Paragliding

SO we got a few videos, but looking back we taped more closer to the beginning of our lesson so we definitely look amateur in the video. By the end of the lesson he said we were getting about 200 feet off the ground! Anyways, here is the video.

But we got some pretty good pictures. Here are the prize winners.








One of the funniest parts was when you would fall and get dragged for a bit. But luckily the ground wasn't too far and you only fell during landings.

And the way that the straps hit your arms gives you bruises on your biceps. So now it looks like Eric abuses me. Of course it looks like I abuse him too. Or maybe he abuses himself??? :)


And btw, it was really fun.


Oh, and look, I found MORE zucchini! MONSTERS!!!

Da dal lad dul da!

Due to the fact that it is like a sauna every night in our apartment, I am sort of looking forward to winter where I will freeze every night instead.

Well I realized my blogging skills have been sort of lacking lately so I thought I would do a catch up blog. Make sure to look through the whole thing as a lot of different topics will be covered. Lets start with...

My garden. Bugs basically ate everything in my garden but the zucchini survived. I would check the garden on Saturday and pick anything that there was. Then I would go camping for work and come back to find monster zucchini! It grows so fast. I have gotten about 15 zucchinis from two plants and enjoyed sharing them with friends and the ward.



Also did I show you my grill yet?

We grilled steaks for my birthday and have grilled hamburgers so far, but that is it. I got it to smoke stuff, but I havent gotten around to that yet.

So on my birthday my big toenail finally fell off! I lost 5 toenails from the marathon- and sure, you pro marathon runners are thinking "thats rediculous! She must have had horrible shoes!" But rest assured I had great shoes. I just didn't really train all that well...but it kind of is my pride and joy. I always wanted to lose a toenail growing up since my siblings lost them a lot in soccer. but my toenails held fast. I am happy to say that I have lost toenails now. I know what it is like.

It has been growing in weird, but hopefully it is fine in a few weeks or so.

On my birthday I also got lots of fun presents from Eric.

He made me delicious green blueberry waffles and gave me wonderful presents.

My favorite was the map he drew me. I have been wanting a map for a really long time, so he drew one!


Later that day we had a party at our house. It was a lot of fun and we had lots of cake and ice cream and some other goodies. I shared some produce too.


Then on the following Tuesday we went to Thanksgiving point for $2 Tuesday. We chose to go to the dinosaur museum and had a lot of fun.




Saturday started out big road trip. We first went down to Vegas to see our friends Tiffany, Robbie and Daxton Hale. We went to Circus Circus and played some carnival games. Eric won me a cute stuffed animal. A horse! And Robbie gave us the fish he won.And I won one too.


On Monday morning we went to the Ethel M Chocolate factory. The factory wasn't the greatest, but the chocolate sample was great! The cactus garden was also really neat.



And Daxton was really cute. Super smiley and chunky.

We then headed up to St. George to see "The Little Mermaid" at the Tuacahn. It was a really amazing show and very impressive.
(sorry it is fuzzy)

We also saw the St. George Temple and took some artistic photos at 25 Main, the restaurant that Cara recommended to us. We had paninis that were very delicious and a cupcake each.



It was a very fun trip that we will always remember probably.

Then to top it all off we went up to Layton. We had a hang out with Kathy and went to lunch and saw "The Help". Then Mike let me take some veggies home. I brought home a whole trunk full and gave most of it away to about 9 different people.

The selection is very impressive. Im excited to go back for another picking!


Do you see all that variety?
Lets see if I can list it all. Asian eggplant, the egg shaped eggplant, Armenian cucumbers, Asian cucumbers, regular cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, cantaloupe, corn, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, butternut squash, several kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, yellow straight neck and crooked neck squash, bell, banana, jalapeno, habanera, and some other really spicy peppers, onions, and green beans. Im sure I missed something and there were some things that weren't even ready yet, but Im so excited to have it all. Next time I go up Ill take orders if anyone would like me to bring you back some.

Oh and something else, I finally got the published version of my book I wrote. It is about 180 pages and is all the emails that I wrote as a missionary. It's called Vampire Emails. It turned out wonderful. And as a plus, I found a coupon code that made it free!

That's about it for the update. We had a wonderful summer and the last few weeks have been jam packed. Tomorrow is our last adventure. Paragliding. We'll tell you how it goes.
Bonus picture:

We didn't want to wait in line to get our pictures with Ariel and Prince Eric

Dave Barry

My (Eric) life is now complete. I am married to an elite woman, the New York Giants have won a superbowl in recent years, and now I have met Dave Barry, my favorite author of all-time.
Dave and Ridley Pearson came to the Provo library last night to promote their new Peter Pan book and we were able to hear them speak and then have them sign two of my books after. They were both very nice and fun to listen to and I can only hope that they had a good experience here. The best part was when Dave Barry was telling a story about the beginning of his and Ridley's careers together and how he went to get a cup of coffee and a small market and he paused and said, "Is that bad that I would even mention coffee here?" And everyone chuckled, and then he continued with, "I was only drinking coffee because they were out of heroin." Funny, funny man.
Here are the pictures to prove it:

They read a snippet of their new book to us, which was very funny.


Our plan was to get more of a candid shot while they were signing other books but they were so nice that as soon as we stood behind them they both looked up and smiled.


This is in one of my favorite Dave Barry books, which is now priceless.


This was the first Peter Pan book that they wrote together.

Layton Triathlon. Eric Style.

A couple of weeks ago Eric, Brandon and Caleb ran the Layton Triathlon.It was a sprint triathlon. It was horribly organized and was a weird race where they did everything twice. But overall it was fun and good family bonding time. Eric and Brandon had special outfits of mustaches, cutoff shirts and fun colors.
Almost time for the race!
Getting in the water.
Perfect form :) Go Eric GO!
Eric getting ready for his second ride.
Not too bad of time for having to do everything twice. Transitions add a lot of time and when you have to do them twice, well, you get the picture.
The mustache Eric grew for several weeks to match his brother Brandon. We had to put a little eyeliner on it so it was a little more visible.
Eric crossing the finish line.
Here are all the boys from the race.
So Eric had some pretty long hair from growing it out all summer, but I cut it. But I thought this picture was pretty funny.