i love technology

Technology is great. Today I realized another great reason why. My best friend is on a mission and I write her lots and lots. It would be REALLY nice if I could send her a text, give her a call...things like that. It makes me realize how lucky we are to have the technology we have!

Today I especially wish that Miss Alyssa Eyring had technology. It's really frustrating that I can't write her and hear back immediately, especially when another friend has given her false information about me that I would really like to clear up. Pretty frustrating when your best friends decide to tell other people confidential information, or even made-up information about you.

and that is why technology is fabulous.

Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts!

This weekend I watched Harry Potter 7.2 with my family. I am such a Harry Potter nerd. Here are the reasons why I love it so much... (and my love for it only increased when we got to read the Harry Potter and therapy novel for class)

1. Harry, Ron, and Hermione remind me of my group of friends in high school. We had a pretty good group of guys and girls and we just did everything together! Sometimes we were frustrated with each other, but most of the time we just had the greatest adventures! I love when I can relate to characters in books.

2. They destroy Voldemort but you don't even know it until the very last second. I hate those books/movies where you totally know the whole time that the good guys will win. Then you don't even have to get stressed about the ending because you just know all along that it will be the perfect fairytale. When I read Harry Potter 7 for the first time I remember not knowing what was going to happen, and I loved it! Even this weekend watching the movie it was almost like I could forget what I knew the ending was and it got intense all over again!!!!

3. There are so many different relationships that are SO REAL. Harry and Snape don't get along but you don't realize until too late that its just because Snape was so in love with Harry's mom. Of course he would be rude and jealous! I also love Harry's relationship with the Dursley's. It definitely helped me to realize that dysfunctional families are OK and that good people (like Harry!) can come out of bad situations. Harry's relationship with Sirius Black makes me happy too. Really anything involving Harry makes me a happy girl.

4. I also love that the movies didn't ruin the books. Obviously I was a book lover long before a movie lover, and the movies just made it that much better. I'm the biggest fan.

There are like 100000 reasons why I love Harry Potter so much, but those are just a few.

The only thing that I really don't love about Harry Potter is that Ron and Hermione end up together. I think that Harry and Hermione would be a way better match. But then I guess Ron and Ginny couldn't end up together and everyone has to fall in love, right?

For Thanksgiving break my family took a cruise out of Florida, but before we sailed away we DEFINITELY made a good stop at Universal Studios. I could have lived in Harry Potter land ALL DAY LONG. I even bought myself my own wand. 13 and 3/4 in. Nature Curved Oak with the

aca-scuse me?!

This weekend I went up to my friend Meg's cabin in Midway. We had the best time ever catching up, playing games, eating lots of treats, and we watched Pitch Perfect. I've been hearing about Pitch Perfect FOREVER but just hadn't gotten around to seeing it so I was excited that the girls wanted to watch it.

I thought it was HILARIOUS. I laughed out loud so many times. The story was entertaining, funny, cheesy (but more making fun of acapella groups than real life cheesy)....However, it was terribly crude. The whole movie was full of sex jokes and inappropriate humor. There were so many things that they could have taken out so easily to make it more appropriate. This movie has seriously been the big thing for so many weeks and now that I've seen it I understand why. I couldn't stop watching it because it was so hilarious. But so inappropriate. It's always so frustrating when you find a movie that is so entertaining, but so raunchy. I vowed I'd never see it again because I felt yucky after.....but I'm sad that I vowed that because it was so good!

...and this is what Satan does to me. Makes me love something that I just can't love.

makin memories, makin memories!

There's that old cliche saying...."a picture is worth a thousand words...." Well its totally true! Some pictures seriously are worth more than 1,000 words, which is why I love taking pictures so much. 

So here is my life lately according to my iPhone pictures: (haha pictures are backwards...they start most recent and get less recent....)

survived school through snapchat.

sent and received MANY letters from my favorite sister missionary

celebrated missionary homecomings with mini cupcakes and fabulous roommates

jerusalem reunions!

jerusalem roomie reunions

pictures obviously not in order. snapping with my favorite sister missionary

nineties parties

i miss my missionary

sleepovers with the roomies before alyssa left :(

mac and cheese with my bff.

saying bye to sister eyring :(

lookin fly

crying

welcoming home missionaries!!!!!!!!

listen baby i'm sorry, just wanna tell you don't worry!

