Tuesday, December 7, 2010

He shall reign forever and ever!

If you're having a hard time getting into the spirit of Christmas go ahead and watch this video. I think it'll help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Count your many blessings

I love Thanksgiving. It makes me sad that Thanksgiving gets so overlooked becuase people start celebrating Christmas right after Halloween. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Christmas, but Thanksgiving is awesome. It's a day that we can really look at all the things we are blessed with and eat until we burst and not feel guilty about it. I just wanted to write a quick post about all of the things that I am grateful for.
1. The gospel of Jesus Christ.
2. My testimony of the wonderful gospel
3. The atonement
4. A living prophet
5. The Book of Mormon
6. Prayer
7. A family that I know will love me no matter how ridiculous I can be
8. Friends that will be there for me no matter what
9. My job
10.  The school I go to
11. My car
12. My healthy body that allows me to do som many wonderful things
13. Nieces and nephews
14. Animals
15. Food!
16. Books
17. Chapstick
18. My ipod
I could truly go on and on. I am so blessed with everything I have. I know that all I have comes from my Heavenly Father. I'm eternally grateful for Him for so richly blessing me with all I need and more to live a happy and fulfilling life. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Just a wizard living among muggles

If you really knew me you'd know that I am obsessed with Harry Potter. Obsessed. I basically grew up reading Harry Potter and honestly I kind of went through depression when the books ended. I'm not just saying that. I literally woke up every morning for like two weeks with a pit in stomach. I used to have dreams, actual dreams not just day dreams, about Harry Potter being real. One time I dreamed that Dumbledore was my grandpa and I got to go to Hogwarts. I even went through a phase where I wanted to name all my kids after Harry Potter characters. Well a couple of nights ago I went to the midnight movie release. I think that my little sister's boyfriend said it best in his facebook status:

"Society today questions the true meaning of the word, "masterpiece." Don't look at the dictionary, and don't ask Cha Cha, because I have the answer for you right here. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1!"

                                                                                                                                        -Dilan Maxfield

I love love loved it!! Before the movie I had a little Harry Potter party with some buds. My old roomy Emily made some delicious butter beer and we ate some Bertie Botts every flavored beans. It was a lot of fun. I'm already anxiously awaiting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2!!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

T minus 1 month



Anyone that has had a conversation with me that lasted more than 10 minutes knows about Matt. I dated Matt for about a year and a half before his mission. We started dating right before senior year and dated up until he left for Guatemala November 19, 2008. Now it's been 23 months and 17 days since I last saw him. The other day I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do while he was gone and I started to get a little sad because I felt like I haven't done anything really worth mentioning. But after thinking for awhile I proved myself wrong.What have I done since he's been gone? Well let me tell you...

I left my teenage years
Rode a motorcycle for the first time
Went to the Grand Canyon

I had jdawgs for the first time and fell in love!
I learned to knit

I've always wanted to go to dinner at La Caille and I did


I was part of a world record: the biggest water balloon fight
I went to the Utah Copper mine for the first time
Discovered that cookie sheets make great sleds
I went to a party dressed as a Christmas tree
I went to the Killers concert
I went to the Justin Bieber concert
I went to my first demolition derby and LOVED it (yes, me and Rachel are dressed like white trash) 
I jumped into Bear Lake in the middle of the night and the dead of Winter
Got a little culture in me by attending the festival of Colors twice
Decided to be a goth girl for a day
I was a counselor for a girl's camp
I welcomed a new nephew into the world: Dean Barney
I ate a chicken heart!
I had sushi for the first time
I participated in a parade
I got a job that I actually like
I ran my first half marathon!!!!
I did some service at an orphanage in Mexico
I went to Vegas- two times
I went to New York twice and was on a billboard in Times Square!
I went to California with the fam (or part of the fam)
I lived with my sister
I hiked mt timpanogos
I threw a party that was shut down by the police (which has been a goal of mine since I moved to Provo)
I crossed something off of my bucket list: go to Carlo's Bakery in New Jersey
Made the world's largest cookie
rode a llama
Became a soccer fan


I've finished two years of school at BYU
Decided to go on a mission...?


