2nd happiest day of my life thus far

I'm going to Italy!!! That's right. with my bestie stacy!! July 15-24. WOOT WOOT! 

I also bought my ticket to Utah for May 28-June 6. Which is equally exciting on a different level. I get to see my sister brittany and all my besties I left out there and eat Gurus and yogurtland everyday of my life and my other bestie RACHEL is getting married! This is shaping up to be a pretty good summer.

Betrothed

Well it's no secret there's a ring on my finger these days, but it is only right to blog about one of the biggest/happiest days in a girls life! I'm engaged to the love of my life! It's a very surreal feeling. And it feels so right. I couldn't be happier about our decision. Don't worry, I won't bore you with all the details here, but if you would like to read the full story, you can find it HERE!* Yep, I made a wedding website. I've had a severe lack of sleep the last couple days, but at least I've got my priorities straight!!
****DISCLAIMER--the site says our wedding date is Sept 10, but that is a random date it had me put in. We still have no idea. 

I was lucky enough to visit Duke in San Diego last weekend. We had a ton of fun. We ate waaaayyyyy to much. (my pants seriously don't fit the same since i've been back) We had some good laughs and made some good memories!!

Got in late Thursday night, so didn't do anything till Friday. But Duke brought me some pretty yellow roses to the airport!

Friday morning we went to an awesome restaurant called Hash House a go go.

It was seriously amazing!! I thought of my friend Loral and her husband---you guys would love this place. The portions were outrageous and the food was delicious! I got a blueberry/pecan pancke and it was HUGE.

 

Duke got some kind of hash thing with a biscuit and mashed potatoes.

It was a chillier day and kinda rainy. We went to mission beach and walked around and got ice cream and read the oatmeal comic book.

Then went to the mall to hit up h&m. I love that store. I wish they believed in expanding their stores or online shopping. come on!
Saturday we ate breakfast at a little french bakery/cafe thingy.

It was yummy, then we drove out to Ramona to hike up to cedar creek falls, which was realllllllly pretty. beautiful area. That is where Duke asked to me marry him! Once again the rest of that story can be found here.

Engaged!!! woot woot!

happy

Sunset Cliffs

 

Bleu Boheme

Such a great weekend.

my hair & happy things

My hair is a love/hate relationship. I love my hair. I would be ugly without it. However, it takes a lot of time to have hair. You have to wash it, and then blow dry it, and then brush it and then figure out what to do with it. And then the next thing you know, you have to do it all over again. I realize most people probably wash their hair everyday and its no big, but that just doesn't work out for me. I typically wash my hair 3 times a week...Last week, it was 2 times. Saturday was a scary day. Sounds gross, huh? I just hate washing my hair. If I wash it, I have to blow dry it and that means damage to my already fragile hair. I even revolve what days I run around what days I will wash my hair. Anyways, I'm sure thats more than anyone cares to know, but the point is, I'm not gonna let my hair decide what I do anymore! I will wash it when it needs washed and whatever happens, happens. 

Guess what? The walmart home office has a little pharmacy inside of it for the associates, isn't that kinda cool?? hah, I just found that out today. I love Walmart. They really do make the world a better place. Anyways, remember my post about fast walkers yesterday? Well today I was walking with this guy I work with to the pharmacy and on the way back he said, "I'm glad you're a power-walker like me" and I started laughing, and told him my feelings about walkers as well. Especially when it's cold outside...helloooo, lets move it! Anyways. 

I also got my very own AAA card today!! yay!! My mom has had one for years, but for some reason I got one this year too. I feel safer. 

Also, I love Sam's club/Costco. We don't have a Costco in Arkansas for obvious reasons, but I feel like they are essentially the same thing. It is factually true that the food is better at Sam's club than at walmart. If you don't believe me, buy a carton of strawberries and/or blueberries at Walmart and then buy some at Sams club and well, then you will believe too. And its just fun to buy stuff in big quantities for some reason...I don't know what it is. AND! I went today and they have a self-checkout now! and its cool, bc you get to use the laser gun scanner thing. Anyways, it made me happy. 

