showered (again!)

 

my neighbor and long-time family friend rachel threw me a bridal shower along with my grandma and great-aunt (…who may be the classiest person i know; british accent and all!). it was held on my great aunts property and there were beautiful flowers, delicious food, and a slew of (refreshingly appropriate) gifts to aid me on my journey to domestication. oh, and there were strippers. lots of strippers.

 

mckenzie approves of the strippers, apparently?

p.s. thanks to everyone who came and showered me!

things i don't understand about boys...

(living in a house full of boys and growing up with a handful of guy-friends and more-than-friends-guy-friends, i feel like i have a good handle on the male race. sometimes. other times i am just left completely and entirely bewildered…)

 

i don’t understand their…

::ability to sit and do the same mind-numbingly repetitive thing for hours and hours on end; only stopping to scratch their, in my brothers’ cases, mosman multipliers.

::unwillingness to work for food. when i am hungry, i will drop everything i am doing –be it exercising, studying, socializing– to tend to my ravenous needs. when i am hungry, i will eat…even if it means spending $15 for a mediocre meal or settling on a suspicious gas-station burritos and a day-old donut. boys, however, don’t seem to have that desire. for example, my brother chad won’t eat all day long if my mother doesn’t put the food in front of his face and force him to chew.

::(…on that note)real understanding of what ‘being hungry’ is. when i stumble upon delicious food, my hunger does not factor into whether or not i am going to eat…i am going to eat…you know? when i ask jeff if he is hungry he pauses for a few seconds as if he is listening to his stomach and generally bases his decisions off of that.

::obsession with being compared to bear grylls.

::love of lord of the rings, late night cartoon network shows, zooey deschanel, and all things involving fire.

::source of confidence and mood swings: height, how their team is doing, leg hair quantity and quality.

oh, boys…

hippity happiness!

 

last night jeff worked until eight and i decided to make a full-fledged dinner; foil-baked tilapia with parsley, rice with collared greens, and some frozen yogurt with baked apples (COMPLIMENT MY DOMESTIC ATTEMPTS!). as i was putting the finishing touches on the meal and staring out the window like an anxious puppy dog waiting for him to hurry up and come over, i decided that i could be perfectly happy doing this for…ever?  well, maybe not for ever. but for now. isn’t that funny how that works? i mean, i do want more…of course! i want more education and more clothes and more kitchen-counter space but, even if that never happens–even if i had to use the makeshift fold-out counter-top forever–i know i could be happy with this and most of all, with him…and i think that’s pretty neat!

living in solitude(ish).

 

dear crazy cat ladies and hermits of the world: i get you.

i get it! the whole ‘living on your own’ thing. it’s the caterpillar’s spats (thanks you google search: ‘synonyms for “the bees knees’ …i think?). there is a certain kind of beautiful that can only be found in a clean, organized fridge. carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and other various veggie tales protagonists all squeezed nicely into the bottom shelf; strawberries, grapes, apples, and cherries in the right drawer. lactose-free almond milk…bottles of diet pepsi (it’s a new phase, sorry mom!)…leftovers, my leftovers…bliss, bliss, bliss!

i can stay in my rutty, white robe all day and just…lounge. at any decibel at any hour. FREEDOM! if the place is messy, it is my mess; my hair in the drain, my laundry on the floor, my cheese-encrusted dishes. i love my messes so much i could lick them up.

the best part: the naked barrier? gone. fart barrier? thing of the past. anxiety over having to sneakily steal condiments…and cereal…and fancy dryer’s ice cream (my jana-roommate always bought the expensive stuff! s’mores ice cream, are you kidding me?!)…no more!

now, how wonderful is that?

here’s to one more week of living in solitude! then it’s off to idaho…home, sweet home.

p.s. ummm…hello? my name is brooke and i am apparently the world’s easiest target? ha. whatever, if someone tries to snatch me, they will have to cross the barrier of the non-fart-barrier barrier…you know?

bye june!

 

the final two weeks of june were spent moving into and decorating the place that jeff and i will share come august. my mother came down with a truck-load of supplies and a car-load of kids to help me out (read: do it all while i floated around seven peaks’ lazy river and made ikea runs)(ikea’s soft serve vs. chic fil a’s? i just can’t decide!)(read: my mom is the literal best).

i loved having my family in town. it was so fun to show off provo to them. my favorite outings were to the movie brave (holy best. movie. ever. exclamation point. i recommend it as a mommy-daughter bonding date;  is there anything better than a date with your mom? i submit not.) and to provo’s comedy sportz (there’s something so tasty about soda that’s been snuck in, right?).

and! and we fused together the stapleton and (3/8ths of the) mosman clan. it was magical and chili’s tortilla chips were involved. i was sort-of actually nervous for the ordeal…mostly nervous for myself. when i’m trying to fuse together two groups of people i tend to get seriously awkward and try to force friendships; “susan likes rice and you ordered a rice bowl today and susan likes..breathing and so do you so…ha! friends? let’s take a picture together!” …luckily i didn’t have to build any bridges and everyone got along swimmingly.

bye, bye june!

that good-good.

 

::waking up obscenely early and hiking Y mountain…holy, polynesians! there were so many cute families up! and by cute i mean huge! each family consisted of like, twelve kids!

::finding my phone and my engagement ring. yes, i temporarily lost that little sparkler…worst(ish) six hours of my life! i have a sleep-walking problem and evidently slept walk over to my dresser and placed it inside the hood of a gray sweatshirt? thank heavens for answered prayers! bumper sticker that!

::a homemade meal made entirely by jeff. delicious whole wheat macaroni and cheese with spinach and olive oil and extra love…and strawberry shortcake for dessert! he is a dreamboat…so much so that i will disregard his affinity for outfits that make no sense– a button up chambray with basketball shorts? funky?

::long talks with my mother dear on the phone while slurping down a vanilla diet coke (with fresh lemons! thanks jennie!).

::swimming some late-night laps at the gym. wait, actually i am not thankful for this at all. i realized how terrible i am at swimming; i blame my parents, they only forced me to get to the minnow level! let us take from this: i went to the gym.

::saturdays….enough said.

we bought a zoo!

…or an apartment, rather. (but have you ever seen that movie? okay, bawled my eyes out! it was so touching and scarlett johansson officially never looks bad…ever. even in an ill-fitting zookeeper’s suit!) we are pretty, seriously excited about it…even though we can’t actually live there together yet…but, oh! is it fun to look at!and now i switch gears: how do you take a good self-picture on the phone, people?! jeff and i try so hard but every time the front camera is facing us we just…freeze. well, jeff does. he has this incredible ability to maintain the same face in every single picture (no, seriously. you should see all of our engagements!) while i twitch and dance like a strobe light. behold:…painful. this was supposed to be our ‘WE JUST SIGNED THE CONTRACT AND OWN AN APARTMENT!’ faces but, as you can see, FAIL. i think it is mostly due to our camera-awkwardness but also because we had, minutes before this picture attempt, realized that there was no dishwasher in the place that we had just signed for…and owned. three cheers for hand-washing? four cheers for paper plates and plastic cutlery?

i might just add this whole ‘selfy’ thing to the long, exhausted list of stuff that i am not very good at THUS pretend to think is lame. like slalom skiing, walking in heels, and hugging people with backpacks on (so lame!). as i told jeff on our first date, i am not humble by choice, i am humble by default (dangit, genes!).

now, five cheers to that!