Dear Tyra,

Tell your "top models" to watch out.

My fiance is about to steal the show.

J and I had engagements a few weeks ago.

The proofs are back...

 and I really think I MIGHT be engaged to

a model.

Don't you wish I were nice enough to give you the password to the site ;)

For a preview go here

Dear Wedding,

9 o'clock tonight JD and I will be on a plane to California to plan the wedding.

See ya Sunday.

Dear cold,

Please go away.

It's too early for you to be here.

I can barely get out of bed in the morning

 because I know the second I take my covers off

I'm going to be shivering for the next 20 minutes.  

It's only October.  

It's cold.

& I'm almost late to all my morning classes.

Wishing you would leave,

Ashley 

Dear Old News,

I am terrible at blogging.  

It's official.

Point in case:

Last week in class I was looking at Dani and started cracking up because she had a little chip of nail polish stuck in between her teeth.  You may remember my post about her obsession with painting her nails.  If so, you understand why I was laughing. 

Upon me telling her this, I also said, "Yes!  I now have something to blog about.  This is great!"

She stared at me and said, "You just got engaged... and you're going to blog about ME with nail polish in between my teeth?!"

Good point.  

So folks... the cats out of the bag.

I've been engaged for a little over 2 weeks.

We're getting married December 19th 2009 in the Newport Beach Temple.  

More updates coming soon :) 

Being engaged to your best friend is pretty great.  

Dear little people,

So today I made myself some lunch and then decided to turn on the TV for a few minutes.

Little People/Big World show came on so I decided to watch it.

Back in high school one of my friends Jenny was OBSESSED with midgets.

(maybe that's not a politically correct term...but I'm not exactly a politically correct person).

Anyhow, as I'm watching they start talking about how a

 good family friend of theirs is visiting for a few days.  

This "good family friend" just happens to be my pal I met on my plane on my way home for thanksgiving my sophomore year of college.  

He was the guy on Pirates of the Caribbean so OF COURSE we had to take a picture.   

I'm not going to lie... I felt very awkward about this picture.

I didn't know if I should stand normal, bend over, or kneel down.

Okay... obviously I knew I shouldn't kneel down (that was simply for a dramatic effect).

He's a short little guy,

but boy was he nice.

And famous.

Hahaha... I burst out laughing when I saw him on TV today 

and immediately dug up this picture purely for blogging purposes. 

Enjoy: 

Dear Food,

Yep.  That's right.

I talk about food.

I think about food.

I eat food (sometimes inhale).

Occasionally I will even admit, I dream about food.

Why not blog about food?

Am I sounding chubby yet?  

Maybe.

I am just dying to get to Provo for many reasons.

One of them being that no longer will I be eating mass produced food.

No longer will I be picking at chicken soaked in grease 

OR lettuce with shriveled edges that appears to be turning brown.  

EFY supplied me with a lot of great things this summer.

 Food was not one of them.

Food, comida, nourriture, nahrung, cibo, 食べ物...

(however you want to say it)

I am officially in complete control of you & what enters my body.

Sayonara campus cafeteria food.

It's been real.

Dear Provo,

I'm ready to be reunited.

These are just a few of the reasons why I'm missing my Provolone:

My friends are kind of AMAZING.

I wouldn't mind having them back after an entire summer of not seeing them.

Love, love, love you guys.

Dear JD,

Pretty sure that's one of the last "Dear JD's" I'll be writing. 

JDizzle returns from 2 years in Japan on Friday at 11:30am!

Welcome home, best friend!

Dear MIA,

I'm alive.  I promise.

This is an apology to all friends and family members 

who may rightfully feel I've fallen off the face of the Earth.  

I've been in Minnesota:

Loving counselors,

Loving kids,

and Loving the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Life is wonderful and I hope yours is too.  

Call you this weekend :)  

Sincerely yours,

Your STILL friend/sister/daughter/cousin who loves you

Dear EFY,

So lots of people ask me why I love EFY SO, SO much.

