thinking of you

i loved this song the very first time i heard it, long before they started playing it on the radio.  i think katy perry is a brilliant lyricist.  and this song never gets old to me.  it gets me every time.

someone once asked me, "would you rather be married to someone who could never love you but who you were completely in love with or married to someone who is desperately in love with you but who you could never really love?"  i have no idea and i think it's a really mean question.  unrequited love, you are the meanest thing i have ever come across in life.  just thought you should know.

cavity free!!!

went to the dentist today and i have no cavities!!!  i repeat... none.  for most of you normal people out there in the world that might not be a big deal.  but for someone whose older sister once came back from the dentist with 12 cavities (that's right, 12... in one sitting.  this was obviously before she discovered the beauty that is sugar-free gum... and no brooke, you'll never live that one down) this is revolutionary.  my family has a history of soft teeth, people.  so let me have my moment of glory.   my teeth feel a little like this guy.  that's right, i've got super schwartz teeth!  i can almost feel pj's coveting eyes as he reads this.  numbness wear off yet, squeege? 

lebron

if you ever watch king james play, you can expect to see this... all night long. 

earlier in the semester ryan took me to a jazz game.  i was really excited because i love the jazz and jump at the chance to watch them play.  little did i know that this was no ordinary jazz game.  this was the jazz game that will forever mark the night i fell in love with a man named lebron james.  dear ex-boyfriends and all of the other men in my life, how in the world did you never mention to me the name lebron james?  you have failed me.  but it's alright, because fate made things right.  i haven't had that much fun watching anyone play basketball since jordan, whom i adore. lebron's passes are magical and he completely dominates on the court.  he had a whole handful of amazing dunks that night, which normally would have really frustrated me because i'm really competitive and can't stand to watch my team lose.  but lebron, you can come and beat my team any time you want.  i am a witness.  we are all witnesses.

dear lebron, i think i love you.

after the game, we ran over to try and get close to lebron.  as he was leaving, he threw up his sweatband.  the guy on the left caught it.  ryan stole a kiss despite the kung-fu panda grip of the excited, slightly untrusting new owner of the lebron game sweatband.

and i sweet talked the guy into letting me wear it for a picture. i'll never wash this forehead again.  ever.

fidelity

regina spektor is brilliant.  this video never gets old.

road trip!

i just got back from a four day trip to la with some friends.  ben, jaremy and i went to an audition and lane came along for the ride.  the weather was beautiful!  it was so fun to walk around in summer dresses and shorts and t-shirts.  remind me to move somewhere warm in the future.  i can't take utah's bipolar weather anymore.  

we did lots of fun things while we were there.  we hung out on santa monica peer, spent two days at the beach (i forgot how much i love the sound of the waves and how good for the soul it is just to walk along the beach), had frozen yogurt at pinkberry and yogurtland, visited the kodak theatre mall, did the walk of fame and visited the chinese theatre.  

lane and i went to lunch one day at a little restaurant called uwink.  it was really fun.  each of us had a little tv screen in front of us.  they have you order on the tvs and then use it to play games with everyone on your table.  lane and i played the "first date game".  it was actually really fun.  it had a bunch of questions for us to ask each other and, of course, we chose to ask all of the "spicy" questions.  i think i know lane a lot better than i used to... as if sharing a hotel room for 4 nights wasn't enough. :)

we also went to my favorite restaurant in downtown la called miceli's. it's the oldest italian restaurant in la.  it's been open for 60 years. the food is delicious and the restaurant itself is so ambianceful.  there's a really cute old man that plays live piano music.  the whole thing is adorable.  

the trip was so laid back and fun.  it's great to go on audition road trips with people that do it right.  i love my boys.  

at dinner with ben, lane, jaremy and kevin

lane's oval of destruction.  and yes, i destroyed him.

pinkberry.  how i've missed you.  lane likes it even better than yogurtland.  just ask him.

laner and i at lunch at the kodak theatre mall

our special night at the "adventure"

pound it

sometimes i have awesome dumb blonde moments.  and by awesome i mean pretty hilarious and usually very embarrassing.   mostly they're brought out by my family, but a couple of weeks ago one slipped out in a conversation with a provo police officer.  

i had been in an accident near campus and a local policeman came to help us sort out all of the paper work.  pj, being the sweet brother that he is, came to hang out with me while we got everything worked out.  while pj and i were talking and laughing, as usual, the officer came over to relay some information.  he said, "now if you have any problems, just give me a call at 422-2222."  