The greatest thing I have done is strengthen my relationship with my Heavenly Father and Savior and develop a stronger testimony of this wonderful gospel

That's a pretty good list, right? There are so many more things I wanted to do and so many more things I wanted to improve on. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm good enough for him yet. But ready or not it doesn't matter because he will be home in 31 days. 744 hours. 43,640 minutes. 2,678,400 seconds. However you want to look at it.
                                                                                         I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The big apple


Yep. You guessed it. This post is all about New York!! I love New York. I've always really loved big cities and, well, you can't get much bigger than New York city. I love all the different people and cultures, I love the noises and the business of it all, and yes, sometimes I even love the smells.
A couple weekends ago I was able to go visit my brother and sister in law in NYC. It. was. fantastic. Seriously. I was blown away by how much we were able to do. We were only there for about 4 full days (and one of them was a Sunday so we didn't do a whole lot) but we did nearly everything that we wanted to. We ate at so many delicious places, we were always busy running from thing to thing, but my favorite part, as lame as this sounds, was being able to hang out with Matt, Jaime, and Simon- my brother and his fam. They were such great hosts and I can't thank them enough.
I honestly don't even know where to begin with this trip. I don't think I can do it justice. We did so many awesome things. Maybe I'll just give a little time line of what we did every day.
Wednesday: We flew out of the Salt Lake City airport towards JFK. It was a red eye and it started out rocky because our flight was delayed about an hour. I guess the brakes on our plane weren't working so they had to replace them. Kind of scary, right? Yeah, we were a little nervous. But still excited.
sistas in the airplane
waiting waiting waiting
FINALLY getting ready to board
me and the Sanders sistas
Me and Rae with our treats Lynell packed
Thursday: So we got to New York about an hour later than expected and absolutely exhausted! Matt picked us up and we went back to his place to sleep. Jaime was so sweet and had breakfast and little presents waiting for us. We slept for a few hours then woke up ready to hit the town! First thing we did was go to this delicious restaurant called Max Brenar's the Chocolate Man. You walk in and the smell of chocolate gets you right away. In a good way. The whole place has a chocolate feel to it. It's seriously like Willy Wonka's choclate factory. There is a big mixer of chocolate with pipes that lead out of it and go up the ceiling into another mixer of chocolate. I grew up loving Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory so I felt a little bit like I was there. The fries are even dusted with cocoa powder. Sounds gross, but it's tasty! After we stuffed ourselves until we were basically overflowing we did a little bit of shopping. We also walked a lot! We went through Union Squre which was pretty great because there was an artist's fair going on so we got to see some cool things. Including a man wearing undies as a tee (serious. I'll post a pic). Then we walked into times sqaure and hung out there for a little bit. After that we did some more shopping at one of my favorite stores called Strawberry. It has super cute things for really cheap! I feel bad because we were there for a long time and I'm pretty sure it drove my brother kind of crazy. After getting our shopping fix we walked the Brooklyn bridge. This was something that none of us had ever done and it was really neat. I think the city looks absolutely beautiful at night so it was nice to get a good view of it. We started walking the bridge on the Manhattan side and ended in Brooklyn which was great because that's where Matt and Jaime live plus it's really close to the famous pizza place Grimaldi's. We ate there and it was DELISH! Sounds like a long day, huh? It isn't even over. We walked back to Matt and Jaime's and really close to their house there is a boarwalk called the promenade that looks over the city. So we walked there and looked at the perfect veiw of the Manhattan skyline. Then... we went home and crashed.
a cool pic of us in our slippers that Jaime bought for us
gotta love the subway
Jaime, Simon, and Matt- I sure do miss them
Eating at the delicious chocolate place
A hilarious guy wearing undies for a tee. I only wish I knew what it looked like in the front
ha ha this pic cracks me up
Walking the Brooklyn Bridge
me and Sar
Tried to do a jumping pic. Failed.
cuties
This is us eating at Grimaldi's
This is us with a cool view of the city behind us. This boardwalk was really cool at it was maybe a 10 minute walk from Matt and Jaime's
Same pic but the city looks a little cooler
I love this pic. Our feet just look itty.
hangin at Times Square!
Serious. This place was like real life Willy Wonka.
A way cool building
This is us at Union Square
Friday: First thing we did was get some delicious donuts at a little place called the donut plant. They are apparently famous for their peanut butter and jelly donut. I don't know what that sounded so weird to me but I decided since it's their signature donut I should try it. Let me just say it's famous for a reason. It was REALLY good. After that we did something that I had been dying to do. I'm not sure how many of you are Cake Boss fans but I am a huge fan. Do you have something that you feel like is especially yours? Something that you feel like you discovered and you'll always have a special place for it? Well for me, that thing is Cake Boss. I found it one day while flipping through the channels and I instantly fell in love. Needless to say, I'm a little obsessed. So my one request for the trip was that we make a stop in Hoboken New Jersey and visit the Cake Boss. We had to wait in line outside of the bakery for maybe 45 minutes. When we went in I was devistated because I saw no one that I recognized. But then shortly after, Mary came out! I was like a little kid in a candy store. And of course I got one of their famous canolis. After that we went to this art exhibit called the earth room. It's literally just an apartment filled with dirt. But it was actuallly pretty cool. The dirt looked so perfect and it smelled really good. As weird as that is. Then we had lunch at this famous New York deli called Katz's deli. While in this deli we met probably the nicest guy in the world. We don't even know his name but he gave us his business card. He's a chef and he calls himself "Mr. Recipe". He was born and raised in New York so he knew all the best things to order. It was hilarious because I was going to get a philly cheese steak and I asked him if it was good. He looked at me and said "honey, you aren't in Philadelphia. You're in New York. Get something we're famous for. So  I got the corned beef sammy. Normally I'm not a HUGE corned beef fan but I couldn't get enough of this stuff. It. was. so. dang. good. Seriously though, I feel like I'm not doing Mr. Recipe justice. He was so great! I could go on and on about him. But I won't. After the heavenly deli we went to a New York haunted house. We figured that not many people who don't live in New York can say that they've been to a haunted house there.
The NYC haunted house we went to. I must say, I think Utah haunted houses are much scarier.
Mmmm.... DELICIOUS doughnuts!
This was seriously a dream come true for me.
<3
Delicious Carlo's Bakery treats
MARY!!
Eating the famous canolis
this was a scary broken elevator that we tried to ride
Oh goodness... words can't even say how much I loved this place. So good!
Mr. Recipe with his biggest fans

