See You Later!

Well everyone,

I guess this is it. Thanks for the support to get me on a mission. I am excited beyond words but also nervous and apprehensive and every other emotion possible. My mom will be posting my emails on a blog specifically for my mission, hermanajackson.blogspot.com Easy enough, right? On there, you will find my most current address (as well as the mission home's address) for you to write me. :) For those of you that said emails are better because you prefer typing, I don't really want to be reading lots of emails every week so I'm probably not going to give out my email address to anyone but family. But you can use dearelder.com! It's free while I'm at the MTC and then just the cost of postage after that. If you have anything important you need to get to me, email it to my mom (calciomom@gmail.com) and she will forward it on to me.

Thanks again and I hope to hear from you often in the next year and a half. I love you!

I am SO converted to Seattle!

Ok, so I just got back from a weekend in Seattle visiting my friend Megan and I LOVED it. I had never been to that part of the country before and it is absolutely gorgeous...huge trees everywhere, beautiful lakes, and not to mention a low altitude, which was nice for my passing out issues. It was like going camping every time we drove around and I love that feeling. Anyway, here are several pictures from the weekend. Enjoy!

Who says you can't go home?

Picture this: sitting in a car for 10 hours in weather that is getting hotter and hotter as you go when finally, you reach your destination. You come peaking over the Tehachapi mountains and down into the valley as a faint smell of acid rain drifts in through the air vents. As you head further into the depths of this town, oil rigs pierce the horizon through the brownish haze we like to call smog. And then, you drive past Weedpatch Highway...
...and you know...
...that you are HOME.

Yes, I had a lovely trip to California with my mom. It was one last girl's trip before my mission so my dad wasn't allowed to come. We spent a couple of days in Bakersfield, which of course included visits to Dewar's and Monica Ward. Then we headed down to Thousand Oaks, where we picked up my grandma and took her out to Santa Barbara/Solvang for several days. We stopped for a night at my aunt's house in Palmdale on the way home. It was just really nice to be able to reconnect with my mom because we haven't really spent much time together since I started at college. Sure I live at home right now, but I'm always working or out with friends and the same with her so this was nice.
I love my mom so much. She has been there for me through all of my worst nightmares, even when I may have thought I didn't want her there. She exemplifies everything I want to be in a mother - caring, intelligent, driven, forgiving, faithful, patient, and more. I tease her a lot that we are complete opposites, and in many things we are, but being able to spend the week with her taught me just how much I want to be like her. I am going to miss her above anybody else on my mission but I know that our relationship will just grow stronger as the years go on.

A Day in the Life...

I love my job, can I just say that? I have been doing sewing/alterations at the laundry now for 2 years! Crazy! Let me just explain a brief bit about what typically happens during my workday...

1. 8:30 or 9 - drive to work and think long and hard about what my opening line for the day will be...something like "Oh my gosh, I had the weirdest dream last night!" or "Gah, why are boys so retarded?"
2. 9 to Noon - share stories from the night before with my coworkers as we laugh hysterically at some of the clothes people bring in for us to sew or at the sewing instructions the front counter writes - for example: "replace butt" or "sew crotch together." I mean, come on, they could just write "mend crotch seam" and we know exactly what to do. Haha
3. Noon to 1 - discuss what we're going to do for lunch and/or wait for a customer to come in who is desperate for his clothes to be altered/mended right then (instead of waiting a week like anyone else). When such a customer comes in, we require a "rush fee" in the form of pizza or chocolate milk or ice cream or orange chicken or any number of other things we've obtained :)
4. Afternoon until we decide to close up and leave - we get a little tired and start laughing at just about anything. Because I've worked there so long, my coworkers ask me for advice about what to do on things and I usually have no idea but I make something up that sounds good, they do it, and it works. Fake it 'till you make it, I guess. :)
5. About 3ish - call my mom and ask her when she is coming to pick me up, and she usually tells me not until 4, but I'm really tired by then and find some random sewing job to keep me busy my last hour.
6. Oh, and in between all that, I sew :)

Ok, I just wanted to do that while I still work there because I won't for much longer. Whoa, crazy how fast the time has gone.

