Timp Caves, Etc.

So, great news! Trevor and I recently purchased a new desktop computer, which is going to make it a whole lot easier to blog! Now I just need to take pictures more often and have interesting things to blog about! Haha! :P

Here's a recap of last weekend, when my awesome Aunt Kelly and Uncle Jim came to visit on Saturday! We spent most of the day hiking up to the Timpanogos Caves. You may recall my previous post from last July when Trevor and I hiked up to the caves but it was too late in the day to actually do a tour. Well, I was more than excited this year when we made plans early enough to be able to go through the caves. Here are a picture of Kelly and Jim during the hike up to the caves. This is looking down the valley back toward Alpine, UT.
The inside of the caves was SO cool! Right now, this is the only picture I have of the caves (courtesy of my Aunt Kelly):
They called that first formation the chocolate waterfall fountain or something like that. It kind of does look like falling chocolate huh? Something like you might find in Willy Wonka's factory! This second picture is of a stalactite called the Heart of Timpanogos Cave. It literally weighs more than 2 tons. And it looks a lot bigger than this in real life:There were SO many cool formations! Trevor was working that day, so I'll have to make it a point to take him back there one day soon! :)

After the caves, we stopped by DI (my aunt and uncle are big fans of thrift shops, and DI is HUGE so we had to go) and they made some very thrifty purchases! :)

That night, Trevor joined us and we had dinner at Lamb's Grill Cafe - the oldest restaurant in Salt Lake City! It was pretty darn tasty! We took a late stroll around temple square and finally stopped for desert at another recommended local restaurant.

Overall it was a GREAT day and I hope we didn't wear my relatives out! :)

An Ad-lib Acoustic Adventure

Last Saturday night, an evil headache sneaked up on Trevor just a couple hours before we were supposed to leave to go to my company's summer party. He's never had a headache like that before. At first, I was bummed, but then I decided to make the best of it. I let him nap and then made him dinner (and yes, cooking dinner is a special occasion for us!).

At about 7:15pm I got a call from my friend Miriam who lives in my apartment complex and she wanted to know if I wanted to go to an acoustic concert at Thanksgiving Point where Chris Carrabba (lead singer of Dashboard Confessional) would be performing.

Could I pass up the opportunity? Uhm... NO! :) So, off we went, last minute, to enjoy some music I've loved since I was in high school! Please enjoy the pictures and videos:

Trip to NC - Part 2: Family & Friends

Warning: LONG post! But it's a good one! So read it if you have time :D

Sorry it took SO long to get to Part 2 of my vacation! I guess it's only appropriate to have this post done now, as it's been a month ago today (the 23rd) that we left for NC! This post will include some of the other fun activities we did outside of going to the beach!! :)

After the beach, we got back to my parents' house only to have visitors in town from my Dad's side, including my grandparents, my Dad's two brothers and their families (minus my cousin Morgan). So, in typical Southern fashion, we HAD to cook a pork butt and make cole slaw. Here are Aunt Kim, (Trevor), Granddaddy, and Uncle Todd working on the cole slaw:
You've gotta taste test, you know!
In the meantime, poor Trevor was fighting off a flare-up of his Ulcerative Colitis, so he did a lot of veggie juicing in hopes that he could feel somewhat better. Notice the nice deep green color of juiced spinach:Uncle Todd and Trevor, waiting to eat:
Later, after dinner and other various dessert fiascoes (see below), we wrote cards to my brother Mike on a mission:
And took another photo for Mike too, with the infamous yellow signs!
So, I've got to tell a little bit of our dessert fiasco story. So, my Granddaddy Frank has diabetes, and because of this we always make this delicious sugar-free banana pudding for him as dessert. This year, my Mom and Dad made it, and we were so excited to break into it after dinner. After a few bites and a couple of comments about how good it was, my Mom finally took a bite and realized something was wrong. Very, very wrong. I had tasted it too, but just wondered if it was me, or what. Something tasted... well... off. Plasticky, perhaps? Sour? Bitter? After a bit of speculation and a group consensus that "Yea, we thought it tasted funny", we realized it was the MILK that we had added to the dessert. Although it was the day before the expiration date on the carton, it had gone sour!

