Some shenanigans

               

I am going to be IN Africa in 10 days. I leave in 9 days to get there. I will miss a lot of things and I already am missing some of them! This is what I have been up to the last week.

1. Hanging out with my tortoise, Oliver

2. Crazzy nights with my frineds

3. Dinner making with the whole family

4. Watching my sisters fight with Emmanuel, it is the funniest thing ever.

5. Hannah playing me the ukulele and our 5 am talks

6. Jams with Jesse, Bryan, and Hana

7. Being Missionaries and doing missionary work

8. Picking this little one up from school. She is a BALL of energy!

9. I watch these kids every day...I know some days were rough but we went out strong, they thought me so much, they just tickle my heart fancy.

10. Conner, Monday mornings will not be the same with out going on walks with this little one and letting him barf on me.

11. Jeremy and Joshua even though I still have a hard time telling the difference between them to I SO enjoy going to the park with and them telling me I get a 9/10 on a fun scale. 

12. Brother and Sister Ferguson they are the best thing that could happen to senior missionaries

13. Pretending I am in love with this man. He is my husband number 4.

14. My Grandparents

15. Hanging with SOANA

16. Hana Doss-Johnson this girl gots my back. ALWAYS

17.  Institute and Making new friends

18. Taking 6 new pictures of this kid every week. (he is husband number 2)

19. Being with all of my family

Africa

11 days and counting. My handy dandy computer has a count down on it for Africa. I cannot even imagine being in a different country in less then 2 weeks. There has been a few things on my list to do before I head out of the country. Like get my passport, get all of my shots, get and take my medications, and go to the dentist for the first time in 2 and a half years. I got blessed with Maori teeth, aka they are more inclined to get cavities. (naturally weak as some may say) I came out of the appointment with only 5 cavities. I know RIGHT? Be so proud of me.   The dentist did tell me that for someone who has not been in for such a long time my teeth are doing real well and that I have very good hygiene. OH my I was SO excited to hear that little piece of news. I have an appointment for Tuesday to get all my teeth fixed and filled. Then I will be all physically prepaired for Africa. But the mentally prepared hand I think that's a different story. 

My HOT date with Taleah!

     

Tonight my little sister Taleah and I went on a hot date. Really we just drove behind my dad going to find a Christmas tree and she asked if her could come with me. We had SO much fun together, lets be honest. On our way to the second store of the night because the first had for reals about 25 trees at it and they looked like poop, we headed our way over to the wonderful Home Depo. For some reason this little one was just so excited she got to ride with me and in the front seat too. (shh don't tell the cops) We turned on the radio and guess who was on? The BLESSED Selena Gomez. Man this girl LOVES her Selena. So we sang to the rest of I love you like a love song, which wasn't very long. Then the OH so Popular Miss Adele came on, and you bet you, Taleah and I were singing together as loud as we could to that blessed daughter of God...even though her songs are WAY too over played. It was a fantastic night and I will miss her craziness when I head out to Africa.

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Halloween Weekend

        

 So my family ward had a chili cook off. That was the day of the walk-a-thon for my sisters school and my mom was pooped, so I got to make the chili! Here is what i got from it.

That is right. I got second place out of 11 chilies. The elders judged the chili. (all 4 of the elders, the single adult elders and the home ward elders.) I was talking to Elder Miller about it, he is so funny, he told me that it was really close between my chili and chili number 9 (who won). He also said that some of the Chilies were so nasty he gagged just eating one bite of them. haha

After the chili cook off I made it to one of the 3 halloween parties I had planed for the weekend. 

To enter this party, you had to go through a spooky alley and I screamed. It was so fun I love it.

 On Sunday after church 8 of us headed up to the temple for the afternoon. I love this place. It is just so wonderful! While we were there we ran into Olivia.

 HALLOWEEN Erina and Taleah went trick-or-treating with my pops when Soana and I hit up another party.

 At the party they had pie eating contest. No hands allowed. Ian is so funny, his is him drinking his water like a dog. They used the BIG costco pies. I have no idea who ended up winning. It made me sick just to watch.

I also went to a dance, but we didn't take any pictures there. But the dance was SO MUCH FUN! I loved this halloween it was the best one I have yet to have!

Painting Faces

      

This weekend my mom was in charge of the biggest fundraiser of the year for my little sisters school. I am sure most of you have heard of it. All the schools around here do it. It is call a Walk-A-Thon. The idea is that you walk as many laps as you can or want to and get prizes for every 5 laps you walk and people sponsor you money, so like every lap you walk someone might give you like 50 cents. So if you walk 10 laps you made 5 dollars for the school. There are also a hole bunch of games and food and activities you can do. I was in charge of face painting again. It was SO much fun! I LOVE painting little kid-o's faces. the last one i painted was my all time favorite.

The one on the right is the last face I painted. Arn't they SO cute? I know right, SO cute!!!

