Summer Trip #3 Philly

Wow. You'd think with nothing to do I'd blog more. I don't even have any excuses so here goes.

In May (I know I'm way behind) Brad and I went to Philadelphia. We went to visit my dad. He lives in Philadelphia. If this is news to you then I'm sorry. If you want to know why he lives there, you will have to ask him because honestly I'm not sure. I think I just realized why it took me so long to post about this trip..... SOOO how's about we just going to talk about the trip and not why we went.

I was really excited to go to Philadelphia because the history teacher nerd in me wanted to be able to say I'd seen stuff like this:


and this:

and also this:
And of COURSE we saw this:
You don't know what that is? Oh it's just Ben Franklin's "Privy Pot". That's right. His toilet.

My need to see these things is like the French teachers need to go to France. Which reminds me, I watched 'The Jane Austen Book Club' and loved it. But back to the trip. We ate great food from here:
Can't tell where that is? Here I'll help:
We didn't eat at Geno's. Too many flashing lights.
You mean you don't spend your spare time watching food network so you have no idea what the hype is about Pat's and Geno's? Well they are a big deal. Just believe me.

We went out to Lancaster county where we saw a bunch of this:
But I had to steal this photo from google because those buggies go too fast and managed to escape my ancient cameras terribly slow lens. Also I feel like it's cheating for the Amish to be using leaf blowers. It was interesting to see one man plowing his field using a gas powered tractor that was being pulled by horses. Pretty much everything I thought I knew about the Amish is apparently wrong.

We went to Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ben Franklin's house, Reading Terminal Market, Lancaster County, Pat's and Geno's, and Valley Forge. If you want to see more photos of the trip I have them in my facebook album titled Summer '09. If you aren't my friend on facebook then I'm not sure how I'd let you look at the photos so I'm not going to try to figure out how to link to that. At the end of it all of course we did this:

Summer Trip #2 Vegas Baby!

One week after our trip to Logan my mom, sister and I packed up our belongings and headed to Vegas for a wedding. Because my mom had to work that day, and Erin was checking out of her apartment in Logan before driving down to meet us, we didn't leave Provo until after 6. This meant that we got to Vegas at about midnight (1 am Utah time) Luckily we were staying at my Aunt and Uncles house so we knew we'd have beds waiting for us. Saturday morning mom and I went to the wedding while Erin went with her cousin to search for jobs. That evening we went to the reception. After changing our clothes behind our car we headed to the Bellagio to watch the fountains. When we got home we did the traditional road trip tattoos and then came home early the next morning. It was a fast trip but it was fun to hang with the girls yet again! Here are some photos of our awesome tats and of the world record setting chocolate fountain at the Bellagio!

Summer has begun.... weeks ago

So because I was all hung up on what to post for the big one O O, I let some really fun trips go by without reporting about them. Now that school is winding down meaning no more subbing jobs for me I have some time to tell you about my fun summer trips.

The first summer trip I went on started out with my moms sisters. Every year around mothers day (this year was a few weeks early) my mom and her sisters have a girls weekend. It started out as a way to get out of going to their own churches on mothers day (my mother says she doesn't enjoy hearing about how great everyone elses mom is...... makes her feel bad. She really shouldn't) This year they spent a weekend in Salt Lake staying at a fun hotel and partying all night. (or at least until 10) The next day I got to go with them to see "American Fork Idol" at the Desert Star Theater. I love that theater and if you have never been you ought to go see a show. My aunts are a hoot and that made the show even funnier. After the show we all went to my aunts favorite Chinese restaurant. When everyone went their seperate ways my mom and I went to Logan to visit my sister Erin and watch her perform in her last concert as a member of the University Chorale at USU. It was a big production of Beethoven's 9th symphony. It was really neat but something I will only need to see performed in its entirety once in my life. After staying in the scariest motel in Logan we went to participate in Erins last lesson in her relief society. She taught a very nice lesson on families and temple marriage, a topic that was really difficult for her to discuss due to recent events in our family, but she did a wonderful job and got a lot of girls talking and thinking about the subject. We were able to help Erin pack up a few boxes to be ready for her move to another apartment for the summer and we also got to interview her date on Saturday night. Even though it snowed a little while we were there I'm still going to label this summer trip number one because it was the beginning of summer for the college students so it counts.

