That time I took a vacation

(Beware, this post is probably unnecessarily detailed, and therefore rather long. But it could've been worse!)
 It was spring break for the school districts here in Logan. This meant I had a week of no work, but all my friends did. So I could either stay in Logan and do whatever all day and hang out in the evenings the same as usual, or I could go somewhere by myself. I chose the later. I had a brilliant plan- go spend a few days with Mom and Dad in Heber, see some friends then go to Provo for a day and see friends there then SLC for a day... then back to Logan sometime before Monday for work. It's great, I thought, Mom's always reminding me that I can come visit, and it's been a while since I saw many people I'd like to see again and I'll have a whole week to do it. Well, the thing I forgot is that it's spring break for everyone involved with public schools, so Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and several friends were all on vacations of their own. Oh well. Just didn't visit as many people as I had originally planned, but I still had fun. Plus it was worth it just to get out of my regular routine. I was about to go crazy!

Monday I had scheduled a dentist appointment (hadn't had one for 2 years, I figured my teeth are worth the expense of paying for it yourself...) so I packed my things, checked twice that I hadn't forgotten anything and set out for home. I got my teeth cleaned and with a 42 second glance from the Dr. got my teeth declared fit as a fiddle. On my way home I noticed that what used to be a lumber yard was now a thrift store, so I stopped in for a gander. I'm glad I did. I got a nice sweater and the ABBA Greatest Hits II record! Woo. I then borrowed the Greatest Hits I record from my parents and can enjoy all the ABBA my heart desires on vinyl. Back at my parents I had no sooner unpacked when I noticed that I'd forgotten several things, despite my checking twice to make sure I had everything. Luckily Ashely was coming down the next day and brought it all with her. That night, though, I didn't have anything to do. No one I knew in Heber was around, so I was on my own. I ended up getting dinner from 3 different restaurants and renting some movies from the library. I then went home, at the food, watched movies from my mom's collection and did a puzzle. Good way to spend an evening. I did feel rather Gilmore Girl-ish (although a puzzle would be way to strenuous and activity for Loreli's tastes.)

Don't worry, I didn't finish the breadsticks that evening.

Tuesday I had lunch with some friends at Dairy Keen. While we were waiting to order I get a call from Ashely asking if I wanted to eat lunch with them, they just got to Heber. "I'm already eating, but thanks. Where are you going? ...To DK, of course. See you in a bit!" So my friends got to meet my nephew and nieces in all their "Here let me crawl all over you" glory. We enjoyed a nice lunch of catching up, it'd been a long time since we'd all been able to get together. After lunch we went to the park. Drew wanted to walk so he and I did and met Ashley at good ol' J.R. Smith to use their play ground after stopping to buy a kite. The only kites we could find were diamond shaped. I was bummed cuz they're typically really hard to get flying well, but at least the kids would get lots of running in. We got a nice Darth Vader one that Drew assured me everyone would like. He was right. The Kite surprised me, it was maybe 18 inches tall with a tail I guess was 9 feet long. I thought I would break the cross bars when I put them in because they were such skinny little plastic things. But they stood up to the pressure and the kit took off as soon as I let it go. Anne especially had a good time with it. That kite was good. It stayed up like a champ and refused to be crashed. Kite Triumph! The rest of the day we just spent at home playing and watching movies, as usual.

Wednesday I headed up to Provo with the intention of going to the temple. Didn't actually make it there. I had planned to go in the evening but ended up babysitting for Ashley after Kate was carsick the second time. I enjoyed seeing cousins Ari and Taylor, especially since Taylor's going into the MTC this week. Highlight of the day was getting a facebook response from a friend I hadn't seen in a couple years. We went out and got horchata and tortillas at Cafe Rio, sat under a tree in the parking lot, and chatted for an hour.

