Viva Las Vegas

A couple of weeks ago, Cheryl and I took off to Vegas to visit our good friend Lolly. I am always looking for an excuse to get out of Provo, and Lolly is one of my best friends and has been for a long time, so I like to go visit her from time to time. Lucky for me, Cheryl wanted to keep me company. We had a blast! We went shopping, went out to lunch, walked around a casino and a little bit of the strip, we took lots of pictures (Lolly did our hair and make up just like old times) and we talked about the good old days back when we all first met back in Santa Barbara. I am so lucky to have such amazing friends.

And lets not forget about the kids! Cheryl and Lolly's daughters became BFF that weekend. Ava Lillard & Ashby Bishop.

Apx Alarm

I have been working at Apx Alarm for a year now. Sure it seems like a lame job, but I actually love it. I started working in Data Entry and I hated it, but I made it through the summer because I happened to have some friends that worked there with me and kept me entertained. Then I moved to Contract Admin / Record Management and I LOVE it! My boss is awesome and we get a long great. I am like her assistant. Anything she needs done she comes to me. I worked hard for her long enough that I proved myself and she made me a supervisor over the filers (10 people) and so I have had a lot of fun doing interviews, hiring, putting together a training power point, and getting all of the responsibilities of being a supervisor. This next week I will train all of the my team for the busy summer to come.

Something I really love about Apx is the people I work with. Not only have I had some good friends that happened to work there, but I have made a lot of good friends there too. We even spend time together outside of work. But they are the ones that make me excited to go to work. I love these people! :o)

Vibeology

There was a point in time where I was really into making music video's. My friend Jesse helped me make that happen. He was amazing at editing. This was one of my favorite video's I came up with and directed and some how got lots of people to participate in.

San Francisco & Monterey

On Presidents weekend Nate and I became travel buddies on an adventurous road trip to visit our good friend Steve in San Francisco.The adventure begins in the car after our friend that planned the trip and was supposed to drive bailed on us 10 minutes after we were supposed to be on the road, so we were behind schedule. When filling up on gas in Draper, Nate realizes that he forgot his wallet and we had to drive back to get it. Now we are even more behind schedule.We finally got on the road. We were going to get a hotel in Reno that night and then drive the rest of the way the next morning, but since we left so late, we couldn't stay awake long enough to make it to Reno, plus we were only splitting gas two ways instead of three. So Nate suggests we pull over and sleep in the car. Not only is it not comfortable to sleep in the car because of lack of space, but it was also the middle of winter and it was COLD outside! Everything became our friends fault that bailed on us, because we figure none of it would have happened if she would have come and it was easy and funny to blame her for everything. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep that night, but we did make it to San Francisco and had a great time with Steve and went to the Symphony.
Saturday we met up with Kirsten and her fiance' and went to the Monterey Bay aquarium. I was very excited because I had not been since I was in the 5th grade. We ate at a nice sea food restaurant and enjoyed the sea life away from snowy Provo, Utah. And lets just talk about how good it was to spend time with Nate and Steve again. If only Brad was there it would have been complete. It was almost like he was there cause he called me every day.

The rest of the trip was spent touring San Francisco (It was Nate's first time) and just having a good time together.

Rock Star

This last summer I was introduced to Guitar Hero. I don't know if that was such a good thing. I ended up buying the game and become a little obsessed. That is pretty much what I did all summer. Of course I invited others over to play too. I got pretty good at the game pretty fast. Then Rock Band came out. It is a brilliant game. Not just two people can play, but FOUR people can play. One person on Lead guitar, one person on Bass, one person singing, and the other on drums. Endless amount of fun. Don't worry, I don't own this one... yet. :o) But my friend Clayton does own it. And we created an "Expert Band" we all play on the highest level of difficulty. I am the only girl in the band. These guys are serious about it too. We get together and have "Band Practice" once a week and play for a couple hours. We play in career mode and go on tour, we have a tour bus, we have gained thousands of fans and we even have roadies now! I know... I am a Nintendo nerd. But It is a lot of fun, and when you get really good at these games, it is just so much fun to play with other people who are just as good.

I don't have a picture of my "Expert Band" yet, but I do have a picture of our score after playing "In Bloom" we got over a million points and we all got 97% on expert. We were so impressed with ourselves that we had to get a picture. Oh ya... so you know the members of the band, Clayton is our drummer, Randal is our vocalist, Mike on Lead guitar and I am on bass.
This is a picture that my roommate Blythe drew of what is was like when I first started playing. Blythe and Clayton are on the bean bag and I am the one hypnotized in front of the game.

I was a bit scared....

So... turns out this really happened to me. I told my co-worker about a time I was cuddling with this guy while watching a movie and he pulls out a knife to show me but puts it in the middle of us... and mind you we were close because we were cuddling, so it was really close to my face and I was a little scared for my life. I was not 100 % sure that he wouldn't hurt me. Anyways.... after I was done telling my co-worker about the story, he made this comic strip, and though it is really simple, it made me laugh. Enjoy!

Miss Independent

I was not quite sure where I wanted to start my blog. So I thought that I would start with my trip to New York this past October. I had worked at a Physical Therapy office with this girl. The little time that we worked together she always talked of how she always wanted to go to New York. I told her that I had been before and it was so much fun I would love to go again. So a few months later we get together and buy our round trip tickets to New York for October. Since we were no longer working together we didn't see each other much, but we got together a couple times to plan the trip and finally the time had come to go. We both were super excited to go. The first day of our trip was all travel. We spent the whole day in airports and on the plane. We got to NY late and just stayed in a hotel to rest up for the rest of our week in NY. The next day we slept in and went into a few shops and then went to find my friend's house that we were going to be staying with the first night. Once we got there we just hung out with my friends and had dinner.
Right after dinner my friend received a phone call from her boyfriend that she had been dating for the last couple months. She left the room and came back 5 minutes later crying. She told me that her boyfriend was having "internal pain" and was not sure what it was. Maybe kidney stones, she was not sure. I tried to calm her down and tell her there was not a lot she could do and to just try and have fun while she was on vacation. She told me she couldn't have fun while her boyfriend was in pain and should go home to be with him. I tried really hard to talk some sense into her, that she wouldn't be able to do anything for him, to have her mom check on him, see how serious it was before she went home. She got on the phone. I thought she was going to call her mom. She called the airline and changed her plane ticket to leave the next morning. I was in shock that she would actually do it, spend so much money to come out to a place that she had always wanted to go just to turn around and go back home for something that was probably not that serious. After she got off the phone she looked at me and said "I feel bad, what are you going to do?" Oh how nice of her to ask! I told her it would be fine, but I was a little nervous. It had been years since I was in NY and I have never been there by myself and I didn't know my way around by any means.
I fell asleep that night and when I woke up she was gone. My friends were shocked, she had never seen anyone leave NY the day after they got there. They were super great and let me stay with them the rest of the trip since I didn't know what I was going to do. They also gave me suggestions of where to go and what to do and would always tell me how to get there. So everyday for the week I would set out into the city by myself and pretend that I knew what I was doing and where I was going and tried not to look like a tourist. I still had a great trip. I went to the World Trade Center Memorial, I shopped, I walked around Central Park, went to the Met, walked Time Square, visited my good friend Brad in Connecticut, saw a movie being filmed with Tea' Leoni, and best of all I saw three Broadway musicals that I had been wanting to see. So in the end, I stepped out of my comfort zone, met some new people, saw some good friends, and had a great time. Just different then what I expected.