I've just got to admit it... I love this song.

bad day daises and stuff.

1. Smash Book - a birthday present that I've finally started using and I absolutely love it.
2. Bad day daisies, which have lasted for more than two weeks! 14 days of insta-cheer.
3. You'll know me by these polka dot pants, because I've matched them every outfit I can. Love them so.
4. The Disneyland fund jar. So far Max and I have saved $116 dollars (amaze!!) But even though we're short a couple hundred, I think Mickey's Halloween Party sounds like too much fun to miss. (and people think I'm joking when I say I get onto disneyland.com once a week... #fact)
5. My partner-in-crime, who bought me a pink tennis racket of my own!
6. The reason why I hide his guitar on the weekends. His ability to focus on any of our conversations drops negative one hundred.
7. Getting ready for The Dirty Dash. A group of us talked ourselves into doing it, (not sure why) but it's happening this Saturday, ready or not.
And 8. If it's not bad day daisies or a cheese pizza, Max knows the only other way to my heart is a fridge full of diet coke. Clearly my health matters to me.

first unofficial day of fall 2012.

"The First Unofficial Day of Fall" is a tradition three years running, so I thought why not continue the celebration? It's kind of like Thanksgiving, because there's no specific date, really, it just always happens to fall on the second Saturday in September.

So we celebrate it.

As tradition would have it, we usually kick off the day by listening to Christmas music, eating french toast, making trips to the library for old black and white scary movies, and snacking on a batch of homemade caramel popcorn... so the un-holiday was celebrated again! Nat King Cole sang about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, we ate (and ate) all-you-can-eat french toast at Kneaders, (first time, by the way, and it was amazing) And we ended the night up the canyon taking pictures of barely red and golden leaves, with our black and white scary movie of choice: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

May any made-up tradition that includes all or any of the above, always continue.

but why?

I remember the first time I attended an Opera. It wasn't romantic... or that much fun. I was 13 years old, and my dad had bought tickets for the family to attend a Saturday night production of La Bohème at Capitol Theater. I dreaded going, I dreaded even the idea of sitting through an entire two hours of people singing in French, and worst of all, I dreaded spending any Friday night without the company or quality of my Dream Street CD.

I remember asking my dad why we had to go. A lot. I'm sure he said something about spending quality time with family, but when I kept persisting, but whyyyy ... I remember him saying something about the importance of broadening our horizons.

Years later, in a British Lit class at BYU, I had a very wise professor ask us why we were in college. Beside, perhaps, becoming informed citizens, gaining necessary credentials, and socializing - why were we there willing to study History? Art? or Literature? Why did something that happened in 1809 matter over two hundred years later? Why read Wordsworth? Practice the piano? Travel thousands of miles to see the Mona Lisa? Or barely survive reading The Odyssey for the first time? Why do we care?

My dad must have taken a class from this same professor, because he said something about broadening our horizons, too... But then he quoted something I doubt I'll ever forget:

Make your mind an interesting place to live for the rest of your life.

september.

It felt like summer sort of came to an end this weekend, (even if it technically lasts a few more days) so we unofficially kissed our summer goodbye; we did nothing that exciting, really, it just felt sort of final with all the rain and the leaves beginning to change colors.

I'll miss our summer months, all our free time for outdoor movies, temple trips, and the few bike rides we went on, (Max doesn't seem to share the same sort of affinity towards beach cruisers that I do, unfortunately,) but I'll mostly miss our long, summer afternoons. It was all so perfect, and it all went by too fast; but truth be told, I'm welcoming the new season with open arms. Fall is great. So we bought pumpkin(and the like)-scented candles this weekend, only because Max insisted, and it seemed sort of deserving... Official and all.