Company Summer Retreat

Just two weeks after our trip to Colorado, we headed to Vernal, Utah with my company and everyone's families to enjoy two days at my boss's cabin. First we stopped off at the Utah State Bingham Entrepreneurship and Energy Research Center to see how things were doing. My boss and his wife donated the money for this building so it was named after them. It is a really cool modern building. Here are all the Blue Diamond employees:

Then we left Vernal and drove up Diamond Mountain for about an hour and a half to Marc and Debbie's cabin. It is literally in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing else up there except for cows and deer. It was really cool to be in the remote forests on top of the mountain.

David and I were able to get some more four wheeling in. At my grandma's cabin in Colorado, you have to stay on certain roads because she lives in a state park and the park rangers yell at you if you go on park roads. Here you could go wherever you wanted. It was really cool to just drive around through the mountain.

We ate a ton of really good food at the cabin and played games. We played a game with all the couples called Ladder Ball. It was really fun but we were not that good at it. My coworker, Scotty, and his wife, Karin, (Yes, she is the one other person in the world who spells her name like me!) killed everyone. No one could beat them. The highlight of the trip for me was the zip line. It was hilarious. My coworker, Scott, and I told David to test it out first to see if it could hold up. David climbed up the ladder, sat on the bar, and took off. In the far off distance, you can see a white thing. That is two really old, pretty thin mattresses propped up against a tree. We did not think to check the end of the zip line before we sent David down. He just went flying down and smashed in to the mattresses. He got the wind knocked out of him but was laughing. It was pretty funny. After that, we put David at the end of the line to slow people down as they came down the zip line. We had a few children get hurt, but over all it was actually really fun! Pretty nice for a self made zip line!

Not gonna lie, it was really scary at the start. That ladder was really tall!

All in all, it was a fun trip. I am so grateful that I get to work with such fun, kind people. David and I really enjoyed our weekend in Vernal.

Summer Vacation Begins

So I am way way way behind on blogging. I am going to try my very best to catch up so these posts may not be too detailed. Way back in May, we took David's sister and brother with us to my grandma and grandpa's cabin in Southern Colorado over Memorial Day weekend. My sister, Angela, her husband, Scott, and their baby, Bradley, came down to. We had a wonderful weekend. David's siblings had never been to Colorado so we took them to Mesa Verde and explored the small town of Mancos. They had also never driven a four wheeler so we drove around the mountain a bit and then enjoyed a nice evening relaxing in the hot tub. We also went to church with my grandparents and enjoyed a Sunday stroll down to the lake. We ended our evenings with a nice game of Mexican Train. Oh and I'll pretend this was a perfect trip and not even mention the water pump breaking on Sunday night and our lack of water for the final 12 hours of the trip. Of course that happened after I repeatedly told David's little sister that I have never ever had a problem with the limited water supply at the cabin. Oops! Besides that, we loved the trip. We cannot thank my grandparents enough for opening their beautiful home to us. I have been to this cabin and mountain my entire life and I am always amazed at the beauty of it. Here are some completely out of order pictures for you to enjoy. (I would love the day Blogspot makes loading pictures easier - anyone else agree on that?)

The beautiful cabin that my grandpa built:

Who doesn't love having a hot tub in their basement? Plus when the water pump broke, we had a nice supply of water to flush the toilets with. Is that TMI? Did you know you could flush a toilet by just dumping a bucket of water in to the bowl?

Yes we drove around like this except I then squeezed in between Kelli and David. We had a blast!

Mancos only has three restaurants. 1. Absolute Bakery and Cafe - I am dying to eat here. It is this super cute, quaint little bakery and the past two times I have come to Mancos it has closed minutes before I arrived. Some day I will eat there. 2. Hamburger Haven - a ghetto hamburger stand that belongs at a fair. 3. Millwood Junction - family restaurant/motorcycle gang bar. Of course since my first option was closed we chose the next best one. And sadly, this is my second time eating here. The highlight of the day was when Kelli asked the waitress what was in the macaroni salad and the waitress responded, "I don't know. It's not that good, though. I wouldn't order it." Great sales skills.

