The Flowers at Temple Square

Yesterday mom, dad and I went up to Salt Lake City to go see a Tabernacle Choir concert featuring Brian Stokes Mitchel and the Utah Symphony. It was part of the celebration of the 150th celebration of the Golden Spike. I don't know much about that to be honest.

Mom was in the concert, because she is in the choir, but dad and I had some free time and walked around the City Creek Center and ate some dinner. I went to kneader's and he went to Costa Vida which was nearby. I got a chicken pesto panini that came with Parmesan chips. I also got a fruit tart, which was amazing, and a little package of macarons, which to be honest didn't impress me much. They must have been cheap macarons. We didn't see very many shops, but we did get to look around the Microsoft store. That was a store I chose. I saw this huge $4000 surface screen that was 28 inches long. I'm pretty sure it is meant for art, architecture and other careers having to do with design. I've never seen one in person until yesterday, so it was cool finally getting to play around with that. It reminds me of a huge tablet. I can see why it is great for design.

I got to walk around Temple square a bit and take pictures of some of the flowers. I'd like to come back sometime and get even more pictures. My time was limited, so I couldn't get them all.

Here is a random picture I took when dad and I were walking around the Conference Center to pass time.

The concert was enjoyable. Dad and I gotin our seats and hour and a half early at 6:30pm because that is when they open the doors to the Conference Center. We were actually first in line at door 9. I fell asleep in my chair for a while after I sat down. It really si better to get seats earler, because you get better seats in your assigned section. Because of my nap I didn't have to waste much of my already low phone battery thankfully.

We got home around 10:30pm I think. It might have been later. I just played games for the rest of the night before I went to sleep.

My 4th of July

So yesterday was pretty much awesome.

I could not sleep the night before yesterday I was excited for my birthday and I started to think about friends, my mind was loud and it was hot in my room. I only got 3 and a half hours the night of my birthday it was insane. I fell asleep around 2:30am and had to wake up at 5:50am to get ready to go to the hot air balloon launch.

The hot air balloon launch is an annual thing we do over here on the 4th of July. It is basicly what it sounds like, we just go watch a bunch of awesome Hot Air Balloons inflate and rise into the sky. It is a lot of fun and every year hundreds of people go. They also have a police fundraiser every year where you can buy breakfast in order to help the police, the breakfast is pretty good.  We didn't do that this year though because we are all a little strapped for cash.

It was actually pretty cloudy in the morning we weren't sure if it would rain. The balloons ended up inflating and then deflating right after because the wind currents were too strong for them to be safe.  It was still awesome though to watch them inflate.  We were late to the balloon launch anyway so because of the complications we got to see the balloons. Usually if we were as late as we were they would have already been in the sky. The balloons usually launch around 6:30am, and we go there around 7am.

My dad made egg and cheese breakfast burritos in the morning right after we woke up to get ready. I was going to have him make waffles but the burritos were great as well.

We went in 2 cars when we left. I went with my sister and her husband and my nephew Jax. Everyone else went in the other car. One of the reasons why we were so late is because Justin's car wouldn't start. We had to wait 10 minutes before we could try again, it worked the 2nd time though.

After the balloons and everything that happened in the morning we walked a couple of blocks to where the parade route was. Our relatives saved a big space in front of where they live and we sat with them near the beginning of the parade route.  We got there an hour early so I just played on my phone, and ready my book while I was waiting. I took a photo as well.



I didn’t really watch the parade, just mainly talked with my relatives, and read my book a little. About half way through I started playing with my camera a little more and took some pictures of myself for fun. My mind was caught inbetween daydreaming and thinking of what I wanted to do afterward. The parade and balloons were not my idea, they were something I just let my family do every year. I really hate parades, not to fond of big crowds as some of you know, and the balloons are cool but I don’t like going for the same reason as parades. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything around me at the time, I texted Sam a few times, but he was busy.

This is some random photo I took of myself while I was there.

The parade was okay but I was glad to get away from the crowds. We left right when it ended, I was glad because they start shooting off the cannon at the end, i hate cannons, to loud for me. I’m not sure my nephiew would have liked it either, it would have scared him a lot.  

