Awesome Trip to Kanab!

Family Pic @ a Sand Cave: My Dad, his wife Nikki (who is totally awesome and we love her SOOO much!), her son Alex (16), and Fluffy (Branden's new favorite sleeping buddy)!

Branden and I were in this cool sandcave that had so many cool clors in it: purple, pink, green, white, black, brown, and of course all colors of orange.

Fluffy slept with us every night we were there.....because Branden insisted. The last night in Kanab, Fluffy went back and forth between sleeping with us and sleeping with Alex. Good thing I had earplugs in and took sleeping pills!!

This is a pic of us standing in the middle of the remnants of a Native American house. It was super cool! It was in this secret place that my dad took us to that was an hour and a half from Kanab and 50 miles of it was on a dirt road! We found about 5 houses together right here. You could see the perfect cricles that were made that used to be rock walls. These rocks had to have been hauled here from a different part of this mountain. There was a ton of broken pottery and flint (which is a type of rock that was used to make arrowheads, spears, knives, and other tools) around these houses. The flint isn't naturally present in the area where we were, so it was cool to realize that the indians had bartered/traded/traveled to get this flint to make things....and pieces of flint were littered all around this ground!

The next day, Saturday, we went to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. We went on a tour and stopped at one of the "Doggy Octagons" and met this cute, shy little guy named Solly. I wanted to bring him home so bad. He was bred by a hunting dog breeder, but was abandoned because he didn't like the sound of guns. He is super mild mannered, cuddly, and very shy. He was the sweetest thing. Of course I cried!

This little kitty loved my shoe. He smelled something he liked because he followed me around the kitty enclosure the whole time. I don;t remember his name, but he was in the Kitty Leukemia enclosure. Kitty leukemia is transfered to other kitties through spit, so the kitties with Leukemia are kept in their own kitty house.

After Best Friends, we went to see some petroglyphs. To the left of my finger you can see 2 "people" carved into the rock. To the right of my finger, you can see a spiral which is thought to be the symbol for water. (There is a small natural spring by this site).

You can see that the juvenile delinquent of this indian tribe scratched a giant penis into the rock!

In the "black" part of this rock you can see a figure with a triangle body and a small dot for a head. On his shoulders, there is another figurine etched right above him with a triangle body and dot head.

Saturday night we went to the Prom. Yep, I said we went to the Prom. Alex (a sophomore) took his girfriend, Lauren, (a junior) to Junior Prom. We went to watch the introduction of all of the juniors and to watch them do the promenade (a dance that one of the girls coordinated that all of the juniors participated in). Alex couldn't do the promedae with Lauren since he isn't a junior, so he sat with us and made comments about the boys dancing with her. It was funny. Then Lauren was crowned Prom Queen which none of us knew was happening (including Lauren). Its hard to see, but she is the girl on the bottom right. We got more commentary from Alex when she danced with the Prom King :). It went something like: "whatever, that guy voted for himself like 100 times."

On sunday morning we went to two sandcaves. This is the first one. You can see light coming in from the cave opennings on the right side of the tunnel because those openings look off of the side of a cliff. Super cool!!!

This is the second cave. It is the one that had the purple, green, white, etc colors. It was soooo pretty and had a ton of little caverns.

This is a pic of the sanbottles we made by scraping the sand off of the walls of the 2nd cave. Super cool and pretty.

This is my sand bottle from the 1st cave. After the caves we drove home. We can't wait to go back to Kanab!! We had so much fun. My dad and Nikki were so hospitable and accomodating and they really made our trip what it was. Without my dad's knowledge, we wouldn't have seen any of this cool stuff! Thanks Dad, Nikki, Alex and Fluffy!!

Springtime@ Our House!!!

Even though it keeps snowing at our house....we have begun our yard work. As soon as it was semi-warm Branden ordered a dumptruck full of black/brown mulch and he and Kevin (his Bro) worked so hard to spread it around our yard. It looks awesome and we are itching for spring to come!

Our First Flower!!! When the snow melted...there it was!

We planted 450 bulbs las fall, so I am so excited to see them springing up all over our flower beds!

I am so excited that our bulbs are finally coming up. They are so amazing to me.

I told Branden I wanted a pea trellis for my peas to grow up....when I came home from work, this is what I saw. You can't blame him...he grew up in a small town, so fence posts and hog fence from IFA is what he knows :)

Jobs come and go and then come back again

So pretty much anyone who reads this blog already knows that I lost my job at EY due to layoffs on November 12th. I got one month of severance and exactly one month later, I got a job offer to work at an American Express Bank that is closer to home, more money, and less hours! The Lord works in mysterious ways. I never really felt all that bad about losing my job. It felt right and....let's be honest...it has been fantastic to be home. It has given me more time to serve in the church which has given me more opportunity to get to know some new friends in the ward. I am grateful for my new job (which starts in January)....but I do wish I could stay home ;). My friends at EY helped me out in my job search so much! I definitely think that the experience I gained at EY was important, but the relationships built were so much more important! I am filled with so much thankfulness for everything that I have! Merry Christmas!!

