We're Coming Home!

I totally spaced blogging about this - we're coming home for Christmas! We fly in on Christmas day at one in the afternoon. We're SOOOO excited to see everyone and we want to fit in as many visits as possible! I fly out Monday night and Jordan will fly out Thursday night.

Disney World and Universal Studios

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had the chance to meet up with the Hendersons, Petersons, and Evers for a family vacation in Disney World and Universal Studios! It was amazing!

Day One:

Jordan and I caught our hour-and-a-half (that's right, folks) flight down to Orlando early in the morning. Mitch, Jackson, and Creighton picked us up from the airport and we went to check in at the hotel. We decided to go to Animal Kingdom first, so the little boys could have the time of their lives, and got our tickets all set. We had an amazing time! The safari was better than I ever remember it. The boys went on Dinosaur with Mitch like 20 times and loved every minute of it. You can see the video description of what Dinosaur is like here. Aren't our nephews awesome?! We even took Jackson on the Mount Everest ride. He barely made the height requirement, but he loved it! We also went on the river raft ride, and got completely wet. I just love how happy the little boys were about getting soaked.

Then Allie and Easton flew in and we went to dinner at Chevy's, which was incredible by the way. If you like seafood, you should definitely get the crab and shrimp quesadilla - so delicious.

After dinner, Mitch, the boys, and Jordan and I went to the Magic Kingdom. We rode on the Thunder Mountain Railroad (is that the name?) and a the Haunted Mansion. The boys were so nervous for the Haunted Mansion, but they bragged afterward that they were only scared once. :) And I am extremely pleased to announce that there are going to be TWO new rides at the Magic Kingdom soon....Little Mermaid and The Beauty and the Beast!!!!!! My two favorite movies!!!!! I am so excited.

Jordan and I decided to go back to the hotel at this point because we had only gotten 3 hours of sleep and were exhausted.

Day Two:

Sunday was a wonderfully relaxing day. There was the big debate about whether Epcot was considered educational enough to count as a worth-while Sunday activity. Jordan, Jim, and Matt thought it was, so they spent almost the whole day at Epcot. I basically read Harry Potter all day (gearing up for the movie)! Around lunch-time, we decided to rent a four-person bike and ride around the lake. Lindsey, me, Jackson, Allie, Mitch, Creighton, Easton, and Beckham rode around three times! We are so fast. It was quite a workout too.

That evening, we went to Downtown Disney for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe, mainly so the little boys could have an awesome time. Then we walked around and Jordan and I bought some awesome shirts.

After Downtown Disney, we all played Scum, one of our favorite games.

Day Three:

Monday was incredible. We spent the day at Universal Studios. My absolute favorite part of the entire park was THE WONDERFUL WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER!!!!! Ahh, I was like a little kid the entire day! So many wonderful things. Hogwarts was amazing, Hogsmeade was amazing, butterbeer was amazing, Hogwarts Express was amazing, Honeydukes, Zonko's, Ollivanders, Dervish and Banges.......I LOVED IT!!! I am a self-proclaimed Harry Potter freak, and so I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.

We also went to Suess Land, Marvel Superheroes Land, Jurassic Park, and a couple others. They were so fun :) The boys absolutely loved the Spiderman ride! And they were able to go on the Flying Pterodactyl ride. Almost all the adults decided to go on this "great" river adventure with Popeye, and it was awful! The main point of the ride was to completely soak you, and those that weren't wearing ponchos did indeed get completely soaked.

After drying off a bit, Micah wanted to go on the Jurassic Park river ride. "You won't get wet, maybe just a little sprinkled." Yeah. Right. :) Here we are, drifting along next to the bronchiosaurus, and then there is this HUGE drop and I got soaked! "Micah!!!" It was a hot day though, so we dried off quickly.

For lunch, Jordan and I went to the Three Broomsticks, which was an amazing experience. The attention to detail in Harry Potter Land is incredible!

For dinner that night, we went to Cheesecake Factory and then shopped a bit around the mall. Then we took the flight home!

It was an awesome experience and we were so lucky to be able to see our family members, if only for a few days! We love you guys! (P.S. See our cool shirts! haha)

Charlotte International

Last Friday, I packed up an overnight bag and drove down to Charlotte, North Carolina, for an International Convention for ACN, my business! It was awesome. I was able to spend time with my friends that I hadn't seen for quite a few months: Melodie from New Jersey, Curtis from Salt Lake, and Kyle from Tooele. We had a blast! Saturday morning, Melodie's husband drove us to the convention center and dropped us off. We found some seats among 40,000 other excited representatives way up in the nosebleeds and got ready for an awesome day!

