B-day

Today was my dad's b-day so my sister and I decided to do something nice and decorate his desk at work. It was fun and I think he appreciated it.

Kind of simple but we didn't have a whole lot of time this morning.

Elder Ross

So an old companion of mine posted pictures from the mission on facebook. They were fun to look at and remember the people I knew. I really enjoyed my mission and am really glad I went. I met tons of interesting people, some I still keep in touch with and some I wish I could forget, namely a guy mauling me on the street corner in NoHo. Anyways, so I came across this picture. I forgot that this is what he looked like, very innocent and young, so young. It made me laugh cause that guy I def didn't know like I know now and where we both have come since. But its a picture that makes me smile so I thought I would share.
It shows how long I have been home, it took quite a while before I realized she is breaking the rules, she is touching him, not just touching him but TOUCHING him :) This is one of the many members in the mission that took very good care of all the missionaries that came through. The sisters I went home with spent our next to last night in the mission at her house.

Gotta Love April

The weather lately has been sporatic. It will be warm for a day or two, I have even been wearing shorts and flip flops. Then it would rain and be very cold. On Wed it was raining again and half way through the day the heavy rain turned to snow. Within a couple of hours we had like 2 inches of snow. Then it stopped and seemed to be melting. Then, yesterday morning I woke up to at least a foot of snow on my car. I was going to get pictures but forgot. It took at least 10 min to dig my car out, there was so much snow. By 4:30 in the afternoon much of the snow was gone. The bad part of the weather was that cause of the warm weather most of the trees were in bloom and then when it snowed the blossoms caught and held the snow so the trees were covered in snow, which was gorgeous, but the trees weren't used to that much weight and trees were falling down and branches broke off. The complex next to ours had a couple of large purple plum trees and one of them had broken off at the trunk and the other had many large branches broken off. Half my parent's purple plum broke off under the weight. We have gotten snow this late but never this much. I am so ready for summer and warm weather. I think someone forgot to tell the weather its the middle of April.

Date Night

So we, Ross and I, decided we needed to get in the habit of date night. I have been meaning to post this but had prolems with internet connection and now its good so I am posting now.

We are taking turns planning and Ross did our first one and we went bowling. We went to Cafe Rio for dinner and then went to the bowling alley. We had to wait a little while for our lane to be ready so Ross kicked my butt at pool. Then we started bowling. We used to play a lot on the mission on our p-day and I always used a heavier ball than the elders and kicked everyones butt, I would beat in a landslide. Since I got home from my mission I haven't done so well. When we started playing, I like to make things interesting and put a wager on it. We bet a dollar on the first game, which Ross was doing very well at first and I was not so good but in the end came back to win. The 2nd game we put ice cream on the line. (whats a date in Utah without an ice cream cone?) I couldn't believe how well I did. In the end I think I beat Ross by like 70 points. In the last picture you can kind of see the points. But it was a lot of fun and I think its a good habit to get into.

WTF?!?!

The jewelry store where Ross got my wedding ring set has a policy that if you bring your rings in every 6 months for a cleaning and inspection they will replace any stones that fall out. Mine was due this month and we took it in yesterday. I had an engraving in my engagement ring and when I got them sautered together they buffed out the engraving so when we went in yesterday Ross asked them about it and they said they can put it back on for free. The lady at the counter asked what was engraved and I told her it was Y. T. F, for some reason she started to laugh. So we went to run some other errands while she worked on my ring. When we came back, I picked up the ring and looked at the engraving and the light wasn't good enough to read it well. When we got out to the car I was looking closer and had to laugh. I handed the ring to Ross to see what he saw, she engraved WTF instead of YTF. Kind of explains her laughing about it. We are debating whether we are going to get it fixed or not, cause it kind of fits still.

Last Weekend

Last weekend my niece, Celeste, was baptised. Ross wasn't able to go and Mel was sick so I rode down with Jeff and Nathan on Friday. I always forget how long of a drive it is to get to Bluff and I think that's because there really isn't a lot to look at. When Jeff picked me up he dropped off his camping gear, Ross was going to meet us for camping Saturday. Right off the bat Nathan was showing me that he lost a tooth. He was very proud of that and periodically through out the weekend would ask Jeff to look and see if his new tooth was any bigger. We had hotel rooms for Friday night. Originally we would only have a place to stay for Friday night so we had decided to go to Goblin Valley to camp on Saturday night. Then at the beginning of the week we found out that we had rooms for both nights but decided to camp anyways, the others stayed the weekend in Bluff. Nathan, Jeff and I were put in one room since we were staying just one night. The rooms were actually nicer than I expected for Bluff. The beds were actually comfy, but very small. They were smaller than a double bed and very short, Jeff is shorter than Ross and his feet were hanging off the bed, so if Ross had been there a large chunk of his legs would hang off. It reminded me of the scene in "Fred Claus" where Vince Vaughn is sleeping in the elf bed. The baptism was at 11 on Sat so we had some time to just play around that morning before getting ready, Brandon had brought his Wii so it was fun to watch the little boys and my parents play. I was back in our room brushing my teeth and Jeff told me he had to show me something. He said in the night he felt like he got bit by something and on the edge of his and Nathan's bed, coming out of the blankets, was a big black spider, it was the size of a cough drop. Nasty. It really made me nervous to pull the blankets from my bed out. Later when we were taking stuff to the car I pulled out a grocery bag with bags of chips and inside was another big black spider, not as big but still creepy. I can understand spiders but not in a hotel room. I expect my hotel rooms to be bug and rodent free.

