Christmas 2010

Christmas seemed kind of like a whirlwind this year. Maybe it was all in my head but I didn't feel like we got to really start celebrating until we got back home. We only had 15 days to get a tree, decorate it and the house, bake up a storm, and all the other things we like to do around Christmastime. Unfortunately, because of the lack of time we had to forgo a couple of our traditions.


One thing we made sure to fit in was these almond cookies. We dream about these all year long. It was a two-day endeavor since the dough has to chill and life was busy but I spent a good deal of one Saturday baking up all these goodies. I thought about Jannicke all day and hoped I had made her proud. This was my second year of making the M&M buttons but my first attempt at the Raspberry Linzer Squares. I was SO worried about them and kept asking Carl what they should look like and taste like and if it was like his mom used to make. We were both happy with the result.

Our traditional fondue Christmas Eve dinner was on again/off again like we were playing hot potato with the idea. In the end, calming my fears that Christmas would be ruined, the Nortons and Holbrook agreed to come over for dinner and it was officially ON. It's nice for me to think that all over the United States in various homes, my family is doing fondue that same night.

This year's fondue blasted last years out of the water! Huge success. We did a spinach artichoke cheese fondue this year instead of regular ole' cheese like usual. We also ventured into the broth fondue this year and the Norton's did NOT disappoint. We cooked steak, chicken, and shrimp in the broth and it was amazing. And just like any good fondue'ers would, we topped it all off with chocolate.

After some puzzling, general chatting, and a couple of games of darts, everyone said goodnight. It was everything I had hoped it would be. Carl and I put on our new Christmas jammies (maybe a new tradition?), opened just one gift under the tree, and snuggled in to wait for Santa to come.

Christmas morning was exciting as always. We opened presents and played with our new toys. I made quiche for breakfast (my first one!) and we sat around in our pajamas for the rest of the day. We played with our new XBox Kinect (which is SUPER fun!) and read touching Christmas letters written by Carl's family. When it was time, we cooked the potatoes and ham and headed over to the Lundell's for a Christmas Day feast. We enjoyed delicious food with some of our favorite people here in Maryland and topped the night off with a couple of hours playing Krista's new Wii game.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Christmas in the Desert

From Thanksgiving through December 10 we were in the desert. It was hard for the brain to comprehend. There were Christmas lights up in trees and Christmas music playing in stores. Houses and businesses had Christmas decorations up and we even saw a few blow-up snowmen...but it was 70 degrees! I'll admit, it was a little difficult to immerse yourself in the Christmas spirit when you were having gelato more than you were having hot chocolate.

No snow aside, we had a great trip to Arizona. There is a massage school near Carl's office there and one evening we both booked massages. Cheap and wonderful. I wish we could just go there every day. I'd even settle for once a week!

We also went to a Suns game which was fun because they were playing the Washington Wizards. Carl and I were rooting for the Suns (me specifically for Steve Nash) but we golf-clapped when the Wizards were doing well.


In an attempt to get into the Christmas spirit, our friends from Tucson invited us down to their house for some festive sugar cookie decorating. They had no idea what they were in for. You can see the Ashdown's plate above. I especially like the decorated cactus with the red coyote (yep, coyote) in the bottom corner.

I ate several of mine as I went but these were two I was proud enough of to hold off until we got a picture.

And my favorite of Carl's. There are little pearly nonpareils for teeth. Funny...and scary. Carl never disappoints at cookie decorating.

So even though it made me a little stressed out to spend so much of the holiday time in Arizona, we made the best of it.

Turkey Thursday, Black Friday, Birthday Saturday

There was a serious blogging hiatus here on TeamBrewer. Mostly because I didn't think that anyone wanted to read about 2 1/2 months of me lying on the couch all day with morning...scratch that - all day sickness. Not as glamorous as one might imagine. We DID do a few fun things between the tree park and Thanksgiving like seeing the premier of Harry Potter 7 (Part 1) at midnight, a moonlight monuments cruise down the Potomac River, and putting on a phenomenal Talent Showcase for our stake. But otherwise it was a lot of lounging around in stretchy pants for me and trips to Arizona for Carl (and sometimes both of us).

