California summers

Every summer, I have had the opportunity to fly up to my sister Heather's in California to visit! Although this one was not as long as the usual stay is it was still a blast! The kiddos are always my favorite part of the trip. They all just so smart and funny! I love hanging out with them, acting out in the plays, playing in the Olympics, having book discussions, watching Shark Week, watching funny videos, acting silly etc. We did fun things like go to San Francisco to ride the rocket boat, and I went with Heather to a sonogram of the new baby!! It was amazing! I have never been to one before. :D  Well I have also gone to girl's camp up there every year so I was not going to miss my last one!! Oh my, camp was amazing! We planned the theme to be Hold on to the Yellow Brick Rod- a cross between the classic story the Wizard of Oz and Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon. My group was named Dorothy's Angles and each of the girls in my group were a character and the groups our "little sisters" were themed after us. I was the Tin man and my little sisters were the 5th years and they were called the Hollow Hearts hahaha!!! Every day had a character theme like love, the Holy Ghost, knowledge etc. We had a lot of fun with it! As usual there was a LOT to do! Although the 5th years did take a TON of the responsibility off of our shoulders this year. Fun stuff to do this year included archery(which I stink at!), crafts, and a  ZIP LINE!!!! Oh my, I was helping out there and I rode twice it was amazing!! One thing that I love about this camp is the structure. There is a schedule planned so everyone gets to do everything. Every group does capers(chores), passes off certification, does activities, goes on a hike etc. My group did have a little bit of drama this year surprisingly. Definitely not as major as we have had in the past, but things got a little tense in our group. We had a talk about it and that helped to relive us a bit. Oh and there was another girl named Sarah, from Utah, who is also a CNA, in my group!! It was halarious, I loved it! It was bitter sweet to know that it was my last year there. That will take adjusting to. I love the spirit of camp-it is my favorite part. Even though there can be drama sometimes, the spirit is almost always present there. The majority of girls are excited and happy to be there which makes all the difference. I could and have talked about camp for a week constantly so I will try not to make this too rambly.
I was able to spend a few last days with Heather and her family which was great. One things that the kids loved to do was text 2 of my friends and their grandfather, it was cute.
I realized the last 2 days that I was there I forgot to take pictures so here is some documentation of the fun that we had:

I love my buddy Jacob and his smile! He is so creative and energetic, this guy wears me out!! 

I am on a quest to become the best auntie in the world and one of the qualifications is to give countless airplane rides!! 

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Jay-Jay!!

The kids all love to play with their youngest brother endlessly

just some snuggling :)

I gave the kids a stethoscope before I left 

Can they get any cuter?!

He quite literally disappeared to come hopping in a minute later! 

He is so FUNNY

Oh my goodness!! It has been a goal of mine for the last 2 years to go indoor skydiving and I finally got the chance to thanks to my sister Corinne! It was amazing! I was a little wobbly but I think that I sort of got the hang of it, you really feel weightless. I was grinning ear to ear when the instructor took me all the way to the top a few times. I LOVED it! I want to go back so bad.Another great perk is that we got a dvd of our session :) At the same building, they also have indoor surfing and rock climbing. I will definitely remember this!

The boys were loving playing with my phone on the way there! 

SURPRISE!!

sweet Elle 

Kelly's

Kaylee were she belongs! On a horsie! 

Where's Brylee?(as I look over to see clothes being thrown out of the dryer haha!!

This summer, I have been spending time up in Logan with Kelly! Which has been super fun! We try to do a lot of fun stuff like attempt to craft, shop, see fireworks, go to the zoo, street fairs, etc. I have had a blast. We talk a ton which is great because we both LOVE to talk and now we can finally talk to each other! Even with all of this, my favorite part has been seeing the girls. Now you must understand, that my favorite job in the WORLD is being an auntie. I take it very seriously. And I get to live with these two precious girls. Kaylee has such a sweet spirit. She is energetic, funny, smart, loves animals, honest, nice to everyone etc. I could go on all day long. I love how great she is to her little sister. She is also a smart girl! She has a lot of sense, and is really mature for being 3. Brylee is a little ray of sunshine. She is the smiliest, loving, most spirited girl I know! She has a huge heart, smile and is the biggest girlie girl! She has more than once, picked out outfits for all of us to wear to church! She also loves to dance, but especially loves to love. But this girl has some personality as well, do something naughty and you have a finger pointing at you and being scolded, "NO! no! no! Stop that!!" LOL I can't get enough of them!!

Back of police cars....

