Decemberlist

1. Bump n' Grind hike with Mom.
2. Living room fort with Maren.
3. Homemade orange juice.
4. Boat parade in Newport Beach.
5. Volunteer at CVRM.
6. Take Dad to Borough Market.
7. Give twenty things to charity.  (25 down)
8. Visit Frank Sinatra's grave. (Seriously? I don't think I'm ever going to do this.)(UPDATE: DONE)
9. Hug my grandparents.
10. Give good gifts.

Hey, remember that time I took pictures of my bedroom window and backyard on the night before I left for school?

It was fun seeing my family this weekend. I miss the desert.

Driving away I waved to the giants who had always watched me leave and regress and leave and come home again.

Provo.

(photos: Cor Jaring)

Cosas y otras cosas.

I'm home/in the desert.

It's hot and I'd rather be back in Provo.

But the nights are clear and starry, and my family is funny, and I wrote a new song today.

Should be a decent few months. :)

Windmills

This year I moved to Provo, Utah from the Southern Californian desert. Driving away from my hometown, as on any road trip, I passed these and several hundred other windmills on the way out:

(Photo: Jeff Turner)

Imagine my pleasant surprise when, from the top of Maeser hill, I spied these windmills on the edge of Utah Valley:

Last night, I had a conversation with a friend about what makes the place you live home. My parents moved to a new house while I was away at school, and so when I visit the desert, there are places more familiar to me than the house my family lives in. I was looking at a PostSecret book, and someone had sent in a card reading, "I want to go home. But I am home." It reminded me that (no offense, family; I'm excited to see you) I will probably wish I was back in Provo when I go back to the desert in about two weeks.

I think that this year, Provo has become more home to me than the desert. It amazes me how quickly it has become the setting for great memories, the milieu for my friends, and the backdrop for my life.

This I Believe essay in the works?

Urgh.

So... I've pretty much royally screwed up the whole NaBloPoMo thing this month. It's not really a HUGE deal, since I did it pretty successfully this May and can therefore keep my participant sticker up. Better luck in 2010, I guess?

Anyway, Christmas was lovely, as I expected, and break has been going fairly well so far! :) I've gotten to see lots of old friends who I missed tremendously, and this next week I'll get to see more of them. Hopefully today I will start doing some recording with a friend of mine, but I'm mainly excited because I get to see him again!

In some weirder news, today I walked around our old house, which I lived in from age 5 until I left for school this past August. My family moved to a different neighborhood while I was away, so it's been kind of odd. Our new house already feels like home, however, and the old one just felt really... surreal. Everything looks smaller without our furniture, and it was also kind of like when you go back to your first grade classrooms and realize that everything was really, really little. Only I haven't gotten taller. The house just felt weirdly small anyway, and my whole life there kind of felt like an odd dream, even if that sounds super cliché. It also brought back the memory of moving in when I was about five years old, and I remembered picking my old room for Madelyn and I, because I thought it looked "pinker." Both rooms were white. :)

Another thing- my mom is making me these two really pretty skirts that I found a cool pattern for. I'm super psyched to wear them once they're done. I love clothes...

That's all for right now, I guess.

And this is the last of the three!

I am finally home for Christmas and having a lovely time seeing all my family! My grandma had a Christmas party last night, which was really fun. My sister and I played Mele Kalikimaka with her on the ukulele while I harmonized. It was great to see a lot of my relatives and friends of the family. :)

Still more...

In other news, yesterday I gave Sam a bag shaped like a taco for Christmas and he loves it, which made me really happy. :) Also, I Skyped Charné yesterday and told her about life since Tuesday, which was fun. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET HOME.

My Grandma Nora is having a Christmas party on Monday night! I can't wait to see her, since it's been such a long time. She's definitely one of the most prevalent influences in my life. :)

Anyway, for the party the family and everyone are all doing something musical. I think I'm going to arrange a piece and sing it or something. :)

Blogging Landmark!

I am now a member of four blogs, and this new one is the first one I did not play a main role in creating! It is a site for my This I Believe class at BYU and it is located here. We will be discussing our class and talking about statements of belief once the semester begins. I'm so excited!!!

In unrelated news, I have spent a wonderful week in Newport Beach with my little sister, Melissa! I got to take her to the beach two times and we also went to the OCMA, the Pageant of the Masters (along with their Festival of Arts), and a lot of other cool places. Melissa especially liked the Environmental Nature Center or "ENC," where they had a butterfly house. While we were in there, a butterfly flew up to me and landed on my finger and then it came back and landed on my shirt. I tried to take a picture, but I wasn't quick enough. It was really cool though.

I'm excited to get back to the desert and finish up things before I move away for the year!

Catching up...

I am home now, as you must have deduced, so I will just finish up my trip stuff and have done with it. :)

The next day in Paris we visited Saint Chapelle, which is a beautiful church with exquisite floor to ceiling stained glass windows and jeweled light bouncing off of everything. I liked the Basilica best of all of them, but I think this one came in second. After we left the church, we took the subway to the Rodin gardens, which were more coifed than Monet's, but beautiful and gold and green in the summer. Madelyn and I ran around taking pictures and stuff and then we went home in a taxi. That night, I stayed up really late talking to our family and then went to bed.

