Rain Rain Rain!!

Cedar City has had a SUPER dry winter and summer. We seriously did not get a single drop of rain between the months of May-mid June. But as soon as July hit, we have had rain for almost 3 weeks straight! Most of the time the rain is here and gone in a matter of minutes, or it is a slow drizzle that will hang out for a while but not really rain much water, but today, holy cow it POURED cats and dogs!


Paul and I went out to our garden to do some weeding, but half way though we started to get drenched. We ran back to the car and decided that unless we wanted to wade through the mud, it was a good time to head home. Since it was seriously pouring rain we figured by the time we got home it would stop and the sun would be out, but when we got home it was raining harder than it was at the garden! The road was flooded and water a foot deep was all up and down the street! We just had to go out and play in it!

Adventures in the Big Sky State

     The next big adventure of the Burnett family was a trip to Montana to visit my cousins. Sadly, Paul missed the first half of the trip because he was in Las Vegas doing an externship for an accounting firm.  
     Paul went to Las Vegas for 3 days for a crash course/ overview of the accounting firm McGladrey. He got to have an inside view of what it would be like to work there, he did a lot of networking with the employees, and he got to see the major differences between the auditing side of accounting, and the tax side. Apart from all of the "work" that was getting accomplished, Paul did go bowling, went to dinner several times, and did a fun service project.
     Meanwhile, back in Montana, I went with my family on a backpacking trip. Every year they go on one in various parts of the Western United States. This year we chose a hike that was near Bozeman, Montana. After the hike we would drive about 30 miles to Livingston Montana for our Blatter family reunion.
     Our hike started on Monday July 23rd and we planned to hike out Friday the 28th. When all of us arrived at the trailhead and put on our back packs the clouds looked like it was going to rain soon. About 20 minutes into our hike lightning started striking all around us and the thunder began shortly thereafter. About fifty minutes into our hike it started to downpour like crazy. Because we had started our hike around 4:30, we figured it would be a good idea to start looking for a place to camp. We found a small campsite meant for maybe two tents, but it was all we could find. Somehow we managed to stuff 5 tents into a tiny site. The whole time we were setting up tents it was raining hard. We had to hold up our rain flys over  our tent in attempt to keep as much water out as possible. After all was said and done, my tent only had about 1/2 and inch of water sitting in the bottom. Thankfully we were prepared with a few small towels to dry out the tent. After we all got our tents set up it stopped raining (how ironic), but we realized that we had left a bunch of things back in the car. Since the trailhead was only 1.5 miles-ish away, my cousin, little brother and I decided to take an evening jog back to the car. We got back to the car no problem, but on the way back to camp, we just happened to stop running for a minute to look around and we saw a baby grizzly bear about 10 yards away from the trail. First thought was cool a bear, quickly followed by baby bear = mama bear = trouble. We kind of took off running and didn't stop for a while.

     The second day of our hike was pretty gruesome. It was all up hill. We had a huge elevation climb and it wasn't super fun. We did find a pretty neat water fall that we stopped at, but other than that it was just hill after hill, climb after climb until everyone was ready to crash. We finally got to the lake we wanted to camp at, but we found a sign saying "No camping near lake" frustrated and tired, we decided to hike a little ways to the next lake. It wasn't that far to the next lake, but we had another steep climb to get there. Finally we got to the upper lake and found a good camping spot.
   
 Day three was sort of an adventure day. We kept our campsite from the previous day as a base camp and just hiked up to one of the other lakes. We hiked out several miles and found the lake, but it was pretty pitiful. My dad wanted to hike even higher to see another potential lake, but half of our group was tired. The other half of our group (me included) went with my dad to hike a little higher. We were in a hurry, so rather than follow the trail, we basically scaled the mountain and climbed up a rock slide. Once we were at the top, we had a lot of fun rolling rocks down the hill seeing if we could make them either jump really high, or roll all the way down without breaking, (we did get a few rocks to jump 40 feet or so in the air). The view from the top was fantastic.  You could see everything it felt like. We found that my dad had a few bars of cell service, so just for kicks and giggles I called Paul from atop the mountain. When we got back to our base camp it was still pretty warm outside which meant that it was time to play in the lake. Even though it was warm outside the lake was pretty chilly. I got my hair washed and my clothes washed, but I couldn't bring myself to jump in. It was just too cold.
   
