A Very Merry Weekend

This weekend was full of Christmas joy! I attended a production of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens on Friday night. It was in a very small playhouse but they sure do a good job of using the space they have to put on an amazing show. The man who played Scrooge played grumpy and mean well and was just as good being giddy and happy at the end, he was cute. I had actually forgotten I had said I would go to the play with some friends so when Cami asked me what time I wanted to leave I was quite surprised to find out I had plans. I had already made plans to sit on the couch and watch television all night, so these surprise plans were much more inviting. To put just the right touch on a wonderful Christmas celebration when we came out of the playhouse, the actors and actresses were singing carols to us as a light snow trickled to the ground. It was very movie-like.
The Christmas merriment continued on Saturday morning by attending the Ward Christmas breakfast. It was jolly good fun to sit with friends and laugh and see my cute Sunbeams sit on Santa's lap. That night I spread Christmas cheer by taking care of my friend's dog. We watched the Christmas classic, Transformers 2. (Okay so this would be the part that was not so Christmasy, but I was serving and we should all serve our neighbors at Christmastime.)

To finish the weekend off right Cami and I got up before sunrise to make the trek to Salt Lake in the rain, sleet, and hail (well really just rain, but it sounds so dramatic to add the other two) and see the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert featuring David Archuleta. This year with girls of all ages dying to get tickets we were very lucky to get some Sunday tickets. I have to admit after hearing David sing and see his cute smile, I may be a little smitten myself. The MOTAB is always amazing and David has quite the voice. It was a great Sunday morning. I made it back to church in time to spend one last Sunday with my Sunbeams before they head off to CTR 4 in January and I start with a whole new set of unruly 3 year olds to mold. We had a lesson on the birth of Christ and it was so fun to hear my cute Sunbeams tell the story of the birth of Christ and they always surprise me by how much they know.

So as I prepare to leave the rain, snow, and cold of Utah behind and have a beach Christmas in Florida, I have to say this weekend did make me feel merry and bright!

Rain couldn't keep thousands of people from pouring into the Conference Center to see and hear teen cutie, David Archuleta. Cami and I were there for the MOTAB though, not David. :)

Here we are after the concert! Do you like the new rain-dos we are sporting? It was worth it!

I realize this is a picture of the big screen in the Conference Center but I was too far from the real thing and I just had to capture how stinkin' cute and happy David is!

Here are my cute Sunbeams! They have tons of energy and the attention span of a fly, but I love them dearly and will miss them!

33 is the Year for Me!

I am sure you are all anxiously awaiting a blog about my trip to Greece but that blog will take more time than I have available at the moment, so you are just going to have to wait a little longer. (I do have some pictures and commentary about my trip in a photo album on Facebook to tide you over until then.)

I thought I would make sure I document the most important day in all of our lives, my birth! Admit it, your life wouldn't be the same if you hadn't met Angela Day and on November 30th, 1977 my journey towards knowing all of my devoted readers began.

I have always enjoyed my birthday, a day dedicated entirely to people paying attention to me, who wouldn't love it? Although, since I have hit the 30s I will admit I haven't been too excited and for some reason 33 has been really hard for me to say, getting closer and closer to 35 then 40! Ugh! Now having just gotten back from Greece I felt that was a pretty great birthday present to myself. The guy that checked me through customs even wished me a Happy Birthday since it was a few short days away, nice huh? So nothing too grand for the real day, dinner with a few friends and a little party after.

My principal did manage to announce it was my birthday in morning announcements, so all day I had kids wishing me Happy Birthday and trying to guess how old I was, that was fun. Fortunately no one guessed over 26, man I love kids! Then some good friends and I went to a yummy restaurant, Texas Roadhouse. To celebrate your birthday this place makes you ride a saddle while the whole place sings to you on your birthday, something I was super excited about, but sadly I didn't have time to ride the saddle since we had to get home for my party. Big bummer! ;)

At my party I displayed my Greece pictures and some Greece candy for others to enjoy, had a great time laughing and catching up with friends, it was a good time! Happy Birthday to me!

