a married twin.

before i left on my mission, 

i shared some deep thoughts about rae,

and the love i have for her.

well somethings never change.

sure i have to share her now,

but there are worst things.

all my life i have felt like the pioneer of the family.

the example that everyone looked up to.

and it never really bugged me.

i honestly love being about to look at what others have done

and improving. make it all my own. 

and having someone there to take it from me

and keep it going.

i think that's honestly why i loved training sisters on my mission.

it was difficult, and there were several weepy nights,

but i grew.

and as i read emails from my family each week,

i realized that we were all growing.

sometimes when you don't see the progress daily

you see the progress actually happening.

the "ah ha" moment after you step back

and get a better view.

rae got married. 

and it was probably the hardest thing for me to grasp.

because one, IT'S A HUGE DEAL.

and two, it's an important first that i didn't make first.

and i was kind of jealous for a little.

(after getting over the initial shock of a having an engaged twin sister).

i couldn't be the first daughter married.

but then it hurt.

because she would have to take this journey without my full attention.

i was just another friend, far far away.

growing up is kind of hard...

and watching your best friend do it alone

was really hard.

but you know what?

she did it.

photo creds to a twist of lemon photography

and dang didn't she look good doing it.

now that i have met my brother in law in person

it makes the realization that she is married a little easier.

i know that eric is a good man,

and that he will treat her right.

she's in good hands.

and now we can do a lot of things that it hurt me not to be able to do.

we can go to the temple together (check!)

we can talk about all that we have seen.

and we can enjoy the promise that if we are faithful,

we will have eternal life.

"Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, 

feasting upon the word of Christ,

and endure to the end, 

behold, thus saith the Father: 

Ye shall have eternal life."

2 nephi 31:20

isn't that promise enough to make you happy forever?

well, hello there

so it's been a while. life got pretty busy there.

i have gotten back from my best eighteen months in nicaragua.

to check up on how that went, go and check out

hermanagraves.blogspot.com

it really was an adventure of a lifetime, and i would love to spend all day

talking about how amazing it really was.

since moving back home, i have seen lots of friends,

spent a lot of fun time with female role models in my life

getting adjusted to the rm wardrobe,

worked, and most importantly, fallen in love with these guys again:

photo creds to darrin perryman photography

we took family pictures right before i left for my mission
and thanks to weekly emails, i somehow survived the
eighteen month sabbatical from daily life.
lots of pictures, and lots of spanish vocabulary words,
made the adventure interesting to retell.
but this time, i got to be there, and that was special.

i am now back to school, trying to get my lazy butt
excited to be at school again.
i have some good motivation hanging over my head,
so there isn't much time to waste.

rae got married to a cute guy named prince eric
and they are great. waay cute couple.
it's a plus that they live a few blocks away too.

bug went to the other blue school
and we have to learn to love the weird again.
#showmethescotsman

russman got big. watch out world.
a stud muffin is a cooking.
chris is as tenderhearted as ever,
and has become quite the little adventurous one.
still holds out for the football player dream,
but there may be some growing that has to happen first.
hannah is the little princess.
she's the only little girl left in the house
and i don't think she will let her brothers forget it, either.
spencer is into everything sports,
which really isn't new to me.
the kid can't think straight if it's not raining outside.
he loves playing outside...


i love my family and i can't believe that
we made it through eighteen months.
congratulations family.
we rock.

sisterly firsts

everybody asks what it is like having a twin sister.

imagine having your best friend with you all the time.

imagine being able to talk about anything and everything,

and she understands because she lives your life.

this statement is entirely true, because i have something

imperative to tell her every other second.

this year has been hard because the longest we have ever spent apart was this summer.

in nineteen years, the longest we had ever been apart was two weeks.

until this summer when i left her in logan the first weekend in may,

and didn't see her again until the middle of august.

hardest three and a half months of my life.

but, heaven knows it was a trial run of what my mission is going to be like.

as a kid, the teacher asks you who your best friend is,

and my answer was always rae.

i didn't have many "best friends" in school,

but rae was always there.

