Infection.

I dont care what Mister Robins says, sometimes ":)" 's are the only thing to describe how you feel. Are they maybe a little childish? Maaaaaybe. But they just match perfectly with the expression written across my face. Besides the fact that my face isn't sideways..

And thats exactly how I feel right now.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :( oops. :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

scaling the mount.

So I don't usually love to blog about my average, day-to-day life events. But this was a little more than average I feel, and I just have a few things that I want to write down.

Yesterday at this time (1:30 in the a.m.) me and christopher robins dear (real alias: christopher jepsen) were in my kitchen stuffing our camelbacks with almonds, snickers, and trail mix. We headed down to Days parking lot where we met up with Lauren Cole and her nice boy Spenc.

These were our happy faces BEFORE the hike. And they weren't staged. We were truly and genuinely really excited. At least I was.. as soon as we got to the parking lot just below Timpanogas, I hopped out of the car and started doing a little jig. I couldn't hold in my excitement..

So the rest of our gang showed up. Lane and her boyy Preston. Shay and Todd.

You might think, "Who hikes timp at two in the morning? Those nuttys.." But guess what? There were LOTS of nuttys up there. The parking lot was jam packed and when you looked up the face of the mountain, you could see tons of tiny little headlamps scattered all over! Quite a sight, I tell ya. People were scaling up that mount like ants!

And so our journey began. We were all trottin along like we owned that trail. Whistling, telling jokes, etc.. but within maybe the first-ish mile, the only whistling going on was through my nose. Trying to breath. And I don't even want to TALK about the second mile where I pulled my hip flexor. Tragedy.

Anyhow. We climbed and climbed. The whole time I was just thinking, "K wait. Why, Lauren? Why did this seem like such a wonderful idea an hour ago?" But I kept climbing regardless. (Mostly I just need to thank christopher. I was tripping all over the place. But every time that I almost fell off a cliff or down the mountain, he would quickly grab me, and place me back on my little feetsies. Which was probably.. oh I dunno.. every 2 minutes or so.) So eight miles, a couple protein bars, and a whole lotta IBProfens later, we made it to the top.

The view was UNREAL. Not to mention, sunrises are pretty high up on my list of favorite things:

Once the sun rose, those 8 treacherous miles suddenly seemed worth it. Not saying that I'll ever do it again. . . but let me just make this clear. I've seen a lot of beautiful things, I think. But the view up there just really hit close to home.. I've looked at that mountain ever since I can remember. It's basically been my backyard my entire life, and to be standing on top of it was SO rewarding. Especially with all of the girls I grew up with.. and a really cute boy.

So we enjoyed it for awhile with everything from pop-tarts to beef jerky, and then started our hike down. When you can actually see further than 30 feet in front of you, the panorama is breathtaking.

Uh. Whoa.

Gee whiz. Why do I ALWAYS take everything for granted? Why do I always have to wait for something like this to slap me in the face to remind me of this wonderful world? (But actually in this case I don't think it slapped me in the face.. more like my entire body. And it definitely was more than a slap.. more like a brutal beating. Yeah.. a brutal beating to my entire body. You should see me try to walk up my stairs, or even better, hop up into my jeep. It's a process.) It was incredible. Wish I could say more about it, but I really can't. All I know is that the Lord puts places as beautiful as that really far up in the mountains, so that you have to work your butt off to get there. To really appreciate it.

Do you also wanna know something that came across my mind? We passed like.. A million different wild flowers. And so whenever I saw a pretty one, I'd pick it and give it to Chris. He would then proceed to tell me whether or not it was a good smelling one. . But let's just be honest. Some wild flowers aren't very pretty. The colors are nice and vibrant, but some of them just look.. too wild for their own good.

But I vividly remember one day when I was probably 5 or 6 and I was playing in the hills behind our house. I decided to pick my mom a pretty little bouquet. Let's just say this. It wasn't pretty OR little. It was huge. And hideous. But I was proud of it. And guess who loved it? My mom. I remember it sitting in the window sill above our kitchen sink for at least a week. I mean.. it didn't even smell good and I'm pretty sure there were nasty bugs crawling out of it. But my mom loved all of us little kiddies. And she always wanted us to know it. So she let that terrible thing sit there.. for days.

I don't know how that crossed my mind, but I thought about it for at least an hour on our way down. My mom is the simple-hearted, caring, easy-going mother that you would picture when you thought of a "perfect mom". I love her.

This is Christopher amidst some of the few PRETTY wild flowers.

Anwaayyys, we finished 16 miles later. And even though we got OWNED by that mountain, it was something that I'll never forget. I can check it off the list and never ever ever do it again. So thanks to my crew for sticking it out with me. I don't think any of them really wanted to do it, but I drug them up there anyways. What a couple of good sports, huh?