I Would Like Everyone to Know

that life is grand!!!

My application to BYU is almost finished (and due October 1st haha). I just have to pay the application fee and meet with my stake president. I am excited to go back (as long as I get accepted). I'm still super sad about leaving Travis, Jorge, Celesta, and all my other OSP buddies...but life will go on...I just have to keep reminding myself that both Travis and Jorge will be gone soon and at the rate boys fall for Celesta, she'll probably be married soon. Haha.

I went in to see my bishop on Tuesday night to talk about some stuff and get my ecclesiastical endorsement. A few months ago I was called as the ward choir pianist and as one of the ward pianists (meaning I take turns in the organ-playing rotation..did I already post about this). Anyways I still haven't been set apart which is my fault because I was supposed to go in and they'd do it but I kept forgetting or it'd be really crowded by the bishop's office and I'd plan on doing it the next week. Anyways. I mentioned that to him and he was like, "Oh! Well I'll get Brother Gardner to come over and we'll do it right now!" Bro. Gardner is one of the counselors and he was in the next room over. So they did it. At the end of the blessing, the bishop paused and then he blessed me about work and money and being able to afford school. Which is such a testimony builder!! Because I've been stressing about that and did not mention it to him at all.

Anyways, so my dad has this friend at work who has a daughter about my age and she works with special needs kids and makes $9/hour and the scheduling is pretty flexible. Also, Lauri Hickman told me that Karen Gibson has this job where you start at like $11.50 and they're hiring like crazy right now. The only thing is they do drug testing (I'm clean I promise!) and I've heard that it costs businesses around $1,000 for each employee. So I doubt they would want to hire me if I'll be leaving in January. Anyways, after the blessing, what am I supposed to do? Does it mean I should look for a different job that pays better? Or does it mean that soon I'll be able to get a lot of hours at OSP (because of winter of course) or a raise or something? I don't know. I need to think/pray about all of it. I just thought it was neat that this was in my blessing.

Here's something totally random: A lot of times when I'm bored or stressed, I bite my nails. Bad habit, I know. Well lately I've discovered that as I sit and work on homework, I automatically start pulling mascara off of my eyelashes. Weird??? Yes. Also annoying.

The other night Travis and I went over to Celesta's. Apparently Celesta's and my girl-talk was boring Travis because he fell asleep. I really want to put this picture on Facebook for all of the world to see but I know I would be dead within 10 minutes of him seeing it haha. So I will post it here, where he rarely looks:

Funny, huh?

Titleless.

September 11 is an important day to me for two reasons.

1: 2001. The Twin Towers. It just seems unreal that so many people died that day, and for no good reason either. It is so sad. But I love the sense of patriotism that it left us with. It's sad that that's what it had to take though. And that a lot of it's gone now. I really admire police officers and fire fighters (and people in the military for that matter) who put their personal lives/safety/happiness aside to keep us safe. We can't thank them enough.

2: It is my daddy's birthday. I love my dad! Today we celebrated as follows: He took the day off work. Took a nap. Went to see GI Joes in the movie theather (by himself...? haha). Then as a family we went to Joe's Real BBQ for dinner (so good) and Nielsen's for dessert. Afterwards we came home and opened presents and watched season 5 of The Office! Wonderful!

So I've been really emotional the past 2 weeks or so, and it is so annoying. I keep getting mad or sad over nothing. I don't know what is wrong with me. I just wish it would stop! The weekends are the worst. And as contradictory as this sounds to what I always say, I almost wish I had school on Fridays (I go Mon-Thurs). Today I just wasted my day away and was really upset about a few things. It's like if I'm not in an organized environment doing productive (and usually required) things, I fall into thinking way to hard about things that put me in a blah mood. Just not a good way to spend my day!

And while I'm talking about upsetting things, I am done being walked all over!! I don't mean to complain or make people feel sorry for me at all, I just want to get this out there because I think this is part of the reason I've been so weird the past bit. But I am tired of going out of my way for my friends any time any day and having very few of them ever do the same for me. It just sucks. I know people do care about me, it just seems like everything I do for other people doesn't matter. And when I try not to care about people (not like completely quit caring, more like not care if I can't make them happy all the time) I just feel guilty. What is my deal??

Anyways...I guess I need to update about what I've been doing the past little bit. And I'd like to say that I will but in all honesty I probably won't. Haha. I have a lot of decisions I have to make that are stressing me out (well not a lot..a few though) so I'm looking forward to getting those out of the way hopefully soon...? I just need a change!

Sorry this post was so completely random and negative. Hopefully the next one will be more enjoyable and entertaining.

The Official Decision (I think...)

Re-apply to BYU. (In progress)

Re-accept to BYU. (Hopefully)

Return to BYU in January.

