Summer movie lineup

Summertime. It's official. I may or may not have already forgotten every single thing I learned last semester and every single thing relating to school at all. Bliss! Except I have a sneaking suspicion that summertime brings out the lazy in me. In everyone? Yeah. So far, my summer plans (aside from the travels) include daily bike rides down the Provo river trail and basically moving in at my job. So much fun. 

Summertime also means getting to watch (and actually enjoy) all my favorite summertime movies. Here's just a few of them:

1- Now & Then. Nothing says summertime like hanging out with your friends, riding your bikes all day while listening to music, drinking coke, spying on naked boys playing in the lake (oh wait...), trying to solve a murder-mystery, and earning money to buy a tree house. 

2- The Sandlot. Baseball. S'mores. Community swimming pool. The biggest pickle and the great Bambino. 

3- Grease. Summer lovin'. Drive-ins, milkshakes, and carnivals. Classic summertime. P.S. who wants to go to a drive-in with me this summer?

4- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1 & 2). New places, new boys, new adventures. Old pants. Best friends. Greece, anyone?

5- The Parent Trap. Summer camp! And I'm referring to the original Haley Mills movie ("I shan't tell my aunt about the ants, nor the debutante") as well as the Lindsey Lohan remake (where some of the camp scenes were filmed in Lake Arrowhead, California, hometown of the bestie and where we'll be spending 2 weeks this summer!). 

6- It Takes Two. Another summer camp! Big gooey messy burgers, food fights, and helping people fall in love: Mary-Kate-and-Ashley Style.

7- Dirty Dancing. Learning to dance and falling in love with Patrick Swayze? Yes, please. 

8- A Goofy Movie. Ultimate summer road trip. Quality time with dad and possums, sneaking around and lying to your dad, fishing, cheese whiz. 

9- Heavyweights. FAT camp. My favorite part is how they hide the candy in the legs of the bunk beds. Smart move. 

10- My Girl. This one I'm adding on because of Megan. It seems like she loved this movie a whole lot. Quintessentially summertime; horribly, horribly sad. Stay away from bees.

11- Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain. Yes, I'm including this obscure Christina Ricci movie, which I feel like I watched an awful lot when I was little. Wish I could have a gold-finding adventure this cool. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of good summer movies. People always mention Jaws as a classic summertime film, but frankly, I'm not sure if I've ever seen it. I think I've seen the fakey scene with the shark's mouth wide open, but that's it. Also, I just don't think that scary movies (even poorly made scary movies) belong in a summertime movie collection. Call me crazy, but those seem more appropriate for fall. Summer is fun, so the movies should also be fun. Sunshine, bike rides, ice cream, vacation, swimming, best friends: Pretty much your key ingredients for a good summertime movie. 

What are your favorite summertime movies? I need to expand my collection here!

How can the dollar theater charge TWO dollars? Can you say counter-intuitive?

I saw The Vow at the dollar theater twice last week. I'm kind of obsessed, I'll be honest. It's been a while since a good chick flick came out, right? Or is that just me and my hermit tendencies? One day I want to be a part of a couple as cute as that. Probably won't happen. Oh well. I can still dream of waking up one day to Channing Tatum saying he's my husband. 

However, there was one scene that stayed with me for reasons other than the movie's intended appeal:

You cannot tell me that I am the only one who thought this!! Is it because I watched Kindergarten Cop when I was too young? Is it because I thought I saw this guy staring at me once in a grocery store in Park City when I was about 10 years old and it scared me to death? Either way, the similarity seemed a bit eerie to me. I just wish I could forget about all the things that scared me as a child, but it's probably too long a list for that to ever happen.

If anyone wants to go see The Vow, just let me know. I think I can overlook the scary rain scene. 

B-D-day!

So I pretty much just had the best birthday ever. It was about a million percent better than I was planning on, mostly because I have the best sister ever. And some really wonderful friends. I woke up to the phone ringing at about 8:30. I considered not answering it and just keep sleeping. Who ever heard of waking up so early on a birthday? But I'm glad I answered it, because it turns out it was Megan, calling to tell me that there was something on my doorstep. And there was something on my doorstep--a cute little sister with a big present in her hands. How great is she? She took pity on my sad little life and took the day off to hang out with me on my birthday. And it was quite the marathon day.

