I woke up giddy and excruciatingly happy. Very similar to how it felt to wake up knowing you were going to Disneyland as a little kid.

My mother saw me wearing my moomoo and putting sponge rollers into my hair. She exclaimed, “You’re leaving the house like THAT?!” I didn’t even have on my makeup yet.

Shortly after completing my zombie makeup with some homemade blood, I crept into my mother’s bathroom and started tapping on her shower door. “Uuuuuuuu. Brraaaainns.”

She told me to go wake my father up for church. He wasn’t very pleased.

I could tell that both of my parents were thinking, “Zombies? Fake blood? Where did we go wrong???” They weren’t about to spoil the moment; my mother said she hadn’t heard me giggle so much, or seen me so happy, since the Christmas BEFORE I moved to Utah.