My Dad and I repainted my room this weekend. It looks so good! We just painted it white, but it was gray before, so it's a big improvement. Plus, I rearranged all my furniture, and I love it!

I just realized that I might have made a bad choice on my blog's address. I'm only going to be kjanderson for 10 more months. I don't know whether I should change it after I get married (kjhewitt?!) Maybe I'll just keep it, so I can still have something with my old name. I'll miss being Kayla Anderson, but I don't want to do the whole hyphen thing, and I don't want to drop my middle name because it's my grandma's name. Oh, well! I guess I'll figure it out when I get there.

Should have gone to 3rd Rock

The other night Brittany and I went to Cold Stone because I had a coupon for a free Like It. Well, I kind of already have a beef against that place because the line is always extremely long, yet they still constantly stop working to sing their stupid songs. The absolute worst is when anyone orders something with bananas. "Peel bananas! Peel, peel bananas! Slice bananas, slice, slice bananas!" And so on. Anyway, this time we made it to the counter without hearing the banana song. I ordered my usual, Founder's Favorite. I can tell the girl must be new because she has to keep consulting the menu to see what mix-ins to add. Anyway, she adds a ton of chocolate syrup and caramel to my ice cream until it's a big gooey mess. Then she scoops it into the tiny cup. It's dripping everywhere, so she uses the scoop to pile it back on the cup. There are still big globs of ice cream running down the side. I'm thinking, "I wonder how she's gonna handle this." I assumed she would put it in a bigger cup. Nope. She hands it across the counter and says, "Uh...you're probably gonna need some napkins." At this moment, a huge glob falls off the cup and slides down the outside of the ice cream freezer. I couldn't believe it! These were not just little drips running down the cup. Seriously, half the ice cream was falling out. It would have taken a thousand of those whimpy napkins they give you to clean it up. I asked her if she could put it in a bigger cup, which she did. Brittany and I just looked at each other in disbelief. I think maybe Cold Stone should spend less time teaching their employees the dumb songs and more time teaching them how to scoop ice cream. But, at least Brittany and I got some laughs out of the whole thing.

Honeymoon Plans!

Darby and I booked our honeymoon hotel this weekend! (Well, one of the three hotels we'll be staying in). We went ahead and got the one for Niagara Falls because a lot of them have already filled up for next summer. We're staying at the Doubletree Resort Lodge and Spa Hotel Fallsview. You can see pictures of it here. It looks really nice! We're super-excited. It was a tough decision, though. It took us forever to read all the reviews and look at all the photos of different hotels online, but we really wanted to make sure we picked a good one. Now, we just have to go through the whole process again for Dallas and Toronto!

End of Summer

I can't believe it's almost the end of the summer! It went by so fast. But I am ready to go back to school. I'm a nerd; I like school. It was a good summer, though. Very busy! Here were the highlights:

- Getting engaged! (of course)
- My DDR/Karaoke Revolution b-day slumber party
- Being a bridesmaid twice and all the time I got to spend with my girlfriends because of that
- Buying my wedding dress
- Eating free lunch every day at work (Okay, so it was the Bean, but it was still FREE!)
- Getting to see my adorable cousins when they came to camp
- Learning how to light a match (sad, but true)
- Holding Amanda's baby, Sidney, when she was only 4 hours old!
- Going to the DCI show in San Antonio with Darby

There were, of course, some not-so-great things about this summer, like how unbelievably hot our upstairs is, but overall it was really fun.

I find myself at the end of every summer getting depressed about all the things I had planned to do that I didn't. But I decided I should stop thinking that way and just think about the things I did do. So I didn't make our curtains upstairs. Would I want to give up any of the time I spent with my friends, family, and Darby in order to do that? No. I'm happy with how this summer turned out.

I'm so brave!

Today, I faced one of my greatest fears; I caught a gecko! Okay, it was with a cup, not with my hands, but that's good for me. I hate those things! I saw him last night in the bathroom. Darby was over, so he tried to catch him, but he went into a crack behind the sink. My mom said, "Oh, well; he's probably gone for good." Hannah, just trying to scare me said, "No, he'll probably show up in the shower tomorrow." Well, I forgot about it, but sure enough when I went to take my shower this morning, he was in the bathtub. It took me a while to get up my nerve, but I finally went to get a cup to trap him. I didn't think that was going to work, though, because of the sloped bathtub, so I went to get a big wad of paper towels. I was going to try to just pick him up with that, but I chickened out. Finally I talked myself into slamming the cup down on top of him. It took me about 7 tries, but I got him. Then I slid a folder underneath him and carried him outside and threw him out as far away from the house as I could get. He was actually kind of cute. He kept trying to climb up the side of the bathtub, but he would just slowly slide back down. Then he'd double-time it, and run up really fast, but he still fell down. That made me a little less scared of him, although my legs were still shaking. The whole process took about 20 minutes, but I did it all by myself. I was pretty proud!

On a totally unrelated note, Whitney's wedding was this weekend. It was beautiful. We had a fun time decorating, even though we were up to our elbows in real ivy. I'm going to attempt to post a few pictures from the weekend:

All the bridesmaids. Aren't we pretty?

Me and my handsome man! Won't be long till we're the bride and groom. Yay!

This is all of us gals from church. We all were in the same grade and have been really good friends since middle school. We've had some crazy fun times together! I hope they can continue, even though Whitney's an old married woman.

Here's me and the beautiful bride, Whitney. We've been friends since we were 6! I can't believe she's all grown up!

I don't know why the beginning of this post is underlined. Oh, well!

The worst job ever

I feel so sorry for the weathermen in Abilene. They have such boring jobs, especially in the summer. Every day it's hot, sunny, and windy. Brittany said they might as well just make a tape of one day's weather and replay it for the whole summer. They try to come up with cute little sayings to distinguish the days. When the high is 99, they say "Under 100!" Like 99 is so cool. Like you can really tell the difference between 99 and 101.

Sunday night there was a story on the news about how the Abilene mayor had asked all of the local churches to pray for rain. That story was followed by the weather. Poor Pete the weatherman! He looked so sad. He said, "Well folks, I have some bad news. Tomorrow's going to be another hot, dry day." It just broke his heart to have to tell everyone that their prayers weren't answered and no rain was in the forecast for at least seven days. I'm not saying that God can't make it rain, but I just thought it was poor placement to have the dry weather forecast right after the story of everyone praying for rain. It puts a lot of pressure on the weatherman to deliver some good news. But Pete usually doesn't let it get to him; he keeps smiling through it all. I love that guy.