Summer Days Drifting Away

How is it almost September? I swear this summer has just flown by; actually my whole time in California has gone by in a flash. Before I know it, I will be reaching my year mark. The passage of time freaks me out a little bit and I find it best not to think about it.

As luck would have it, I got to go to Utah for a second time this summer.  Tiffany’s brother was getting married in Utah , so she was planning a trip.  She convinced me to take an extended weekend and to buy a plane ticket to go with her. 

The convincing consisted of the following:  

“I found cheap tickets to Utah, you should buy some.”-Tiffany 

“Sounds great” -Me.  

Believe it or not, this is the first time we have flown together. We passed the time by doing the crossword puzzle and other word games in the in-flight magazine. We flew out Wednesday night and Thursday morning we caught up with friends by getting Kolaches (essentially stuffed rolls) in down town Provo. You can’t get them here, and Tiffany cries every time she remembers that.

As luck would have it again, this just so happened to be the weekend my mom’s family was having a reunion in Idaho. On Thursday my family drove up to spend the weekend at my aunt’s house in Rigby. 

We went boating on Thursday and Friday and I learned how to wake board.  

How am I just now learning this? I don’t know. But it probably has something to do with me declining to do anything but tube the whole time my family actually owned a boat. The lake we went to was home to many a bald eagle, and every once in a while one would swoop down and grab a fish. Real life planet earth. 

McKay just plopped himself down on this chair and was perfectly content sitting here keeping watch. He was all business.

 The weekend consisted of playing games, eating, making ‘smores, going to the house of our great great grandpa, and to the local park. 

Turns out, it’s more fun to go to the park when you bring the proper materials- one can only swing for so long. But not to worry, Josh found a stick and a tennis ball and decided to start a makeshift game of baseball. 

Our bat. 

The game actually went pretty well considering half of the participants were under the age of 12.

One of the last things we did was get ice cream at the local Dairy Queen which is located inside a grocery store. My cousin works there, so we decided to bring the whole clan and give her the customer rush that all fast food employees dream of. 

We drove back to Utah on Saturday, and I once again met up with Tiffany and some friends to get JCW’s milkshakes (another food item that is absent in California). This was after I got Café Rio for dinner, which again is something I haven’t had since leaving Utah in January.  Café Rio, if you are reading this, please build a restaurant in Palo Alto. There are so many BYU grads and Mormons here that I know it would be a hit. Just a thought.
Our Sunday morning flight came all too soon. 

Other notable things that happened this month: 

We randomly saw Austin again. He came back to California for a few days. 

Just like old times. Why are all of our mouths open?

My work had an open house. Sweta and I helped out in the kitchen to prepare for the food that would be served.

(taken from Jazz's Snapchat) 

  There was a photo booth at the open house, and instead of mingling with the guests and giving tours of the building, we spent most of the time taking pictures.

  Lots of pictures

Seriously, so many pictures. 

There was also an unlimited supply of alcohol at this event, so seeing my coworkers tipsy was a fun experience. 

I have like 20 more of these. 

One Saturday, our ward floated the American river in Sacramento. 

There were no rapids so a lot of relaxing was happening. 

To make things interesting, we pulled over to the side of the river and set up a water slide using the backside of the raft and dish soap brought from home. 

We definitely caused a scene and a few bystanders got in on the action. 

It was an interesting mix of people on that river. For some it was like a slow moving party. They would be lounged out on their personal big comfy rafts with music, beer, and occasionally weed.

 At one point one of our rafts were water attacked by other people on the river. Being the good friends that we are, our raft got the heck out of Dodge and left them for dead. That water was cold, and we were dry.  

I am pretty sure I got swimmers itch from the water because I have been itchy and have had a rash ever since.  TMI? What can I say, just par for the course for my life.

We ended the trip at a park, playing spike ball, volleyball, and having catered Costa Vida. 

And finally, Tiffany and I discovered that we met five years ago on August 24^th. 

So we decided to celebrate our five years of friendship with a dinner at Cheesecake Factory.  We also decided that we should make this a tradition, and eventually get to the point where we leave our husbands and children at home while we go on a trip together to celebrate our friendship. We can dream. But in all seriousness, everyone needs to get themselves a friend like Tiffany. I am grateful everyday that we somehow ended up in that same Regency apartment five years ago. The day that one of us finally gets married is going to be one rough day for the other. 

We of course had to treat ourselves to a slice of cheesecake, because if there is something I don’t do enough it is treat myself with food. 

A Day in the Santa Cruz Mountains

We had a ward camp out, and somehow I found myself volunteering to take care of the meals. It was a moment of ignorance as I failed to internalize what kind of work goes into feeding 80 people 2 meals. Luckily it wasn't just me, Alicia and I worked together and got organized.
We of course went to Costco to purchase all of the food, because is there any other way to buy in bulk? That's a real question.

We strategically placed our food into separate carts, recorded what we were buying, added up the price as we went, and tried to estimate how much of each item we would need. But we actually had no idea, and just put stuff in the cart and hoped for the best.

After we loaded our cars, we headed to the church for meal preparation. Taco salad/burritos were on the dinner menu so we cooked all of the meat, cut the tomatoes, and shredded the lettuce. This way it was ready to go for the next night. On Friday we got to the camp site early and finished preparing dinner for the masses. I truly felt a like a real member of the  relief society. 

Our campsite included a full kitchen, and a indoor dining hall. Dinner was a hit.

So candid. 

Since I own no camping gear, I embarked on this camp out with nothing but a pillow (but actually not even that, because I forgot it at home) and faith that somehow my sleeping arrangements would fall into place. Tiffany came later, so she was able to bring me my pillow, and some blankets. Then someone offered me their tent, and then someone else offered me an air mattress. These were definitely blessings from my acts of kitchen duty service. Let me tell you, camping with an air mattress is life changing. I don't know if it even counts as camping at that point. Tiffany and I shared the twin air mattress though, so the sleep I got was still minimal.

When it's warm at night, it's not as fun to sit around the fire. 

The night included making smores, singing around the campfire, playing cards (which I won every round), and talking late into the night. 

Because Alicia decided to be an over achiever, our breakfast included eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, fruit, muffins, and drinks. I was all for fruit, muffins, and cereal, but somehow that idea got shafted. So we got up early to cook a full breakfast buffet.

We had plenty of kitchen helpers because multiple people had gotten all the sleep that they could get by 7:00 am.
Since I refuse to eat another Krustese "just add water" pancake in my  life, I added milk, vanilla, sugar, and cinnamon to the pancake batter.  Huge difference.

People will probably remember the food from this camp out with fondness for years. They will look back and someone will ask "remember that one ward camp out...." and someone will respond with "the one with the great food??" I was told that the elders quorum was in charge of food last year, and it was seriously lacking.

I love organized chaos, so I actually really enjoyed planning, preparing and serving the food for the camp out. Or do I actually just love being in charge?? Jury is still out. The San Francisco ward also came to the camp out, and they were in charge of bringing "build your own" sack lunches. Though they failed to bring any sacks or Ziploc bags...

After breakfast we packed up and some of us went on a hike to a water fall, which turned out to be nothing but a nature walk with no waterfall.

Braden convinced three of us to go to Empire Cave, which was located near the camp site.  

When we got to our location, it looked like it was just a slab of cement, but when we got closer we could see that there was a hole with a ladder leading down to nothingness.

This greeted us at the entrance. An unlucky omen if I ever saw one. 

We heard the UC Santa Cruz students came to the caves to party, but this desk shows that they obviously come here to study.  

 The cave just kept going deeper and connecting to more caves. We didn't even explore its full depth. 10/10 recommend.