Birthday Blues

08.08.08. There are so many things that happened on this date. The Olympics began, there were tons of weddings (I heard there were 150 weddings scheduled at the Mt. Timpanogos Temple this day - who knows if it is true, but I'm sure it was close), and more! But what most don't know, was the luckiest birthday of all time!

About a year ago, we were invited to a 007 birthday party. (We have a picture of us from that party you must see. Click on "April" under our blog archive, then scroll down) Our friend was turning 21 on 07.07.07. 7+7+7=21. John simply said, "That would be so cool to have a birthday like that. No one ever gets a birthday like that."Right after the words spilled out of his mouth, we stopped, looked at each other, and our mouths dropped to the floor. We instantly realized that John was having his 24th birthday on 08.08.08. He was so excited. For a year, he planned on his super cool birthday. He was even going to drive over to the Idaho border and purchase himself a lottery ticket, because we all know he would've won it for sure. He even planned a day at Bear Lake with his family.

(Side Note)For those of you who don't know, John is in the National Guard. He has to give up 1 weekend a month, and 2 weeks a year. This year, we had the opportunity to spend those 2 weeks in Korea. A few weeks before this once in a lifetime birthday, John looked up his flight plan for when he had to fly to Korea. As far as we knew, John didn't leave until August 9. Wrong! They changed his flight to the 8th of August instead, first thing in the morning. All his year's worth of planning went down the loo. Not only did he miss his birthday, he literally lost half of it on his way to Korea because of the time change. (Korea is about 16 hours ahead of us) I have never seen such a broken heart in my life.

Don't feel too bad for him though. John was taken care of before he left. My mom made him a birthday cake and dinner. John's parents and family spent the day at Lagoon with us, and gave him 24 lotto tickets. Those are only a few examples. He defiantly had his fair share of birthday time, if not more. But I'm sure when he gets back (This Saturday, Aug. 23 - I'm so excited) he will STILL be milking the whole situation anyway.

Happy Birthday, Babe. I love you!

Yellowstone Pics.

Yellowstone Trip

We were invited to spend the week with my family in Yellowstone. We filled it with all sorts of events, but some moments were highlighted more than others...

For example, "Da Bear". If you click on the picture to make it larger, it will be proof that it is for sure a grizzly in the wild. My brothers were convinced they were going to find a bear on this trip. Sure enough, Wade spotted some. But not this one. We pulled out a scope and saw some Grizzly bears about a mile way. Wade went to see if he could get a better view closer, but then quickly found the one that was about 100 yards away from us. Naturally, our focus turned to the bear. He seemed to mind his own business, but slowly got closer to the crowd. (not us, the crowd 100 yard away) Would you believe all the people you see in this photo? None of them moved with how close the bear was. We were pretty close as well, but we didn't seem to be as near in danger as they were. The bear did end up crossing the road, and probably made the car it crossed in front of leak some oil or something. It was quite the sight to see.

This is Old Faithful. John likes to now call it "Old Disappointment". Old Faithful is suppose to go off every hour. Or every hour and a half. I can't remember. Either way, your suppose to give or take 10 minutes for the geyser to blow. We waited 45 minutes after it's scheduled eruption! It's still really cool to see.



This is me in front of Midway Geyser. It was rather warm. This wasn't a huge highlight on the trip. The reason why I'm showing this photo is to show off my claw. We stayed in a "time share" with my family, so we made most of our food. My sister-in-law, Kali, made this delicious brownie toffee thing. We were using a steak knife to cut out the brownies because they were hard to cut a piece. I was holding the pan from slipping, but I wasn't paying attention to the steak knife. It slipped, and I cut myself on the web part in between my pointer and thumb on my left hand. Instantly, I had a geyser of my own. We took a look at and realized I needed stitches. John called to find out where the nearest medical place was that wasn't closed at the time, and they said 80 miles away from where we were. Lucky for us, Susan (my sister-in-law) is a RN. She looked at it, and said that we could just super glue it. So, that's what we did. All I wanted was a brownie. My hand healed pretty quick, and I'll obviously have a scar. I feel real fortunate to have a husband that was so willing to help in my time of need. He rocks.

It was so fun to be with my family. Some of us are moving, and so we probably won't be able to do these quick trips as often as we usually do. Love you guys!

4th of July

Happy Independence Day! It's been awhile since I have done my blogging, so I'm relying on my memory. This 4th of July was an all American way to celebrate. We went to Salt Lake to spend the festivities with the Fraidenburg clan. John's parents were so kind to hook us up to watch the Salt Lake Bees (baseball). We had awesome seats! We were sat on the third base line, 7 rows back! We were defiantly in foul ball lane. This was proven when we noticed a speedy foul ball headed our way. It was about to hit John's sister, Marie. She luckily ducked, but unfortunately, the little girl behind her, didn't. Her eye instantly swelled and turned purple. She looked like she was in pain, but impressingly, was quite the trooper. The ball game was followed by a firework show in the ballpark. It was so fun to get with John's family. We hardly ever get to see them. Oh - and the Bee's lost.Tina, John, and Boyce

Trey

Boyce

Front Row(L-R): Walt, Traci, Trey's Seat, My Seat, Trey, John
Back Row (L-R): Luke, Boyce's head, Marie, Cassandra, Mary, David