That Time We Went to the Air Show (again)

So a couple years back we went to the Air Show they hold at Hill Air Force Base. I remember we had fun, but I forgot ear plugs back then and I didn't realize how incredibly loud the show got. We also got so hot we stayed under the big plane and didn't get to see too much of the planes really doing their tricks.

 

 

Once I heard it was coming back I told Larry we had to go again to make up for the first time. And this time we went more prepared! Larry surprised me with some awesome ear protection covers (like what you use when you go shooting), we brought sunscreen, and just enjoyed the day (i.e. I just soaked up the sunshine). We got there really early so it wasn't as crowded and we could take our time walking through the base. I even got to see a ton of the tricks really early on, when it wasn't as hot as later in the day, so I loved that part! Larry's Mom and Jim showed up a little after noon so we could hang out and visit while watching the other planes do their tricks (although I think only Jim and I were the ones who really wanted to watch the planes haha).

Larry started to get restless after a couple hours so we decided to leave early. Which now I think was probably a good idea to avoid traffic while leaving. We went over to Marie and Jim's to have dinner, which I never complain about because she's such a good cook. I usually always love going over there for meals. It was really nice visiting with them and seeing more of the planes this year. I'm not sure we'll go every year they hold it, but it is a fun experience.

 

I'm still loving being out in the sun, as long as I have sunblock to stop from being burned. I'm not sure what it is this year, but seriously, ever since St. George I just always want to be outdoors and in the sun. I also want to walk everywhere! I haven't wanted that since I was in Jr. High and we didn't have cars, but had the summers to do whatever we wanted. I think it's going to be a great year!

Summer Time

Oh boy am I excited for the warm weather! It's really heating up lately, I almost have a hard time believing summer could really be here...in Utah you just never know when the cold will show back up. I swear we are 50% cold, 30% chilly, and 20% summer throughout the year. The summer doesn't last nearly as long as it should. After going to St. George I'm suddenly obsessed with being out in the warmth. I love the idea of going on walks in the middle of the day.

Even though we're saving up for the house I'm still craving planning a vacation. I haven't been able to plan one since New York...everything after that was completely last minute. I didn't realize I'd miss planning a big vacation again, but I do. I check out Groupon and KSL Deals travel pages all the time because it's just the most fun to check them out and start dreaming of where we could go next. I think I get a high from vacations or something.

The only problem is I always spend the summer in long jeans. I decided this year I wanted to wear shorts again. Maybe my legs should finally get some sun haha. Old Navy was having a crazy sale this weekend on flip flops so my mind decided that would be a good time to go get shorts. Actually, I shouldn't complain, everyone was so focused on shoes that there were tons of shorts available for me to try on. I found two that I figured would work for weekends this year and now I'm so excited to wear them. Once I got home I immediately put a pair on and wore them the rest of the day. Now I'm realizing I should've gotten a couple more, just to switch it up a little.

While I was in my new shorts and feeling pretty good about myself we decided to go check out the house again (it's something we do every weekend if not once again during the week at this point). We officially have cabinets, tile, rock and stucco, and a painted door. We also got to lock in our rate and have a closing date set: July 20th!!! It's so nice having a date and it makes it feel so much more official. This whole time I tell people sometime in July and they would say it's so close, but because we didn't have a date I would think "eh...it'll come up eventually", but now I can say July 20th! We've already put in our PTO for the week afterwards to move in and get settled...oh and get the condo ready to sell. I'm trying not to think about that part, it's stressful thinking of how that will go.

So now that summer is beginning I'm already hopeful to get lot of plans started. We probably won't be able to do anything big until after we move, but I'm sure I can find some things to take up our time and make it go quicker so we can move quicker ;)

Our First Neighborhood Party and A House Update

Okay, we officially love this new neighborhood we're moving into! The people are so friendly and welcoming! We had our first official neighborhood party, a barbecue pot luck. It was so yummy. I'll admit I was nervous because I'm not exactly a social butterfly and Larry is pretty introverted around new people as well. Most of these people already knew each other and we'd be newbies in the neighborhood. I also knew a bunch of them (like 90%) had kids and we don't so I felt like we'd be the little kids of the neighborhood. Luckily no one treated us that way. Sure, they asked what we were going to do with all the space in our new house, but no one made me feel like we were odd for not having kids. A bunch of the others came up to us to get introductions out of the way so that really helped relieve some of the stress of meeting people. I can't wait to officially move in and get to know more of them.

While we were there we decided to stop by the house and check out what was new. We officially have shelves and railing in! It's crazy how much they get done each week! It's really starting to come together and really hitting me this is our house! I can't wait to move in and show it off. We're still tossing around the idea of having Thanksgiving in the house this year...it depends on when we can get a good dining table to fit everyone.