Now at the beginning of the day one of my good friends at work asked how old I was to which I forced myself to say, "33." She told me her little motto when she was that age was, "33, the year for me!" We joked about it but the more I have thought about it, the more I really like it. So my goal for my 33rd year is to make the year for me, in all aspects of my life: career, having adventures with friends, serving in my church more, putting myself out there, doing great, crazy, exciting things. So hopefully I will have lots of future blog posts about this year being MY year!
And now for some pictures...
Taylor Lauttner was nice and stopped by work to wish me well on my special day. He stayed all day actually and kept freaking me out every time I walked into my office! But it was a good freak out.

Here are Suzanne and I at the yummy restaurant posing with the cute card she gave me. It might just be the cutest card I have ever seen!

So when you turn 33 you don't blow out wussy birthday candles, you blow out honker candles like this one! It was close, but I blew it out so my birthday wish should come true...

My friends think I rock! I think they rock too!

Here are some longtime friends, cute Dave, Boyce and Suzanne. Boyce and Suzanne are expecting a baby soon and I am still crossing my fingers they name her after me!

Lovely ladies that stopped by to say hi and give me a birthday squeeze.

The cutest roommate ever! Cami set up the dinner, made the yummy cake and all while conquering world hunger at the same time! She is truly amazing!

My dear friend Sarah had to show up after everyone else had left so she could spend some quality time with just me, she is so thoughtful!

Pre-Thanksgiving Stretcher

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! I love the idea of spending a day with loved ones and just eating all day. Plus Thanksgiving dinner has all my favorite food groups: potatoes and gravy, bread, and pie! The funny thing is even though it is my favorite holiday I usually don't spend it with my family because they are too far away. I usually go over to the house of a friend and enjoy some yummy food but it's not quite the same as spending the day with loved ones. Often I will spend Thanksgiving weekend by myself which sounds depressing but sometimes it's nice to have some quality Angela time. :)

Well this year I am changing things up a bit and I am going to Athens, Greece for Thanksgiving! (I'm sure I will have many blog posts about the trip in the near future.) But I didn't want to miss out on the yummy food so I improvised! I organized a pre-Thanksgiving stretcher with some dear friends. Usually we get together to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving for our dear Canadian friend, Sarah. We just got together about a month later this time. Same fun friends, same yummy food, same silly traditions. It was such a great Thanksgiving and I was able to enjoy loved ones, a delicious Thanksgiving feast, and I still get to go to Greece!

Boyce is carving the turkey that I baked!!
(Okay Cami helped me and there wasn't too much to do to it, but I did take out all the yucky insides and butter the baby up!)

Here's the loved ones! One of our traditions is to write what we are thankful for on a slip of paper and then we draw them out of a bowl and read them. Mine said I was thankful for DVR, Zac Efron, and great friends who love me. I really do have amazing, loving friends!

The kiddie table. Although the kiddie table had better manners than the adult table.

Here is my favorite little turkey, Jacob. We had a great time at the party together and he is just dang cute!

Happy Halloween, I guess...

I was realizing the other day it had been quite some time since I had posted anything new on my blog which meant nothing all that exciting had been happening in my life. Well with a weekend of Halloween festivities how could I not post about the great thrills of dressing up, eating lots of candy, and parties, parties, parties! The only problem is I just don't seem to get as excited about Halloween as I used to. It is kind of a drag to dress up at school and you feel like a loser if you don't go to some Halloween social event, so I force myself to do all these things. To add to the pain, I was sick this weekend also. Of course any other person would have said I am too sick to go to another party where I talk to the same people and enjoy the same activities I do at every single event. The only difference is, we are wearing some silly, scary, or stupid get up. But not Angela Day, she is social girl! She will be there rain or shine with a stuffy nose and sore throat, you can't keep her down!

I feel like I am sounding a little cynical in this post and while I am trying to convey I wasn't all that thrilled to celebrate Halloween this year, lets see if I can turn this downer post into one of merriment and joy. I had big dreams and plans of being Raggedy Ann (again) this year but my principal supplied me with a much cuter outfit. This year I was a bee, a cute little Honey Bee. At school there were about 10 other little girls dressed as bees. I pondered gathering them all together and taking a picture with them, but then thought I might feel a little silly- the big honker bee with all the cute little bees. Saturday night I went to the big Halloween partay that is thrown for all the singles in my neighborhood every year as a bee and believe it or not, I was the only one! So either I was super creative or being a bee is only for small aged children. Oh well, I'm young at heart!

