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 :)