 Day four we hiked out and headed down the trail. The plan was to hike about 10 miles and camp, then on Friday we would hike out the last 3 or so miles. After singing lots of trail songs we got to the spot we figured we would camp and half our group decided they wanted to just hike the last 3 miles out  and just be done with the hike. After a vote, it was clear that we weren't going to be camping in the wilderness again. We pushed on to get to the end of the hike. Five miles later (not three) we got back to the car. We were all pretty beat from pushing ourselves so far today. We got in the car and drove to a family members house in Livingston to take a REAL shower and have some REAL food. Because there were 12 of us all trying to use one shower, I had to wait about 2 hours before I got a turn. Thankfully the water was still warm! We pitched our tent in the yard and camped out on the grass for a night.

     Day five (Friday) is the first day of our Blatter family reunion. This was not just my grandpa and his kids kind of reunion it was my grandpa and his brothers and sisters and all their kids, and all their kids! It was pretty neat. We got to stay in a massive horse arena and do all kinds of montana things. We tried to set our tent up outside but the wind was so bad it pretty much blew our tent down. Since we could tell the storm was only going to get worse, we set up our tent inside of the horse arena (it was indoors). All the cousins had a blast visiting with each other and getting reacquainted with the other relatives we don't see very much. Paul flew in from Las Vegas today also. It was so nice to see him after pretty much a whole week  of being apart.

     Saturday was packed full of activities. Half of the family got inner tubes and tubed the Yellowstone River. I was lucky enough to have swollen tonsils so I didn't tube the river, but I canoed it with Paul, my little brother Tallus, Dad, Mom and Kessla. We had so much fun trying to hit as many rapids as we could. My parents had to bail out their canoe a few times because of all the water from the rapids. After Canoeing was horseback riding. I chose not to ride horses because I wasn't feeling well at all. Paul had a blast running and trotting around. That evening we had a family devotional type thing. We learned more about our heritage and swapped stories and got to know our relatives a little better.

     Sunday morning we all went our separate ways and headed home. The trip wasn't too bad, but after the 8 hour drive from Montana, Paul and I had to drive another 3 hours to get back to Cedar City. We got back to Cedar around midnight, but driving the extra three hours was totally worth it to sleep in my very own bed for the first time in over a week!

Small Town 4th of July

In attempt to save money Paul and I decided that this year we would spend our 4th of July right here in Cedar City. We didn't really have any huge plans, but we banded together with some of our other married friends that were staying here and had ourselves a party!

Wednesday morning (July 4th) Cedar City put on a cute little parade. Paul and I went along with our friends Shay and Ray Martel and Ada and Dion Munk who also brought their cute kids Madi and Dory. I am used to big town parades with real floats and lots of cool stuff, but this year the parade was way smaller than I thought it would be, but it was really fun to come and support the small town community. There weren't any big snazzy floats but there were dance companies and baseball teams and lots of familiar faces. I think I could get used to small town festivities. They just feel so friendly.

 Paul had fun with Madi and Dory. He took them into the street with the "big kids" to get candy and sprayed with water. They thought it was so cool to get candy thrown at them. Some of the bigger kids were actually thoughtful enough to share some of their candy with the little kiddos.

One of the nurseries here in town passed out plants in the parade. We jumped on that opportunity and snatched a yellow crookneck squash to add to our garden. Paul and I just had a crookneck die at our garden so this one should be perfect to replace our dead one. 

After the parade was over, we debated on what we were going to do. We had planned a hike, but with time constraints we couldn't manage a hike. We decided to go to what we call the baby lake. Some how  Shay and Ray convinced Ada and Dion to come swimming with us so we had a great ole time. For once the wind wasn't blowing us away. The weather was somewhat nice, and the water temperature was actually quite pleasant.

Paul jumped right into his old habits of swimming lessons and worked with Madi on coming deeper into the lake. Ray and I tried to start a water fight with Paul which turned into Paul and Ray wrestling with each other. At that point I just let them have at it. I joined the girls on the beach to dry off.

After the lake, we planned to have a small BBQ with as many neighbors as we could get. Paul was excited to show off his grilling skills again. When dinner time came around we had a pretty good amount of people show up. We were expecting to have maybe 4 couples come, but we had at least 15 people and eat some grub with us.

