If I would have to use my amazing vocabulary to describe my life, here are the words I would choose:

One huge heap of craziness. 

Yeah, I know, all y’all are just blown away by my word usage, aren’t you? I’m pretty amazed myself, but I try not to be overly proud. Ok. Really though, when I think of all that has happened in the past month or so, I am taken aback. Like, how can someone do so much?

In September I was gone for a third of the month. The month began with me visiting my married sister who lives out of state. Next I flew out to Colorado, we got home and a couple days later I headed over to my adopted parents for a photo shoot for their new CD. When I got home from that I had the onset of a horrible cold. Thankfully with a lot of prayer and vitamins I got over it in time to make it to work for the second half of the week, which we had a really big project going on. (Read that this way: Really. Big. Project. Going. On.)

Then on Sunday, after church I headed to a cabin where I got to spend five days all by my very own self. And that’s the last y’all have really heard from me. Oh, except for on the last day of September I turned 21. So let me catch you up a little bit. =) I’ll save my week at the cabin to tell you later on, and we’ll start at the Friday afternoon when I got home:

When I arrived back at our house, I was thrilled to see one of my bestest friends, Sarah, who lives on the other side of the world. She’s back in the USA for a couple of months, and we hadn’t been sure if it would work out for her to come and stay with me (she’s staying about six and a half hours away), but we worked it out! By the way, for any of y’all who read the comments, she’s the Sarah who’s always leaving such sweet ones. Yep, I really got to spend ten days with her!

Aubrey, me and Sarah

 That night, one of my cousins, Alexa, was going to spend the night at our house. She arrived and we were all sitting around talking when low and behold I looked up to see another cousin, Aubrey, walking into the room. Lots of squeals and laughter erupted, because Aubrey was supposed to be out of state at college and Alexa picked her up and brought her as a surprise to the whole family (all my mom’s side of the family was getting together the next day to celebrate my and my uncle’s birthdays).

Needless to say, we had quite the marvelous time with our cousins, plus it was really neat for me to have them meet Sarah, because Aubrey and Sarah are two of the girls I do the most with, but since Sarah’s hardly ever in the states, they’ve never met.

After hanging out with Mom’s side of the family on Saturday (which was tons of fun!), a few of my siblings, Sarah and I headed over to my adopted parents house because we were in the area and I really wanted them and Sarah to meet each other. We had a remarkable time. We spent a while sitting around talking, then we all headed out and took turns cracking the whip, then we had fun riding their horse, Cowboy, then we walked around looking at stuff. When we went back to the house they gave me a lot of nice presents (including a Keurig for my office!) then we talked about music for a little bit before heading home.

On Sunday we went to church and then my older bothers, sister-in-law and niece and nephew came over for the afternoon to celebrate my, my brothers, and my nephews birthdays, all which were taking place in the following week. We had a lot of fun with them.

The next day, Monday, was my birthday. For months I’ve been wanting a donut, but being off sugar and flour doesn’t really leave me many choices. So, I decided I would have flour, but not sugar on my birthday. I thought maybe, just maybe we could find/make some sugar-free donuts. Well then the night before my birthday I was talking to my adopted dad, and he was talking about cinnamon rolls, and I started getting hungry for those.

At around 4:00 in the morning my sister, Helena, who is totally amazing when it comes to baking, texted me to tell me happy birthday (we have this game where we like to be the first to say happy birthday), so I texted her back and asked what she would think of making cinnamon rolls? She said maybe.

My wonderful sister had already been planning (unknown by me) on making me donuts, and decided to go ahead and make cinnamon rolls as well. Yes, she’s that cool. And they were delicious.

Ok, so this is getting really long and I’ll finish up with a hurry. That night we had a fun, great, amazing birthday dinner with just our family (and Sarah). I was really tired so I laughed like crazy. I am so thankful for my family! I have a stupendous one. =)

On Wednesday we had another retreat where I work (that means majorly huge and busy time. Use your imagination and then multiply that by two and you’ll probably get close to how busy we were). The retreat ended on Saturday and Sunday my bro and I drove Sarah back to where she’s staying, spent the night up there, then drove home. So yeah, sounds busy, right? And that’s not even telling you everything… Just wait until you hear what all I did on my week away, and then you’ll know why I’m so tired. =)