sister.

mikayla at her 80's themed birthday party

mikayla's 12th birthday was yesterday!

i can't believe it was TWELVE years ago now that i finally got a little sister.

after praying for five years for this girl, i can say that the day she was born definitely goes in the top five happiest days of my life.

and i'm so grateful that it was mikayla who was sent to our family.

she brings so much joy & laughter into our home and even though we love to tease her since she is the youngest, we all love her so much.

she has become so talented as a dancer and pianist and is really good at sports too.

she is much more sporty than i ever was.

i am sad she is growing up so fast but i'm excited to watch her go through jr. high and high school and see where life takes her. i know she will do amazing things.

i love you kaykay!

spring on the slopes.

My dad, devin, tyler, anthony, jake, jamie, and I all hit the slopes at Snowbird last week. It was gorgeous and we couldn't have asked for a better day. It reminded me how much I love spring skiing. 

My dad packed us the best lunch. Or maybe it was just the fact that we had burned any calories left in us on the slopes. Either way, we all agreed that was the best tuna sandwich we'd ever had.

We had so much fun & luckily we still have one more day at Deer Valley ahead of us.

So happy to be apart of a family of skiers!

p.s. click on the pictures to view them better.... the collages didn't fit on my blog right so i had to make them small.

lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

dustin & i had a project for our computer tech. class where we had to take pictures and edit them.

easy enough, right? since i tend to do that like daily...

so we decided to take pictures of zoo animals. i hadn't been to the hogle zoo in ages so it was a lot of fun & a good way to take advantage of a nice spring day.

this plump, little owl was my favorite.

a grapefruit a day keeps the doctor away?

i sure hope so since i have been eating one every morning lately. 

just starts my day off fresh and right. 

& i really wouldn't mind one day living somewhere where i could have a grapefruit tree in my backyard.

that would be lovely.

on another note: 

spring break is this week! even though i only have school on tuesdays&thursdays this semester so it's really not that big of a deal; i still just like the idea of it and plan to do some fun things with my time.

but the best part about spring break is that there is only six weeks left of school when we return!

glory, glory, hallelujah! 

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." 
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

*picture found here