Lessons in Traveling

When we first got our plane tickets it took us a while to realize that Danielle Portela was heading out to Michigan. Hard to do when you don't have much proof of being that person anymore. ha. Lesson one learned: Your expired passport still counts a valid ID as long as it hasn't been over a year. Phew. My office manager coincidently lost her ID on the way home from her vacation and learned that her Costco ID and credit card was good enough to get her home as well.

Lesson Two, The Flint Ariport rocks. Rock my socks right off. Small, clean, the people are NICE, friendly, and SO helpful. Grated I was wheelchair so I think I had some pity points but still, so nice. Pre boarding ain't so bad either.

Third, Ward Families are forever families. We were able to park our car with a family who used to go to go to our same ward in Michigan. Not only did we park out car there, they then drove us to the airport and then dropped our car off the night before we arrived because they were leaving on their own vacation. Above and beyond these people went. Such good people.

Then of course we had to drive back to St. George from Vegas. Night-mare. Of epic proportions. It was over 100 when we got here, which we knew it would be but still doesn't soften the blow when your in leggings and long sleeves for the plane. As soon as we managed to grab our baggage we were off to find the car. We were hot, beyond sweaty, I was attempting to walk so that we could pull all our crazy baggage with us. I was breaking d-o-w-n guys. We started driving down the strip trying to kill some time so we could drive back in weather that wouldn't burn us alive. We finally parked at a Casino and changed in the car. Changing in the car with a hurt back in 100+ heat and a cramped up leg was nothing short of a miracle. It was not done discreetly but hey, when in Vegas right? At that point I was ready to strip naked outside the car to change. Modesty? What's that?

So by the time I waddled into the casino I laid and cried like a true drunk Vegas girl at Ceasars Palace while I made Chad go check out H&M. It was his birthday and I still hadn't/haven't gotten him anything so we weren't leaving until he found a kick ass suit at H&M. He finally made it back to me with a bit of a birthday haul! Success! Until a few days ago when we realized the pieces just weren't going to work. So back to Vegas we will go within the next 30 days to return! Lets see if I can get walking before then because wheelchairs are for rent and not borrow at good 'ol Ceasars. And I don't know if I can mentally handle being a crying Vegas cliché again unless I'm actually seriously intoxicated.

We did eventually make it back home. It did cool down once we left the city, we finally got some food in us, which helped immensely, chugged some Gatorade, which we have been living off of, and Chad got me one of those giant bags of ice for the ride home. We took turns with it. I would lay on in, he would simply hold it in his lap to cool off and then I'd sit on it again. We may not have a/c but bless Chad's heart, that giant bag of ice saved my life on the ride home.

Awkard and Awesome Thursday

Chad tried to scoot this little guy back into the bunny nest only to scare the crap out of him and send him running into the neighbors yard. Chad of course then ran after it, thinking the poor bunny would not be able to find his way home and really needed his help now. The bunny then starts crying and "yelling", running in and out of the road. Finally Chad caught him, only because the poor thing was exhausted. But, mission accomplished, he slipped him back into his little bunny nest, only to find all the other ones gone. Apparently they were just old enough to be allowed outside :)

 

Awkward:

• The guy that we pulled up to at a red light on a motorcycle in full on snow gear. I'm talking a coat, hat and gloves in 80 degree weather + humidity.
• I brought one pair of shoes camping that remained wet the whole time. Rather than wear wet shoes around the campsite I channeled my inner Brittney Spears and used the restrooms barefoot the full 3 days. That's how I roll when camping.
• The old woman who got mad at me when I informed her that she was in my seat on the plane. I apologized that she had to move and she proceeded to grumble about how rude I was. Sorry you still don't have a handle on your numbers lady.
• Getting upset with Chad when he lost our SD cards for a hot second. Then I proceeded to loose my glasses after we got home from camping. He of course was super helpful and optimistic about it all. Luckily Nikki and Matt were able to find all of the lost things.