Anyways, that's me bragging about how awesome our new place will be. I love our condo and when we moved in it was such a nice neighborhood, but there's so many new people in our building I hardly know anyone anymore...hopefully that won't happen in the house.

That Time We Did The Parade of Homes and a Ghost Tour

This weekend has been pretty eventful so far. We've started the Utah Valley Parade of Homes this week, our first Parade of Homes ever. I've heard some pretty cool things about these things, but I've never been. Now that we are building I thought it would be a good idea to check it out to get decoration ideas. So far I've been super impressed with how big the houses can get and how much they can put in them, but as far as decorations I haven't seen anything that I've loved a lot. However, we did see a house with like 2 or 3 basements...didn't know that was possible. It had this huge basketball court and this glass overlook thing that was a bar. That was on day one and I was blown away. Of course I didn't realize that was kind of the point of the parade. There was another one with a foam pit and a bowling alley (what?!), that one had an amazing pool with a slide and a pool house I wish we could fit into our new backyard.

Even though these were homes I knew we'd never be able to afford (while I usually hate that phrase or attitude, I can admit they are amazing, but I have no idea what I'd do with all that space. Especially for just two of us) I did find features that I did think would be cool to incorporate into our home. I'm loving the tall ladders with the book cases (a la Beauty and the Beast). Larry found a fish tank he'd love to put into the house (I'm surprisingly okay with having one). Making the space under the stairs into something cool was another idea I was interested in adding in our home and I also love looking at the different theater rooms they have, especially since I hope to have one in our future basement. Here's to hoping I can find a way to make some of these things work.

Now onto the best part of the weekend...our first ghost tour. I had heard of this company, Grimm's Ghost Tour, a while back and knew I wanted to do a tour with them. Unfortunately, I didn't think of it last Halloween so I figured we would do it later this year. Well we started talking about it at work and a small group of us decided it would be a fun night out. We went to dinner at Lucky 13 before the tour where I got the worlds spiciest burger...it was awful! Larry got a foot tall burger and everyone was really impressed with how much he could eat. Dinner went into overtime so we ended up running late getting to the tour spot so we all had to high tail it to the bus stop...that was probably my least favorite part of the night, but I promise it got better from there.

The tour we did was the SLC Cemetery tour where they walk us through the cemetery and tell the stories of the graves (I had no idea they were so old up there). It wasn't exactly what I thought a ghost tour would be, it was more historical fact than ghost hunting, but we all had these EMF's and mine kept going off like crazy. There was this spot between these two trees that it went insane! I wish I had had a real camera to get some good pictures to see if I see anything, but I only had my phone. I'm hoping to do another one and take a real camera and maybe a voice recorder. They said you can get some crazy things on recorders if you take them with you.

So while it wasn't as spooky as I was expecting, it was still really cool. For being so early in the year the weather was pretty overcast so it was perfect. We almost got to do the Ted Bundy tour (where you go see his old cellar up Emigration Canyon), but then it ended up getting booked so we couldn't, but we all decided that would be a good next one with more people. Everyone seemed to love going to the one we did so it ended up being a great night out.

That Time We Went to St. George - big post

So let me say (and I hope I'm not repeating myself on the blog) that I've had a hard time not being able to plan a vacation this year. Not because we can't, but because we are trying to save our money for house stuff right now and since we have no idea how much we'll need want once we're in the house we're just trying to stifle any major spending. This doesn't compute very well in my head...I need getaways, I love seeing new places, how can people go a whole year without doing anything??

One day I was on Facebook and a Utah page I follow mentioned a quick, fun, cheap weekend getaway to St. George that it had planned out. I thought why not? That's not really a vacation, it's just a weekend thing, and it might help hold me over a bit. The link had info on when they had farmers markets, street fests, where to stay, what to eat, where to golf, etc. We had never been to St. George before (driven through it on our way to Vegas a lot, but never stopped). So once I got home I mentioned it to Larry, we put in the PTO requests the next day and were set.

Here's the story of that trip:

We went the first Friday of the month because that's when they have the First George Street Fest with music, shops, food, etc. It didn't start till 6 so I worked until noon that day since it's just a 4 hour drive. Leaving that early gave us plenty of time to possibly stop for a late lunch along the way and get checked into the Seven Wives Inn (go check that link out, they are AMAZING!) by 5. We ended up making great time and got to the B&B early. We got checked in, picked from the menu for our breakfast the next morning, visited with the lady who helped us, and then headed to our cute little cottage that was beyond adorable. The best part is they had these little journals on a dresser of people who had stayed there previously. We read so many cool stories, some funny remarks, and got to see how far people had come (hello Italy and the Asian writing!!)