My goal was to not be sick anymore by Thanksgiving because, dang it, it's an eating holiday! For the most part my plan worked.

We spent Thanksgiving for our third year running with the Uhligs and they didn't disappoint. I wanted easy contributions this year so I did rolls, pumpkin pie (not my best work), chocolate silk pie, and pumpkin cheesecake. Carl's birthday was on Saturday so I got him some birthday cookies but decided we'd better get them out early so they could be enjoyed before we headed off to Arizona again. After watching a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and playing a few games, we were headed back home. After all, I had to get ready to SHOP! Yummy food, excellent company, and overall a bucket-load of things to be thankful for this year.

Long story short (ha! like I've ever told a short story in my life!) friends canceled plans to be at Old Navy at midnight and the free video game (Dance Central for our new Xbox 360 Kinect) was worth it to Carl to come with me. So we bundled up shortly after we got home from the Uhligs and headed out to meet Black Friday. Good news - Old Navy - SUCCESS!

Next stop, Best Buy. They were giving away FREE phones and we decided as a family that I ought to have one of those FREE phones. The problem was that they weren't giving away tickets for hot items until at least 3:30 am and it wasn't worth our time to go home and then come back - so we headed to the Best Buy parking lot with blankets, cushy things to sit on, treats, our books, and resolve to make it through the night together in the cold. I was continually grateful that night to not be homeless. That's what they do every night. Surprisingly we were pretty far back in the line. Who are all these crazies that are lined up outside all night long and what could be THAT good of a deal? Oh yeah, that was us. Good news - Best Buy - SUCCESS! We got the ticket for the phone we wanted around 3:45 am.

Kohls opened at 3 AM so we headed over there for a few items since we had to wait for Best Buy to actually open to get the phone. We found all of the things on our list and plenty of things that weren't. Good news - Kohls - SUCCESS!

Best Buy opened at 5 AM and we went in and got this little beauty (Isn't it 'incredible'?) Did I mention it was FREE!? (unless you count the sleep and warmth it cost). I was supposed to meet Krista at 6 am but called her and canceled since I hadn't yet been to bed. She didn't have anything she was too eager for this year so neither of us were too disappointed (right, Krista?) We slept pretty much the rest of the day. Overall - SUCCESS!

On Carl's birthday we got up early and headed to the airport, Scottsdale bound. Once we got to a sunnier climate we went out for Birthday lunch at one of his favorite spots there in AZ, Carlsbad Tavern. I wonder why he likes it so much ;). The rest of the day was spent doing whatever Carl wanted which mostly consisted of watching football. That night we kindly shared his birthday with Justin & Michelle who got married that day and we went to wish them well at their reception. Happy Birthday, Carl!

Playing in the Trees

George of the Jungle? Sort of. Carl and I went to this amazing tree park where you get to play in the trees. Essentially, you get in a harness, hook yourself to a cable, and go over a series of bridges and ziplines though a course. SO FUN! They had different levels of courses so we started near the bottom (park rules) and worked our way up to medium. But even medium was challenging! You might have to click on the pictures to see them better - but check out all the fun options they had throughout the park!




They had amazing equipment which made it super safe. In fact, safe enough that they didn't even have staff up in the trees with us (unless someone needed rescuing). We had three hours to climb and zip through the trees as much as we could. The leaves were starting to change on the trees and it was beautiful weather. An excellent fall activity. but don't go unless you get a discount! Thanks, Sandy Spring Adventure Park!

Sedona

I am not a professional with photography or words so it's hard for me to express the majesty of a place like Sedona. We were excited to take a day away from the city of Scottsdale to explore the great outdoors. Sedona was only a couple hours away so we packed the car full of treats and charged ipods and made our way to the incredible red-rock landscape.


We started off with one little mini-hike before we turned around and decided we wanted to climb a different peak - Cathedral Rock. I didn't actually think we were going to the top so I agreed. Ha. It was a lot of rock scaling.

We found this twisted tree at the first little summit which I was sure I could imitate. Good, no?


