2013 in Review

I’ve been entirely terrible at blogging since I’ve returned to the states (note the lack of a single post in December. Oops!), but there have been so many major developments this year that I felt it would be shameful if I missed my annual review.

So, without further adieu, here’s a snapshot of my 2013!

JANUARY

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: I got transferred to the coldest area for sister missionaries in Japan just in time for the winter! Battling the snow every day was sometimes crazy, but it was also beautiful. Asahikawa also is home to a sweet zoo where they have a penguin walk, so I got to make some new animal friends. I may have gone on three p-days.

FEBRUARY

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: February continued to be super cold, but it took a turn for the awesome when we got to go to the world-famous yuki matsuri (a.k.a. snow festival) in Sapporo and the winter festival in Asahikawa. The sculptures were the size of buildings!

MARCH

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: The snow… was still a main feature of this month. I celebrated my 24th birthday and continued having fun serving the wonderful people in Japan.

APRIL

Locations: Asahikawa, Japan

Included: April was the first month the age change for girl missionaries hit our mission, so all of a sudden our numbers tripled! I also got my first non-Japanese companion, Sister Lundstrom from Ohio, and we had way too much fun together.

MAY

Locations: Asahikawa & Sapporo, Japan

Included: In May I was transferred to Sapporo to be a sister training leader, which meant my companion and I got to visit all of the areas in our mission to split up and train with the sister missionaries. It was so much fun to get team up with everyone, and a dream come true to see all of the different areas! We usually went to two locations in a week, so we were living out of our suitcases and hardly ever were in our own apartment.

JUNE

Locations: Sapporo, Japan; Portland, Ore.

Included: This was my last month of the mission and it was fast and crazy and fun as we continued to travel around Hokkaido every week. It was actually perfect because I got to see all of the people I had come to love in all of my areas one more time before I headed back to the states. Leaving was sad, but being reunited with my family after a year and a half was wonderful. I also enjoyed the whole being able to sleep in again thing too.

JULY

Locations: Portland, Ore.; Provo, Utah

Included: This was a whirlwind month of adjusting to being home, reuniting with friends, landing a job at KSL.com and then finding an apartment in Salt Lake City. It was crazy how fast things moved, but it all worked out so perfectly I know it was definitely what I was supposed to do.

AUGUST

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah

Included: Moving to Salt Lake and getting settled at work was the biggest part of this month. It was a fun adventure! We also had a mini mission reunion when my last companion came into town from Japan, so I didn’t have to miss my mission friends for too long.

SEPTEMBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah

Included: September was a pretty chill month. I continued to have fun exploring the area and Amber even came down from Provo a few times to eat something delicious.

OCTOBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah

Included: I kept working and living and enjoyed the fall colors.

NOVEMBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah; All over California

Included: The best part of this month was hands down tagging along with Amber and her friend for a Thanksgiving road trip to California. We hit up an extra-magical Disneyland on Thanksgiving, enjoyed warm beaches and visited the animals at the San Diego Zoo (in case anyone was wondering, I think I’ve been to three zoos this year for a total of six times). It was kind of hard to come back to cold Utah… as you may have guessed, I’ve had more than my fill of chilly weather this past year.

DECEMBER

Locations: Salt Lake City, Utah; Portland, Ore.

Included: The Christmas season featured fun parties in Salt Lake and then wonderful reunions back home in Portland! I got a fabulous week off from work to come home. I wasn’t here for Christmas last year, so that just made it even more special. It was a perfect end to a big year.

And that was 2013! I hope you all had a fantastic year as well, and that 2014 will be even more amazing.

*Song of the day = London, by She & Him. My next destination, perhaps?

A Merry Christmas to All

Happy Holidays from the Crofts home!

We stopped downtown for some Christmas Eve happiness.

And yesterday I went with my sister and dad and enjoyed the beauty of Mount Hood!

I wish you the best for your holidays, and hope they include as much family warmth.

*song = I’ll Be Home for Christmas, performed by She & Him.

Week of Thanks

My sister’s schedule this semester allowed her to be home for over a week for Thanksgiving, and it was wonderful to have her here. We spent a lot of glorious time just chilling at home on the couch, but we did a good amount of shopping too! Plus some munching at St. Cupcake.

Some things I’m grateful for? Family and Portland, of course!

*Christmas song of the day = The Christmas Waltz, performed by She & Him.

Pumpkin Patch Magic

In case you didn’t already know, I am obsessed with pumpkins. And I absolutely adore pumpkin patches. So the first weekend I was home my parents and I headed out to one of my favorite places – Lakeview Farms. I haven’t been home to go there for ages since I’ve been at school, so it was a wonderful reunion!

