First of all, I would just like to say that

College is fun!!

Early Thursday morning I woke up and loaded a TON of stuff into my mama's van and my stuff filled up the entire thing. Who even knew I had so much stuff to live with?! And we started heading down to Cedar City! My sister Melissa drove with me and and we had fun talking and singing to music the whole way down. (minus the part where the guy with the trailer fish tailed like a maniac and nearly took the whole freeway off the side of the road with him...needlessto say, since I am alive, I am a good driver and avoided our near-death.) Upon arriving at Southern Utah University, 4 or 5 HUGE football players ran over and asked if they could help move my stuff to my room! This was a pleasant surprise, because I hate making mulitple trips to bring stuff in. It was such a warm welcome! It instantly made me happy. And then I was greeted by my lovely roommates!! I have much to say about them, but I am going to save that for a post I will be doing in a day or two, when I actually have pictures of them to put up. I keep forgetting to take those. But really. I got lucky. I love them all! I can't wait to tell you about them!

My first weekend here was filled with "Flightschool", which is a knock off of us being T-birds. Get it? Flightschool was preparing us to "take flight" into our college careers! Woo hoo!...ha. No. But it was okay. It was fun seeing a BUNCH of people whom I adore from Snow Canyon, including Paige Ovard, Cody Patterson, Robbie Hillstead, Kaleb Hurst, Brody Fausett, Tyler Miller, Sam Wilde..etc...Great people. It was fun seeing them again! and I love being here with three of my best friends, Abigail Richards, Matthew Ludlow, and Braden Perucca. I seriously..would be having a difficult time without them. They are my family here.

I've had a lof of fun spending my time watching movies, playing volleyball, playing ultimate frisbee, walking around campus, having morning dance parties, going to the cool dance party at the Harris Center, and getting used to this new leetle town.

I like living on my own in these cute little dorms. I don't even mind that they are so small! And I am especially happy with the size of my closet, because I thought I had to leave half of my clothes behind, which I did, but my closet here is so big that I can bring up the rest after my next visit home! yay.

BRB AF.

miss you. sort of.

love, Kalynn.

One of the best things about being a Petersen is that we have SO many ridiculously fantastic traditions.

• Every Valentine's Day, my mom door bell ditches our house and leaves us a special Valentines cards/a small gift for us.
• All of us really do wear green on St. Patrick's day.
  
• Every Easter, my parents will hide our Easter Baskets, so the first thing we do on Easter morning is look for them. Then we all gather in the living room and trade candy. Derek always steals everyone's Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs.
  
• Also, We do not only do chocolate Easter egg hunts, but money egg hunts! :) yay!
  
• Mama and Papa always make a delicious breakfast for us to eat during General Conference.
• While the men are out for Priesthood session, the girls go to Ladies Night at Desert Book, and then do some bonding shopping at the mall. and then we go for dinner and ice cream. If there's time, we'll come home and do something girly like scrapbook or puzzle.
• Birthdays are a VERY big deal.
• On the 4th of July we have a BBQ, play croquet, and do fireworks.
• Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday filled with at LEAST 1o pies. no matter how many of us are actually attending dinner. {and I can bet you one million dollars that my mom's apple pie is better than any apple pie you've ever had.}
• During the Christmas season, when everyone is home, we have one night where we play Deal or No Deal, one night where we have a family competition of who can come up with the best talent/skit/act thingy, one night of gingerbread making.
• On Christmas Eve we dress up and act out the nativity as my dad reads it from the scriptures. This activity always makes for great family home videos. :) Which we also watch every Christmas Eve!
  
• Every Eve of New Years Eve we play Monopoly. EVERY year. haha. And we write down who won on the inside of the box. Nathan won last year, and he received a trophy! We have 14 different versions of Monopoly, too. It's great. :)
• and one other tradition is that EVERY Sunday we play games as a family. It's something that I'm really going to miss when I move away to college. I've always loved automatically reserving my Sunday nights for family games. It's really gotten us close over the past few years and I've always looked forward to it.
  

Today is my last Sunday at home. Me and my parents played NUTS, since it's one of my favorite games. And seriously..this game is nuts. It's basically group Solitaire, only it's super fast paced and a lot more fun than Solitaire. When we have my entire family home, playing nuts is one of the funnest things we do. We're all mostly pretty good at it and it can get pretty crazy. I always look forward to a good game of nuts. Today, I won!see that pretty score? Almost a good 40 points above the parentals. :) I'm just a little proud. Cause you just have to be good at this game to fit in with the fam.

Maybe my future roommate will play games with me on Sunday?
--Kalynn.

Do you approve?

Cause I sure do. :)

Love, Kay!!

