Movies, sushi and goodbyes

Last weekend was a lot of fun. Water Garden movie theaters moved in to Holladay across from the old Cottonwood Mall. It's similar to the dollar movies in price and the candy, drinks and popcorn are super cheap, that's probably my favorite part. 

Friday night we grabbed some sour patch kids, mambas, reese's pieces and popcorn and saw Captain Phillips. It was a great show! After the movie, Spence, Aaron and I watched the Olympics all night. Go team USA!

Since Spence and Aaron live together, every Saturday morning we make breakfast together. It's usually a mix of sausage or bacon, eggs, hash browns, pancakes or french toast, and sometimes breakfast burritos. It's a yummy tradition that's been going on for about 2 months. 

Later on Saturday Gavin and Madi came over and we went hot tubbing at my place and then went and got some sushi at Shogun downtown. We love getting half off late night sushi there. The warm miso soup and sushi never disappoint. Plus I love taking off my shoes and sitting on the little table nooks there. 

Sunday was one of my real good friend's mission farewell. Xanni gave a great talk, and even slipped the word "floop" in. There was tons of people there to support her, and the food was good! Here we are last night when Madi and I went to say goodbye to her before she got set apart. I am so proud of her! Right now she is on her way to the Mexico MTC, good luck Xan, I'll miss ya! 

Weekend Fun

My mom came to visit over the weekend. She had a long, hard trip to get here since the south was frozen over from the snowpocalypse last week, but she made it!

Friday I took work off and we went on bought a very pretty and sparkly long white dress :). Later that night we went to Zupas with Spence and Aaron. We were bummed when we found out Zupas no longer makes the chocolate fondue.

Saturday we ran around a looooot. We sampled some very delicious cupcakes and visited a greenhouse.

Sunday we had fun just relaxing, visiting my grandma at Sunrise and just munching away on Super Bowl snacks and played Blokus about a million times! Aaron is obsessed with that game haha.

Monday my mom took me to Market Street Grill for lunch and we finished it off with their to die for key lime pie yummmm.

It was a fast weekend but good. Now she's back to the Tax Season grind.

Pictures, pictures, pictures

Sometimes pictures are funner to look at then reading. So here are some of my favorite pictures from the past couple of months.

I am very lucky to work at an awesome advertising agency. Along with working there I get some great benefits..... like awesome Jazz tickets. Like these on the 7th row. Aaron was pumped, he loves playing and watching sports. I also got to bring along my brother Spence and his friend so it was lots of fun. Aaron works at Fidelity downtown so it's always super easy to just meet him  at the game! 

My family has a tradition of going out for Thanksgiving dinner at the Ross Bridge Country Club. And boy is it delicious! It's close to where they live in Hoover Alabama, and it is true southern food! They always have fried collard greens, grits corn bread stuffing and even mac & cheese along with the traditional turkey and mashed potatoes. It doesn't hurt that we don't have to cook or clean up :). We are missing David and Kim here. 

One of my best friends from Riverton is going on a mission! Xanni got her call to Boston Massachusetts... Spanish speaking! She is going to be awesome, really though she has gone through a lot to get her call, and is so excited, I couldn't be happier for her. Here's Madi, Xanni and I all together after she opened it. 

Continuing on with our Jazz tickets, we have been twice in the past week and a half. On one of those occasions we got buffet tickets and tunnel access to meet the players after the game! The buffet was so cool, you go in before the game and they have a spread and table laying out- they even had ham and a caterer to cut it for you, all the coke products you would want, salad, potatoes, chicken... man I'm getting hungry. Then at half time you get to go back and they have cakes, nachos, popcorn and more coke products, we are lucky kids. I think I was more excited for the food, while Aaron was more excited about meeting the players haha. 

It's sad that this picture of the onion rings are my only picture of us up in Park City, but those onion rings were really good. A few weekends ago Spence and a date, Aaron's sibling and wife Jake and Mary and Aaron and I went up to Park City. We went up to the factory outlets at Kimball Junction and then ate at the wonderful Red Rock. We planned on going down to Main Street to walk around during Sundance, but there was literally no parking anywhere so we ended up heading home, but it was a good little outing.

Ice skating for Family Home Evening last week. I saw a pool of blood on the ice and another girl fall down, and stay down for about 10 minutes. Luckily we had no injuries! 

I am so glad Jake and Mary live in Holladay close to us. I love hanging out with them. Last week we went to the Utah gymnastics meet. We usually hang out with them every weekend and watch the Bach every week too. Here is a picture Mary got of us all. 

I think that's enough pictures for now! Looking forward to spring coming soon so we can do more outdoor things! 

Thirteen point one

Thirteen miles...... thirteen miles..... THIRTEEN MILES!

