Well our trip to Zions National Park this weekend was nothing but a success. Talk about a great weekend. It is hard to believe that we pulled it off, and we pulled it off so well! My mom and I headed down Thursday morning (and I need to clarify, we did not go to St. George like I wrote in my previous post), we stayed in a little town just at the base of Zions called Springdale. It is the cutest little town, so down to earth, and has such a great feel about it. The best part was that our husband's went to Vegas together to watch the U of U basketball games and to golf. (Happy Birthday Scott). It was so great because we didn't have to worry about them home lonely or fending for themselves, we knew they were in heaven. And so were we so it worked out great!
We had way too much fun together. The drive down there flew by as we just gabbed and gabbed about life, ate our Wendy's frosty's, attempted our books on CD without much success (we couldn't stop critiquing the narrator), etc. We got all settled down there and in our motel and then took a walk around town and in all the little shops to get our legs movin' again. We ate at a yummy restaurant called the Bit & Spur cafe (mexican). It was delicious but way overpriced. Whoops! That night we headed to the grocery store and fell in love with these popsicles (we made it our goal to try every flavor before we left) and we rented "The Secret Life of Bees". Loved it. We each had our own bed with these great down comforters (we called them our puffs) and a nice flat screen, it was heaven!
The next morning we took off up through Zions and walked along the road all the way to the very top. It was a great walk and there were hardly any people. It was quite chilly though. When we got back to our place we were so starving so we stopped and got some yogurt with granola, some grapefruits, and ate it out on our cute little patio. Oh the sun felt so good! We just wanted to lay out in the sun so we secretly stole our "puffs" and pillows and loaded them into the car. We went and found some open grass to lay on and planted ourselves out in the sun for a few hours. We read, talked, listened to music, slept. It was heaven. Here is our setup: (how's that for a backdrop?)
After our hike we went back and got all showered and ready for dinner and oh it felt so good. (if you can't tell from those fabulous pictures, we were quite dirty and smelly). Someone recommended we try this new restaurant and so we did. It was definitely more of a fine dining place (white tablecloths, wine glasses, fancy folded napkins, you know). As soon as we were seated they gave us our menus (and the wine menu of course). We opened them up, scoped out our options, and looked at each other kind of hinting that this might not be worth it. Our busser had greeted us and poured us water but no server yet. We decided we were out of there! So we just got right up and bolted to the door. It was great! I have never done that before, let alone in such a fancy restaurant! See ya suckers! Were laughing so hard when we got to the car until my mom couldn't find her keys and we were about to bust out a game of rock/paper/scissors to see who had to be the sucker and go back in there and confront everyone that yes, we did just walk out on you all and your pricey menu. To our relief, the keys were found after dumping out the purse. Whoosh! We moasied on up to a restaurant much more our style: Oscars. Loved it. It was so casual and fun and we had a great time. After dinner we went and got our popsicles of course and went back to watch our movies that awaited us and our "puffs". We are very proud of what comes next: we watched TWO movies that night and both stayed awake for both of them! (sidenote: my mom and I are both famous for falling asleep the moment we sit/lay down. I don't think I've ever last through a movie if started after 9pm). Well we got through Australia (a long one) and Bella. Both were so great and we were laughing so hard when it was 1:30am and we were still awake. We couldn't wait to tell the boys, but or course they didn't believe us.
Saturday morning we woke up and found a trail that went up the whole canyon along the river. It was beautiful. We talked about our movies and the messages we got from each of them, and much more stuff. We left about 8 and didn't get to the car until 12:30. Totally lost track of time. Later that day our husband's drove over to meet up with us. They were so tired from 4 basketball games, 54 holes of golf, and eating in-n-out burger 3 times, that all they wanted to do is nap. Scott and I decided to stay one more night together and it was completely worth it. We walked all around town, went to the candy shop, and then to get some pizza for dinner. We rented a movie and of course I was out 10 minutes after it started (I don't know what it was about that night with my mom, but it's true)! It was so fun to be with Scott after being away from him for a few days and to celebrate his birthday.
