HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!

Once again it is October 21, and my birthday! To commemorate my twenty-three years on this earth, I put together some pictures of myself for your enjoyment.
This is one of the oldest pictures I have of myself courtesy of my first digital camera which I got for my nineteenth birthday, Fall 2004. I used to love taking pictures of myself late at night and then photoshopping them. This picture, however, us untouched.

Here is one of my favorite engagement pictures, and the photo that was in the center of our announcement, Spring 2005. See how happy I look?!

My bridal pictures, Summer 2005. I was told to spin. When I concentrate I tend to stick out my tongue. I guess spinning in a dress and train is pretty difficult stuff!

Skiing at Beaver Mountain, Winter 2005. Look how awesome that powder looks in the background! The sun is very shiny, that's why my eyes are shut, I have a hard time with shiny.

Summer 2006 we went to nearly all of the national parks/state parks in Utah and several surrounding states. This is a hike in one of those parks, don't ask me which. I believe the gray mass behind me was a 'salt upheaval.'

This is me graduating from college, Spring 2007! That hat was seriously bugging.

Here I am at a Vietnamese optometrist getting fit for ridiculously cheap 'Gucci' glasses, Summer 2007. This is how they determined my prescription. Do you see how shiny I am? It was so hot and humid there, and no air-con anywhere!

This is me at Hamilton's restaurant a couple of weeks ago, Fall 2008. I'm telling my dad how to operate my camera, don't I look lovely?

Thank you for that trip through memory lane, and I hope this next year brings new and wonderful things. And if you see me today, you should sing me a song.

Mini Golf

Yesterday, while hanging out some family, we decided to go mini-golfing with the rest of our evening. It had been raining all day, so the heat was bearable, and an evening out on the course with fun people sounded quite pleasant to all of us, so we headed out!

I hadn't been mini-golfing in years, perhaps I had been on a bad mini-golfing date more recently, but mostly my memory of mini-golfing was from Unni (my grandmother) taking me during the summers of my childhood. I recalled the long afternoons mini-golfing and going to the local cheap water park with her and my cousin-friend Lisa, rushing home afterwards to raid the candy drawer, eat home-cooked churros, cruise around on Gramps' 4-wheeler, and play the marble game.

Now I spend my summer afternoons working hard, or occasionally sneaking away with my mom and sister to buy these matching shoes. Those times seem so simple and so far away. I have an excellent life now, and I remember wanting to be old so badly when I was young, but sometimes I yearn for simpler times when my biggest worry was who I would hang out with tomorrow, and which of my new outfits from the Nordstroms sale would I wear on my first day of school?

I did come in third out of five mini-golfing though. So congratulations to me!