Regret THOROUGHLY leaving all my best buddies in Arizona. Probably die.

Remember all the fun times I had my freshman year at BYU.

Recreate these fun events, along with others.

Remorse. Because I will miss Travis's and Jorge's last moments in AZ before they leave on their missions. (Which absolutely will kill me. But of course I'll come home for their "farewells".)

Remind myself that even though it is nearly impossible, I will (eventually) be able to survive without Celesta.

Really miss everyone. Especially friends from OSP and my family. And my dog.

Rekindle old friendships (and weakening friendships) with buddies at BYU.

Resort to odd forms of comfort--run around at midnight with a cloak on, dance on the table, scream at the top of my lungs with Lacey and Lauren, light things on fire.

Realize that I can have fun where I am even though I terribly miss everyone at home.

And then who knows what.

Ahh......

Dear Mr. Birch:

I am actually doing a post all about you of my own free will. Cool, huh?

And I think it's safe to write this "letter" because you rarely read my blog. So chances are you will never read this. And that means you will never get mad at me for writing potentially embarrassing things about you for all the world to read. Plus it will be a good outline for what I have decided is your obligatory birthday letter. I can only return the favor for the lovely letter I received from you in March.

It's been a fun summer. And for as much as we've hung out this summer, I have very few pictures to show for it. I'm even cheating and using this picture from April (you know, the day we went to the Easter pageant and accidentally wore matching clothes?):


And here's one from July at our burning party. Too bad I already posted a picture nearly identical to this in my last blog.

And here we are at Jordan's surprise party with Lily, the stinky dog, who was madly in love with you (like all female dogs you met this summer).

You are a character. I never know if you are going to poke me in the eye, tickle me, put your arm around my shoulder, or push me off the couch. I can, however, predict nearly half of the words that will come out of your mouth. Because I am awesome.

I love your weirdness. Like rolling across my floor every time you come to my house. Usually while wearing a black shirt, resulting in many accessories in the form of dog hair.

Or like your booty dance you do every time you hear a song by Gwen Stefani. And your music video you make in my car at Sonic with the rearview mirror.

Or like your frighteningly-perfect Nacho Libre impersonations.

Or like your odd/cool ideas. Buying crochet and knitting hooks then re-selling them as head-massagers. Starting an Asian techno band with my brother (Travis squared). Hiring a random man named Art Hatch (from a flyer in Jamba Juice) to install the ceiling fans in our future house.

Or like when we were cleaning up from Jordan's party and I looked in the kitchen to see you doing the dishes, wearing one of my mother's aprons.

I appreciate your friendship. I know that you'll always be my buddy, even if I make you mad by teasing you excessively or misunderstanding what you're saying about a wall in Israel (for real) or showing up to your sister's baptism to see you baptize her (!!!) after you tell me not to, even though I was invited by two other members of your family.

I can always count on you for a good time. Even if all we do is sit around on a couch for 2 hours or drive around town aimlessly. You are my best friend.

And now I will end this letter in hopes that nobody else (in addition to the 65,457,869 people who already believe that we are) will think we are dating.

Love,

Lisa.

P.S. I have to confess that I set out writing this letter with the intent to express my hurt and dismay at your irritation that I came to Emma's baptism Saturday. Because I came to support you. And to see her get baptized. But, I guess I'm just too nice (or just not skilled enough in the reprimanding department) and wrote an appreciative letter about you instead. So now you know. Please be happy about this.

Hello Blogworld

So I haven't posted for a while...aside from the Travis post. And although blogging seems slightly pointless to me, I feel like letting you all know what I have been doing since I got back from vacation (despite the fact that half of you already know a lot of it). That's what blogging's for, right?

A few weeks ago was the lovely Kaela's baby shower. Here is a picture of the said lovely, her baby, and myself. (PS Camden was born July 28th...sooo cute.)


I've also been hanging out with these hooligans. Travis "El Gringo" and Jorge.

Here's Becca, Lacey and me. We hung out a bit before Lacey went back up to the Y. I love these girls quite a lot.

And here we are doing what we've done best for 6+ years....entangling ourselves. Seriously, it happens in some way or another every time we hang out.

One night, Lacey, Matt, Travis and I had a burning party. This was a regular occurance in high school. We'd have a burning party at the end of every semester and invite tons of friends to come over and burn all their old homework and school stuff. This was a sporadic burning party, hence only four people.

Travis squared. These two boys and I have gone to my mom's school 3 times all day to help her set her classroom up. Sounds super boring, actually super fun. Especially when Travis and Travis discover things like magic fairy wands (which are barely visible in this picture...sorry about the blurriness). We also discover amazing things like dicut (how the heck do you spell that!?) machines where you can turn full sized papers into puzzles (hehe...), we draw pictures on the white board, read first-grade books to each other (there was a book called "Scruffy" [that's my dog's name] and the last line on the first page read, "Scruffy was a frisky puppy"....we lost it at that point), and have all sorts of other amazing adventures.