So, following the lead of my Nana who tends to get her way with issues like this, eight of us (ranging from age 70+ to age 8) marched our little behinds into Harris Teeter to speak with someone about the banana pudding that was ruined by their milk! And yes, we DID take the rancid dessert with us, just in case they wanted to taste. :)

After a short discussion with the manager (who so boldly asked us why we didn't SMELL the milk before pouring it into our dessert - whaat!?!?), we walked out of there victorious! Not only with a new carton of milk, but ALL of the groceries it took to create a brand new, delicious pudding. Hence our victory photo:
Thanks, Harris Teeter, for treating us like important customers! :) That night, we went home and created - and ATE - a very very delicious banana pudding!

The next morning, Sunday, we got to take a picture with Granddaddy (who wasn't in the picture from the night before due to his insanely early bedtime of 8:30pm):
Sunday night, after all the family had gone, I invited some friends over from high school for dinner. Afterward, we partook in MORE of the good banana pudding and then played Corn Hole, a very fun, social party game.

Basically, the idea is to get the bean bag sacks into the hole of the board (3 pts), or to land it on top of the board (1 pt). However, if you get one in the hole and your opponent does as well, they cancel each other out! Same with two on top of the board! So, it's more than just accuracy - it's strategy too!

So, enjoy some pictures of our Corn Hole tournament! Here are Katie and Blaire (pardon the blurry picture!):
And Catherine and Alaa:
Here's Trevor - definitely MVP of Corn Hole (and my teammate, I might add!!):
Focus Mom! :) We were playing against each other - tough competition!
A closer look at what the board might look like in any given round:
And here's a great shot of me with my friends. From L to R: Katie, Trevor, Blaire, Alaa, Me, and Catherine. It was seriously a fun night and I'm glad I got to see them again! :)
Okay, so I'm sorry for the longest post EVER, but just a few more pictures of us boating later that week. Trevor had gotten sicker, so he stayed back to rest up, but we sure did have fun! :)
Me waterskiing (I got up on my first try even though it's been 2+ years since doing this!!):
And me kneeboarding - my FAVORITE! (Ignore the awful nerdy goggles. Please and thank you!):

My Mom also got up on the kneeboard in just two tries!! It's not an easy task, so give her LOTS of kudos!! :) Skimming the water with her fingers like a pro:
And she's also a pro water skiier:
My dad was on the boat with us too, and he's the awesome, amazing boat driver that made all of this waterskiing and kneeboarding magic happen! Thanks Daddy!

Overall, it was a much-needed, fantastic vacation! It was hard to come back to real life, but also nice in it's own right. Now summer's getting close to ending, but hopefully we'll have some good fall memories to come!!

Trip to NC - Part 1: The Beach

Trevor and I took our big yearly trip this year for over a week and a half to North Carolina to visit my family and go to the beach. Many more pictures will come, but this post is dedicated to the fun we had at the beach. The first 2 1/2 days it was just Trevor and I with my parents and we had a lot of fun just laying out and boogie boarding in the wonderful ocean.

On Wednesday afternoon, my Aunt Kristen, Uncle Scott, and cousin Lauren joined us. That night, we all went out for dinner at Amos Mosquitos (also known as Skeeters) for dinner. We sat outside on the patio and got to enjoy the sunset and good food.

Here we are at dinner:
And our view from our table out into the sound: Thursday it was rainy, so all the girls went swimsuit shopping. Then we all hung out and played games. On Friday, it was a nice sunny day, and my mom and I got to sport our new swimsuits:
Trevor enjoying his beach lounge chair:
Me and my sweetie at one of the best places on planet Earth:
Drawing the traditional beach heart in the sand. We always include the dates of our trip with all of our names in the heart so we can remember:

The whole gang. From L to R: Trevor, Me, Dad, Mom, cousin Lauren (11 yrs), Aunt Kristen, and Uncle Scott:

And of course, a silly picture! It would be wrong if we didn't act silly, because that's how we really are normally:

It was a wonderful beach trip. So relaxing, getting to soak up the sun, read books, and float in the ocean!

More of the NC trip to come!

My 23rd Birthday!

I felt like this was my first real, "adult" birthday. Trevor was in Las Vegas, I went to work and stayed late, and then watched the Bachelorette as a treat to myself :) However, it wasn't completely devoid of fun!

At work, my friend Alyssa had her birthday on Sunday July 18th and I had mine on Tuesday July 20th. So, the week before, we planned to make each other birthday cakes and celebrate on Monday the 19th! Below are a picture of the cakes we made-

I made the cake on the left: white cake with fudge chocolate frosting and hand-done flowers! Haha, okay, so it was my first time, but I was pretty proud of them!