Lenard

        

One of the boys I nanny, when he is excited he gets up and pases back and forth while sometimes clapping his hands together. If I was him, this would FOR SURE be one of those moments. So last night I went shopping with my dad. It was lots of fun. I like shopping with him. He buys things. Here is what I got last night with my dad. 

(The Pops also got a wireless printer-see in the box in this picture, thats what that is!)

Yup that is right, I got a lap top. I love it. It is a Lenovo. Nobody I have talked to has really heard of these lap tops but the dude at the store (Ervin is his name, and he was way nice, had a real nice grill aka braces and pulled them off quite nicely.) said they are real good lap tops. Also, that it is rare to find this type of lap top with a Intel processor under $500. SCORE! My lap top has a 15.6" screen, is all black, has a 500 GB hard drive, and 4 MB of ram, I think. This baby and I are going to go far in life, so you better prepair yourself. I am still trying to pick a name for him out, so far I have Lenard, but it will not stay...no worries.

Chili WINNER!

   
That is right, I am the FIRST PLACE winner of a chili cook off for my young single adult ward. I do have to say the chili I made is heeeecckka good. I LOVED it! It is called Creamy White Chili. It has chicken in it instead of beef and it is just so good and spicy. I love myself some spice.
Now that you are all proud of me. I do have to say there was only 3 other Chilies. But I am sure if there was more I would have still won, my chili was just that good.

Enjoying the happy meals of life

   
Last night was Institute. I LOVE institute! It is like the best thing that has happened to me. I look forward to it every week...Thank you dad for forcing me to go.
This week we talked about the first 22 of chapters in Numbers in the Bible. It mostly talks about the pride cycle. Anyways, I loved it. It was just want I needed. In Numbers 21:1-9 it talks about a serpent sent to the people from God because they sinned, and so the people go to Moses and are like help us we don't know what to do we have sinned and now all of our people are dying. So Moses got one of the serpents and put them on top of a pole and told the people all they needed to do is look up and they would be saved. And some people did and others didn't.
Then we got into a class discussion and we were talking about when we are going through trials and we pray for help. And most of the times we expect our answer to be something really difficult to do or like a long process. But, when our answer is something easy we are like no...this isn't right; there has to be something else; I cannot just look to a pole and be saved. But some times it is the Lord who is just testing us to see if we will follow what he says no matter how hard or easy it may seem.
Brother Bohn, my institute teacher, said we need to stop eating the Hater Tots and drinking the Hater Aid and start enjoying the Happy Meals of life. There IS always hope. He said it is okay to feel bad when things aren't going as well as they have in the past. But then you can pray to be happy again, to help see your path more clearly, to help your back strengthened so that you can keep going on this path of life.
I know when times get hard, that it is for a reason. When we learn that earlier on that it will make the trial more bearable to know that Heavenly Father is on our side. And Christ already paid the price for all our burdens.

Keep Your Head Up

So today i watched 9 kids. and it was CRAZY. I do not think I will volunteer for that ever again. Maybe one friend each for each kid next time at the max. WOW. It was intense. 

When I was driving home and was thinking to myself "YES I MADE IT THROUGH!!!" (I was very proud of myself) Then this song just happened to come on the radio and I BLASTED it while singing it on the top of my lungs. 

(I don't know how to post a link yet, but here it is. I'll figure it out and then post it the right way, if you know how please leave me a comment on how to do it.)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmrOB_q3tjo 

My favorite part is- 

This is just a journey
Drop your worries
You are gonna turn out fine.
Oh, you'll turn out fine.
Fine, oh, you'll turn out fine.

But you gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.

You gotta keep your head up, oh,
And you can let your hair down, eh.

HAIR

...My sister (Mega-roni) will be so PROUD.
I decided last night that I am not going to cut my hair again until I come home from New Zealand. Which will be around like this time next year. Yes you heard that NEW ZEALAND. Okay it is not a for sure, for sure thing that we (my family and extended family) are going. But, you know I am going to do everything in my power to be able to go and I am PUMPED!!
Here is my goal length (not to long not to short)

(this picture is from 2007 homecoming)

Senior year of  high school I had really long hair like middle back, and if you have know me for the last 2 years, you know my hair is always at my shoulders or above. Not any more. MUHAHA this is going to be so good. I am excited. 

27 things I love

1. PINKBERRY, oh my BEST thing that has EVER happened to the earth.

2. Letters from missionaries

3. Going out to lunch

4. Children, now that sounds creepy huh? haha so funny. 

5. Taking pictures!

6. The ukulele

7. HUGS

8. Swimming

9. Family!

10. Laughing and Smiling

11. Singing on the top of my lungs!

12. The Oakland temple

13. Flowers

14. The color YELLOW

15. Dancing in the kitchen

16. Cleaning when nobody is home.

17. Randomly busting up laughing for something that happened forever ago.

18. Jeeps and Toyota Tundras

19. Staying busy

20. The beach.

21. Corn on the cod

22. Being a helper

23. Pictures

24. Brown people

25. Being spontaneous

26. When everyone gets along

27. Blog stalking photography blogs.