Updates  

Posted by Amber

Not too much exciting has been happening around here lately.  I'm now 17 weeks along and have not been obsessing over everything baby anymore.  Granted, that may change in the next 3.5 weeks when we get to find out the gender.

Matt is still doing the work thing, the scout thing, and the two pipe bands thing.  He stays pretty busy :) 

On the 8th and 9th of June, we went to the Utah Scottish Festival.  Friday night was nice.  The weather was decent and the tattoo was pretty good.  I especially liked the drum major exhibition.  It was fun to see drum major friends.  (I got another hug from Jason Paguio...I wonder if he really knows who I am? We *are* FB friends, and I've tagged him in some photos, but does that mean he recognizes me, really? One of these days I'm going to ask him lol)  Damsel in this Dress was also there.  I got to see my cousins Ashlee and Natalie.  Sadly, Natalie was not feeling well at all on Friday night, but I sat in the booth and chatted with her for quite awhile.

 Matt helping the high school pipe band.  Next to him is Logan, who is in our ward.  Cute kid :)
David McCormick and Jason Paguio 
 Jason Paguio and Kevin Conquest
Arturo Herrera, Jason Paguio, Kevin Conquest

Saturday, Matt had solos.  I also hung out with Natalie for a little bit and introduced her to our extended family who was helping in the piping tent.  The weather was nice.  Justin played for both Matt and Daniel, and screwed up for both of them.  It was pretty entertaining.  Matt took second in both competitions.

 Ashlee and Natalie at the Damsel in this Dress booth.
 Matt soloing - thanks for taking the pictures, Natalie!
Matt and Justin

Later in the afternoon, the wind picked up.  It got super bad, and SUPER cold.  It was difficult, I bet, for the bands to compete in it.  After Wasatch and District grade 3's performance, Matt and I were on the other side of the field from White Peak's tent.  As we walked back, we noticed an ambulance.  When we got back to the tent, we found out that our two large garage-type tents and blown away. (Yes, they were staked and secured. I told you the wind was bad.) Apparently one of them hit a lady and knocked her unconscious for about a minute.  She was the one in the amublance.  Since we were on the other side of the park, we didn't see it happen.  However, it sounds like they were working on getting the easy-ups down and were about to bring down the other two tents when they took off.  Quite an adventurous day.

 Our friend Glenn Kvidahl judging.
 Another casualty of the heavy wind.  This little guy isn't fully fledged, so he was sort of gliding from place to place.  He wasn't so fond of getting caught, though.


As for me, our Draper phone center at work is nigh unto done.  We went up for the first orientation last week.  It's a nice facility.  I'm quite excited to work there.  We were supposed to be up and running yesterday, but the internet got hooked up to the wrong building (because the address on the lease was wrong...), so now it may be another week!  However, I went up yesterday and helped to interviews.  Have I mentioned I'm excited to work there?  It will be a nice change of pace, indeed.

Umm, Father's Day.  We went to church... :)  I had sharing time, and it went very well :)  Our ward did pie for the guys.  My parents also brought over a huge Costco apple pie for Matt on Saturday (unfortunately, I was working).  After church, we visited with my parents.  Then we headed home to collect the puppy and went the Matt's parents for dinner and visiting.  Mocha found the kittens outside.  They're growing up so fast!  One especially just sat and kept an eye on Mocha, even after she'd moved onto something else. lol  That night, I made cake and we watched more Deep Space 9 :)

I think that pretty much brings us up-to-date.

Tuacahn Aladdin  

Posted by Amber

June 1-4 we took a vacation to St. George. (Much needed, I might add...now what to look forward to?)  Matt's family was going to Tuacahn on Monday, June 4th to see Aladdin.  Since we have family there and it was a weekend, we figured we'd head down and actually spend some time there. 

We ended up leaving Friday afternoon.  We had to take the bird to Jason and Camile's house for bird-sitting, and then we had to take a house key to my cousin Elisabeth, who was going to feed Cinco.  Mocha got to travel with us.  The plan was to make it down in time to go to my nieces' dance concert, but we didn't leave on time.  Fortunately, it was also on Saturday :)  We got into town at about 7pm.  We stayed at my sister Makayla's house, although they were in Phoenix for my other niece's baptism.  We hung out for a bit and got Mocha and Candy acquainted, and then we headed to the house the family rented for the weekend for dinner.

We stayed there for a couple hours and ate and watched people playing in the pool.  We then headed home to our puppy.  Shortly thereafter, Chase and Kiera made it back from youth conference, so we stayed up and talked to them before heading to bed.

Saturday was a rather lazy day.  We took Mocha and Candy on a walk and I worked on some stuff for the Primary program in the morning on the deck before it got super hot outside. 


We eventually made it out of the house and went to pay the mortgage, since we didn't do that before leaving on Friday :)  Then we went to Pizza Factory Express for lunch.  We were going to go to the house to swim, but within 30 minutes of getting home, Mom called to say they were heading out to dinner for Thai food.  So instead, we stayed home and watched TV.  That night, we headed out to the dance concert.  It was good, although the violins were a bit different.  We saw my nieces and my sister Monica afterward.  It was fun when we found them because they didn't know we were coming :)  We chatted with them for a bit and then returned home, but stopped at Costa Vida on the way to pick up dinner.

