Let them eat cake!

Ok, so while I have a spare minute, I just have to share mine and Brett's latest adventure. Yesterday we went to our final bridal show before the big day, and it was awesome! We entered a wedding cake eating contest and won second place!! Woot!! Luckily, the second place prize was the one we actually wanted, so we are even closer to having the most FUN wedding EVER! :-) I have to give Brett nearly all the credit though.... Because I am not a big cake fan, he ate most of the disgusting stuff, while I gagged the small bits down that I could. It was the most awful thing ever, but it was so worth it! If you want to see what we won, come to the wedding!!

In addition to deciding never to eat cake EVER again, we had a fun time going to the Vineyard cornmaze with Sarah, Antonio and Natalie. Since we got there just as they were letting the last group in, we were told we needed to be finished by the time it got dark. Well, we were done before dark, but unfortunately we got locked in!!! Apparently they forgot about us.... So we had to explore a little and find a way out. Here are some pictures:

Sneak Peek

Wow, it has been so long since I last wrote!! Things have been incredibly busy for us over the last few months!!! Because I still don't have a lot of time to include all the details of what we have been up to, I will just give you the highlights on both of us:

Savannah:

-loves her new job, even though it was very new and a little hard to get used to
-is so busy taking 6 classes in school she barely has time to think

-loves living at home a lot more than she thought she would (you really can't beat free rent!)

-hates the ridiculous amounts of homework she has, but LOVES two of her classes (Sociology and Abnormal Psych) because she is passionate about the subjects

-is still broke despite not paying rent, and may have to look for a new (really old car) soon because hers is about to give out...

-is so excited that she doesn't have school for the next two days, although she wishes she didn't have to work so she could really have a break.

-hates seeing Brett for literally only 5 minutes some days.

-is really excited for Christmas despite the fact that she can't afford to buy presents because it will at least be a long break from school.

-has decided to take one more year at UVU to get her Bachelors Degree so she doesn't have to stress out so much, and now she doesn't need to take summer school right after she and Brett get married!! YAY!!!

-is still antsy about planning the big day, although she doesn't have the time.

-hates that it already snowed up here and is getting really cold!

Brett:

-found a really awesome condo to live in until they get married, and it's only ten minutes away from Savannah's house!

-loves school, even though he thinks some of his classes are boring.

-is still working at Home Depot in American Fork, freezing his tooshy off in the lot

-loved that he got to go see Anberlin and Scary Kids, Scaring Kids, two of his favorite bands last week!

-received first place in the Cashier Olympics at work! (woo hoo for free dinner at Applebees!)

-is buying his first real suit tomorrow and is excited to hang out with his parents

-wishes he lived in New York City so he could be on Cash Cab.

Ok, so there you have it. That's pretty much it. A big highlight of the month is that we got our engagement pictures done last week and afterwards went to a really awesome concert! Since we don't get all our pictures until after the wedding, I kinda cheated and took pictures of them online on our proofing site with my camera... Shh... haha. So, they really are much higher quality than this, but I wanted you to at least be able to have a little sneak peek.... Here you go! (These were a couple of the ones our photographer chose as his favorites):

Here are a few pictures of the bands that we saw right afterwards! It was an awesome show!! One of the best we have ever been to! The first one is the guy from Straylight Run, the next one is Scary Kids, and the last but not least, Anberlin!

After the Big Move

So, we are finally starting to get settled into things up here in Utah County! Woo-hoo is it good to be home! (For me, at least.) I hate all the unnecessary traffic, and the fact that any store (WALMART!) is highly congested at any hour of any given day. So ANNOYING! But I guess those are things I can live with. So, to update you on our goings on for the past couple weeks, they are as follows:

--Brett got a job at the Home Depot in American Fork. It's nice because he is close to my parent's house, so I can come visit him on his lunch break, but it's a bummer because it's so far from school, and he was demoted from head cashier to regular cashier/lot attendant. I guess he still makes the same amount, but it would have been nice if he could be FULL time, so we could get at least some of his tuition and books paid for by their tuition reimbursement plan. He has already started working, and he says he likes it ok so far. Hopefully he can get to know more people so work will go by faster for him.

--I got a job at a place called Youthcare up in Draper! Finally! I will be starting orientation next week, which I am stoked about! I will be working with troubled teens basically, which is a great way to get a foot in the door with the counseling career I have chosen. The pay and benefits are GREAT, and the people I've met so far, have seemed awesome! The only drawback is, I will be missing most of the my first two days of school for orientation, and I won't have a set schedule for awhile because I will be on-call. But I think I can live with that for now. It helps that I don't have to worry about a rent payment anymore!! (I'm mooching off the parents....haha).

--We still haven't found Brett a permanent place to live yet, which is the biggest thing on our minds right now. The "perfect apartment" just doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight! That may have changed as of 10 minutes ago, though. I just called on a really nice place that sounds perfect, and we are going to see it tommorow! Wish us luck!