We walked back to our cars, it was a semi-long walk back and it was getting hotter because the clouds were moving away.  I don’t mind heat as much as my other family members, but it was nice to get away from the sun and into the shade finally after a while.  My nephiew began to be more energetic again once we got into the air conditioned car again.  

On our way back home we stopped at Smiths, Justin (my brother in law) needed to get some allergy medicine, I went in with him because I wanted to find some silver nail polish I used t wear, i couldn’t find it though. We started to leave the store but decided to go into the Sally’s Beauty Supply right next door to Smith’s. My sister and I went in this time. Justin just stayed in the car with Jax.  Linda and I bought my hair dye, and a few things of nail polish. The color of hair dye I picked is lighter and more red than the last one I used.

When we got home we decided that we would do my hair right then, before we had our picnic up the canyon.

My sister dyed my hair, I left it in for about 40 minutes or so and then we washed it out. When we wash my red dye out when we dye it it looks kind of like  horror show haha.  I brushed and blowdryed my hair after leaving it in a towel for about 10 minutes. When I saw my hair dryed for the first time with it’s new color I loved it a lot, I still love it a lot and so did everyone else. Red seems to be my perfect color, it matches me well and goes good with my skin tone.  

Various people were watching Star Trek The Next Generation around my house, we didn’t do anything for a while after this.

We decided to go up the canyon and find some place to have a KFC lunch. My parents had bought some while they were on the way back to the parade. We drove up the beautiful canyon and my mom and dad brought us to this really random place up a short trail. It had a couple picnic tables but it was mostly empty. We all pretty much protested at this spot because it had tons of bugs, didn’t look very pretty, and the ground was uneven. We all pretty much decided that we would move to another loacation. We did not know where we were going.

We drove up to another random place at Sundance and started looking for a picnic table. We walked around this place at Sundance, I don’t know what it was but we were all feeling pretty irritated by then from searching for a place to just have a picnic lunch.

After walking through a park a little, we found this little grassy area in front of a little hotel. I think it was a hotel anyway. We just sat down and ate. It took a few minutes for the tntion that we had built up to dissappear from the air. We all became a lot more relaxed once we sat down and ate. I took a few pictures here as well.

After we ate we just packed up, and waited for a shuttle to take us to our car that we had parked a ways up. My dad decided that he would go and that we would just stand in front of the place near to where the shuttle came.  We just stood there for a few minutes and talked about various things.

After a few minutes my dad came with the car and we went home.  

We were pretty much scattered around the house for a few hours just playing games, watching movies and TV and just hanging out. I spent a few hours just watching anime, and a few movies, and playing on my phone. I was pretty worn out from all the stuff that had been happening.  

We eventually got together and said happy birthday to me and ate the cheesecake.

I went back downstairs ate my cake while watching a Harry Potter movie. I was down there for a little bit and fell asleep. I’m not sure how much I slept but I was woken up by my sister. She told me that we were setting off the fireworks. I just wanted to sleep and almost fell asleep again but I somehow dragged myself out of my bed, grabbed my glowsticks and went outside.  I was feeling really irritated for a few minutes and I just wanted to sleep. It passed though.

We could tell it was going to probably rain soon so we tried to set off as many as we could. Pretty soon it started to rain, but other people in the neighborhood started setting of their fireworks. This year is the first year they have let us use the kind of fireworks that shoot up into the air, we could see various fireworks shoot up into the sky and we could hear some others that were just on the ground. I don’t know how they managed to light them but it was still pretty awesome!

We just watched the neighbors fireworks for a while, a lot of people were shooting them off. I got out my glow sticks and started snapping them so they lit up. I gave some to my family members. i had quite a few glow sticks.

It stopped raining, it wasn’t raining hard or anything, that is how we still managed to watch the neighbors fireworks.  We tried to light some more fireworks of our own after the rain stopped but the wind started to pick up and it wouldn’t let us light the fuse. We tried about 8 different times and managed to light ONE!

