Mirror Lake Camp Out

I had gone all summer just about without going camping. I could not have that. I feel like my summer is not complete unless I have gone camping at least once. This particular weekend, camping was really needed because drama had been going on at work, I just needed to get away from the house, turn off my phone and be with some friends out in nature. Thankfully my friends Brent and Brian (guys in my ward that I have been having dinner group with every Sunday with all summer) and I had planned a trip that weekend and had been talking about it for a while, and we finally were making it happen, which was perfect timing for me. :o) We were just going to go by ourselves, but then we discovered some other people in the ward and a few other random people were going to Mirror Lake up in Heber Valley camping. So we decided to just join with them. It was fun to have a big group, but
there are some major set backs to having that many people as well. The night did NOT go as I thought it would. First of all, we were supposed to leave at 5:30 pm and it takes an hour and a half drive to get there. We did not end up leaving until almost 7 pm. Just a side note, I did not know that we would leave so late, so I did not eat dinner, I only packed a tin foil dinner to eat once we got to our camp site and set up a fire. So after being on the road for a while, we stoped in Heber to get some food. This would have been fine had I brought money to eat and had we not stopped for an HOUR! This put us back even more and I was starting to get really hungry. Then, the girl that put together the camping trip failed to mention that she didn't know how to get where we were going, so we got lost and turned around several times. When we finally reached our destination, it was dark. The girl that put together the trip had told us it would be a 2 mile hike until we got to the lake, when we got there the sign at the head of the trail told us it would be 5 miles! This wouldn't bother me so much if I were not so hungry. I mean, it was late, and I was tired and hungry and they are telling me I have to hike 5 miles before I get to eat and sit down. I wasn't sure if I was capable of hiking that far with a 40 lbs backpack on with no food in me. But away we went. I was probably the slowest in the group because of that, but Brent was a sweetheart and stayed behind with me to keep me company and to try and cheer me up and make me laugh. He was great. People saw that I wasn't doing too well and when we would stop to rest people would give me some of the food they had. One guy gave me banana chips and I told them they were the best tasting thing in the world. He knew I must have nothing in me and gave me more and started calling me banana chip girl because he didn't remember my name. By the time we finally got to where we were going to camp and set up and got a fire going it was 2 am. I had been talking about my tin foil dinner for hours and was SO excited that I finally got to eat it. It was such a great meal. We all had fun chatting and eating around the fire and around 4 am decided to head to bed after hanging our food from a high branch (so the bears would not get it). The branch ended up braking anyway. which scared the crap out of me, so that was pretty much pointless, luckily we didn't have any bear visitors that night. I slept in a little two man tent with a girl that I had just met and we basically had to sleep cuddling because it was so small, but it was fine, I didn't sleep much anyway, it was not comfortable. Next day we got up, had the fire going, Brent hiked in with a dutch oven, eggs, bacon, buiscuts, and who knows what else. Needless to say we had a pretty decent breakfast, packed up our stuff and then hiked back out. I was ahead for most of the hike back, go figure. It is amazing was some food and rest can do for you. It was a beautiful area, which I had no idea on the way in because it was pitch black. Anyway, although it was a little rocky, overall it was an awesome weekend, I had a blast. :o) A little camping is good for the soul.

2008 Summer Olympics

I have to say that I just love the Olympics and I am very sad that they are over. I wish they lasted longer, and wish they came more often than ever four years. But then again... maybe it would not be as exciting if it were not so rare. I watched the Beijing Olympics every chance I got and loved every minute of it. Sadly, I had to work through a lot of events so I only got to see the main ones. But I wanted to share some of the highlights for me during those two weeks. :o) 1- The opening ceremonies. I watched them later online because I was busy the night they showed, but wow... it was quite a show. It is amazing how many people were involved and how much preparation they put into the ceremonies! I heard that they were practicing and getting ready for that night 9 months before hand! Just shows how important appearance is to them. Also heard that some of the fireworks were added by the computer for all the viewers watching at home. I thought this was not necessary. I also heard that the little girl that sang was lip sinking because the real singer had a snagle tooth and they didn't want her to be seen to the world. Sad!

2- Michael Phelps! Yes... he got a lot of hype, but I felt it was well deserved. He made history! Plus that he got our country half of our medals! ha ha.. ok, that is an exaggeration, but still, he got a lot of golds for us and he was always so fun to watch. I loved cheering him on, especially the race that he won by like a tenth of a second or something like that. That was ridiculously awesome. Basically, he rocks my world.

3- Next to one of my favorite events to watch, Gymnastics. Our girls rocked! I was so proud of Nastia and Shawn! They were amazing to watch, I would get so nervous for them to mess up and then they never would. They showed that 13 year old Chinese girl what was up, in a graceful way. The one thing that got me a little worked up was when Nastia and Chinese girl were tied on the uneven bars (even though Nastia had the more flawless ruteen) and Chinese girl won anyway. ewww! Nastia was a champ though and handled herself well even though it was TOTALLY unfair.

4- Next we have boys gymnastics. They were also very fun to watch. My favorite was Jonathan Horton. Not only did he rock and get us a medal for the guys... but he helped his whole team I think. I mean, they were not even expected to medal and they walked away with bronze. That was awesome to watch. Another reason I loved Horton is because he was always so excited and happy to be competing. Very fun to watch. And I think he is kind of cute. That is just a side note.