--School starts for us both this next Wednesday, and we are very excited! I didn't really think I was looking forward to it (I'm so burned out with all my previously gained knowledge!!), but I think I really am. It will be fun to have a change of scenery. We even have the same schedule 3 days a week so we can have lunch together and we are even in one of the same classes! Wow! Haha. That might be interesting. We are going to ride the bus to school on Monday to pick up all our books and map out our classes. It's definitely going to be a big change for Brett, but hopefully he will catch onto things quickly.

Ok, so those are the major things that have been going on in our lives up here so far. Some other fun things we have done since being up here are:

--Watched all of the gymnastic events of the Olympics (Go Nastia and Shawn!)

--Went to Lagoon and had a blast all day with Emily and Skyler.

--I surprised Brett with a romantic and fun picnic basket dinner at La Caille up in Salt Lake.

--Tonight we are going camping with Sarah, (and hopefully Dave) Natalie, and Antonio and I'm sure we will have a great time up in Provo Canyon!

Well, that's about it. I will post some picture of our visits to La Caille, Lagoon and Provo Canyon later on when I have more time!

The Big 21!

July 21. Wake up. Get all excited that tommorow is my birthday. Get dressed. Shower. Text Hillary because today is HER birthday. Brush teeth. Floss.

Heck, I don't remember the rest of the details. All I know, is that I had a freakin awesome birthday!

It was monday and I got stuck with working the night shift so that I could have another day off in the week. I wasn't too thrilled. (After all, I was working with Dan... haha) However, the night actually went by pretty fast; By the time 10 o'clock rolled around though, I was ready to go! I loaded my bags, picked up Brett from work and we were on the road!

For all you Gilmore Girls fans out there, you will totally love this! I have grown up with them, so of course I had to steal their brilliant plan for Rory's 21rst birthday bash. Of course I couldn't make it all the way to Atlantic City, but we thought Vegas (and Mesquite!) were a good compromise. After all, we were due for a little vacation anyway.

So we drove our little butts down to Mesquite where we checked in at the Oasis. We got there almost an hour before midnight Nevada time, so first things first, we decided to check in to our room. It was a muggy 102 degrees outside, so when the keys for our first room didn't work and we had to haul our stuff to the lobby and then back to a different room, I wasn't too thrilled. Ugh. I thought the manager who helped me sure took the easy way out. But once we got to our room, I was glad our keys hadn't worked!! We got lucky and ended up with a remodeled room, which was way freakin nice! A lot better than the first room we were almost stuck with...

After getting things settled in, we decided to scope out the casino. My heart sank when the whole section of blackjack tables at one end of the casino were empty... I thought we were going to have to rush to the Virgin River, and we only had 10 1/2 minutes til midnight!!!! Crap! But, finally we walked around a bit more and found a $2 table for me to gamble away my life savings... The chinese/japanese ?? dealer was kind of a retard. She kept speaking some language that definitely was not english, so for the first ten minutes I had no idea what was going on. And I kept losing! Ugh. That does not go well with me. Finally we got a new dealer who was still chinese/japanese ?? but he at least spoke english to us and was cool. I finally started winning some back, and decided to quit while I was ahead (or at least not losing anymore...) I played 21 as I turned 21, and I felt like a freakin bamf doing it. Haha. Of course since I hadn't gambled with 21 dollars quite yet, I had to play with a few more on the slot machines (which I also lost at). I am just not a born gambler! Or maybe my magic 21 luck decided not to show up.

At the end of the night, this is where we crashed. Not bad for 25 bucks, eh?

So we woke up the next morning, drove down to Vegas and spent the whole day shopping. When we were finished I was about ready to DIE! However, we attained our goal of purchasing our "lucky" 21 items! When we finally arrived at the Rio, I was dissppointed in our "suite". Apparently last time when we were "upgraded" I guess we REALLY were, because the room we got this time was like a Circus exploded. Oh, well. It served its purpose.

What a lovely room. :-P


The rest of the night seemed to get worse from there.... After checking in, we wanted to swim to cool off and the nicest pool was closed. What a bummer. And the ghetto one that was open, closed a half hour later. Lame! What hotel does that? So we scooted over to the Coke store, where we bought the sweetest "coke can" cups and of course our traditional bottles of Coke. And this time, we even got to meet the Coca Cola bear! AWESOME!


From there we had to pop into the M&M store and play around for a bit. It was packed as usual!



He looks like he is trying to suck up and tell her she is so gorgeous. In reality, he just wants a piece! Har, har har.

So many colors.... So little time.....





This purse was made of M&M wrappers!!! So freakin sweet! Except for the fact that it was over 100 bucks!


After all our childish fun, we didn't have time to ride the Gondolas at the Venitian as planned, so we tried to see the Pirate show at Treasure Island. Well lets just say the view we got was not worth the 30 minutes it took to find a parking spot, and circle our way through the entire hotel. Not that it mattered, because the days of the cool sinking ships are over! Now the show is just a bunch of hookers dancing around for some extra cash. Cool to some, maybe, but not to me. Dinner at the end of our night, finally made things better!! We made it to the Cheesecake Factory for my real birthday dinner which was AMAZING! By the time we were done there, I was ready for bed!!!