Sunday we drove down to go to church with the family at Matt's aunt Lori's ward.  We had quite a large crew there, and they apparently have a large ward anyway, AND there was a baby blessing - it was a bit crowded...  Church was good.  They just had a 4th missionary receive his call to Armenia.  Craziness.  Least favorite part?  Sunday school.  Adults complicate things.  I was like, really?  The answer is simple.  Give me Primary any day :)  Relief Society was good, though.  After church, we went back home where Matt changed and we hung out for a bit before heading back down to the house for dinner.  Brian made super yummy Teriyaki chicken.  Then we hung around forever talking.  I learned lots of fun family history stories :)  The plan was to head back to Lori's house, but since it was taking awhile to get out of there, we headed back home for a few minutes and picked up Mocha.  Gave the kids a start when they got back from their grandparents' to no Mocha.  Good thing they had my phone number :)

We got to Lori's house just as everyone else did, so it was pretty awesome timing.  We stayed and chatted while the kids played in the epic game room downstairs.  Mocha did well with their dog Harley, and we hung out in the back yard with them for a little while.  Evenually, we made it back home to crash.  When we got there, my parents had gotten to the house.  They apparently decided to split the trip and stayed at Makayla's Sunday night as well.

Monday we visited a bit before heading to the house for breakfast and swimming.  We were lucky to have the kids around to take Mocha out (like after church and in the middle of the day Monday).  We had lots of fun swimming in the pool most of the day.  Although the after effects have been less than enjoyable.  This is what happens when you don't reapply sunscreen AND you lay on a raft for awhile.  My shoulders and hips are sunburned, and Matt's back is sunburned.  Oh well, we had lots of fun playing around and hanging out with the kids.  Here are a select few pics from swimming Monday.

 Brian
 Shawn attacking Melody
 Pool full of people
 Canon mid-dive
 Ian riding Matt
 Karsyn and Kassidy attacking from the hot tub
 tee hee hee - awesome face from McKade
 Did I mention the house they rented had a putting green as well?

 Great pic of Matt and McKade
 Sisters' revenge
I made him come over for a picture :)

After swimming, we left around 2pm to get ready before dinner.  I showered and Matt napped.  He did eventually wake up and get ready though :)  We had made a reservation at Brick Oven at 5pm, so we headed there at about 4:45pm.  Although we were sidetracked by the kids outside playing with the dogs.  Candy and Diamond were playing, but Mocha wanted nothing to do with it.
 Diamond, Chase, Candy
Candy and Diamond playing while Mocha gets loves

Dinner was tasty.  I did the pasta bar and got penne with the chicken white sauce and four different kinds of cheese.  Matt got an 8" pizza.  We also had soups with our dinners.  Matt got clam chowder and I got chicken noodle.  It was quite tasty.  We sat with Karsyn, Kassidy, and Darrel.  We had fun chatting and eating tasty food until we were way too full.  Afterward, since we lived closer to Ivins than the rest of the family did, we went home for 30-45 minutes and were followed by Greg and Makayla getting back.  It was nice to be able to chat with them for a bit before leaving for Tuacahn.  Lexie and Lainee loved playing with Mocha.
Lainee and Mocha


 Matt and Candy
Lainee, Mocha, Lexie 

We got to Tuacahn at about 8pm where we hung out for awhile with the family before we were able to get into the theatre.  We didn't go over to the cutouts this year, but we did snap a few pics while standing around.
 Me and Matt
 Roxanne and Shawn
 Noel and Melody
 Jenn and Michelle
 Matt and I in our seats
Set

Aladdin was good.  It's a revamped version of the Disney movie, with some added songs, new characters, and a 3DS movie.  Sometimes it was a bit too gimmicky for me, but it was still quite enjoyable.  Aladdin was HOT.  It was most unfortunate when he became a prince and put on more clothes.  The movie in the Cave of Wonders scene was really unnecessary.  Genie was hilarious - although again gimmicky with modern references in the jokes.  Jafar was properly evil.  The flying carpet was pretty cool.  It went around the theatre suspended by cables.  It was quite good, but I opted to stay in my seat at the final bows.  Being on the very end, I couldn't see everything happening on the trail behind the stage - like Jafar becoming a genie.... so that was unfortunate as well.  Since it wasn't actually "opening night" but rather a "preview" (first time in front of an audience, though), the characters didn't come out to mingle afterward. So we hung out for 10-15 minutes for nothing.  We left at about midnight.  (The show got over at about 11:45pm) 

We headed back to Makayla's to pick up the last few things and the puppy before leaving town.  We were going to leave on Tuesday, but Matt was informed during the week of a non-optional meeting Tuesday at 9am.  His boss had to cut her trip short too.  She was in Vegas for the weekend and was also going to travel on Tuesday.  Oh well.  We picked everything up, stopped to get gas, and drove home.  Matt drove for the first hour so I could nap before driving the rest of the way home.  I fail at driving late at night, by the way.  However, we did make it back safely.  We got home at 4am.  Lucky for me, I had Tuesday off, so I did laundry and put the house back in order :)