Gaming, vacay plans & more...

My bro, Orson, little sis Penny stayed at our house last night after a long drive from Seattle. Orson is on his way to law school in Houston and Penny is along for the ride and to visit Annaliese and Addie in New Orleans. They taught me and Ryan Canasta. Ryan and Orson don’t look terribly happy in this picture seeing as how me and penny totally beat them.

We have also after months, many months actually, of researching a bunch of different places, (mostly in the carribean) and trying to decide where to go and when, we have finally planned (and bought our airfare- so its official) our vacation. Ryan’s cousin who(m?) he roomed with for a couple of years in college is moving with his wife and newborn baby to Hawaii to teach for a semester at BYU Hawaii in September. They invited us to come visit them and so we are. October 30th- Nov 6th. This is the beach house we will be staying at. Its right on the beach on the North Shore of Hawaii right by the Polynesian cultural center, 10 min from where they filmed Jurassic Park and the tv show Lost. Yea!! Its so nice to have a vacation to look forward to, I had forgotten, the last real vacation we went on was our honeymoon. I may be jumping the gun a little bit but I am already starting to shop for our trip and bought a cute dress for Hawaii.

http://www.vrbo.com/194918 - This is the link to the cool place we are staying...

Also, my sister Annaliese and Spencer and Addie were here for a couple of weeks and I thought i'd post a few pics that she didn't....

Addie has the cutest frowns.... I swear I think she likes me although this pic would suggest otherwise.

Here are Annaliese and Addie looking a little TC (too cool:))

The Big One

I can’t believe it, I am now 30. I don’t think it has quite sunk in yet that next time some body asks how old I am I have to say 30. I’m no longer in my 20’s. It’s weird, It seems like I should feel more adultish because there is no denying once you hit 30 you’re an adult. When you are younger you envision that you will feel differently when you are at certain ages like 30 or be different, I don’t know but you’re always you I guess, you just have had more experiences that have you taught you more things… k, enough ponderings about growing up.

I actually had a pretty fun day. I took a half day off work, Ryan took me to Tucanos (brazillion restraunt) for lunch. After stuffing myself with lots of garlic sirloin the best steak ever (and I’m not a big steak eater) we went to the city pool by our house and worked on our tans and read our books. Then got home and got ready and opened up my presents from Ryan. A GPS for my car, which I have been wanting for a while (sorry Orson), a really cute (too expensive) black dress from Express & hot pink roses. Then we met up with some friends and Ryan’s family at the cheese cake factory for dinner and ate outside on the patio.

All in all a pretty good for my first day as being 30:)

Also, I hadn't gotten around to posting our 4th of July Festivities, Amber and Christian pictured above asked us to go on a impromptu trip to Vegas with them. We stayed at the Mandalay Bay hotel, which has a fun beach/wave pool, did some shopping and saw the cirque de solei show Ka.

Our Acting Debut

So, Ryan's company has been working on shooting a comercial for the Salt Lake Palace Convention Center which will be shown nationally and then at all the conventions they do. We got to drive a black convertible 1964 Thunder bird around downtown Salt Lake last night for part of that commercial. We had a camera strapped to the front of the car and then on the back of the car as we drove around. It was pretty fun, we got a lot of attention as we drove around everyone was staring at us and yelling out things. It was a little bit stressful at first because the lady that worked there that was in charge of the car told us like 3 or 4 times to be super careful plus we had to watch the camera strapped to the car to make sure it didn't loosen and fall and all while looking happy and care free as we drove around and not looking directly to the camera. I'm pretty sure my acting career is going to take off pretty soon....

These are the pictures we took with ryan's iphone.

Moab River Trip

My boss has been going on river trips for about 30 years now. There was some cancellations on a trip he was doing in Moab this past weekend so me and Ryan got invited along. Friday after work we followed Stan (my boss) and his long time friend down to Moab, stopping at what looked to be a small town's biker's hang out called Ray’s Tavern on the way for a delicious burger and then slept under the stars by the river. Saturday morning we got up with the sun and helped get the rafts ready for the trip. About 10 am everyone was there that was going on the rafts ( a bunch of people we didn’t know, they were in some kind of art society but a pretty friendly group) was there and we loaded into the boats. Of course that was when the clouds came so unfortunately it was a little cool. We leisurely went down the river, stopped for some cliff jumping, lunch, water fights and a few fun rapids. So all in all a pretty good day. We went in to town to eat dinner with my boss and his friend and of course the sun came out just as soon as we got out of the river. After dinner we walked around town for a while and then decided against our camping plan (we were tired, had forgotten our flash light and hot) and rented a hotel room for an absurdly high price considering the quality of the room. Sunday we woke up early (due to the fire alarm that went off at 7:30 am (there was no fire)). Ate the hotel’s sad excuse for a continental break fast and went to the National Arches Park and hiked up to the delicate arch and explored a few other places around the park. After that we came back to our hotel and jumped in the pool which was really small got some sun ate a late lunch and headed back up to rainy/cloudy/cold utah county.

Seasonal Disorder

Its probably lame to post a blog about the wheather, but its been cloudy and rainy here for the past two weeks and its driving me nuts. This is why I can't live in Utah for the rest of my life. Its the second week of June it should be warm and sunny by now. It always teases you, gives you a few nice days in March and then snows, then gives you a few really nice days in May and then rains the first couple of weeks in June. Now I understand that summer doesn't officially start until the 21st but growing up in Texas for 16 years for some reason I feel entitled to June 1-August 31 should be nothing but perfect hot summer weather. I should be at the pool this saturday but the forecast is 74 and cloudy not quite pool weather, i feel cheated.

Note: I know that 74 doesn't sound too bad but today (its thursday now) and its 50 outside and still raining and supposed to be for the next week...I guess I shouldn't expect any sympathy from the Washingtonians (except for Kirsten- Thank you!)

So I married a Handy Man

When Ryan inspected our dishwasher to see why it was broken he said, "ok what I think I need to do is cut this wire and re-connect it over here, etc...." And I said "Um maybe we should just call a repair man." What I should have said was, sounds great, I know you can do it Honey or something like that (except for I've never once called him honey). This blog is to say I'm sorry I doubted your handy man abilities because you are an awesome, wonderful, Sexy- Handyman. I should never have doubted you. Total repair cost- $4 for supplies.

And, I usually don't think this but I can't wait to go home and do another load of dishes, so I can finally use the kitchen as I have this weird phobia, I'm not a neat freak or anything but if the kitchen is dirty I don't cook: Hence- a lot of eating out this week.

Also, totally un related to the topic of this blog I never posted our Memorial day Hike pics. We went up American Fork canyon with Ryan's family and did a little hike.

Updates

#1 Our dishwasher & micowave is now broken. I opened up our dishwasher sunday morning and heard a loud popping noise and a huge spark and the electrical cord thing that snapped seems to be connected to the microwave because it is also not working. I think i'll start taking bets on the next thing to break down.

#2 We have not been as diligent on our P90X program this month as we were last month. And our junk food intake/stash at our house has increased, not a good combo.

#3 We've been trying to decide when/where to go on vacation, (this is a contributor to the motivation for item #2) We've considered, Jamaica, Hawaii, Barbados but I think we've narrowed it down to the Dominican Republic and Tahiti ( which will probably be twice as expensive as the DR but Tahiti looks amazing, really, really incredible) My boss who has been everywhere attests to the fact that it is the most beautiful place he has ever been to. My justificaton on considering the Tahiti option is : tax refund- kids = Tahiti (also factoring in ignoring yesterday's entire day of church learning about being frugal, food storage and the economic crisis)