The condo

I wont title this flashback Friday because it is Monday and that would be a lie. Plus all I've done lately is flashbacks because I don't have time to write except on the weekends. But I thought today I would tell you all about my weekend. My grandmother has a timeshare at the Island Park Resort in Idaho and so we go up there for a weekend at the beginning of every October. So on Friday we were able to leave as soon as Brad got off work and drive up, stopping at my cousins reception in Idaho Falls, and arrive at the condo around 11. We spent most of Saturday in Yellowstone playing and hiking and then Sunday we were able to kick back and relax, listen to a little conference and feed some ginormous fish. I love going up and I love the feeling in Island Park. There are so many memories that I have up there, and I look forward to it every year. I could probably write almost 20 flashback posts about it since we go every year, but I wont. Some of you that read this have come with my family to the condo before and you know that it is one of my most favorite places in the whole world. So now you can enjoy a nice picture of Brad, Erin (my sister) and I at Old Faithful. This picture was snapped online from the webcam that is located in a tree near the geyser. I know we're small but that really is us.

going, going, going

Things at our place are just never going to slow down! We kept with tradition this last week and went on another vacation for the weekend. I'll tell you all about it but first I have to back up to Wednesday of last week. We went and saw Dark Knight. I thought Brad might die because we had to wait 5 whole days from opening to go see it. He has been SO excited for it to come out. So we went on Wednesday with his best friend Ryan and some of Ryan's buddies. It was really good. Brad will probably buy it the day it comes out on DVD. Thursday was a holiday so both Brad and I got to stay home all day and just do nothing. We don't have air conditioning so it got really hot during the day so we decided to go on some adventures. We went to Smiths to try to turn in our big change jar so we didn't have to lug it around when we move. Turns out coinstar charges you 8 percent to exchange coins. LAME. So we just took it home and counted it ourselves and we will probably go get ice cream with it or something. (We are sorry if you are behind us in line but we are using all change.) Eventually we ended up hanging out at the mall. We got Brad some new pants and a new video game. Friday we took of for the booming metropolis of Burley, Idaho. We went with Brads uncle David and his wife Jen and their 3 kids. We stayed at Jen's parents house. They were very kind people and they were so fun to stay with. Brad went and saw the Blue Angels preform with David and he loved it. I hung out with Jen and her mom and the 2 younger boys. We went out to lunch and we went and to the Twin Falls temple open house. It was beautiful. We then went to Shoshone falls. They were beautiful too! The falls actually are painted on the walls in the temple. It was a good day. We got home last night and are getting back in the swing of things today. We don't actually have plans for this weekend so we might stay in Logan! We are hoping to hear from the apartment complex this week so we might end up going down to sign contracts if that goes well. We'll see.

The Blue Angels

The Twin Falls Temple

Shoshone Falls

Theater in the Desert!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love that my husband will go to plays with me and actually enjoy them! This week was girls weekend in Cedar City. But it was even better than last year cause Brad came! He managed to survive the week with my mom, my sister and I and he even had fun. He says that being the only boy with 3 sisters prepared him to be able to handle sharing a hotel room with the 3 of us. It really was a lot of fun and we both felt really cultured afterwards. We drove down to Provo on Wednesday night and stayed the night there. Thursday morning we got up early and drove to Cedar. We saw 'Taming of the Shrew' first and Brad really enjoyed it. When he was in elementary school his 6th grade class did a production of this play and he approved of the man who played the same role in this version. That night we went and saw a play that was written by Molière, a French playwright. The play was called 'The School for Wives'. It was pretty funny. I had this feeling that there was a theme going on because both shows that we saw on Thursday dealt with how to make women behave.........

