Old-fashioned Family Update

Hello, my loyal readers (all three of you)!

I realized that I hardly ever do family and/or vacation stories or updates, so here you go.. Warning: this is a picture-heavy post,

Our big summer vacation this year: Utah and Idaho. Yeah, I know.. sounds lame. But, it's our longest road trip yet, and we decided to make the most out of it.

Carter's last official day of school was Friday, June 21st (it got pushed out from the Seattle Snowpocalypse days in February), but we had our nephew's wedding in Utah on the 21st.. so we literally drove alllll night through Washington, Idaho, and Utah to make it to the wedding. It didn't take nearly as long as we thought--we left at 4 PM on Thursday, and made it to Orem, UT by 6 AM (Mountain time), making it only as 13-hour drive. Apparently, the speed limit in Idaho on I-84 is 80 mph!! It was awesome, but I didn't feel safe going much over that in the dark on an unknown road.

We had every day packed full of visits with friends and family. I have one brother and Graham has one sister that live in Utah, so we made seeing them a priority. We had the wedding on Friday (btw, the Payson, UT, temple is amazingly beautiful), visits with my family and Graham's sister on Saturday, fun with cousins, 2nd cousins, and old friends on Sunday, visits with old college roommates and Graham's aunt and family on Monday, and we finally did some typical sightseeing in Salt Lake City at Temple Square with one last college friend visit in Utah before driving to Idaho.

Here are some pictures of our visits and activities. By the way, Carter now calls Utah the "cookie monster state" because of all the cookie places there. I totally agree. WTF Utah? How can you support a cookie place around every corner?

Not a bad random family photo. My mom usually cuts off our heads in the camera.

Just to get a scaled idea of how big and beautiful this temple is.

The happy couple!

Swig cookies--just kind of meh. I wasn't super impressed to be honest. Their soda mixes though--wow--I got the diet soda mix a couple different times, and all were delicious.

I'm officially a great-aunt now. How weird is that?

Graham and baby Brecken. Graham loves naps with babies.

Baby Autumn, who is the baby of Graham's "baby sister" Grace.

We hiked the Y. For those of us that live at low elevation, this is a tough hike at 4550 feet above sea level! Sadie did NOT want to walk or sit on shoulders, so Graham had a really tough hike.

We all lived in the same town from 2008-2011 when we were newlyweds and newly parents. Now in 2019, almost all of our old friends have moved out of our town.

Here's us gals in 2009 for our first "girl's night out". 

The guys. 

3 families worth of kids.

Kelley, Julane, and me in 2019. We were BYU roommates for two years. We all have two kids: one girl and one boy. How random is that? We haven't been all together since 2006. Kelley and I were friends and roommates in Portland after BYU.

Me, Julane, Kelley, and Tiffani in 2005. We totally look the same, right? Motherhood hasn't changed us a bit.

Sadie and Graham's aunt Cindy at the ranch.

The kids got to meet Graham's uncle's horses.

Temple Square

View from the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

I love the big and ornate doors.

Shannon and I were friends and dorm mates in 2001-2002 (crazy long ago, right?).

We drove to Council, Idaho on Tuesday. Graham's grandma lives there. Population: ~800. What? You've never heard of it? Weird. Here it is..

There's obviously not much to do in Council, but really we just wanted to see Graham's sweet grandma. We hung out with cousins, played croquet (I'm not a fan), played horseshoes (I sucked, but not as bad as croquet), and relaxed.

On Thursday we made the windy road trip up Highway 95 to Coeur d'Alene (CDA). We were prepared to give the kids dramamine, which did help them sleep and not be as motion sick as last time we drove on Highway 95. The whole purpose of this trip was to end our longest road trip ever up at Silverwood (the biggest amusement park in the PNW). Graham has been dying to go for ages, so we finally decided to do it.

On Friday, we did some hiking around and swimming in lake CDA. I definitely did not put my head under--that's too cold for me. The lake was beautiful and the 2-mile hike at Tubbs Hill was perfect for our kids. We also saw Post Falls, ID, ate at a Cracker Barrel, and got some huckleberry ice cream.

Cracker Barrel had some games for us to play before we got our food.

Post Falls

More Post Falls

Other side of the falls.

Us hiking at the lake in sandals

They even had a mini suspension bridge

Sadie wasn't super interested in the water.

We spent Saturday at Silverwood. It was expensive, but was perfect for our age of kids. They had a LOT of kiddie rides, so Sadie went on the most rides of all of us. I rode the big roller coasters and had a lot of fun. One was freaking awesome, but I was scared to get motion sickness, so I closed my eyes until I felt the roller coaster slow down.. HAHAHA. That was right before it ricocheted backwards and upside down. Certain swear words came out of my mouth in that moment. We hung out with Graham's cousin and her family, so my kids got to meet more of their 2nd cousins. We didn't really enjoy the water park because we spent most of the time looking for Carter and his 2nd cousin, and I recovered from the roller coasters by laying in a inner tube on the ground. I got really dizzy in the lazy/crazy river. Yes that's right--it's ridiculous, but it only exacerbated my motion sickness from the roller coasters.