My dearest, darlingest mother,

I don't quite know where to begin a letter that is supposed to be celebratory of your 50th birthday. I wonder if you ever knew how much I appreciated all that you gave me, even though most of the time all I ever gave you was a simple "thank you." Those words sound so pathetic given the circumstances.
HALF a century old, you now are. Fortunately for us, you don't act like it. :) and I mean that in the best of ways. By the time most people are 50 they are crazy, a little bit senile, and mean. But not you!! You are so much fun, and you always have been. That's how I remember you always being. You are always able to find the good and humor in anything and everything. I think that is something that really draws people to you. You've passed that on to your children by teaching us to think optimistically, yet realistically. It is this and other values you instilled in me that helped make me who I am today. Thank you for helping to shape me into a person I like and can be somewhat proud of. Thank you for your support throughout my journey.
You never stopped loving me no matter what. Even when you were mad at me you still loved me. I never understood how you could do that. But you did. You just always loved me and all of your children perfectly unconditionally. And you were always really great at showing it. You have always put your children first. At the beginning of each new school year I had new clothes and a new pair of shoes. Who even knows the last time you bought clothes or shoes for yourself. Thank you for teaching me how to live life by your example. I'll always be able to remember the things you taught me and hopefully I can put those things to use and live by them as well as you do and always have.
Whenever I come across something in life that seems difficult, I so often think of all the hardships you turned into triumphs. The times when I would complain about my difficulties, I would feel foolish. Somehow, you are always able to put on a happy face and get through your trials and you come out stronger than ever before. I really hope that is something I got from you.
I am so excited to go on to college and i know I'm ready because of you; because of the things you taught me. The ability to tell myself that "it'll all turn out in the end", perseverance, the ability to laugh at myself, to trust myself, and to learn from my mistakes and have the strength to move on from them are just a few of the things that I'll be able to take with me as I move on in life. More importantly, you've instilled in me that beauty of the gospel and of a woman living within its guidelines. You've helped me come to the knowledge that there is nothing better. You've guided me throughout my entire life in this truth--and I owe you greatly for that because I would be no where without it.
I hope you have a wonderful 50th birthday. I love you so much more than you could ever know, and it's true-I will miss you so much ALL the time when I'm away for school. Thank you so much for everything, Mom.

Love your favorite youngest daughter,
Kalynn Eve.

The only thing better than making new friends...

Is keeping the old.


I have such a great big amount of love for this girl.
Thanks for keeping in touch, Berk. :)



You should all try calling an old friend today.
love, Kalynn.

Death by hiking..

So, all week I've been getting texts and facebook messages from my friends saying "Come hike Mt. Timp with us on Saturday at 1:00 in the morning! meet at the high school!" And I'm like...that's a 16 mile hike. YEAH right.

Friday morning: I'm going to do it. I'm definitely not in shape to do so, but I'm going to anyway.
Friday night: mama calls my cell phone around 11:00, informs me that there should be lightening storms, so I can't go anymore.
Saturday at 12:59 a.m: mama changes her mind on account of the weather being super duper clear.

So I pack my backpack with 4 water bottles,
a jacket, and a flash light,
and I head to the high school to meet everyone.
And then we're on our way!

The first two hours of the way up were perfectly fine; how every hike should be. The mountain was reasonably level, it wasn't too steep, and I could still breathe just fine! I laughed and joked with my friends, tripped on rocks in the pitch dark, and was having a really great time. That was the first two hours. The last two hours...that's a different story. I mean. I was still having a great time the whole way. And it was doable. But it was DIFFICULT. Especially the really steep parts..and the track girls in our group basically running up the mountain, pushing the rest of us not to stop. okay. but anyway. we FINALLY get to the top! And we're there and it's so surreal to have actually made it and I'm all thinking "wow. I can now actually say that I have hiked Mt. Timp!"

At this point it is about 4:45 in the morning. So we have to sit up there for a bit and wait for the sun to rise. And all of the sudden I realize that it is SOO cold. Unbearably cold. and it was windy up there too! So a couple of us hide behind a rock so that the wind can't exactly catch us, but we were still freezing, practically to death. Matthew and I sat under Jordan's rain pancho shivering out guts out for about 45 minutes before that sun began to rise. {surprisingly, the pancho helped a ton.}
And when the sun finally did rise, it was a very beautiful sight indeed.


And then it was time to head back down. Which is supposed to be the fun part, right? wrong. It took FOREVER to get down, and we were even booking it! like..running at times. The other half of our group was 45 minutes behind the rest of us, and I still felt like it was taking forever. Every time I thought we had finally reached the bottom, it just kept going down some more. By this time my legs were like jello. They were not used to this sort of treatment. When we finally DID reach the bottom, it was the happiest sight of all.

and Now here I am. 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. Living off of no sleep, having hiked 16 miles all night long. But I did it. Just. ha. I feel so cool. and it was super fun, and I'm way glad I did it. Even though I AM dying now.

I love my little friends.

I'm just hoping I didn't get Matt's pink eye.. ..........

I will never hike you again, Timp. But I am glad I did it once.
-Kalynn.

Just a few

minor reasons that
Matthew David Ludlow
is my best friend.


1. We go on actual dates quite a bit. Which I like. {And it's usually something not uber expensive that is a ton of fun.}
2. Last night, he took me to Olive Garden. mmmmm! Chicken con broccoli. 3. My family would love to know that he is the perfect gentleman and he opened all my doors. {even when he barely fit in on that side...}
4. He then watched PONYO with me. Ponyo is the best Japanese anime movie EVER. It's pretty childish..but it's utterly fantastic and adorable. {Seriously. I HIGHLY recommend it.}
5. He LOVED Ponyo too!!
6. Sometimes he is oblivious which makes it easy to attack him and give him wedgies. hahahah!...
7. He showed me Badger Badger. hahah.
8. And We don't need no stinking badges!!
9. He cut my badger.
10. He turned on Owl City's "The Bird and the Worm" on his phone while we sat on my tramp and deciphered what the clouds were and, when it got darker, tried to find Orion's Belt. Not an easy thing.
11. He counts the raindrops that fall on him and freaks out when there are so many that he loses count. haha.

Have fun on your fishing trip, Matthew. I'll miss you. :)

As always,
Kalynn.

Summer rain

I. LOVE. it.
-Kay.