bests

This weekend was so fun! My six best friends and I headed down to St. George to see Brian Regan, soak up the sun, shop, and laugh. It was such a relaxing and fun weekend and I was sad to come back to rainy Provo.  (Speaking of rainy Provo, Josh & I went to a BYU/UVU baseball game tonight with his parents and it rained basically the whole time. Fun, but really cold!)  


We got to St. George with just enough time to get to the Tuachan to see Brian Regan.  Thanks to Cris' wonderful parents, we were able to get front row tickets! All of my friends have very distinct laughs and it made everything even more hilarious to hear everyone's crazy laughs again.  It's been more than a year since we've all been able to get together at the same time.







After that, we headed to the jacuzzi. Its so funny how similar we all are, even though we're living in different places, we were all wearing swimming suits from the same place.


The next day, we woke up, had a delicious breakfast from our personal chef, Cris, and headed out for a hike.  We went to a place that had a really narrow space to hike through. It was a little bit scary but so fun.

Then we headed to the pool. It was so nice to relax in the SUN after living through weeks and weeks of rain and working in an office all day long. We also went shopping.  Usually, I don't really enjoy shopping and I hate spending my money on myself. I always feel that whenever I earn any money I should pay my tithing and save the rest. BUT, being with 6 girls that tell you that you look so good in literally everything you try on and that you should be a model, you can't help but purchase a few things.  That night we made headbands, watched a home video of different things we've recorded over the years: A Mexican hat dance/Love Story, a music video for "walking on broken glass", our own rendition of What not to Wear, and my favorite, Napoleon Dynamite: Rupert Style.    

(picture from 2005)

The next day we got up early, had a little photo shoot and headed to church. Then we hurried and packed, helped with dinner, cleaned up, and headed back to the real world. 

 As I was sitting in sacrament meeting, singing the opening hymn, I looked down the row and on both sides of me were 3 beautiful girls.  I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, but I got a lump in my throat. (and five little tears trickled down my face, haha my girls will get that... hopefully).  I just felt so happy and so blessed to have such wonderful friends.  We haven't spent a lot of time with each other the last 2 years since we've all moved away from home, but whenever we get together, its like nothing has changed.  I realize that this is something that is very remarkable.  Once we all left the wonderful bubble of Rupert, ID and entered a whole new world, we could have each chosen a different path then the one we were on before.  I realized that our lives have basically been turned upside down at times, we've felt sad, homesick, lonely, failed a few tests, had our hearts broken a couple times, made new friends, had new experiences, become independent, and been placed into a new world.  Throughout all this, we've all stayed strong. And when mistakes happen and we mess up at times, we've always returned back to the path we were on before though the Atonement.  I can't tell you how amazing I felt to be sitting next to 6 of my favorite girls in the whole world and knowing that nothing would ever change.  Knowing that whenever life gets tough, or my testimony is wavering, I can call up any one of those girls and know that I can rely on them for anything.  It is so wonderful to be surrounded by girls who have strong testimonies and who live lives that are full of goodness. Its easy to be happy and feel loved when you're surrounded with people who beam with the light of Christ. I LOVE YOU GIRLS!

Moving on up...

So if you look at this picture and imagine a skinnier, happier, younger girl with long brown hair, then thats me in my cubicle at work!

And, I kinda "decorated" my cubicle with pictures... the brothers, my family, friends, my cute niece and nephews, Josh & I, ect. I have been told on numerous occasions that my nieces and nephews are the cutest little kids in the world. I definitely agree :) I love being an aunt!

On Friday, on my 10th day of work, I got a little promotion! I was sitting at my desk in my little cubicle and it felt like someone was standing behind me. I turned around and my boss said, very officially,

"Karee. I need to see you at 2 in the training room." 

Oh jeez. So at 2, I was still finishing up some paper work with a client on the phone and he had to come and get me for our little meeting. I finished as quickly as I could and went back to the room with him.  There were 3 other people in there, and no one looked nervous so I tried to relax.  Turns out, we've all been doing the best (the others had been there for a while before me..) and he was going to train us to do a new job! It feels so good to be working and excelling at it.  It's not that big of a promotion, I mean I just get to do another step in the whole paperwork process, but I feel good about it.

Work at Myler Disability so far as been actually really fun.  The people I work with are older than me, the closest one to my age is 23, and most of them are graduated or going to law school or another graduate school, and the majority of them are married.  But they are so fun to work with! They're really funny and everyone is so completely different, that its always very fun.  We get a lot of perks as well.  Last Friday they rented out a theater for the opening of Iron Man 2 (which you should definitely go see), we play volleyball every other Saturday, and on Mondays if you get 18 intakes then you get a gift card.  I really wanted a gift card, and today I finally got 18! If you average 15 points/intakes a day for a week, you also get a gift card.  Also, we're all put into groups based on the different parts of the country, like South, East, West, Central, ect. Each person gets a point for doing intakes or applications and the team with the most points at the end of the week gets to go home early 2 hours. Paid. Awesome.

So far I really love my job.  The only downside is that I have to sit inside all day. I'm so used to working outside in the summer heat, that I have to go outside on my lunch breaks just to remind myself that there's more to this world then my little cubicle!  When I was roofing in 100 degree weather, I told myself I couldn't wait to be in an office someday, but now, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. Oh well, picnics everyday are fine with me! I'm so grateful for this job and the wonderful experiences I am having.