Here Carl and I are showing off the landscape behind us. It was a perfect day for hiking! There was a slight breeze, around 75 degrees, and cloudy. We couldn't have asked for anything better. We found a geo-cache up there but won't show the picture to protect the secret location of the hidden treasure. We made it to the top and spent a while looking over the scenery as we sat on a huge rock together. We probably contemplated life as well.

After a little more hiking around up at the top (off any real trails which made me super nervous - I kept running into cacti), we headed back down. I could feel hunger coming on and I knew it'd be a while before we scaled the rocks back down. Here we are on our way back down. I was actually sliding down this rock crevice, not posing like that on purpose. If you look closely you can see here the last known whereabouts of my left earring may it rest in peace.

As soon as we got into the car - DOWNPOUR! It was some seriously violent rain and we were so glad we weren't trying to get down those wet rocks. Satisfied with conquering a mountain, we headed into the town of Sedona to get some dinner before we made the long drive home. By this time it was dark so we no longer had the countryside to look at and we talked about a bunch of funny things we did when we were in high school. Many of Carl's stories grossed me out but aren't road trips so great for this kind of stuff?!

We are, as usual, so grateful for the opportunities we have to explore the beautiful places this earth has to offer. We'd go back.

Park City Girls Weekend

Just like every October, we women met up in Park City for the weekend compliments of Grandma Bigler. This year wasn't quite as crazy as we've gotten in some years - no threatening-to-call-the-cops prank calls, no accidental relieving of bladders, etc. but it did not disappoint!

We started ritualistically with a trip to Lovely Nails to get pedicures.

Sommer and I dyed our hair back to brown. Melissa dyed her hair blonde. Crazy girl. (pre-trip)

This year my family made jackets for the occasion.

We shopped. We Geo-Cached. We went to SEVERAL movies.

And, of course, Park City Weekend wouldn't be complete without BINGO!
(with prizes)

It was nice to be back in Utah for a few days. Carl got to spend lots of time with his family and friends but didn't take any crazy pictures like we did. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Travel Adventures

I haven't blogged too much lately. Mostly because there hasn't been too much blog-worthy stuff going on. Also because I didn't want to. We spent a couple more weeks in Arizona and we don't have any pictures to show for it. Not that we didn't do anything fun - we had a big BBQ with the Brewer family and watched the BYU game. We got to go to a fancy dinner at Ruth's Chris thanks to Arizona Restaurant Week. We doubled with some friends there who just got engaged. We just didn't take any pictures. But just to make sure that this trip got documented, I'll tell you our best and worst parts of the traveling adventure.

Favorite: We're at the airport headed to the hottest place on earth (AZ) and standing in the security screening line. Our airport has implemented some of the body scanners as opposed to the metal detectors. One of the differences for passengers is that they have to take EVERYTHING out of their pockets. Paper, chapstick, everything. A gentleman in front of us yells out at the TSA guy, "I have WAY too much cash in this wallet to put it onto the belt. I will NOT put it through the scanner." So TSA obliges the man and figures something else out to get him through security. Carl, the lady behind us, and I are all chuckling about this idiot. Is it really safer to YELL out to everyone in the airport that you have bucketloads of cash on your person than to just let it go through the scanners where you're away from it for 30 seconds and can practically watch it the whole time? People are dumb.

Least favorite: It was hot, hot, hot in Arizona for those two weeks. Breaking records for mid-September at 108 almost every day. We were really looking forward to getting back home into a little cooler, fall weather. When we're touching down in Baltimore, the pilot tells us the temperature there is 95 degrees. Ugh. But it gets better. When we get home, we start unpacking and whatnot when we realize our house is really hot. We set the AC to 80 while we were gone but it was hotter than that. Why wasn't the air conditioning kicking on? Oh. It's because it's broken. Luckily we got it fixed the next morning but who would have thought our first night home we'd be wishing we were back in Arizona where we could at least sleep comfortably thanks to air conditioning. It's like rain on your wedding day. Or ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.

