my McCarty reunion

Family is pretty much the greatest thing ever, right? So how about my whole McCarty family all gathered on the coast of Oregon My favorite people getting together at my favorite place! Here are a shmishsmash of pictures to tell you about the trip...

I always love seeing my sisters, and now they come with extra bonuses cause they always bring along my cute nephews. I seriously could not be more obsessed with these humans.

One of my favorite places to go when we visit Oregon is the Bandon Zoo because ALL zoos should let you play with baby animals don't you think?!

And seriously? Baby foxes. Is this Heaven?!

Oh yeah and watching baby James walking up to all the animals and saying "woof woof" was probably the cutest thing I had ever seen.

This was the view that I woke up to every morning. Hi?! Ok, so maybe it wasn't actually this sunny everyday because this is the coast of Oregon we are talking about here. But, still I couldn't believe how perfect this was.

I convinced my parents to go hiking with me, and we went on a stunning hike called the Arago Pack Trail. I loved it. I can never get over how green and perfec Oregon is. I think it's now one of my dreams to hike the entire Oregon Coast Trai (so like, who wants to hike 400 miles with me...?).

I love these people, and I love this place.

AND MY BABY EDDIE EVEN GOT TO COME ALONG!

The highlight of the trip was celebrating my amazing grandmother's 90th birthday. This woman is amazing, and I am so lucky to still have her around and to be a part of her incredible family.

She sure has created an incredible family.

Love you grandma and the rest of the McCarty fam. So glad I got to spend time with everyone and celebrate the legacy that my grandma has created.

my graduation

So...I realize graduation was a couple weeks ago, and you are probably so so sick of hearing about it...but, I'm going to talk about it anyways. Sorry everyone, but I haven't had my computer for the past week, so we are going to have to catch up now.

To chat about it, here are more pictures of me than you have ever had any desire to see...

Here I am all diploma-ed up. Ok not really, that's just a diploma cover, but we can all pretend. A lot of people seemed kind of annoyed by the whole graduation thing, and I even had quite a few people tell me they weren't going to walk. Here's the thing, if I spent thousands of hours in classes to graduated, you betcha I'm sitting through a 2 hour long ceremony to walk across that stage.

 My sister Diane, her baby James, and my mom and dad all came out for graduation, but unfortunately since my sister Rochelle lives so far away in Germany, she wasn't able to come. Diane and I took this picture to pretend like she was there with us.

 These two amazing humans, my mama and my papa (in the picture below), have been the most amazing support through my college years, and well...every year of my life. I could not be more grateful for all of their help in getting through school (and yeah..life).

 #actiontasselshot

 Seriously, my whole family is amazing (plus Rochelle, Matt, Jed, and Daniel who couldn't make it out).

Every time I tried to put my hat on this little future cougar, he just put it back on me. Guess we'll have to wait a million years till his graduation day to see him wearing a weird flat-topped and tassled hat. (No, seriously. Who invented graduation robes and hats and more importantly why?!)

 Rather than take all my pics just outside of the Marriot Center where my graduation was held, I wanted to take some pictures at my absolute favorite spot on campus, the fourth floor deck of the JFSB. If you have not wandered up there on a sunny day to study (or really any day because it's always so nice), you're not using your time on BYUs perfect campus correctly.

My family all taking pictures of me and looking directly at me, and no one could say Hey Danielle, your hat is really lopsided and off center. Thanks guys.

Well, I guess this is it for me and BYU. I am so grateful for the four years that I have spent here, for the friends I have made, the professors who have taught me, the things I have learned, and the memories I have made. I still remember getting my acceptance to BYU and crying with joy, and I'm going to be honest with you right now, I'm crying just a little while I type this knowing that it's all over. Even with the number of times I pulled all nighters, had meltdowns because I thought there was no way I was going to get everything done, and questioned what I was doing, I still think I might do it all over again given the chance (wait...I guess that's what grad school is. Ok yeah, give me some time to think about that one).  I'm looking forward to bigger things, but I also can't stop looking back on a beautiful four years.

peace. love. and go cougars!

my home for the holidays

To start off with MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU FILTHY ANIMALS!!!

I love love love this holiday and I am so so happy to be home celebrating, but it was quite the trek to make it back here thanks to a snow storm that came into Utah the day that everyone was trying to fly home for the holidays.

Luckily my friend driving me to the airport was clever enough to check the weather and see that it was going to be a little rough getting there. So my day started with getting up at 6:30 (actually the earliest I had woken up all semester...) and heading out at 7:00. Everything seemed like it was going great since I made it to the airport and made it on the plane and the plane was even almost empty so I had a whole row to myself! 

And then they kicked us off the plane and said the airport was shutting down....so I had to go sit around and wait for a couple hours. But, I mostly just hung out and watched Netflix so I mean I guess I survived. Eventually they let me back on the plane. YAY! and I still had a whole row to myself. more YAY! And then they told me that it was going to be another few hours before we actually took off. No more yay.

I had to take selfies of my disappointment to pass the time...

because my window looked like this and I couldn't even see outside.

But, eventually it cleared off and they started de-icing the plane. I really thought that this was going to be a quick process and I was kind of excited to see how it worked, and then I realized that this was going to take two hours and I decided to just sleep. Thank goodness I am a champ at sleeping on airplanes. I should probably put it under skills on my resume. 

And even though I got home six hours after I was supposed to and least I made it home. And since we got so delayed I got to land at night, which is one of my absolute favorite things. I'm obsessed with the lyrics in Lorde's song Tennis Court "Pretty soon I'll be getting on my first plane/ I'll see the veins of my city like they do in space." Because seriously this view mesmerizes me. 