After dinner we played some Jungle Speed and waited around for the firework show. Because Utah has had so many fires, and Cedar had a fire scare a week ago, there were restrictions on our fireworks. They had to be in a parking lot during certain hours and only on certain days. Since we knew everyone would be doing fireworks at the park or school parking lot we decided to save money ourselves and watch everyone else's' fireworks. We set up camp at one of the high schools with hopes that it would be a good spot to watch the big show that the town would put on. The firework show was better than I expected. When the town show was going on, other people were shooting of arial fireworks to try and compete with the "big guns." Despite not having and immediate family to share our 4th of July with, it was better than I expected it would. Paul and I have been blessed with such amazing friends that have really added to our experience here in Cedar City.

A Week Apart

The last week of June the Burnett family took a little road trip "Up North." Up North is what us Southern Utahans consider anything further North than  Fillmore. Anyway, Paul's youngest brother Jonathan was giving his farewell talk in church on the 24th of June so we went up to visit.

I do just need to add that on the 22nd and 23 of June Paul and I played ultimate frisbee in the Utah Summer Games with our SUU team, the frisbee militia. Anyway, after like 11 grueling games spread over those two days, we placed 3rd in the tournament and received the bronze medal! That basically made our day. It was fantastic.

Anyway, back to the trip up North. So we go, and visit Paul's family and say bye to his brother, then Paul gets on an airplane to fly to Texas for the week. He got to go with SUU's PBL (professional business leaders) club to a national competition in San Antonio. They had to present a project and get judged on it. While Paul was in Texas I didn't want to be alone at home in Cedar so I stayed with my parents in Riverton and we had a few little adventures of our own. 

Monday: Paul arrived in Texas at 12:00 AM Monday morning, then had to wake up at 6 AM to get ready for his presentation. He practiced with Randi and Johanna at 7:30 and presented at 10. After getting that huge load off of his chest, he walked the river walk and visited the shops in San Antonio. That evening he had a lovely dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe, and goofed off at the pool.

               I woke up early to work out with my mom and get stuff done around the house. We loaded all the girlies in the car and went to Joann's in search of a sewing project to work on that week. We found swimming suit material and decided that all the girlies were going to make our own swimming suit top. When my dad got home he made all of us do bench pressing and curls, but it was great to have a hard workout.

Tuesday: Since Paul had done so well with his presentation his team made finals. They practiced early in the morning and presented for finals at 9:30 AM. After finals they all took a little river cruise down the San Antonio River walk as well as a trip to the Alamo. Since everyone was so tired they basically all took a nap then had dinner at a delectable BBQ restaurant. 

                 I had decided that Tuesday was the decided sewing project day. We pieced our suits together and worked on them for most of the day. No big adventures here. 

Wednesday: Paul had a lovely meeting to go to, but thats ok, because after the meeting he got to go shopping around town. And of course, he had to watch the soccer game for the Euro Cup. Wednesday was the closing ceremonies for Nationals, so that evening, thats were Paul was. They announced that Paul's group had gotten 1st place in his competition. 

                    Today my mom declared that we needed to chop down an apple three in our  backyard. I enlisted my youngest brother Tallus to do all the sawing of the large branches, then Kalena, Kessla and I all chopped off small branches and stripped them of their leaves. Surprisingly we got the whole tree chopped and stripped of leaves in less than 2 hours. Because we felt we had labored SO hard in the back yard, the kids decided we deserved a water fight. We picked up some squirt guns and water balloons and filled up our little kiddie pool in the yard. Kalena and I had the water balloons so we decided to join forces. Together we dominated Tallus and Kess in the water fight. They were totally soaked by the end. In their defense they got us real good too, but we got them better. While we dried off, all the girls decided to draw with chalk on the sidewalk. It was so joyous. Wednesday night my family introduced me to the movie Thor. I had never seen it before and it is fabulous! Right after we finished it we just HAD to rent Captain America from Redbox and watch that one (because I hadn't seen that one either). They are both fantastic movies. Now all I gotta do is watch the Avengers. 

Thursday: Paul got on a plane at 6 AM to fly back to Utah. He had to catch a plane from SLC to Cedar but not until 5 in the evening so we planned to spend most of the day together before he had to go. He landed and came and got me from my parents. We visited his parents for a little bit then went to play ultimate frisbee with my dad's coworkers. It was really fun, and real nice to see Paul after 4 days. Once we finished frisbee, we picked my dad up from work and went to Paul's house. The plan was to play some FROLF (frisbee golf) but the course was kind of taken over so I said my goodbyes to Paul and left with my dad. Paul had to go to work the next day and take a test in Cedar so he couldn't stay up North with me. 