May I share again that while I was not feeling all that great the minute I starting seeing my friends, my attitude changed and it was fun to see all the different costumes. We have this guy in our neighborhood that is like 7 ft tall (he played volleyball for BYU) and he was an Avatar, very clever. Also we had the Obama family visit our party and a whole bunch of other creative ideas, but these two were my favorite. And the best part of the whole night, there was dancing! I love to dance and DJ Dave did not disappoint with some great songs I could rock out to. So while I may have not wanted to go, I am always glad I do. I saw great friends, ate some yummy gummy bears, and got to dance, dance, dance.

Here I am, Angela the bee! I'm trying out my new camera, thanks parents!

Cami and I arriving to the party, buzzzzz!

Suzanne, Candice, and I getting our dance on!

And now that Halloween is out of the way, on to my favorite holiday... Thanksgiving! Of course this year I will be spending Thanksgiving with the Greeks in Athens, but we will save that for another post. :)

Brad, BYU, and Bears

Yes it was a weekend of B's for Miss Day. Saw a little Brad Paisley, saw a little BYU Football, and saw a bear! Well I wish it was a real bear, but it was just a stuffed bear at Cabela's and technically I saw the bear a few days ago, but I needed another B word for my title. :)

Now I am not a real concert enthusiast. I would rather spend my entertainment money on vacations or Disneyland where you get like a whole day out of the spendy ticket. But some friends were going to see Brad Paisley and the tickets were pretty cheap so I took the plunge and headed off to the H2O tour. It was at an outside venue and it was a gorgeous fall evening. It did get a little cool when the sun went down, but not too bad. Brad Paisley is one dang good entertainer. He had this incredible screen and the Hi-Def was amazing! He changed to a different guitar like every song and I never did see how he switched. It was magic! He had fun songs, I was with fun girls, it was a super fun evening!
Here we all are! Brad Paisley's biggest fans enjoying a lovely night out! It did get a little cold, we all enjoyed a hot chocolate to stay warm, but Brad was hot!
See the screen was huge! I felt like I was right next to Brad and he was singing right to me even though I was in the very back. He had some super fun graphics for his songs too.

Onto BYU Football... I am loving the Utah weather right now. Gorgeous mountains in the background and gorgeous weather make for a perfect Saturday afternoon Gameday. My roommate, Cami and I went to cheer our Cougars on against the Nevada somebodies. I love going to games and singing the Cougar fightsong, or having the whole stadium chant B Y U Cougars. The weather wasn't too hot, wasn't too cold. It was just a fun day. Sadly the Cougars didn't win, but I did get a free Go Cougars towel and enjoyed all the Cougar fans wearing their blue and shouting at the refs. They weren't the best refs in the world.
Here they come! The Cougars take the field as the crowds cheer, the band plays, and the cheerleaders flip for joy! Good times at the LaVell Edwards Stadium.

Cami and I showing our Cougar Pride. Well Cami has way more pride than I do. She wanted to buy a Cougar head and wear it, but I told her I would not sit with her if she did. (Okay Cami didn't really want one, but we saw one, and it was kinda ugly.)

And for my final B event... da Bears! For a very long time, I had quite a fascination with bears. I learned about them in a class I had in summer school in 8th grade and ever since then, I have wanted to raise a cub and train it not to kill me and live happily in my home. Well then March of the Penguins came out and I turned my focus to getting a pet penguin instead of a bear, though the thought is still there, just might be a little easier to raise a penguin. So when my friend, Chris wanted to show me around Cabela's, this huge hunting, camping, man loving store, I was more than excited when I saw some bears! They had some great displays of all sorts of animals and while they were probably displaying them as a potential hunt, I just enjoyed seeing my Black Bears up close. I still have a dream of maybe someday having a live bear for a pet. My real friends will work on making that dream come true. ;) Well work on the penguin first, then the bear. :)

Ah the Fair...