Awesome:

• Spending all last week with friends and family. We are lucky ducks.
• Nikki and Matt had a nest full of baby bunnies right by their front door.
• Death by Chocolate Ice Cream... and Strawberry for Chad.
• Kieli teaching Chad how to do handstands. She was a rockin' teacher and he is a lot better now!

Happy Campers

Clifty Falls! Chad and I love this place and were super stoked to be able to go back with Nikki, Matt and all the kids.

After we got the fire situation under control we were good to go. While we aren't allowed to build fires at home anymore, something about burning the whole west down, the Midwest is just so darn humid and wet that nothing wanted to burn. I'm talking 95% humidity at night, and it wasn't raining. But everything was still wet. The wood, the grass... our pillows. Fun stuff. The second night was a much better fire night.

We had great food the whole time! Nikki had it all planned out and everything was delicious. Much better than the nachos we attempted on our car last time we were camping together :) The kids, Matt and Chad each had a s'more. Then I'm pretty sure Nikki and I ate the rest of them.

We spent 3 awesome days there. I loved all of the trees and water! While the desert has perks, and is definitely majestic and beautiful, I feel at home surrounded by green, trees, lakes and rivers.

We saw our share of wildlife: water snakes "attacked" Kieli, Blake ran into a dead turtle, we found a cool salamander, tons of fish and tadpoles, and Chad picked ticks off of me. Don't be jealous.

We hiked through rivers to the bases of waterfalls, through the woods to the tops of waterfalls, and Chad helped everyone get in some rock climbing. Kieli was a rockstar and tried climbing everything that Chad did. Blake and Greyson were super stars too. They had no fear, and were fast! They were able to get just as high as everyone else!

We can't wait to see where our next annual camping trip will be with Nikki and Matt ;)

Sno in June

All Matt wanted was a sno cone and some Kneaders French toast. While he knew we couldn't bring sno cones all the way to Indiana he knew we could bring some of Kneaders cinnamon bread and whip up the best French toast ever.

Sad day for Matt when we showed up empty handed. I thought he might take us back to the airport and tell us to go home and try again ;)

Then a surprise package showed up on their doorstep just a few days later. Inside was a loaf of the cinnamon bread, Kneaders syrup and two different flavors of sno cone syrup. After a quick trip out we had a sno cone machine to whip them up!

And while they may miss the awesome sno cones and French toast that we have I already miss getting ice cream from Scoops. Somehow St. George is missing a great ice cream place. We more than made up for it though by getting ice cream almost every day. My grandma would be so proud.

Best Week Ever

We made it! We've survived a red eye flight, celebrated birthdays, baked cakes, thrown out backs, devoured chimichangas, ate half a jar of salsa, played games, and spent the whole last day with part of mine and Chad's family and our two very best friends. And we've only been here 2 days. Can't wait for the rest of the week!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

It's the Final Countdown! We're off to Kokomo tomorrow!

Awkward:

• A patient clipping her fingernails in our waiting room. Ugh, I really feel like that's an activity that should be restricted to your own bathroom. blegh.
• Waiting 2 hours to get 3 tires changed on our car. Apparently it is rocket science.
• A patient brought his "service" dog in with him last week. It was the most hyperactive golden retriever I've ever met. It just tore through the entire office smelling and rubbing on everything. Our office smelled like dirty wet dog the rest of the day. Needless to say the pup was a pet, NOT a service dog. However small details like that don't stop the whole of St. George from bringing their animals everywhere with them.
• Finding out halfway through your haircut that your hairdresser works for the WalMart salon during the day. She did a great job though so it all ended well.

Awesome:

• Getting our flight changed! They switched our original flights, leaving us with a 10 HOUR layover. So Chad called last night and got us on a later flight with a short layover that will get there earlier. Awesome sauce.
• Chopping 7 inches off my hair!
• Making time to go play the piano last weekend.
• Knowing we get to see a ton of family and some great friends in just a few days :)

Meatless Monday: Veggie Burger Success!