In honor of the fact that I am flying out to Minnesota tomorrow for some training before the kids come on Monday, I decided I would share the top 14 reasons why EFY makes me happy.

1. Where else do teenage boys get girls their food?

2. Ha! Taking trays up to the conveyer belt is a coveted responsibility.

3. I've never seen so many teenagers go out of their ways to have missionary experiences.

(My kids ALWAYS rock).

4. I get to go to LOTS of wonderful places.

Case in point:

5. Service activities WEEKLY.

6. Eating pizza is a required activity.

7. Hilarious things happen... like the whole entire floor floods from an overflowing toilet.

8. I get to hang out with the GREATEST youth in the church.

Just take a look:

(p.s. Kelsey was one of my girls TWO years in a row...

this was us feeling ugly before the banquet)

9. I have the coolest coworkers you could ever ask for.

11. Being above the age of 20 and still immature is completely acceptable.

13. Wristbands. Who doesn't want neon colored wristbands?

14. No sleep = Very tired counselors.

And nothing could be better than getting an invitation in the mail for TWO of your girls weddings. YES, two of my girls have been married in the TEMPLE.

My job is so rewarding.

EFY 2009... bring on the memories.

Dear Story Time,

As you may be very well aware, I have been employed by GAP for a while now.

I love my job.

I love the people I work with.

I love dressing mannequins and hanging decals.

I love cleaning the fitting rooms in the morning shifts (no, seriously though...it's my favorite)

I even love work meetings.

SO... since I've been home I decided I would see if I could pick up some shifts at our local GAP. My managers were fabulous and took care of everything for me. I was excited, they were excited... life was good.

WELL, yesterday was my first day working there. It was only a 5 hour shift... not bad.

I arrive to the store 10 minutes early so I can get accustomed with everything. Something you should know about me is that I LOVE sales rallies...opening, closing... I love them all.

You can imagine my disappointment when I asked, "Soo..where do you guys meet for the sales rally?" And the girl looked at me and said, "The what??" In that split second, I think my heart skipped a beat. I gave a nervous laugh and said, "Um you know...where they tell you the goals for the day, special promotions, you know..." She just looked at me and said, "Oh yeah... just go read it off the sheet and then go out to the floor and find a manager."

This was the moment where I had my first "WHAT?!"

My second "WHAT?!" moment came when I walked out on to the floor

and she sent me to GAP Baby. Ugh.

The third occurred as I walked over there and found no one in the store. I started walking around looking for clothes to refold, size, etc. That's when I quickly realized that there were LITERALLY, NO LIE, NO EXAGGERATION, NO clothes to fix. Everything was perfectly placed, folded, sized... it was insane. So, I got on the walky and asked if there were any reticketing jobs that needed to be done or go-backs. Reticketing was done that morning (reticketing is a never ending process at our store... it is never "done") and apparently go-backs are non-existent in their store.

To add to my dismay, Baby's register wasn't open...so anyone who was even going to buy anything from me would go to Kids to check out. This left with me with virtually nothing to do. SO, I Swiffered...yes, Swiffered the store... in the middle of the day! (I was actually happy to see dust... it made me feel like I was back in our store). In our store we do all the cleaning in the morning because there are too many people to do it during store hours. Don't worry though, because that's not a problem here. I had MAYBE four customers walk in the store during my whole five hour shift.

Long story short, if I worked in this store every day...

my career in retail would last about one month... tops.

The people were great.

The store obviously looked perfect.

However, standing and twidling my thumbs for 4 hours straight

just doesn't really hit the spot for me.

EFY couldn't come any sooner...

Dear Bing,

Nope.

Not Chandler.

Bing CHERRIES.

I love summer for many reasons. One of which is that with summer, come the bing cherries.

I hate normal cherries. They are gross and weird.

HOWEVER, these suckers are divine.

Muchos gracias verano.

You rock.