Fortunately, I was able to go home to Orange County for Thanksgiving this year, and for a whole week was able to sleep in my own bed and hang out with my family. For Wednesday and Thanksgiving day, we were out by Santa Barbara eating lots of food and feeding ostriches.

On the drive out there, we drove past this Ostrich farm, which I thought was so funny! We just had to stop and feed the ostriches and emus they had there.

We spent Thanksgiving with one of my dad's client's family, who have been like family to us for as long as I can remember.

Since this is a Thanksgiving post, I also want to take a moment to give my thanks to the friends I have. Within the past year I have realized that you never know when your friends will be ripped away from you. And because of that, I want to express my love and how thankful I am for the friends and family I have.

Many of you know about my best friend Sarah, who passed away in March. I am especially thankful to her, and who she has helped me become. Going through the holiday seasons without her is especially hard, and heartbreaking. There isn't a day that goes by that I am not reminded of her and wishing to hear her laugh. Losing her has made me appreciate what I have and the importance of letting people whom you love exactly that - that you love, appreciate, and are thankful for them.

I miss you Sarah, love you more than you could imagine, and can only hope to be as brave as you once were.

Never let a day go by without telling the people you love exactly how much you love them.

Paint Twister! Never a bad idea! Well maybe it was a little cold this time around, but it was so completely worth it!

If you don't know what paint twister is, think of the normal game twister with the white mat and dots and you have to put body parts on the dots. Now replace those dots with paint of the same color. And the remaining rules for twister stay the same. Except we added to the body parts and included our noses, foreheads, elbows, and knees. 

Lets just say that it was a good get to know you game for the people who didn't know each other!

Top Row: Stephen, Sarah, Josh, Jason, Madison

Bottom Row: Hannah, Taylor, Alexandra, Tasia, Kai

Taylor was our winner! She was quite proud of herself!

You are amazing. You are doing wonderful. Stop beating yourself up for things that don't go to your way. You are doing your best, and you should be proud of yourself. We can't control everything, but we can do our best, and if you are doing that, be happy. Be glad to be alive. Enjoy life. You are awesome.

I've come to learn and realize this. And I wish every person could come to realize it. Things happen in life, that throw you off your game, and sometimes come really close to destroying you. But you just have to keep going, because you are wonderful.

The weekend of Halloween, Jessica, Mikele, Jeff and I drove down to the beautiful St. George for the Snow Canyon Half Marathon and 5k.

The only running I used to do was to the fridge. But over the past couple years I've fallen in love with running and how proud of myself I am after I run. I have been working really hard to get to the point that I am at today. And now, the 5k was easy! A piece of cake! And I'm continuing to motivate myself, so next up - Half Marathon!

Doesn't matter how tired you are, you can't sleep the night before a race from all the excitement!

In order to prep for our races the next day, we loaded up on pasta and played Dr. Mario (a game on the original Nintendo game system).

Yes I am proud of myself for finishing the 5k, even though it was more of a fun run for me. But I am even more proud of my sister Jessica, and our friends Jeff and Mikele for completing the Half Marathon.

We beat the storm - as soon as we were done running, it became freezing cold, and within an hour it was pouring rain!
We all had SO much fun and are looking forward to signing up for more races!

I think its hard for us as humans to keep our eyes on the real finish line. We get caught up in things and forget to enjoy life and laugh through it. So I challenge you to go through this week and every little thing that is giving you a hard time, laugh about it and do something that will make you smile.

Do not ever let life get you down. Just keep running, and eventually you will get past the storm.

This year we had an early Halloween as I was out of town for the actual holiday. So the week before, we had a little bit of fun. Taylor, Madison and I were superheros (kindof...). We were twists of Captain America, Batman, and Superman. I made tulle tutus that matched the colors of our hero tshirt. 

Can I just say that ice skating in a tutu is so fun! I don't know what it is about wearing a tutu, but it is so exciting and gives you so much energy! I was SO excited to go ice skating in my costume! (Seven Peaks Arena only charged you $2 to skate if you showed up in your Halloween costume) And to make it even better, we made total fools of ourselves :)

We went ice skating with Jessica (nerd), Cameron (Sherlock Holmes), Will (cowboy - in this picture he is missing his hat) and Jeff (I guess a basketball player in tights?)

Unfortunately, Madison couldn't make it to ice skating, but after skating the three of us went to a dance party and danced until we were super sweaty and decided to call it a night.

The following Monday our street of college apartments decided to have trick-or-treating. The fact that we did that was totally hilarious but completely awesome. Of course we had to have a dance party after that, so complete with a legit DJ on our lawn, we danced and again made fools of ourselves!

I just want to start with saying the world is beautiful - absolutely stunning! And what better way to look at it than hike up a mountain and sit there for a while?

Y Mountain sits just east of BYU's Campus, and you can park your car at the bottom and hike up a trail that takes you to the big cement Y that sits on the mountain. So that's just what Madison and I did. And the view at the top is amazing, especially right now with all of the fall colors!

What adventure would be complete without a selfie?!

About 10 minutes from campus is this beautiful waterfall - Bridal Veil Falls. I've actually "hiked" it once before this summer while I was in Utah for a couple of weeks. But I've been wanting so badly to do it again. I have this huge list of things I want to do before it starts snowing, and this was one of them!

Let me add that it was so much easier doing it now that I am in shape than it was this summer! But it's not a hard hike (if you would even call it that) to do at all - if you are in the area, go take a stroll up before it gets any colder!

You walk through a park on your way to and from the waterfall. The leaves are beautiful right now so we had to come back and have a mini Fall photo shoot!

Did you know that you can actually pay to play with a puppy for an hour or two? Someone will bring a puppy right to your apartment! So of course, how could we ignore an offer like that? My sister and I have been missing our dog at home way too much, so we went ahead and rented a little black lab for an hour.