Summer Adventure

I think I've finally come to accept the fact that I never know exactly what I'm going to be doing with my life. Things always seem to come up at the last minute. Every summer I make a plan and every summer that plan changes. This summer I thought I had beaten the system. I made a plan and it was actually going the way I thought it would. I moved into a new apartment, I was working during the day and porch-sitting at night...but no. About 3 weeks ago, Steve talked to me about spending the summer in Nauvoo for Shelf Reliance and after debating about it for a while I told him yes and two weeks later, I re-packed up my stuff and drove about 1500 miles to Nauvoo. Crazy huh?! But what an adventure!!!

So here I am out here in Nauvoo. I came out here with Steve's sister Michelle and I'm still a little blown away that I am here. It really all happened so fast! I drove home after work on Thursday, dropped my car off and finished packing and then drove down to Ogden to meet Michelle on Friday morning. We drove 13 hours that day and stayed that night in a really nice hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was so excited to stay there because my old roommate Megan is going to grad school out there right now and she came out to see me for a little while while we were there! The next morning we drove for another 7 hours and finally pulled into Nauvoo around 6 that night.

I really do love road trips. And even though this one is officially known as "the most boring car ride in America" we still had fun. Highlights of the trip: we went under a bridge, through a tunnel, saw a huge statue of Christ welcoming us to Nebraska, saw a really pretty overpass, witnessed Michelle's first speeding ticket (oops...not so fun), went over the Mississippi River (it's HUGE...not like the other little stream that we thought was it at first), and pulled into beautiful Nauvoo.

My head is still spinning that I'm actually here but I'm so excited to start another adventure. It seems to kind of fit though that I would spend 4 months in Jerusalem and then 2 months in Nauvoo right after that. What a crazy life!

Sweet Summer Time!

Horray!! It's finally summer! I LOVE summertime! There are so many more things to do and a lot more time to do them. After surviving finals (and actually doing a lot better in my classes than I thought I would...) I moved into a new apartment in my complex that comes with our own private balcony. To make it even better - my roommate has a hammock from El Salvador and we each bought some camp chairs so that we can porch-sit.


The first item of business this summer: Road trip to Moab! Oh Yeah! Me and Morgan and Bryan loaded up the car with treats and headed south at about 6:30 in the morning. We hiked ALL day long and got back home around 10:00 that night. The arches in Moab are amazing. Of course I had my camera with me and I was taking pictures like crazy. :)

Look at Morgan holding up that rock - man he's so strong. :)



I rediscovered the black and white feature on my camera and had to practice on the boys - I think they turned out pretty good.

Of course, you can't have summer without baseball. Not that I'm the biggest fan of baseball. It's a little on the slow side for me. But it IS America's favorite past time, and my brother DID offer me a free ticket to go with them, so I decided that I would be patriotic, and go watch the Salt Lake Bee's. It was a great game. Horray for the home team - they won 13 to 12! And my nephew Thane caught the game winning ball! Thanks for taking me with you Todd!

You would think that after growing up on the Golf Course with practically my whole family golfing, that I would be a pretty good golfer. Not so much! I've only been out a couple times in my life and the ball definitely doesn't go very far. Today though, Shelf Reliance held it's first annual golf tournament so I thought I'd give it another shot. They split us up into teams and did a best ball scramble and had some individual competitions as well. Despite some doubt and a little mockery from certain people (cough, Bryan!) I am officially the current title holder of the Women's Longest Drive! Maybe I'm better at golf than I thought. Or maybe just really lucky! It was a really fun tournament with a BBQ afterward - perfect for summer.