bannack state park photo shoot.

due to my lack of blogging recently my writing skills have severely diminished, however, i felt it was about time to write you something exciting about my life, which really isn't too exciting at all.
the weekend after general conference my roommates and i decided to make a little trip over to montana to help morgan out with her photo homework. we went to bannack state park which is an abandoned town that is really cool. shelby, tania and i were morgans models and we looked quite lovely if i do say so myself. we had a lot of fun going into all the old abandoned buildings. a few of them were pretty creepy,

but overall it was just fun to read about what they were used for, or who lived there, and then pretend like we were living there in the 1800s. we gave each other fake names and stories and then talked in our best old hick accents.

morgans name was annabelle, she was engaged to the town lawyer, william jacobs, she was our sweetest and kindest friend, but she liked to hear the town gossip as much as the next girl.

shelby was abigail, engaged to the town doctor whose name i don't remember, she liked the riches of doctor hood  and was probably our fanciest friend.

tanias name was mabel and she was our spinster friend, she helped run the general store, owned a small hotel that was used for long term stays for prospecting miners, and she also had a fling with an escaped convict, she was definitely the most exciting one of us all.

 I was mary beth, engaged to joshua meade, owner of the meade hotel,

i had all the juicy town gossip and was kind of the town drama queen and caused quite a bit of excitement in the town.

it was funny pretending to live in this tiny little town back in the day. we definitely enjoyed ourselves. but when all was said and done, we were there for a purpose, and that was to take photos. here are a few of the photos that morgan took that day, i may put some more up later as they become available. enjoy! (if it looks like i'm engaged in any of these pictures it is purely for photographic reasons, morgan had me wear a fake ring so she could practice some engagementy, wedding type, ring pictures.)

school house.

standing in front of hotel meade.

love this one, she's on the stairs inside hotel meade

my favorite door knobs of the day!

my favorite one!

morgan is pretty much an amazing photographer! it was a ton of fun and luckily i got over my fear of the camera (trust me, it was pretty funny) and we got a lot of cool pictures and even better memories!

scripture of the day:
1 Nephi 3: 19-20 And behold, it is wisdom in God that we should obtain these records, that we may preserve unto our children the language of our fathers; And also that we may preserve unto them the words which have been spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets, which have been delivered unto them by the Spirit and power of God, since the world began, even down unto this present time.

today i am thankful for:
* wonderful roommates.
* abandoned towns.
* scriptures.
* jackets and a warm car.
* great bishopric members and their wives.
* stake choir.
* jayce.

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three of the greatest blessings i have ever received!.

as you have read, it has been a long busy weekend. to top the weekend off it was my turn to teach the relief society lesson on sunday. i was going off of a few hours of sleep from that night and the night before and knew i still had to do the fine tuning on my lesson. as i was kneeling on the ground preparing to say my prayers before i finished my lesson and thought to myself, maybe i'll just skip sacrament and sunday school so that i can get everything done, and then i heard in my mind "but you get to be with your roommates at church" and i just laughed and realized that there was no way i would ever give up an opportunity to be with my roommates. they are such a blessing to me. they bring me so much joy. i can't even begin to describe how much i love them. so this blog is to tell you all the reasons i love these three girls so much!

michelle:

michelle is so amazing. she is so good at sharing her emotions and feelings with others and letting them help her when life is hard. she has helped me to feel comfortable being myself no matter what. she and i love to joke around and laugh. but, she is also great at listening to me and discussing the things that are hard or stressful or even exciting in my life with me. she has helped me learn how to put the needs of others before myself and just always be aware of what other people need. she is from puerto rico, a convert, the only member in her family. she is pre-pa (physicians assistant) and she works so much harder than most people i have ever met. she is the relief society president this semester and is doing an amazingly fantastic job. i love her so much and am extremely grateful that she is my roommate.

morgan:

morgan is the epitome of being a woman of God. she is everything i hope to be when i grow up. the light of Christ is so apparent in her eyes. she helps me to grow and want to be better every day. her shy, yet funny ways remind me so much of myself. she inspires me to work hard and build my talents. she always knows the perfect thing to say to help me feel better or be better. she is an amazing artist, one day everyone will know who she is, i firmly believe that. it is astounding to me how quietly confident she is in what she believes and how she lives. she doesn't need to say what she is thinking or feeling because you can tell just by the way she lives her life. i love being able to be real with her. it is so easy to be yourself around her. she never makes me feel like i am not good enough and i am so grateful that she has been placed in my life. she is such a fantastic blessing in my life!

shelby:

shelby and i are practically the same person, only she is about a million times more talented than i am. she is a singer and a dancer. her dream/goal is to perform on broadway. she can do it too! she is so amazing. i love to be silly and joke around with her. she and i have so much fun together. i can't help but smile when i am with her. i always know that i can count on her to make me happy. when i spend time with her it's like i am my real true self. she allows me to be confident and sassy and full of life. i do things with her that i never imagined i would do in my life. she gives me faith that i can trust myself and do more than i believe. there are few people in my life who have helped me open up as much as shelby has. she has made a deeper more profound impact on my life in these few months than most people have made in my entire life. i love her so much and am unexplainably grateful to have her as my friend and roommate.

these three girls, together, have blessed my life so much. i was so afraid at the end of last semester, when i knew i was going to have to get all new roommates. it's always a gamble whether or not you will get  good roommates, or weird ones, or crazy ones. and i just prayed and prayed that i would get good roommates that i would be able to get along with and the Lord definitely went above and beyond and blessed me with far greater roommates than i could have ever imagined for myself and i am so grateful for that!

scripture of the day:
3 Nephi 24: 10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house; and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

today i am thankful for:
* michelle.
* morgan.
* shelby.
* blessings from the Lord.

