Vacation Part 3

Finally wrapping up the vacation posts. Only it's now been so long that I can't really remember choronologically what happened.

We stayed at a church owned property in Washington called "Zion's camp". The highlight of the whole weekend was the lake that they have there. We spent a lot of time playing in the lake, pushing each other off the docks, pushing each other off the paddle boards, racing canoes, and that's pretty much it. No pictures of the lake because my camera is not waterproof.

The younger kids got to hit pinatas...but I guess when you're married you get excluded from that. I don't mind, it was more fun to watch anyway.

There was much Nutella consumed over the weekend, along with chips, salsa, candy, cookies, cookie dough, and other snacks. Most of the time we were snacking and talking and playing canasta. When we weren't in the lake anyhow.

We also went to the beach one day but since it was the Puget Sound, we hunted for shells and didn't go in the water (unlike that one time on my honeymoon when I wore snowboots with my bathing suit down to the water). I found a snail and Andrew found a dragonfly. Then we went back to the camp so we could swim. =P

Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, my sister got her mission call while we were up there. The Ukraine Dnepropetrovsk mission. That was months ago and she's leaving in November so pretty much everyone who reads this already knows. I'm still trying to reconcile myself to the fact that it is not Tokyo, Japan...even though she never studied Japanese, but I can still hope that my sister goes to the best mission in the world. =P

After the reunion, Andrew and I headed out to Seattle with a VERY full car. We had to stop at the international district to grab some Japanese groceries and to get Boba. Seattle is the only place I've been able to get Almond boba to date and it also happens to be the best boba I've had (and I've had a lot of the stuff). After Seattle we finally headed home. We had intended to leave no later than noon; we left at 2. That means it was 3 Utah time. Whoops.

We didn't sleep in the car either because it was so stuffed full, we couldn't recline the seats. It made sleeping hard. We grabbed dinner in Boise at 10:30 and would have gotten a hotel room but we had work the next day. We soldiered on.

Just before we the Idaho border, we decided to pull out at a rest stop and well, rest. We laid our sleeping pads out on TOP of all our stuff and slept with our feet dangling over the front seats and 4 inches of room between us and the roof of the car. I would have taken pictures of the hilarious scene...but it was 1 in the morning and we fell straight to sleep. We woke up around 3 and started the last part of our journey home. We got back at 6:30 am, I emailed my boss and said I wasn't coming in til noon, and we went to sleep without unpacking the car.

So ended vacation. :)

Washington blackberries! They weren't ripe :( I ate them anyways. =P

Andrew and Alex playing horseshoes

playing on the swings. This swing made me ill. =P

Sandy wanted to go home with us.

Best. Boba. Ever.

Vacation Part 2

Ok, I finally am getting around to vacation part 2. I've been pretty busy with school and everything and it was only the threat of my Lightroom trial expiring that got me to sit down and edit all the pictures/convert them to jpegs.

So, here they are. Beautiful Washington where someday I'm going to live. It's already decided, even if Andrew gets a job in Texas I'm still going to manage to live there somehow. I'll settle for Oregon too I guess. And while we're planning my future, it's going to be in the pretty part of Washington/Oregon...not the ugly rain shadow part.

Anyhow, so this is our hike to Snow Lake and Bench Lake. It was a wonderful hike, even if all 700 feet of elevation gain came in the last 1/4 mile and the biting flies wanted to eat us alive. Even then, we managed to stand still enough for some semblance of a family picture.

And by the way, on most of these pictures, I didn't do any editing except some cropping. And also, some desaturation because seriously...it was THAT green.

Don't you just want to drink that water? I bet it tasted amazing...but we had no water filter with us and didn't want to ruin our vacation so...

Yeah...and I desaturated this picture too. That is SERIOUSLY what it looked like.

This is what it looked like if I didn't have my polarized filter turned the right way, but even then isn't it gorgeous!?

I like to take pictures of Andrew's back, clearly. =P

Catching Up-My Bestest Friend's Wedding

I finally downloaded weeks of pictures off my camera. This was back in August, my friend Erica's wedding. She was my companion in the mission (the same one I was with when President called our apartment looking for Andrew =P) and has been the person I've remained closest with since my mission. In the words of Anne Shirley, we're "bosom friends".

