The first of many

Where to start? My name is Kelly and I figured I'd start a blog to record memories and thoughts as I go through my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I currently have 4 days left until I leave safe little Ashburn Virginia and step out into the big old world on my own. (i know that sounds a little dramatic) Still, I am quite excited :). No i haven't started packing because I don't really know where to start.
So I figured I'd begin with recapping some highlights from my summer. As you'll soon learn about me, I absolutely love lists so here is lovely list number one:

Highlights/memories--summer '09

• Graduation- Officially my last day of being a student at Stone Bridge High School and first day of a whole new chapter of my life. No, I didn't cry but I did feel pretty sentimental about leaving all my great friends from high school. The actual graduation ceremony was average (I've been to all of them since freshman year for choir) but still super exciting. I'm not even really sure if its hit me that I'm done with high school yet. Maybe the first day of classes at BYU?
• Beach Trip With Brittany and Shannon- kay so technically this occurred before graduation but I didn't realize this until just now. oh well :) This was a really fun beach trip with my girlies to Virginia Beach. We scored great deals on our hotel room and our food and basically spent three great days on the beach getting FRIED. seriously. we were all burnt soo badly. I think i was the worst tho...my back and stomach were bright red and blistery. Anyways, besides all that it was great fun talking like new yorkers, jumping in the waves, boogie boarding, failing miserably with the umbrellas, walking on the boardwalk, searching for sonic, listening to great music and so much more. Never gonna forget this.
• First Attempt at dying my hair...ever- can't say this was an entirely positive experience. It all started the night of graduation when I decided to lighten my dirty blonde hair myself with a little store bought dye. Poor choice. It looked pretty unnatural and I was unhappy with it. SO I decided to go in and let the professionals fix it for me. Also a very poor choice. I ended up with even worse and more unnatural hair. It was seriously a strange bright yellowy color. Embarrassing! Lastly, I went to a different solon to have them give it a try. Hours and several colors later, I ended up with dark brownish reddish hair that I actuay kinda liked. Its faded a bit since then but i'm still pretty happy with it over all. It was a stressful experience but hey, I figure everyone needs a dramatic hair story and I learned my lesson: don't attempt to dye your hair yourself! I just want to thank my parents for putting up with this particular dilemma and paying for me to get my hair dyed a bunch of different times. I'm grateful they understand how important it its to me.
• The Intense Job Search of Summer 09- I'm sure plenty of people can relate to me on this one. I spent WEEKS searching and searching for a job for this summer! My two main problems were that 1. Im 17 and most places require their employees to be at least 18...2. I could only work for about 2 months because I'm leaving. Given that, it was very difficult to find places that would work. I applied everywhere from cydes to express to the lansdowne resort. All of them had issues. I eventually found a 2 week job as a counselor at a cheerleading camp. Although this job didn't seem ideal (its only 2 weeks and i don't have all that much cheerleading experience) I took it and decided to make the best of it and do other random things as well (mainly babysitting). Overall, the job search was stressful but I was happy in the end and hopefully next summer will be much more successful!
• Spontaneous Trip to Canada- So randomly one sunday afternoon, my parents announced to my sister and I that the following weekend we'd be taking a spontaneous road trip to niagra falls and palmyra, New York. Can I just say that its really fun to be random like that? I hope that when I'm older and have a more stable life (aka money) I'll be able to do things like that. It was really fun driving up there with everyone in the car, listening to music. Tay, my mom and dad helped me with my lists of overrated and underrated people and things. Thanks to them, those are both quite long:) We saw some beautiful scenery along the way and even got a little lost thanks to someone deciding that they knew better than the GPS (love you Dad). Still, we got to Canada and had time to walk around Niagra falls a little before going to bed. It surprised all of us that the city of Niagra falls is so Vegas-y. They had bright lights and casinos and a big ferris wheel. I definitely expected it to be all nature-y and woodsy. nope. The next day we had some issues with the rain but luckily that only lasted an hour or so. We got to see niagra falls from multiple angles, the CRAZY rapids that are close by, a cool movie about crazy people and stunts they do off of/around Niagra falls, and walked around the city some more. On the way home that evening, we went to the Pageant in Palmyra to support our good friends Andie Schindler, Rob Swasey, and the Lewis famiy. It was awesome for the first half, but unfortunately, a huge thunderstorm came in and they had to cancell the rest of it. I still enjoyed what I got to see. All in all, the trip to Niagara was super fun. I got to spend time with my awesome family, ate far too many mints, and tried to say 'eh' as much as possible. I'd call that a success:)
• Cheer Camp- Soon enough, it came time to do the cheerleading camp. This camp was located in Lansdowne at the conference center with DMB sports group. It was composed of about 30 little girls, ages 6-10. The first day I was pretty nervous because there was only the Camp director, one other counselor and me to entertain these girls all day for two weeks! It took a LOT of patience but I think I started to get the hang of it. Unfortunately, there was an incident that occurred the first week I was working there. During pool time, a little boy from another camp almost drown in the pool. It was a very scary experience for everyone involved and really showed me how fragile life is. I don't want to get too deep but it really affected me. The rest of camp after that went smoothly along with the girls' final performance. Honestly, I was happy when it was over, but I do miss my cheer girls now.
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• Since Cheer camp I've been doing very random things, and none of them quite deserve their own paragraph so here are the random little things i've been doing since then:
• bike rides on the W&OD
• got my wisdom teeeth out (ouch!)
• saw 500 days of summer (great movie)
  
• hangin with my churchy friends at our awesome all-night party
• babysitting Joey and Grace Semler (my little cutie pies) lots!
  
• shark week!
• lots of Skype/ichat with Braydon as well as other friends
• moving into scott's room so that Tay can move into mine (bigger project than it sounds!)
• Getting ready for school in general

(My future Roommate, Emma Fuller and I)

So now as my summer is winding down, I'm both getting super excited and getting sad that I'm finally leaving. I know so many great times await me in Provo, Utah but I can't help but be a little sentimental about the past 11 years I've lived in Ashburn and the past 17.5 years I've lived every day with my parents. There are plenty of things I'm going to miss. Sunsets on Hay road, kickboxing at fitness first, farmers markets in leesburg, jumping on the trampoline with friends late at night, going to church with my family every week, driving Willa (my jeep) around blasting random loud music, costco with my mom on lazy summer days, acai energizer smoothies from robeks, watching cake boss with Brittany and Shannon and so much more will always be fond memories to me. However, I'm okay with the fact that its time to move on to brand new things. Its an opportunity to start fresh..and thats exactly what I need right now. This blog will follow me and my many adventures as I begin my 'new life'. Should be interesting ;)