The baptism was kind of interesting. I haven't been to a baptism since my mission and those were usually for adults in stake centers. In Bluff they just have a branch so I thought the baptism would be in Blanding in a stake center but they did have a baptismal font in the branch building. The floor to the kitchen comes up and there is a font under there. Very small but it does the job. It was a pretty short service since Celeste was the only one getting baptized, which I was very much ok with. After the service there was a lunch. After the lunch we were getting ready to go, I was outside talking to Ross making sure he had everything we needed him to bring and letting him know we would probably be leaving sooner than expected. Most of the time I was talking to him I was walking around outside and Nathan was following me. Every step I took he would follow and give me a flat tire. I would turn around to chase him away and he would run behind me again and step on my heels. He is def my brother's son. Funny kid.

On the way to meet Ross we stopped in Moab to get food for breakfast then met Ross in Green River and then went on the Goblin Valley. We didn't actually camp in the camp ground, cost too much, we just went out by Little Crazy Horse and found an open spot where someone had already made a fire pit and set up camp. Its a nice place to camp but the wind was horrendous. I am so not a fan of the wind. I had just put on some chap stick and then got out of the car to set up the tent and with the wind and all of the sand my lips were caked with sand. After setting camp and weighing the tent down we went over to the park. Goblin Valley is a very unique place. Its down in this little valley and there are a lot of clusters of red rock and sandstone. When the sun starts to set and you are sitting up on the rim the shadows and formations look like goblins. Its a lot of fun to hike and climb on the rocks.

The sunset was amazing but the pictures don't do it justice.

On Sunday after we got camp cleaned up we decided to do Little Crazy Horse, some slot canyons that were right there. I did them years ago and they were pretty cool. Again the wind was horrible, it was whipping up the canyons pretty hard and all the sand was in the air again. We hiked together for a little while then Jeff and Nathan slowed down. We waited for them to catch up and when they finally did it was the funniest site. Nathan had been collecting rocks the whole way up and his pockets were so full of rocks his pants were falling down so he had to hike with one hand holding his pants up and he showed me another rock he was carrying in his other hand because it wouldn't fit in his pants. When the wind and sand got painful we decided it was time to turn around and head back.

On the way down when Ross and I got ahead of them we would wait a little for them to catch up. The last time we were waiting for them Nathan told me we could just go ahead and wait in the car that way we didn't get sand in our eyes and mouths, which was ok with me.

When we got out we headed to lunch and then home, the ride home was pretty uneventful, which was a good thing. We got a little rain and lots of wind but my parents who were actually about an hour behind us got pretty bad snow.

Weekend Warrior!!

I am getting very excited for this summer. Its already filling up, but that is normal, my summers are always full and they fill up early, in fact, the summer of 2010 is already starting to get things planned for it.

Ross and I had been talking about making a trip to Jackson Hole, he broke something I got from there and promised to replace it. We figured we will only be like an hour and a half from Yellowstone and Ross has wanted to see Old Faithful so we may as well go. Ross has been to Yellowstone when we were snowmobiling but didn't get to go in and see the sites. I think it will be fun. We are also in charge of my family's family reunion this year so we get to plan and do that in June. I think it will be a lot of fun. We are going to a camp ground we have never been to before and judging by the map all the camp sites are on the beach.

I also started today, due to my boredom at work and my desire to get out, planning another road trip. This time to Mount Rushmore. I have always wanted to go and I figured, why not take a weekend. It would take 10 hours to drive there, take off after work, take a tent and things to camp along the way. I have never been to South Dakota. Then we can drive down through part of Nebraska on the way home (never been to Nebraska either). Luckily Ross is all for it. I love to travel and sometimes he isn't as excited.

Along with everything else this summer there has been a lot of talk of doing a lot of hiking around here and in Salt Lake and multiple back packing trips, nothing as far as Havasupai but things we can just do over the weekend. Man, I am so ready for summer to be here and I wish it could last longer, it always goes by very fast.