Dallas, TX || Moving Hannah

This is a literal copy-and-paste of a post from my other, more-often-updated blog.

I spent a weekend in January with my best friend Hannah. We were glued at the hip for hours and hours--and I don't know when I'll see her next.

We made it 💕 #HJtakesTX

A photo posted by 🌵 A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Jan 9, 2016 at 9:41am PST

Together we embarked on a 14-16 hour drive that left her in Texas and left me bawling my eyes out at the airport.

She accepted a job with Geico which meant she needed to move from Arizona to Texas, the land of the oil fields and smelly flatlands.

I was (obviously) super bummed to be leaving her in a different state. She's my oldest and closest friend, and also the fifth or sixth of my friends to move out of state in the past two years. Arizona is starting to feel pretty lonely.

But, on the flip side of the loneliness, it was really cool to help her move and be a part of that life event. She even let me decorate her wall <3

Helping Hannah move made me even more excited to move. I got to think about how I'll decorate my room and get an idea of how little stuff I actually need in my new apartment (hello, minimal chic?) It was definitely a bummer leaving her in Texas (even the TSA agent sympathized with me while I was bawling at the security checkpoint) but I got a sweet, simple taste of moving.

Las Vegas || New Years' Celebration

Flix, Waters, Me, Pox and Paddles. Gotta love camp nicknames.

I went to Las Vegas for New Years.

Before you start freaking out, though, you should know who I went with--two of my camp friends who are 19. And we stayed with another camp friend who is 19, and her then boyfriend* (also a camp friend) who may have been 20.

At 22, I was the oldest--and also on some crazy cough meds because I had a case of bronchitis that led to two cracked ribs. So there was absolutely no cliche Vegas-style partying.

And cough meds meant I didn't have to drive! At all! Pox and Waters did all of the driving while I just sat in the passenger's seat, playing DJ and jamming out to Switchfoot and Kendrick Lamar and eating Sonic and reveling in how much I missed my camp friends.

When we got to Vegas, we immediately started celebrating. We took of our road trip clothes and changed into cute night-on-the-town clothes, and then went to get sushi.

"Look Ma, I'm a walrus!" // Pox is my camp roommate and a ray of sunshine.

Sushi is kind of my go-to whenever I visit Flix in Vegas. I met up with her when I was in Vegas in September, and we had sushi then--so, of course, we had sushi now too. It was delicious and perfect and so so so much fun.

Camp friends are awesome because our friendships sprouted in a time when we had z e r o cares in the world--we just had to wake up, go to a breakfast meeting, eat food, and do our jobs. And our jobs were hanging out with kids all day--so we're all basically glorified children with responsibilities, which means whenever you throw a group of us together, we're still glorified children with responsibilities. But we're not afraid to be totally ridiculous.

A-n-y-w-a-y...

The rest of our New Years Eve was spent at Dutch Brothers (le duh, DB is a HUGE deal for camp kids), WalMart and then back at Flix's dad's house where we poured some Martinelli's and toasted the new year! Then we ran outside and popped party poppers to our hearts content.

Night #2 was actually spent walking around The Strip, because it's really not a trip to Vegas without doing that. It's always fun to see how different people interact with and react on the strip. All of us camp kids took it chill and enjoyed the lengthy walk, the bright lights, and the crazy people.

I'm pretty sure there's nobody else I'd rather explore Las Vegas with. I love how lowkey New Years was with this crew, and I'd gladly travel with them again.

*the timestamp on this is January 2016, but I'm definitely writing it on March 31, 2016