Cooking in Bulk

Five ladies (four plus me) got together and planned a freezer meal exchange. We all submitted a meal we'd be willing to make in bulk at our own house and have ready on a certain day for the big exchange. We each made 5 of our dish (one to keep and four to give away). I made Stuffed Shells and it was quite the experience cooking in bulk like that. Carl and I cooked all day. We had a good time and in the end, I would say worth it. I gave away my Stuffed Shells and in return got chicken enchiladas, meatballs, fettuccine alfredo, and chicken curry. Our freezer is now full of a variety of pre-made meals that we can just throw in the oven or crockpot. I hope we do it again.

What happens in Vegas...

As many of you know, Carl is traveling to Arizona for work a lot these days. When I can, I join him. We decided this last trip that he would go to AZ for a week, then drive up to Las Vegas to meet me there for the weekend, and then I would stay with him in AZ for the last week. As you already know, I had a bit of trouble getting to Sin City, but once I finally made it we had a lot of fun.
Saturday we walked around the hotels and did really adult things like taking pictures with SpongeBob. We ate at the House of Blues and had the most delicious matchstick fries! They were made out of potatoes, not matches, just so you know. That night I wanted to try to find a cheap prime rib dinner but apparently Vegas has changed. Instead of cheap prime rib and shrimp cocktail - they only have really expensive and flashy everything. We went to the old Vegas Strip in search of my dinner request but alas, we ended up with mediocre food from Tony Romas that was more expensive than that caliber of food should be. Oh well. We headed from there straight to the Bellagio hotel because we had great tickets to see Cirque du Soleil - O. Apparently 'the strip' on a Saturday night is a popular place to be so traffic made us late to the show. I obviously didn't take this picture (because no cameras allowed!) but this was our favorite part of the show. There were three...uh...rocking thingys that would go back and forth. Acrobats would step onto them and then it would catapult them into the air where they could do their twisty, flippy, impressive moves before diving into the water. You can see in this picture two such acrobats flying through the air with the greatest of ease. They would get amazingly high! It was a great show. We've never been disappointed by Cirque du Soleil.

The next morning we got up, had yummy crepes from the Paris hotel, watched the beautiful fountain show in front of the Bellagio.....twice, and wandered around Caesar's Palace. That place is even bigger than last time I was there! I told Carl I thought we should go see Cher while we were in Vegas but he put his foot down. This is a picture of Carl pulling the handle of the slot machine where he went on to win $28,542 (minus $28, 543).

We found a sweet deal where you could buy discounted tickets to a comedy magic show (and of course I was hyperventilating with blissful joy - did you know I love magic?!) and get tickets to their buffet FREE! So we bought our tickets and were pleasantly surprised to find NO LINE at the buffet. Apparently everyone does Sunday brunch on Sunday and so no one else was hungry when we went. It gave us time to stop and see the flamingo habitat which also included other feathered friends, giant koi fish, and turtles!! (did you know I love turtles?!) And I also bought a cute new flower clip for my hair. Sorry, no pictures. But it's pink and made from seashells. We ate. We laughed. We were magicked. It was the perfect end to a little weekend jaunt in Vegas.

Our car was packed up and ready to go. We had a five hour drive ahead of us. We had eaten, been entertained, all that was left to do was....decide whether to buy the beautiful globe we had looked at several times during the weekend. We thought about it. We talked about it. We envisioned it in our house. It was on super sale and we researched it on the Internet. So we sat in the car and went back and forth on whether we should buy it. We've always wanted one. Which size would be buy? So we decided to get it and excitedly walked to the store inside the Paris hotel to buy our globe.

But when we got there...we had second thoughts. We started looking at another globe. We looked at them from different angles. We talked to two different store associates about them. We spun them and looked at all the different countries. Our decision had turned from 'should we buy it' to 'which one should we buy'. It was a very long process. And then we decided. And we purchased. And it got shipped. And here she is in all her spherical glory:

and as the saying goes, What happens in Vegas...gets shipped to Maryland.

Travel Nightmare Response

You might be interested to know that I got an email back from US Airways. They told me all about air traffic control, blah blah blah, and delays, blah blah blah, and how they were sorry, blah blah blah...and how they hope I'll choose them again next time I travel.