We had an AMAZING week last week. We played, hiked, and jumped all week long! It was fun to have people out here to show all the fun places we've discovered in St. George! Pioneer Park was one of the favorite places and we went there twice to hike through the narrows and scamper all over the giant red rocks.

We of course had to take everyone to Trampoline Land! The kids had a blast, and so did Chad.

We also made it to Zion's National Park not once, not twice, but 3 times! What can I say, it's just a really cool place. The third time we took Kristy and Dylan and the two oldest boys to hike up Angel's Landing. It was a steep and high climb but we ALL made it! There was a fair amount of panicing and anxiety but we all made it across! The kids were rock stars and did better than most of the adults :)

If I wouldn't have been at work when everyone left I would have stole this cutie and kept her as my own!

Emerald Pools

At the top of Angel's Landing!!!

Ok, onto the meatless potion of this Monday! We made these veggie burgers when Jared was here and I was a little concerned. This is the guy who doesn't like peanut butter for pete's sake. Ashley and I would have lengthy conversations with him as teenagers about all of the food he didn't like, fried ice cream? Come on Jared! So when I made these I was really worried that they were not going to get eaten... by anyone really, let alone Jared.

I was pleasantly surprised when I tried these guys out, they were really good. The texture was great from the seeds and nuts, gave it some crunch, and all the spices really gave it a wonderful flavor. We all finished ours and I threw the leftover "dough?" in the freezer. It made a great lunch 2 weeks later. These are definitley in our dinner rotation now, especially being able to freeze it. I've decided I need to start prepping our dinners better on Sunday so that we (I) don't cave and get take out after work. We also made these when all the family was here last week and they were a big hit again!

You can find the recipe here at OhSheGlows. That's where I stole the picture from because we were soooo hungry that I didn't remember to snap a picture. I wasn't kidding when I said these were good, we inhaled them! I didn't have any black beans on hand the first time so I just substituted white beans. Instead of using the "flax egg" I just used regular ol' eggs. I just added them one and a time until I got the consistency that I wanted. It's great to finally have a good burger substitute for the summertime!

Vacation

 

 We took the kids to Pioneer Park. It's basically the very northern side of St. George, so it's really close and a really fun place.

 The kids had NO fear. None of them! They were little rock climbers and managed to make it up, over and through everything Uncle Chad was!
 

Rukia was very confused as to where she should sit on the ride home. Frustrated she just leaped up onto the boys laps. You can see how happy they were about this. We were all HOT and just a little tired, so sharing seats with a big, hot, panting dog wasn't super exciting for them. 

  
 BFF's. They stopped moving for a hot second so I could snap a picture. They have been running and playing like crazy all week. They are having just as much fun (if not more, really) as all of us!

Penny on the other hand is freaking out. She does not like all the commotion from the animals and kids so she hides all day in our room. Since she's hidden all day in constant fear she's become insanely needy whenever Chad and I are near her. She is usually not very snuggly but as soon as I got on the bed she jumped onto my chest and started purring. Not normal for Pens, but very nice and very cute.

MIA

Our normal slow paced, easy life was interrupted as of late. Starting out Friday and continuing for a while... and we couldn't be happier!!! I'll start at the beginning...

It was a C-R-A-Z-Y weekend! Chad was told last minute about a scouting camp out that he needed to go to. Sweet. So... he managed to sneak in a test early and make it to the camp out. What did I do without my lovely husband? Something super awesome and girly? Wrong.

Poor Rukia and Penny were very concerned that Chad was never going to come home.

We also had Scott come down to visit! It was exciting to see him and hang out, especially since we hadn't seen him for 2 1/2 years! Chad got home from the camp out just in time to change and shower and then went and picked up Scott. He spent the night after being abandoned by his roommate and hung out all morning. Chad dropped him off and then headed out to church to teach his lesson. I was a super slacker and stayed home and cleaned, a little, just enough to avoid the nursery really. Then Chad and I had to fit in all the cleaning and grocery shopping we were planning on doing all weekend into a couple hours Sunday night. Eeeek! We managed to fit it all in though, except the whole grocery shopping thing, and it was totally worth it to be able to have such a surprising and fun weekend! We really could have managed to get to the grocery store but we HAD to watch The Killing. Was that not the BEST?! Seriously, I need more. Thank you AMC for delivering all kinds of TV awesomeness! Aaaaand to top it all off? We've got Chad's family in town with us for the week!

