Fun In The Sun: St. George Trip

Our trip to St. George finally came! We left early Friday morning. Our AC went out with about two hours left of our drive, it was horribly hot in our car! But we were so excited to get to hang with Cody, Tara and Atticus for the weekend. We went to Sand Hollow reservoir when we got down there to go out on the lake with Cody's parents' boat. It was so fun and the sun felt so good. I didn't get on the tube or try to water ski because I'm a baby and don't like being thrown off something into the water. Josh gave it a try though. He went with Cody and by himself. Atty and Cody also got out on the tube. That reservoir is so nice. We stopped to swim for a while where the water was 7 ft deep. We could see to the bottom where we were so that made me feel better, I don't like not seeing what's below me. The water was warm and we had lots of fun. We left after we started getting too warm and went back to the house to get showered, then we went to the county fair to meet up with one of Tara's cousins, who I went to school with. It was an interesting fair, they had bears in a cage just pacing around in a circle and a big bear that you could have your picture taken with. I felt bad for the poor things. They also had a boxing ring set up and there were really little kids in there boxing each other with their parents cheering them on. We got a slushy and then decided to head home for the night. We went swimming in the community pool where Cody's parents live. The pool was too cold for Tara and I but the boys had fun jumping off the cliffs. We got in the hot tub for a minute but the water was almost too hot for us.

We got up and ready on Saturday to go back out on the lake again. It was really crowded so it was kind of hard to get around the lake pulling someone behind you. Josh didn't get on the tube or try to ski or wakeboard because he was really sore from the day before. He also got this horrible bruise from the tube from being thrown off or from bouncing on it, I'm not sure.

Cody and Atty got on the tube, though. Atty was teasing Tara saying that she couldn't throw him off the tube so she drove the boat while he was on the tube and she threw him off a couple of times and the kid got some major air. We had so much fun out there. Went to shore to swim again but the water was way too cold for Tara and I, the boys swam though.

We went back home to get showered. The guys played Risk with Cody's dad for a while, it got pretty heated...all the betrayal! They had fun though. After their game they all took a nap and Tara and I ran to Target to get some treats, lotion for our sunburns and some anti freeze for our car. Then we stopped and got some yummy frozen custard, lemon and oreo. Josh put the anti freeze in our car and the AC was working again!

That night we went on a hike where the settlers got the lava rock to put beneath the St. George temple because it was a swamp, they had to take those rocks a long way.Then we went to see District 9. It was so weird and gross. We didn't know what to say about the movie for a while after we left, we were speechless.

We got up Sunday morning and got ready to head back out on the road for the long ride home. The boys played Risk again before we left. On the way out of town, we stopped to look out over the city from a very big rock. It was really cool.

Our AC quit working again on the way out of St. George so we were pretty hot on the way home. Luckily it was getting cooler the further north we went.

It was such a fun little getaway, we had a blast. I hate coming back to real life but it was good to see our furbabies. My dad was great and stayed with them while we were gone, I don't think they missed us, they love him!

Six...

Six years of marital bliss was celebrated today and we still like each other.

I love this man more than words can say. He makes me so happy and makes me laugh every day. I'm so grateful we found each other.

We went to see this movie...It was really good, a little long but I loved it. We went to dinner at Chili's and ate too much.
I can't believe it's been six years since the best day of my life, but it seems like forever, too. I'm so thankful to have Josh and to have the relationship we have. I love our life together.

I Love Technology & What Happened To The Sun?

I love technology. I love what it puts at my finger tips daily. I love being on the internet for hours, checking up on all my blogs and looking at anything that happens to cross my mind. Any information I want is right there in a matter of seconds, finding out who was in what movie and what other movies they've been in on IMDb, the celebrity gossip on TMZ, how to make anything I want and watch any music video or hilarious comedians on YouTube. And taking thousands of pictures with my digital camera, not having to wait for them to get developed and wondering if they are going to turn out good. How amazing technology is.

On Wednesday when I got home from work, Josh was studying his school work and said he had gotten an email from Ben asking if he would get on the Google video chat in a few minutes because his daughter, Aurora, wants to hear Josh sing his "Ringo Bingo" song. Ben, Ilaria and Aurora are in Switzerland while Ilaria's dad battles stage 4 rectal cancer and Josh has talked to them a couple of times on video chat and sang "Ringo Bingo" for Aurora and she loved the song and loved seeing Ringo. I haven't been able to see them until Wednesday and we talked and sang songs to each other for over an hour. We haven't seen them for a couple of years so it was so good to see them. It's amazing that someone can be half way around the world but because of technology you can still see and talk to them every day.

When I got off work yesterday afternoon, the sky was kind of pink and hazy and it was really windy and looked like a rain storm was coming in. I went to dinner and shopping with my mom last night and as we got to El Sol's the sun was blanketed by smoke because apparently the world was on fire around us. Later, a lady in Michael's said there were 50-100 fires between Bountiful and Cache Valley. When we came out of Michael's we couldn't even see the mountains around us anymore, they were covered by smoke.

Here's what the sun looked like as we went into El Sol, and yes, the sky really was that color, too.

And here's what it looked like when we came out of dinner, you could see the smoke billow around in front of it.