This picture is not rotating for me, sorry!

Several of my favorite people spoke, including Greg Provenzano, ACN's president and co-founder, Tony Cupisz, ACN co-founder and Vice President, Robert Stevanovski, ACN co-founder and chairman, Simon Abboud, Mindy Deeble, and.... GEORGE ZALUCKI!!! Wow, what a day. I love these events!

I was sad to not be able to stay for Sunday. Donald Trump, who endorses our company, was going to be speaking to the 40,000 representatives there that weekend! For more information about ACN, visit my website here.

Kyle and I

Curtis and I

Shenadoah National Park

Our good friends Alan and Lyanna invited us to come camping with them in Shenadoah National Park (about 2 hours away from us) over the Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately, we don't have any camping equipment except for camping chairs and marshmallow roasters. So we decided to join them on Saturday for a nice day of hiking, tinfoil dinners, games, and s'mores. It was so fun!

We decided to go hiking on a trail that led to an old Episcopal Mission. I thought it would be awesome to see, plus the hike was only 4 miles round-trip. The hike was easy (compared to Utah hikes), with just some rolling hills. The forest was amazing. I couldn't get over how thick the forest was; the trees were towering and the wildlife was abundant. We had been strolling along for about 45 minutes when Jordan said he thought we had gone farther than the hike was supposed to be. Uh-oh. I thought for sure we were on the right trail, but maybe we had missed a turn? No, we had stayed on the main path the entire time. We did pass by a rotting shanty, could that have been the mission? No, missions don't look like that. We were so confused. So we decided to keep hiking a little longer and then turn around if it didn't look promising.

We hiked for approximately 3 miles in before we turned around. Jordan pulled out his iPhone, amazingly getting service, and the map said that we had almost hiked to the edge of the park! Wow! All-in-all, the hike was a good experience, and next time, we'll follow the trail markers more closely. I still have no idea if that trail was the one we were supposed to be on.

We joined Alan and Lyanna and started building a fire. While our tin foil dinners cooked, we played Scrabble, which I lost horribly at. All my letters were U, M, and Q. Can't really do anything with those! Dinner was delicious. If you've never had tin foil dinners before, this website has some really good tips.

We had s'mores and talked for a while then headed home! It was such a fun experience and we look forward to going to Shenadoah National Park again soon.

Welcome to the Hendersons!

The week of Jordan's orientation and White Coat Ceremony, Jim and Wendy came out to visit! It was SO great to see them. We had missed them so much! So much happened that week. First thing we did was go to Costco and Sam's Club. Can you say food storage?? It was awesome. We went couch shopping and decided on a black leather 4-seater at Ashley's Furniture, which is about a mile away from us. They were having a Friday the 13th sale, so everything was 13% off, and shipping was only $13.00!!! Compared to a couple hundred! I was very pleased.

I felt so bad on the fateful morning Jim and Wendy decided to go running. They ended going about five miles in the wrong direction because all the streets fan out, and had been running in about 90% humidity for three hours. They tried to find out where they were on the iPhone, but kept going in the wrong direction. It was awful, but Jordan saved them and picked them up near our grocery store. It's so hard to tell what direction you're going because there aren't any mountains, which Utahns generally rely on for direction. Hopefully next time they come, Jordan will be able to run with them so no one gets lost.

We also toured around a bit to see Richmond and the sights. Before Jordan's ceremony, we went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Richmond. It was very interesting and informational. I love to study this time period in history. It reminds me of my mom's dad, Buppi, who grew up in Communist East Germany during World War II. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside.

We then walked around the capitol building, which was this gorgeous white building hiding in a park in the middle of downtown Richmond. I believe this statue is of George Washington, but I can't remember. There were dozens of statues.

Inside the capitol building, there is a life-size statue of George Washington. This is the only statue he ever posed for.

Robert E. Lee, inside the capitol building.

Then we walked to another old building (the Justice building I think), which looked like a church on the outside and a castle on the inside!

We saw a few movies with the Hendersons: Dinner for Shmucks (hilarious!!), and Eat, Pray, Love (Inspirational to me :)). We had an amazing time while they were here, and hope the humidity didn't deter them from wanting to visit again! Thanks for all your help!

