Smiles.

Early yesterday morning, I got back from a lovely trip in Utah.
I'll start out by saying that I feel like the luckiest girl in the world right now. I am loving life.

Some highlights of the trip:

On Friday, Jackson and I went camping in a way I never have before. We hiked about an hour up a mountain to find a good camping spot. I thought we were going to die from carrying heavy packs (interestingly enough, this wasn't the only time one of us thought we were going to die-- I'll get to that in a second). It was a night of firsts....First time setting up a tent, climbing a mountain, playing a clean game of Never Have I Ever and roasting starbursts. Jackson was pretty sure a bear was about to attack multiple times throughout the night thanks to us being paranoid, but thankfully we left unharmed.

Starting our journey....
Our campsite!
Sitting in front of our lovely fire.
On Monday, we went long boarding. It was my first time and I absolutely loved it. From now on, it will be my "skiing" fix for the summer/fall season. The breeze, cruising through nature..It was awesome. And I did pretty good, minus my dismount at the end. I crashed the long board into a fence (sorry Robby).

On Thursday we went to volunteer at a nursing home (Jackson's idea, best idea ever). We spent some time with a 90 year old woman named Norma. She was a fun lady to hang out with, and had some great words of wisdom, although some of it didn't make the most of sense. She touched my heart, kind of like every patient that I have the pleasure of spending time with. We asked Norma where she was from and she said, "Heaven. I'm going back there soon!". There was a picture of her and her husband in her room from when she was a young adult. She was beautiful. It made me want to live in the 50's.

I won't bore you with every single detail of the trip, but I had so much fun. In fact, it was so much fun that I'm going back in 2 weeks.

A couple more pictures:

I don't know how or why, but we had so much fun with these broken sunglasses.

My last night in Utah--


And.....Most awesome face award goes to:


So, to my faithful 3 blog readers (plus one new stalker, hint: he's in the pictures above), that's my update on life. Still jobless, at least until October 25th. But, completely happy.