Now that I have officially rambled for the length of this post, I am finished.

Quarterly Braindump

I have to get something off my chest. a random pet peeve of mine I just have to vent about to feel better.
here we go:

I find myself annoyed/feeling weird when i'm reading a blog post and the post is finished, but then the blogger adds in some questions at the bottom that relates to the post. For example: Lets say the post was about how the person loves post-it notes, at the end she writes: "what about you? do you love post-it notes? what are your favorite kind?" ahhhhhh it drives me crazy!!!!! i don't know why. It just looks like they are fishing (i almost spelt that phishing) for comments. It makes the person look robotic and not like a real person. It just irks me. I love blog stalking, its one of my favorite hobbies. but oh the questions...why?! (disclaimer-i still continue to read the blogs with the questions bc i like them. also this does not apply to a post that in and of itself is a question to the general public) it felt good to put that out there.

I have 2 other things to say:
1. I've never appreciated friday as much as I have the last 2 fridays. working is so tiring. Even though I pretty much sit all day, Everyday I come home and crawl into my bed.

2. I like people who walk fast. Not that I don't like people who walk slow. I guess what i'm trying to say is that I have an appreciation for fast walkers, I have an instant kinship with them. I am a fast walker. I think I always have been and I really can't help it. It takes a lot of effort for me to walk slow. Like you know when you're walking somewhere and then you see someone ahead of you that you know, but don't really feel like chatting it up with, so you just slow down so you never catch up? Well when these kinds of things happen, it is so hard to walk slow! I just don't know how to do it I guess.
I also know that sometimes I walk so fast that I scare people. It always cracks me up. I'll come around a corner or something and people will kind of jump or scramble to move out of the way. Maybe that means I need to slow down. But i can't!

On a side note, I changed which parking lot I park in at work and since then I've realized it takes me longer to walk from my car to my desk than it does for me to drive from my house to work. Only by about a minute or so, but still...it seems so wrong.

sandy ego

The silver lining of a long distance relationship comes when you get to visit each other in fun places. Last weekend I went and visited my boyfriend in San Deigo and it was very fun. Good way to celebrate my last few days of freedom before becoming a slave to the man again. It was a super short trip, but we had a couple days to do some fun things. For any food lovers out there, let me just tell you, if you are looking for the best mexican food you've ever had in your life, go to Luche Libre taco shop in san diego.

Luche Libre

 It was soooo gooooooddd. so good. Also We went to the cuuuutest little french restaurant- Cafe Chole, which was also absolutely divine and precious.

We also decided that you can judge a restaurant by it's bathroom (that is nicer restaurants--prob not your dirty, yet delicious mexican restaurants). If the bathroom is impressive, generally speaking, its going to be a good restaurant. We appreciate weird things. And we really love food. Every restaurant we go to, we either hear about on tv, or spend a good amount of time researching on urban spoon and cross checking reviews on google, yelp, seriouseats, chow hound, you name it. We don't mess around with our food. We appreciate good food and will do what it takes to get it!!

Moving on... we went to the lovely san diego zoo! It was really cool and lots of fun. You should go sometime. Animals are pretty cool. Plus I've been reading Life of Pi (highly recommend it!) and he lives in a zoo, so it was a little more interesting than usual for me.

i don't really want to talk about my pose in this pic.

i love giraffes eyelashes!

fun fact: elephants gestation period is 22 months. yikes.

i took like 60 pics of the polar bears..i just couldn't stop!

 

fun fact: hippos have no sweat glands

Other fun things we did include: going to La Jolla beach and I got to do a legit flight simulator and "flew" over San Diego, and did a couple 360's and only crashed like 4 times! 

la jolla shores

he's gonna kill me for putting this pic on here--but hes the one who took it. mwahaha

 I love san diego. Its a beautiful city, very clean, warm, lots of cool stuff. I love visiting it!

My Best Friends Wedding!

