| Allie's Spot

Make A Wish

Last Tuesday, my family was blessed enough to be invited to the Make A Wish facility. When a cancer patient is well on their way to recovery, the Make A Wish foundation contacts them and ask them to list several different "wishes" that they'd like to be granted. With Emmy being in her maintenance stage of her chemo treatments, the Make A Wish foundation contacted her several months ago and had asked her to list several different "wishes" that she would like to be granted.

Anyways, now that the doctors have given her the "ok" to go back to school, Make A Wish invited her to visit their facility so they could present her with her Wish, unaware to which Wish she will be granted. Now, if you've never been to the Make A Wish facility, I strongly recommend going there sometime. This building is unlike any other. Half of the building is shaped like a castle tower, while the other half is a regular building, complete with a huge garden surrounding it.

When we got to the facility, we were given a tour of this amazing building. After a while, we were all invited into the Wishing Tower. This room was cylinder-shaped with white walls. In the center of the room was a waterfall. The floor were clear tiles with color-changing lights that shined up through them, giving the walls color. It was just magical. Before we entered this room, we all wrote down a wish we had for Emmy and her life. Once inside, we all read our wishes to her and let me tell you, this was a pretty emotional event for us. The feeling of love in that room was thick enough to cut with a knife! It was just so amazing. Anyways, they presented her with her Wish: She and my family will be spending a week the first week in May down in Orlando, Florida. Its a super exciting event for our family because we never have gone on a vacation like this before. (Well, I should probably mention that any siblings older than 18 have to pay their own way. Therefore, not all of us will be going. But thats ok and it's still super exciting!!!

This is Me, Emmy, Jessica, and Danny at the Make A Wish sign.

Family picture around Emmy's star which reads "Welcome to the Wishing Place Emily!"

The ceiling in the main hallway of the facility had many, many glass stars hanging from it. Each star represents a wish that was granted to a child.

My Little Friend

This is what happens when I am really tired and really bored at the dinosaur museum....

Family is Really the Only Thing That Matters

Me and my sisters

You know, life is crazy. It changes ALL THE TIME. As soon as you are comfortable, it throws something totally random at you, keeping you on your toes. I keep realizing over and over and over the same thing. Friends are fickle, but family is forever. I cannot tell you how many close friends aren't that close to me anymore or how many times people have let me down (or how many times I've unintentionally let a friend down.) But no many how many times you let your family down, they still hold their arms wide open for you. You can always go home. Even though you aren't perfect or may be a little hardheaded and stubborn or can be annoying, they will love you no matter what, no matter how many mistakes you make. This just keeps becoming more and more apparent to me as I get older and I cannot believe it has taken me this long to actually see it. So, I just want to let my family know, immediate AND extended, how truly thankful I am for you guys. You all are the reason I get up in the morning! THANK YOU for your love!!!

Change

Wow. The weirdest thing is happening. My sister, Kristi, got engaged today! Its totally crazy! I mean, yeah, of course I like the dude and he's perfect for her. I completely approve of their togetherness. Its just...weird. And that is the best way I can think of how to describe it. She is my first sibling to get married and its just weird to think of her getting married. Where have all the years gone? Why did we spend so much of that time torturing each other? Ugh! Its just weird. Things are gonna be so different... but its all good. I'm ready, so bring it on!!!

I Guess I'm Not Old Yet :)

When I get all my homework done, I have actually quite a bit of spare time on my hands, thank goodness. Well, the other night, I was talking to one of my friends. She is cheering at CEU this year and is struggling just a tad, so we were talking about about cheerleading. Its been forever since I've cheered or even danced so I didn't know if my body could handle various jumps, kicks, etc. Lol, I was very surprised to see that I actually have some "cheerfulness" left in me :) Go Eagles!

Halloween

This year for Halloween, we went trick or treating for the food bank and had lots of fun doing it! Garrett and Stevie went as Danny and Sandy, Whitney went as a model, Jacob was at first an Arab and then decided to be Jewish. Shrug. And I was an 80s rock star! It was tons of fun! After trick or treating, Jake and I picked up Chris and we went to the haunted forest in Huntington.

Here's Stevie, Whitney, and Me :)

Fall Break Trip :)

For fall break this year, my two older sisters (Kristi and Kelly) and me and my mom all got to take a trip to California! It was quite the adventure. The plan was to fly out to Long Beach at 7:30am Thursday morning, spend the day at Seal Beach and then spend the evening at Knott's Berry Farm for the Halloween thing. Then, we were gonna fly back Friday morning. Well...things don't always work out the way you've planned.

We missed out 7:30am flight and were rolled over to fly stand-by to San Diego at 10am. There were exactly enough seats for us to ride stand-by, but two people in front of us bought two tickets, kicking us off the flight. We decided to give it one more try and made it onto the 4:53pm flight to Long Beach. By then, we'd switched our plans to just going to Knott's and flying home in the morning. Well, we landed and my two sisters didn't feel up to going to Knott's. So we decided to switch our plans yet again and use the money we would have used at Knott's to get a nice dinner. Lol, we ended up eating at Chevy's. Yum yum, it was delicious! After dinner, we all wanted to just relax so we went hot tubbing and then went to bed.

The next day, we missed our flight cuz we slept in. So we went to look for the flea market. But (and this is sad to say) we were a little intimidated by the lack of Caucasians so we decided to go elsewhere for our California shopping spree. On the way, we stopped at a park somewhere in Anaheim. There was a life size flighter jet thing made our of cement that we wanted to get our picture with. When climbing off, I wasn't paying attention to the dew on on the plane and slid right off it and landed on my back. Everyone was laughing SO hard, including myself, even though I was in a ton of pain and could not breathe.

We finally found a HUGE shopping center called Fashion Island in the New Port Beach area. So we spent some time there. Afterwards, we went and found the New Port Beach Temple. Oh boy! It was so beautiful! We actually went to the Crystal Cathedral first and both places were very interesting and extremely different. I dunno how to describe it other than it was a really neat experience.

After that, we went to Corona del Mar beach. SO BEAUTIFUL! I wish we could have spent more time there. It was perfect! The water felt amazing, the temperature of the air was great, everything was just perfect. That is now my favorite place on the globe!

Before heading to the airport, we drove along Pacific Coast Highway for a perfect ocean view for miles and ate dinner at In n Out Burger. :) We flew back to SLC and then waited a few hours for my dad, a TSA officer (aka a security worker at the airport) to get off work so we could ride home with him.

All in all, it was an amazing trip, even though it was shorter than I would have liked. :)