               After Paul left I got to go and do some horse therapy with an autistic boy in my mom's ward. We took the horses up to Dimple Dell and rode for almost two hours. It was a really humbling experience to hold that cute boy in my arms and kind of see the world through his eyes for those 2 hours. I decided that one day when I am not teaching anymore, I would love to do horse therapy for cute kids that need it. 

Friday: Paul had to work and to take his motorcycle test (which he passed WOOT WOOT)! Then he went to the ward picnic and started a water fight with the youth in the ward. After his appearance at the picnic, he taught our really awesome neighbors Shay Martel, and Taylor and Aaron Remer how to make one of his favorite sandwiches, the samoan. 

            Some how I convinced my family to float the Provo river on Friday. We recruited a few rafts from neighbors and fixed the holes in our rafts. When we got to the river the sun was shining, it was super hot and we were all so excited to float the river. Kalena and I decided to take a two man raft and try to survive together. We figured that together we were either smart enough, or dumb enough to survive the trip down the river. As we started floating the river, the sun just kind of disappeared! It got a little cold outside too. We kept going though. Kalena and I hit a few

 patches of white water rapids and some how survived. About 1/4 of the way down the river we got high centered on a rock and put a hole in our raft! We immediately started freaking out and waving our hands in front of our face like little girls tend to do. Just a little ways up Kess was in a four man raft with our neighbor Rachel. We begged them to let us join their boat and thankfully they let us. The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful until my dad started a water fight. It was SOOO cold. But we got him pretty good, so we all felt good about it. By the time we got to the end of our river run, the sun had come out again, we only had one hole in all of the rafts and no one got seriously hurt. Needless to say, it was a success! So, as most of you know, Utah has been burning to the ground the past week, and when we were driving home from our river trip, we could see that ANOTHER fire had started in Herriman. Crazy! 

Saturday: Paul had the luxury of helping another family move out. After that he basically just loafed around the house to wait for his wonderful wifey to come home to him. 

                Today I was planning on going home to Cedar again. My parents were going to just do a little overnight road trip, but all the kids wanted to come so it turned into a sweet little family deal. by 12:30 we got on the road and headed down to Cedar. The trip was relatively uneventful. When we got to Scipio, there was another fire that had started. At one point the flames were seriously over 100 feet high. I really do hope that all of Utah doesn't burn down. We got to Cedar around 5 ish and my parents wanted to go and see Cedar Breaks before it got dark so we kind of unloaded the car then loaded it back up with people (Paul included) and went up to Cedar Breaks. Afterword we had pizza factory and made paracord bracelets while we watched a movie. 

After a whole long week of being apart, it was so lovely to be back with the hubby. We both had so many wonderful adventures apart, but I definitely think that they are even better when we are together!

Until next time!!!

End of School... Time for Summer!

Paul was lucky to finish his spring semester the first-ish week of May. My summer break didn't start until the third week of May. I wasn't too upset that Paul's summer started before mine because he gets to work all summer. I get the summer off. :)

A little bit before school ended Paul received an invitation to join the prestigious Beta Gamma Sigma, which is a club that only the top 10% of the business students receive an offer for,  and it is nationally known. Because this is such "big" thing, he had to be inducted into the group. We got to dress up real pretty and go to a ballroom for a fancy catered meal. The food was not so great, but it sure looked nice. Paul was inducted and we both decided that one day when Paul is rich and famous, even though the food isn't always great, dressing up and going to fancy ballrooms would be kind of fun.

For memorial day weekend my cousin Krista Sohn and her husband Craig came down to visit us. We had lots of fun plans to go hiking, and cliff diving and just enjoy the awesomeness of Southern Utah. But to our dismay Krista and Craig brought bad weather with them. The weather was great all week until they showed up on Friday night. It started to get chilly and windy, and Saturday morning at frisbee it was on and off hailing and snowing and raining. We decided that it would be to cold to do anything in Cedar City. We had to hope that in St. George the weather would be a little bit nicer. Paul and I decided to take Krista and Craig to Snow Canyon. There are lots of fun hikes there, some caves, and the weather is usually about 10 degrees + warmer. The first hike we did was to the Lava caves. We were so smart and only brought one flashlight so traveling through the caves was not the easiest thing we did that day. There were a few old glow sticks still giving off light in the deepest cave. It was kind of cool to turn off our one light and see the faint glow of the glow sticks all round us. It kind of made me realize how small we really are and how big the whole wide universe is.


