Final Days as a City Girl

I am actually writing this post from Utah so my days as a city girl truly are over. Here is a photo display of what I accomplished in my last few weeks in Washington D.C.

They presented a movie on Monday nights on the National Mall and the event was called Screen on the Green (clever little title I think). While the movie we watched was awful there is something about watching a movie on the grass of the National Mall with the capital in the background that still makes it fun.

The only touristy places I had left to visit were the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court. I loved the Library of Congress! It was my favorite place, there is something about seeing great architecture and a whole bunch of books in one place that gives me goosebumps. It was just gorgeous.
This is the Supreme Court, also neat to see. They are working on updating it as you can tell.
I was able to visit with many "old" friends. This is my dear high school friend, Nicole. She is a bigtime lawyer in DC and has a super cute baby. It was so fun to catch up with her and chat about our high school friends.

Since I have been in many BYU wards, I have many BYU friends. Here are a couple of my favs. Joseph and Regina both live in DC now and it was so fun to go to dinner and chat about silly things with them. Joseph totally fits the t-shirt he is wearing by the way, but you can't trust him!

Now there are many fabulous ice cream places in DC and Virginia. The fact that I cannot fit into any of my clothes is testimony to their deliciousness and my dedication to visiting them often. One of my favs was called Dairy Godmother, (even the title is great!) and evidently I am not the only one who enjoys a nice yummy custard from them...

My roommate Patti was asked to sing at the Kennedy Center the day before I left. I was so excited for her. Singing at the Kennedy Center is a big deal! I was told Nora Jones sang there before she made it super big. I am sure Patti is on her way. She is on the left and sings beatifully, she was the best one there! It was so great to be there for her and enjoy her show.

We had a roommate dinner as a good bye to me and you can see why I had so much fun this summer. We took like 6 pictures because we were goofing off so much! So there is me, Patti, KaRyn, and Mary on the end. Sharyn was out of town with family and we missed her dearly for our roommate picture. We got along so well and had probably too much fun together!

As you can see my whole summer was filled with adventures, happy times, and great people. This has been an amazing summer and while I am actually excited to be back in Utah and get another school year under way, I will never forget my summer as a city girl and the things I learned about myself. It was also special to see my family and dear friends I have known for many years as well as make new friends I will know for many more.

Family Time at the Fair

Another activity I needed to complete before I left was a visit with my Aunt Michele. She lives in New Jersey and we had talked about getting together all summer so with only a few days left we needed to make it happen. Michele discovered that halfway between us was the world famous...Delaware State Fair! Having just gone to Delaware the weekend before to go to the beach I was now an expert at driving to Delaware and was super excited to see Michele. So she packed up her husband, Grant and her cute kids Megan and Kettner and I packed up myself and off to the Delaware State Fair we went. Sadly they had more traffic than I did this time. I got the fair in a record three hours (a two hour improvement from beach time) and it took them four! We enjoyed the heat and walked around looking at all the yummy foods. We enjoyed some fun rides and of course we visited all the award winning farm animals. It was a grand day at the fair. To top the day off, Grant found a quaint seafood restaurant for us all to relax and enjoy a good dinner at before we went our separate ways. It was so good to see Michele, and have family around. We realized we see each other about every nine years but we are going to break the mold and see each other again in just a few months or even weeks!

Me with my Aunt Michele and my cute cousin, Megan. Yeah, Michele and I are pretty much the same age. Cool huh?

Michele and I relived our childhood days and rode the bumper cars. I totally won the bumper war! These are Michele's kids (aka my cousins), Kettner and Megan. They are so cute and have great personalities. It was fun to meet them and hang out with them for the day.

A Day at the Beach (or a day in the car getting to the beach)

There are only a few things I had left to do as my summer as a city girl winds down. One of them was a visit to the beach, a must do in the summer. I grew up in San Diego where the beach was a daily occurance so I was excited to head to the beach on the other side of the country and experience the waves, the sand, the hot sun, and life guards! My roommate knew of a great beach in Delaware and though it would take 2 hours to get there, it was going to be worth it. We loaded up two car loads of friends on a sunny Saturday and we were off for a day at the beach. About half way into the trip we ran into some traffic, a common occurance in these parts, but an hour later we were still in the same traffic! And an hour after that the other car decided to turn around, they didn't need the beach THAT bad. Well my car was ready to endure so we continued on. Five hours and many veggie strips later, we had made it to the beach! It was 3:00 in the afternoon and as many people were leaving for the day sunburned and beached out, my roommate, KaRyn and I were ready to party. The beach was so small and very crowded, definitely different from the west coast. We stayed for a fun filled couple of hours, ate some dinner, and headed back home. So... was it worth it, probably not, but I did love being near the beach and have decided I am a coastal girl and need to live near the beach (or at least have a beach house:)

KaRyn and I and our Veggie Strips. We spent more time in the car than at the beach but as you can see we still had fun!

Lots and lots of people and I still got to see life guards!

I love the beach!KaRyn introduced me to these delicious ice cream place before we made the trek back. At Rita's you get Italian Ice and Custard in one yummy treat called Gelati. At this point in the day the dessert looked better than I did so I am letting it have full shot in the picture.

