Thanksgiving

Wow, I can't believe Thanksgiving has past and now Christmas is upon us! I still haven't posted fun pictures from Halloween.. oh well. The past two weeks have flown by! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my parents house, we had my parents (of course), Travis (bro)& Carly, my Grandma Weeks and us. Very small but soooo relaxing! As we were driving home, I realized I took NO pictures of our day. I was so bummed!

I can't pass up the opportunity to share our experience frying a turkey this year. I just wish I had taken a picture! Anyway, Brad and Travis had been wanting to deep fry a turkey, my mom agreed but decided to cook two turkeys. (Mainly because she wanted gravy and there is no way to get any juice from the turkey when you deep fry it.) We have deep fried turkeys in the past with great success so why would we think this year would be any different?! Well... it was! While getting the turkey ready to fry we asked Brad to figure out how many minutes it needed to cook based on the size. He is really good with math and so we trusted him....once again.. no problems with his math skills in the past. My mom and I with Brad's help cooked the side dishes, and Carly cooked her Tofurkey (she is vegetarian) and some yummy rice dish!

Meanwhile, Travis and my Dad were outside frying our turkey.. it takes a lot of skill to regulate the temperature for the turkey to cook evenly so they had to watch it the entire time. When it was time to take the turkey out we discovered it was still a bit undercooked, so we put it back in the fryer for a few more minutes.. we were not sure how long to leave it in so we all decided 20min would be safe. Well.. that was too long. When we pulled it out again it was burned on the outside which is how it should look but this was even worse. To make a long story longer.. we ended up only being able to eat half of it, the rest was too overcooked to eat. Luckily, my mom had cooked the 2nd turkey in the oven so we still had some wonderful turkey to enjoy. Usually the fried turkey is more moist and delicious - you should definitely try it sometime.

After discovering we had severely overcooked the bird, we asked Brad to recalculate the minutes.. I had told him to multiply 3 1/2 min and 17lbs to get the time.. apparently he only heard 3min and didn't calculate the additional 1/2 min. Oops! We should have only cooked it for another 8-9 min instead 20min. We learned a valuable lesson in communication that day - I can't ask Brad questions while he is watching football! :)

I hope you all had a wonderful turkeyday.. Anyone else have a good Thanksgiving story?

TOFW & Girls - Long Beach - Nov 3rd

I don't know about you but until about a year ago I had no idea what "Time Out For Women" was. Here is the link to Deseret Book so you learn more about it. http://deseretbook.com/time-out/schedule. We have the privilege to live in the same ward as one of the presenters and back in Sept I had the opportunity to attend a "Time Out For Women & Girls" event in Logan, UT - with a couple ladies and their daughters from our ward as well as my sister. It was great to have my sister there; she learned a great deal and enjoyed the experience. The day starts out at 9am and ends at 3pm, with remarks by the presenters and musical performances in between.

It was such a great experience! At the Women & Girls events, the presenters tailor their remarks to the young women and since I had just been called as YW president, I internalized everything they shared. Although I don't have a daughter, I still learned a lot of things that I could apply in my own life. I came away feeling uplifted and with a renewed desire to be a better wife, daughter, friend and leader for the YW in which I serve. Another highlight was seeing Hilary perform in person, she is amazing!

Ok.. so now I get to the "Long Beach" part of the story. I know you were wondering....why is she talking about Logan when the title is different?! Alright, maybe you didn't care. Anyway, a couple months ago I asked Hilary if she ever wanted a buddy to accompany her on one of these trips. She agreed, so I went online to see what events were coming up and which presenters would be at each event. In reviewing the list, I found that Sister Ardeth Kapp was going to be speaking in Long Beach and Dallas. I was a young beehive when the YW theme and 7 values were introduced, while Sister Kapp was serving as the YW General President. I will never forget the impact those values and theme had in my life. I also had the opportunity to meet Sister Kapp at a Regional YW camp in Nashville, TN when I was 14yrs old and had my picture taken with her. Needless to say, I was excited meet her again! After looking at the dates for each, I decided the Long Beach event would work best with my schedule. (Bad hair day or something, not loving the pic.. can I blame jet lag? :) )

I know that was a loooong intro to this weekend but I felt the background helped to make the story. We left on Friday afternoon and returned home late Saturday night. It was a quick trip but sooo worth it! We had Friday night open to do some tourist stuff, so after checking in to the hotel and unpacking, we headed off to the Long Beach pier which was about a mile away. We were able to see the ocean and even saw a large freight ship, which seemed massive from where we were standing.









Next, we needed food! As we looked around we saw popular restaurants from here in Utah, Outback, Chili's, California Pizza Kitchen, PF Chang's and the list goes on... we were hoping to find an original California restaurant or at least one we don't get to frequent back home. While trying to decide where we should go, we both mentioned a restaurant called Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.. and how fun the atmosphere was there. Wouldn't it be fun if we saw that restaurant down at the pier?! Since we didn't see anything that wasn't a chain (at least nothing that looked good) we decided on Outback. (They have an amazing dessert called the thunder from down under, you should try it sometime.) After dinner we decided to take the bus back to the hotel, the bus had to drive us in the opposite direction we had taken to get to the pier. As we drove by the many restaurants we had seen, lo and behold.. we drive right past a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company! We couldn't believe we were within 50 feet of seeing it but missed it all together. How disappointing!!