Along the lines of Travis Birch, we have been hanging out almost every day for the past 3 or 4 weeks. I know. What do we do? We go to Goodwill, make bowls out of vinyl records, discover new bands which are impossible to read about on the internet (The Jones), have kicking/slapping/punching fights, eat at Taco Bell and Rubios and (drink at) Jamba Juice, lay around my front room. Stuff like that. Sorry, no pictures to show for these events because he DELETED ALL OF THEM off my computer, the butt.

I had a lovely lunch with these two dear friends, Brianna and Jorge. They are so fun. We ate at Costa Vida. If you have not been there, please go, it is amazing. Northwest corner of Baseline and Val Vista in the Dana Plaza. Oh man, writing about this is making me super-crave it...bad idea!!

We said good bye to one of the coolest guys around, Scottie! For those of you who are not in this picture (haha) Scott is the blonde guy in the back with the white shirt. He left on his mission to Ogden, Utah! The day before he left, his brother Brad got home from New Zealand (bringing with him a super awesome accent!). For those of you who care and don't know, from left to right these people are: Linda, Jordan (tall one), Anamin (short one :] ), Scottie, Jorge, Travis, Me, Rhonda.

This is Matt. He was one of my very best friends in high school. We've been hanging out quite a bit lately and have been having a blast (if you couldn't tell by what I did to his shirt in this picture). He is so great. A few nights ago, Matt, Travis, my friend Mitch and I all hung out. Soo fun...we played Rockband and Guitar Hero, ate at Taco Bell, got frozen yogurt, and went to a park where we climbed on the playground and took turns trying to knock each other over. As you may have guessed, I was the only one who got knocked over. :[ This resulted in much sand in my pants.

And this is Jordan. Her birthday was August fourth. A few days before her birthday (probably 3 days), she told me that her birthdays were always lame. I felt really sad for her, so I decided to throw her a surprise party 2 days after her birthday! Here she is being surprised! She had a great time :] and I hope her birthday celebration was not so lame this year, especially since her actual birthday was quite lame from what she told me. I am quite sad though, she is going back up to NAU on Wednesday. Oh how I will miss her. I will be left with no one to carry on entire conversations using nothing but Office quotes. Sigh.

Well, that has been my life the past month or so. Thank you for joining. For more pictures of basically any of the events above, see my Facebook.

Travis Daniel Birch

This is a post about Travis because he was offended that I haven't written a post about him. He is sitting on the couch next to me right now screaming in my ear and now my head hurts and my ear is ringing. I think he is having a baby. This picture is of him being a luchador. Travis and I are getting married. Travis is one of my best friends in the world. So here Travie, I hope you are very thrilled that I have dedicated an entire post to you.


The end.

Family Vacation

*WARNING* This post has many, many pictures. Hope you enjoy.

So about a week ago we got home from our vacation, which was wonderful. We left on June 26th and got home July 6th. We started out by going to Las Vegas for a few days. Here's my lovely brother and I on the way to Vegas.

To be honest, I basically hated Las Vegas. It suffices me to say this: Sin City is the perfect name for it, I saw a real pole dancer for the first time, there is porn literally covering the sidewalks, and I don't exactly call it a "vacation" when you go somewhere that's just as hot as the valley. Not to mention we stayed in a hotel called Circus Circus which featured many, many terrifying clowns that looked like they were capable of turning into real murderers at night. I hate clowns.

Anyways. This next picture features a very, very, very tall building called the Stratosphere. And by very, very, very tall, I mean 1,149 feet or 101 stories high. And Travis and I DANGLED OVER THE EDGE!!!!

There were three rides at the top. They were all actually pretty lame but the anticipation was a killer (as is demonstrated by myself in the next picture...Travis, however, was excited). One of the rides was just a short straight track about 30 feet long or so. You'd sit in the roller coaster and the track would slowly lower over the edge of the building. Then all of a sudden you'd shoot down (straight for the ground!!) and stop right as the coaster reached the end of the track. Another ride was like a giant swing that spun you in circles over the edge of the Stratosphere. That ride actually would have been awesome if it hadn't made me nauseous.

And here is my lovely family atop the Stratosphere.

We also saw a couple of awesome water shows outside the Bellagio. The Bellagio is the building in the background...giant hotel/casino. My dad called it The Great and Spacious Building. Accurate. It looked even Greater and Spaciouser when it was all lit up.

I found Batman and the Joker after the water show was over. (For some reason the Joker doesn't creep me out...just normal clowns.)

