Sometimes you just need happy hour!

Another great thing about Price is that we have a Sonic. I love that from 2-4 p.m. M-F Sonic has happy hour when drinks are half price. I have to say my favorite drink there is the Diet Strawberry Limeade. My body has weird reactions to sugar so I have to go with the diet drinks and with the strawberries and limes in the drink it takes that edge off the diet taste.

Another bonus to Sonic... they have the best ice ever! I broke down today and went and bought a bag. It's 10 lbs for $1.60, you really can't beat that! As a lot of you know, I have this addiction to chewing ice, especially when I worked at Su Casa where it was easily accessable, and then when we moved away, that temptation and craving went away. It has now come back. It usually does when I'm trying to lose weight because it's something I can snack on guilt free. When I was a teenager, we would always have ice water with dinner and I would always chew the ice while we were just sitting there talking after and my dad made up a rule that I was only allowed to chew ice around the house on holidays and my birthday. Hehehe. It's so funny to me now. But of course my cousin Laurel never got in trouble with that when she lived with us and did that. We made quite the pair at the dinner table. Does anyone else have any weird addictions or cravings like that?

Missouri... here we come (In a few months)

Well, we'd like to make a special shout-out to Scott's brother Matt who is gonna take the plunge in August. He's marrying an awesome girl named Kristine in August in the St. Louis Temple. Now I don't mean to be biased or anything, but that may just be the most special temple ever. I'm so excited to go back there and just enjoy the time instead of being nervous and frantic over everything getting done before we got married. We are excited to go home to Carthage and see friends and family, it should be a good time! My aunt lives in St. Louis so it will be so fun to spend some time with her and her husband, they are pretty much some of the coolest people ever (even though I think she might like Scott a little more than me, but who can blame her?) Notice how she wanted to be by his side on the wedding day? Hahaha
Can't wait!!!

Post 101 featuring Las Vegas

Okay so the last post was 100 but I didn't feel that it was appropriate to celebrate that then. So we will celebrate post 101 with Las Vegas. It was so fun to get away for a while and just spend some quality time with Scott. He's quite the stud. We began our vacation with the Hoover Dam. I really wanted to go there, so we drove there and it was way cool! And super hot!


They have a bathroom on the dam. I used it. They are making a new road to the dam from Boulder City. It runs alongside the current one but is straighter and less windy against a mountain. The road will continue over the dam on this monstrous bridge. It's massive! My dad would hate it. He's not a fan of bridges.


The next night we went and explored part of the strip. We saw the lions at MGM Grand. They were super cute and playful. I saw a pirate and got my picture taken and he said to me "I work on tips love." How awkward is that?! I was nice enough to tip him.
This is inside the Venetian hotel. I love it!! It's so cool.
We saw the Blue Man Group while we were there. We got tickets in the "splash zone" so we had to wear ponchos. It was pretty cool. They played drums that splash paint everywhere and rock out and interact with the audience. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It was a fun show!
This is the Blue Man that shoved a camera down Scott's throat. It pays to sit so close. You get to be interactive with the performers.The highlight for the whole trip for me was going on a gondola ride in the Venetian. That's all I wanted to do while we were there and it was so fabulous!
This is just a random picture of Scott on the strip. He looks super cool.
This was a yummy highlight. There is a restaurant called "Serendipity 3" in front of Ceasar's Palace and it has the same menu as "Serendipity" in NYC. They had a to-go window so I had to have a frozen hot chocolate. It's not often I will pay $8.75 for a 16 oz. drink and it was almost as good as the one in NYC. Ah...yum! So all in all, it was a fabulous trip, but way to short. I wish we had more time to play.

Grandpa's funeral

I know that there is some family on my mom's side that would like to see how the funeral went because they were unable to make it so here are some pictures and a little review. The funeral was absolutely beautiful. It lasted almost 2 hours and were filled with memories and wonderful stories about grandpa. I think that my favorite story had to do with my brother. When my grandparents moved to Utah in 1990 the house that they moved into had an unfinished basement. So many days my dad would go over there and take my brother along to work on it. My brother would do odd jobs like working in the yard or helping in the basement or just hanging out with my grandpa. My grandpa would always slip him some money for the help. One day when he was over there my grandpa asked if he wanted to go to lunch. My brother said sure so they got in the car and left. My grandpa said the he needed to stop by the bank to pick up some money for lunch and some extra to give to Joey. When they pulled up, my grandpa said "Okay, I'm going to go in and get some money, now Joey, hand me my gun out of the glove box and I'll be right back." He did this all with a straight face. My brother thought he was serious until my grandpa finally laughed it off and said he was kidding. These were the types of funny things my grandpa did. He was quite the character.