Waiting in line at Mesa Verde:

These are backwards in order but this is the end of the Balcony House tour. They call it the adventurous tour. You get to climb up ladders and crawl through tunnels. It was really fun!

This was our rather enthusiastic tour guide. She talked with her hands a LOT.

To end, here is a nice embarrassing picture of David striking a pose. Thank you for the fun trip everyone!

May Birthdays and Graduation

May was a fun, busy month full of birthday, holidays, graduation, and a mini vacation. First up was David's mom's 50th birthday. We invited David's family over for dinner that weekend to celebrate. We decided to make mini pizzas and let everyone create their own. It was very yummy! We had sausage, pepperoni, olives, green peppers, pineapple, canadian bacon, blue cheese, mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan. Here is David's mom opening her gag gift from us. Since she is now over the hill, we gave her a giant Book of Mormon along with a magnifying glass to help. For real, we gave her a gift card to Lowe's and the promise to spend a weekend helping her with a job of her choice around her house - painting a room, weeding the garden, whatever she wants.

On May 26, we celebrated David's sister's high school graduation and David's 27th birthday! Below are me, Kelli, and Cami (David's cousin) after the graduation. Kelli will start at BYU in the fall!

After graduation, we all went to Chili's to celebrate!

After dinner, we went to David's parent's house to celebrate David's birthday. (It was a late night!) First, though, we gave Kelli a small graduation gift. Her first bottle of perfume! (Marc Jacobs Daisy) Doesn't David look so cute in this picture!

On to the birthday cake! I knew we would all be stuffed from dinner, so I purchased a mini cake from a place in Orem called The Chocolate: Dessert Cafe.

I didn't realize David was making that face when I selected this picture. Sorry David! Here he is opening all his presents. His parents and I decided to do a sports themed birthday for David this year. He got a basketball, tennis balls, tennis racquet, soccer ball, and some other stuff I can't remember.

Then came his present from me! He got a golf glove and three private lessons with a golf professional!! David decided a year ago that he wanted to learn to golf. He goes to the driving range but has never had any formal training and does not know anything about proper technique so I thought it was the perfect gift. In case you can't tell, I was really really excited to give him his gift!

To end the night, David's family wrote a song and sang it to David. It was really cute! It was to the tune of that song "There She Goes". (But it was "There He Goes) David's mom put it together because for Mother's Day, David wrote and performed with Ben a song for her. It was written to the tune of a song that Mike Meyers sings in the movie So I Married an Ax Murderer. All in all it was a fun night! Happy Birthday David - I love you!

How to Not Grocery Shop for a Month

Today is June 25th. I have not grocery shopped in a month. Well, that is a lie. I have bought three items: bread, milk, and cereal. Other than that, I seriously have not grocery shopped. Would you like to know the secret? Here is what it takes:

1. Go on as many trips out of town as possible.

2. Eat at other people's houses as much as possible.

3. Make giant freezer meals.

4. Eat every last thing in your pantry.

Seriously, though, I am a bit surprised that I managed to go this long! In the last month, David and I have been to Colorado, Vernal, and California. At the beginning of May, my ward had a Freezer Meal Frenzy party. I signed up to make three of the freezer meals. During the last month, David and I ate two of them - creamy chicken taquitoes and chicken broccoli bake. They seriously each lasted us three nights of dinners. I still have my third one to eat so my grocery shopping strike will continue even longer. We have literally eaten almost every last thing in our pantry/refrigerator. There are a few ramen noodle packages left, though. I am hoping to make it to July. We shall see.

In other news, get ready for lots of blog updates about our fun adventures this summer! I intend to catch up this weekend!

Easter Weekend Pt 3

On our way home from Ogden over Easter Weekend, we decided to stop by the Hill Air Force Aerospace Museum. David was so excited! Here are a few pictures from the museum. It was really cool to see all the planes. The ones outside were GIGANTIC! It was really cool.

This is David's favorite aircraft.

This helicopter was really cool. The man who took the picture cut off the top of the helicopter, which was sad, because that was the coolest part. It had two separate rotating blade things. (Ignore my technical terms)

This was David's favorite World War II era aircraft.