Inside the Bellagio, the ceiling of the entranceway was covered with giant blown-glass flowers...it was so pretty! Each flower was probably about the size of an umbrella.

Peace among the chaos and terribleness. The Las Vegas temple.

Here's a picture from the temple grounds.

And a cute pic of my awesome family on the grounds! :]

FINALLY we left Vegas. We headed over to Bear Lake, California. Let me tell you, the weather was absolutely perfect. I think this was probably my favorite part of the vacation. It was such a quaint little town. I think the population is only around 5,000. They had the cutest little shops and it was just such a great place. Our hotel was amazing too. Not to mention it had a heated pool and a lovely jacuzzi. On top of that, the few days we were there, there were hardly any other guests so we often had the pool to ourselves. Here are Travis and I in front of Bear Lake.

Our family went paddle boating/canoeing on the lake but no pictures from that. They're on my mom's camera. This next picture is in the little shopping center called "The Village." My brother is being mature and poking the bear's bum.

(Okay I'll admit it....I told him to pose like this.)

Another great part of Bear Lake was their alpine slide! This thing was so awesome. For any of you who don't know what it is, it's kind of like a louge but on cement. It was SO fun!!! I made a movie going down it...I believe I posted it (along with other movies from the vacation) on Facebook.

The only bummer: Mom went way too fast around a corner, flipped, and got quite a nice flesh wound! Please notice she is laughing hysterically. To this day, it still has not healed completely. Poor Mom.

Mom, Dad and I went to the lake one night to watch the sunset. Here are a couple of pictures from that. The picture that's the background on my blog right now is from this night too.

:]

After Bear Lake, we went to Costa Mesa. I think. Or Newport....I believe we stayed in Costa Mesa but we went to Newport Beach. From what I gather, Costa Mesa and Newport are the kind of like Mesa and Gilbert...no distinction. Anyways. Here's my family in a cool elevator at the mall.

One of the days we were here, Travis and I went to Knott's Berry Farm. My favorite thing about Knott's is all of the berry bushes that grow throughout the park. You can go along and just pick the most delicious berries off the bushes and eat them. There are also several little make-it-yourself milkshake and smoothie stands where you can use the berries you pick. (Joke. This is what I told Travis Birch and he believed me. No berry bushes or milkshake/smoothie stands unfortunately.)

I got this AWESOME lion coin pouch at Knott's!! Travis (my brother) and I were trying to name him but couldn't think of anything. So we decided to call him T until we decided on a better name...but T has stuck.

And here we are at the beach. Trav dug a giant hole. He was trying to make an underground tunnel, but about halfway through he decided it would be a better idea to have Dad and I bury him in it.

Brother and I. Travis is buried in his hole in this picture too. This is after I got my terrible burn which many of you saw the effects of...you can't tell that I'm fried in this picture though. (FYI my skin is STILL peeling. It's almost done though. And I have a nice tan now.)

Here is the Los Angeles temple.

And the Newport Beach temple. Actually I don't know if it's called that or just Newport temple. Anyways.

And here are some neat pictures I took at the Newport temple. I like this next picture because it just says "GROWTH!" to me. Look what you can aspire to be! :]

And I love love love this next picture. So awesome.

This was our last day in California I think. We went to the beach to watch the sunset.

Love this picture of my brother. I kept taking random pictures of him while he was talking to me and this is one of them. You can kind of see his racoon eyes from his sunglasses.

Here is his model pose.

And here we are.

And here is the sunset in all of its glory.

I put this next picture up because out of all the pictures I took, it most clearly shows my sunburn despite the blurriness. Let me tell you, it KILLED!!! I got blisteres all over my chest, arms, back, and knee pits (though some of them didn't surface til we went home). Every single time I would move at all while I was asleep, I would wake up because it hurt so bad. For 3 nights I believe. There was one point where I couldn't even take my shirt off because it hurt too bad to bend my arms in that manner. So I wore the same shirt for 2 1/2 days. Gross, I know. Said shirt is featured in this picture. My brother also got burned pretty badly, and due to these burns, we did nothing to celebrate the 4th of July :[ I was bummed.

I'm sure you'd all like to know that I also didn't wear a bra for two or three days. Hence the jacket. Haha.

Here's my brother and I just being goofy. In Bear Lake there was this little shop where everything was $3. That's where I got this hat (and another one in a different color...plus one for Travis Birch and one for Lacey). Don't ask me when I'll ever wear it....since winters are so cold and snowy in the valley...

Overall, it was a very awesome trip and it was a great chance to make new memories with my family and grow closer to them. It was so fun! But it was certainly good to come home....despite the 115 degree weather that greeted us. Ugh.