we walked through life together.

we started elementary school together.

we walked through the doors to middle school together.

high school was an adventure we took on together.

college was a life changer we supported each other through.

 i can't imagine walking onto a plane by myself,

meeting my future without her.

i'm tearing up just thinking about it.

firsts are always something we supported each other through.

rae got her first glasses and i was there to tell her she looked good in them.

rae judged me as i tried on my first colorguard uniform.

we were in the car together when we took our newly issued permits for the first spin.

we entered the temple together on our first time.

our first cross country drive was together.

and so many more.

but there are some firsts i haven't shared with her,

and firsts she hasn't shared with me.

i can't share or talk with her about the experiences of being endowed.

i can't show her the feelings i have about the people that i worked with this summer.

there are some feelings that i can't show her and it hurts.

i can't talk with her about her boyfriend,

because i've never had one.

i can give her advice based on the things i have seen from her life.

i am that voice of reason in the back of her head

that says "five dates before you bring him to meet the family."

the voice that says "i approve" and makes the relationship legit.

she trusts me, and i trust her.

there are so many things i want to share with her about the things i saw

in the temple, but i can't talk to her about them, mostly because

she can't go there with me. and it's killing me.

and there is nothing more in the world that i want than to share that with her.

there are so many beautiful things in the temple that i want to discuss

and she can't do it with me.

sure, i have my mom or my dad, or my wonderful family.

but i want my sister.

we will always be best friends.

we will always be the ones we turn to for advice.

but we are our own person and this is where the road takes us apart for a time.

but the roads run parallel, and we will be together. forever.

my mom always encouraged us to be our own person.

we never walked around in matching outfits.

coordinating, maybe, but never matching.

we were given the option: 

band or orchestra?

red or green?

vanilla or chocolate?

alone or together?

and in many ways, we are complete opposites.

i loved band. rae thrived at orchestra.

i love red, rae prefers the cooler color of green.

i love vanilla, she loves the chocolate heart attack of rocky road.

i love the silence of being alone, rae loves the social life.

but we dragged each other into each others lives.

rae drug me into so many dumb social activities that i ended up loving.

i got rae to enjoy vanilla bean ice cream.

but, we still support each other in our differences.

orchestra concerts are terribly boring, but i went.

rae went to football games for the social aspect, but loved to watch me perform.

we compliment each other.

we are each other's person.

she's my person.

time.

what a weird four letter word. it holds so much power with it, too. 

it's bizarre to think that two years ago today, i was frantically finishing a presentation for the parents of governor's school participants. a year ago today, i was hanging out around the house, worrying about chores and packing for a road trip two weeks out. today, i'm worrying about getting the smoke out of the blankets i took camping last night and about getting a cowboy to pay enough attention to me to take me out. 

time. what a silly thing. my friends have their mission calls and are preparing for the fateful day when they will enter the MTC. other friends are fretting over the details of another fateful day: their wedding day. and yet others are worrying about getting all their summer vacation tucked into the next few weeks. then there's me, just worrying about my job, my crippled love life, and remembering people's names. 

time. it slips away from you. i can't believe that i haven't seen my sister in six weeks, my family in six months, some of my friends in over a year. it's just wrong. it makes me ache for the "good times" back. those careless summer nights when we played hide-and-go-seek in the backyard of nice neighbors. those crazy fall nights when i spent all night in a ridiculous costume, freezing my butt off, cheering for the football team. those awful spring nights where i was up until midnight or one am writing a paper. i'm gonna say it: i miss high school. don't get me wrong, there are something things i DON'T miss. but the simplicity of life sure was nice. i miss my laurel friends. the semi-adult life stinks, man.

i want the simplicity of life back. 

the logan hot tubs

apparently close at eleven.

so we almost got a citation when we showed up at Rae’s friend’s hot tubs and the po-pos showed up. #awkward…

but he was chill and wasn't overly annoying about the fact that we were a bunch of college students in a hot tub after hours. thank you cop. you earned respect.


we looked too good in our swimsuits to not share with the world our awesomeness.