well, as he was saying that, he held out his fist (maybe to physically emphasize each number that he was rattling off? we'll never know) and naturally, i figured he wanted me to pound it.  so, i did.  but just as our knuckles collided, i realized that he hadn't wanted to me pound it at all.  my mind was so preoccupied by figuring all of this out and being mortified that i had just pounded it with a police officer that i completely missed his phone number and had to ask him to repeat it.  422-2222?  hello, maybe one of the easiest phone numbers in the book!  neither pj nor i could hold it in.  we started laughing and tried to control it until the conversation with the officer had ended.  but oh, did we laugh about that one the rest of the way home! 

so when in doubt... pound it.  at least it'll be good for a laugh.

smoothie

shaved my legs this morning so i could wear shorts here in la.  i love the feeling of my legs when they're newly shaved. i couldn't help but rub them all day.  i have a little secret for making them extra smooth.  shave with conditioner.  try it... you'll never go back.

evening at the ball

ever since i can remember, i've always dreamed of going to a ball with someone i love.  call me a hopeless romantic, i know it... i am.  but how amazing would it be to spend an evening dolled up with the person you love at a ball?  my ukrainian friend lucy dreams of owning a castle in italy and we used to joke that she would host a ball in her italian castle and i would fly out with the love of my life to attend.  i like to think it's going to happen.  i think i'll wear something resembling this gorgeous little ditty...

sicky

the past couple days, i've been feeling like this little guy looks. i think i shall call him herman. 

dear herman, please feel better 'cause i don't want to feel how you look anymore!  i just got back from taking a test so i think i'm gonna take some more drugs and go back to bed. 

zzzzzzzz.......

ellen

love her.  my mom always dvrs her shows for pj and me so i we can watch them when we're home.  love her monologues, ridiculously hilarious games, shameless ploys to get george clooney to come onto her show, her skits with paris hilton, watching her dance in the audience and over her little coffee table, her personableness that makes everyone love her and the amazingly talented guests she has on her show.

click here and here to see two of my favorite performances from her show.

top 22!

some people think i'm joking when i tell them that my big brother graduated from byu in accounting and is now a pop star in china.  well, now i have footage to prove it.  benji just made it into the top 22 on taiwan's hit tv series "super idol".  benji, i'm so proud of you!!

p.s. thanks for showing me how to upload videos, laner. :)

my ambianceful city

thinking of my beautiful city.  5 more weeks.

music for the soul

time by billy porter makes me think about life.

sorry by maria mena breaks my heart.

heart of the matter by india arie makes me want to understand and forgive.

the way i am by ingrid michaelson makes me want to fall in love.

girly perks

i hate the song, "i enjoy being a girl".  but it's true... i love being a girl.  it has its perks.  

i've had a couple of moments in the past couple of weeks that have made me smile simply because i'm a girl.  

the other week i was hit by a guy who decided to make a u-turn across my lane and smash into the front-right corner of my car.  later in the week he called to make sure i was doing alright. i guess he was serious about making sure i was being taken care of and asked me to lunch that friday to prove it. maybe he wanted to make sure i was getting enough to eat as well as paying for a rental car far nicer than my own for a couple of days? pj rolled his eyes.  i just smiled.

last week it snowed here in provo.  yes... snowed... again.  don't ask me why.  one afternoon i had to run up to campus to turn in an assignment.  the parking area closest to the building i was going to was guarded by a campus parking monitor.  i smiled and told him i was just stopping in to drop off an assignment and i'd be right out.  i could tell he felt badly as he told me that he was only allowed to let faculty into that particular parking lot.  so i put on the sweetest face i could muster and said, "since it's so cold and snowing, can i just run in there and drop it off?" he smiled and let me pass.  parking monitor whoever you are, you were my hero that day!  and you reminded me how great it is to be a girl.

i also got pulled over for going 15 over in a construction zone coming back from california a couple of weeks ago and got off with a warning as a "gift from the sheriff's office" as the copper put it. thank you mr. nice police man! the boys i was with rolled their eyes and laughed.  i just smiled.

sweet tooth fairy bakery

found this adorable little bakery here in provo right across the street from the provo towncenter.  i had heard about it from a friend so i decided to stop by one night.  i met the owner, a really cute 28 year-old named Megan Faulkner Brown.  she and her husband just barely opened up the shop.  it's adorable and the cupcakes and fudge brownie cakes bites i sampled were delicious.  the cake bites were recently featured on rachel rae.  if you're in the area, go try it!

yum.

