Visiting Teaching Freebie

Today my friend Palmis and I decided to actually drop by and meet the girls we were recently assigned to visit teach. We were planning on making cookies, but realized that after 2 hours of meetings on top of 3 hours of church (and more visits later that night), we weren't really feeling like dragging out all of the ingredients and mixing them up. Also it's 100+ degrees in Utah right now (and like 0% humidity, aka we're living in an oven, so I don't really feel like baking in one too).

I remembered that I made some visiting teaching treat bags last summer with a "s'mores" theme, so I went and found the files and the pictures (from a previous blog) and thought I'd share them again. Sorry for the quality of the pictures -- the originals are somewhere on my old laptop, so for now I'm using downloads from my old blog. I'll update these soon.

We included a couple of graham crackers, some chocolate, and a few marshmallows, then packaged them in cellophane bags and tied them with twine. Easy peasy.

Click [here] to download a PDF version of the s'mores tags.
If you do, leave a comment! I'd love to hear from you.

Bahamas Cruise Part 3: The Islands

There was so much to do on the cruise ship (70s/80s music trivia, shows, games, movies, shopping, dining, etc.) but during our down time, I really liked to sit out on our deck. It was so beautiful and we saw quite a few flying fish. They looked like little birds flying above the water, but they were obviously fish because they'd all dive in eventually and not come back up. Too bad they were so far away or I would have tried to get a video of it.

We visited three islands: Halfmoon Cay, Nassau, and Grand Turk. Halfmoon Cay was definitely the most beautiful in my opinion. It's owned by Carnival, so it's relatively undeveloped and we spent most of our time wandering around the trails and finding snails in the rocks out by the shallow water around the edges of the island.

This is the "sassy grandma snail" according to Kristen. It kind of makes sense. It was way bigger than the other ones we found (obviously a grandma since it had been living so long) and it had a leopard pattern which is apparently "sassy."

Again I was pretty bad at taking pictures . . . between wanting to swim 24/7 and having sunburnt shoulders that really didn't want to carry a camera around, I only snapped a few pictures on my iPhone. Oh, well. My parents have like five more I think that I may or may not add into this post someday.

Nassau didn't have a really pretty beach (at least in the area we went to), but it had lots of shopping and big houses like the one in Pirates of the Carribean. We bought ships in bottles and pretty shells and Kristen got an Alexandrite ring for her graduation present (it's cool because it changes from blue to green depending on the light).

 

I'm ready to go back to the Bahamas now. It's been just as hot here lately and we don't have an ocean, so I think it's time to go on a vacation again.

Bahamas Cruise Part Two: Everglades

Since the first time I ever saw a show on TV about the Everglades, I've really wanted to visit the real thing. We got to go on an airboat tour that was really great (minus the part where I was sitting on the end of the row and kept getting whipped by all the grass/branches we sped by). In case you've ever wondered what riding on an airboat looks like, here you go. It's 30 seconds long but you can get a pretty good idea of how it is in the first 5 seconds, just in case you're in a hurry.

 Finally! My first real alligator sighting.

Kristen has a hard time looking at the camera.

Second real alligator sighting.

We got up close and personal with these cute guys. I bought some alligator jerky for John here and I'm pretty sure he still hasn't tried it so I can't give you a review of how dried reptile meat tastes.

So all of this so far was pretty exciting. But THIS takes the cake:

(And yes, I do realize that this video is really low-quality. It didn't look so bad on my phone but on Blogger it's pretty grainy). Anyone who knows me well will know that I'm really scared of alligators, crocodiles, sharks, etc. Holding this guy was kind of a big deal. On the way home it rained and rained and then rained some more. I'm actually more proud of this picture than I probably should be. 

We decided to go out for dinner and on our way back to the hotel Kristen somehow took a big chunk out of her toe on the bus. Still not sure how she did that . . . But anyway, I had to apply pressure to her toe with some tissues and because of the Heat vs. Spurs game it took FOREVER to get back. I'd post a picture but I think she'd be embarrassed. Luckily the toe ended up not needing to be amputated so I'd call the Everglades adventure a success.

