California trip with the in-laws

This post is a little bit overdue, but I've got pictures this time so I'm posting about it anyway! We went on a little California vacation with my in-laws the week before the Fall semester of school started. We had the entire week jam packed with things we were going to do. We left for St. George on Friday. My grandparents let all seven of us raid their house and they cooked us some yummy dinner. I'm a big fan of that. Thanks grandma and grandpa! We went to the Tuachan theater to watch Tarzan that night. Wow! Tarzan was sexy. I couldn't stop watching his muscles! Ben only got a little bit jealous...I think. I'm sorry, we didn't get any pictures of that nice body, but here's a picture of the kids before Tarzan started. Cute. We left really early Saturday morning and drove straight for California. We had to hit the beach. Little did we know, the beach is freezing! Windy plus wet equals cold. I'm not a big fan of cold. So we buried each other in the sand. Much warmer. We didn't think of how we'd clean ourselves off though. Bright idea! We had to jump in that freezing ocean! Remember how I'm not a fan of cold? Anyway, it ended up being okay. We got used to the cold and had some fun with the waves. That night we went to Bubba Gumps. It sits right on the pier, overlooking the beach and ocean. The whole restaurant is themed around Forrest Gump. It was really fun. And the food was delicious. We tried our hardest to keep Sunday the sabbath. Of course, we had to eat, so that required some buying food, but other than that we did the free stuff in Cali. We saw the Hollywood sign and the walk of fame with all the stars. I always thought it would be way cool, but I think I just crossed that off my bucket list and I won't need to do it again. Oh well though. It was a good way to spend a Sunday. We hit Six Flags, Magic Mountain on Monday. Ben and I were looking forward so much because of our last Magic Mountain experience with my family. Disappointment. That's for sure. The park was SOO crowded and it was SOO hot. Nobody was a happy camper. Everyone was ornery. I'm pretty sure Crystal even cried once. We stood in lines for two hours for a 30 second ride. In all, we got in four rides. FOUR rides! That's not cool. Anyway, here's some pictures of us acting happy. I don't even know what made her cry, but she wasn't faking it. She was miserable. We got that park out of the way, so Tuesday we went to Disneyland! The happiest place, even for grown kids. I don't know what it is with this place, but It just puts a smile on your face no matter what! We got there super early and was able to walk onto a lot of the rides. Then, we mastered the fast passes and didn't hardly wait in any lines at all! It made up for the four rides we rode on Monday. We were kids again. It was great. California Adventure is also awesome. It's actually my favorite. It's a little more themed toward adults and I loved it.
I have so many more Disneyland pictures to post, but I'll limit it to just three. You get the gist, we had fun. We started heading home on Wednesday. To break up the trip we stayed in Las Vegas. Peggy wanted to keep us occupied so we weren't tempted to go onto the strip so we saw Tournament of Kings. It's a fun little dinner and show. The whole dinner we have to eat with our fingers while we're watching the show with horses and "kings". It was all supposed to feel like we were a part of their times. This is the king that we were rooting for to win. His name was Dragon. He was the evil one. But his horse was beautiful. I look a little bit scared in this picture because I am. That horse was breathing right down my neck! It freaked me out. We headed home, home really early on Thursday morning. We were all so ready to be home. I think we were all so sick of each other, it wasn't even funny! But, I did love the trip and it was so nice to get away from the norm for a little while. My in-laws are great. I'm so grateful that I can get along with each of them. Thanks for the trip Tim and Peggy! Wow, judging by the size of this post, and how long it took me to write it, I must have been thinking I had nothing better to do. I better get off this computer! Oh, one more last catch up on our lives. Ben just started his second-to-last semester at Weber State. He's crazy busy so I only get to see him after 8:30 every night and on the weekends. He's being a trooper though! Pray for us that we'll get through this busy semester! It's going to be rough!

Seriously, it's been two years!

Yup. It's seriously been two years since I've married my sweet husband. And I can honestly say that I love Ben even more today than the day that we got married. Life just keeps getting better and better! It is crazy how fast these last couple of years have flown by! It seems like just yesterday that we were getting engaged. I don't know how that happens. Life just takes over I guess. Anyway, it was my turn to plan our anniversary this year. I was so excited because I had so many things planned! Unfortunately, not everything happened because I had the day too packed to get everything done. Oh well. It was still fun. Our anniversary is August 8. That was a Sunday. Bummer. Or so I thought. Instead of just celebrating on one day, we celebrated on THREE days!! Yes, it was a whole weekend ordeal. Listen close because there are a few odd similarities to our engagement and wedding day. Okay. I'll start with Friday night. I made some yummy dinner (which doesn't happen too often) and then we jumped in the truck and made to to Mantua with the dirk bike and four wheeler by 6ish. So the time doesn't really matter. Just know that we made it there for an evening ride, because we all know those are the best rides to go on. It was raining, of course. By the way, it rained the whole weekend. We waited it out for a minute and then jumped on the bikes and just went for it. I was wet. I didn't have a jacket. It was freaking cold. Thank goodness that it didn't rain for too long. I love Utah summer storms! We made it to Inspiration Point just fine and dandy. Here's our cute love on Inspiration Point. I'm not one to usually take kissing pictures, so brace yourself. Now, the way down was a little different story. Here's what happened. I was going too fast, of course. An unexpected turn popped out of nowhere. I slammed on my brakes, turned the handle bars to avoid going off the cliff, and rolled my four wheeler. AGAIN!!! Holy cow! I don't know what's up with me and four wheelers. I'm contemplating never driving one again. My body just seems to be a rolling ground for these huge things! It hurts. So, some of you don't know. Almost exactly two years ago, Ben rolled a four wheeler with me on the back of it. Yes, this is one of the similarities I was talking about earlier. Here's some pictures to demonstrate.
Those are my scratches from Friday's rollover. My entire right side of my body is a solid green bruise with a few scratches. I can handle that. At least I didn't go over that cliff that you can see in the picture. Shoot, I can't find my other, similar picture. I will edit this soon when I find it.
Anyway. I'm walking and I was able to ride my own four wheeler down the mountain. That's sweet. Saturday. We woke up early. I made Ben some breakfast and then we went on our hike. I love hikes when I'm done with them. The way up is never as fun. Especially when you're sore from a stupid accident and kinda getting over a cold. We hiked up Waterfall Canyon. It was beautiful. I love the mountains and everything it offers.

