Fun While Melting in Florida

Brian and I started our month off by flying to Florida to visit his parents and surprise his mom by coming! Since we were in the middle of a surprise, we didn't have anyone to pick us up from the airport and instead of paying $50.00 for a 20 minute taxi drive, we paid $4.00 for a 2 hour bus ride. Wonderful public transportation. I think school and public transportation are the only things that you would like to buy in hopes that they have the least amount of time/work associated with them. Everything else you buy in hopes of having hours worth of fun. Public transporation was interesting. I guess we got to see all the "sights" (meaning the industrial areas of Florida) on our lovely ride. When we finally got to the restaurant where Brian's parents were eating, I walked up to their booth and asked Diane if the seat was taken. She looked up at me like I was an idiot and with the expression, "Of course it's......" and then she recognized us. She just laughed and gently shoved Brian several times while asking what we were doing there. It was pretty funny!

Saturday we spent going to timeshare meetings in the morning while the parentals were trying to convince us to never get one. Well, we bought one! Just kidding. (That was so my in-laws s could have a panic attack). :) Although it would be fun and they look pretty nice, I'd rather not have one and save my pennies. The rest of the day we spent at Sea World! Boy oh boy was Sea World fun! We had never been, so we went to all the shows, all the galleries, and saw almost all of the animals. It was pretty cool for me to pet a stingray since I've only ever seen them while snorkeling and scuba diving. After being at Sea World, I've decided that I want a pet whale. Good thing Brian is an animal person because he could go for it if we had a bajillion dollars and if we owned an ocean. :)

Monday and Tuesday we spent at DISNEYWORLD!!! I love Disney! When I go there I become the most giddy little girl and I feel like I'm about 5 years old again. However, Disneyworld has one thing that Disneyland doesn't have.....sweat! I think I sweat more than I ever have in my entire life and it was absolutely miserable at times! It rained everyday we were in Florida, so everyday was muggy and overbearingly humid. Anyway, Monday was mostly spent at Animal Kingdom. The greatest thing at Animal Kingdom was the Everest rollercoaster! It was such fun and I love thrill rides for sure! It was nice there because everything is like a jungle and it's where we had the most shade and I'm not a happy person if I get too hot. We also rode some of the rides at Epcot that night. To be honest, I was not a huge fan of Epcot at first. It has some pretty ghetto rides, but we didn't go to the country portion until the next day. We also went to Magic Kingdom on Monday night and there were too many people there. We just went on a couple rides and then made our way back home, exhausted.

Tuesday was our Hollywood Studios day. I can't even begin to describe how much more fun the Tower of Terror is while sitting by Brian, who is afraid of heights. Not only was it hilarious to hear him scream like a little girl, but his face in the picture at the end still has me laughing. It is my favorite ride still, but I love being married to someone who hates the scary rides! Awesome! Now, Tuesday was so freakin' hot and there was no shade. Remember how I'm not a happy person when I get hot? Well, I was not being the happiest camper in the woods that day and I was pretty miserable to be around. My poor family (sorry guys)! I thought my skin was going to melt off and boil in the asphalt before I would have a chance to run to the nearest air conditioned building. Luckily I didn't end up fainting or anything and it did start raining later on so I was able to cool off. We also went to Epcot again and went to the circle of countries, which is definitely super cool. I can imagine it being the farthest thing away from happiness if I were a little kid, but now that I'm older I really enjoyed it.

Something else of note is that my fear of flying has increased. Goodness! Has anyone watched the news lately. Plane crash in New York, plane crash in Brazil, plane crash here and there. I'm freaking scared of another plane crashing...while I'm on it, not to mention we had the WORST turbulence I've ever had while flying. Brian and I really thought we weren't going to make it this time, so we're both very grateful we made it home in one peice.

Well, I hope you enjoyed our vacation report and our pictures :)

Moving

Cinder block: the ugliest thing that apartment buildings have ever been constructed with. I loathed the ugly cinder block walls that covered my dorm room my freshman year and I was so happy to get out of that prison! Our neighbors below just got evicted, thus opening up a spot on the bottom floor. This apartment is nice, has new appliances, an outside patio just for our apartment only. We won't have to carry groceries or strollers (when the time comes) up stairs to get to our apartment, which would be so great! We could get a grill and have yummy kabobs just because we would have our own patio! The only thing that I hate about the apartment is that it has ugly, cold, prison-like cinder block walls. I hate them. Now, I know you must be thinking that the good things far outweigh the bad, but in my mind......it's just the cinder block. Like it's my worst nightmare. Arg! I hate them. Needless to say, we will probably be moving down stairs sometime next month. Does anyone have ANY ideas on how to cute-ify an ugly cinder block wall? I just can't paint it a different color and that seems to be the first recommendation. I know this is pretty darn ridiculous, but it makes me sad that we'll be moving out of our first apartment and having a project would make things.....happier. :)

Camping with "Bears"

Brian and I are now the proud owners of a new 2 person REI backpacking tent. It's very small for two people (according to me), but it's only 5 lbs. and we love that it's so light. We haven't gotten much use out of it yet, which is really sad to me. We've only set it up in our living room while I watched Brian sit in it to play video games. Yeah. So, we wanted to get out of the house and actually use it this summer, even if it was a very short one day camping trip. So we planned to go last weekend on Friday night up Squaw Peak. Now, for a little preface:

Do any of you watch the news? Well, I watch it religiously everyday. There's the morning news, the noons at noon, news at 4, the nightly new with Brian Williams, and the 6 o'clock news that I watch. I don't know why, but I LOVE knowing about all the horrible things that are happening in the world. I guess it makes me feel more involved and informed. Well, last week was bear week. It seemed like there were bears popping out all over the place around Utah. Some went away, but most of them just got shot and died. Scary! Well, I guess the news can make you a bit paranoid...

Anway, we couldn't get up to the camping spot we were looking for until about 10 pm since Brian had a softball game that night. We got to our spot, but it was taken! EVERYONE in Utah County was camping! There were no open spots. None. Darn! I was so excited! Well, we started to drive home, much to my dismay, but then we saw an open spot on the side of the road. Yes! We got out of the car to see if the spot was camp-able, and Brian heard "something big" in the bushes next to us. It sounded like a deer to me, but he kept saying "whatever it is, it's big" and then he ran back to the car. Come on, be a man! Well, he started throwing rocks in the bushes and all the noises stopped so we started down this little trail to find a spot, but we got "nervous" and jumpy by every cracking twig beneath our feet. I finally got freaked out enough that I turned around and told Brian we were going home. It was already past 11 and I was tired. As I was doing up my seatbelt, Brian thought it would be hilarious to scream at the NOTHING that was outside just to freak me out some more. Well, he screamed, and I looked up in terror, just knowing that we were about to be eaten by bears that I heard about on the news. When I looked up, I screamed, then I saw that nothing was there, so I buried my head in my hands and started to sob. Yup, that's right. I sobbed. It was as if my heightened emotions had no wear else to go but through my eyes. Brian just started laughing at my crying until I eventually started laughing at myself. We ended up going home and playing ticket to ride instead. Much more safe! :) Just don't watch the news if you're going camping. You'll have a much more enjoyable time that way!