no but really. what is even happening right now?

Soooo...I wrote this post two months ago but then never posted it. Why? I have no idea. But I went to blog today and I found this in my drafts. My apologies. So basically this only catches you up to about the middle of May. Also, for once in my life there might be more pictures that words. So basically you won't drown in the paragraphs on nonsense as you look for the next picture. Celebrate the little things, I guess. Pffffft.

Things that have happened during my long absence:

 

+ went home to CA for the long weekend to celebrate my sister's bridal shower and so everyone could meet her fiance and to celebrate Valentine's day and mostly to eat chocolate covered strawberries.

+ chaperoned a youth dance. Levi said if one of the kids thought I was a teenager and asked me to dance, he would take me out to ice cream. Turns out Levi is the youngster because some girl asked him to dance! What the heck? Also, we didn't get any ice cream.

+ spent fifty billion years trying to find a dress for my sister's wedding. Finally found one! 

+ went to the medieval fair here in town. Medieval-ness is wild, for sure. But I did get to eat a turkey leg and part of levi's navajo taco and we also go to launch marshmallows off of mini catapults and saw a lot of interesting outfits and also I got a sunburn.

+ had our huge work event and didn't die from it.

+ made banana bread, but I think I want to try a different recipe for it now...one that is a little more moist.

+ had Levi's little brother in town! went to some of our favorite places: KD's restaurant, a Thunder game, guitar store, raising cane's, dick's sporting goods, etc. It was super fun!

+ levi got a new guitar! many thanks to his mom and grandma for it. he seriously loves it and plays it evvvvvery day (and sometimes tries to get out of doing the dishes by sneaking off to play...)

+ storm season started and we had a couple small tornadoes and a lot of thunderstorms. we've even had to get in the storm shelter once (and we took a #shelterselfie!). also, I really hate flash flooding. maybe you've been reading about the flooding in houston right now? (...oops. like I said, I wrote this two months ago haha) stuff like that is the worst to me. levi's car got flooded one night and it was the worst. and it's really scary. turn around, don't drown!

+ went out to provo for BYU graduation! we're so proud of lauren for graduating and we're excited to see where life takes her next! also, it's always good to go to our favorite food places in provo!

+ we went straight from provo to california for my sister's wedding! It was super fun and I just love love love being with my family. It always goes by too quickly, but I'll admit: I'm glad to be done with weddings for a while haha.

+ came back to oklahoma and we've had even more storms. it's been a really wet may! I don't mind the storms just as long as I'm in the safety of my own home. but you guys, driving in it is the pits, yo. also, the sky gets such weird color during the tornado-y storms. the pic above was taken at like 10 pm and it was way more yellow-y and weird than you can see here...

+ celebrated our anniversary!! I can't believe how quickly a year has flown by! the day started with me having to go clean the church (ha!) but then I came home to find flowers and donuts and my favorite juice waiting for me in bed with my favorite guy in the world! please note levi hiding under the covers (for modesty!).  it was such a fun day of hanging out together, reminiscing on all the incredible (and some less incredible) events that have transpired over the last year. we ended the evening with dinner on the 49th floor of the tallest building in town. It was amazing! It was almost cancelled due to--surprise!--a thunderstorm, but fortunately it wasn't. In fact, we ended up having an awesome "light show" (i.e. tons of lighting) while we ate our dinner. It was awesome. (Suuuuper crappy anniversary pic...really not sure what the guy was doing but it was so blurry and dark that I had to like edit it all weird (and I have no idea how to edit btdubs) but it's the best we have haha)

+ and then just this last weekend (lies. two months ago) was really fun. We had the long weekend and on Saturday we went up to Penn Square mall to redeem my reward for winning my family's March Madness bracket (1 pound of See's Candy!). Of course, as we were ready to leave, the flash floods were starting. Because of where we were parked, the water was deeper (probs 4 or 5 inches) so we wanted to get out of there before the water got to the engine! It continued to pour rain, but we made it home safely and spent the evening in our sweats and eating the chocolate!

+ and there you have it. The last three months in a nutshell. Out.

yum yum candy bars.