       Panic                 Rae                    Never Nude              Me

spring break

was interesting. Work was having a HUGE sale, so it was hopeless to even think about asking for it off. So, I took other people's shifts so that they could go and do spring break things.

my roommates ditched me on Sunday. thankfully, Aunt Colee that asked if I would like to come to dinner, so after church I ditched town as fast as possible.

monday: lonely cleaning, some Big Bang Theory, donating plasma (made $35, too!) then work. I had plans to go up to Rigby that night at stay with my aunt and her chillens, but I was late leaving Logan because I locked me keys in my car. First time for everything, right? Thankfully I have some good friends who were able to take me back to my apartment and then back to work to pick up my car, so the whole ordeal only cost me $3 (for the manager to open my apartment) rather than the ticket for a locksmith. With that in mind, I made it to Rigby around 11 pm on Monday... longest drive of my life. Two and half hours by yourself is not fun. Especially when it decides to snow.

tuesday: a lot more fun. i got to hang out with my cousins and help me aunt out a tiny little ounce. i learned that just because your picture is on the fridge, doesn't mean that your youngest cousin will recognize you, or even cuddle with you when he is sick. Urn was nice enough to zone my feet that night while we watched Season 2 of Downtown Abbey and o my gosh! it was wonderful. if you have never had it done, it's like the best worst foot massage ever.

wednesday: i stayed up in Rigby until noon-ish because i had to work (i mentioned that i hate work, right?). that night i came home to the guys who live next door in the apartment across the hall (*disclaimer* one of the boys has a sister that lives in that apartment) even though none of the girls were home. come to find out that they just wanted some putty to fix a whole in the wall. i hung out with them for a few hours, but still ended up going to bed around eleven because we ran out of things to do/talk about.

thursday: i invited some friends over for breakfast and it was a lot of fun. pancakes, fruit, friends. such great things! work wasn't too bad that night because i got off a few minutes early. hallelujah! thursday was also the day that i found out that Mormon boys do sit around in just their underwear when they are alone. just trust me.

friday: no work to pass the time, so i finished a season of Big Bang Theory and then I took my healthy self and went and donated plasma and made FIFTY BUCKS! (go and donate plasma, put my name down as a reference. #shamelessplug) Then I called up Aunt Fluffy and asked if I could come and borrow her laundry equipment for a few hours. She of course had no problem with it, so I went and helped out her and did my five loads of laundry at her house. yeah, Rae and I do five loads of laundry every two weeks. I would have stayed the night with Fluffy, but I had to work Saturday morning, so I decided I should probably get a good night's rest.

saturday: a 10:30 to 7 shift. a heavenly shift as a cashier. call me crazy, but I seriously love that shift! i got to sleep in, go to work, and still had enough of an evening to go and hang out with my single uncle, Juan, and his friends that night without being super exhausted! some of my friends had returned by the time I got done with work, so I hung out for a little while with them and caught up on their adventures of Spring Break.

sunday: ward council at 10:30 was slim, but spiritual as ever. Bambi came home about a half an hour before church started, so I got to have at least one friend at church with me. :) i ended up being the chorister in sacrament meeting because the chorister was still out with her family, and the organist (who was one of my close friends!) let me fall asleep on the stand!!! thankfully, i was pretty well hidden behind the organ, so only one or two people could see me, but I apparently missed a really awesome talk. i was super bummed... after church i had to kind of twiddle my thumbs and find things to do before my roommates started coming home (Bambi left with her family after church, so she wasn't home until later). I did a little happy dance when Rae and Panic finally made it home. Never Nude and Provolone made it home a little bit before they, but they were busy putting together a new bookshelf for Provolone.

nevertheless, it was okay. lonely and long, but okay.

shooting guns

i shot a gun. fun story actually.

so we met these guys two weeks ago tomorrow. sometime between then and sunday, it got brought up that rae and i had never been shooting. so these two boys invited us to go shooting with them on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. so we dressed up in our cowboy boots and warm sweatshirts and drove over to a spot right outside Smithfield.