Once again, thanks for nothing, US Airways.

travel nightmares

The live version of this story is better because it includes my commentary (and is very theatrical), but most of you will have to settle for the written complaint I sent to the airline this morning.

Dear US Airways:

I am going to share the details of my recent flight experience because, although each incident is possibly bearable by itself, the total experience turned out to be an absolute travel nightmare. You can skip to the last paragraph for a summary of my complaints.\

To start things off, I arrived at Baltimore airport and had to wait in line for 20 minutes to check in. That seemed a little excessive for electronic kiosks. When I got up to the kiosk it was 43 minutes until my flight and so it wouldn’t let me check my bag. I asked the attendant if there was anything I could do and he was completely unfriendly and told me that I could take the next flight out among a few other unhelpful suggestions. So I took my bag through security as a carryon and had to throw away my large liquid toiletries only to find out that my flight was delayed and there would have been plenty of time to check my luggage. Had the attendant been more helpful, he could have checked for a delayed flight and allowed my luggage to be checked.

At the gate the passengers were getting nervous about missing their connections, but the attendants just kept saying that we’d be there in plenty of time and that everyone would make their flights. But by the time we arrived in Philadelphia, we were all sprinting from gate to gate. My flight to Las Vegas was scheduled to leave at 6:05 and I got to the gate at just before 6:00. The gate agent told us that the plane was still there but that she would not open the doors – even though there were TEN of us trying to get on that flight. US Airways should have held that plane for 5 minutes so that ten people from a US Airways connection could board the plane.

So next we get into the ridiculously long customer service line to try to get the next flight out. We waited for at least an hour in that line. When it was finally my turn I remained friendly and calm and appreciative of the agent’s help. She put me on standby for the next flight out and said she’d put me on the morning flight in case I didn’t get on the standby flight. So I took my new standby ticket and my printout with info for the morning flight just in case and headed to the new gate.

While waiting for my standby flight they made several announcements that said, “This flight to Las Vegas is overbooked and if you have a flexible travel schedule and will volunteer to take a flight out tomorrow, we’re willing to offer you a $500 travel credit good for up to one year, and we’ll put you up in a hotel tonight.” The offer was not extended to me. Well my schedule wasn’t flexible and I didn’t volunteer to take a flight out the next day but I was being offered nothing for my inconvenience. Not enough people volunteered to give up seats, so I didn’t get on that flight.

So I went to the next hour long customer service line to get my ticket printed for the morning flight and get a hotel. When I got to the CS representative he told me that I had NOT been put on that morning flight and he was having trouble getting me on the list. I don’t know what he did but I got the ticket but he told me that US Airways would not do anything about a hotel other than give me the phone number to the discounted reservations hotline. I’m pretty upset at this point but I’m still courteous to the representative and book my hotel. Now I’m paying for not only my hotel in Philadelphia but also for my prepaid reservation in Las Vegas which I am not using.

From my filthy, bug-infested hotel I call US Airways customer service for my complaint. After waiting 30 minutes to speak to someone she tells me complaints must be issued through your website.

The next morning I get to the airport and with ticket in hand, head to security. I might as well carry on my luggage since I now don’t have any large liquids. But they stop me and tell me that it’s too large for a carryon and that I need to check it. So I go downstairs, wait my turn for a kiosk, scan my ticket, and it says to see an agent because it can’t find my reservation. So I ask the nearest agent and after looking at my ticket and asking what it was, she told me I needed to go speak to someone at station #4. So I took my stuff down to station #4 and waited in line for 50 MINUTES! Several times there were three agents helping one customer and everyone in line was very upset. Everyone was trying to make their flights. When I got up to the counter and handed my ticket to the woman, she looked it up and called a supervisor over. She says to him, “That’s weird, she has a confirmed ticket but it kicked her off the flight”. The confirmed ticket in my hand had a seat assignment and now they’re telling me I’m no longer on the flight?! They finally put me on the oversold list and luckily they checked my luggage.