We could tell the other neighbors were probably having this same problem because the fireworks started to die down a lot. We went back inside after this.

I listened to some music and read some posts on Xanga for a while and then crashed and went to sleep. I was SO tired.

It was a great day. :)

More random picture, mostly of me.

I forgot about the mascara under my eyes so that is why it looks like I have dark circles. ><

System Overload

Yesterday was pretty fun, we decided to to the the fireworks at the end of the "Stadium of Fire". They always have really great fireworks. The "Stadium of Fire" is an annual 4th of July celebration we have here in Utah, it is usually held in BYU stadium here in Utah. They usually have some famous singer give a concert and there is different stuff that happens like dancers, and other things I don't remember, but it's really cool. The fireworks that they have in the finale are SO amazing, they shoot off a lot of them. There are a lot of people that just come over towards the end and sit on the grass with a blanket and just watch the end of the fireworks. You don't even have to be inside the stadium to see them, just sitting outside the stadium on the grass is enough. That is what we did.

We went to the stadium and put a blanket down on the grass somewhere where we could hear the concert pretty good as well (you can hear it from 5 blocks away so didn't matter really). We had gone to Costco earlier yesterday and bought Sun Chips, chocolate, water bottles, oranges, and a few other things. We brought some of the stuff with us to the Stadium just so we could have something to snack on. We had to park 3 or 4 blocks away because there was NO parking at all. There were a lot of streets blocked off and a lot of Police, and barriers and stuff because there were a lot of people that were in the same situation as us and had to walk a couple of blocks. I did not use my cane because I did not want all the people glancing and looking at me. It is already hard for an HSP Introvert like me to be around big crowds, the glances and stares would have just made it worse. I was fine without the cane and decided to try my glasses again. It worked fine, but not a lot. 

Anyway so we just sat there listening to Brad Pasley sing, he is pretty good. I liked this years selection better than last years. Last year they had Miley Cyrus singing at Stadium of Fire. I hate Miley Cyrus. I just played with my phone and ate snacks and watched my cute nephew playing around.  As you probably guessed I ended up breaking my diet again (I'm never going to try HCG in june again ha ha). It's not really possible for me to keep a diet at this time of the year I have found out **laugh**.

The fireworks came around after a while, they just started with a few at a time and just increased. I took video of some of the fireworks (I'll post it later).  Jax (my nephew) was a little scared by the loud noise, we had to cover his ears so he wouldn't freak out. He got used to it after a while and calmed down a little but still got startled and complained a little bit. He is only 10 months old so I don't think he has ever seen fireworks like this before.

When the finale came around we left right after the fireworks were done. There were thousands of people going to their cars afterward, we had to hurry. Being around a lot of people like that is very draining to me since I am an introvert down to a T.  I knew I would probably be out like a light when I got to the car because I find crowds and lots of social interaction draining. It was noisy, crowded, chaotic, absolutely insane. We kind of drifted along with the crowd that was going in the same direction as us, I tried to wear my glasses and it didn't really do anything so I took them off and it was actually better.  Right then was not a time to have my awareness dulled so it was a good thing I took them off. I get lost in crowds if I am not careful (like I said two posts ago). 

We eventually got to the car after about 20 or 25 minutes of maneuvering around crowds.  I felt so dead when we finally got to the car. When I sat down I could just feel the urge for sleep coming over me.  We managed to only get stuck in traffic for about 10 minutes which was a miracle since there were thousands of people trying to get out as well. Lucky for me we have lived here so long that we know how to avoid situations like that and get out of traffic fast. We took a different way home.  I was drifting in and out of sleep the whole way home, it came over me really fast. If you know the way and introvert's brain works you would completely understand why, even if you don't if you know what and introvert is you will know why I was so drained after that.  On top of this I am HSP (Highly sensitive person).  This makes it much harder.

By the time we got home it was around midnight. It took us probably 35 minutes to get home. I was so overloaded and every little thing was annoying to me. I wanted to just be alone and sleep, everything, even my bones felt tired. I used every bit of energy I had pretty much to be able to stand that huge crowd of people.  I went downstairs as soon as possible and went inside my room. I decided to wind down a bit and listen to some New Age Music to get more relaxed. I listed to music for about a half an hour and then went to sleep. I slept like the dead yesterday night.