After hiking through the caves we did a hike to called the rock amphitheater. It takes you up to natural amphitheater made in the rocks. There is also a little cove filled with whiter than white, finer than fine sand. We didn't really do a whole ton at the actual amphitheater, but we played in the "celestial sands" for a good half hour, took lots of crazy fun pictures, then decided we were all really hungry so we headed back to Cedar to eat at the famous Pastry Pub. We also spent part of our Saturday doing almost nothing, which is not a common occurrence at the Burnett home.

Krista and Craig left on Sunday evening, but Monday is a whole other story. Paul's old roommate Joe Keeler and his wife Tricia wanted to do a 12 mile hike through a slot canyon up Cedar Canyon that ended in Cedar Breaks National Park. I have been to Cedar Breaks and it is gorgeous, so we consented to going on this hike. About 8 months ago there was a massive landslide up Cedar Canyon that took out about a mile stretch of road and turned rivers into ponds and did all sorts of crazy madness. And it just so happened that this landslide took out our hiking trail too. We didn't figure that out until we were 4 hours into our hike and lost, of course, but hey, finding out sooner rather than never was a good thing. After bush whacking, getting cuts, scrapes and bruises, and moving no more than a few hundred yards in an hours time, we started to get smart and actually look at where we were and what we were trying to hike into. The girls sent the boys to scout out the area and see if what we were trying to do was even passable or not. An hour later they came back with news of no trail but they found a cool pond type thing. We decided to follow them out to what they had found.

When we got to the pond we didn't really see a trail, but we saw what looked like a cool nook in the rocks to explore. After having lunch we set out to see what this "nook" really entailed. As we got closer we realized that it was actually the start of the slot canyon. We had wandered around for almost 5 hours before we saw the start of where we wanted to be 4 hours ago. We started hiking though the canyon taking lots of care not to get our shoes wet. Within the next hour Tricia, Joe, and a friend of theirs, Alicia,  decided dry shoes wasn't worth the trouble. I quickly gave in as well. Paul still tried very hard to keep his shoes dry.

Now I forgot to mention that Paul and I had to be back at a certain time because we were hosting a BBQ so the further we got into the canyon, the more we realized that if we weren't careful we would be too far out of reach to get back in time. Because we had taken so long to find the actual trail, we didn't know how much of our six miles in we had covered. All of us wanted to get to Cedar Breaks, but  no one knew how close we really were. After Paul and Joe saying, "I bet it is just around that bend," ten or more times, we decided that we could only go on for another hour and if we didn't find it we would turn back. We sent the boys running ahead to determine if it was worth it to keep moving forward. Near the hour mark the boys came back with grim expressions. They said that they didn't find it and they had no idea how much farther ahead it was. We all sadly turned around and headed back. We had about 3 hours to cover the ground it took us 6 hours to do previously. Thankfully Paul decided that dry feet weren't all they were cracked up to be, so we saved lots of time because he could now just walk through the river and not worry about finding stepping stones.

Two and a half hours later we get back to our car. Some how we got out of there way faster than we got in. But no one was complaining. We drove down the canyon and got home perfectly in time to put the meat on the grill for our BBQ that night.  It was a very long and crazy day, but we had so much fun. Joe and Tricia said they google mapped our route when we got home to see how close to Cedar Breaks we really were. They told us that we were still 4 miles away! that means of our hike that we had planned about 6 miles in 6 miles out we were only 2 miles into the canyon! We felt so silly for thinking that we were so close to our end goal when really we were not even half way there. We decided that some day when we have nothing to do, and need to fill up a day this summer, we are going to start this hike and actually finish at Cedar Breaks.

Spring Break & Everything In Between

From January to April was a very jam packed few months. I will try and squish it all in because I am a slacker at blogging. I promise to become a more faithful blogger from here on out.

