Oh Mona.

One of Utah's mecca cities resides about 30 minutes south of Provo just off I15. How I've made it through my entire career of living in Utah and never experienced the rope swing in Mona I will never know. Luckily, Lola, Mark, and Ryan showed me the way.

Unfortunately, the weather was a little colder that we anticipated. Ryan came prepared, wet suit in hand. (Yes, child-size wet suit.)

Mark and Lola ventured into the lake to swim across.

Due to inclement weather I didn't actually get in the lake...next time Mona. Next time.

Awkward service, awkward statues, and awkward movies.

We like to eat, we do.
So, on Friday night we ventured up to Midway to eat at Cafe Galleria. It is a quaint little Italian restaurant that my parents rave about, so we decided to try it out. The food was good and all, but we all agreed on the fact that it must have been the most awkward dining experience of our lives.

The awkwardness began when we couldn't find anyone to help seat us, and finally we were told to just find a table, and someone would come find us. So, we walked around trying to find a good spot. We ended up on the porch of the building, most people eat outside, and we pulled an extra chair around so all 5 of us could have a place to sit. As we were starting to sit one of the workers came rushing over to us telling us that we couldn't sit there because it was against fire code. Instead of helping show us to another table she walked away leaving us stranded and table-less once more. We found another tiny round table we could all huddle around, and then we sat there for another 10 minutes while we wondered if someone was actually ever going to help us. Finally a little tiny girl who spoke hardly any english named, "Ivy Joan," (psssh, yeah right), came and took our orders. She looked like she might burst into tears at any time, and she couldn't understand a word we said. It was rough...

We followed up our dining experience with some gelato at Zermatt.
This is what happens when I tell everyone to "get together for a photo." Thanks guys.

If you'd like to catch us in action however...

Again, soooo cooperative.

We finished off the evening with Step Up 3D. A bad idea. I have loved the other two because although the storyline is usually lacking, the dancing always makes up for it. Not so much in this one. The storyline was awkwardly awful, albeit nonexistent, and the dancing was all computerized, so it wasn't even real talent. LAME. Still a good time though.

You spin me right round baby right round.

80's Dancing. I recommend it.
We got a group together and headed up to Area 51 for a Thursday night of great music, great outfits, and above average dancing.

Let's be honest, I love to dance anyways, but there is just something about the beats of the 80's that makes the moves unstoppable. We didn't get up to the club until about midnight and we danced straight until 2 in the morning. Yep, you bet I was exhausted for my early morning clients, but let's be honest...so worth it.

I still can't stop singing, "Send me an angel." Good times.

Sun, fun, and water. All favorites.

Last week I went to Lake Powell.
It was glorious.
Every year I usually go with the Safford Family. It is a tradition of about 8 or 9 years. Much to our dismay, the family that had the houseboat the week before our planned trip, drove it over a sand bar causing a lot of damage to it and canceling our trip this year. I was very sad indeed...until my friend Ryan Moss invited Benita, Mark and I to go with his family.
Some of the high lights of the trip were...

1. The Moss family. They were awesome, and SO welcoming to let us invade their vacation.
2. The diving board off the back of the boat.
3. Laying in the sun all day. No concern for time or schedule. We put a lot of good hours into the flotation devices we bought.
4. Laughing...a ton.
5. Playing with Ryan's nieces and nephews. His 4 year old niece Bella called Benita and I "The sisters," and was convinced that we were twins. Mark played with Ryan's nephew Tanner for the entire trip. It was adorable.
6. Morning runs. Benita was a good sport and appeased my exercising addiction. We got up a few mornings and went running in the dried riverbed's and through the trails by our camp.
7. The Luau. The Moss family has a theme day every year. This year's theme day was Hawaiian, and both the boat and the vacationers were decorated from head to toe. The day was full of games, tribal tattoos, Hawaiian music, and a dance party.
8. We ended each night with a campfire. It was so amazing. The weather was perfect and we sat by the fire and laughed and talked for hours.
9. Sleeping under the stars. One thing I love about Lake Powell is sleeping up top underneath the stars. The sky is always SO beautiful.
10. Midnight Tiki Torch Hike. On our last night there we realized there was a lot of oil left in the tiki torches, and we figured what better use than a midnight hike through the red rock. It was awesome.
11. Wakeboarding.
12. Trying to explain to the Moss family that I don't like meat. (Ryan's dad is like the CEO of the meat portion of Albertsons or something...needless to say they eat a lot of meat.)
13. Brian, Ryan's brother-in law's, amazing nightly homemade frozen yogurt. Fat free of course. I was seriously in HEAVEN with this one. Yes please.

It was such a good time. I really do love Lake Powell.

now that's talent

Preface:
If you haven't seen the Old Spice commercials on TV you need to stop what you're doing. Go to You Tube and search for Old Spice. I PROMISE you won't be disappointed.

Now why do I even bring this up? Because my dear friend Stephen Jones took it into his own hands to help BYU create their own commercial parody spoofing the Old Spice commercials, and it is pretty dang good if I do say so myself. It's worth your time. I promise.



It's pretty amazing actually. This video was posted 6 days ago and already has well over a million hits and was featured on CNBC. No big deal Stephen Jones, no big deal.

Slip Sliding Away

I have lived in Utah for a large percentage of my life. I always find it amazing when people tell me about these fun things to do that I have never heard of. The natural water slide in Alpine being one of them. I just heard about this last week from one of my clients and mentioned it to my friends, so we decided to make a Saturday of it.

It was about a 20-25 minute hike up to the waterfalls. They were SO beautiful. We hiked up and around them, and of course went on the slide.

Kiley, and her friend Kacie, got done with EFY Saturday morning so we got to hang out all day Saturday. It was so much fun having my lil' kiki with me! (She's not so little anymore...probably about three inches taller than I am, and DANG that girl is beautiful!)

After we went down the rock slide we hiked over to a pond close by where some boys had built a bike ramp coming down from a huge hill. The bikes were strapped with life jackets so they would float and they'd ride the bikes down and jump off into the pond. My friends, of course, wanted to try it. It looked way too scary for me!

It was so much fun! I can't wait to take my fam there. :)

Drivin' in

100 degree heat? NBD.
We decided to beat the heat by taking a group up to Salt Lake to the Drive In Movie, a guaranteed good time. Did we beat the heat? No...turns out we sweated to each other on love sacs and created a dire need for ice cold slurpees post movie, however...still a great time.

We were fully equipped with about 6 love sacs, tons of blankets, and an air mattress. We saw despicable me, which was fantastic. It was adorable in fact.

Although the air mattress seemed to be a good idea at first these folks, ended up watching the movie on the pavement due to deflation...oops, sorry guys.