Happenings

Ok, so I'm pretty much the worst blogger ever, I know. But in my defense I have been somewhat busy lately. I've been traveling for the past month and I'm heading back over to Seattle next week and to DC in two weeks. So here's some of the highlights from the past month:

~California was wonderful!! I miss it so much, I love everything about California and I hope that I get to move back someday. Here's a few pictures from my lovely week there:

Ahhhh, there's nothing like a good pedicure to kick off the summer, especially when you get to go with your sisters :-)

Here's a picture of the best dog EVER!!


... and here's a picture of my dream home *sigh* Cinderella's so lucky, she gets her Prince Charming and a pink castle in Storybookland...

Disneyland was by far the high point of my trip hope. It is so magical and if it didn't take so long to upload pictures onto this thing I'd post a TON more. So since you all can't experience Disneyland for yourselves (and even if you do get to go, I highly doubt you experience it the way I do), just imagine the most magical, perfect, blissful place on earth where everything goes right, where there's always a happy ending, where you never have to grow up and where dreams really do come true and then you can begin to see how I feel at Disneyland. Most people don't understand this feeling, perhaps because they've never felt it. If that's the case, then I suggest that you fly to Orange County as soon as possible, head straight to Disneyland, and make a beeline for Fantasyland. Float through Storybookland, sing along with the Small World characters, take your picture with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, throw a coin into the wishing well by Sleeping Beauty's castle (you can hear Snow White's voice echoing up through the well), watch the Electrical Parade (it breaks my heart that it's not on Main Street anymore, but I'll settle for watching it in California Adventure, just as long as I get to see it), and then just stand for a minute in front of the beautiful pink castle and close your eyes and imagine a perfect, fantasy world. Then open your eyes and let it sink in that you're experiencing the closest thing to that perfect, fantasy world this side of heaven. If that doesn't make you happier than you've ever been before, well, then maybe you don't have a heart... or a soul. I get goosebumps sometimes just remembering all of the wonderful memories I have with my family at Disneyland. It's been my favorite place in the whole world for as long as I can remember and I hope it never loses its magic to me. This is why I could never work there, even though I've always, always wanted to. When I was a little girl, I was sure I'd grow up to be the Cinderella at the beginning of the Electrical Parade and wave my sparkly wand at all of the little girls who would want to grow up to be me. But in order to safeguard my naivete (I think I spelled that right, minus an accent mark) surrounding the happiest place on earth, I can't ever pursue this dream. I wouldn't want to ruin anything for myself and lose my greatest source of joy and happiness. That would be a tragedy and I refuse to risk losing that. So I'll settle for some other boring job where I'll never get a sparkly wand... so that I can still feel butterflies in my stomach everytime she waves that wand at me!!!



~Brandon Came Home!!!

We make an effort to see each other each month or two. He came home for Shauna's wedding and then again a month later for Memorial Day weekend so he was waiting for me in Seattle when I flew back from California. I finally got to meet his grandparents on the O'Malley side (who I've never met before throughout the entire 8 years that we've known each other). Scott was home too and my sister Rachel is in Seattle all summer long and Renee just moved home to start her new job downtown as an environmental engineer. I love it when all the people that I love and cherish are all in one place. It makes life so much easier and more enjoyable. Let's make a deal everybody; how about none of you ever move away from either Seattle or southern California? Those are two very different options so everybody can choose the one that fits them best and be happy and settled there. That way I can go to both of my homes and see everybody I want to all at once. And hopefully (pray for this) someday soon Brandon and I can move back to one of the two places and be happy and settled ourselves. Anyways, the weekend Brandon was there, we had an invitation making party and finished all 250 invitations (which had to be disassembled and completely re-done 2 weeks later on my next trip home after I discovered that a quotation mark was missing from the beginning of the verse at the top).






~ And... I moved across town at the beginning of June. I wouldn't exactly call that a highlight of the past few weeks since it was 97 degrees and I had to come home from vacation to move 8 girls' and 4 years' worth of junk out of our very large and very dirty house on Astor Street. It took me 5 days straight to get everything out and somewhat clean and it SUCKED!! I must have sweated out 5 pounds and made a hundred thousand trips up the stairs carrying loads of junk and trash. But I finally got it all done and thrown into my new house... and when I say "thrown" I mean literally "thrown" into the new house. See below.






It stayed like this for exactly two weeks because I lacked the motivation to deal with the mess. I just pushed the clothes aside every night to sleep and then threw them back on the next morning while looking for an outfit. But last night I finally did it and look at how great my new room looks now!! It looks like a completely different room in just a few hours, it's not perfect yet but it's as good as it's going to get considering I don't have any furniture or shelves to store my things on. It's kind of wierd to look in my room and see literally every single thing I own (besides my car of course) in that small space which is actually rather empty.



Well, I guess that's a summary of the major events from the past month, other than that everything's pretty much the same here in Spokanistan. Working alot and trying to enjoy the summer so far. I'll post again in the next couple of days on wedding planning and all of its' joys and stresses and progress made. I can't even think about that now.