On Friday we started off the day with going to Cedar City's 4th of July parade. There were so many people IN the parade that I'm not sure who was watching it. Every kid that played on any sport was on an "allstar" team of some sort and they all got to march in the parade. My sister wanted to wait for the band but turns out there was no band in the parade, dang. That afternoon we went to 'Fiddler on the Roof' and that evening we saw 'Othello'. 'Othello' was so long that we missed all the fireworks. We could hear them going off in the distance but the show went until 11 so we didn't see any. It was ok though because the play was really good. I'd never seen it before and I'd never actually known the storyline at all so now I feel more cultured.These are the banners for all the shows they are doing this summer.

Saturday we went to Godfathers pizza for a lunch buffet and turns out they have some really cool temporary tattoos in their little waiting area. Brad got really excited because one machine had marvel comics heroes. My roommates and I used to have a tradition where we would get temporary tattoos on every road trip so we decided to continue the tradition. We both got one and Brad even got a Spiderman one which was his first choice! We convinced Erin to get one but couldn't talk my mom into getting one. Next time! Erin got a sparkly flower and we made it a tramp stamp. I got a sweet Wolverine and put it on the back of my calf.











Saturday we went and saw Cyrano De Bergerac. It was an interesting play. I'd never even heard of it before but there were parts from it that are used in a lot of romance movies and such that I now know where they got their starts. That night Erin and my mom went to one last Shakespeare play while Brad and I drove to St George and watched Les Mes at Tuacahn. If you have never been to Tuacahn you really should look it up. The picture above is in the parking lot. It's an amazing place. They really use the landscape to their advantage for their shows. All in all it was a great trip and Brad and I had a great time on vacation number 2!

Florida Condo

So these are all my pictures from the condo that we stayed in when we went to Florida. I'm sure most of you don't care but it's the best way I can think of to show them to our travel agent. :) So here is the walk through of the condo.

This is the condo. Obviously the day we were leaving since the day we got there it was 2 am.
This is inside the front door. Directly to the left is a door to the garage that we didn't use because it didn't have an automatic opener and we weren't positive the car doors would be able to open once it was in.... Straight back was the first bedroom.
This was Scotts room. It had a washer and dryer in the closet and a bathroom with a big shower.
Up the stairs on the second level was the kitchen and living room.There is a 1/2 bathroom through that open door in the kitchen and a pantry behind the door.

Behind the TV is the stairway up to the 3rd floor. Up there were 2 bedrooms.
This room had a king sized bed and the bathroom had a big tub and 2 sinks.
This room had the 2 twin beds and just a regular bathroom.

So everything worked out great with exactly the right number and sizes of beds. And to think it all cost less than 2 hotel rooms! Thanks Jackie!

Florida!

Florida was so great and I even have a little bit of a tan going on! There is a definite line between pale and pasty on my arms. Perhaps this weeks trip to Cedar city will help the line continue! So here goes my journal entry run down of the whole trip.

Wednesday-
Our flight wasn't until a little later in the afternoon so Brad and I went and looked at apartments first. We were glad when that was done and we were able to get on our way. I watched a bunch of food network on the flight over. It made me crave Macaroni and Cheese....... Dad Dimick bought me some easy mac the last day we were there as a joke. I still want some good deep fried macaroni casserole though..... Picking up our rental car proved to be a little more difficult than necessary. The girls were being silly and the guy behind the counter was being ridiculous. After standing around forever while everything got settled we finally got to our minivan. The windows in the middle rolled down! I was amazed and I think my mom should upgrade her minivan for this feature alone. (I'm easily impressed) We got out the gps but unfortunately it didn't know where the heck our hotel was. We finally called Jackie and got directions and tried to find where we were going. When we would call the number that we had no one would answer so we were worried that if we even found where we were going we wouldn't be able to get in. By the time we got to the condo complex it was about 2 am. We had to go on a treasure hunt to find the first condo which had a box and in that box was an envelope with our name on it which led us to our
condo. We were all sorts of confused and happy to finally get to some beds.