1. I remember when I was growing up my mom would buy candy bars from the grocery store which would then be stored in the freezer and then those would be our treat on Friday night when my parents would go out on a date. I also remember that sometimes my dad would go in there during the week and sneak half of a candy bar. Now, I don't care that he was taking some of our precious Friday night candy, what I care about is the fact that he would only take HALF of a candy bar. Half of a Snickers, half of an Almond Joy, half of whatever. And what I want to know is how do people do that?!?? If I'm going to have a candy bar, I'm going to have the WHOLE DANG CANDY BAR. Do not attempt to stop me because I want all of it. I think I'm saying this mostly just to justify the Hershey's bar I'm eating right now. ALL of the Hershey's bar that I'm eating right now.

2. Also I remember that the Friday night candy was very important to us and I remember that it was very important that we never ate it on any other day of the week, nor would we eat more than one candy bar on Friday night, however tempting it might have been. And for that, I give myself a high five for self-control because if there was a large bag of frozen candy bars in my freezer right now you could guarantee that there would not be a bag of frozen candy bars in my freezer right now. Because I would have eaten them all already.

3. For the record, I ate 3/4 of the Hershey's bar. Small victories.

4. Also, I really like Rolo's. I gave Levi a bag of Rolo's for his birthday and I know for a fact that I ate at least 95% of them. In other news, my mom used to get Rolo's for the Friday night candy bag. I love Rolo's. But it was always such a debate as to whether or not I should choose Rolo's for my Friday night treat because Rolo's are one of the few candy bars that are NOT better frozen. In fact, they are zero good. So if I was to pick the Rolo's, I would have to wait for them to warm up, which would usually mean they would have to spend half an hour smashed between two couch cushions or under my armpit or something (still in the wrapper, mind you) and 8-year-old Stacy did not have that kind of patience! (And in case you were wondering, she still doesn't). So usually I went with the Kit Kat.

5. I just wrote a post about candy bars.

6. Now I want the last 1/4 of that Hershey's bar.

7. I also want some Rolo's.

8. Or a Kit Kat.

9. Also a nap.

10. Okay bye.

Also, I was trying to find an appropriate picture for this post when I saw the picture I posted above. I could not figure out why on earth I had that random picture but then I realized it's a picture of Levi attempting to cool himself off in the freezer at his parents' house. Which is funny. And surprising, it kind of sort of fits with the theme of this post.

update on our current living situation.

So I was thinking that maybe it would be nice to show you how our apartment looks now that we've brought all our stuff into and it's sort of kind of organized now. But then I was looking at my last post and these pictures will basically be exactly the same except that there is now more stuff in the rooms. We haven't been able to get to hanging pictures or anything yet and there are still a lot of things that still need a home within our home, but maybe I'll just show you these pictures anyway. I feel like people always promise to show you pics of their new house or apartment, but then never are able to get around to it. Well, this girl over here is basically going to show you way more pictures of her apartment than you probably ever wanted to see. You're the luckiest. Or maybe I should say I'm sorry? Either way, here you go.

So first, this is the view from outside our front door. We live right next to a golf course and it's really pretty. We also get to see lots of golfers because one of the holes ends right outside our window. We've also seen people cheating because they'll hit one ball and not like where it went and then put down another ball and try again. Okay, so maybe that's not cheating. Maybe it's just extra practice. All I'm saying is that Levi never let's me do that when we play mini golf, so in my book, it's cheating.

Here is our living room. We have no furniture, but we have a TV! Levi and I have a list of items that we need to get but we don't want to just spend all our money right away buying all of the things, so we have them in order of priority. On Saturday we were out running errands and we decided that it would be fine if we let the TV jump a few spots on the priority list and we could get it before a few of the other things. Levi was stoked out of his mind, but he had spent a lot of time studying it out and researching things and then spent another hour asking the sales girl about a million questions and then the TV was selected! And Levi could hardly contain himself! We brought it home and Levi built the TV stand and then set up the TV and it's awesome. Granted, we only have local TV channels and don't actually watch TV anyway, but we were mostly excited because now we can watch movies on something bigger than a laptop! Woo! Plus, Levi has been the very nicest as we've used gift card after gift card to buy all kinds of kitchen appliances and things that I wanted, so he really deserved to use some of the wedding money to get one thing that he really wanted.

Also, as you can see we still have a number of boxes that need to find a home and all of our pictures to hang, but we'll get to it. Also, you may have noticed that lovely banner that I made for Levi's birthday. Am I skilled at cutting out block letters or what?!