After visiting the Delaware State Fair with my Aunt Michele last year, how could I not make another appearance at my own state fair? I think I may have a new goal to visit a different state fair every summer. I mean state fairs have high quality entertainment, high quality food, and high quality people! How could you not enjoy the state fair?! This year I went to the Utah State Fair with some friends and one of my friends had her aunt and uncle visiting from Australia. It was their first time in the states and the first thing they see is the Utah State Fair. Candice's uncle at one time said, "This is just how I pictured America would be!" Don't worry they headed off to Zion's National Park the next day, hopefully that will erase their memory of the fried Twinkies, Mullets, and big 'ol belt buckles.

After watching a dashing pig race, eating ice cream while I stood in line for a funnel cake, and visiting with all my barnyard friends... I felt sick, smelt like hay, and had one superfun night with my gals!

Suzanne and I doing the State Fair Dance, gettin' jiggy with it!

See it's just like Disneyland! Crowds of people all coming together to see that dreams come true at the Utah State Fair.

The big event, Pig Races! You have to get there hours before it starts to be able to see these famous pigs battle it out for an Oreo cookie.

The food! The line for funnel cakes was so long I had to eat a twist cone while I waited! Not gonna lie, felt a little sick after eating this so called yummy treat.

This girl was the cutest thing at the fair. She is sporting her fancy blue ribbon belt buckle for raising up a mighty fine sheep. That red line on Mr. Sheep means he was sold to be slaughtered. They were saying their final goodbyes. He was a good sheep...

Lovely Labor Day

I think I have moved Labor Day up on my favorite holidays list. I try to be an equal opportunity lover of holidays and help out the ones who may not get the glory Christmas or Halloween seem to get. I am a fan of Thanksgiving, Gumdrop Day, and recently I have realized, I enjoy Labor Day weekend. Did I spend the weekend like I wanted to? No, but I had a splendid weekend nonetheless. I WANTED to go camping and enjoy the beautiful red rock of southern Utah, but no one else was really feeling the desire to go on one more camping trip before the crisp, cold nights begin to settle in. So I stayed in town, and I am glad I did.

The first thing to occur on Lovely Labor Day weekend was a wedding reception for a good family friend, Julie. Julie is the youngest sister of my dear twin friends, Jenny and Tami who I grew up with in San Diego. So not only did I get to see the wonderful DeLoura family who I haven't seen for quite some time, but all sorts of people from my ward growing up were there also. Evidently the cool people from Santee 2nd ward have migrated to Utah County, woo hoo! It was so great to see people who loved me and helped teach me the gospel principles I so strongly believe in and follow today. They made me feel accomplished and just as loved as a 32 year old as I felt as a 16 year old. It was great to catch up and hear about their families and see Julie so happy with her new husband. I have come to truly admire Jenny and Tami. They both have such adorable, amazing families and are such good mothers. I hope they will teach me everything they know when I become a mother. It was a gorgeous day!

Long time friends: Jenny, Me, Tami. Don't they look good for having 9 kids between the two of them!

On Monday, Labor Day, the warm sunshine woke me up and I felt a strong desire to begin the day with a run. You may remember I have not been able to run for over 3 months now due to a dumb knee injury that occurred while training for a half-marathon. Well the weekend of Labor Day, my injury was gone and I was able to go on a gorgeous, sunny run. It feels so good to run again and while the winter months will cause me to move my running indoors(because I am not that into running that I will do it in the snow), knowing I can try for glory in a half marathon next year makes the world seem better somehow.

After my run, Cami and I met our old roommate, Sarah and her adorable kids, Jacob and Eliana for some more fun in the sun at Seven Peaks water park. I have decided going to a water park with little kids is way more fun then with adults. Jacob loves the water and I love playing with him in it. Spending the day in the sun, getting that last sunburn in before the leaves change and a new season is upon us, made my Lovely Labor Day complete.