If you are ever near Ogden/North Salt Lake, you should stop by! (Plus it is free)

Easter Weekend Pt 2

After our visit to Antelope Island (why is it even called that if it mainly has buffalo), we headed up to Ogden for the fun part of our trip. I had bought off of Groupon a coupon to go rock climbing, indoor sky-diving, and indoor surfing. I had never been to Ogden before, but it was actually a cute little town. They have redone "downtown" Ogden. They built a bunch of new restaurants, a new movie theater, and then the place we went to that had the skydiving, rock climbing, surfing, a Gold's Gym, a bowling alley, and Costa Vida.

Our first stop was iFly to go indoor skydiving! I am waaaayy too chicken to ever skydive for real, but I had no problem with this. After a short lesson on the proper position to take in the skydiving wind tunnel, we suited up and got ready to go in.

We couldn't take our camera with us to the waiting chamber, but we did get a DVD of our flights. Below is a picture of a girl trying out some cool moves. We didn't get to do anything like that since it was our first time.

It was really fun! I loved it! The wind is crazy in there! You have to wear goggles and ear plugs and a helmet. You can't hear anything while you are in there so the instructor has to communicate with you through different hand movements. The best part was when the instructor would spin you around and the two of you would fly up high while spinning. At the end our instructor, who was super nice, cranked the wind power up really high and do a bunch of cool moves. It was really fun - I definitely recommend trying it if you are too chicken like me to do the real thing!

After skydiving we were going to go rock climbing, but it was packed so we decided to skip it. We have been indoor rock climbing at The Quarry in Provo, so we knew we weren't missing anything. After a quick dinner at Costa Vida, we headed over to the indoor surfing place - Flowrider. If you are a girl you either have to wear a rash guard or shirt over your swimsuit so that you do not expose your self when you fall over and are swept up by the way. I was really nervous to do this. I have never snowboarded, wakeboarded, or even skateboarded!

I decided to start out by just trying the body board. That was a lot of fun! David was way better than me. If you watch my video below, you will see that I wasn't very good, but I still had fun! We had an hour to surf/body board so about half way through our hour, one of the workers insisted that I try the surfing. He had done it a couple of times and of course made it look super easy. They let me use a rope to help stable myself, but even that did not help. The second time I tried it, I totally face planted and smacked my forehead on the ground and was washed up and over the wave. My neck killed for the next few days! Very painful! After that I stuck to the body board. David tried the surfing a few times and started to get the hang of it a little. He loved the wave - that was his favorite part of the day!

After that we were exhausted and it was pretty late, so we went to the hotel to go to bed. Stay tuned for Easter Weekend Pt 3 - Hill Aerospace Museum.

P.S. So I tried to upload our body boarding videos but after an hour and a half of waiting and they were still loading, I gave up. If you ever come visit me in person, you can view the video of me embarrassing myself. Here is a picture, though, of what the place looked like.

Easter Weekend Pt 1

David and I decided to plan a little "stay-cation" as he kept calling it for Easter weekend. I had that Friday off for Good Friday and David decided to take the day off of work. Way back in February I had bought a coupon to do some fun things up in Ogden, so we decided to make a little trip out of it and spend Friday night in Ogden. On our way up to Ogden, we decided to stop at Antelope Island, north of Salt Lake City. I'm just going to say it now - it was a bit lame. I guess if you want to actually see more than 3 of the 700 buffalo on the island, you should go in October when the round up all the buffalo.

Despite being sunny, it was very chilly. Online it said there was a restaurant on the island, so we had decided to eat lunch there. The "restaurant" was just a small burger place with no heater. It was cold! David did order the buffalo burger and said it was good. I had chicken as usual.

Way in the distance you can see the 3 buffalo that we saw. Exciting. I know.

Utah does have beaches! They are on Antelope Island!

And this was when David decided to drive along the buffalo corral hoping to see some more buffalo, but no such luck. All in all it was pretty lame to go to Antelope Island, but now we can say we have been. Check that off our Utah Sight Seeing list. Coming up part 2 of our trip - the fun part!!