The infamous Aftershock roller coaster.

Before the roller coaster madness

Sadie and her second cousin.

Second cousins and giant scoops of ice cream. Perfect way to end the night.

The lines weren't long at Silverwood except for two rides: the ferris wheel and bumper boats. Carter had to ride on both of them, of course. It was at least a 30-60 minute wait for both.

Dinner in bed. I was so done with sleeping in the same room as my kids by this time.

Did I mention that the Iron Man was in CDA the same weekend? Some people asked us if we were there for that. I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time. Graham last worked out in January...

The drive home was supposed to only be about 5 hours, but we had freaking traffic starting in Cle Elum, WA, before even getting to Snoqualmie Pass. Anyways, we had a great time with friends and family despite driving a million miles. Funny enough, Graham and I are about to drive back to Utah for another family wedding in 2 weeks. We are not bringing the kids this time, though. 

The drive home, armed with tablets, markers, coloring sheets, and gummy bears.

All in all, it was a great trip, and now we won't fear long road trips as much. Our kids were pretty good. We just accepted that passenger seat is now called the "slave seat" to serve our masters in the back seat. Sadie was the worst task master. Peace out Utah--until next time.

Date Night

So, Graham and I had a "date night" last night. We took the ferry over to Seattle, did an endowment session, and went out to dinner at BJ's Restaurant and Brewery.

We don't go out to eat that often because Bremerton's selection is quite limited: Shari's, Burger King, Outback... You get the idea. The nearby town has more restaurants, but we just don't have the time or desire to dine out.

One reason is money.. We're really trying to pay off our debts: credit card, my ring, his car..

Another reason is taste. I don't know how many of you know this, but many chain restaurants have pre-made frozen food that the "cooks" just throw into a pan. Ever since my friend told me that, I just don't enjoy eating out that much because the food just tastes "warmed over". The restaurants where I've really noticed the frozen food include the following:

--Applebee's. I will literally never eat here again. NEVER.
--Olive Garden. This restaurant is less noticeable than the others.
--Cheesecake Factory. You can definitely tell the difference in texture between a fresh chopped onion and a chopped frozen onion in a pasta.
--BJ's Restaurant. Graham's chicken was one of those pre-cooked chicken breasts with "grill marks". It was really chewy too.

Anyways, I was really disappointed with the food. Chewy chicken. Yuck.

I'm wondering what you all are interested in hearing about on my blog. I don't see any of you on a regular basis, so what would you like me to blog about? Whitney said more funny stories about Graham (i.e. him eating pot roast off the floor).. So what about you?

Wedding Stuff

Ok, so after many requests to post pictures of my wedding, I'm finally putting some up. These were taken by the foreign exchange students that attended my wedding.. (Long story.)

Happy New Years everybody!

I just wanted to give a shout out to the best friends EVER. Whit and Tish--you helped out so much on my big day and really made me feel special. Thanks for being there for me!

Hopefully my photographer will give me copies of my pictures on a CD or something so I can upload them to my computer and share them with everyone.

Ok, back to work...

Temple

So, I'm going through the temple today for the first time. I'm really excited for the whole experience. I'm expecting... something unexpected I guess. I think it'll be really neat and special.



I bought all of my temple stuff last night. There were so many different kinds of fabrics and styles, so I asked the lady what her opinion was. She would give me a blank look instead of her opinion. I was like HELLO.. I have no idea what I'm doing. My mom was there with me but still.. the worker was of no help at all.



So our parents finally met last night. It was a pretty successful meeting in a good, but not expensive, restaurant called Manzana's Grill right on the lakefront in Lake Oswego. The parents enjoyed swapping stories about crazy kids and their jobs. Now.. all that needs to happen is the meeting of the families. My family is quite older (Graham's oldest brother just turned 25, and my oldest brother is 31 and has 2.5 kids), but I think it'll be ok. I just realized we didn't take any pictures. I always have a camera with me, but I forget to take it out. Oh well.

I got a really cute dress for the rehearsal dinner. Seriously, I hate dresses, but I tried this one on, and I was like dang I look good (meaning SLIM). So yeah, excited for that. Less than 3 weeks!!!


So, Graham wrote a song for me on the piano. He first wanted to call it "The Essence of Beauty" (yes, that's in Zoolander, which he had NEVER seen), but he changed it after watching Zoolander. It's now called "Her Essence".

Graham recorded it at his cousin's own little music studio and added music effects to it. It's awesome, and like 5 minutes long. I love it. Graham is amazing because he will just play music he is making up. He hears the chords and the harmony and just ad libs the songs. He always tells me it's not hard to make up your own songs. Yeah... right.

So, I tried to add the song to my blog, but I can't figure out how to do it. Do any of you know how to do it?