I don't think we had ever noticed this big Trojan Horse in Caesar's Palace. It was huge! Haha.



Well, that is my big 21 in a nutshell. Not everything went according to plan, but overall it was a fun birthday. And of course Brett surprised me with concert tickets to a show up in Salt Lake in a few weeks because he's awesome like that. Well, currently we are in the process of moving, which is why it's taken so long to post anything. July was so full for us! We had a dentist appointment every week, job hunt/interviews up north, my birthday in Vegas, two family reunions, a trip to Zion, etc. SO fun, but SO busy! As soon as we get things settled in up north, I'm sure we will have a lot more to talk about. Til then, peace out!

No More Gold Teeth!!

The sad moment has finally come.... I no longer have any gold (or according to my mom, copper) teeth! I forgot to snap a picture of me with my matching goldies, but I at least remembered this time that I had to make a memory out of this one! So long, my dear, gold, friend!


After braving the dentist for the most painful appointment so far, me and Brett finally got to go to the Tuacahn! It was freakin awesome. Besides getting stuck around all the old men who smelled like the world's worst B.O., we had a lot of fun. We went for their pre-show dinner, which was delicious. (In fact, remembering how good it was is making me wish it was lunch time already!) We saw the Sound of Music which was way good. Neither one of us had been before, and we loved the outdoor theater!


If we thought we were tired the next morning (we didn't get back to Cedar til almost 1 am), we didn't know what was coming today! Ok, so we really did know, but I thought I would try to be ignorant. So after getting like 5 hours of sleep Wednesday night, I tried to sleep all day Thursday after work so I would be able to stay awake through the midnight showing of Batman. Well, even if I hadn't gotten my 3-4 hour nap in before the show, I'm sure I would have stayed wide awake! The movie was freakin awesome and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. It was after 3 a.m. by the time I finally got to sleep, so today I'm living off of only 3 hours.... Just thinking about it makes me yawn.... Well. That's our life in a nutshell for these past couple days. I'll post most pictures after I turn the big 21 in a couple days!! Woot Woot! Haha.

We Finally Made it to Angel's Landing!

Ever since me and Brett started hiking in Zion last summer, we have been trying to "work our way up" to the harder hikes. Well this last week, we finally made it!!! Since we are moving soon, and have so much going on this month, we determined that Tuesday was our only shot at trying to hike Angel's Landing. The weekend weather wasn't so hot (in fact it was kinda rainy and gross), so we were hoping that we didn't get rained out once we got to the park. Luckily it was a clear, beautiful day and we were able to enjoy getting all sweaty and feeling the burn in our legs! Here are some sweet pictures from the trip.



I used to drive through Toquerville twice a week, and I don't ever remember seeing this tree. As we drove by on the way to Zion, I thought there were just a bunch of birds sitting on it, and as we got closer, I thought it was so weird that none of them were moving or flying away as cars were going by. Once I realized that they were shoes, we had gone past, but I was cracking up so bad that even though me and Brett were mid-sentence talking about something, I had to flip a U-ey to show him what was so freakin funny.



I told you we meet a new friend everytime we go hiking! This time we were just starting on the trailhead and were walking alongside the river when we see a cute little family of ducks just floating downstream on the current. It was so cute!



I have a weird obsession with inanimate objects like bridges, trains, train tracks, etc, so I love it when we get to cross these at Zion! There is just something about them that is so freakin cool! I guess I'm just weird.



Don't jump!





Here is what we hiked up the first probably 1/3rd of our trip... Talk about a burn.



This view was freakin awesome. We just had to stop and stare for a minute.










After going up the first set of switchbacks, we hiked through a little canyon which was so pretty!! There was a lot to see!




This was the biggest fuzzy caterpillar ever! I haven't seen one like this since I was a kid!


Here are Walter's Wiggles. I was a little disappointed I couldn't get a better picture like in the postcards.... Oh well, I guess.







Here was our pretty view from the Scout's Lookout point. It was pretty freakin sweet!


Here's a big crow? raven? big bird? Haha... Whatever it was, we saw like 10 of them as we were finishing the hike and they were squaking at us tauntingly.


The river was SOOO muddy that day, it was disgusting. Good thing we had already hiked the narrows!

I got this picture because the clouds looked totally sweet, but I've been informed that the highest point in the picture is Observation Point which is another of the really long hikes at Zion.

Here is a really tall mountain. Which....we...climbed!


You kind of can't tell what this is in this picture, but it was like a little salamander or something! The top half of him was shimmery silverish gold, and his whole bottom half was bright blue like he had been painted or something. So weird!

Here is what we had to hike up....

Here's looking down behind us.



What a beautiful view!

We finally reached the end and were able to rest!!


More of the gross river.





Here is a view looking over the sheer drop off of the cliff that we sat on the edge of...







Going both directions, this point of the hike was really windy! On the way down, it felt so nice to feel the strong breeze and cool off! Here is a picture of Brett basking in the wind. Haha...



One final view on the way down before my camera died!