I do love the sun and heat and wearing flip flops and shorts so much. I know I will miss my friend while he is hiding behind clouds and wind chills for the next 6-8 months, but just like the rest of my closest friends, I know my good friend, Mr. Sun will return to my life again someday. I can visit him in Florida for Christmas and maybe I'll have to see him in Hawaii real soon too. But I know he will come back to me and I am grateful for holidays like Labor Day that make me remember how much my friend, the sun means to me.


Jacob and Me taking a break from the water. The boy is a fish, I swear!


Jacob loved taking pictures of everything. Here we are taking a picture of each other! He will be a great photographer someday, book him now for your next family picture.


This picture was technically taken the weekend after Labor Day but I just wanted the fun to keep going. Some of my gal pals after Stake Conference at Dessert Night!

Catchin' Up

Oh the woes of having a blog. Feeling the pressures of keeping it updated and making a post sound witty and charming so those 5 people reading the post will actually be entertained. Sadly this past month has been so busy and with every activity I participate in I find myself asking, "Is this blog worthy?" So now that I have put so much pressure into this very post, enjoy!

The past month has been focusing mainly on getting a new school year started. I love the school I work at, I love the people I work with, I love the many jobs I do there, and of course I love the kids that attend good 'ole Westside Elementary. So I haven't minded spending quite a bit of time there this summer. So far I have helped new teachers get their rooms ready, I have organized schedules for anything and everything, started pulling test data together for teachers, and the highlight of my first week of school... organized bus schedules. Usually organizing bus schedules isn't too big of deal but when the Bus Shop changes the bus routes almost every day it makes it hard to get the kids home on the right bus. I think we have finally solved the problem, but this week has definitely been memorable.

Here I am in my office smiling at the job I love on the outside. But on the inside...I am cursing all things related to school buses and bus lists.

Even though I lot of my time has been spent at the school I have still found some time for fun. I have hung out with friends at various singles' activities and man I wish I had footage of some of the people at these parties. I overheard conversations about children graduating from high school, someone just got out of their 3rd marriage, saw more grey hair than any other color, and any socially awkard habit you can think of I either had the pleasure of watching from afar or watching right in from me. This is what my life has become! I am being a tad rude I guess but seriously, if I have to go to too many more of these kind of social activities I may just get a cat and stay home on Friday nights.

Below are some pictures of things I wanted to take pictures of because I was with dear friends doing normal things.

This is my friend Anelise rockin' it on stage. It was great to see her in concert!


Anelise's groupies: Liz, Dave, and me. I have such cute friends!

Yep, I ate this! A friend took me to try Sushi for the first time. This is technically the kind he got, but I ate something similar! And it wasn't that bad, I will try some again!

Family Time in Florida

So I made the annual summer visit to the family in Florida (although I didn't visit last summer because I was in DC, and one summer we were in South Carolina, so I guess it isn't really an annual summer visit). I of course was very excited to see my cute family, their new dog, and maybe it is sad to say, but I was really excited to see the nice pool and backyard that my dad so meticuously takes care of. We did normal family things, BBQ, bowling, lots of movies, walking the dog at night, relax and enjoy being together. I made sure to spend quality time with the pool everyday reading a good book so the pool felt like it was getting family time too.

One reason I was really excited to come to Florida this summer is because I wanted to be the first of my friends on the West Coast to go to the new Harry Potter World. I was going to be famous! Well sadly we heard from several sources the lines at Harry Potter World were very, very long and with it being very, very hot I didn't want to be famous for passing out from heat exhaustion in a line for the bathroom or something silly like that. So no Harry Potter World this visit, but my cute mom still wanted me to do something fun so we went to Orlando for a girls' day. We saw my cousin, Corie and her super cute boy, Cody. We did lots of shopping although I had like 6 bags and my mother had none, she is so strong! Then we topped off the day by going to Universal Studios to see the Blueman Group. It was a very entertaining show and had more illusion/magic stuff than I thought it would. That kind of stuff drives me crazy because I sit there and try to figure out how they do everything rather than just enjoy the show. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed! They had super fun music, comedy, and the best toilet paper audience fight ever!

