“if love is a labor i’ll slave ‘til the end…” – rise against

on friday [9.2.11] megan and i kicked off our labor day weekend with a little bootcamp action. it’s this fun thing we’ve been doing together that is also known as: we go to the gym for an hour and a trainer pushes us and about 10-15 other poor souls to the point of almost throwing up. we love it. but also hate it at the same time, you know?

and megan is way stronger than me because she has been doing it for way longer, but then i see this little tid-bit on the wall at the gym:

so then how can i complain, right?

running on the indoor track with her during our workout sure takes me back to my years of running high school track with her by my side. we broke the state record in the 4x800m relay my freshman, her junior year. man, those were the days. she always had my back, even though we were competing. we pushed each other a lot, and that sibling rivalry drove us to work harder in practice everyday. good times.

after bootcamp we had a long over-due sister date. since i’ve been back we haven’t been able to spend a ton of time together, but we got some dinner at buffalo wild wings & then went and watched the help. best movie i have seen in a long, long time. i can’t say enough great things about it. seriously, so good. and megan so lovingly paid for me since i am so poor. gosh i love sisters, i am one lucky girl.

but it’ not always easy, loving someone. because when you do, you have to make all kinds of sacrifices for them. like borrowing your one sister’s car to drive to your other sister’s soccer game that is an hour away because your car needs new tires. then the car has no air conditioning and black leather interior and it’s 100 degrees outside. so then you are all sweating & all hot & all not sexy like. and your shirt is all wet on your back and your jeans are all damp and uncomfortable. that is ALL love, people.

 

it is also love to sit in the hot sun all day just so you can hang out with said sister. and to cancel your hair cut so you can stay and watch another game. also, i think that going to the store and getting her water in that hot car again counts as love, too. but i would do it all again tomorrow if i could. because it was all worth it when she said, “thanks for coming to my game sissy.” and everyday that we are on this earth together it will be worth it. because how nice is it to know that you have a best friend for the rest of forever? how great does it feel to know that when no one else particularly likes you, and people are telling you that you suck, you have like 3, THREE, three amazing sisters that will be there for you and love you no matter what.

i would go to hell and back (or in this case, fallon) for any of my sisters. the benefits of loving someone and having them always far out weigh the sacrifices that are made. and soon, sacrifices aren’t noticed because they turn into what you actually want to do. you want to drive to fallon on a saturday and love on your sis and embarrass her in front of her friends.

sunday was another great day at the singles ward and a yummy break-the-fast lunch. it was a nap in my dress between the two functions and then a kidnapping by my megan sister to the rib cook-off. the famous, "Nugget, Best-In-The-West, Rib Cook-off." people come from everywhere, people. there are soooo many ribs. you can smell them all cooking for miles upon miles and man--there is nothing like 'em. it is one of thee top reasons why i keep coming back to reno every fall, ha. seriously though.

megan & i ate at texas outlaws. they won first place this year, and it was well deserved. we also enjoyed some delicious fire-roasted corn on the cob & fresh-squeezed (not squoze) lemonade. we sat and reminisced about our first semester at unr when we could barely afford to eat there (a half rack of ribs is usually around $13, a full one about $23, corn: 2 for $7, lemonade: large for $5) but went anyway. oh the good 'ol days.

monday was an extra-long session of boot camp for the holiday. then i got my haircut, finally. and really just had a nice catch-up day before week two of the semester started. thank goodness for holidays! :)

friday morning [8.12.11] i woke up and my megan sister was there (she arrived at the ranch the night before from reno). i love her so much. i missed her a lot. it was a weird summer without her.

anyway, so we packed up my car and my parents packed up theirs and we hit the road to utah. we were going to salt lake to maybe go to the zoo before nychea, megan, and i went to my cousin eleshia'sbachelorette party at sapa. we definitely did not make it to the zoo. construction delays, poddy breaks, and food stops made sure that it took us like five whole hours to get there. so instead we went and snatched madison from the salon and hung out at the mall.

the four of us hadn't been together for about two years, so it was a fun reunion. lots of laughing and inside jokes. i have the most fun with these girls. madison & megan bring out the best in each other. seriously they are hilarious. so we went to the bachelorette party. eleshia was beautiful & the food was fantastic.

after dinner we weren't done having fun so we went out to see crazy, stupid, love. it was really great. it was everything: funny, cute, ryan gosling...need i say more?

the next day my family had some fun at this is the place monument, and then that night: the wedding. i definitely cried when eleshia started to walk down the aisle. she looked so beautiful. at 19 i can't believe she is the first one to be married of all the grandkids! but i am so happy for her :)

then there was the reception. then there was chili's with my uncle lyndon's family. then there was a much needed visit with the burke family--and how nice, they let us (megan, me, and nychea) sleep over to minimize our driving time. then there was a beautiful talk by lexady in sacrament on sunday. then there was the long drive home.

one of the best things about the wedding: i got to see people that i love more than anything in the world. family is so important. and i got to spend time with madison before she left for texas! oh texas....

here's some pictures from the wedding :) what a day...

when you steal, you lose.