Sooo as I mentioned my sister, Brittany, got married on Feb 5 in salt lake. It was sooo much fun!! and it really turned out so beautiful. The whole day seems like a such a blur. There were sooo many people I hadn't seen in a long time and so many people to talk to and catch up with. It was so fun to see all the people who came out though. That's one of the reasons weddings are so fun I think, you get to see so many people who you haven't seen in a while.
Also, i was thisclose to catching the bouquet. In fact in flew directly into my hand, as you will see in one of the pictures below, and then just bounced right back out. It was so tragic. And then a cute little girl just picked it up. (she was closer to the ground) I suppose it made her day, so I'm ok with it. I just felt it was my duty to catch the bouquet at my sisters wedding..but i failed.

All these pics are from the photographers blog: alixannlooslephotography.blogspot.com. She did an awesome job i thought.

 

do you see that desperate attempt of mine?? so pathetic...

Best Day Ever

Today is the best day ever. And I will tell you why:

1. Slept in till about 10:30
2. Got a JOB!!! Walmart-private brands analyst (kinda scared about actually DOING the job)
3. Job turned out to be DOUBLE the pay i thought it was. Yes, literally double.
4. The weather is 70 degrees and sunny
5. I went for a run
6. In 3 hours I'm hopping a plane to San Diego to spend the weekend with my boyfriend.

Seriously, could this day get any better? Some days you're the hydrant, some days you're the dog. Today makes up for all those sucky days.

It feels so good to have a job.

Frozen Yogurt tales

So when it comes to frozen yogurt, I consider myself a connoisseur. My boyfriend says I am a food snob. Either way, I just have a really deep LOVE for frozen yogurt. I even drove 40 minutes out of the way on my way home from Kentucky to get some. This is how much I love it. With this all in mind and the fact that I walked in after having a really downer-kind of day, let me tell you this little story.

Bentonville is a little behind the craze. But they did recently open a new place called YumYos. I've been excited to try it out and today I did just that. Here's how it played out... I walk in and some girl, hopped up on redbull, is behind the counter and says, "is this your first time here?" I say "yes.." and she's like "oh!" and walks all the way over from the counter to tell me how to do the yogurt. "We have 15 different flavors and you just get a bowl and the middle lever.." me interrupting--"combines the flavors" (yeah i get it) she continues "and we have thirty six different toppings, so be sure to try them all out!" I kinda wanted to be like, 'sweetie, this isn't my first time in america, but thank you?'

Anyways, My usual go-to is the cali tart with a bunch of fruit. So, i grab my bowl and start pouring, and the second it hit my bowl, I already knew it was no good. The color and texture were not right at all. so i moved to the strawberry. The strawberry looked like a better consistency so I gave it a go. Popped on some not-so-fresh fruit toppings and paid a whopping $4.76. I had one bite, and was disheartened. The strawberry flavor wasn't horrible, it was just very mediocre and just not what i'm use to i suppose. but I dug to the bottom to try the tart, and was seriously grossed out. It wasn't tart, it was SOUR. So i ate all the fruit off the top, downed a few more bites of strawberry, then thought, maybe the tart wasn't that bad. So i tried it again, and I couldn't help but make a face. It was absolutely horrible.

But then I came home, gave it to my little sister and mom, and they thought it was great. But it is kind of a fact that my mom has highly desensitized taste buds so that really doesn't say much.

I will say the best frozen yogurt i've ever had is probably fro.zen.yo in DC. But it also could have something to do with the fact I was very hungry the 2 times I had it. But still. I  believe it's completely delicious. Also Spoon It Up in provo is high on my charts and Yogurtland is delicious as well. and red mango is good, but the non-self-serve thing kinda blows.

I tried to tell my boyfriend how after you've had the good stuff, the bad stuff is so apparent. It's like if all you had ever eaten was Spaghetti-o's you wouldn't know what you were missing out on. But after you had say, carrabba's spaghetti, you would never go back to spaghetti-o's  (unless of course, you are homeless, on the verge of death and someone hands you a can of spaghetti-os). He claims he can't taste a difference between any of the places. And thus, I am a food snob. But if I am, so be it. I just like good quality yogurt. sue me!

(and wow this was the longest post ever about yogurt)