And now, enjoy family time in Florida through pictures:

This was my daily view. I would sit, enjoy my book and look over at the lovely scenery my dad has landscaped all by himself! He is very talented.

Family BBQ! We got the grandparents, the parents, the brother and his girlfriend. We're all here!

My family all bowls on actual Bowling Leagues and are super good. But with my dad as my bowling coach I was able to beat my mom!

This is the new family pet, Rico. My parents insist on calling him my new brother. Lame I know! I tried to call him Mia the whole time because he looks like my old dog. Either way he was a pretty cute doggie!

My mom and I got to go to lunch with Corie and Cody. Corie is the oldest cousin so we of course all look up to her. :) And she has one cute little man!

Here they are, the famous Blue Men. You weren't supposed to take pictures so don't tell anyone I have this!

Mom and I after the show. They really did have televisions as heads for part of the show. It was very entertaining!

This was the closest I got to Harry Potter World. Kind of sad, but once the excitement of it dies down, I'll be back!

Sometimes Life is Hard

I am sure this picture may make the title of this blog somewhat misleading. But I stand by my title, sometimes life kinda sucks even when chillin' in a pool. Let me get personal for a moment and use this post to share that the past few weeks have been kind of hard for me, agency wise. At the moment I am not really a fan of the whole agency idea. I made some judgements and choices that have caused me to lose out on a good opportunity. And when trying to make that opportunity available, another person's agency thwarted my plan. So now when my agency and another person's agency doesn't match up I am left feeling kind of alone. And no matter how hard I may try to convince that person their choice is wrong and my way is right, in the end we all have our own agency and it sure stinks that I can't control other people. You are probably reading this and thinking I sound very selfish. I know, it is a weakness of mine. I of course recognize the many positive outcomes and blessing that come from having free agency, but I am allowed to frown at it everyonce in awhile too right? I guess I can say I have learned a lot from these past few weeks... I have learned that you can miss out on some great things when you wrongly judge others, I can't manipulate other people's agency, focusing on my own happiness and my relationship with my Savior is the way to turn a hard life into a happy one. I have been reading this quote everyday lately and have taken it as my theme for the moment:

"Greatness is best measured by how an individual responds to the happenings of life that are totally unfair, unreasonable, and underserved." -Marvin J. Ashton

City Girl Makes a Comeback

It has been a year since this blog was first created to document my summer in the big city. So it is only right I return to the place that inspired my desire to blog one year later. I arrived in Washington DC to the smile and laughter of my dear roommate, Patti and we quickly got caught up on all the important stuff... boys, jobs, boys, and life in the city. The entire evening my DC roommates and I laughed, danced, sang, and were just as silly as the day I had left. It truly felt like I had not just spend the past year away from them. We all just stepped right back into our roles as silly girls.

The rest of the weekend we attended a Midsingles Conference and the fact I have nothing to really say about it should give you a good picture of how exciting it was. I did go on a lovely boat ride down the Potomac River, saw some fireworks which were interrupted by plane takeoffs at least 5 times, and ate lots of yummy food. The return to the city wasn't life changing or monumental in anyway, I didn't even touch foot on National Mall ground(feel free to gasp in astonishment). This city girl was more of a homebody this go around and enjoyed spending time with some of the coolest people I know. I didn't become nostalgic about the Trader Joe's Animal Crackers, the traffic everywhere we went, and the fact that Jason's Deli has real ice cream in DC. The Jason's Deli here has ice milk, yuck!

I have been asked again if I would ever move to Washington DC. My answer is sadly the same... I love the city, I love the adventure and the shopping, but I love my job here in Utah and I think I would have the same frustrations with my social life there as I do here. So I am a city girl at heart living the dream of a suburbian reality.


This is what we did all weekend... laugh a lot!


An evening on the Potomac River with friends. It was a beautiful evening!


The last day I was there we got together for a final lunch. The lunch was so yummy and it was a perfect end to the vacation...food and friends, really all I need in life.


This is the Flourless Chocolate Waffle dessert at the Sweetwater Restaurant. It may be the best thing I have tasted ever!! I don't know why it is called Flourless Chocolate Waffle, nothing was "less" about it.