Another failed attempt at a jumping picture. At least Jess is rocking it.
We wanted to go to Coney Island so bad but it was closed :(
Saturday: We went to visit lady liberty! She was beautiful. I had been before but for some reason this time I loved it. I kind of almost cried when I first saw her. Guarunteed I would have bawled if there was a patriotic song going in the background. After the statue of liberty we visited ground zero and wall street. Then we went into little Italy for some dinner. There was a big festival going on in little Italy so it was fun to walk through. Matt took us to this place that claims to have the world's best canolis. I hate to say it but... they're right. The canoli I had there was even more delicious than the one Buddy made me. We did a quick little stop in China town after little Italy to pick up some purses. I mean seriously, what's a New York trip without a cute new purse? Then we spent the last hour or so of the night at times square. We even got on a billboard at times square. How many people can say that? Ok, probably a lot of people can say that. It was a billboard for Forever 21 and they took live shots of the streets so we found ourselves in the corner.
The ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty
She's a beauty
Wall Street!!!
Sar, me, and the bull
Little Italy!
Rach, me, and Matt at dinner in Little Italy
Shoppy girls
We <3 the NYPD
Standing by the red stairs at Times Square
Our moment of fame! You can see us kind of in the middle at the bottom
Sunday: We went to church with Matt and James. Then Rachel had to fly out because she couldn't miss school on Monday. So Matt and I drove her to the airport then we came home and just hung out at the house. We went on a little walk and had some delicious dinner. It was really nice to just relax.
Monday: Our last day in NYC :( We spent it well though. We had some lunch at a fantastic pizza place and got some ice cream and a little place called the farmacy that is just down the street from Matt and Jaime's. We were also able to walk around their neighborhood a bit and get a little bit of a feel for it. Then Matty took us to the airport. We were doing the curbside checkout and talking about how we didn't want to leave at all. The guy that was checking us in asked if I had a confirmation number because he couldn't find me on the flight. I handed him my paper and he goes "Angela, Angela, Angela. You really don't want to leave. According to this you aren't scheduled to fly out until October 25th." Yeah don't even ask me how in the world I was stupid enough to book a flight a month later then I actually wanted but somehow I did it. Luckily I was able to switch it and get home. It was pretty scary though.

The cute little farmacy
I'm doing a scared face because I had the wrong ticket
Anyway. That's my New York trip. If you made it through that long blog entry I will reward you with a funny little story. My nephew, Simon, is one of the funniest kids in the world. He had a really hard time at first telling the difference between Sarah and Jessica because they look a lot alike. So he would ask Jessica if she was Sarah and vice versa. One night when we were all just hanging out at their apartment Simon was being especially goofy and kept telling Jess that she was a fish. The next day we were about the eat and Matt asked Simon to give the blessing. Simon does this really cute thing where he will go around and bless everyone in the room. So he starts out his prayer and says, "Please bless daddy and Angie and Rae Rae and Sarah and.... Sarah and... that fish and mommy." It was seriously so funny! Poor little guy, just so confused about who is Sarah and then finally gives up and calls Jess that fish. It was funny.