I headed up to the gate, got my seat assignment, and finally got on a plane to Las Vegas…but my new seat was in the middle of two very large men…for five hours. All the while, I missed half of my weekend getaway, while my family waited in Nevada for me.

I understand flight delays happen, but because US Airways employees wouldn’t hold the doors to the plane for five minutes for ten passengers making a US Airways connection, who they knew were in the airport, I was forced to miss my flight and half my vacation. Because of understaffed and unhelpful US Airways customer service and ticketing desks, I spent hours in lines, kept getting told I was on a flight and then it turned out I wasn’t, paid for a gross hotel room to stay an unexpected night in PA while paying for a hotel in Vegas, spent most of my day waiting in lines at the airport, endured constant anxiety about getting to my destination – all while being polite to everyone I spoke with. After all this, I am offered nothing in reconciliation. Meanwhile, US Airways is willing to offer someone who volunteers to give up their seat a $500 travel credit and pay for their hotel room? That is horrible customer service and I think I deserve more than that. At the very least I should be offered the same travel credit and hotel room reimbursement that was offered to travelers who would voluntarily give up their seats. I was forced out of mine, and my vacation was ruined because of it!

Beach Fireworks

We had a lovely 4th of July weekend. On Friday we went to Butler's Orchard to pick blueberries. There were a lot of people there picking but plenty of berries to be picked.

We got a little tractor/tram ride out to the blueberry field and then picked to our hearts' content. (3.5 lbs worth of content hearts to be exact)

Carl informed me that if I wasn't full by the time I left, it was my fault. So we snacked on the extra big ones as we put the regular sized ones in our bucket.

On Saturday we started our day by hitting up the Annual Ward Independence Day Pancake Breakfast. We enjoyed patriotic trivia and, if you can believe it, blueberry pancakes. Other than wearing red, white, and blue - that was about the extent of our patriotic-ness on Saturday. However, we DID make good use of our fresh blueberries that evening. I made blueberry buckle and Carl made blueberry ice cream - which we ate together while enjoying a movie.

Sunday we went to church and were so grateful to live in a land where we have the freedom to worship as we choose. After church we headed straight to the Norton's to pack up the van that was beach bound. We picked up the Stampers and started our journey to Ocean City. We expected extreme traffic but got lucky and ended up making it there in only about four hours. I'd never experienced fireworks on the beach before but now that I have, I might never want it any other way. It was incredible, beautiful, romantic, and patriotic.

We all had Monday off from work so we spent it at the beach. We brought lots of drinks and fruit and snacks and food so we could stay out there all. day. long. The Stampers brought a couple of boogie boards which provided loads of entertainment.

Everyone took a break from the water and we suggested sand sculpting. We like to sculpt turtles because we love turtles and also because they are relatively easy to make look good.

We did lots of laying around, reading books, eating sandwiches with just the tiniest bit of sand in the which, and enjoyed both the sun and the shade.

The crab house seemed like a logical place to end our beach trip so we headed there before we hit the road. Each couple had a gigantic bucket full of delicacies from the sea. Yum!

Thanks for planning a wonderfully fun beach trip, Nortons!

Egg-celent

Dear people who egged our deck:

Not. Cool.

If you were trying to do something cool like the kids in Glee, I would have preferred a song.

Thanks,
Brewers

Hasbro Game Night

House Party is a site that advertises and promotes products through house parties. Clever name, eh? Basically, they send you a bunch of free stuff and then you invite people over to enjoy it with you. When I saw that they were offering a board game house party, I couldn't resist.

Our care package came with four boxes of variety Triscuits, two boxes of variety Wheat Thins, Hershey's Pieces candy, and three board games. They were trying to promote the new Trivial Pursuit - Bet You Know It game..and promote they did!

We had so much fun (as you can clearly tell from this picture). We only ended up playing Trivial Pursuit and not the other two games but we all enjoyed the new game. The new version actually gives people like me (who can't answer many of the questions) a chance of winning and gets all players involved by betting whether the person answering the question will get it right or wrong. There were plenty of laughs and interesting conversation sparked by some of the questions and hopefully now we can all identify a turkey vulture.

