T-minus 10 days...

Until this:

The move is starting to feel so real! Today we sold our last piece of furniture- our kitchen table- and our apartment is virtually empty! (If you don't count our clothes lying all over the floor where our dresser used to be.) We leave the 21st and will drive to Dallas to visit my family along the way, where we will say goodbye to Zach for 2 years! Then while we play with Mitch's family for a couple weeks, we get to job/house hunt in this big city until I start new teacher orientation in August!


Houston here we come!

Brother #1

Well Mitch said my last post was "boring", so I will try to spice this one up for you non-readers. (As a side note, Mitch is perfectly willing to listen to me ramble about the current book I am reading...and is often interested in it. Baby steps, I know, but we are on the way to making him a reader! :D)

This week Mitch's brother came down to stay with us for two days before he entered the Missionary Training Center. We of course, took great care of him on his last few days before the mish.

Monday night, we ate out at Brick Oven. Free home-brewed rootbeer with a purchase of a pizza...can't go wrong with that!

Tuesday we had In-N-Out for lunch, of course, and then went to Uncle Rob's for a farewell get-together. We got to see their gorgeous new house out in Elk Ridge and ride their four-wheelers!! (Side note: I am a total pansy and got pretty scared of how fast we were going on a paved road...hahaha. Granted, I was sitting up a lot higher on the seat and every time we went over a bump I felt like I was going to fly off. Thanks for putting up with me riding with you Josh ahaha).

We also had an awesome barbecue with them, Rob's specialty- brats and hamburgers and pasta salad and corn on the cob! For the occasion I made rainbow jello, our family tradition and Mitch's favorite:

Ok I admit I took that picture off the internet, but that is basically what it looked like!

Then Wednesday we took him in! Holy cow the whole thing went SO fast. We pull up to this huge line of missionaries, a guy comes up to greet us, grabs Josh's luggage, and starts walking away with it, motioning for Josh to follow, all in like 30 seconds. I had to blurt out- "Uhh can we get a picture first before he leaves?" So we took another 20 seconds to take the picture, hug, and then they just walked off. Yeah. Really took us off guard with how fast it was. I understand that you are trying to stay on a schedule, but can we seriously have more than a minute to say goodbye? I mean come one, it's two years people! Kind of a big deal. Well anyway, I did get a perfect picture of the two brothers.

Seriously how cute is that? Mitch looks like a dwarf compared to Josh, but still so presh! haha.

So one brother down, one more to go! Only one month until Zach reports! I was so sad when Josh left because then it reminded me that Zach was going to be gone too for 2 years! I cried haha. But I am excited to write them both and send them both awesome care packages! All I can say is, they better write back!! :D

Thomas Jefferson said it best-

"I cannot live without books. "

I feel ya, Mr. Jefferson.

The past month I have been doing nothing but reading, day in and day out. Thanks to my children's literature class that I am taking right now, I get to read 80 mandatory minutes of children's literature every. day. Well...5 days a week. But you don't hear me complaining :)

A typical day consists of me going to my 2 exercise classes (jogging and self-defense...seriously what was I thinking taking two of those back to back??), coming home, then sitting around reading all day because I HAVE to, often neglecting other important things...like making dinner, cleaning the apartment, showering. jk. but seriously.

I have discovered so many new favorites in this month alone...I don't know how or why I went most of my college career without reading for pleasure. Oh wait I do know why, because the one time I did read a series in the middle of classes, I ended up also neglecting my homework for 3 straight days until I finished it :D

There is a sampling of the books I have read the past couple weeks in the right column. They range from fiction to nonfiction, chapter to picture, and favorite to not-so-favorite. Honestly most of the ones pictured I really liked. To my own surprise, I actually enjoyed the Lincoln Photobiography, as well as the Hitler Youth book.

If I had to recommend top 3, I'd go with these 3 (all picture books):

Flotsam, by David Wiesner

Interrupting Chicken, by David Ezra Stein

Please Bury Me in the Library, by J. Patrick Lewis

I have a special place in my heart for that last book of poetry- it seems that the author shares my same obsession with books hehe :D

If you're serious about recommendations for your kids, click on a book in that collage type thing on the right, and it will bring up my goodreads page and show you what I thought about it!

Little known fact about Kayla...

I love cemeteries. I am one of two people I know that don't get weirded out by them. Truthfully, I think they are beautiful and I love the special spirit I feel when I am in them. Since the weather finally started to cooperate and behave like spring today, I made Mitch take a walk through the local cemetery with me. I really wanted to walk somewhere, and it's right across the street, and much more picturesque than taking a walk down the road to, say, 7-11. It did not disappoint.

We found out not too long ago that my great-grandmother is buried in this particular cemetery, so we went and tracked down her grave.