Okay I know this post is getting long but one more thing. So I did not realize how powerful the sun was down there. It was warm, but not hot so of course I didn't wear sunscreen. Man I must have been white. My face was red that night and I felt a little burned. But nothing to prepare me for what was coming next......I woke up the next morning (Scott's birthday of course) and went to the bathroom. It was still really early, but I looked in the mirror to see how bad my burn was and holy cow! My eyes and my whole face was SO swollen! Oh my gosh I looked like HITCH. No lie. I got back into bed and told Scott my eyes were swollen. He gave me the normal "man grunt" and kept sleeping. I opened the fridge and grabbed 2 diet squirts. I got back into bed and held the dang things on my eyes for the next hour hoping and praying the swelling would go down. When Scott finally woke up I turned over and looked at him to wish him happy birthday and as soon as we made eye contact he goes, "Woaaaahhh! Your eyes are so swollen!" I said, "I told you." It was awful. My face was bright red and Scott said I looked like a chubby asian. Anyway, to make a long story short, the 'hitch face' lasted the whole drive home, even after lots of Benadryl and ibuprofen. Finally when we got to his parents house for dinner I thought I was looking good, totally back to normal. But as soon as we walked in his sisters first words were, "Teddy, your eyes are so swollen!" So it wasn't gone. Oh well. At the end of the night I broke down to Scott telling him I'm so sorry I looked so ugly for his birthday. Girls, we're such drama queens. I was at least. I had just had it. Trust me guys, it was bad. So no pictures were taken of Scotty and I in Zions, just him. So sad. Good thing he's so darling.
The moral of this huge long post, it was a fabulous weekend. Thanks mom for all the good laughs and for all the great talks. Sure love ya. What a blessing to go down to such a beautiful place with you and not have a care in the world. And thanks Scotty for putting up with HITCH on your birthday. I promise to start wearing sunglasses now when in the sun.
RAGBRAI (register's annual great bike race across Iowa)! That's right folks, 480 miles ----7 days!!! What better way to get to know the midwest than to ride your bike through an entire state out there?! I am so excited to do this race with my darling cousin Abby (and some other awesome peeps)!
Spencer and Scott found this great cliff/jump/drop-off (whatever you want to call it) and it was so fun to watch them, although scary! I made Scott stand at the top so I could get a picture of it. The picture doesn't make it look very big b/c I zoomed in so much but they would come flying off of this thing and then straight line it all the way down Silver Fox. They're so awesome.
Scott also had the worst fall of his life yet in "death chute" just at the top of Great Scott. We are glad he's okay. He gave into peer pressure and did it. No more of that (don't worry, we had a chat about it).
After skiing on Saturday we headed up to Midway for the rest of the weekend. My brother and Keri came up too and it was so fun to spend the night and all day Sunday up there together. 
And then we had a yummy, delicious dinner
So bad. Those 3 are a terrible combination (especially when it comes to golf). Can you guess where they sat and ate dinner? Not with us girls at the kitchen table, that's for sure.
Holy moly! It's been a total pain with how things have worked out....We can't move into our place now until June 1st. Problem is, Scott starts school on May 26th. So.....he's just gonna go ahead and drive on out by himself and then I will come out a week later with my dad driving the Penske truck and towing the subaru. What an adventure! So Scott's just going to bum off a fellow student for a week (thanks Tire's, so sorry!)
You can ask me anything about that dang supplement and I can answer your question. We had to do tons of research, find how it scientifically worked, published journal articles on it, you name it and put it into a power point presentation and write a paper on it. Well I survived it. It's over, thank the heaven's above. It took me 10.5 hours to finish it on Monday. I am so relieved and can move on with life! As far as Proactol goes though, interesting stuff. A great way to cheat and lose weight if you are willing to spend a whoppin' $100 a month on the crap. 
Never done it before. I'm freakin' out a little because I am the least flexible person around. Do I have to be flexible to survive? I'm gonna look like a complete retard trying to twist into a pretzel. Any tips you yoga-ers have? Does it really help with your stress?
