Vegas, Baby!

So, we had ourselves a little Las Vegas weekend trip last week. It was tons-o-fun. We took my little sister, Britni and it was her first Vegas trip. Her reactions were the best. Here is us looking out over the Strip from the fenced-in bridge.


And of course, there's the shopping. This is my fabulous husband in a purple, yes, purple! leather 1980's throwback jacket.



We took in the sights including the New York, New York rollercoaster and arcade. This is my fabulous husband again, with first his triumph over the "Shocker" and his prize.


We ate lunch at Brad's favorite place, Harley Davidson and like the true tourists we are, left with more souvenirs than food. I think the highlight of the trip was seeing the Circ De Solei "O" water show. It was in the Bellagio hotel and we got all fancied up.



So that's it. I get points for posting twice in the same week but deduct points for an excessively long posting. Hey, I'm getting there!

New house

So, I am finally blogging about it and most of you already know, but we bought a new house!...Back in June. I absolutely loooooooove it. It's out in West Jordan, kinda middle of the Salt Lake Valley. The house is 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths on the main floor, 1 bath and 1 bonus room on the upstairs and then a full unfinished basement, a.k.a. the winter project. I have lots of favorite things about the house and am still a little giddy with the excitement of having a real "grown-up" house. I love, love, love the kitchen. It is open to the family room and have pretty slate floors with granite counter tops. There is so much cupboard space that I am in appliance organization heaven. I also love the 25' ceilings in the entry and family room. Let's see, oh, I might as well mention Brad's favorite part. He has a 4-car garage that is about 1300 square feet. He is so stoaked to have a place for all his tools. I saw the kitchen, he saw the garage and we said "SOLD"!

We do love it and it quite the adjustment to go from 1400 sq ft to almost 2500 on the main level. We always find ourselves talking to the each other and yelling back, "what?, I'm in the other room!". And Ruby loves being able to lie on the floor without being walked on.

We still have lots of projects and I'll take pictures as we work on them. You know Brad, if he doesn't have a project, he's going crazy!

Lava Hot Springs-the annual family trip

Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. The home of our annual family camping trip. ("Annual" meaning we have managed to do it two years in a row). If you are deprived and have never managed to visit this quaint little town, allow me to convince you that it is a must! This little bitty place has this "river" (more like a quick paced creek) flowing right through the town. The river was formed by Lava rock and creates a few currents and bumps along the way. It's a thrill to tube down the river and hope you make it to the bottom. The best part is that if you sit too far down in the tube, your hiney will be greeted by some insanely sharp lava rock. Trust me, falling out of the tube IS NOT an option.

(You might be astute enough to notice that this is not actually our family. How do you expect us to take a picture while we are all tubing?)






So here is a partial family picture (missing Dad, Josh, Salina, Ethan and Raine)


Part of the "quaint-ness" of this little town is that it is surrounded by lots of undeveloped land, so half of the family camped out and those with small children or wimpy dispositions, stayed in town in the hotel room.













In addition to the wonderful campfire and dutch oven meals, we take the last night to go out to eat in one of the town's little restaurants. Surprisingly, the place we went to had really good steak.....and service.


This picture is of the waitress "assisting" my dad with his migraine. Apparently she moonlights in holistic medicine. (Ya, Dad knew this picture would come back and haunt him.)


And, lastly, Josh and Salina were such good sports to tote along the 2 young boys. This picture is at the restaurant/ healing house.



It was such fun to get as many family members as we could. Hopefully this "annual" tradition will survive 3rd year!

White water rafting

The annual white-water rafting trip continues in 2008! We camped out southeast of Jackson Hole, near Granite Creek Canyon. Here is how cool we look rafting......

What these pictures don't tell is the real story. Although it appears that we cleared "Big Kahuna" and "Lunch Counter", we actually bailed at the bottom. In retrospect, that capsize may have been attributed to my "hurt" thumb, which I was not aware at that time, that was actually broken. (Ok, so I fell down earlier on the rocks -not even in the raft- but didn't realize I had a broken bone. I just knew I could not bend it and Brad had to do all the steering from the rear. Which, of course we now know, does NOT work.)Yeah, I cried the rest of the way down the river.

Our dear friends were sympathetic but made us promise will we still continue the tradition next year. Sure, why not? Who knows what other bones I could break?


(Left to right, Bryan, Summer, Brad, me, Alexa, Machiel)

3rd STOP: Puerto Vallarta

Ah, one of our favorite memories of the vacation. We didn't actually see anything in Puerto Vallarta but we took this awesome shore excursion to a Sea Life Park. As you can tell from the pictures, we swam with the dolphins. It was amazing to be so close to these creatures (I know how sentimental this sounds). They were gentle yet strong but so responsive to us and their trainers. I loved the experience and would tell everyone that it is well worth the money.

2nd STOP: Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa

This was our "low-key" port. We caught a little local boat to go across the island to the LAs Gatos beach. And when I say "caught", I mean that I literally caught the boat--right in the head. The plastic roof of the water taxi was quite a bit shorter than we are used to and just when I was ducking, the boat caught a wave and lurched me forward. Yes, I cried....for a long time.....in front of everyone.....and had the worst headache of my life. But all that aside, the beach was beautiful and we enjoyed some relaxing. It was especially cute to see all the nephews and nieces play in the ocean.













And that's about all I to say about this port. Perhaps it was the crack to my head that kinda fogs my memory.

Mexican Rivieria Cruise: 1st stop Acapulco

Sounds exciting? Well, to say the least, Brad & I are not "cruise" people. I'm not sure why we thought that suddenly we would enjoy being around masses of people in teeny little spaces. But alas, we took our first cruise with the Locher family. We loved the chance to be around the family and that was defiantely a highlight of the trip. I'll do my best to blog it to sound fun, but let me assure you, Brad and I will not likely be going on a cruise again anytime soon, i.e. forever.

Acapulco, Mexico The weather was beautiful but we found ourselves with not much to do, (we were waiting on part of the Locher family to get back from the emergency room. Our cute little nephew broke his foot) so we spent a little time at the flea markets. Turns out they have the same crap we have at home! :)




Then we hailed a taxi for all of us to go watch the cliff divers at La Quebrada. The divers have to wait for the tide to come in exactly at the right time before the water is deep enough to dive into. It was an amazing sight and they said no diver has ever been killed on those cliffs. Actually they may have said that only 1 diver has ever been killed but whatever, details! Stare really hard at the middle of the picture and you may be able to see the diver. Ok, you probably can't see the diver but here is a picture of how far down the dive is.











And we ended the evening with the most beautiful sunset.