We felt like we did a whole week of birthday celebration because the day felt so long

(it wasn't quite "mud-packed Monday,

double feature Tuesday,

Sephora Wednesday,

complementary makeover Thursday,

big fat fabulous Friday,"

though in retrospect...we almost covered a lot of these. odd.).

The weather changed a few times, we changed a few times, and it was just like this crazy time-space-birthday-continuum. Hooray for extra long birth-days. :)

We started off the rainy day here:

With Laurel!

Eating the most delicious strawberry/nutella crepes

and frites:

Due to some, uh, scheduling conflicts, we ended up at another crepe place about 45 minutes later, this time with the dad.

Where we ate some more delicious crepes! This time we got a s'more crepe, to try and diversify, but we should've just stuck with the strawberry/nutella. We ate some of dad's though, and it was de-lish.

They also had these way good ham, egg, and cheese crepes. Seriously good.

Who has been to this random owl/crepe place? It's kind of adorable. Or weird. Can't decide. But I did like the tree in the middle of the room.

After breakfast number 2 (sorry dad! It was good though!!)

Then we went to one of my favorite stores, the DI. I may or may not have gotten a dress there. I don't normally shop at the DI, promise. But it was cute and from H&M. You know, originally.

Went back to my apartment, where Megan's friend came over and gave us birthday haircuts (random much?) while we watched 27 Dresses and I studied for my last French final. Maybe we should've saved this movie for my 27th birthday?

We went up to campus for my final. Good time. Meh. Finals were so much worse this semester than last semester, which is so weird because I felt like all my classes were so much easier. Whatev. Then we went up and Megan met some of my French professors. We walked around the bookstore for a bit, but I couldn't find the book that I wanted--a book of walking tours in Paris. That's right. Remember how I'm going to be walking all up and down Paris this summer? Hear that, finals? Jerks. Wish the final had resembled something like this:

Because I would've aced that. But it was fun learning about contemporary French civilization this semester. Great preparation also. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm 100% better prepared to vote in the upcoming French presidential elections than I am for the US elections. Good thing.

And I am now reading this book for fun. It's great.

Back to the birthday. The afternoon turned out so beautiful, though it was much later than the weather people had predicted, that Megan and I took a bike ride along the Provo River Trail. My favorite thing ever! I was telling her about how I feel like as children we were conditioned to not like sports or outdoorsy things (because we're girls, after all), but bike riding is one outdoor thing that I adore. I just love it. I think one reason I love it so much is that bike riding + summertime remind me of one of my all-time favorite summertime movies, Now and Then (how many guesses did that take us, Meg?). We started singing "knock three times on the ceiling..." at the same time a few times. Yeah. Same person.

It was just a bit cold. Hence the red noses.

How I jimmy-rigged the basket that I bought like a year ago. Yes that's the rope from my lu'au dress plus the ribbon from my birthday balloons. Wonder how long it will hold.

I also LOVE bridges, just fyi.

By this time, we'd burned off most of our breakfasts and were starving. We considered every option that Provo has to offer (and it's quite the diverse selection), but I finally settled, strangely, on Red Robin. And I was happy I chose it because it was so good.

Strawberry lemonade. So not a water day.

Not sure how much of our food we actually tasted, since it was more like inhaling at this point, but from what I remember it was excellent. I got the california chicken sandwich. I'd highly recommend it, especially when you're starving.

Red Robin happens to be located, conveniently, at the mall. So, of course, we had to do a little birthday shopping. I almost got a few shirts, but I ended up with some new shoes. No, I can't afford it. Yes, it was my birthday. So happy birthday to me. :)

THEN (I know, right? How can the day still be going on?!) we went with Jenny to the creamery for some dessert. I love BYU creamery ice cream. I got my old favorite, Earnestly Chocolate, and Megan got my current fav, Mint Brownie. If you're still searching for a late birthday present for me, let me just say. Mint Brownie.