Kristy, Dylan, Debi and all the babies managed to survive the drive out west! It's a long and horrible drive and I was glad to be on the welcoming end this time. Every other summer growing up my family and I would trek out to Idaho to visit all our family. The first day was always fun with the movies and treats every 100 miles... but it gets old real quick, the second day is just the worse. Nebraska is not a kind state. It's exciting to have our family travel that far to see us now! :)

Monday we hiked the Narrows at Zion's after a delish lunch at Cafe Rio. Chad made us dinner and brownie sundaes when we finally made it home. Last night was veggie burgers, Trampoline land, and frozen yogurt. Who knows what fun today will bring?

Mahalo

Tuesday started off hot and sweaty! After another early and awesome brekfast we headed up to Manoa Falls. Ash and Pat were celebrating their anniversary that day (happy anniversary!) so they skipped out on us ;) Mom's poor knee wouldn't let her come with us so we parked at the arboreum up the road so she wouldn't be sitting in the hot car just waiting for us. This morning ended up being one of our favorites! We tried a shortcut to the trail which didn't pan out so well and my dad ended up asking someone who worked there where the trail was. The guy kinda freaked out on us, wanting to know if we parked at the arboreum because that wasn't allowed, we should have parked down further where you had to pay, blah, blah, blah. He pointed us in the right direction and then let us know that there wasn't any water in the falls that day so good luck. Boo, rude much? Good thing we didn't litsen.

We found the trail and it was like we had entered Jumanji. Clearly none of us had been in a rainforest before, we didn't realize that everything would be so BIG! The trees were gigantic and the leaves on the ferns were as big as me! It was a fantastic hike. Nothing too strenuous, but the scenery was awesome. The falls were very pretty and very cold, ask Chad and Taylor. Chad dove in and Taylor fell in, he has the same grace and balance that I do. The bamboo was great and provided a lot of entertainment. Once we made our way back we wandered around the arboreum, which was gorgeous. Lots of beautiful and different plants and flowers.

 

After lunch we went snorkeling again. We tried going down the beach further, following our little map we got from the rental place. We went down the street pretty far though and had a hard time finding a place to cut through to the beach. Finally we just decided to jump over the cement wall and walk down the skinny stretch of sand until we found the beach we wanted. We threw all our stuff over the wall and Chad lept over while I slowly lowered myself down :) After a small stretch though we reached impassible parts. Back over the fence we went, ok, we just went through a gate this time. Finally we were able to sneak down into the beach we wanted only to see the public entrance smack in the middle of the beach. Geesh. We were better at what we were doing this time so it was a lot of fun. I've decided that all our vacations will now need to have snorkeling involved!

Wednesday morning was my favorite, hands down. We went to Hanauma Bay with everyone to snorkel. It was everything I wanted it to be and more! Everyone told us to go here so expectations were very high, and they were surpassed for sure! After playing with the pigeons again we hoped in the water. The water was crystal clear and there were fish everywhere! Seriously though, we put on our gear and as soon as we dunked our faces there were fish! Best part, we saw 4 sea turtles! That was my mission, to see a turtle. Chad had seen one yesterday when we were snorkling and it scared him. Cloudy water with a large shadowy dark thing swimming around? Yeah, would have freaked me out too. The turtles were really cool. They just swam along and let us swim with them. We had way too much fun and ended up leaving late. Sorry family! Chad and I learned the hard way that floating around in water in the crazy hot sun for 3 hours requires at least more than 2 applications of sunscreen. We were really careful all week but our luck ran out that morning.