Lots of fun, Running Out of Time

Well I am down to about a week and a half here in DC before I make the trek back to Utah. So it is vital I get as much fun in these last few weeks here that I can, because I haven't had enough fun already! Here are some pictures of what I have been doing lately.

A visit to Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home. My roommate Patti and I are serious soldiers! We totally would have been General Washington's favorites.

Visiting the Washinton DC Temple. It is so, so pretty. They use it as a traffic reference point too, kinda fun. I hear on the radio all the time, "...traffic is backed up to the Mormon temple."

World Famous Breakfast at Eastern Market. You can see all these people are in line waiting to eat at this little place in a big market style auditorium. I waited with my friends for an hour to eat breakfast. It was good but no plans to head back there next Saturday.

Craziness with roommates is a nightly occurrance. My good friend Tara (in the red), visited us from New York and was introduced to my three roommates during a Bump It party. If you are not familiar with the Bump It, you will have to Google it!

This is one of many dinner parties we had outside on our patio. We have had lots of fun entertaining guests. Here Peter and Kyle are having a delightful evening with Mary and I. Patti is here too, taking the picture.

I have met lots of friends that know about way cool stuff here in DC. Ralph here is a pilot and showed my roommate, KaRyn and I the Ronald Regan Runway (right behind us) where planes fly right over us. Well it is a park in front of the runway, we aren't actually on the runway!

A Vacation During Vacation

Okay so even though my intention was to work while I lived in DC this summer, lets be honest, I have worked two days the whole time I have been here and have been playing lots and lots... I am on a very long, very fun vacation. Well my parents decided to come up to DC since they have NEVER been here ever, and I got to play tour guide with them. (They won't come visit me in Utah, but they will visit me when I live down the street from President Obama.)
We spent two days trying to see everything we could in Washington DC which equals tired feet from lots and lots of walking, but I think we saw all the important stuff! We even got a special tour of the House of Rep. Chambers on our Capitol Tour because I know important people that work on Capitol Hill. Sandwhiched in between our two day DC activities we drove to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia where my parents had a time share for the week. I toured Jamestown, and spent two full days in Williamsburg learning all about the Revolutionary War and how it affected that area. I now know all these cool facts which sadly I must keep to myself since I have no 5th grade class to share them with anymore. (Although I mentioned this to my principal and we are looking into me being a guest teacher so my knowledge may be passed on to our future;)

It is always a pleasure to see my parents and go on little vacations with them. I love them so!

Here we are about to start our tour of the Capitol. Can anyone guess where I get my goofiness from?

Every state has chosen two "famous" people statues to be on display in one of the rooms in the capital. Here is good 'ole Brigham Young, not a surprise that he was chosen to represent Utah. But the other statue for Utah is of the guy who invented chocolate, kind of random.

My mom LOVED taking her picture with me! (Hee, hee)

My mom and I are touching the walls of history! This is the orginal wall of the tower of the church that was built in Jamestown in 1607. Kinda cool!

Here is Thomas Jefferson reading the Declaration of Independence from the Capitol Building to the citizens of Williamsburg. They did lots of cool reenactments of Revolutionary events and activities and had lots of audience particpation...

My dad was enlisted into the militia to fight against the King! He is the big dude on the end looking very excited about just being made a member of the colonial army.

Aren't they so cute! This is at Arlington House where General Robert E. Lee lived. Arlington was my mom's favorite place. The tomb in the picture is Pierre L'Enfant's who had the plan to organize DC into the grid system of streets that is used today. He is overlooking the glorious city he planned.

Happy 4th of July from America's Capitol

Though a part of the Midsingles Conference was watching fireworks together, I had bigger and better plans. Celebrating America's Birthday in the place of its early beginnings is a big deal so I needed to celebrate this occasion in style! I wished America a happy 233rd birthday at our nation's capitol watching a Fourth of July show that was televised to viewers across America and our troops overseas. But wait it gets better! My lovely roommate, Mary went at 3pm to get the perfect seat for all of us and perfect it was. She secured us some land right in front of the stage the Capital Fourth show was going to take place. We were behind the chairs where all the important people sat, but right in front of the cameras. I was able to see Barry Manilow, Aretha Franklin, Natasha Beddingfield, Jersey Boys, and Sesame Street! Live and in concert! And the National Symphony Orchestra was amazing of course and played those good 'ole fashioned American tunes with cannons firing during a mouth dropping fireworks display. I had so much fun and the cameras captured it all. My friends and I can be seen dancing to the musical stylings of Copacabana, my cute little face is right in the camera for Walk Like a Man, and I have a great profile shot during Pocketful of Sunshine. I am even on Youtube with these songs, I truly am famous. It was a Fourth of July not to be forgotten. Here are some pictures that captured the moments of joy.

This is how close we were to the stage.
This is how many people were behind us. Bummer for them!

Natasha Beddingfield singing with the gang from Sesame Street. We all sang Sing a Song together. Such a touching moment!

Fabulous fireworks, I love them so!

