back to school

around this time of year, when i see everyone else getting ready for school, i really start to feel like 1) i'm old, and 2) i wish i was in school, too.

school is the best! you're learning new things all the time, you're surrounded by fun people, you're doing productive things (this is debatable, i know. we've all done our fair share of busy work :)), you're working toward a larger goal. and you get to buy and use school supplies for their actual purpose (school...). and you get to buy new back-to-school clothes and nobody questions it because, yeah, you're going back to school.

this longing probably just means that i need to be in a school setting in some way. what is fall without school? not as fun, that's what.

thoughts on thursday

attending a dance party  the other night really reminded me how much i love dance parties. it has been way too long since i've danced with such abandon :) one of the downsides to my sugarhouse life is that there aren't nearly enough dance parties. like, zero, that i know of. dance parties are great, people.

attending a dance party the other night also reminded me why i love provo. so many of my good friends are there, people that i don't see all the time but that really know me. it was good to be back adn have one of those classic provo nights, where you are surrounded by fun people and just living the twentysomething life.

i'm getting worried that being at work is actually making me sick. i feel fine when i'm at home and the first hour or two at work, but then i just start feeling gross--feverish, headachy, weak, dizzy. what the heck? probably what this means is that i just need to go to the doctor and get a real diagnosis for a real problem, but that's a little scarier than thinking that my job is slowly killing me :) so maybe one of these days i'll make it to a qualified physician's office and find out what's really wrong with me.

i started getting birchbox last month, and it's pretty cool so far. each month they send you samples of various beauty and health products to try. then if you want to buy the full-size version, you can find it on the website. i don't plan on buying a ton of the full-size products, because some of them are definitely higher end than i need, but it's fun trying out new products. this month i got a mini nail polish, black eyeliner, and a delish granola bar with maple syrup and pumpkin seeds. awesome, right?


a couple weeks ago, i bought if you wait, london grammar's debut album. i'm OBSESSED with it. wikipedia describes it as "trip-hop", which is kind of amazing, and it is that type of hard-to-define music that is also really beautiful and catchy. give it a listen, if you are so inclined.

and there you have it! thoughts that mean mostly nothing :)

i lead a simple life

i interrupt our normally scheduled programming to tell you about one of those beloved simple pleasures that sometimes take you by such enormous surprise that you just can't help but inform everyone.

i've been meaning to wash my car for seriously weeks. things that have preventing me from completing this task: 1) utah springs are unpredictable--it could be totally sunny and then raining five minutes later; 2) murphy's law is a very really thing; and 3) i'm lazy. but today, the stars aligned and i headed to the carwash. i decided to go to the self-wash to really get all that grime off. best decision ever! i literally giggled with glee when i was wielding the power washer.

in short, it was awesome. if you had told my ten year old self that i would one day love washing the car, i would have laughed in your face and then quickly gone back to my baby-sitters club super special.

but i guess this is another sign that i'm growing up. what's next--i'll want to start weeding the yard regularly?

40 days of lent

the past several years, i've decided to observe lent, though i am not catholic. i am, though, a rather introspective and goal-oriented person, and the idea of sacrificing something for a period of time with an eye toward self-improvement is always appealing to me. so, i do lent. this year i decided i was going to give up soda, since, while i don't think i'm really "addicted" to dr. pepper, per se, i was craving it way too often.

but that didn't really feel like enough, since it wasn't like i was drinking 50oz. of pop a day. someone--it might have been meredith--suggested that i start doing something during lent that i don't normally do. i really like this idea, of adding something to my life, replacing a negative behavior with a more positive one. so, since i love writing notes to people, i set a goal to write 40 notes/letters during the 40 days of lent.

i started out really well, on pace to reach this goal. as the weeks went on though, i decided that a more realistic target was 25 notes in 40 days. it wasn't that i wasn't thinking about the goal and just let it slip away from me--i was thinking about who i could write to pretty constantly. but, you know, postage is expensive.