February we came up to visit our families for my daddy's birthday. We went to the temple all together and did baptisms for the dead. Our whole family was there minus my little brother on his mission so it was a fun bonding experience.  After the temple trip we went to Provo to a BYU boys basketball game, had some cheesecake at Tyson and Yulia's Place, and goofed around a little. My brother Tyson as gotten into old school sword fighting and armor making so he showed us his chain mail and some of the armor he has for his fighting competitions.

March was a little bit busier of a month for us. Paul played on an intra mural basketball team and had a lot of fun with that. He had high hopes of winning the championship this year, but alas, they didn't quite get that far. They had a really fun year, and Paul is already planning his team for the next intra mural basketball season.  

As most of you may or may not know, Paul and I are avid ultimate frisbee players. We have been playing with the SUU club team for 2+ years now. At the beginning of March we went with the Club team to the Trouble in Vegas tournament. Our team is mostly LDS so we don't play in the tournament on Sundays which means that we never place in the tournaments, but we still go and have a good time. We won 1 game, barely lost (by one stinking point) another game, and got dominated on a third game. We were able to spend the weekend with a good family friend of Paul's. John and Sandy Wilkinson used to live next door to Paul for the longest time. Funny thing is, they are related to me! Sandy is my dad's cousin or something like that. Anyway we visited with them and stayed at their home. It was quite a lot of fun for the both of us. 

Also during march we all went to the festival of colors. Apparently it is a huge thing in Utah now. I had never been but heard of it and wanted to go so somehow I convinced Paul to come with me and my family. I had a blast rocking out with my sisters and mom. Paul, had a fun time avoiding everything with my dad. Cudos to the boys for tagging along and being good sports about it though. My crazy little sister Kalena did some crowd surfing too. That was funny to see for sure!                                                    I did forget to mention that during March Paul and I also celebrated our 1 year anniversary. We didn't do anything special but we made it a whole year together without killing one another off so that was a big celebration for us :)

The end of March I ran my first half marathon with my friend Bambi Hilliard. We started training way back in the cold months of January. It was a really fun experience to go from being able to run only 3 miles to running 13+ miles. For as long of a run as it was, I actually enjoyed myself a lot during the race. Training was brutal, but the race was actually quite enjoyable. While I was running my race in Riverton, Utah, Paul was in Layton presenting a project for his PBL (professional business leaders) club. He ended up getting second place for his project which is taking him to Nationals in Texas sometime in June. 

Now the problem with college spring break and elementary school spring break is that they usually tend to be at different times of the year. So in March when Paul had his spring break I was stuck working. In  April when I had time off, Paul was at school and working. We had to go up to SLC for something so I ended up staying with my parents for a few days and then they came down to Southern Utah to go camping for Easter. While in SLC I went up to Snowbird with my dad, and siblings and we snowboarding. It was so much fun to take Kalena. She had only been on the bunny hill so taking her up the big stuff was such a fun adventure. Tallus came with us too and so did my cousin Brytt. The snow wasn't spectacular, but there was some powder so I was happy with that. We also celebrated my birthday while I was in SLC. It wasn't anything fantastic, and I am not going to share how old I am finally getting, but know that I am starting to become and old lady one year at a time. 

The last little adventure that we had was my family coming down to Southern Utah. We planned to go camping in Zion, go on some hikes, and mess around. Paul still had school but came down on friday morning after his classes. On Thursday we went on a hike in Zions National Park to the Emerald Pools. It was a little crowded, which is to be expected for a national park on a holiday weekend. On our hike up to the Emerald Pools my family and I decided to plank as much as we could in the coolest places. Rather than take nice pictures with cool backgrounds, we tried to plank with some crazy cool backgrounds. 

On friday we went to Buckskin Gulch. It is a slot canyon that has some really gorgeous views. By this time Paul had met us down in Zion so we were all together. Buckskin was really pretty. You think that you hike one slot canyon you have hiked them all, but this one was really quite beautiful. We did some planking in the slots, and we hiked and climbed around on everything. After the hike we went back to camp and played catch phrase for at least 2 hours. I have to say, I think Paul and I have memorized almost all the words in catch phrase.


Saturday morning we planned to go on another hike, but it was so windy that we could barely keep our tent up. We decided to break camp before even eating breakfast. We came back to Cedar and watched my siblings beat each other up with wii boxing. It was really quite entertaining. Soon after that the parents left Paul and me to our own devices. We had a cozy little Easter morning together and enjoyed it thoroughly. And now we are off to our next adventure... 