This is a picture of my family. Rarely do we get this many of us together at one time so this was a special picture for us, especially my mom.
This is my dad's siblings with spouses and my grandma.

This was at the cemetery. My grandpa was a Air Force Captain so he got full military honors. It was really neat.
The pallbearers were my grandparents 2 sons and the oldest grandson in each family. My dad is the one in the back on the right and my brother is right in front of him.
All of the grandkids were able to put a flower on the casket. This is me and Addison.I'm so grateful that I was able to attend and see family and be a part of such a special legacy.

I love my grandpa

Here I am on my vacation in Las Vegas and all I can think about is my grandpa. Yesterday as Scott and I were walking on the Hoover Dam, I got the phone call that my grandpa had passed away. I've been waiting for this phone call for a few days, as we've known that his time was close. I can't help but be grateful that I had a chance to go and see him on Friday and tell him that I love him and hear that back from him. He wasn't very conscious but I know that he knew I was there.

My grandpa was a good man, filled with integrity, honor, service, love, compassion and unconditional love. I was always jealous growing up of my older cousins. My grandparents lived in Anaheim California until I was 8, and every summer they would drive to Utah in their Winnebego and would take the grandkids (alternating boys a girls every other year) to their home for a few weeks. You had to be 8 to do this, and they moved up here when I was 8. I was always bummed by this, but little did I know that I would be able to have more experiences with them because they had moved here. I loved going to football games with my grandpa. We had season tickets right next to him for few years, until he had his stroke in 1996. His motto was "You never leave a game early" and I don't think we ever have (except for those few times we were losing to the U, but grandpa wasn't there to see.)

My fondest memories of my grandpa were when he and my grandma would come into Su Casa to eat an early dinner. They would come in every other week or so and I really cherished those times. Grandma would tell funny stories about grandpa and he would just laugh and say "That's right!" One of my favorite stories was about when he was a pilot for American Airlines and he and his co-pilot would play jokes on the passengers. One of them would pretend to be blind as they would greet the passengers on the runway before they went up the steps onto the plane.
Since my grandpa had had a stroke, he couldn't feel on his right side, so as he would eat his mexican pizza (which he always had) he wouldn't realize that he would have food hanging down on the right side of his mouth. My grandma would say "Joe, you have food on your mouth." and he would look at me, not being able to communicate well, and he would just roll his eyes and we would both laugh. My grandma didn't think it was as funny.

One of my other fond memories was a couple weeks after Scott and I had been married. My grandpa was having some trouble walking and was in a rehabilitation center up in Sandy. The family had a get together for his birthday up there in the rec room. When we got there, my grandma was wheeling him down a hall so we were talking to them and my grandma kept going on and on about "the deere", a sentimental "line dance" that we did at our open house and reception. She had seen it at the open house but had taken my grandpa home before we had done it at our reception so he didn't get a chance to see it. She wanted Scott to show grandpa how it was done. Having no hesitation, Scott did the dance for grandpa right there in the hall of the hosptial, and grandpa couldn't stop giggling. I'm so glad we had special moments like that.

As I've gone through this process I can't help but be grateful that grandpa decided to join the church 10 years ago. His decision to do that and to be sealed to his family has made this process so much easier. As I was saying goodbye to grandpa, I was sobbing on my grandma's shoulder and she said to me "All you have to say is 'I'll be seeing you.' " And to know that I will is all the comfort I need.

I love you grandpa and I'll be seeing you.

1 whole year!

So we have officially lived in Price for a full year. I must say that I like it a lot more than I did when we first moved here. There are still a lot of things that I don't like about it, but it is growing on me. Here are some of the things that I like about Price...

• Everything in town is within 10 miles of each other.
• I only have to drive 3 miles to work and I don't have to take the freeway.
  
• We have an Albertson's, Smith's, and Wal-Mart.
• People remember you when you go to the store.
• It's such a small town that when Scott was in his first play here this season, we had to take him to the ER because he had the flu and the doctor talked to the pharmacist and told him that Scott was in the play at the college. The pharmacist was very concerned about getting him better before the performance.
  
• People smile at you as you are walking through the store.
• Everyone is moving in slow motion, no one seems to be in a rush.
• When there are no clouds, the sky is always blue. There is never smog.
• It's only 2 hours to Moab and all the great National Parks around there.
• There isn't congestion like in the city. The streets are usually pretty empty.
• They have this cute Main Street with lots of shops, and the Greek Orthodox Church has a cool bell that rings on the hour.
  

So, we are probably in for a few more years here, so hopefully it will grow on me some more. There are a lot of things that I still need to get used to.