but it was still pretty great. i sent 13 notes through the mail, 6 were hand-delivered, 4 were substantial and meaningful facebook messages, and 2 were emails. i became obsessed with stationery during these five weeks and bought way too much of it as a result (but that just means i need to write more notes!! it's a beautiful circle!). with some of these little notes i sent out into the world, i never heard anything from the recipient, so hopefully they all got to the right place. why is it so hard to get people's addresses? mail used to be it, the only way to get information--now it's like a person's residence is a closely-guarded secret or something (obviously, good idea if you want protection from killers and stuff, but bad idea if you want to receive thoughtful mail from a friend.)

anyway, i'm excited to keep going. i love writing notes, as i've expressed before, because it's sooooooooooo much easier to say what i want to say with the written word. and it's something you can keep forever. so if you want a note from me, let me know :) i have plenty of cute things to send you!

preparing for italy

in case you were still in suspense and don't follow me on any other social media, carter opened his mission call a couple weeks ago and is going to the italy rome mission on august 6th. let me tell you, we are all pretty stoked about it.

we've been scouting out the italian restaurants around town, learning italian phrases here and there, and fielding advice and info from many different sources. carter's future mission president's wife has a blog, and it has been fun to see the missionaries who are there now and to get a little taste of where carter will be living for two years. when he is there, we'll be checking the blog religiously to get a glimpse of our cute anziano beesley :)

last week, in a hotly contested instagram battle, we won the right for stately type to design italy-themed t-shirts (results/top design still pending). we recruited a bunch of carter's friends people to vote and blew those other yahoos out of the water. viva italia!!

sources say that there's a good chance that the rome italy temple will be completed while bud is there serving in italy, which is awesome and will (already is) generating tons of interest in the church. pope francis, carter is coming for you ;)

mostly we're excited to start planning our return visit to italy, after carter is already home. because we all know that's happening!

any suggestions for our italy prep bucket list? any ideas are welcome!

yay for conference!!

this weekend, once again, is general conference. i'm so excited to hear all the messages and hang out with my family and eat good food (conference weekend is pretty much synonymous with good eats in my mind). i think we will get to go to a session this time, which will be awesome. there is nothing like being in the room when the prophet walks in--i'm still amazed by how much power i can feel in a room full of thousands.

this conference season, we had a general women's meeting as a lead-in to conference weekend. as i started my notes, i titled the section (the historic) general women's meeting because i predicted that one, if not all, of the speakers would reference that this is the first time all women, ages 8 and up, have been gathered, and i think that qualifier is so mormon haha. "this has been an historic gathering"--we hear it fairly often :)

but this meeting really was historic. as soon as i walked in the door i was bawling, and it didn't stop through the opening prayer, given by a new beehive, or the musical numbers, where the choir was made up of 8 year olds and 80 year olds and everything in between, or the talks, which somehow focused on every single thing i've been wrestling with the past several months. it was incredible.

i'm a faithful member of the church and of the relief society specifically, but i've never felt the spirit of sisterhood as strongly as i did in that meeting. women have power, you guys. i felt it!

so, come to conference. it will be awesome!

oh hey

every day when i get to work, i open a browser and go to my blog. i open a post i've been working on, or i start a new one, intending to fill the blogosphere with my latest profound thoughts. but lately, everything i start to write seems stale, leading to a bunch of half-written, half-formed posts that i feel no enthusiasm for. does anyone really care about the music i've been listening to lately? am i bringing anything original to the table, and if not, why don't i just save all these musings for my journal (which is pretty much what ended up happening this month)? how do the bloggers do it, come up with interesting original content each day?

but i guess the answer is that i don't care too much about all that. i'm never going to be one of those huge lifestyle bloggers with my humble little blog. and if i don't feel like writing something here, i just won't. and if i do, i just will. and maybe i was in a slump, because people, it wasn't like i wasn't trying to post stuff for the past few weeks of my life.

but i also sometimes feel like maybe i'm trying to record things in too many places. does that make sense? i have my journal, which i write in pretty faithfully, and i have my blog, and i have my other notebooks, and i have my phone, and i want to take this art journaling class, which would just make one more place to record my life and my thoughts. and is it just too much?

i don't really know. i don't feel like thinking too deeply about it right now (bowling took up a lot of my concentration cells today). but, best case scenario, i'm prepping to be an awesome over-sharing mom, am i right??