But really it's all worth it now because I have spent the last several days just hanging out with the family, decorating the tree, and eating sweets more than I have been eating real food (woops). 

Plus now I get to hang out with this cute face all day.

I'm bummed that my sister Rochelle won't be here for the holidays as she and her hub and kiddo just moved to Germany, but I'm glad that I am home and happy and ready to celebrate with my fam. Christmas is so great. 

Merry Christmas darlings!!

peace. love. and home for the holidays

my holiday away

I can't believe that for a second I thought about not going home for Thanksgiving! (I know, I know. But I'm starting to feel weird about graduating and leaving Provo, so it makes me think about making weird decisions sometimes.)

If you ever thought that vacation was for sitting around and relaxing, you have not vacationed with my family. My sense of adventure had to of come from somewhere right? But, it was so fun to be able to spend my Thanksgiving holiday with all of the people that I am the most grateful for. And, I guess all the pie was pretty great too...

For one of our adventures, we thought that the kiddies might enjoy checking out all the fish at the Georgia Aquarium. It was such a treat to see my little guppies getting so excited about the fishes.

Danny and Dani. Can't believe Rochelle is moving to Germany and of course taking this little guy with her. But hey, he'll probably look even cuter in lederhosen. 

Those babies!!! I'm not gunna lie, I don't always get the most excited about other peoples babies, but I just swoon when I see these cute nephews of mine. I can't even imagine how obsessed I'm going to be with my own kids one day. 

On my last day of my visit back east, I got to celebrate one whole year of being an auntie with this guy as he turned the big one year.

The great importance of birthdays must be taught at a young age!! Happy birthday sweet baby James. So proud to be your Auntie Dani and can't wait to celebrate more birthdays with ya kid.

Even my cute puppy got in on the celebrating. I was actually so worried he wasn't going to remember me since Eddie was such a little puppy when I left to go back to Utah. We joked that he probably thought I was dead and would think I was a ghost. But ghost or not, he was still thrilled to have me back so that we could catch up on our snuggles. 

Although Provo has been my home for almost four years now, it always feels great to go back to Atlanta and see my family. Hope you had a perfect Thanksgiving too, and I hope you also took advantage of the opportunity to eat pie for breakfast everyday like I did (it's good for you, trust me). 

peace. love. and pie. 

my salt flat fun

I feel really good about the number of adventures I've been going on recently, and this weeks was particularly good. A group of us were originally going to go to Vegas for the weekend, but plans fell through, people got busy, yada yada yada. But, we figured we still needed to go somewhere, and so we decided on the salt flats at sunset (which just has a magical ring to it if you ask me). I had never been out to the slat flats before and I would have been sad if I had spent all this time in Utah and never went.

I was completely entranced, so I took lots of pictures. Unfortunately, I am a complete fool and instead of bringing my beautiful camera, I forgot (again) and had to resort to iPhone pictures (again). uhg.

The obligatory selfie. (You've missed these the last few posts, admit it.)

Seriously, anytime anyone ever wants to go on an adventure, hit. me. up. Especially when it is October and the world is perfect (really any month will do though).
This earth is so beautiful and I still have so much of it left to explore, and I'm sure you do too. So, ignore your homework/work/obligations for just a couple hours this week and go on your own adventure. You will not regret it.


peace. love. and salt.



p.s. big birthday shout out today to my big sis Rochelle. love you!!!

my forgetful brain

I was thinking to myself huh it feels like a long time since I've blogged, and then I thought oh, that's cause it's Wednesday. My bad ya'll. Forgetting stuff is kind of my thing.

To compensate for my failure, here's a failure of picture taking skills. My dad told me I should delete this, I told him I was going to put it on my blog. Woops.

peace. love. and forgetfulness 

my Oregon joy

My mamma grew up on the Oregon coast and some of her family still lives there, so it is always such a treat to go visit every summer. I even got to cross three things off my life list while I was there. Oh boy!

So one of my favorite places to go to in Oregon is this wild life park in Bandon where they let you play with the baby animals. Even at 21 I beg my family to go here. Haha. nothing makes you feel like a child like family vacations. But, I mean you KNOW how I love my baby animals...

Just hanging with a baby black bear...

 and a baby fox!!!! My favorite animal. When they told me they had a baby fox I was going to get to play with, you cannot comprehend how excited I got. This little guys name was Todd, and I loved him, and I wanted to take him home with me. (life list check 1)

But, the fun didn't stop there, a baby bobcat!

 Ok this is just a regular baby. But, that face!

and last but not least, a baby caracal. 

The coast of Oregon is seriously one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life. I just absolutely love it here and it's always nice to get a little cool weather in the midst of a hot Georgia summer. I didn't to go to Oregon last summer for the first time in forever, and I missed it so much. I can't imagine not making my way to the other side of America (at least every few years) for the rest of the my life.

 Yes, I am so obsessed with my dog that we brought him to Oregon. 

Aren't my parents cute? They take me on the greatest adventures.

It was pretty much the first not windy day ever in Oregon when we decided to go fly our kite, but it turned out brilliantly with just enough breeze to get our sharknado into the air. (life list check 2)

And to finish off my trip I had my grandma guide me through making one of her famous blackberry cobblers. Blackberries picked that day, homemade crust, and lots of sugar, I was pretty proud of the results. 

Can't wait till my next trip out west. This place is so perfect.

peace. love. and coast to coast.