we got to the final hill (the shooting range was in the mountain), we noticed that it was super icy. tanner (one of the guys) went up first in his ford focus and tried to make it. we got about a quarter mile up the road before tanner's car decided it didn't like the ice. we got out and messed around for a little bit in the ice, before we pushed his car around and rode back down to the road. the four of us then piled into zach's jeep (one of the other four people that went with us) and got a better "running" start up the mountain. there was a boy scout troop at the range, so we improvised and just shot over the fence into another part of the range. tanner, zach, and josh all had brought their shot guns, so we messed around with some clay pigeons for a few hours. casey had brought his 9mm handguns, so he and rae played with those and some of our not-too-badly-destroyed clays.  i tried so hard to be a good shot, but that really didn't work out. i was apparently just below the disc every time, so i guess i just have to aim a little bit higher, or wait a little bit longer to shoot.

the last half hour or so, we decided to have a competition. tanner and i went first. i shot at three clays, while he shot "back-up"{meaning he shot at the clay when i missed them} and he hit two of his own clays. so, we scored a 3.5. {each shot you got was one point, a half point if the back-up got it.}

rae and casey scored a 4.0; zach and his date tied with his brother, josh, and ashley with a 4.5.

so naturally we had to have a tie breaker. they tried the double disc throw, but that didn't break the tie either, so we just called it a day after that.

we piled all the stuff back up and drove back to Logan. all over, a great morning. fun, but not really something that would hit very high on the list of things to do on a day off.

rae and i

tanner, casey, josh and ashley

zach and his date

tanner and casey

a semester update

aslkj;alksdj;flkasdj;lfkja;sdkljf;laskjdf;lkajsd;lfkja;slkfj;aksdjf;lkasj;lfkjas;ldkjf;alksdjf;lkasjd;flkjasdl;kfja;skldj

my mind at the moment.

i am supposed to be doing homework, but you see how well that is working out...

so far the semester is going well. i have three classes in the business building (which is all the way on the other side of campus for me... :S), one in the huge concert hall on campus, and my favorite class of all is my Western Swing class. i got into the advanced class, and i couldn't be more excited. the one problem about that class is that he is in that class. i try and be his friend, but it really is proving to be hard. he will ask me to dance every once in a while, and he will talk with me, but he really doesn't try too hard to seek me out. he probably figures that i will seek him out and it's honestly the truth, but i'm still sad.

the mission thoughts aren't helping confuse matters much either. i'm NOT going to declare dating abstinence before i go on a mission, but seriously. the fish ain't biting.

we met some new guys two weeks ago and one of them is now rae's boyfriend (although they haven't called it that yet, they have spent time with each other EVERY day since they have met) and the other one is super into one of my new roommates, Bambi. Bambi is super cute and has captured  every guy's heart within a mile radius. she's a return missionary, three months off the boat from Lima, Peru. she's so adorable and i love her enthusiasm for the gospel and her easy love for others. {Never Nude is our other new roommate and she is super hilarious. she's really outgoing and is always ready to party. lol, seriously.}

work is going well. i haven't worked too many hours the last few weeks, but i'm hoping as we get closer to one of our HUGE case lot sales, that i will get more hours. i am still doing a lot of bagging, but i help quite frequently with cashiering. i get paid the same rate, regardless of what kind of shift i am working. lovely minimum wage.... :S

so a future missionary, lots of reading, awesome new roommates, no interested boys. pretty much sums it up.