I love music. I have always loved music. I love the way it makes me feel. I love those songs that I just can't sit still when they come on. My very most favorite "happy" song right now is On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons. I first heard this song this summer while I was on study abroad in Jerusalem and I just fell in love! Now I love it even more because not only does it just have a happy beat and happy lyrics, but it reminds me of the greatest four months of my entire life.

When I was in Junior High, I went through a phase where I listened to the radio with my friends all the time. We knew every word to every top 40 song (and the lyrics were not great....). I knew I should stop listening to the bad music, but I just couldn't get myself to. It was like listening to that music made me more a part of my group of friends. Our music totally identified us.

Music isn't as much a part of my life anymore, and it definitely doesn't define me or my group of friends. It just makes me happy when I need a little pick-me-up!

nineties

books books books

My favorite book growing up was Harry Potter. I loved the whole series and I can't even tell you how many times I have read each book. I remember re-reading Harry Potter at a really trying time in my own life. My sophomore year of high school I went through a difficult transition with friend groups and found myself without good friends for a short period of time. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were “my friends” at the time, but their example of friendship helped me to realize what type of relationships I would want with my friends. I also learned a lot from Harry’s ambition. As I was reading, I realized that Harry was a very determined young man. He never gave up for anything and was willing to do anything to protect his beliefs. I learned that it is so important to stick up for my beliefs and to fight for what I know is right. My old group of friends were getting into harmful substances and inappropriate behaviors with the opposite sex and seeing Harry’s determination in the books helped me to stand up for my beliefs in front of those friends.

I don't think I really have a favorite book now, but anything in the romance category is just lovely. One of my favorites is  A Distant Thunder by Anita Stansfield. It is an LDS romance novel about an LDS girl and a non-LDS boy who fall in love. Their story takes on many twists and turns as the girl, Elizabeth, loses her brother and the boy, Jayson, deals with his alcoholic father. They help each other through trials and come closer to God and to one another.I love this book a lot because while it is still a sappy romance novel, it is very clean. I read this book over Thanksgiving break while I was going through a break-up of sorts and it helped me see that one day there will be a boy in my life who I wont want to get away from :)

 

the bachelor

I feel like I have to blog about The Bachelor sometime this semester, so I might as well get it over with now. I only watched like twenty minutes of one episode on Saturday and maybe ten minutes last night but that was enough for me. My freshman year we RELIGIOUSLY watched The Bachelor with my Taylor 1200 girls, and I think it was a good bonding experience back then. But now that I'm all good and bonded with my friends/roommates I don't think that watching The Bachelor is a necessity in my life anymore. Although its super entertaining when Tierra tells you that she can't control the way her eyebrows move so expressively or when one girl sits with Sean on the beach and cries telling him about why her family is so important to her and then not ten seconds more into the show ANOTHER girl is snuggling up with Sean on the beach crying as well. It's all just a little too dramatic for me. Or maybe it just bothered me because tomorrow is Valentines day and the only boys I have in my life are ones that I wish would leave my life. But back to The Bachelor...

When I was younger, my mom never let me watch this show. Well actually I probably never asked but I think I just knew it wasn't really appropriate so I assumed it wasn't allowed. That's why I watched it my Freshman year...because my mom didn't need to know. Now that I have watched a season or two, I have realized that it's not really a bad show...it's just not a good show either. Watching it gives me a good laugh, it definitely doesn't influence me to go against 20 other girls to try to win a guy over (not to mention that the guy is most likely a tool)....It's just pure entertainment. But I wonder if it would have impacted me as a teenager. By the time I was "allowed" to watch it, I mostly had myself all figured out. I knew what I believe and what I would and would not do. But had I watched it as a teenager, maybe that would have been different.

So for now, I will just keep watching The Bachelor thirty minutes a week for a good laugh.