Read at your own discretion

This is a post I have been anticipating for several days now. I have some very exciting, noteworthy news!

I lost my big toenail today!

Yup, after weeks of it dying, and ripping, and after days of it hanging on by only a few threads, it is finally off!

Now I realize that a fair percentage of people may be wondering what in the world possessed me to want to write a post, and heaven forbid put up PHOTOS of such a thing, but, hey I think its pretty cool. Actually, I could not contain my excitement when it finally came off.

It started when about half of the toenail turned yellow and died. Then the rest of the toenail died when it got stepped on or ripped.

This is how its been for a long time.

Today, I got it to move this far! Ok, this picture may or may not have been taken during sacrament meeting, using my cell phone. I could feel the nail being moved around a lot against my shoe, and so I used one hand to wiggle the nail, all while listening to the talks. No one even knew it. I could tell that the end was in sight, and that my nail wasn't gonna stay on for much longer, and since this is such a momentous occasion, I did discreetly click a picture of it with my phone.

Finally, during the last verse of the closing hymn, it came off! And my brothers were so intrigued that they passed it up and down the bench (just with our family.)

Also, apparently some sort of wanna-be nail has been growing underneath the old one. It's not a "real" nail, but it is rather hard. There isn't just flesh and skin, that's all I'm saying.

Just a comparison of wacked up toe and normal toe.

So, I also took some pictures of the removed toenail, however... they won't upload to the computer. Wierd. But I assure you, it just crazes me out.

My love affair

For the past several, several years, I have been in love with my strawberry chapstick. True story.

I always have this with me. All times, all places, all situations. If I don't have pockets or a purse, I give it to someone else to hold it for me.

Always the same brand. Always the same flavor, unless its an emergency and I can't find strawberry anywhere in the store.

It's become just a habit, almost an involuntary motion, right along with breathing and pumping blood, to pull it out and apply liberally.

Just like food, clothing and shelter, it's a necessity of life.

Paradigm shift

So, I am conspicuously not in France. I was supposed to be there about 4 or 5 days ago. However, a few days before I was supposed to leave, I just had some really bad feelings about going, and prayed a lot and felt really strongly that I needed to cancel, and to stay in the US. So, kinda lame that I wasn't able to go over, but I know it was the right decision.

Now, though, I have seven weeks before I go out to Utah to get married. What am I supposed to do in those seven weeks? Answer: work at the bakery, and do balloons. I'm actually pretty lucky, both of these jobs have been things I've been able to come home and jump right back into. My schedule for working at the bakery isn't too bad: Mondays starting at 4am, Wednesdays starting at 7am, Thursdays at 8am, and Fridays at noon. And then Friday nights/Saturdays I can do balloon gigs. It works out well.

Back to the France thing. We were able to cancel my plane ticket over there, and get back all the frequent flyer miles I had used to get it. Both my parents and Matthew knew how much I was looking forward to this internship, and so they secretly collaborated together on Saturday, and Matthew completely knocked the socks off me when he asked if I would be ok going on our honeymoon to Paris. Would I ever! That'll be fabulous, hands down, no questions asked.

It's rare that people really pull off a true surprise like that on me. I have radar like a bat.

Time feels like its slowed down to a screeching halt. It needs to be August nooowwwwwwwww.

Us

Matthew and I first met on his mission, he was serving as a missionary in my home ward, and I was home for a month or two in the summer. Basically we became aware of each other's existence when he was on his mission. The following January, when we were both back in school at BYU, he saw my profile picture I had up on facebook. I had told one of my friends that if he would let me borrow his blue sweater over Christmas break, I would take a picture with it in front of the giant snowman by my house.

This is the picture I posted on facebook.

Matthew saw this picture, and started talking facebook chatting with me. We started talking a lot, hung out a few times, went on a date or two, and thats how we started dating. So, in a way, you could say that this oversized snowman brought us together. Aww, how romantic...?

L'amour

We look like we're about to get beamed up.

Matthew was so excited this weekend that he decided to play a fanfare on his trombone.

How it all went down...

It's times like these when I realize just how clumsy and awkward words are at accurately and completely describing my emotions and how I feel. I can say that I'm happy, thrilled, excited beyond compare. I could say that life is bliss, that I'm floating on clouds, that I've had a huge silly grin glued on my face for the past few days. And I could even say that my immenent trip to France has been momentarily forgotten (which is a pretty big deal, which anyone who knows anything about me could testify to). These descriptions are all true, just, somehow it doesn't quite capture it all. I'm marrying my best friend, I'll get to be with him forever; how in the world can that be put into words?