Thursday I went to see my friend Sarah who just had a baby. The baby was cute, it was fun chatting with Sarah, and her mom decided I should be set up with her neighbor because he also wears sandals all winter... Ok... one of the more random reasons I've been set up with someone, but I guess it could be worse. If it ever happens I'm sure it will be interesting. I was then supposed to meet another friend named Sarah so I ended up in downtown Provo waiting for her to return my call. I got to see live the amazingness that is the construction process of the Provo Tabernacle Temple. They put it on stilts and dug under it! Probably 60-ish feet deep. It was crazy! They were putting together a crane and had a nifty 'crane building crane' holding up part of the arm so they could lock it in. It's one of those funny things "It takes a crane to build a crane". There was some guy on the steps of the courthouse where I sat to enjoy the wonderful day and watch construction who had brought a camp chair and was eating cookies. It was great. He came over and asked if I'd take a picture of him, sitting in his camp chair watching the construction. And if I could, try to get the crane in the pic. I can only imagine it's his new facebook profile pic. Well, right after that Sarah texted me to say she was sick, so I went back to Grandma's and played my ukulele on the porch. It was fantastic. I then got a call from my friend Brandon and we chatted for a while. His wife was sick though, so he didn't have time to get together but it was delightful to catch up again. It was hard to leave the porch and head to SLC, but I managed to do it and spent the night with my former roommate Kandi.

Kandi had persuaded me to come with her to boxing class on Friday morning so we woke at the absurd hour of 5:30 am and headed off to the gym. She does this every week day and I think she's crazy. It was a regular boxing class so we warmed up by pretend jump ropeing, running, doing jumping jacks, ect. I thought "This isn't a warm up, this is exercise!" but it got better. After warm ups we put on our gloves (we got to wrap our hands and everything. I felt very hard core and kinda silly at the same time.) and started punching the punching bags. I'm used to martial arts style fighting where your hands return to your core area and the coach kept telling me I'd not look as nice as he does if I didn't keep my hands up to protect my face. My thoughts? "Um, it's a punching bag, it's got no arms to fight back with..." We'd box the bag for a minute then do 20 seconds of 'active rest'- A.K.A. not resting. Planks, push ups, sit ups, leg lifts... I got a lot of drinks and skipped most of the 'resting'. By the end those gloves were really heavy and my shoulder wanted to fall off, but I had a really nice nap afterwords!
Originally I'd made plans to go hiking with my friend Andrew, but it was rainy and I slept more than I anticipated after boxing so he went hiking in the rain and I met up with him after for some pleasant wandering around SLC in the sunlight. It turned into quite a lovely day. We went downtown to Temple Square to admire the flowers, then after lunch we wandered around the giant cemetery where all the prophets are buried for an hour and a half. He thought he knew where either Parley P. Pratt or Porter Rockwell (I can't remember which) was buried, but we couldn't find it. We did find Pres. Hinkley, McKay, Taylor and a monument to Hyrum Smith. Close by Hyrum was a headstone for a dude who thinks he is Hyrum Smith reincarnated. He claims to have received the gold plates from a resurrected Joseph Smith and translated the sealed parts. He had the websites for more info carved right into the headstone. Don't worry, he's not dead yet so there's still time to get on this bandwagon. We were both amazed that we'd never heard about this. Obviously the church is keeping secrets... (you know that was sarcasm, right? good.) It was a great day to be out and about. It's an awesome cemetery. I wish I lived near by so I could go for rambles through it all the time. We decided that Andrew needs to get all the names for his kids after he gets married by wandering through it with his wife and picking out names. There were some great ones to choose from.

Pretty flowers on a tree in SLC, in case you were wondering...

After that I was going to go home, but I got distracted by Kandi's Zelda game on her wii. It's fun! you get to 'use your sword' by shaking your controller. I hear in the newer game you even get to use your controller like your sword, which would be even cooler! I guess I'm kinda a sucker for video games sometimes. But I enjoyed that for too long and put off my going home till the next day. I listed to most of the first conference session with them, but headed out before the last speaker so as to avoid post conference traffic. Then I was home. It was a nice vacation. I had been in Logan with only a day or two out for a looooong time. I was starting to go crazy. I feel a lot better about this lovely little valley now that I've gotten to spend some time outside of it again.

P.S. Thanks Mom & Dad and Grandma & Grandpa and Kandi for letting me stay at your place!