Here is a little video of some of the firework show so you too can feel as if you were celebrating at a capitol fourth. I also give you an idea of how close I was to the stage.

Here is the whole group posing for one last picture after a long night of fun. Notice that I am one of the only ones dressed in patriotic colors on the right end in the second row. I love my country! (I realize I used this same photo in a previous post, but I really wanted to point out my patriotism.)My roommate Sharyn and I posing on the crowded metro headed home. Notice how she can barely reach the bar and I am holding on with room to spare. My roommates are always so short and cute and make me look like the Jolly Green Giant.

A Midsingles Partay

The weekend of July 4th was not only special since I was celebrating at the nation's capital, but there was also a DC Midsingles Conference the very same weekend! What is a midsingles conference you ask? Well now that they are so many thirty somethings single in the church they have dubbed us midsingles and when you have a bunch of older single folks who desperately need to get married you hold a midsingles conference where a bunch of activities are thrown into one weekend in the hopes that a lucky guy and girl will hit it off and realize their eternal destiny in the three day conference timespan. While I personally did not meet my husband at this conference, fortunately there are conferences all over the country. So I am thinking of hitting the midsingles conference circuit in the hopes that one of them will be that lucky one. The next one is Chicago, end of August, I am so there! (um for those of you reading this and can't quite get the sarcasm I am desperately sending, please note I do not intend to travel across the country in hopes of finding the one, he will have to come find me!)

Anyway, the conference did provide an opportunity for me to run across several friends I have lost touch with and we are now all Facebook friends so we will never lose touch again! We went on a fun boat cruise on the Potomac River, did some great DC activities, saw some fabulous fireworks, and had a great Sunday meeting all together. Good times.

Fun friends on the boat cruise down the Potomac River.

This is Courtney, one of the many friends I reconnected with at the conference. We were in a ward together back in 1997!

These are my roommates, Sharyn and Patti. Notice they are very short, so I often use them as leaning posts. We were waiting for lunch here and I was tired. They are useful for many things!

This is a big group all here for the conference at the Capitol for the fireworks. I will post a whole blog about the great evening of fun, merriment, and tv cameras.

Working 9-5 (or 1)

This city girl is really livin' the city life. I had a job for a day as a receptionist which is a total big city job to have. I signed up with a temp agency when I first got here to make some extra cash but haven't really been getting any jobs. Finally on July 3rd, when everyone else had a holiday I was called in to be a receptionist at Govolution. They told me I would probably get to leave early since it would be kind of slow. I emptied the dishwasher, passed out the mail, and took three phone calls, one of them was a wrong number. It was so slow and I found myself trying very hard to stay awake. Finally, at 1pm after all three execs that had come in that day got back from lunch, I got to leave. Being a receptionist for a day was easy! Who knows if I will work again while I am here. They keep calling me for jobs that go into August or Sept. and I won't be here, sad day for me.
This is Secretary Angela ready for anything. This was my line for the two calls I received, "Govolution, how may I direct your call?" I was awesome!

Extra! Extra! City Girl Finds Her Curl in the Big Apple

I visited my friend, Tara in New York this past weekend. It was very fun! She is the food editor for Ladies Home Journal so I had a tour of the magazine, everyone should read it. She creates all the recipes you see in there, she is a genius! We spent most of Saturday shopping on 5th Avenue. I have my fall wardrobe! Then that afternoon I had an appointment at Devachan Salon, a salon that only serves curly haired folks. That's me!

This is a picture of the salon's hair washing place, fancy huh?

So my hairdresser, Rick basically told me everything I was doing with my hair was wrong. He taught me about the products I needed to use and there is even a specific towel to use when drying my hair. It was fun to be pampered and learn how to manage and style my curly hair after having it for 30 years. When it was all done, I had my natural curl with really no product in it and it felt soft and had lots of fun ringlets.

Here I am with my new, naturally curly hair! Rick said I don't need to cut it again for another four months. Anyone up for a trip to New York in October? :)

That night Tara and I saw The Little Mermaid on Broadway, it was cute. And Sunday we just relaxed after a busy day of shopping and running around New York. It was crazy to go from DC, which is a pretty big city, to New York. The minute I stepped off the bus, it was louder, way more crowded, dirtier, and smellier. If I become a real city girl, I don't know if New York is the city I would choose. Love to visit, glad to leave. Here are some pics of the weekend!

Fun in Times Square. So, so many people!

This is the view from Tara's terrace, where we enjoyed our Sunday lunch.

Me and Cute Tara saying good-bye on Sunday.

This is the bus that brought me back to DC and took 6 long hours to get here. The trip is supposed to take 4 hours! Lots and lots of traffic, something this "city girl" is not a fan of.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

I was able to go to the Nationals Baseball Game with a group of friends, and they won! It took them 11 innings, but they did it!Since the game was going kinda long, we got a little bored and took pictures of our feet! The guy whose shoe is double the size of the cute girl feet is 6 feet 8 inches tall.

Lisa, Patti, Me, and another Angela enjoying the game. You can see we were pretty high up, but still had a great time.