catch

most people who know me now are surprised to find out that i was totally a tomboy when i was little.  i had a car collection and i begged my mom to let me wear my favorite collared red and white striped button-up every day.  most of my best friends were boys when i was little.  i guess they liked to play with me because i would play sports with them and actually put up a fight. while other girls were playing with their polly pockets at the age of 9, i was running hills and playing catch, helping my friend danny train for the football team.  i thought his helmet was the coolest thing on planet earth. ok, i may have had a polly pocket of my own too.

i love that it's finally starting to get warmer in provo.  makes me want to play catch. guess it's the tomboy in me.

if you're on vay-cay it's o-kay

last week i sent a text to zack that said, "you know what would be fun..."

he replied with, "taking a road trip down to st. george this weekend?"  ...that's why i love zack. he gets me.

so this past weekend conner, zack, kira and i took a break from provo and went down to st. george. we stayed with zack's grandma and grandad.  i adopted zack's grandma nanni as my own.  i love her.  we decided that we're going to be family this summer while i'm living down there. 

we originally planned this trip so we could watch the byu bball team win their championship game down in vegas. luckily, they ended up losing the night before the big game... because what we did was way more fun.  

saturday morning we slept in, woke up to grandma nanni's homemade breakfast and went for a run on the beautiful st. george red rock.  we climbed down a gully and sat on some huge boulders for a while talking and thinking about life (one of my favorite things).  then we free-style ran down through the gully (something else i love to do... brooke and i used to do it all the time when we went hiking).  

that afternoon we headed to vegas where we were met by a free hotel room at the vegas hilton which included free room-service and a free meal at any restaurant in the hotel. thank you bart and michelle oates! we may or may not have ordered about $350 of free room service this weekend.

that night we took a tram to one end of the strip and took a little stroll stopping by mgm to see the lions (which kira and i loved), the ny ny to have some tasty pizza, the paris to see the eiffel tower and the billagio to see the fountains, blown glass and gardens.  we spent the rest of the evening relaxing in our room with a movie and dessert on the tab.  

not bad for kira's first vegas experience!

the clan.

kira.  love this girl.

in-n-out... of course.

the lions at mgm.  we stood in the tunnel right underneath these big kitties.

mr. conner

i have a weakness

can't get enough of it...ever.  i don't really like ice cream.  i'll eat it every once in a while, but i don't love it.  frozen yogurt is so much lighter and i could eat it any time of the day or night. 

preston introduced me to pinkberry while i visited him in la this summer and it remains my favorite frozen yogurt to date.  i swear there is some addictive substance buried in every cup.  i cant wait to live outside of utah so i can enjoy pinkberry whenever i want!

but for now, i'm satisfied with my provo addiction to yozone.  if you live in provo, utah and you haven't been... promise me you will.  you'll thank me.

thank you boyz ii men

two weekends ago my friend weston invited me to road trip out to wendover with him and some other friends to see boyz ii men in the flesh.  i lived in england during the boyz ii men craze so didn't really know what to expect.  but weston and geoff were so excited.  geoff wore the boyz ii men t-shirt that he used to wear in high school and both of them wore the backstage passes they had bought when boyz ii men came to utah this past fall.  their excitement was pretty contageous.  

we played around at one of the casinos and had a buffet dinner before the show.  our seats for the show were amazing.  they were right up front in cushy, leather seats.  we were so close that we got to go up to the stage during some of the songs.  i went up with a crowd of other girls during "on bended knee" and they came to the edge of the stage to give each of us roses. i may or may not have touched each of their hands.  they also had everyone call their moms during "momma" and took a couple of the cell phones to sing to people's moms.  they were really cute.  three black men with amazing black voices in beautiful suits...not a bad night! thanks westy! and of course, the only way to top off a night like that is with frozen yogurt. we stopped by red mango once we got back to salt lake. yum. 

the group. geoff, shannon, weston and me

my rose from nathan

my chinese pop star

my brother benji is a rising pop star in china.  but really...he is.  he's currently living in taiwan and at the moment he's in the top 22 of taiwan's hit tv show "super idol" (the equivalent to our "american idol").  curious?  watch benji here.

this boy is my inspiration! benji has always been the biggest champion of my creativity and it's because of him that i feel that i have permission to dream big and follow those dreams until they come into fruition.  he's always telling me how much he believes in me and how he can't wait to be the first person in line cheering me on when i'm living my dreams. 

this one's for you, benji!  i love you and i believe in you too.  good luck this weekend!!!