Thursday-
We had planned on going to the theme park the first day but because of our late night we decided it was a beach day instead. We started the day with some breakfast at IHOP. While we were there a balloon guy came up and tried to entertain us while we waited for our food. Scott hates the sounds of balloons squeaking so he just got out 5 bucks left it on the table and went and stood outside. The balloon guy was really not funny at all and he was slow. The best part was watching Devin and Josie trying to figure out his jokes. What they didn't realize was that there was nothing to get because the jokes just weren't funny. He made a friendship flower containing Josie and Devin's favorite colors, he also made a heart with 2 lovebirds for Brad and I.
After breakfast we drove west to check out the beaches on the gulf coast. We went to a beach in Clearwater. I saw some Dolphins swimming in the distance. Brad and Scott got in and had fun jumping the waves. Josie buried Devin and then everyone took some peanuts and fed the birds. Brad had the birds trained to hover just above his head and then they would catch the peanuts in their mouths.
After the beach we headed back to Orlando and we got some dinner at subway. We tried to go to bed early so that we could get to the theme park early the next morning. But of course having a room next to 2 excited 14 year olds makes going to bed early difficult.

Friday-
We got up early and got ready to go to Universal Studios. The forecast called for rain and so we wanted to hurry and do all the outside rides first before it began raining. I actually went on the Hulk roller coaster! I was so proud of myself. I got out of line at Lagoon once because I was too scared to go on Colossus. This ride makes that one look like a kiddie ride. We went on the Spiderman ride which was an awesome combination of a 3d show and a ride. That was probably my favorite. We tried to go on the new Simpson's ride but after we waited for an hour in line they came on the loudspeakers and told us that the ride was broken. "Sorry for any inconvenience." So after we were done going on rides we went home and showered. It never rained so that was nice. When we were ready to go to dinner the girls had fallen asleep and didn't want to get up to come with us so we went to TGI Fridays for dinner without them. We had a lovely cross-dressing waiter/ess who took over an hour to get our food. There was another balloon person but luckily they got pulled to a table on the other side of the room just as she was about to get to our table.

Saturday-
Saturday we went to the Kennedy Space Center. We had a blast! (pun intended) We took the bus tour and went around the complex and learned all about the history of NASA and space exploration and we got to see the things as we were learning about them. We sat a little too close during the 3d movie about walking on the moon and my head kind of hurt for a little while. We also got to go in a simulator that made you feel like you were taking off in the shuttle. Basically it just tipped you back in your seats and shook you around a lot. It was neat. While driving home we got to experience a good Florida thunderstorm. It was raining so hard we could barely see in front of the car. At one point we could smell smoke, probably from a fire that started from the lightening, but it was raining so hard we couldn't see where the fire was. When we got home that night we were flipping channels and we caught "When we left earth." We were excited to continue our space knowledge with a Discovery channel documentary on the very things we just spent the day learning about.

Sunday-
Sunday morning I woke up early (I can't help it anymore) and I went downstairs to eat breakfast and I turned on the tv while I waited for everyone else to get up. Our flight was in the early afternoon so we decided just to sleep in and not worry about getting in any more sightseeing. While I was watching tv I started flipping through the guest book and came across a page that had in bold red letters that checkout time was at 10 and that late checkouts would be charged. I ran upstairs because it was exactly 10:06 at that time. I got Brad up and he woke up everybody else and we all hurried and packed up our belongings. Scott went and turned in the key and it seemed like there wasn't going to be any problem so hopefully there wont be an extra charge. Our flight had a layover in Cincinnati so it took longer to get home. On the first flight the
TV's didn't work so we slept a little. We had exit row seats on all our flights and the flight attendant on this flight asked me if I was 15. (Enter my Napoleon Complex) Brad said he was more offended for his own sake because he didn't want people to think he was married to someone that wasn't even 15. On the flight to Salt Lake the TV's were working but the satellite was down so all we could do was pay to watch movies. I watched the Bucket List. I liked it a lot. We'll probably rent it and watch it again so Brad can see it. When we were getting on that flight I asked a flight attendant if the TV's were working and he said he thought they were but when he saw we had paid for movies because the satellite was broken he felt bad so he refunded us the money we paid to watch the movies! It was awesome.

Overall the trip was so nice! We are so grateful to Josie and Devin for getting good grades and to Scott and Jackie for inviting us and paying for everything! It's an experience that as newlywed students we would have never been able to do on our own. If anyone else needs chaperone's for vacations and you want to pay for Brad and I to go anywhere we will try our best to work it into our schedule!