It's totally free so check out their site if you're interested in having a party. (and that was free advertising right there. You're welcome, House Party)

Three Wonderful Years

Three wonderful years ago, Carl and I got married. We're in a different place than we expected when we started out, but there's no where else we'd rather be. This last year of marriage brought us a new home, trips to Europe and the Caribbean, lots of home improvement and a little personal improvement too.

To celebrate our anniversary this year, we went out to dinner at That's Amore (appropriate, right?!) and I made a little heart cheesecake for dessert.

Carl is my favorite person to travel with and definitely the one I like to snuggle up next to at night. He makes me laugh every day and cry every time he writes me a card. He supports my dreams and laughs at my dumb jokes. His curls still make me giddy just like the first day I laid eyes on him and I can't wait to see what this next year holds in store for us.

I love you, Carl. Thanks for everything.

Home again, home again, jiggity - jig

In case no one noticed, I was in Utah for almost a month. Carl had other work travel plans and so he only got to join me for the last week.

I spent most of my time with friends and family members getting to restaurants that I can't visit often now that I live on the East Coast. Oh yeah, and working. I did some of that too.

While I was out gallivanting in Utah, Carl was busy in Arizona checking out Sedona and Camelback Mountain. Oh yeah, and working. He did some of that too.

My grandma, blessherheart, is convinced that she will be dying soon so she wanted to gather all the granddaughters together to pass down some of her heritage. We each got a few items from her house and she sat around and told stories about when she was growing up. It was a really special opportunity.

I also got plenty of time with these two cuties. I miss them so much now that I don't get to go to lunch with them every Saturday. We played Barbies and dance party and I let them put 37 barrettes and bows in my hair (I counted as I was taking them out). I'll spare you the pictures of that one - not my best look.

I got to hang out with my best friend-since-childhood and her new husband.

And Carl got to hang out with his best friend-since-childhood.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, my other grandma passed away while I was there. I got to see her one last time before she passed away and my sister, brother, and dad all came in for the funeral so I got to see all of them unexpectedly as well. I have some fun memories of staying over at Grandma's house when I was little. We liked to dress up in her silk nightgowns and she always had nilla wafers. Love you, Grandma!

We apparently didn't take any pictures with Carl's family but we spent several mornings and evenings with them. Carl got to go fishing with his dad and then we got to eat the fruits (fish) of their labors. We played croquet and read books and enjoyed lots of delicious food.

One of the days we spent with Carl's mom. We went downtown to see the scaled model of the SL Temple at the Visitor's Center. It was amazing. If you're in Salt Lake and haven't been there yet - go check it out! We also visited the new Family Search library and Cafe Rio.

That night we got together with the Linds for a little brats & mallow roasting (but not together). It was so great to enjoy s'mores and be up in the mountains. Ooh how we miss those mountains.

Saturday was my 10-year High School Reunion. I was wicked excited to go because, hey, I loved high school. We got all dressed up and my mom took some pictures out in the garden before we left...just like in high school.

At the reunion they had dinner and a program. We did the typical awards - who traveled the furthest, who has the most degrees, etc. I came close to winning a couple but alas, I came home empty-handed. They had a photo booth set up which obviously means that chaos will ensue. Luckily Carl knows (and likes) several of the husbands of my friends so he got to have a little fun too. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Sommer and Josh let us help them break in the boat for the Summer. The water was cold but the scenery was beautiful and there's no better way to kick-start your Summer than by riding some waves. Carl was so good to brave the cold water and take the kids out tubing.

And lastly, Carl and I spent our last evening in Utah each with our own friends. Carl hung out with Scott and I went to a friend's house to open our time capsule. The eight of us put this time capsule together after we graduated from high school and said we'd open it in 10 years or when the last one of us got married. Luckily, they both happened within three weeks of each other and almost all of us were able to be there to open it. I got home so late that I only got to sleep for an hour and a half before getting up to head to the airport, but it was worth every second.

We enjoyed our time in Utah and it makes us a little homesick. But then again, it was nice to get back to our home in Maryland as well. See you next time.