Tough Cookie & the Latelys...

Ya Gotta Be Tough Cookie & Smile a lot too.
:]

I have learned a lot in the last little while (that is what I have been doing while I could have been blogging of course! :D) There have been some really hard moments for me living back east...times that I have been "stretched" and given a chance to grow.  

I have had two theme songs these past couple weeks. One is Lessons Learned by Carrie Underwood and the other is Brave by Sara Barellies. AND WOOWWZA, I love them. 

And now for the LATELYS...

 

These are a few of my favorite things as of late...

 

1. Planning for visiting Sar in the big Apple. NYC TRIP

 

2. The Pentagon Memorial. We went on the most beautiful night. Every person who passed has a bench. Under the bench is a pool of water. The benches that face the building were in the plane, those facing outward were in the building at the time of the crash. It was beautiful and one of my favorite memorials in DC.

 

3. Just a gorgeous night with a sin rise that reminded me of home sweet home.



4. Another run getting caught and drenched in the rain!  At the point before it started raining I thought my insides were going to cook from the heat... and then I felt rain! MIRACLE.  These two are my angels of exercise. They keep me going!!



5. The Rainbow that we saw as we ran up to the Barlow! Beautiful! The Barlow is right behind that tree!


6. The National Gallery of Art was a fun place to visit. The picture on the right just below is the Preamble to the Constitution in license plates- there is a plate from every state! That was my favorite piece of art.

6. A letter from the cutest brother in the world.  He is on fire and I get too excited to hear from him. He is serving a mission in Calgary Canada. I didn't think I would miss him as much as I do! He is so good and going to do so much good.



7. Some reflection time with Einstein... :] Good for the soul!



8. Friends come to visit!!


9. I am more like my mother everyday... so excited about office supplie hunting?!


10. My auntie sent me this little ditty and it made my week. I want to hang this guy up in my future home for my kids!



11.BEST NEWS EVER. I FOUND A POOL!!!!! :]

 

12. And a gorgeous view on the roof of my building for lunch.

13. Nightly adventures walking the monuments...the Lincoln always wins!

 

14. A trip to the zoo was definitely in order! We sweat so much this day and saw greeeattt animals. Definitely worthy of the national zoo status.

 

15. One of many birthday celebrations...NATALIE's BIRTHDAY had to be topped off with a photoshoot but our favorite little red wall in Georgetown of course!

 

 

16. Best ice cream in the world can be found at Thomas Sweet in Georgetown. I have been here to many times. No sugar until my birthday....But doesn't that look like the perfect cone?!

17. We took pictures to enter a contest for WHERE magazine. We never entered the pictures...but we had fun!

 

18. AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM.  NO WORDS. JUST AWESOME.

 

19. Gorgeous Blooms and a not so gorgeous sight/battle of single housing? :]

 

20. New Indian Sandals from Eastern Market & More pool time...ahhhh.

 

21. Another Birthday Celebration for the beautiful Megan Noak. We is cray-cray.

 

LAST, BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT:

I FINISHED MY SECOND TO LAST PAPER , for the semester, 20 MINUTES AGO.

 

YAYYYYYYY! :]

One more to go my friends..

The lunch tactic...

The little known, widely used secret of taking your lunch at 1 rather than noon... It makes the day go by so much faster!!!!

I am currently participating in the lunch tactic. We talked and laughed about this as interns last night. All of us have been using the lunch tactic to make our days speed by! :) 

Anyways, here's to lunch... Had to share!

Happy Barlow intern Friday!!

So America.

Oh, hey there beautiful ballpark that outlooks that Potomac Riva...

 

So here we have update numero uno.  Yes, once again I have not been a good blogger girl. :]

Oh well...here goes!

 

 

My first baseball game of life was at this lovely Nationals game! I will say that I was a little bit Disneyland excited for this one.  I have been raised in a family where football takes over the season of Fall...so...I never really got that into baseball...AT ALL. Being semi-raised on a football field, I never thought that I would actually like baseball. Well, it turns up I REALLY DO! It was a blast and a half really. There were probably 20 of us kids from the Barlow that bought tickets together and went one night.  I had to buy a Nats baseball hat from one of the guys with a backpack full of them on the street.  Only five dolla my friends! The weather was perfect that night too. It was fun to see a Vegas Native's name on the back of a ton of jerseys too...Bryce Harper! He didn't play this game, but the next game he did!

 

& YUMMMMM...