Here is our table. We found it on craigslist for a still of a dill. When we went to go look at it, the girl opened the door and Levi was like, "Hey! Good to see you!" For half a second I was like, what the heck, why is Levi sounding especially friendly? Almost as if he already knows this person. Which cannot be possible because we don't know anyone here and I certainly don't recognize her. Turns out, she is one of the people in charge of the Teach For America program out here, so that was actually pretty neat. We took that table and the chairs all the way apart and fit them all into our little car and put it back together in our new apartment. I've been very impressed by the number and size of things that have fit into that car so far. It's pretty amazing.

Anyway, there's also the rest of the kitchen. I love my kitchen. It's so nice and open and a really good size and all the appliances work really well and I have a pantry and a washer and dryer in that closet behind the table and I just love it. I can't get over how blessed we are to be living here.

That's our bed, those are our closets, and that is our bathroom. And yes, of course Levi's closet is all perfectly organized and I still have a few bags looking for a home within our home. But those are mostly winter items, so I'm at a loss right now, okay?!

And finally, Levi's room. No, no. Not Levi's room like where he sleeps. Levi's room as in the extra room that Levi will use to do any school prep and to work on his masters program and to write long and extremely romantic love letters to me, of course. Also for guitar playing. And for storage of many items. We're still working on that.

In closing, I'd like to address the thought that I'm sure you're all thinking. "My, oh my! What a lovely apartment! But what I think is the very nicest are those walls and windows! They look so fabulous! And modern! In fact, they look almost brand new!"  Well, thank you very much for the compliment and I must add that you are quite observant. Because yes indeed. Our windows and walls are very new indeed. These apartments were built in 2002, but our apartment got new walls and windows just last year! Aren't we lucky?! We sure think we are. And we have the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma tornado to thank for such lovely new windows and walls. Apparently the old ones were heavily damaged by TONS of debris and 2x4's that slammed through the windows and walls and basically caused enough damage that they had to be replaced. Sorry, I know that's kind of scary and I can already tell our mothers are not enjoying this paragraph, but we really love it here and know that it is the right place for us to be right now. So we'll just appreciate the new windows and walls and keep on loving our new town.

And there you have it!

thanksgiving like a boss.

you guys.  I just got back from my most fabulous surprise trip home.  That's right, a surprise.  You see, I don't just normal style go home for thanksgiving every year because my home home is many much miles away from my current residence, but you see the thing is, my sister is leaving on her mission to the Dominican Republic in just over two weeks and I wouldn't even get to see her over Christmas break and it came to my attention that this was a very appropro reason for my dad to fly me home (okay, but I just want to say that I offered to pay.  It's just that the guy is such a jolly man and offered to pay for it all himself!  And then my mom let me eat all of the food out of her pantry! (And let's be real, girl knows how to eat.)  I mean, really!  Those guys are neat!)  Aaaaaaaanyway, what I'm saying is that I surprised them!  Dad said he had to pick some global pass blah blah blah up at the airport and they believed him!  And I surprised them!  And so many sentences are ending with exclamation points!

We ended up having a most glorious first thanksgiving on Wednesday with my grandma and uncle and some of their friends (who I'm sure at this point think my entire family belongs in an insane asylum).  It was glorious.

And then we headed down to LA where my brother lives to have another(!) thanksgiving with them and and do a mini celbration of my birth and also to ride bicycles on the beach (or in my case, a tandem bike with Jake---whhhhhich, btdubs, cost my dad one whole dollar less than if we had each had our own bike...I'm still not sure why he didn't make my other siblings do the same thing...).

And here's something--I don't know if it was just this tandem bike, but it turns out if you're the one riding in the back, your pedals are connected to the other guy's and you have to pedal exactly when they are and as hard as they are and when they all of a sudden brake, you suddenly can't pedal anymore and you're left wondering whether or not your pedaling actually has any value.  And so you end up looking like this:

...for the entire ride.  Not actually a joke, guys.  So anyway, we rode bikes and ate one million different food items for thanksgiving (did you guys notice that I just used "one million" in an almost appropriate way?  take that, english language!).  I had a most glorious time just hanging out with the faaaaam.  Also, my siblings played hot cross buns on the water glasses.  It was actually quite impressive.