Here are some of the happy moments:

Isn’t it wonderful? (And isn’t the warty one extra cool?)

Lakeview Farms even offers the absolute best in pumpkin transportation – a boat that evades sharks and pirates, and a train that drives through a spooky haunted house.

Here’s what this year’s hoard looked like. Quite nice, if I do say so myself. I got to carve the biggest one today!

The trip was even educational!

We stopped at the roadhouse (McMenamins) on the way home, where I continued my quest to find the world’s best mac & cheese. Mmmmm…

It was highly successful day. Hope you all have a magical Halloween!

*song = Werewolf Bat Mitzvah, compliments of 30 Rock

Hawaii Revisited

My mom is back in Hawaii this week having a reunion with her brothers and sisters, so I’m going to take advantage of this time to finally post some more of the millions and millions of photos I took when we were there this April!

Since my mom is going back home to Hawaii for a family thing, I thought I’d start with some family related pictures. My grandparents on my mom’s side loved Hawaii and lived in Honolulu for forever, so my family got a bench in their memory on the beach at Waikiki. You can see it below in photos, but you should definitely go check it out in person! You can sit on it, watch the waves and get a tan. I wouldn’t mind that right now.

I thought the birds in the tree above the bench that day were kinda cute, even if they were dirty pigeons…

(In case you’re wondering, despite how this may make it seem we actually don’t go to Hawaii all of the time. I think this is the first time my mom has ever gone back home twice in one year! And I’ve only been there twice… so far)

*song = Talking Bird by Death Cab for Cutie

A New York Minute

Those of you who are reading this should be applauding.  Go ahead, you can do it right now.  Why do I deserve your praise, you might ask?  Because this year it only took me one week to blog about my New York trip.  That’s right, one week. Instead of… six months, like last year.  I’m totally becoming a better person.

Amber came and stayed at my place for almost a week, and we decided that since she had never been to the east coast before and New York is only a four hour bus ride away it was necessary for us to take a quick jaunt up to NYC.  Annie, the world traveler, had somehow never been there before either, and since she was even closer to the city than us we all splurged on a hotel and met up for an adventurous weekend.  We were only there for 32 hours, but we packed it full with all sorts of fun, which will be showcased in the pictorials below.

First stop: Times Square.  We decided to embrace being tourists.

We accidentally found a Pylones store, which was the company that made almost all of the stuff we loved at our most favorite London store – Octopus.  I may have bought a robot kitchen timer that I originally fell in love with in London.  Is it the most important thing I could have spent my money on right now as an unpaid intern?  No.  Did I want it?  Very much so.  That won.

Annie and I are slightly obsessed with 30 Rock, so we made a stop by the grand building itself.  Tour tickets were sold out already for the day, but we hung out in the area for a while content with ourselves.

We then pretended like we were going to get half price tickets for a musical. Until we realized they were still a million dollars and we had plenty of other things to do.

Amber had a short list of things she wanted to do, one of which was going to Tiffany’s to pay homage to the classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Also on the list was the never-ending and magical Central Park, where we spent many hours on a quest to find The Sidewalk and Rom Com bridge. 

Amber made friends with the bubble man, who was super nice and let her become his bubble apprentice.  He also fulfilled Amber’s requirement that she see a famous person, because he was totally on the last episode of Glee.

Annie was really excited the whole time we were in FAO Schwartz.

We played dress up and princesses and colored pictures and made friends with Indiana Jones and played on a giant piano and did whatever we wanted.

Ginormous stuffed animals are still really desirable, in case you were wondering. They’re just so fluffy and friendly.

Now that I’m thinking about it, this wonderful toy store totally could have had it’s own post… 

As you’ve probably noticed, none of us ever really grew up.  So we needed candy for fuel.

Times Square at night.  You didn’t think we’d only go once, did you?  Our hotel was actually super close.

We went other places too, like Serendipity and Grand Central Station.

Our final stop together was The Strand, which is a fabulous and famous bookstore with a funny little coincidence – the wife of the Senator I’m doing my internship for, Senator Wyden, actually owns and runs it.  We came away with a stack of books we recommended for each other.

We parted with Annie because her bus left a little earlier, and then Amber and I went and chilled on the steps at Times Square, watching the pre-Tony’s crowd.  A wonderful trip all around.

Annie blogged about it too, so you should check hers out because she’s cool.  Amber, when you read this you should be cool like us and write something too.  Just sayin’.

*song = Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys.  Admit it, you would have been disappointed if I choose anything else.