Virginia Beach

On August 28, Jordan and I decided to head out to Virginia Beach for the day. It was AWESOME! We went hiking along the bay in First Landing State Park, which is where John Smith and the other people from England first landed when they came to America. We almost got lost because of the 20 million trails intersecting, took some pictures, experienced the flora and fauna, and then went to the beach to relax. Like Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach is less than two hours away from us. We LOVE living in such a central location! When we got to the beach, there was a wedding holding up all the people trying to get on the beach. Those people got married and left, and when we were about to leave, there was another wedding, haha! It was a gorgeous day. We also discovered, thanks to a tip from Wendy, that baby powder removes sticky sand from your body. It really works! We just dried in the sun and then sprinkled baby power all over and then rubbed it off. Yay for no sand in the car :)

This is for brother Jordan...a glimpse of a really nice car lol

The swamp we hiked through

Mysterious hanging moss

Awesome tree - check out those roots!

Virginia Beach

Washington, D.C.!

I know Jordan already talked about my birthday, but I wanted to write about it also. For my birthday this year, I really wanted to go to Washington, D.C. I love that city and love doing lots of touristy things there :) We went up on August 7. The drive is less than two hours, so we got there in the late morning. First we went to the Anacostia Community Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian. The main reason I wanted to go here was because of the free parking, which is hard to find in D.C. The thing I didn't know, though, was that it was in the middle of the hood. Seriously. And we were planning on walking 3 miles through the scary neighborhood to the Metro to get to the other Smithsonians. Don't know what I was thinking - it looked good on Google Maps!

Then we discovered that there was a shuttle that ran for free from the Anacostia Museum to all the other Smithsonians! Yay! So we toured the very small museum, which told the story of a man who studied African American history, and then waited outside for the shuttle.

Anacostia Community Museum

The hood. I was scared.

Once we got to the Smithsonian strip and the Mall, things got a little easier. I knew where I was at least :) We then went to the African Art Museum, which was pretty sweet, and then tried to find some lunch. We went into the Smithsonian Castle (below) to see what they had. $10 wraps? No way! We decided to walk to a McDonalds and get tons of unhealthy food for half the price. And free drink refills!

The African Art Museum

The Mall

Then we decided to go to the American Art Museum. I was sad I didn't get a picture of it; it was by far my favorite museum of the day. We only could stay for about 20 minutes, definitely not enough time for that huge place. I could spend all day in that museum! There were original paintings of all the presidents, founding fathers, and historical figures from early America, in addition to sculptures, painted brooches, and golden coins from Spanish America.

After the American Art Museum, I discovered that the shuttle stopped taking riders 2 hours previously. Lovely. No matter, we had planned for the Metro anyway! We hopped on what we thought was the green line and ended up going in the opposite direction, on the yellow line. So we took the yellow line back to the green line and then ended up at our destination an hour later. Ha. Ha. Jordan and I took the wrong direction out of the Metro, so we had to walk underneath the freeway and down the highway to get to our car...3 miles away, remember? I wanted to take pictures of the neighborhood so badly, but I was scared that someone would try to steal my camera. Seriously.

Jordan and I played a game. Whoever sees the first white person wins. We were almost to our car when we saw the first white person besides ourselves...a police-woman. How ironic is that? Sorry if that sounds racist to anyone. It's just how it was! Some of my favorite memories of this walk were:

A door on the outside of a second story...with no steps.

A rotting house with barred windows and rotting steps, but was obviously being lived in.

Tons of trash littering this one little patch of grass.

Black people staring at us the entire time.

All the gangsta's driving their black Cadillacs.

Telling Jordan that no one will rob us because we look dirt poor anyway.

Point of the story: don't ever park at the Anacostia Community Museum just because it's free.

After getting to the car, we drove in heavy, heavy D.C. traffic to Woodbridge, VA so we could get home furnishings from IKEA. You already saw how loaded down the car was here, but this is how many things we stuffed in our car!

On my actual birthday, I was feeling sad because none of my family was there to celebrate, plus it was a Sunday, and birthdays on Sunday are never fun in my opinion. My sweet friends in our new ward, Alan and Lyanna, brought me cupcakes for my birthday. I was shocked! How I love good friends.

Jordan and his mom also conspired (sneaky, sneaky!) and sent me a Nothing Bundt Cake through the mail. It was SO delicious! Thank you so much for making my birthday special whilst we are far away :)