And THEN we went to the dollar theater and saw The Vow. Um, who has seen this? We were obsessed with it. Such a freaking cute movie. I loved it. And may or may not have been crying quite hard at the end. What are the odds that I'll wake up one day and Channing Tatum will be telling me that I've lost my memory and he's my husband? Ah. If only...

And no, it was not on purpose that the two movies we watched today were wedding-themed. Totally by chance.

So yeah. Marathon birthday, right? It was awesome. It doesn't feel real that I get older every year, especially since this is what I still think: (listen to me! and just imagine the real words from the movie). But that's life. And it's great. Thanks to everyone for making it such a big fat fabulous birthday! It's going to be a great year!

Remember how me and finals used to be friends?

Not anymore.

Megan texted me and asked how my finals today went today. This was my reponse:

"It may or may not have ended with me almost hysterically sobbing in the parking lot of my work on the phone with Laurel. Does that tell you enough?"

Yeah. Just kill me. Tomorrow can't come fast enough. And yet... I get the feeling that I haven't studied enough for the final tomorrow. Remember last semester, when I got like 100% on all my finals? Yeah... I don't remember that either. Please someone tell me why I care so much about getting good grades? Is this my parents' fault?

I'm unstable today!!

Can't it just be summertime already??

Pre-birthday weekend!

It was a wonderful pre-finals-week weekend, which just also happened to coincide with my pre-birthday weekend. So it was just all-around a great weekend. You know, besides the 11+ hours that I spent in the library working on my 12-page French paper, finishing my editing final, and studying for my ELang final. Besides that, it was great.

On Friday morning, Laurel and I got up early to judge the poetry-reciting contest for the Foreign Language Fair. Basically that meant about 3 hours of listening to high school students recite poems that they probably didn't really understand. At least it was entertaining! Last year we were a bit too generous in the ratings that we gave out, but we were wiser this year. We only gave out one "Mention Spéciale" (but really, there was the only person who deserved it). We were surprised by one of the poems that they had to recite because it was super long and included words that I didn't even know. There were a few rather painful recitations, but props to them for learning it, er, at least attempting it!

Laurel trying to be a harsh judge. In reality, we all know that I'm the mean one and she's the nice one. Which is why we're such a good team :)

Afterwards, we got our free pastries (as payment for being judges), and Laurel even swiped us a few extras. Then I made her come with me to get my new BACKPACK!!! Woot! Remember how I got a new one last year for going on study abroad? Yep, I get a new one this year for going on an international internship. I'm really excited about it--the internship and the backpack. While I was picking it up, I ran into my friend Stephanie (my bus buddy in Senegal, for those of you who remember), and we decided on doing a weekend in Nice while we're both in France (I'll be doing my internship in Paris; she'll be in Marseille). Yeah. That's my life.

So then Laurel and I were planning on going to Costa Vida afterwards for my birthday. We got there, and I had to go to the bathroom, which Laurel seemed really disappointed about. When I got out, I walked from Fat Cats into Costa Vida and the first thing I saw was her fiance, Phil. I was like, "oh. Phil came. Cool." And then I noticed Kristina, Nathan, and Jesse were all there too! They all surprised me for my birthday!! I couldn't believe it. So we got our food and went to our table, decked out with balloons and cake and cookies. I just have the greatest friends :)

Kristina & me

Jesse, Laurel and Phil

me, Nathan & Jenny

I really love Costa Vida.

The lovely cake that Laurel made for me

And the lovely cookies that Nathan made for me. Or maybe his mom ;)

Here I am with my birthday balloons and my new backpack!

:) I was going to pick the Jamaican one, but I didn't think that would go over too well in France. What do you think about this one?

And then on Saturday, a few of my friends got together for another birthday lunch! It's always so fun to hear about what's going on in everyone's lives, talk about how we're not grown-ups yet (even though, they all really are. I think it's just me who isn't yet. oh well! One day, maybe), and just have fun together. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were in high school? It's crazy how fast time flies. Boy oh boy! Once again, I have some great friends!

Chris (+babyboy#2), Kathryn (and baby Jack), Kylee (+babyboy#1), me, Jill, Linnea

Thanks to everyone who made my pre-birthday weekend so great. I'm looking forward to birthday week itself. Despite finals week, it might turn out pretty okay.