Mission and Farewell info

Hey everyone,
Since I'm pretty much down to my last month before reporting to the MTC, I thought I'd post the info for my mission for you to have if you feel so inclined :)

My farewell will be held on June 28, 2009, at my ward in Lindon (1051 E 200 S, Lindon, Utah). Sacrament starts at 1:00pm but my ward is huge so if you want to come and want to be able to have a seat, I highly recommend being there by 12:30. Not even joking. :) I wish I could just fill the chapel with my friends since I don't even know anybody in my ward but whatever. I'll be playing the piano too. :)

I report to the Provo MTC on July 1, 2009. My address for all of July and August will be:
Hermana Meagan EM Jackson
New Jersey Morristown Mission
Provo MTC
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604

I'll be heading out to New Jersey at the beginning of September so my mission home address for September 2009 - December 2010 will be:
Hermana Meagan EM Jackson
New Jersey Morristown Mission
1719 Route 10 Ste 309
Parsippany, NJ 07054

I hope to hear from you every once in a while on my mission. I love getting letters and will love so even more as a missionary. ;) I will even write you back!

Thanks for your support at different times in my life to get me where I am today. I am SO excited to go and serve the Lord. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I know the gospel is true, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this. :) I love you!

Oh by the way, if you want to send me your address/email so you can get updates or whatever, just email them to me at memj9@yahoo.com. Thanks!

California, here we come!

As promised, I am putting up pictures from my trip to California a couple of weeks ago, which was a blast! My friend, Megan, and I drove down on a Monday to San Diego, where we stayed at our friend Amber's house. However, Amber was already back in Utah for spring term so we just chilled with her family. :) We didn't really have a plan for Tuesday except to hang out in San Diego so Amber left us a San Diego photo scavenger hunt that took us to 7 key places to see in San Diego. We started out going to Balboa Park, then over to Old Town, Seaport Village (our favorite), Hotel del Coronado, San Diego Temple, and then finished off with the sunset at La Jolla Beaches (yes, I know that's only 6...we couldn't find the Cabrillo Monument). But it was such a good idea to do that! We had to take all sorts of random pictures...us at each entrance sign, the craziest person we saw, 3 random statues, 3 sailboats, us jumping off a wall, someone getting married, etc. Here are just a few of our favorite pictures:
Wednesday morning, we drove up to LA area to stay at our friend Amy's place there (who was gone on a study abroad...again, we chilled with the family :) and we spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in Disneyland/CA Adventure. It was a blast but SO exhausting! Growing up fairly close to those parks, I'd never spent more than a day there so 3 days was quite the experience! Her sister, Brenna, and her sister's friend, Adam, flew in to LAX Wednesday night to spend the rest of our trip with us. Don't even worry, we went on the Peter Pan ride on my birthday...you really think I would neglect that? Haha, definitely my favorite :)

Grrrrr.....

Ok, first of all, I had a WONDERFUL road trip to California for my birthday. Pictures and details to come later. But for now, I need to vent and basically I'm venting about my own stupidity.

I always forget to check my oil in my car. My dad is always telling me I should and I always forget. Well, my car had just been in the shop about 2 months ago so for some reason, I had it in my head that that meant the oil had been checked. That, of course, is wrong.

So I didn't check my oil before I went on a road trip to California for a week with my friends. I dropped them all off at LAX on Saturday for them to fly home while I drove myself back up to Utah. I stayed 2 nights at a friend's place in Henderson then finished my drive today. About 5 miles south of Nephi (about an hour south of Provo), my car decided to sputter and die. Luckily I pulled over in time. I called my dad, he called the tow truck and I got towed to Nephi, where he met me. Upon brief inspection of my car by the mechanics, it was determined that I had ruined my transmission or something and it would cost as much money to get it fixed as my car is worth. So we're not getting it fixed. I unloaded everything out of my car, put it in my dad's, and we drove away. My car will now be sent to the junkyard because, well, that's what it is. At least it happened on the way home instead of on the way there and I was pretty close to home so my dad could come get me. Count your blessings, I guess.

I was planning on selling my car before I leave on my mission and using the money to help pay for my mission but I guess that won't be happening now. Please don't tell me I was dumb for not checking my oil because I think I know that. Thanks. My next post, which will be about the rest of my road trip, will make no mention of the car breaking down so it will be happy...but I needed to vent for a second.

If only I had known it was going to break down...I wouldn't have topped off the gas in Cedar City... :)