holland and kady time

does anybody else find it super-dee-duper hard to keep up with old friends that have moved away?! 

why do i struggle with this so badly?!

i even have a hard time keeping in touch with the people that i loved so much and had amazing experiences with on my mission! 

man, i'm lame.

luckily, i have friends that keep in touch with me. holland and kady are two of those friends. 

holland and i met one special summer many, many moons ago. and kady and i worked at red robin together for a few years. somehow, all three of us became besties and were inseparable. it's funny because all three of us are so opposite from each other in style and personalities and dreams. i mean, we do have a lot in common but i love how different all three of us are. 

kady eventually went off and got married and had a beautiful baby boy named avenue and he just turned two.  and she is prego with her second child right now! hoping for a girl!

holland moved to salt lake and graduated from the u of u and is our business-city woman and she's in love! our little holland is in love! we love it!

and then there's me... a returned missionary, working full-time, lovin' on andy and rock climbing. 

we had a great little dinner at a sushi place in draper called tsunami (thought it was a little unfortunate about the name!)

arcade fire

so arcade fire came to town a few weeks ago, 

riding on the curtails of winning "album of the year" at the grammy's. 

i had seen it advertised that they were coming but for some reason, i wasn't too excited to spend $50 on tickets so i shirked it and thought, "oh too bad. just another concert i'll miss."

but come the day of the concert, andy texted me telling me he got free tickets and to get my dancing shoes on! well, he didn't tell me to get my dancing shoes on, i added that on myself....

the wonderful people at skullcandy had decided to buy all the employees at milo tickets to the show! 

and i got to tag along...

ran into some good people!

i'm gonna have to go ahead and say that show was in my top 5 shows i've ever been to and i will most definitely be spending $50 or whatever it takes to see them again. 

jann had an art show

my roommate jann nielsen is an incredibly talented artist.

i'm proud to call her my own.

black and tan

andy, meera and i took a little jaunt down to black and tan a few weeks back.

had ourselves a grand 'ol time!

things i've seen

one of the best things i've ever seen. two prizes in my cracker jacks.

 one of the dumbest things i've ever seen on the freeway. the license plate said, "2big4u."

 one of the funniest things i've ever seen. poor parker. can somebody buy this kid some sunscreen?

 one of the saddest things i've ever seen, right at the end of my day at work.

diseases are no fun

so, for at least five years i've had stomach and digestive issues. 

let's just say they were more than just issues. :)

my dad was diagnosed with celiacs disease at least ten years ago and we just always attributed my "issues" with that disease since it is hereditary. 

so, we did a few tests here and there and they all came out negative. for the life of us though, we couldn't think of what could be wrong with me other than having celiacs and we knew that these tests could come out as false negatives.

i lived with this "yucky tummy",as my dad calls it, for a while and then i started to see a few pretty concerning symptoms that i was not used to. i'll spare you the details... 

my parents kinda freaked out and had me go to my dad's gastrointerologist doctor. 

the doctor was concerned as well so i got a colonoscopy to check for a few things and an endoscopy that would tell me for sure if i had celiacs or not. 

the worst part of the entire procedure is drinking the laxative. i had to get this prescription strength stuff called golytley. it didn't exactly make me "go lightly."

i was supposed to drink a full glass every 10-15 minutes and at one point i was so bloated that when i went to take my next glass, my body said there was no more room and i totally barfed it ALL up...

 it tasted like battery acid smells.

after that throw up incidence, my body just rejected it every time i drank. i couldn't drink another glass from then on without gagging every time. 

andy was so sweet in helping me and cheering me on and getting me to actually drink it. he's the best boyfriend. 

the next morning, my procedure went off without a hitch. i didn't feel any soreness in my throat or luckily, the other end. 

my doctor came in a few minutes after i woke up from being knocked out and he let us know that i did have crohn's disease and acid reflux and i would have to come in a week later to find out the results of my biopsy to find out if i really did have celiacs or not.  

seeing how my dad has lived for the past 10 years with celiacs and seeing how todd lives with crohns, i was not very excited to be told i had both. 

turns out i don't have celiacs!  

i laughed with happiness when my doctor told me i didn't have it too. apparently it's like 1 in a million to be diagnosed with both celiacs and crohns. i'm soooooo glad i'm not that 1. 

so now, i have a name for how i've been feeling for years. crohns is an autoimmune disease and it is non-cureable so i just have to do my best to try and do everything the doctor tells me to do so i don't get worse. 

seeing todd at his lowest of lows from this disease has made me so sad for him. his symptoms were bad from the moment he was diagnosed so luckily i can learn from him and we can help each other and be little sicky crohnsy people together. 

i feel like we're too young to be dealing with stuff like this.

i guess this is all just a part of life right?

i need help!

so now that you know where my semi-brown skin comes from, this post will make more sense. 

a dear family friend of ours that is from the same island as my mother has graciously offered to buy me a REAL sari! 

she will be traveling back to mauritius this summer, as she always does with her little family, to visit all of her extended family that still lives there. 

she asked me what color of sari i would like and i have absolutely no idea so i need your help to choose a color for me! 

but first i'm going to give you a little lesson on what sari is, thanks to wikipedia....

A sari or saree^[1] is a strip of unstitched cloth, ranging from four to nine metres in length that is draped over the body in various styles.^[2] It is popular in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Burma, and Malaysia. The most common style is for the sari to be wrapped around the waist, with one end then draped over the shoulder baring the midriff.^[2]

The word sari is derived from Sanskrit शाटी śāṭī^[4] which means 'strip of cloth'^[5] and शाडी śāḍī or साडी sāḍī in Prakrit, and which was corrupted to sāṛī in Hindi.^[6]

In the history of Indian clothing the sari is traced back to the Indus Valley Civilisation, which flourished during 2800-1800 BC around the western part of the Indian subcontinent.^[2] The earliest known depiction of the sari in the Indian subcontinent is the statue of an Indus Valley priest wearing a drape.^[2]

well, wow. thanks wikipedia, that was very informative.

now this is where i need your help...

here are a few options that i've found when it comes to colors that i think would be really fantastic and i need your opinion:

a red sari is actually what indian women wear on their wedding day. 

i know these bags aren't actually saris but they are made of sari fabric and i'm looking at the color here...

so there ya have it...

what color is your favorite?

a little sidenote:

the only way i can actually get my sari from vanisha (the family friend from mauritius), is to get married! she wants to give it to me as a wedding gift... hmmm. 

maybe i'll fake a wedding to just get my sari because i totally want to wear it everyday.

so don't be alarmed when you see a semi-brown girl walkin' around town in a most magnificent sari.