The next day, we got up and got ready and went to church!!!! On the way though, something scary happened: we were walking down the stairs to the metro and there was this shirtless, grimy hobo hanging around. As I went down the stairs, he blew in my face, said something about pretty French girls (which is ironic) and slapped me, HARD, on the arm! Madelyn even heard the sound! After that, we hurried off to the subway and then we eventually found church. It was so nice to be in a familiar environment! We went to an English sunday school session and then the meeting was afterward. We could only get one set of headphones, so Madelyn and I switched off for the different talks. After church, we rode the subway to the Tuileries and ate a picnic on a bench there. Madelyn spilled the chips, so we fed them to the pigeons, which was fun. :) After we ate, we went back home and slept and Skyped and stuff. I was up really late talking to our family, and after that, packing. Madelyn took all these funny pictures of me that I didn't see until the next day, when I downloaded my camera pictures onto the laptop.

The next morning, we got up around 5:30 and got ready and then Madelyn, Grandma and I walked to the Austerlitz Bridge for a last look at the city. It was cool; we could see Notre Dame from there. After that, we went back to the hotel and had breakfast. Madelyn and I went shopping one last time at the train station stores, and then we came back and met the taxi, which took us to the airport.

You've all been on planes, so I won't go into the flight, but after 20 hours or so, we were back in Newport Beach and then the next morning, we drove home to Rancho Mirage! Once we were home, we gave our family the presents we got them. Shortly after, we were packing for a trip to Brian Head, which I returned from last night.

At last.

Back at home!

Well, all three of my adventures were a BLAST, and I don't feel like writing about them here since that's all I've been doing in my journal of late. To sum it up, I made a lot of new friends (Megan, Beth, Gus, Mykalanne- to name a few) and learned a lot about myself. I've been doing much better at scripture study and prayer and I've started writing a book, which I'm really proud of, even though it's only about 12 pages long, and that's in my handwriting. :)
On Monday Leslie came over and we celebrated her birthday together by making cookies and watching part of Sense and Sensibility and all of Truly Madly Deeply (I'd forgotten how sad that was). Anyway, we had a fun night, and now Leslie's 19!!!!
Last night I went and saw Batman: the Dark Night with my friend Mykalanne. IT WAS SUCH AN AWESOME movie! I actually think I want to go see it again. It was so thrilling, but then there were all these cool lines and monologues (especially by the Joker) that I completely adored. I was not disappointed. Myky is writing a story about the Joker right now, so I'm helping her with it. We wrote a little bit after the movie and then we just ran around the River for a few hours before we remembered that other people existed and we were probably supposed to call and have someone take us home. So my Mom picked us up and that was the night.
Collin's farewell is this Sunday, and I'm a little scared, but I'm glad he's doing the right thing and going on a mission. :) I'll miss him.
I guess that's all.

Getting Better...

Well, I stayed in bed until 5:30 this morning! Jet lag is wearing off and things are going pretty well; Leslie and I are planning her birthday in August! It's going to be pretty awesome. :)
Next week I am going to Lake Powell for a church youth trip, and just after that, EFY. It's going to be a busy few weeks, so this is my one week to breathe before more vacation stuff!
I hope everyone enjoyed my blog during our big trip to Europe, and thank you all for reading it and commenting. I'll continue to keep track next time I'm gone and hope your summers are as wonderful as mine!
Love,
Emily

Friday- leaving on a jet plane... (and briefly Saturday and Sunday)

On Friday we woke up freakishly early, got everything together and in the car, and hauled ourselves to the airport(we'd said goodbye the night before). We dropped off the car in the designated parking lot and its keys at the kiosk thingy of the rental company. Then we took a plane from Finland to Heathrow Airport in London. I had a window seat for the first time on this trip. It was cool to see the landmarks we'd already visited from the plane. It seemed kind of surreal, knowing that we'd been there. I wanted to go back (But, then I always do.). :)
We waited at Heathrow for an hour or two, and later we boarded the plane home. On the plane, my movie screen broke, so we used the headphone splitter and I shared screens with Mom and watched The Other Boleyn Girl, which was kind of cool. Later I watched Doctor Who with Dad and then we watched Be Kind, Rewind, which was funny, but kind of lame. They fed us a few times on the plane; the food was better than normal. After ten long hours, we got to LAX, and got off the plane. I called Leslie for about five seconds, but then Mom wanted me to get off the phone. We went through customs, picked up our luggage, got the car, and drove home, with everyone falling asleep in the car.
When we got home, I got my bag out of the car, and promptly went to bed. It was five o'clock.
The next morning, I woke up at two in the morning, suffering from jet lag. A little later, Spencer came in, then Melissa, and hardly later, we were playing Spencer's new board game, Dread Pirate. Mom woke up next, and came in, then Madelyn, Dad, and finally Collin. By five thirty in the morning, Madelyn, Spencer, Melissa and I were all swimming and splashing in the pool. I got out and put my pajamas on and went back to sleep for about two more hours. When I got up, it was only ten and I felt like it was twelve.
Later that day, around five, we saw Wall-E, which was really cute. I worked on this online Math class I'm doing for a while at eightish, when Leslie called and we talked until Mom wanted me to get off and do my work. I went to bed at about nine PM.
Today I woke up at two again, so I stubbornly told my internal clock to shut up and laid in my bed until fourish, when Melissa woke up and asked me to go the the bathroom with her. So I did. We were talking by five thirty.
These are the dangerous effects of jet lag.

Now it's 8:37 and I'm all ready for church! It's good to be home.

I just hope I don't fall asleep during the meeting.