19th Birthday.... or 20th..... or 18th twice....

Okay, first I should probably explain the title. So I turned 19 (technically) on Thursday of this week (August 2nd). But I didn't want to turn 19. And here's the reason why. The conversation when you are 19 goes like this: "how old are you?" "19" "Oh! That's so great! When are you getting married?" But then as soon as you say "20" they stop asking you about marriage. I don't know, it's weird. But because I am not even seeing anyone, I didn't want to have to answer the question that always seems to follow when you reply "I'm 19 years old." So I would tell people this a few weeks leading up to my birthday, and I would always just say I'm turning 18 twice. But then, one of my cute little cousins said, "why don't you just say you're turning 20?" And I thought back to my 2 year anniversary when lots of people said happy birthday to me, and thought, this could work. So then I decided that it was my 20th birthday. Eventually, I decided that it doesn't matter, and all the stupid people who ask when I'm getting married when I tell them I'm 19 can just forget it. Anyway! So, let's start with the beginning of the week. I went to church on Sunday, talked to one of my (same-age) home-teachers and told him that I didn't have any plans as far as friends for my birthday. Then Sister Wellman kept talking to my family about going over to their house "tomorrow" (Monday) for family home evening to go swimming at their pool. Right? I just thought those were both two totally separate, and totally normal things. Little did I know, those two were so correlated! You see, thanks to Logan Raban (my same-age home-teacher) and Sister Wellman, when I went to the Wellmans' house for "family home evening" I was literally super surprised. Yes, they had thrown me a surprise party! It was great! It was really, really awesome the different people that they had gotten to come too. They had some people from my ward, like two of my favorite families, my Young Women President, and of course, my so-extremely-loved Bishop and his family. They had also gotten my dear good friend, Trisha Cook, who works with Tonya for my family, and her husband, and Trisha, did the most incredible thing by getting none other than my favorite (yes I did just say favorite!) co-worker, Jefferson Campbell to come as well. Oh my goodness, I was so excited! So I actually had a FUN time this Monday, which is kind of saying a lot, since I don't remember the last time when I could genuinely say I had a fun time. Then, Wednesday after work my family left to go up to San Francisco. We made it to Reno, NV by Wednesday night and spent the night there. In the morning, we went to the Reno Temple. This is so important because one of the goals that I set before I even turned 12 is that I was going to go to a temple each year on my birthday. But not just any temple, a NEW temple, one that I have not ever been to before. So, I've been to all of the nearby Utah temples, so we knew that we would have to travel a little bit, and my Dad's company in San Francisco is moving this weekend, so we thought that we would come down here and help him out and in turn, we'd get to go to a new temple! So we started out my birthday by going to the Reno Temple. Then we drove, and drove, until we got to a Rue21. We had to go into a Rue21 because I had gotten some emails talking about a few big sales that would end this weekend and stuff. So, after spending about 1 1/2 hours, I walked out of the store with $311.88 worth of stuff, but I only paid $132.01 for it! So that much was good. (comment if you know where that comes from!) Then when we got into San Francisco, I was put to work a little bit and stuff, but you know, whatever. Then, yesterday (Friday) we hadn't done a whole awful lot (I wasn't feeling so hot) but we decided to go cruising around the city. Oh my gosh! It was so great! I can honestly say that I was feeling happy! Which is another thing that i honestly don't even know when the last time I can say I truly felt happy. Then today, we went to Chinatown. That was okay fun. But it was cool because I got a wicked-cool sweatshirt from my mommy and daddy! :) Then we went to fisherman's wharf where we ate crab. And lots of it. It was delicious! So all in all, I think that this week has been a pretty good birthday week. There are still a lot of troubling things that weigh heavily on my mind, but overall, I have been able to forget about those troubles a time or two, for the first time in I don't know how long! So one heck of a big thanks to all those who contributed, people like Logan, Sister Wellman, my mom and dad, my bishop, and most importantly a Father in Heaven, who, for the first time since the accident, I actually feel like he might care about me, just a little bit.