We rinsed off, got dressed super fast and piled back into the van to drive up to the Polynesian Center. We didn't have a lot of time to do much (sorry!) but we were able to see the Samoa "town". The guy was hillarious! Chad and I laughed through the whole thing. We learned how to make fire, Chad was able to get the wood to smoke! And we learned about "tree"90X. Chad and I got tattoos, we were overly excited about them. The girl helping us out was very nice and thought it was funny how seriously we were taking our temporary tattoos. It took us a while to pick them out and then we had to pick a spot, which took us forever.

The dinner was great, we got to try lots of different foods, Elder Taylor tried sneaking in to hang out and was promptly kicked out, and we got a classic sunburned in Hawaii picture! We loved our crazy enthusiastic announcer and all the hula dancers. We sang Happy Birthday to Taylor, and Ashley and Patrick almost went on stage to dance for their anniversary but got scared! Chad and I were on our way up to learn a hula at the end but on our way up we realized they wanted kids, we quickly turned out butts around and sat down! Afterwards we went to see Ha!, the musical production that was going on there. It was great. We loved the show with all the dancing. We met up with Elder Taylor after the show and were able to visit with him. On the way back to the hotel we all crashed in the van, except for Patrick, our driver, he was a champ and managed to (barely) stay awake to get us back!

 

 

Thursday was another hiking morning. We had sufficiently wore Tay out so he kept Mom company while the rest of us hiked up Daimond Head. Surprise, surprise, it was hot and sunny! Very different from our last hike in the forest but the views at the top were great. Lots of stairs and crazy little asian women hiking up in heels, tights with shorts over top, and jackets. I was wearing as little clothing as possible and sweating the whole way. Best part of all the hikes we did? Compared to doing any sort of running/hiking in Utah I was a superstar in Hawaii. Woot Woot for sea level! And of course, there were more pictures of birds taken ;)

By the afternoon I was pooped. Chad and I were planning on going out that night so I took it easy that afternoon. I laid on the beach with Ashley while the boys surfed! None of us were sure how it would go, they decided to rent surfboards without a lesson and just give it a go! We watched some YouTube videos and figured that was good enough! And it was! Both Chad and Patrick were able to get up and ride some waves. Ashley and I tried to take some pictures, we zoomed in and stalked people out on the water hoping the pictures we were taking were of our husbands. Most were, some were not. We were convinced this one guy was Patrick, definitely wasn't. Then we though we finally found Pat but it was that same random guy. We've got some nice pictures of this random stranger! Chad got some nice board burns? I don't know what else to call it. It looks like a rug burn from the surf board, all over his thighs and part of his chest. It was pretty bad looking. We quickly learned why people wear what they do when they surf. Next time we'll know better!

 

 

That night Chad and I went out and explored the city more. We tried to get something to eat but were very indicisive and ended up just being snacky. So... we each got a cupcake from a bakery that won cupcake wars, got our own Jamba Juice, and split a pretzel. We stopped back at the hotel for a while to get cookies with the rest of the family to celebrate Tay's birthday and sing to him! After we went back out and wandered around.

We were in one store looking for a t-shirt for Chad and after folding it back up and putting it back the lady working walked right in front of me, where I put the shirt, and proceeded to fold it up correctly and then organize the rest of the shirts. She was literally right in front of me. It was super awkward and I just stood there to see what would happen. She just kept folding shirts. There was just enough room for us both to be standing up. Very weird. So we left there real quick and I made sure to unfold a few more shirts on the way out. The shop owners were a little different. Earlier that week Chad, Ash, Pat and I all got kicked out of a Christmas store because they were closing. We had to leave but the Asians that were there shopping could stay. We were also kicked out of a jewelry store in the mall earlier that week. We did manage to find some great shopping areas though and the Hawaiian cookie store with tons of samples, and a great garden with tons of twinkle lights. It was a fun night.

Friday was our last day. We were all beat. It was a crazy busy week. We stocked up on our breakfast munchies and headed out to the beach, where we just ate and hung out all morning. We had to check out by noon so after that we headed up to the mall so we could eat and keep cool and clean until our flights :)

 

It was a fantastic vacation and we can't wait to see where our parents take us next! :)