Salt Lake: Day 2

While we were at Tyler's wedding on Saturday, we met a neighbor of Josh's Uncle John's. His wife of 32 years had just passed away unexpectedly and they were having a celebration of life for her on Sunday. Uncle John told him about Josh's singing and guitar playing and asked that Josh maybe sing a song or two the next day at the celebration. Josh, of course, said he would love to do it for him. So we headed down to Salt Lake again Sunday morning. We met Josh's mom at the new church history museum. We only got to see one level of it because of the time but it was really cool. I really want to go back and see the rest of it. We got to see what the bunks were like on the emigrant ships and they had the old baptismal font from the Logan temple. We also watched a video about the Mormon Battalion. They have so many interesting, personal belongings of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and a lot of others in that museum. It was so fun, we'll definitely be going back.Then we headed down to Sandy to see Shannon and the kids since we didn't see DJ in the hospital the day before. You would never guess the sweet little boy who I say had just spent 2 days in the hospital. He was CRAZY! He couldn't sit still, he wanted me to show him how to do cart wheels and come see this and that and throw the ball. Those steriods seriously made him so hyper. He started playing baseball with Elizabeth's new kitty, Marley's, toy. He just kept saying "batter, batter, swing!", he just couldn't hold still. Shannon finally broke down and got Elizabeth a cat, even though Shannon is allergic to them. Elizabeth LOVES cats and is so happy to have Marley.
We headed back up to the avenues for the celebration of life. There were so many people there and it was outside in the heat. The woman was buddhist, so they did the buddhist ceremony with chanting and lighting incense, it was interesting. Then people got up to talk about what a great mother and person she was, and all the help she has given people through out her life. Her husband had forgotten to ask Josh to come up to sing so Josh went and put his guitar away. We were ready to go home when a man came up and said they were ready for Josh to sing, so he got his guitar back out but as he did his guitar case broke and sliced his finger open. We scrambled to find Band-Aids for him to play. He was going to play a couple of songs but only played one because he sliced open his middle finger on the hand he plays the chords on and it was hurting. We thought we were going to have to take him to get stitches, but it was okay once we got home. Thank Goodness!

Busy Salt Lake Weekend Day 1

With all of our lazy weekends lately, we finally got a busy one. Josh's cousin was getting married on Saturday up at Snowbird. They didn't invite any of the cousins, just the aunts and uncles, so Josh was going with his mom and I was going to stay with Shannon's kids while she and Arnold went to the wedding, too.

Well our plans got changed Friday afternoon when I found out that DJ had been rushed to Primary Children's Hospital from Alta View hospital because he was having a hard time breathing and was gasping for air. He had a cough while going to bed Thursday night and woke Shannon up at 1 am saying his tummy hurt. Shannon's cure-all is to take a "tubby", so she put him in the bath tub to see if that helped him. When she was getting him out of the tub he started gasping for air and couldn't breath. She woke Arnold up and he hurried and threw some clothes on DJ and Shannon rushed him to Alta View Hospital. In the ER they told her it was life threatening and they were going to have to "bag" him, put in a breathing tube. They decided that they could do more him up at Primary Children's so they rushed him up there in an ambulance.

They did a lot of testing on him and couldn't figure out what was going on. They thought it may be an allergic reaction to something, but he hadn't had any milk which is the only allergy we know he has. They had given him 2 adult doses of steriods to open his bronchioles up so he could breath which just made the boy bounce off the walls, then had to give him a sedative so he would calm down. They also had to pull some fluid from behind his ears by putting a tube down his nose which wasn't so pleasant from what I heard. They had to hold him down, poor boy. I wanted to go down and see my bub on Friday night but the doctors had him quarantined and told Shannon that only one parent could be in there at a time so that DJ didn't get excited. They tested him for the swine flu and we had to wait to get the primary results from that which was negative but they still sent it for a culture to see if it popped up.

Friday night was a bad night for him, he started having a hard time breathing again so they put him on 3 liters of oxygen and his O2 saturation was in the low 80's. They had to give him more steriods. One time when they came in to give him his medicine he said "No yuck" then turned to the doctor and said "You suck." He obviously was sick of being there. When I talked to him on the phone Friday night he told me he wanted to go home to see Noah, his big brother.

They released DJ on Sunday morning saying he had had a severe asthma attack. He's never had asmtha before but now has to be on daily medicine for it.

So Shannon didn't get to go to the wedding, I went in her place. It was beautiful up there with the mountains as the backdrop. The girl Josh's cousin married is kind of an earthy, hippie girl. She wanted to wear a tie-dyed dress but wore a gorgeous white silk dress. Her hair is dreaded and she had flowers all over in it. She looked gorgeous! They seem so in love, I'm so happy for them.

They danced back down the aisle, it was adorable. We all sat outside for a while talking with the aunts and uncles and the cousins who were there. One side of the hotel facing the mountains was a giant wall of windows and the reflection of the mountains and trees was beautiful.

Josh' s mom and her brother and sisters, that were there.

Josh and I with the cousins who were there and Josh's uncle Don.

We had a yummy buffet dinner, then the toasts that the parents of the bride and groom gave and toasts from the sisters and brother of the bride and groom. After that the had the first dance and the dances with the father of the bride and bride and the mother of the groom and groom, then eveybody danced. I couldn't get Josh to come dance with me so Rosie and I were dancing with everybody. I knew that Josh's cousin Marla wanted to dance with Josh so I was sneaky and asked her to go get Josh knowing he wouldn't tell her no. He wasn't very happy about it, but was a good sport.There was a waterfall in the mountains up there.

And the beautiful sunset on the way home.