The half marathon happened, Saturday October 19th. Thirteen miles.

A few friends and I- Aaron, Madi, Gavin and Adam rand the South Jordan Half Marathon on Saturday.

I had my best mile times, best 5K times, and best 10K times, I have run, including my training for it. Still not great, but finished faster than I thought I would at 2 hours and 18 minutes.

It helped having people around running, and having Madi run with me.

My mom, Spence, Claire and my roommate Kim were all at the finish line, which was nice. Apparently they were all screaming and cheering me on right at the finish, but I barely even noticed them, cause I had my eyes on the prize, I was almost done.

Yay for getting a break from running for now. And yay for putting a half marathon down on the books!

Zion not Zions

I still don't know why Labor Day is called Labor Day, since I (and most people) have work off and get to celebrate and relax.....

I went down to Aaron's hometown Hurricane(pronounced her-i-cun.... I don't get it either) with him over the long weekend. We spent the weekend hiking at Zion National Park(I just barely learned that there is no "s" in Zion), making and eating brick oven pizza, visiting with his family and friends, looking at mission pictures, playing lots of games, singing to N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys, and of course going to the famous Bear Paw in St. George for a late breakfast. 

I haven't been to Zion since I was a little kid. I couldn't believe how pretty it was! I felt like a little kid again, gaping at the steep crimson canyon walls and watching the wildlife. It was a little crowded because of the holiday weekend, but it didn't really matter. 

Aaron loves the Angels Landing hike. Hurricane is super close to Zion and he would run and power walk Angels Landing in high school 3 times a week in the summer! The hike is about 5 miles round trip with lots of switch backs and some real big drop offs towards the end. 

[crazy switchbacks]

When we headed to the trail we started counting how many Asians we would pass, soon we realized there were lots of Indians as well, and the Indians surpassed the Asians headcount by a landslide! It was like 65 to 51! 

The only way to get to the tippy top of the Angels Landing hike is to take the chains on a skinny path with cliffs falling to the canyon floor just inches from your feet. I was pretty scared. It seemed like forever, but we finally made it to the top, and the view was spectacular!

[not me, but wanted to show the intense chained segment]

Two girls were following us forgot their camera and asked if we could take some pictures of them and email them. No biggie right? Well, lucky for us those girls worked for Toms and told us to each pick out a pair on the website and they would send them to us as a thank you for taking their picture. How nice! 

[sweaty, dirty and wet, but I made it!]

Long sunny nights and comfortable evenings are fleeting. I am taking as much summer in as I can for these last few weeks, enjoying the warm weather, comfortable nights, driving with the windows down and ate about as many snow cones as you can imagine before my favorite shaved ice shack (Island Flavor) shut down for the summer. 

Goodbye summer, you will be missed! 

HBD

JULY

Georgetown cuppycakes. Jewelry. 1D. Rodeo. Blue Lemon. Snow cones. Baby showers. Fireworks. Holidays. Blue Lemon. Nordie's. Froyo. Pizza. Failed half marathon attempt. Swimming. Blue Lemon. Merica. Late nights. Early mornings. Deadlines. Face Time. Drive in. 

1D

Cupcakes! 

Rodeo

Wedding

I went to a wedding last week, and I wasn't even a bridesmaid! Can you believe it? I'm actually sort of glad I wasn't even though it was my brother David's wedding, because hey, I got to pick my own dress!

Last week my parents, grandparents, Spence and I all hopped in the Suburban and took the extremely uneventful, drive to the middle of nowhere, aka the beautiful Fresnoooooooo California. 

The weekend was full of potato peeling, potato cutting, potato boiling, potato mashing, chicken cutting, chicken shredding, craisin cutting, setting up, taking down, DJing, flower arranging, and a little bit of swimming. 

The night before we had the two families get together for a BBQ from Famous Dave's, it was delish! I gave a mini speech about my bro, with a funny story about playing UNO when we were kids, that no one appreciated, I don't even think my brother did. So there goes my career in wedding speech giving. 

The next day was the wedding day. They got sealed at the Fresno LDS Temple. Super small temple, only one sealing room! After the ceremony we went to lunch and then set up for the wedding for most of the afternoon. 

The house where the reception was had a pool in the backyard, so we started a pool party at the end of the reception, it was so much fun! there were about 8 of us swimming fully clothed in the pool, including my dad, as well as the bride and groom- guess they couldn't let us show them up. So much fun jumping off a diving board in a sopping wet dress! 

The next morning we took the long trek back to Utah, through Reno and the middle of nowhere Nevada, worse then the drive there!

Tonight we are having a Utah reception, so here comes round 2! Too bad there's no pool to jump into tonight!