the summer i took 2,022 pictures

The summer after my first year of college. When I still kept in touch with all of my high school friends and hung out with them as much as I could, realizing the difficulty of finding brand new friends when you go to a college 2,000 miles away.

[trips to Oceanside, wearing the same suit (really? we did that?)]

[hanging out in the street next to my house]

 [Oceanside again]

 [driving to Laguna Beach and getting lost forEVER looking for this school that we just HAD to find it after stumbling upon the show Laguna Beach while on our senior trip in DC]

 [taking pictures in the mall and trying to re-create pictures we see in the stores and then having an older woman walk by and ask us if we want her to take our picture...cue laughing embarrassingly and saying no thanks as we try to walk away and pretend we weren't just doing that]

 [taking the bus to the Del Mar Fair]

[celebrating the 4th of July on the Midway in San Diego]

[watching a movie with a bunch of random friends...I WISH I could remember what movie it was]

[wasting time playing dress up in ridiculous clothes because there's nothing else to do in Escondido]

[church with Erin every Sunday]

 [distracting Erin while she was "cleaning" her room]

[being camp counselors at Hume Lake for high school freshman girls]

[jumping off Riley's roof into the pool]

 [beautiful sunsets in Esondido (who would have thought?)]

 [spending countless hours at our second home and first real job...and talking about it all the time, while getting yelled at by our other friends who didn't care]

remember that time?

Music is a powerful memory-evoker. I love how songs can take you back.

putting it into perspective

I miss...

: first days of school


: high school projects


: being small enough to do this


: the innocence of childhood


: the cuteness of baby Kristen


It's easy to look back and wish things remained the way they were. I think about being a kid and worrying about nothing but taking care of my fish and eating popsicles in the bathtub and getting lots of presents for Christmas. I think about high school and the great group of friends I had and the homework that was nothing compared to college. Then I think about my college life and the freedom that came with it, the independence and being surrounded with people my own age that were working towards the same goal as me. It's easy to miss all of that stuff.

Yet now, as I've been graduated for two years and have been in the "working world," trying to figure out what my life should/will look like, I wonder what good parts of my life I'm missing by spending too much time in the past. Right now, it's easy to get caught up in all the responsibilities and bills that I have, or my challenging job, or the fact that I STILL don't have bedroom furniture even though we moved here three months ago! But I don't want to reach my thirties and only then realize the happy, memorable, challenging but stretching moments I had in my twenties. I want to cut the cycle. I don't want to miss out on what's happening now because I'm too caught up in what used to be.

Every day is a blessing.