Bahamas Cruise Part One: Miami

I'm usually kind of an obsessive picture taker (I have thousands and thousands from my study abroad to London and that was only three and a half months long). But for some reason I didn't take a lot of pictures on our cruise. I think this was mainly because A) I got sunburned and it hurt to wear my camera strap around my neck, B) water and cameras together make me nervous, and C) I wasn't feeling all that great for the first few days of the cruise because I caught a cold. But anyway, I do have a few pictures that I will probably split into two separate posts (mostly taken on my iPhone). A few of these pictures are already on  Instagram, but I'll repost them anyway.

We started the trip out by spending a couple days in Miami. The view from our hotel room was pretty nice.

Especially at night.

We spent some time exploring the city and shopping.

I bought this cute little cricket made from a palm leaf.

And of course we had to visit South Beach.

And since Rachael was on the trip with us and she loves the pool almost as much as she loves seashells we had to stop by.

I realize this post is pretty picture-heavy, so I'll put our Everglades adventure picture in a new post. Stay tuned.

I Guess this is What Happens When You Work Full Time...

Well, I'm officially really really far behind on blogging. In the time since I last wrote, Kristen graduated from seminary and high school and the fam spent a couple days in Miami then went on a cruise to the Bahamas. (I held an alligator. It was kind of a big deal). Anyway, I will eventually get around to blogging about/posting pictures of the senior trip, but for now I'll just put these pictures of Kristen and my parents after her seminary ("sem sem" as she'd say) graduation. Aren't they cute?

This girl knows way more scripture masteries than you. Promise. So it's a good thing she can move on from seminary to institute now because we all know that's the big-time.

I Love Weekends

This weekend was really fun. On Friday I went to the Living Planet Aquarium. I used to work there so most of it was really familiar to me, but they have added three River Otters since I quit so at least that was new. Just as a warning, I didn't really take many pictures and the ones I took weren't great. Oops.

Don't let these pictures scare you away from the aquarium. Everything looks better than this in real life. On Saturday John and I went to Park City. We spent a couple hours at the Outlet Stores and then drove up to Old Main Street. While we were there I saw a Banksy, which was exciting for me and not so exciting for John, mostly because the foreign country I've lived in is England the foreign country he's lived in is Guatemala. Don't let it fool you. It looks like graffiti but it's worth a lot of money.

After the Banksy encounter we got some of the best ice cream I've had in a while. The flavor was apparently the most popular one in the store ("Wowie Cowie") and even though the name made me feel a little skeptical, it was really good. I can't resist dark chocolate pieces, Heath bar, and caramel, even if they're all mixed into a dessert named after a cow.

We drove home through Provo Canyon, which was beautiful. The ulterior motive behind this was that I wanted to try Popeyes. (There's only one in Utah so it's kind of a big deal). Also, I not-so-secretly wish I was from the South. I routinely have cravings for gumbo and I wish that I was allowed to eat biscuits and gravy and LOTS of butter for every meal. The only reason I can figure that I'm not is because God knew I'd be morbidly obese if he allowed me to be born to a Southern family. (Not that Southern families are fat necessarily. I'm just addicted to the food and I have no self-control). 

The wait was pretty long for fast food but I actually thought it was really good. Plus you can order green beans with bacon or red beans and rice as a side instead of fries and that is probably one of the most amazing ideas I've ever heard of. Since it's not like we spent a bunch of money already just driving to and from Park City and buying tons of food, we decided to go see Now You See Me. (This was after John decided he wanted a chocolate shake from In-N-Out and then announced right before we got to the window to pay--6.4 seconds later---that he didn't feel like eating one anymore so I had to help and that was waaaaay too much ice cream for one day). Anyway. I liked the movie but the end kind of confused me and I really don't like when there's a supernatural/cop-out explanation for things (like at the end of the newest Indiana Jones). If you're going to write a screenplay you better explain everything at the end instead of just wimping out and blaming everything on magic. Unless you're JK Rowling and you wrote Harry Potter. And on Sunday while I was driving to John's house I saw this and had to take a picture. The clouds have been really great lately.

Ignore the reflection in the glass. I told you this wasn't my proudest photography week.