Micaela and Dominique riding home in the tow truck

Mathew was a bit freaked out so we took some mug shots 

Still breathing! It does not look like it is very small but I assure you that what you see in this photo was all of the space that we had! LOL

So I had a crazy day. A group of my friends decided that we wanted to go see the most recent movie Brave.  Well, we had quite an adventure ourselfs getting there. After a lot of communication mishaps, 3 of us finally got on the road to pick everyone up. Skip ahead, now there are 4 of us driving to Manti to pick up the last one. On the way back we were on the freeway and my friend's car stopped. Like stopped working. Luckily, we had enough momentum that we could pull over to the far left lane. Well, I don't mean to complain but it was HOT!! As several of us tried calling everyone we know, the rest of us entertained ourselfs with random car games. Well, we won the alphabet game, and Ispied ourselfs to our limit. Eventually a highway help car found us and gave us some water. Now we just had to wait for the tow truck. By now we have been stuck here for approximately almost an hour. Well, there were 5 of us total, 2 of us could go in the tow truck but that still left 3. My friend's visiting grandmother happened to be the only one home. So she drove up and down the freeway hunting for us, later to find out that we were on 2 separate freeways!!! So she pulled in to a gas station to wait. Lovely. Now I was put in charge of my friend's little brother who is now starting to dehydrated on the 100 degree freeway. Luckily the highway help guy still had a few waters left over. About another half hour of waiting a police man finally showed up to help transport the last 3 of us remaining. Well, my friend Chris rode in the Highway Help car and my friend's 12-year old brother and I squeezed in the back of the police car. And I mean squeezed. I doubt that an obese person could fit in the little cage they had  back there. By some miracle, Mathew and I did it for a few miles until Chris, Mathew and I found my friends grandmother to take us home. Well, I thought that it would be smooth sailing from there but no. I have yet to see worse traffic. Okay skip ahead, we are all now home and 2 1/2 hours late for our movie but gosh dang it we weren't going to do all this for NOTHING!! So we finally were able to see it. It was cute, and I recommend it. Honestly, at that point, we were all expecting fireworks to shoot out of the screen to make this trip worth it. Well who knew that I would be so rebellious to ride in the back of a police car?!(He assured me that he regularly cleans it...)

SENIOR TRIP!!!

Me and a few girlfriends decided to go on a senior trip to celebrate graduating! It worked out perfectly because one of my friend's grandparents had a little house that we could stay in(THANKS!!) We had a blast driving down, stopping at a gas station with a petting zoo?!?! Oh my, I have yet to find a better gas station. Although I did find out that I am scared of emus(or was it an ostridge?) Oh well, it was practically attacking me.(don't worry, it was apparently filmed) When we got there, we chilled for a while and ate, then later that night, we saw Aladdin at the Tuacon Theater there. I was worried that it would be too hot for an outdoor theater but I was wrong. The sun set just as the play started and it was gorgeous. the backdrop was the red rocks, plus the breeze was hitting us so it was great. Not to mention how amazing that play was-I was very impressed. It was pretty funny because a man who was either high or drunk was sitting next to us, so that made for some VERY interesting conversation. LOL.
The next day we spent up at Zion National park. We drove around, got a little lost, hiked, waded in a river etc. It was fantastic and really gorgeous! I want to go back someday. We also went to a few really amazing museums-St. George is great for that. I have officially been to a real art museum, and also a taxidermy museum. As creepy as that sounds, I actually really enjoyed it! It was filled with animals of various regions of the world and you had a personal speaker to the different animals and the history of it. This will sound weird but my favorite part was the antlers. Haha, I think that Heavenly Father really outdid himself in this category because I noticed how many types there are! And they are all so beautiful! Some of the best ones were the ones that tightly spiraled up. Okay lets face it, I am a nerd for some things lol.

This is all of us at Zion National Park underneath a natural waterfall! 

We also went back to Zions and played around with a little shopping up there for a while. We were able to go to the St. George Temple to walk around it and visit the visitors center. I LOVED it! I wish that we planned ahead to do baptisms there because it has a great history with Brigham Young and such. We found the craziest store in St. George as well! It was a whole cowboy/indian store. And if you know the boy crazy side of me well enough, you know that I am in LOVE with cowboys! So this was awesome! There were real cowboy hats, weapons, Indian jewlery eeep! Shopping on the way back from Zions is great I must say. There are a lot of stores devoted to geos, and nature, but you also get a lot of variety as well. We topped off the vacation by going out to lunch and swimming a ton! Man, I wish that I could do this more often!