8.19.11

was the day that nychea wished she had never eaten my peach o's.

because i colored all over her face with a hi-liter.


and maybe it didn't come off that easy.


but maybe she shouldn't have eaten them. because i reallllly really wanted them. i was saving them. they were basically like buried treasure. minus the fact that they weren't exactly buried. and also that, well there was no map. she didn't even need a map though! she just scoped those things out and ate them all. that's right. she didn't even leave me one. 


but i win. because i graffitied her face AND got pictures. ha!

one night (let's see it was august 9th, yes it was) i was driving home from work. i have a very long drive home from work. on the way, i couldn't help but notice the big dipper out my window. there it hung, gigantic in the western sky.


i thought.


wow, there isn't a cloud in the sky. i bet when this big, bright, shining moon goes down the sky is going to be ridiculous. there are no city lights that the stars will have to compete with. no smoggy air. yes, i thought, this will be wonderful.


so i got home around 11:30 (i work late hours, but it's not what you think. ha). and i got in bed next to my cute sister nychea. i planned on setting an alarm and waking up at three so that we could see the billions of tiny lights in the sky after the moon had gone down, but with jordan calling the next day and the diet coke i drank earlier i could see that wasn't going to happen. so i laid there for a while. then i watched a movie. then i laid there some more.


the adrenaline at the thought of hearing jordan's voice again was harder to suppress than i could have imagined. so i laid there a little longer and day dreamed (except it was night time. but i was awake, so how does that work?). then at pretty much exactly 3 am i woke nychea up. and i may or may not have made a video of our little adventure:

star gazing. from Keisha Stewart on Vimeo.

and so, the parts the video missed: laughing super loud up there on that old railroad car and hearing our voices echo off of the metal surface. being really frickin' scared to climb down because it was really frickin' dark with no moon. the cold. i thought it was august? and of course all of the "shooting stars" that we thought were just for us. seriously. there were so many. with streaming tails and different colors. i was in heaven. and "did you see that one!?" "no, i blinked!" yeah, it was like that. rapid fire.


it wasn't until the next morning i realized there was a meteor shower. man are we lucky we chose that night to look at the stars.

In between my Utah trips I was home for a couple days and had some serious family time. Some memories from those two days:

Listening to Nychea's stories from Youth Conference.

Painting my grandma's toe nails.

Every minute with Odessa.

And the night before I left, my adventure with Nychea and her friends.

Basically my boring Wednesday (July 13th) of cleaning, packing, and playing catch up on here turned into a really fun night! Nychea's friends Hannah and Autumn came down from Ely and brought James with them from Lund. Nychea had made us all hobo dinners earlier and so we headed to the 4-H camp pond to swim and have a fire.  When we got there, the gate was not open as we were told, so we ended up having to throw everything over the fence and then hop over it ourselves.  Well, it was more like climb over it; it was a really tall chain-link fence with barbed wire on the top (so serious). We all made it over with out any injury and quickly made our way to the water.

Swimming turned into a n a s t y moss fight, and I don't think I have laughed that hard in quite awhile. I felt a little silly hanging out with a bunch of 16 year olds, but hey, I'll take what I can get out here. ;) 

We started a fire and threw on our dinners then continued to swim while they cooked. The moon was sooo bright, casting the prettiest light on us as we all sat around the fire eating our hobo dinners...with NO forks. Haha. We truly were hobos. So sloppy.

After making some delicious s'mores we packed everything up, put the fire out, and had to climb over the fence again. This time, I came out with a small wound. Those barbs can be kinda tricky sometimes... When we were all back in the truck we headed back to Lund to drop off James and then came back to the ranch for a little scary movie. I thought, "I am pretty much over scary movies, this won't even be fun." Wrong. I ended up in the same recliner as Nychea, holding on to her for dear life. At one point we both jumped and screamed at the same time and definitely banged heads. I guess I underestimated this one, but never again. I freaking HATE scary movies. Yuck!

Favorite quotes from the night, "You can't touch my chastity boob-basket!" "'Sup wit it!?" "Ew." "He's 14!?" "ohh, you mutha uh uhh." and on and on...oh I miss being 16!