Ok I admit. We actually had decided about 3 weeks ago that we were going to get married. So I totally knew it was coming. We had even started to plan some things for our wedding, all before we were officially engaged and the ring was on my finger (because I was going to be gone for most of the summer in France and we wanted to get married at the end of the summer) However, we didn't really want to tell people or have anyone know, and I tell you what, that was so hard. So, ok I may or may not have told some people. Possibly.

Matthew came up on Tuesday. I was so anxious for him to get here that for the last half hour to an hour before he got here I was just kinda sitting on my couch, maybe reading some stuff but mostly watching out the window for him. When I saw his car pull in, I ran out and probably would have tackled him if the car hadn't kept him up :)

That night, Matthew did "the talk." As in, the "ask the father if he can marry the daughter" talk.

(Matthew's on the right, dad's on the left)

Mom and I, like any self-respecting females, spied and tried to eavesdrop on their conversation. First we opened the bathroom window just a smidgen and tried to listen through the crack, however, the sound of water dripping on tarp outside the window really muffled any sound we may have been able to hear. So then we snuck into the garage and laid down next to the door to the backyard. We even brought the video camera and could hear pretty clearly. Unfortunately after all that effort, once we could actually hear them, I felt bad about eavesdropping and we went back inside. Mom, on the other hand, had no qualms whatsoever, and would've stayed out the entire time.

Wednesday I showed Matthew around the Mall of America, and we went through the amusement park there. (Although no rides. They were so dang expensive!) And after satisfying our Chinese cravings at Great Moon Buffet, we headed out to the Walker Sculpture Garden. These gardens feature some really cool abstract art-ish sculptures.
After walking around for a while, we crossed a pedestrian bridge to go to Loring Park, just on the other side of the street. There we found this pretty little circle area that was filled with trees and bushes and flowers and plants, and also some benches. So we sat down there, and just kinda basked in the pretty nature stuff around us. Now, about this time, I'm thinking that hm this spot is nice, I know Matthew's gonna propose sometime soon, but I wasn't really sure when it was gonna be. We were sitting at that bench for quite a while, and so I was pretty much thinking that he was going to wait until later. At one point, I told him I loved him, and he smiled and said good, and then got down on a knee, pulled out a box with a ring, and asked me to marry him! woot!

The bench

We're totally engaged!

The RING. I love it.

A close up. By the way, Matthew totally picked it out himself.

It's kinda funny that, even though we both knew and were planning for a few weeks to get married, him actually proposing and an actual ring on my finger just made me sooo happy, and physically incapable of getting that huge smile off my face for the rest of the evening.

It's 100% legit. We are so getting married.

Will someone please slap me so I know I'm not dreaming?

Matthew and I are engaged!!!!!!!!!
Yay yay yay
happy happy happy
August 14, 2009
Draper Temple
Time and all eternity, baby

5th grade just isn't like it used to be

This past week I subbed at Weaver Elementary, the school close to my house where I went, and where Andrew goes right now. Needless to say, he was really excited that his older sister was going to be working at his school. The first two days subbing there I was mostly outside, working with the field days that were going on. Ah, it was a tough job, working out in the nice sunny weather... but hey someone's gotta do it.

The third day, however, I was inside the building, doing actual work sorta stuff. Towards the end of the day, I looked at my schedule and realized that I was supposed to be in Andrew's class for an hour or two. I walked in and realized that his class was in the midst of working on this ongoing big robots project. Apparently they were in groups and were supposed to be building any sort of creative amusement park ride that they could come up with. They were using all sorts of little lego parts to make these creations, and using hot glue guns at time to help things stay in place. However, that wasn't the main focus of the project. They were also given some sort little mini computer thing, maybe the size of a small brick. This small brick communicated with a program on a Mac, where they programmaed it to do all sorts of movements and turns and stops and... stuff with the lego creations hooked up to the brick. So each group had their own Mac to use, their own brick thing and the lego resources to make a complex amusement park ride.

These are 5th graders. Working on a programming projects with a computer program called Robo lab. I never did anything like that in elementary school.

!!!!

May I just announce to the whole entire world that...

Matthew is coming on Tuesday!

I can hardly function I am so excited.

<3