The next day was the Time Out Event.. what a blessing to be surrounded by several hundred other women and girls that believe exactly as I do! The event was fabulous! There were 2 different presenters from the Logan event Michael Wilcox and Ardeth Kapp, the others were the same, yet the messages touched me in a different way this time. It is amazing how the spirit helps you pick up on the things you need at that moment and then next time you hear it, you learn something entirely different. It was such a neat experience talking with Sister Kapp and the other presenters during the lunch break and on our way home. (The other presenters were Hilary Weeks, Abe Mills, Jenny Jordan Frogley, & John Hilton III - all amazing!)

I also told my friend Jenn from San Diego about the event and she drove up to Long Beach to attend. She is the YW president in her ward and brought 9 young women and 2 other leaders. (She was actually called that same week to be the 1st counselor in the Stake YW presidency, good luck Jenn!). It was sooo good to see you!

I was also able to meet a friend of Hilary's from other events like this, she is darling and I am glad I got to know her during the event.

I am grateful to Hilary for being willing to share her time with me, which allowed me to have this experience. She is such a fun, talented, and giving person and I am grateful to call her my friend! I look forward to having more adventures!

NEW YORK - Labor Day

Since we are just starting a blog, we HAVE to share pictures of our trip to New York! This was a very memorable adventure. Brad surprised me for our 5th year anniversary (July 17th) with a trip to see the US Open tennis tournament in New York City over Labor day weekend. It was such a surprise, especially because I have played tennis my entire life (or at least as long as I can remember) and have always dreamed of going to the US Open. I was soo excited!

Now... I have to give a little background. Brad does not love tennis like I do, so to be willing to spend our "anniversary trip" to go to New York (a place he wasn't that excited to visit) and also be willing to sit through 2 days of tennis meant so much to me. As we were planning our trip, we found out some friends from our ward (McKinley & Andrea) were headed to New York the same weekend for the US Open and wanted us to go to see Wicked on Broadway. I am still not sure how I talked Brad into seeing a musical along with tennis but he was such a trooper and actually ended up enjoying the entire weekend. I did throw in a Yankee game which sweetened the pot a bit!



We also had some fun adventures in pedi-taxis, one adventure resulted in the police coming to our hotel. We were discussing the fare for the ride to our hotel from Broadway, when our doorman at the hotel came up to ask what was going on. The pedi-taxi guy, let's call him "Bob", said everything was fine. We proceeded to tell the doorman that the fare he quoted was not was we were told. To make a long story short, the doorman told us to go to our room and he ended up calling the police to help "Bob" leave the property. Good times! The following day, based on a recommendation from Brad's sister, we ventured back into the world of the pedi-taxi to tour Central Park. Despite the events of the previous night, this adventure turned out to be a fabulous way to see the entire park without the view of a horses rear end! Thanks Natalie!






Brad enjoys baseball so going to a Yankee game seemed only fair, given the fact that he spent the majority of the weekend doing things that I enjoy. Yankee stadium and their fans definitely make the experience! Every fan was wearing Yankee apparel and there was always someone yelling at the players the entire game. We don't claim to be Yankee fans but started a tradition a few years ago, that whenever we are in a city with a pro team we will go to a game. We also buy a hat to remember the experience!

We couldn't have gone to New York without hitting Time Square, Rockefeller Center, Ground Zero, and taking the subway -which is always an adventure! Brad loves to people watch so he was in heaven!















This is a self portrait of us in the pedi-taxi racing through Time Square.. we seriously thought we would die several times during this ride. "Bob" was dodging in and out of traffic and was barely missing cars! We even saw a pedi-taxi in front of us get hit by a cab! :)

It was such a great vacation, one that I will not forget! In fact, we are already planning a trip back to the US Open! Brad ACTUALLY enjoyed watching tennis! YEA!! He is also taking tennis lessons so that we can start to play together. Isn't he a great husband? I sure think so! Cute too!

my first post

Ok...so I finally gave in to peer pressure! I am starting my first blog. I am kind of excited to have a place to share photos and experiences. I have a feeling Brad will have no part in this but will most likely enjoy the photos and commentary. Since I am new, be patient with me, as I am sure I will make a fool of myself once and a while.

I stole my first post idea from my brother-in-law (sorry Chris) but I just HAD to add pictures from our trip to Havasupai. If you haven't been there you really should go. It is AMAZING! For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about visit this website http://www.havasupaitribe.com/home.html. We went this past Memorial day with Brad's sister Monica, husband Chris, daughter Alison and son Will. Havasupai is an Indian reservation located in Arizona. You need to obtain a permit and they only allow 200 visitors per day. The hike into the campground is 10 miles and then yip you guessed it 10 miles to hike back out! There are 4 waterfalls Navajo Falls, Havasu falls, Mooney Falls and Beaver falls (another 3 miles from camp in the opposite direction). Needless to say we hiked about 30 miles in 4 days. It was SOOO worth it!