My Trip to the Windy City

This is me standing on a plate of glass that juts out from the 103rd floor of the tallest building in the western hemisphere. There's just a piece of glass between me and falling 103 stories to the street below. My hands were so sweaty...it took me about 15 minutes to get brave enough to walk out there.

2 Weeks ago, I went to Chicago for some Banking Training for work. The streets were crazy. Ther were fairly narrow streets (not as bad as Seattle or NY), but the buildings came right to the edge of the streets, it was crazy. There were tall buildings on every street. I felt trapped.

Our offices are at the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower). It is the tallest building in the western hemisphere (used to be the tallest in the world). So Steve Plowman, Brad Schultz and I went up to the top floor where they have the Skydeck.

This is a replica of the tower.

This is a map of where the tower is in Chicago. It is right on lake Michigan, and as you can see, you are suposed to be able to see up to 50 miles into 4 different states.

This is a shot from the top floor. The city of Chicago is HUGE. It goes on and on forever. It looks like this out of every window.

So, they SkyDeck is this little glass room that has been built off of the top floor. You can step out onto it and there is nothing but glass between you and 103 stories. Those little dots below are cars.

The river runs right through the city and there are bridges every few blocks to connect the streets.

More Bridges

So, the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) has the LAMEST lobby ever. You would think it would be cool since it's such an iconic landmark...but it's not. Those weird shapes on the wall spin around.

See...I was really there.

Cupcake Class

I tought a cupcake class for Relief Socitey a few weekends ago. I showed a couple of ideas that could be done with only 2 icing tips (the 2 I think are essential to have).

I loved this pink frosting. Good tip is to buy frosting from a local bakery. That way it's already colored and you don't have to make it! I got pink and red frosting from Smith's Bakery for $2 each. It's a little more frosting than what comes in a regular frosting container on the baking aisle at the store. (Don't try to make red or black frosting. It's the most frustrating thing you'll do. Just buy it!)

Flowers in 'dirt' and 'grass'

I found these cute terracotta dish things on clearance at Walmart for like 20 cents.

Hunting in Mount Pleasant

Branden, his brother Kevin, and I got up at 3:30am and drove to Mount Pleasant to hunt Elk last weekend with my Whitaker Family. Everyone kept saying how much Kevin looks like his dad.

Nikki, my dad's girlfriend, made breakfast burritos, so the boys loaded up on food before they headed out.

L to R: My dad, Kevin, Branden, and Nikki's son Alex

My Super cute grandpa, Russ, went out too, but he drove in my dad's truck.

They came back at about 10am and my grandma made milk gravy. (It's a family favorite where gravy is made out of bacon grease and then is poured over little pieces of broken bread and then bacon is sprinkeld on top...I personally am not a fan of Milk Gravy. It's almost un-Whitaker to not like it...sorry). Grandpa immediately fell asleep after his breakfast.

Night-night

Kevin, Branden and Alex ate their milk gravy, bueberry muffins and of course....Coke.

My uncle Scott and my cousin Max were there too. Scott was showing us a play that he and some friends wrote for Park City Municipal somthing-or-other. It was a 5 act play. Each act was one of the 5 "R"s: reduce, recycle, reuse, restore, rethink. The had a waterbottle monster in the recycle scene, and in another act they had a chocolate chip cookie bake off with the Solar Sheriff with his solar oven and "The Man" with his machine. It was pretty cool.

Nikki has a ton more pictures, so hopefully she's send some with me in it to prove I was there ;)

I peed my pants!

(luckily there are no pictures to accompany this post)

So, I had to fly to Chicago last week and I was running to my car from work so I could go to the airport. I was really worried I wasn't going to make it to the airport in time before I peed my pants. So I drove through the ghetto (Rosepark by the State Fair Grounds) on my way to the airport and contemplated going in to a Taco Bell to pee, but I didn't for 3 reasons: 1) it was the ghetto, 2) YUCK! and 3)Branden's Germophobia would cause him to be so disappointed in me!

So...I figured I should make it to the airport and I continued on my journey. When I got to the airport fear set in as I realized that I had to park in long-term parking and ride the shuttle to the airport before I would be able to pee. I found a parking spot after about 5 minutes of driving around the parking lot. I saw a shuttle coming so I hurried and got my bags out of the trunk. I took 2 or 3 steps toward the shuttle when I just couldn't hold it any more...and I peed in my pants right there in the parking lot! Luckily I had a skirt on....so I jsut ran behind my car and dropped my drawers for the remainder of the tweedle.

I figured that if I had to pee my pants, this was the ideal situation....it was in a remote location with no people around, I had a skirt on, and I had clean unders in my luggage. And to be honest...peeing your pants isn't as bad as I expected it to be!