Alyssa made the cake on the right: chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and awesome decoration! And pink, of course! How did she know my favorite color?!?

Here's a closer look at my birthday cake with two candles on top and three on the bottom for "23":
Here we are in the break room at work with our candles lit. After a lovely rendition of "Happy Birthday", we got to blow out our candles and share our cakes with everyone. I was surprised at how good white cake is!!
On Tuesday, my actual birthday, despite having absolutely no plans to celebrate, my best friend Chris Kyle came to my rescue and invited me to lunch at her work at APX. They have a really cool "cafeteria" of sorts on the bottom floor of the office building. It's really contemporary and had pretty good food, but the best part was the company! I love you Chris, thanks for making my day!
Also, you can notice in the above picture that I'm wearing a bow in my hair that was the actual bow wrapped around a present I got from my in-laws. Haha. I try to celebrate in STYLE, baby!

Anyway, about a week-ish later, when I was at the beach in NC with my mom's sister Kristen and her family, we got a cake and sang again. Aunt Kristen's birthday was about a week before mine, so we had a joint cake!

Blow out those candles!

My Aunt Kristen's nickname is Boo and here's our cake!!
So, I guess, overall, it turned out to be a pretty good birthday - spread out - but good!

More for my record than yours, here's a list of my gifts (so far):

Lip gloss and a cookbook - from Trev's parents and crew
Rook cards for playing Nertz - from my parents
Beautiful silver bracelet - from Aunt Kristen and fam
A great birthday lunch - from Chris Kyle

And I still haven't gotten my gift from Trevor yet! He says I'll have to wait until next weekend to find out and says I won't expect it and I'll love it. I just can't wait to find out what it is, and I'll keep you posted! :)

Happy (Third) and Fourth of July!

Trevor and I had a lot of fun this year celebrating Independence Day with his family. On Saturday the 3rd, he went to play golf in the morning while I spent a few hours at the pool with some friends. Then, later in the afternoon, we went to his family reunion in Heber City at the park. It's always a really fun time, and this year the weather was perfect! All my cute nieces and nephews were there. I only have pictures of a couple of them. Most of the girls got their faces painted. Here's Callie looking so cute as usual: And my cute little buddy, Cohen:
My uncle-in-law, Shane, had made a candy gun so he could shoot candy at the kids at the reunion. In this picture, you can see the end of the pipe of the gun, the kids, and if you look really hard over by the gun, you can see the smoke and the candy where I caught it shooting in mid-air. It was so fun because the candy would rain down on the kids' heads!
Collecting the candy:
I had a lot of fun going out in the field with Cohen to help him try to collect his candy. Whenever he'd find a piece, he'd pick it up and then try chewing on it. I bet the wrappers didn't taste very good! I finally taught him to put the candy in the paper sack that was provided. Here's Cohen with his daddy Steve:
After the candy collecting, all the kids put on bathing suits and participated in the forming tradition of having water balloon fights. This year, Trevor got involved and got his butt kicked by Caden and Kanyon! Haha. I haven't seen Trevor smile that big and have that much fun in a long time!

On the way home, we drove back through the canyon and it was just gorgeous how green it was! Almost like we weren't even in Utah!
I have to take a car shot of myself at least once every six months ;)
That night, we went to Meg and Steve's house to do fireworks. We had a couple small illegals, including firecrackers (who knew they were illegal??) and a cop came and took them :(. Oh well. It was still really fun. And then after the kids were in bed, we watched some UFC fights on TV that Steve had ordered and recorded. So fun!
On Sunday, I conducted my choir at church and we sang a really pretty rendition of "America the Beautiful". After church, we went back to Meg and Steve's for a barbecue (aka grilled steak and chicken yum!) and just hung out with the family for a few more hours. It was a really great way to enjoy the holiday.

My red, white, and blue outfit:
Happy Fourth of July!! I hope yours was as fun as mine!

Who Needs Kids...

When you have a Trevor? :)

The other day, I was walking around my house, picking up clothes and other such clutter that had found its way onto our floor, when I almost stepped on this little friend, left behind by my wonderful husband:Yes. That's a Cheerio. Most women don't experience cheerios on the floor until they have young ones running around the house. But I had to smile, and realize how happy this little Cheerio made me. I mean really, who needs kids when you have a Trevor?