moved out

so school starts in a month. crazy life. this summer has been almost been separated into two parts: Tennessee and Utah. it's been all sorts of crazy too. before i moved to Utah, it was all about catching up with people, making last minute plans, packing up my life, and patching up and saying good-bye to people I will probably never see again. [scary thoughts, no?] now that I have moved to Utah, my life has been all about finding a job, keeping up with the family plans and having some fun. don't get me wrong, Utah is amazing and I love being able to draw a circle two hours wide, and being able to hit five uncles and four aunts, two sets of grandparents, and countless other extended family members. it's great... but I miss home. I miss the baby and toddler sounds in church. YSA branches are quiet enough that even if you snicker, the guy across the chapel can hear you. i miss my family, and all of the crazy times that we had just sitting around the house. i miss being able to pick a movie from the DVD's or Blu-ray's and watch it a couple of times without the Internet being a problem, or it costing me a buck twenty to rent it. i miss all of my friends! i miss being able to go out and hang out with them. it would be amazing to have plans during the week besides "what does great grandma have for me to do today!?" (although that will change just a little bit due to my job!) i miss home. i miss all of my adult leaders/friends. I miss the missionaries, for crying out loud.

but life will get better once I get my feet on the ground. I found a job, at a local grocery store. I am currently a bagger, but will hopefully being learning the ropes of cashier here soon. I love it so far. It kind of stinks when your feet and knees and hips go numb from standing in pretty much the same position for eight hours, but I am hoping that a trip to the local Wal-Mart and a Dr. Scholl's will help that out.

church is interesting, because i am fresh meat in town and all of the men are off their missions, dating a girl, and/or are too old for me to fathom right now. I know that it won't be better once school starts, but hopefully there will be some more girls closer to my age when that happens. i want to get settled here, but right now the whole stake is combined into one meeting right now, so it's kind of hard to find new people. a lot of the people are just waiting for their housing contract to be up so that they can move into a new ward... rough life. it's kind of hard because I want to find people my age, but I know that's close to impossible because they are all serving the Lord. I hope that I don't go two years without going on a date. Ugh, that would be awful on all sorts of levels.

let me just say this. living with your great grandmother sounds like a great idea and a great opportunity to get to know her a little bit better. and let me tell you, it has been really cool to spend some time with her and talk to her about her earlier life. but sometimes it's just plain rough. at about nine o'clock every night, I am in my room watching a movie on Netflix or watching one I rented from Redbox. She doesn't have more than some granola, toast with peanut butter and honey, or a smoothie for breakfast and doesn't have the fixings for much else. She eats things WAAAYY past expired out of her food storage and eats vegetables like they are going out of style. Don't get me wrong, it's been interesting to see all of the different ways you can make a green salad, but the otherwise light main courses are a little rough to eat sometimes. I mean, she doesn't eat meat. Canned chicken, a little bacon, and some tuna is all I have seen her make/eat in the three weeks I have been here. Where's the BEEF!?

I love her, but seriously, the generation gap may be a little much on this one.

a forever sister

I am one lucky girl. I have a sister who I can't stay mad at. Like, seriously. I came into the world first, and I always joke that it was the best 35 minutes of my life. But I really don't think that any more. We've always been so close. The perfect epitome of two peas in a pod, perfect opposites, and of course, partners in crime. I love her dearly.

People always ask, who is your best friend? And the answer is her. She listens to me, she teases me, she understands my interesting moods and is always willing to talk. She is one of the few people who I can take an insulting comment from her, and then two seconds later be able to talk to her like it never happened. Love her!

One day, we were on our way home from school. I was angry at her for not answering her phone (not a huge shocker, she NEVER answers...) and within the eight minute car ride home, I had forgiven her and was laughing at something she had said, without any thought to the anger.

Sure, there are some days that I wish to strangle her. But I won't. Because I can't stay mad at her. There are some days that I need a good tease, or don't wish to tell the world something. But, she always seems to know what I am thinking about (none of that twin telepathy stuff, it's just coincidence and some pretty rocking brains at work), even if I haven't laid a single hint about it. I love her.

I can't wait to room together next year at school. People always say they couldn't live with their sister in a dorm room. I have seriously been doing it my entire life. I probably could count the number of months that I have NOT shared a  room/bed/sleeping area with Rachel on two hands. In almost 18 years. I am seriously not worried about it. We are just that awesome with one another. That we don't fight for extended periods of time. That we don't get on each other's nerves about certain habits (although it kind of bugs me when I can't find my clothes because she hasn't put away her laundry.). That we can complete each other's stories and comments.

We are just that awesome. Love you Rach!