5- Next event I really enjoyed watching was volleyball, both men and women beach and court. We did pretty darn well all around. I mean both men and women won gold for beach volleyball and then men took it for indoor. The women's beach volleyball were unbeatable though. It is so amazing. I believe they won over one hundred matches in a row! I can see why they are so excited in this picture. So awesome!

6- Besides Diving, Track and Field was the other event that I mainly watched. It is amazing how many world records were broken and how fast people can actually go. Both men and women for USA did awesome, but one of my favorite moments was the men's 400 meter hurdles when USA took top three! Domination! I guess that had not happened in many years. So that was pretty sweet. There were also some sad moments to watch, but I just try to remember the great moments such as this one. We had so many amazing athletes!

7- Last but not least another one of my favorite parts of the Olympics was our final medal count. 110 medals! All I care is that we beat China. ha ha. They may have received more gold, but we had more medals over all, and that makes me happy. The whole Olympic experience (from the little I get on tv) is so awesome. I have pride for my country, I love to cheer on our athletes, I experience a little bit of the joy and sorrow with the rest of the world watching. It is quite an amazing thing that it can bring the world together, even just for two weeks. I love it. :o)

Twlight Addiction

So... I am not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you that I didn't like these books just because everyone else and their mom (literally) loves these books. I found out about them last summer and read the first 3 then. Stephanie Meyer is a great writer. I mean, when you hear that the book is about a high school romance with vampires and werewolves, it sounds really dumb. Really though, I have not been as addicted to a series since Harry Potter. So I was one of the hundreds of girls in Utah that lined up at Barns and Nobles Book store at midnight when they first released the last book of the series. The one that we have all been waiting for what seems like forever. Most of those people finished the book the next day. It took me about 3 weeks because I decided to still have a social life rather than making the book my life. By the time I FINALLY finished it, I was really glad it was over. As much as I liked the series, I felt like the last book dragged a little bit and to be quite honest... it also weirded me out a bit. I won't spoil anything for any of those who have not read it and want to. Don't get me wrong, I still liked the story, I just would get annoying with Bella being so dramatic, and Jacob being so manipulative and I just got to the point where I just wanted it to end. So I am glad that it did. Now we are all looking forward to the movie which supposedly got pushed up to November, when Harry Potter was supposed to be realised but they were retarded and are making us wait another year because they think it will do better in theaters if it is realised in the summer rather than fall. I was not happy about that. But I am excited to see what they do with the Twilight movie. :o)

New Nephew is here!

On Tuesday August 12, 2008 I received a phone call from my sister Kristy just a little after 4:30 am. At first I thought it was my alarm because I went to bed at 2 am and couldn't quite think straight. As soon as I realized it was my sister, I knew that there was no other reason why should would call except for the fact that she was in labor and needed me to come over. Sadly Jess was not home yet from Afghanistan... Kristy was trying so hard to hold out for him, but little Grant couldn't wait any longer. So I got ready and went to my sister's house and she was off to the hospital around 5. I had to go to work at 9, so someone else came to watch the kids during the day, but I got off work early that day bought some flowers to take to my sister and got the kids and we went to the hospital to visit Kristy and my new nephew Grant. Kristy was lucky and only was in labor for 3 hours before little Grant came and she is doing very well with all the recovering.

Grant Wade Bourgeous (named after his grandpa Bourgeous and his dad) weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 21 inches. He was born around 8:30 am and is just a sweet little guy. It was really fun to see Reanne and Sierra's reactions when I first took them to see their mom and baby brother. Reanne just wanted to touch him right away and asked her mom lots and lots of questions of why she was in her pajama's and why she was in a funny bed and lots of other questions. Sierra was kind of nervous about the whole situation at first, but as soon as I told her it was ok to sit by her mom and to hold her brother and set her on the bed with her mom, she warmed up to everything. :o) They are both enjoying having a baby around the house, and now daddy is home for a couple of weeks, so they are all together and happy. I was just glad that I was here and able to help out in the little way that I could. And glad that my mom was able to drive up that day and stay a few days to help out also. We sure do have an amazing family that I love very much.

Kaicia

One day I went to FHE and this girl in my ward (Julia) came into the room singing "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson, so naturally I start singing along (because I love that song) and started clapping at the chorus where it does in the song. She was so excited that I knew all the words and knew when to clap, and with the right rhythm, so she told me that I should join her band, they needed a clapper. I really thought she was joking. We ran into each other at a ward party soon after that and became instant friends, singing lots of songs together, once again she mentioned the band and told me when to come. So I decide to go and see if she was serious. I walked in her house for "Band Practice" and Nat said "You must be the clapper". I just laughed. So it was for real, they were actually a band and it was pretty sweet. We had Steve on the bass, Nat on drums, Julia on guitar and Kallie on guitar. I guess that means I get the shakers. :o) So as we practiced we decided that all the girls would take turns singing their own song while the others sang back up. So I had my own song... of course we are only singing cover songs at this point, but maybe one day we will start writing our own music. As for now, our only performance was an outside show next to campus, we opened for these other guys. It was a lot of fun, so there is talk of us trying to play somewhere else. Until then, Kaicia the band might be a one hit wonder.