I did not want to wake up in the morning. I think my radio was on for 30 minutes before my brain decided to respond to it. I took a shower yesterday evening so I wouldn't have to wake up earlier today and take one. I know how my brain works so I knew I would be fizzled out and I would need that extra hour and a half of sleep. I usually wake up at 7am on Sundays it but today I woke up at 8:30. I got ready for church, decided what I wanted to wear, did my hair and stuff and got my purse. I had an orange and a glass of milk right before I left, when my ride came. I was still pretty tired, not really recovered from yesterday.

We were a little late for church today but we made the sacrament portion of the meeting. I was semi- fine for the first hour of church and stayed awake pretty well even though I wanted to sleep. The 2nd hour though I fell asleep after just kind of bending over in my seat and letting my head droop. When I managed to get myself to at least be half awake I decided I should probably just go plug my ear buds in my ears and go sit out in the foyer and listen to the scriptures. I was pretty much asleep when I was doing this but even when I was sleeping I could still hear what it was saying.  There were a few times in the 3rd hour of church when I was sleeping out on the couch and listening to the scriptures on my iPhone that I went into this state where I was awareness where I was semi-aware of things going on around me and my body and stuff, not like sleep paralysis or anything like that, that is different but it was still weird. It was like I was asleep but became aware of that when I was sleeping, kind of like I was kind of awake but not really. I could still move a little bit. Then another time I actually had a mini dream that I woke up to late after church and everyone was gone. For some reason in that dream I was carrying 3 purses haha. That was super weird. 

i did not want to get off the couch, my brain knew it had to wake up again though and so it did and I felt SO drowsey, I was stumbling everywhere and if everyone didn't know better because we were at church and none of us drink they probably would have thought I was drunk or something. I really felt like I could fall asleep standing up. I found my ride and we left o go home. i could not wait to go home. The hot car kind of made me wake up a little bit but I was still pretty tired, wiped out from yesterday.  I didn't say anything to anyone in the car on the way home. None of them really tried to talk to me I told them I was feeling really wiped out.

When I got home I went straight downstairs, got on my casual clothes, and went back upstairs for a few minutes to eat something. My dad made waffles right before he and my mom went to church. I ate some waffles and drank some milk and went downstairs. I checked facebook and Destiny Online and a few other things and decided to turn off my computer because it would be completely silent. I turned off my computer and turned on Pandora Radio on my iPhone. I had it on the New Age Mix station. I climbed back into bed and was out like a light within 2 or 3 minutes. 

I had a few times during my 3 hour nap when I would kind of wake up a little and I would be aware of my body. My body felt heavy, I could tell it really wanted sleep, my brain could tell this too because I went right back into deep sleep after I realized this. The music and the mixture of silence really helped me a lot along with the extra sleep. I felt a lot better when I woke up. It's amazing what silence and quiet music can do for you along with sleep when you are an HSP Introvert like me.  I no longer felt like I would collapse any moment after I slept more.  I'm still a bit tired, but nothing sleeping later can't fix. I'm still not completel recovered but I think I will be by tomorrow. Tomorrow is my birthday, I am turning 22.

I just watched Star Trek Next Generation and ate a Sandwich after this. I also turned back on my computer and I have just been watching anime and stuff. I don't think anything else will happen tonight but if it does I will remember to update.

Favorite Christmas Tradition.

My favorite Christmas tradition is when we make all the yummy home made treats. Not only is it fun but they taste so good. We give them away to neighbors and other people as well!

We make this stuff called Million dollar Fudge. The only thing I know it has in it is marshmallows, chocolate (the marshmallow is stirred into it so you can't see it). Its so good and the texture is amazing! I know there are other things in it but I've never asked what.
We also make English toffee that's my favorite thing we make.
we make peanut brittle too!
White and dark chocolate pretzels are never left out of the bunch its just not the same without them!

That's what we usually give away and what treats we eat at Christmas.