I'm so happy that she got married and I'm absolutely POSITIVE she couldn't have found someone more perfect for her. The only bummer about this whole deal is that they're going to be living in Massachusetts. :( That's really far away.

The whole wedding was beautiful and I think I cried more than three times. I NEVER cry at weddings! But I was just so happy for her. 

Her husband is a convert to the church and his family is Jewish, so the reception had many Jewish traditions laced into it. The Chuppah was handmade by Erica's mother and features so many neat symbols. For instance, the Oxen and the Lion represent the tribes of Judah and Ephraim coming together. I can't remember everything, but it is seriously SO cool.

That's pretty much it. Hooray for Erica!

That time I had 14 babies

No, really. I had 14 babies. And they were adorable. Kinda stressful to take care of, I mean half the time I couldn't tell them apart. But they were still adorable and I miss them very much.

Yep, Stargirl, our friend's rat, had babies. And I got to babysit them over Labor Day weekend. I miss them all. :( They were so much fun. I even built them a playground in our bathtub for them to get some run around time in. It was GREAT fun. :)

That Time When

That time when you take your husband to the doctor to discuss stress treatment options because his stomach pain seems to be stress related...and he has the flu.

Yeah...then you feel like a jerk because you kinda sorta didn't believe he could possibly be sick since he was sick LAST week.

Oh well. Maybe this means he's done being sick for the year.

And once again, I didn't get it. My immune system is impervious to the flu. I could probably get bitten by 60 million west nile virus carrying mosquitos and STILL not get it.

I will get very itchy if that happens though, so let's hope it doesn't.

Better

I feel better than I have in a while. That's good. I'm actually enjoying school and my homework (except that stupid writing class). I told Andrew the other day, "When you are excited to go home so you can work on your homework it tells you 2 things. You're a huge nerd, and you found the right major".

I've actually found time amongst the homework to actually make dinner. That's helped on many accounts which I shall not bore you with. In fact, if I might brag, I made crepes the other night and managed to keep the kitchen clean despite using the food processor twice and the KitchenAid once. It's nights like that which make me excited to cook dinner again. Nothing like starting to cook WITHOUT having to clean first. :)

It's so clean I even have room to make BREAD!

I didn't make dinner last night though...last night we ate at the state fair. And by ate, I mean I totally forgot that fair food is like 10 dollars for a stinkin funnel cake and I settled for a 1/4 pound of cinnamon roasted almonds. Turns out, I should have spent the extra monies on the 1/2 pound bag because they were gone way too fast.

Good thing I have a pin for cinnamon roasted nuts on my pinterest. My house is gonna smell like Christmas soon and its not even October!

Speaking of October, there's a Japanese food bazaar in SL the first Saturday in October. Anyone see the problem? Yeah...Conference is the first week in October. Life is really unfair sometimes. But with Conference comes mission reunions. Hooray for that! Even though we totally spent like 3 hours with President and Sister Hill a couple weeks ago, I'm excited to see them again. :)

That's another reason I can't go to the Japanese food thing...these days one cannot simply drive up to Salt Lake and back 2 days in a row. Gas is too expensive. I miss when it was under a dollar...because I actually remember those days even though I wasn't driving. Crazy, right?

Life is good and I get to go write an essay tonight which despite the fact that I totally procrastinated on it (not my fault, essays lend themselves to such a thing), I'm kind of excited to write. Like I said, I'm a huge nerd in the right major.

Decision Making the Easy Way

I just love it when you can't decide on something and then something else makes the decision for you. Like the Styx concert being sold out.

Thank you Provo Residents for buying all the tickets and removing the temptation to spend 90 dollars from before me.

Am I sad I don't get to go? Kinda.

But at least now I don't have to spend a week rationalizing buying those tickets. Because I would have. I'm not strong enough to say "we don't have the money to go see Styx". I'm just not that good a person.

Perhaps this is what it means when we hear that we will not be tempted above that which we are able. =P