 

We decided to eat dinner at the Painted Pony. It was recommended on the Facebook page itinerary and had really good Yelp reviews. I was worried because online it said it was casual, but the dining seemed semi fancy (we definitely didn't dress up after half the day on the road). The food was delicious and pretty pricey, but it was worth it! The waiter was friendly with his recommendations as well!

French Onion soup in an onion
It was delicious

Small but yummy

After dinner with hit the Street Fest, which was filled with lot of fun things, but the thing I ended up being the most excited about was the antique shops they had. We found lots of fun gems I would have loved to buy. Also, the red rock around the city was so pretty! I immediately fell in love.

 

After walking around we decided to head back to the room to unpack and get settled. They also had this cute little fire pit area next to a chicken coop that we walked through real quick. It was seriously the cutest place I've ever been!

Saturday we decided we had to head to one of the nearby state parks. I had originally wanted to do some hikes (we knew we would be hitting Zion on Sunday for hikes, but I wanted to do as much as we could). Well when we checked in the lady mentioned that if we went to Sand Hollow Reservoir we could jump off the red rock there...hello! How could we pass that up? We decided Saturday would be for that. After eating the most amazing breakfast ever (I got oatmeal and I'm not the biggest oatmeal fan, but I literally gorged myself on this stuff!) we headed out. It took a little while for us to figure out where exactly the red rock area was, but once we found it and found a good spot to jump from I couldn't get enough. Larry claims the water was pretty chilly, but I thought it was warm (I mean it was only 10 AM and it was already 104 degrees...I think most people would love the water at that point). We would jump, swim around, sit on some rocks in the water, and repeat. I even had to cannonball a couple times because I'm still a kid at heart! Haha

Once we were done we saw there was a larger cliff that everyone else was jumping from and Larry wanted to try it. I was a little nervous about people watching me jump, but after watching so many people try I thought I have to do this. When in Rome, right? I told Larry to go first so I could get a video of him jumping and then I'd go afterwards...that's when I figured out how chicken I was! Everyone made it look so easy, but when you get to that ledge I couldn't help but think there had to be rocks down there I would hit. Or what if I went too far down and couldn't get back up? Luckily there was another lady with me who was just as scared so I didn't look too foolish (or at least didn't feel like it). I eventually (after MANY MANY minutes of people trying to convince one of us) I jumped in! It was scary because I went far enough down my ears started to hurt, but I popped back up and just laughed...It was fun, but I was good just doing it once haha.

 

After jumping and swimming around we headed back to the hotel for some lunch and a shower. We had plans to go hiking after swimming, but we were so wiped out and had just enough time to go get ready for our play that night that we skipped it (we'd be going to Zion on Sunday so it's cool if we miss a day right?). We ended up seeing Tarzan that night at the Tuacahn. Unfortunately we didn't hear that you could wear whatever you wanted to the Tuacahn. So while people were in shorts and tank tops we were in fancy clothes and it was sweltering hot! Like still 100 degrees at midnight hot! I felt so bad for Larry, in jeans and long sleeve button up shirt, I'm sure he was miserable, but he was a good sport. The play was really awesome, the theater was beautiful, and I'm so happy we got to see it.

We got back from the play and realized we forgot to order breakfast the next morning so I was automatically sad. I was okay with paying for breakfast somewhere else, but this place had the most amazing food I was bummed I wasn't going to get to try something else. Luckily I have the best husband so the next morning when we woke up he called them to ask if they'd make an exception and let us order still (orders are due by 9 PM so they can get everything ready). Oh man were we not disappointed with the food again. Larry got a fruit and yogurt parfait while I got an omelet...YUM! It was a good start to our last day out.

We went to Zion after leaving the B&B and did the overlook point hike right away (Oh man that line through the tunnel is the worst ever!!). We got some good picks, relaxed, and enjoyed the views. We didn't realize you have to ride a shuttle to get to the other hikes and everything looked so crowded, plus we were so ready to be home at that point we just took off (also my phone had shut down from over heating so I couldn't get more pictures anyways). I got to see what I wanted, I had never been to Zion before either so it was cool to see what we did see, but I was ready to be back in our air conditioned home again. For some reason the drive home seemed to be longer than the drive down, but man when we got home it was so nice to cuddle with the kitties and shower and relax again. I had taken Monday off to do grocery shopping and laundry so Sunday was just to do nothing but enjoy being home.

So while it was a short trip for us, it was SO nice getting away for a weekend. I loved every moment of it, Larry would've loved it more if it had been 30 degrees cooler haha. I am officially obsessed with the red rock and being down there, the towns are so cute and everyone is friendly. Makes me wish I had gone to college down there or something haha. That's our St. George trip and hopefully not our only one for the year :)