The next day we headed back to northern California (the land of milk and honey or maybe it's actually just wine) and on our way we we able to stop and visit Danny and Lena who were having thanksgiving with her family and how neat is that?!  They were at this ranch and it turns out ranches sometimes have one BILLION peacocks and a herd of llamas. Also, llamas are weird.  I mean, look at this guy.  Is he really a llama?  Or is he actually a demon?  Or maybe one of those creepy creatures from lord of the rings? Honestly.  Poor guy really got the short end of the stick because he is just unfortunate-looking.

Then we finally made it home and I watched The Avengers for the first time (all of it!  No sleeping for me! Mostly because Jake sat on one side of me and Jalyn on the other so I couldn’t even lie down which may or may not be a major factor in whether or not I stay awake for an entire movie).  Then on my last day in town I went to church and a lady in the ward told me that she could “see my future husband just on the horizon.  Trust me, you will find him soon!” so that was encouraging.  I also found a baby that is whiter than me and that also provided a good amount of comfort for my albino soul.  Then my mom made me favorite dinner as a little bit of an early birthday celebration. And then I was off to the airport to catch my flight (which, turns out it was actually a ward flight because there were two guys from my ward on the flight).  The flight was fairly uneventful other than the fact that the 18-year-old girl in the seat next to me was on her first flight and the fact that the guy in the row behind me collapsed in the middle of the flight….soooooo, nbd whatever.

And now here I am, back at school and suddenly realizing that blogging is not what I should be doing because I have an insane amount of stuff to do in the next two weeks and blogging doesn’t actually get any of it done.  Weird.

But, important comment!  Christmas season is just about to commence!  (I say, "just about to" because we all know Christmas season doesn't start until after Thanksgiving or after my birthday, whichever comes second.  And for the first time in the history of ever, my birthday is super one million after thanksgiving and has not yet occurred and so the Christmas season must hold on for just one more little minute).

But that doesn't mean we can't have a Christmas tree!  It's so beautiful!

Also, p.s.  The guy that collapsed on the plane was fine.  Just a little light headed, I guess.

this new bishop i found.

Over President's Day Weekend, I went home to California for a quick little visit with the fam.  It was actually a surprise for my dad who became the bishop of my home ward that weekend, so we came to be supportive and also to eat lots of good food.

Since all the family was going to be flying in (except for Lena--sad day), we tried to coordinate schedules so we would all arrive at the airport at approximately the same time.  So Danny had it all figured out so he would arrive at about 6:30, Jalyn and I would arrive at about 7, and then Matthew and Mykel would get there at about 7:30.  It turned out that Danny arrived on time and everyone else was horrifically late.  We didn't end up leaving the airport until about 11, but it was pretty cool because Tom drove up in our 12 passenger van (classy)   blasting Back in Black, so we knew we were in for a good time.  It was seriously the most hilarious thing.

Anyway, we drove home and walked into the house and surprised my dad quite successfully.  From then on, the weekend was just full of perfectness.  It was seriously so fun to just be with my family for the entire weekend.  We joked and laughed and told every ridiculous story there ever was.  We all have such similar humors and it kills me.  My favorite thing is telling the same pun/joke as one of my siblings just seconds before they can get it out.  I give myself bonus points for that.

But really, we just spent the weekend going on little walk/hikes, eating supes good food, watching videos that feature my grandfather in a speedo, going to church and making a scene (i.e. letting my little brother carry me around and "over the threshold" into our new home, the church), driving back and forth from the airport, watching videos in 3D on our GINORMOUS television that my parents decided to get once there were only 2 kids living at home (Really?  I mean, really? What's next?  A Ferrari for each of them?), and finding any and every segue into watching this really cool video I once saw.

Basically, it was a perfect weekend.

p.s. such cute parents, right?

i just said that #35992

(thomas and his creepy-style hand.)

Just your average dinner conversation:

Mom: We're all going to drive Danny to the airport tonight. That way we can spend as much time with him as possible before he leaves.
Stacy: Hmm, sometimes I wish we could make it so that instead of having benches in the van, the seats would just line all the walls so we could face each other in a big circle when we drive...but then it would seem like some Amish van or something and that would be weird.
Mom: So tell me, how many Amish vans have you seen in your lifetime?

Stacy: Dang it.