africa pictures!

i had the hardest time trying to decide which pictures to post - i took SOOOO many. so this is a brief collection of some of the pictures. it should give you a feel for the trip.

this trip was absolutely the most incredible thing i have done up to this point in my life. i got to spend 3 weeks in ghana, africa. my volunteer placement was in a school called suzzy mother care. i taught the class of 6 and 7 year olds. they were such sweet kids and i fell in love with each of them.

my perspective on so many things changed while i was there. i wouldn't go as far as to say i am a totally different person, but i definitely have changed in some aspects. the things i learned there are things that i will never forget. the people in ghana are so happy and content. my intention was to go there to see what i could do to help - but i never expected for it to be the other way around. i truly consider the people there to be angels that were placed in my life to teach me some of the things i need to know at this point in my life. although i will probably never see any of these people again, they really will be a part of the rest of my life.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

manti pageant and 4th of july

nikki andi drove down to manti for the manti temple pageant. i had never seen it before and it was amazing. it made for a really late night, but it was totally worth it. about halfway there, we decided (and i still have NO idea why...) to get out of the car and get on top of it. so we did. super random.

on top of the car


on top of the car again


manti temple


waitin for the pageant to start


on the 4th of july nikki and i met a group of friends from my old ward over at the mtc field for fireworks. it was fun to hang out with everyone again. the stadium of fire fireworks sucked, but we played some fun games and just had a lot of fun.

messin around after the fireworks - we eventually got a full pyramid, i just don't have a picture of it


love these boys


i'm not sure how this started... but it was funny


lark, tanna and i

californ-i-a

now on to our trip to california. tacy, nikki and i decided we would take a spontaneous trip down to california for the weekend. it was quite a fun weekend. tacy flew on her first airplane, we went shooting at the shooting range, spent some time at the beach, got henna tattoos that turned out horrible, had a bonfire at the beach, went to the newport beach temple, went to the long beach aquarium where we went on a sea life cruise, went to the museum of tolerance, made dry ice bombs, and lots of other fun excursions.


yep - we made matching blankets


shooting at the shooting range


henna tattoos that looked like poop on our feet


bonfire at the beach


at the long beach aquarium


embarking on our cruise


the only sea life we saw on our sea life cruise...

Round-About-Campout

i have a lot to catch up on. i'll start with the illegal sleepover that i wrote about in my last post. so the undisclosed location was a roundabout in provo. yes - we slept in the middle of the roundabout. it has a bunch of trees and bushes and rocks around the outside, and there was a small space just big enough for the 4 of us to squish in there. and i'll tell ya - we were squished. there was a huge rock that i was laying on, so i went to move it and what did i find?? oh, just a HUGE spider...

we slept right behind those rocks that i am standing in front of


o yes we did


the 4 of us