Cruising to Mexico

Paul and I have always wanted to go on a cruise. One day we were just perusing the cruise options as a possible one year anniversary trip. We looked at Mediterranean, and European cruises, but the Baja Mexico cruise caught my eye. It was half the price of the other cruises we had looked at, so we could take two people with us and be able to afford it. We decided to take Paul's older brother Eric and his wife Amanda with us on our cruise. We would leave a week before Christmas and get back the day before Christmas Eve. Yeah it was a little bit before our actual 1 year anniversary, but it was the best time for us to go.

The day before we were supposed to leave for our cruise, Paul decides to play racquetball with his cousin Seth. Sometime after 9:00 A.M. I find a message on my phone from Paul telling me that he had gotten hit right in the eyeball and couldn't see much out of his eye. Of course I started to flip out a little bit. Here we are leaving the country in less than 24 hours and Paul is partially blind in one eye. He told me that he was going to just wait and see if it got better by the time I got back from work. I quickly got permission to leave and take him to the eye doctor.

The doctor prescribed some eye drops and told him it was a bad idea to leave the country. He then sent us to an eye surgeon in Salt Lake. Once we got to Salt Lake the eye surgeon told us that since Paul's retina did not detach he would be ok if we went on our cruise so long as Paul took it easy, put in his eye drops every day, and slept inclined.

We got to the port in California and we were so excited. After lots of long hours waiting in lines and checkin in bags we finally got onto the ship. The Carnival Spirit was our lovely home for the next few days, and man was it massive! I had never seen a cruise ship up close and personal, and was quite surprised at how massive it really was!

Day one mostly involved eating, exploring, resting and more eating. Did I mention we did a lot of eating? The food was so delicious! And you could always find it somewhere on the boat. Our second day was a day at sea. We filled our time with, playing games, loafing around, and what do you know, more food! Our third day we arrived at Cabo San Lucas Mexico. Where we toured the city a little bit. Amanda, my sister in law, found a glass blowing factory so we went and checked that out.

We got to watch how they made the blown glass. It was really neat. They would throw old glass bottles into a really hot kiln type thing, melt it down into goopy hot red glass, scoop it up on a long metal pipe then start to blow and shape the glass as it cooled.

The people running the shop even let us have a go at blowing the glass. I thought it would be easy like blowing up a regular sized balloon, but no, it was harder then blowing up a water balloon!


After our trip to the glass blowing factory, we walked the shops, found a fun restaurant to eat lunch at, and walked around for several miles trying to find a way to get to the beach. Sadly it was getting dark and we couldn't find a walkable path to the beach so we decided that we would go the next day. On day four we spent almost the whole day at Cabo San Lucas again. We hassled and bargained with a local to take us in his water taxi out to the beach. Good thing Paul has good bargaining skills. He got us a good deal! At the beach we went snorkeling, explored a small cave, and just looked at all of the beautiful sights.

Day five we were in Baja Mexico. Just South of California but still in Mexico. Here we went on an excursion to La Bufadora, that means The Blow hole. Paul and I went to a similar place while we were in Kauai called The Spouting Horn, and then we got to visit this one in Mexico. It is said that there are only three of these blow holes in the world. Paul and I have now been to two of them. The last one is in Australia, so I guess we will try to go to Australia some day to have visited all three!

We did a little shopping and bargaining in Baja Mexico then got back on the ship. The next morning we would be back in the United States and have to go home from our lovely adventures and enter real life again.

We flew into SLC the day before Christmas Eve, ready to relax a little bit and celebrate with our families, but on the way home from the airport we we the lucky recipientes of a couch flying out of a truck onto the freeway. Merry Christmas to the parents in law! They totaled their car! Wahoo! So a couch flew out of a trailer in the middle of the freeway, we switched lanes to pass a truck slowing down and he tried to switch into the lane we were in while slamming on his breaks so we had no choice but to slam on our breaks and hope that we didn't hit them too hard.

Thankfully no one got hurt, but the car was a little worse for wear. Paul's dad ended up with a totaled vehicle and had to get
a new one, but we tried not to think about that too much over the christmas Holiday.

The rest of our break was pretty uneventful. We had Christmas Eve with both families, as well as Christmas. We spent most of our New Years Eve with Paul's family playing games and having a blast. But alas Break time is over. Time to go back to work!