since Brady and Melissa had a Costco size bag of pretzels they are desperately trying to use up. So after my first batch of chocolate I decided I would use some awesome doTERRA oil to improve the taste. So I added a drop of peppermint oil to the next batch of chocolate and man did it taste AWESOME!!!

Speaking of doTERRA... I LOVE WORKING THERE. It is such an amazing, honest, thriving, friendly, caring company. They invest their full effort into finding the most pure oils and products to satisfy their customers and provide them with the best product. They also put so much effort into the care of their employees and loyal members. The environment I am working in is fantastic! You can tell their screening process for employees really works. Everyone is dedicated and friendly. They all work very hard and are very welcoming and helpful to the new trainees (me). My trainers are Abbie and Mitch, both awesome people. So far we have learned about the products, how to handle calls, and a few of the processes on "datatrax" which is the computer system we use. It is rather confusing and not very user friendly... I am getting used to it, but there are a ton of little details you have to remember.

I am working on a couple different posts right now... all of which require pictures that I can't currently get off my phone so I have to wait for my parents to come down so my Dad can give me my card reader.

Speaking of my Dad, I FINISHED MY CD!!! Payton completed the editing today and I the cover together and sent everything to my Mom to make tomorrow. When they come down to Utah on Sunday I am going to give it to my Dad as a "pre-christmas-going-away-present". We are going to work on making the actual cd cover before Christmas comes so it can look a little more professional.  But I am really satisfied with the product!!! Yay!!

P.S. I promise I will strive to be a better blogger and post at least once every couple days! But I am staying very busy which is making even that a challenge!

Much love from Utah!

BKPR Reunion 1

Bridget Katie Payton Robert. BKPR. The best group of bestest friends ever. We have not hung out all together since the Jones family moved up North but we FINALLY got together this past week. And the reunion was all too fun. The trek up to Snohomish was enjoyable with just Katie, Robert and I. Our first activity was playing the games Catch Phrase and Curses together. So so so FUN. We had a blast. Laughing constantly as usual. The second round I had like 9 curses to keep up with and I eventually just gave up because of the stress of it all! It was insane. Then we decided we needed a really big fun activity! So we went park hopping at a couple different epic parks. If you want some awesome parks, Snohomish is the place to go. The first park we went to was pretty diverse, lots of options. 

They had this cool climby thing made with kinda bouncy ropes!

Robert and Payton on the 4 seater-teeter-totter!

Payton was the teenager disruppting the peace of the child's park.  Smh

Robert and Katie were trying to get "married" haha (when you are swinging at the same pace you are "married")

This is Katie Payton and I racing to the top of the climby thing. 


They also had a launchy thing that Payton was pretty good at moving so he launched us!

And now what you have all been waiting for... the coolest park EVER. The slides were sooo awesome, very long and tall slides! I didn't take a picture of just the slides but you can see them in the background of the videos. 


There were some other kids at this park and we were afraid their dad was going to call the police on us cause we were in a residential only park...and of course with a park that cool you have to break the law! These videos are only going on the internet per KPR's request... They are pretty embarassing for me but still entertaining. These are all from the giant wood teeter-totter. It was... well, just watch. 

I think these videos say enough for themselves...


The park also had a small rock climbing wall, payton took like 3 steps and was at the top... so it wasn't really worth climbing for us, but we got a couple of group shots by it. 

Of course...Katie ruining our NICE picture! haha

This was probably our last adventure for the next couple years because Robert and I leave for Utah and California in a few days and then Katie starts at UW and then Payton leaves for his mission in Brazil! Crazy crazy times, but it will make our next reunion that much sweeter :) 

Breakfast at the Bigelows!

My core group of girls has been desperately trying to get together as much as possible before we are all gone and away. Unfortunately I only got to a few of them so far... These are the girls I got to enjoy breakfast with this past weekend!!! Yay! Nikki, Emily, and I all made our "specialties".

I made waffles!

Emily made omlets!!! (DELICIOUS)

And Nikki made hot chocolate shakes! Mmm, yummy and quick!

After our fun breakfast we continued festivities with a Just Dance 2 dance-off! We had a FANTASTIC time dancing! My favorite one was the Indian kasdiogbksdgj dshfuosudhsl one. Emily and I did that one, here are some great action shots!

Emily was asking for my hand, I said, "No, I caaaan't" haha

I love this picture of Nikki! :)

 Overall, we had a FANTASTIC morning. We had lots of fun and ate some really yummy food! Always nice ;) I love, love, LOVE them. I will miss them both. Emily leaves tomorrow morning for school, it is unreal. 

Emily, Nikki, Sarah, and Annie stopped by house this evening while they were on their drive so I got some parting pictures with Sarah and Emily :')

I love my girlies. They are so sweet and I will miss them as they leave for Idaho in the morning :( Then again we are all off on our own adventures! Love you Sarah and Emily!!!! Best of luck to you both!!!

Parks, Phantoms, and Partys!

I have a new found relationship with probably the best family on the planet. You can check them out at
(www.jennandrandyekins.blogspot.com) The girls in this family are so fantastic! They feel like my own kids! They always listen and are always up for great fun! They are creative and energetic and just plain awesome!I didn't get any pictures with them on our adventure day but I took quite a few of the girlies :)

On my birthday they put "18" in the windows, it was very precious!!

This is one of the dresses I used to wear when I was little. I wore it for  Halloween when I was 5 !!

 We were dressing up like characters from Phantom of the Opera cause that is the girls favorite movie!!

Here we have Carlotta (Ellie,left) and Christine (Emily,right)

The PHANTOM!!! (Maddie) 

Phantom, Carlotta, and Meg!

 Our next adventure was going around to a couple of parks in my neighborhood. Allen park is probably the best park around. It has fantastic swings, a huge play toy, a large field, lots of picnic tables, a basketball court, a funnel ball court, a big slide, and a moving whale bouncy thing.

Emily and Maddie 1

Emily and Maddie 2

Emily and Maddie 3

Maddie on the bouncy whale thing

Ellie on the slide!

 This is the first of quite a few tries of a perfect group shot!

This is my favorite! Maddie is priceless!!!

Ohhhh Maddie. My child. hahaha

Ahhh the simple things. :)

 I love these girls sooo much and I can't wait for more adventures with them!