 

My shoe broke after the game...don't I have the best friends in the world?! They carried me for a little while as we adventured to get milk shakes at the bomb.com GOOD STUFF Eatery. ummmhmmmm. :]

This is from another night...the night we got stuck in a spontaneous rain and lightening storm with balloons! We were running back from CVS at 11pm and BAM. Drenched and tangled balloons galore.  We laughed so hard and had a grrrrrrrrreattt time being semi concerned with making it home alive! This is Chrisianne...one of the best people I have met in my life. She is the greatest.



 

& lastly...

 

MEET MY FAVORITE PEOPLE:

The ones who made/make my day erryday of life this summer.

BARLOW CLASS of SUMMER 2013.

and Elder & Sister Fulkerson, our favorite missionary couple alive.

and Bro. Goodliffe, the man who teaches us all we know.

 

 

ta-ta fooo now.

Gettysburg.

RANDOM THOUGHT....

 

Before I get to Gettysburg I have to tell you about the iPod dance party at the capitol reflecting pool! A group from my ward sent around a playlist and we all downloaded it on our iPods or MP3s.  We met at the reflecting pool around 10 and pushed play on our iPods at the same time.  I am sure people thought we were nuts dancing it what looked like silence. IT was a BLAST.

 

Our last class excursion of the summer was to the beautiful Gettysburg.  It was a day trip where we left early in the morning and came back late in the afternoon.  We were blessed with another beautiful day, a great on bus tour guide, and a questionable small town buffet. WHATA DAY!

This is the view from the top of one of the battle towers. It made me want to live in the country side...

 

My favorite people and I.

 

The cemetery where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address.  I remember memorizing the Gettysburg Address in elementary school.  That is my first memory of having a true love for the United States.  I was really excited to be in the place where Lincoln gave the speech many years ago.  I admire Lincoln a lot.  I often ponder upon the person I would have been during that time of struggle in the United States. Gettysburg was a neat (and tiny) town to visit.  One of the buildings had TONS of bullet holes in the side that were from the battle...so COOL!

Shall we go to Old Town?

Once upon a weekend...

 

...We wanted to do a day trip. Get out of the city a little bit and refresh our heads! Our original plan was to head out to Annapolis...home of the Naval Academy...ummmmmhmmmmmm. :]  We planned to go so spontaneously that we didn't check transportation availability as well as we could have... while standing inside the Metro station we decided to go to Old Town, Alexandria for the day and explore our little hearts out.  It was a much needed and one of the most beautiful days that DC has blessed us with all summer!

 

Our first stoppppppp:

THE MASONIC TEMPLE.

 

 

We spent two hours in this little ditty. When you get to the "King Street" Metro stops this beautiful building is one of the very first things that you see.  There was a guided tour for 8 dollars. YES, we definitely did that.  I felt like a mystery was about to be solved.  I don't know if it is National Treasure's influence in my life, or what, but I have always had this fascination with Masons. We got to see some beautiful architecture, statues, paintings, and even a lock of George Washington's hair that they had retrieved when they had to fix his grave at Mount Vernon.  My favorite thing that we saw all day though was a special little clock that was frozen in time.  The time that the clock read wad the exact moment that George Washington had died.  They snipped the wires at that moment. THAT WAS COOL. Another great moment from this day was when we got to go to the very top of the building and see the view of Alexandria and a great view of DC.  It was beautiful!

 

Well Hello, little MAGNOLIA TREE...

So below is a picture of one of my very favorite things about DC. Magnolia trees are EVERYWHERE and really make the place special.  They smell kind of like lemon heaven. When they have white blooms open all over them, their beauty competes with that of the cherry blossoms I think. New favorite thing.

 

 

THE MALE VERSION OF SANDRA BULLOCK-IN REAL LIFE.

That's right folks...you guessed it- an amazing older gentleman who plays "glass" in Old town. He gave our good friend Sandra a run for her money.  I wish that I would have recorded a bit of him playing.  He plays the most amazing songs. The glasses are all different shapes and sizes, each filled with different amounts of water.

 

Once you go all the way to the bottom of King Street you reach the beautiful water front.  It just makes you want to hop on a sail boat and ride away! This was the group that we went with and had a blast-and-a-half. Old town is one of my new favorites.  There is even a complementary trolley (how magical is that?!?) that drives you from the metro station all the way down King Street to the water front.  I am so team Old town! I love the quaintness and fun.