After the hike we stopped by a family BBQ really quick. We had to do it to see family from out of town. It was okay. We left really fast and headed to the Bountiful temple. That's where we got married!! I haven't done a session there, ever! So sad though, we got there too late to make it to the next session AND to make our dinner reservations. We just sat just inside the doors and talked. It was still nice. The temple is just a great place to be no matter what. For dinner we went to Jasoh's. I would 100% recommend the food. Now the price, that's a different story. I almost died when we got our bill! It's way too fancy of a restaurant for us poor college students. But, we justified it. The last time we've spent that much on dinner was when we got engaged. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture at dinner. We were too busy stuffing our faces I guess. Here's our beautiful, or should I say disgusting, picture of us at dinner when we got engaged.

Remember, I broke my arm and had surgery only FIVE days before we were engaged! I was not feeling so hot. I couldn't even do my own hair or even dress myself. It was a pretty day for me. Ben does look pretty sexy though. We had the best part of our day after dinner. We got on Ben's rode bike and rode out to Willard Bay. We were smart and went the back way where it's free. I carried some fishing poles in my backpack. When we got there we were almost completely alone. We were able to sit on the boulders together and look at the stars. Ben fished a little bit just to satisfy his ADHD. He always has to have something going on. It was so relaxing. We loved it. In all, we had an amazing anniversary. I'm looking forward for many more anniversaries with my honey to come!

Girls Camp

So...It's been a while. Hi. I was really going to post a little blog about girls camp right when I got home, but one thing led to another and I was really busy at work in the ICU. That busy ICU kept from blogging! (I usually blog at work if I don't have pictures) Crazy, I know. Anyway, I went to girls camp about a week ago. I always love girls camp. It's such a growing experience for everyone! This was the first year for our presidency to go to camp with the girls. It is always so neat to build those strong relationships with the girls, and to really get to know them really well. Wow, I'm not feeling in the blogging spirit today so I have a feeling that this post will be really scattered. Sorry everyone! Okay, we went to Heber Valley Camp. It is this amazing place that is set aside just for girls camp. Has anyone ever thought about how boys have tons of scout camps everywhere? The girls were a little deprived of this until a good ol' man named President Hinckley made this camp. It's amazing. Have I already said that? The camp holds about 5 stakes. Each ward has separate camp sites within the stake's camp ground. Each site is named after amazing people in the scriptures. We each slept in cabins and had comfortable trails to walk on. The bathrooms were close and always clean. The kitchen was huge and we had amazing cooks that fed us huge meals every 4 hours. Pretty much, this kind of camping was not roughing it. Okay, I have to get a little bit spiritual now. This place was not only awesome, but it was so blessed. They definitely dedicated this camp to the Lord for the girls. Even the animals knew that there was a special spirit in the camp. I can't even count how many animals I saw there. Wait, I didn't only see them, I got really close to them. The deer would walk in front of us in our camp site. They would go hide under our cabins as we watched each other. They weren't scared. I held a squirel in my own hand. It crawled up my arm, then I got scared and dropped it. I got scared, it didn't. The closest comparison that I can think of for this place is the Garden of Eden. I want to go back just to feel that strong spirit again. So, each morning we woke up nice and early, had some hot chocolate, then had a really spiritual devotional done by the stake presidency. Then the day was started! Yay! The stake always had something fun planned for the girls. They did crafts, played lots of games, did service, and went on a hike. I had such a hard time not being one of the girls. I wanted to do all the crafts with the girls. Well, here's a little secret, I kinda convinced them to do let me do some of the craft. Okay, that's not so bad. Well, and I got to do the zip line at the challenge course too. That was fun. Some of the times I used me looking like a Laurel to my advantage. I was a leader when I needed to be. I had so much fun. I loved being with the girls. I do have to admit that I kept them up a little late one night trying to get them to teach me how to make bracelets. But, other than that, I'm pretty sure I was a well behaved leader who followed all the rules exactly...to a T. :) Anyway, I think that I just summed up girls camp pretty good. It was a lot of fun and I'm so grateful that I was able to go. I would have loved to have some pictures to put on here, but I just depended on the millions of girls there with cameras to do the work to take pictures. Sorry everyone!