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the ipad.

a few weeks ago my roommate michelle received an email confirmation that her ipad was being sent to her. this came as a surprise however, seeing as she didn't buy an ipad. she quickly deduced that her mother had bought her the ipad for her birthday (which is today) and sent it to her and had the confirmation sent to her email address unknowingly. well, we decided that it was important that michelle have something exciting to open on her birthday so when her ipad was delivered we promptly hid it in a secret location and told her she would be able to get it on her birthday. and although we felt a little bad about keeping it from her, we decided it was best for her to receive it for her birthday. so we have kept it hidden for the past couple of weeks and when we prepared for our birthday sleepover celebration we wrapped it up and prepared to give it to her, only, we decided that was boring because she already knew that that was what she was receiving, so we hatched up a little plan. we decided to take shelby's old ipad case and put in it our own version of the ipad. we then had michelle open this gift first, and then gave her the real ipad promptly after. she was super excited when she unwrapped her gift and there in front of her was a gleaming ipad case. she opened it up and to her surprise all she found was this ...

she was a little disappointed. morgan, shelby and i were all dying from laughter and michelle seemed unimpressed. we were all confused because we knew for a fact that this was funny. we quickly gave her the real ipad which she unwrapped and was excited to have.

after a couple of minutes i noticed the 'ipad' we had fashioned her was in the garbage pile with all the used wrapping paper. i looked at her with my best serious face and said, "i can't believe you would throw away your ipad, that is a very special gift." all of a sudden she burst into laughter and started laugh-crying. we were all super confused. but she calmed down just long enough to pick up her 'ipad' and say, "i just got it." and then she continued to laugh uncontrollably.

i knew it was funny!

scripture of the day:
Psalms 27: 14 Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

today i am thankful for:
* amazing FHE's that make me grateful to be where I am.
* learning new things.
* hugs.
* moving forward even when it's hard to leave things behind.
* love.

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legacy air show.

for the past couple of weeks morgan has been super excited to go to the legacy air show. she had never been to one, i had never been to one, heck, none of us had ever been to one, so we decided it was a good way to continue our birthday weekend celebration! so, after getting a few hours of sleep on we woke up bright and early and got ready and headed off to the air show. shelby and morgans' brothers came with us, as did our new friend adam (he is mostly shelbys friend, if you get what i mean, but we all love him and have adopted him into our lives).

we had fun. they started the show off with some motorcycle people, which was interesting but it was cool to see all the different planes. i felt like most of them just flew past us a couple times and that was it, but i loved when the more awesome planes went up and did air tricks in the sky, it was way sweet!

this was my favorite plane of the day!

after the airshow we went back to our apt. the brothers left. adam stayed. we made waffles, taught adam to cook bacon, watched man on a ledge, went to the civil defense caves, and then ended the day by going to shelby's house for camp bootcamp. her dad made us show our camping skills and learn how to put up their camping things. it was pretty funny to watch, that's for sure. all in all, it was a great day! it went by way too fast, but it was full of fun things and new adventures! i sure love my friends and roomies!

scripture of the day:
D&C 121: 9 Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.

today i am thankful for:
* airplanes.
* fun friends to spend time with.
* new experiences.

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"sleep" over.

so, as some of you may know this coming tuesday is MY BIRTHDAY!!! and as it turns out, monday is my roommate michelle's birthday. so for a few weeks now we have planned to have a sleepover this past friday as our roommate birthday celebration! the night started with a trip to winco to buy groceries (this was more just because we needed to go to winco than being an actual part of our celebration process). after we got home from the store we got pizza from papa murphys (i think their pizza is de-li-cious!) and rented man on a ledge. we started our party night off by eating pizza and opening gifts. that was a lot of fun!  it was funny to see what my roomies got me, most of them were just inside joke gifts, and they were definitely funny! they did buy me this tasty smelling soap i have been wanting, and they helped me in my endeavor to build my disney princess movie collection by buying me beauty and the beast. we got michelle a lot of gifts for our plans for next weekend. its always fun to give and receive gifts!! we also gave michelle a "girly hick" hat. we found them on sale at walmart and all bought one, again for this weekends adventure, we sure look cute in them if i do say so myself.

we then brought all of our beds out to the living room so we could have a most comfortable and enjoyable sleep over. after that we played with the golf set i was given. it was funny. it was definitely made for a small child, its so tiny, but it was fun getting to go outside and act like little kids for a while.

next we got rid of our blackheads

enjoyed some sparkling cider

and delighted ourselves in a facial to "purge our pores"

shelby bought these awesome balloons that glow in the dark and so we also spent quite a bit of time playing with those.

after all of that excitement and adventure (we left for winco around 430 and when we ended all the above events it was 1030) we settled in to watch pearl harbor (because michelle had never seen it before). we snuggled up in our beds, ate some oreo cookies, and practiced our sniffling choir. i forgot how amazing (and long) that movie is! it was fun to watch it again. after the movie we just talked and laughed and made fun of our sniffling choir and finally went to sleep around 4 in the morning. it was a great sleep over. i am so extremely grateful for my roommates. these 3 girls make my life so much better than i could have ever imagined. i love them!!!

scripture of the day:
D&C 88: 33 For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.

today i am thankful for:
* wonderful roomies who make my birthday so great!
* a great friend who calls and keep me updated about her life.
* a little brother who is such a special part of my life (i don't think he understands how much i talk about him and miss him).
* fun things to do with friends.
* the small things in life.
* prayer.

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