See? We love the cemetery.

Yes please.

Ever since I was little, I knew that I wanted the library from Beauty and the Beast. Seriously, what's not to love?


Since I'm older and more realistic now, I have done my research and have determined that I will settle for any of the following:

freaking awesome book nook.


swirly staircase? yes please.


a rolling ladder with rows upon rows of books is pretty much my dream come true.


at minimum, it must be well-lit, cozy, and have an oversized stuffed chair. even this room would be more than adequate.


sigh. I want to curl up in that chair and bask in the sun with a good book right. now.

3 things.

1. Saturday, I impulsively chopped off all my hair (10 inches to be exact) and donated it to locks of love!! Ta-da! Surprisingly, Mitch loves it. Yay.



2. A couple weeks ago, my friend Cassie and I entered in a competition offered by the BYU education department. Basically we had to come up with some innovative use of technology that could be useful in a classroom setting, make a movie about it, and then present our idea to a panel of esteemed judges. Our idea was to use skype to facilitate community involvement through virtual volunteers. The volunteers could include parents, international "pen pals", or influential members of society (senators, famous authors, etc). After presenting to the judges, they deliberated, and the results were in! We got runner-up, with a total prize of $1000, meaning $500 apiece! Pretty awesome. Here we are. Famous.

3. We then entered our project into the "People's Choice" portion of the competition, which required us to get as many unique views on our youtube video as possible. We got extra points for the more states or different countries we got. Mitch is actually way more competitive than I am, so he took it upon himself to win this competition for us. He found this website that people post their videos on to get hits. The entire point of the website is "you watch my video, I'll watch yours." Due to this website, as well as the fact that we all had lots of friends and family living outside the US, we got a lot of hits from all over the world. By the end of the competition though, we were still lagging behind in terms of raw views. It was hard to tell who was going to win, since the hits don't include the point calculation for the extra countries and stuff. We were far enough behind though that we thought we had lost.

...a week later I get an email from the guy in charge of the competition. He said that due to the fact that we had far surpassed the other teams in number of countries and states (39 states, 92 countries, to be exact), we had racked up way more points that way and had won the competition!!! Can you believe it? Also I forgot to mention what the prize was...

dum da-da-dum! the ipad 2 ladies and gentlemen, wi-fi enabled, 32 Gb, retail $599. pretty much we have no use for it, since it doesn't have 3G internet. we figure they are trendy enough that we should be able to sell it pretty easily.


All in all, a pretty satisfying couple of weeks :D

In honor of General Conference Weekend...

I will tell you the amazing opportunity I had a couple of weeks ago. As many of you know, I have been driving up to Salt Lake every day for my month of student teaching with the same carpool of girls. One of these girls invited us all to a sleepover at her aunt's house in Salt Lake, so we all went, excited for a girls night and an opportunity to sleep in 45 minutes the next morning. Even more exciting, guess who her aunt is?

Yep, that's right, I spent the night at this wonderful lady's house. She was, as you would imagine, incredibly hospitable and generous. We had so much fun hanging out and listening to her words of wisdom. She gave us our own little devotional about receiving personal revelation...wow. I had even prayed the day before that if it was appropriate, she would be inspired to tell us something that I needed to hear to help me through the next few months of graduating and growing up and getting careers and all the craziness that has me stressed out. Well she didn't disappoint...that little talk was definitely the thing I needed to hear.

Basically she told us how she once heard Elder Bednar answer a question about personal revelation in this way (I'm paraphrasing): "It doesn't matter if after lots of prayer and meditation you are still unsure that what you are doing is what God wants you to do. As long as you are keeping the commandments and genuinely trying to do the right thing, God will NOT let you choose the wrong thing. If you should choose the wrong thing, with the intention to do the right thing, he will put a roadblock in your way so that it becomes impossible."

Wow that made me feel so much better, as you can imagine. She also counseled us to ask Heavenly Father every day in our prayers to help us learn how to receive personal revelation for ourselves. She said it is something that has taken her her whole life to develop,and it didn't just happen because she willed it to happen- she had to ask to be taught how to receive personal revelation. Wow kind of crazy...I had never thought to ask like that before.

As a side note...guess who dropped by while we were there snacking on hummus?

Apparently Elder and Sis Nelson are neighbors and bffs with Sheri...and Sis Nelson had stopped by to bring in her mail for her. When she saw us in the kitchen snacking, she came up to us and introduced herself. I started to shake her hand but she gave me a HUG. Haha she was so nice and friendly and sweet- truly a disciple of the Lord.

That night was definitely the respite I needed from all the craziness I had been experiencing in my life, as well as a great reminder of what kind of person I want to be, and what I can choose to be :)