Salt Lake City

On Friday we went to lunch with the family and then left Rexburg. We spent the day in the car and drove up to Salt Lake City. That evening we went to dinner with one of Alex's mission companions and had a really good time. They talked about stories from their mission, some of the good times they had, and caught up on what some of the other guys were up to since returning home. I didn't really get to participate much in the conversation, but I was glad that Alex got to see his old friend and it was cool to hear them talk about some of their times together. After dinner we drove some more and then tried to find a place to stay for the night.
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Saturday was a really cool day. We toured the Conference Center and then went to Temple Square and walked around.

This is the fountain that is on top of the Conference Center. Our tour guide said it sits on the roof right above where the pulpit is inside the building. Wow.This stone wall is also found on top of the Conference Center and it represents all the people of the world that the gospel has touched and will touch - just as it says in the inscribtion that comes from the D&C. And..... if you look close enough - you can see yourself in the stones reflection.This is a picture of the Salt Lake Temple from atop the Conference Center. It looks so magnificent!This is me inside the Conference Center and down on the lower level. It is so amazing to actually be inside there - it looks so much bigger than when we see it on TV. After touring, I have decided that we are going to go to a Conference soon.

This is us... of course! in front of the Temple....... does every one who gets married there have their picture made on that little podium behind us? It almsot makes me wish I had taken my wedding gown!! :)This is the inside of the Tabernacle. It seems so little compared to the Conference Center, it's amazing to think that this is where they used to hold Conference meetings.We thought this looked like the picture of the Salt Lake Temple that they always show on TV before Conference.... and one that most people have hanging somewhere in their house!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturday night we met Valerie and Ashley for dinner at this place called Mayan Adventure. It was really cool; kind of had that Indiana Jones feel to it. here are some pictures from our night there.Alex and Val while we were waiting for our table!

when we got inside they told us we weren't allowed to take pictures becuase of the flash... so here Val is trying to find a setting on her camera that would work without a flash and actually capture a picture.... I don't think she had much luck.This.... is what we weren't allowed to take pictures of! At Mayan Adventure they do these shows that are about ten minutes long and it's these ancient people who are doing some kind of tribal ritual. The most fun part though is the next picture....There are about five or six guys, wearing these little loin cloths (which, I guess that is what they wore in ancient times!) - and they do these incedible dives/jumps off of these high rocks into a pool of water about 20 feet below... which is also surrounded by rocks. It seemed very dangerous.... yet very cool!

The food at Mayan Adventure was also very delicious... so, if you're ever in Salt Lake its a restaurant I definitely recommend going to.

Yellowstone

On Thursday Alex and I caught up on sleep and then we decided to drive to Yellowstone. It was a nice trip and we had fun spending time together and seeing all the things in the park. We didn't get to see any bears but we did see some other pretty interesting things. Alex in front of the sign going into the park.
Alex tried to throw some snow on me.... so I got him back!! We thought it was pretty crazy how much snow was still on the ground in some places there.
We believe that these were female Elk. We didn't see any males which was kind of disappointing because they look cooler with their big horns!!
Me, with the Buffalo. After looking at the pictures later Alex goes, "hey Jess, you even look like a buffalo...." Thanks, ALOT!!
This one stoppped and posed for us.... amazing. They are so big and fluffy!!This is one ranger that was trying to get the Buffalo out of the road. We sat in a traffic jam for over an hour because they crossed the street once and then decided to cross it again....We stopped at this one spot that was full of these types of geysers. There were only two that actually spewed out water - this one wasn't one of them. They were all stinky, but the water was a really pretty blue color!We got to Old Faithful just in time to watch it blow!! Here I am... in front of it's sign!This is my favorite picture. We are in front of Old Faithful its smoking behind us... but it hadn't blown yet. It had just blown and Alex videotaped some of it but mostly we could just see a lot of smoke.

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It was also Val's birthday on Thursday.... So, after we had gotten back from Yellowstone and Val was done with classes, we went to dinner with Alex's parents, Val and Ashley at a pizza place called Craigo's. It was like a much nicer version of the pizza buffets that we have here - MUCH nicer. The pizza there was very delicious and we all had a really nice birthday dinner together. After we were all full Val took Alex and I to a place called the REX. It's this center where students can go and watch movies, go bowling; and, they also have an arcade type of room with video games, air hockey, and pool tables. Luckily for us, it was $3 Thursday ~ on Thursday, you can do everything for three dollars, if you are a student. WE, of course, aren't students but when we paid they didn't even ask to see our IDs.... so, we got to bowl as much as we wanted for three dollars. It was really awesome. After bowling we got ice cream at Cold Stone and then took Val back to her house. What a great day!

Turbulence

I have decided to write about our trip out west in short stories... the first of which is called Turbulence. As you can probably tell from the title, this story is about our plane ride out and let me say..... it was a very interesting few hours.
We wake up at about 2:30 a.m. so that we can be at the airport two hours before our flight at 6:55 - even though it was a very early start, the beginning of our day wasn't too bad. As soon as our flight took off, it got a lot worse....
We had a connecting flight, so we flew Atlanta to Dallas - where they were experiencing some bad weather including rain and thunderstorms. Lets just say our ride was very bumpy!! It seemed like we felt every blow the weather had to give. It was the worst flight either of us had ever been on... There were brief thoughts of crashing and a whole lot of nervousness. Not to mention that our pilot did a questionable job.... it seemed like the whole flight he kept swaying the plane back and forth - from side to side - like a teeter totter; he would slow the plane down and then all of a sudden speed it up; and, he kept changing elevations - now, I feel like maybe he was trying to aviod some of the turbulence, but at the time it felt like he had no idea how to fly. Once we got to Dallas, we had to fly around the airport for about 20 minutes because the weather was still pretty bad; and when we were finally allowed to land, we were greeted by hard rain.
So, I'll briefly side note here and say that Alex doesn't like roller coasters. He hates them. He won't even go near them. They make him sick. Needless to say, our airplane ride that morning was about as close as it gets to roller coaster rides. Alex took his newspaper and made a little bag - just in case. He didn't throw up, but he was really sick after the flight and to add to it - our flight to Salt Lake was cancelled because of the weather.
The next flight to Salt Lake was full, so they put us on standby and all we could do was wait... two hours later - we luckily got on the next flight and we weren't that excited about it. though it was better than waiting three more hours for the next one. We got to our seats and Alex immediately closed his eyes. I am pretty sure he didn't open them until we landed in Salt Lake!! We did experience some turbulence at the beginning of our second flight, but it wasn't nearly as bad or for as long as the first one.
I seriously thought Alex was going to fall on the ground and kiss it once we landed!! He didn't, but that would have been an awesome picture!! We are still alive - Hooray... but after this trip - we are more likely to go places we can drive to :)
Stay tuned for more stories from our trip!

Rachel

On Saturday I babysat for the Campbells and I have to say that Rachel has gotten SO big and she talks SO much now. We had so much fun on Saturday that I had no choice but to post the pictures and write about it! Even though most of the time I can't really understand what shes trying to say, we had fun communicating together and she had some pretty funny moments yesterday.

Everytime I'm there she likes to play with my phone... this time she was asking me to find Elmo on it!
She was mad at me for taking her picture, and this was the face she came up with to show me. Everytime I pointed my camera toward her she would yell "NO!" and then show me this face!
Here she is.. trying to put her shoes on my feet. She actually got the this one on pretty easily.

She had a lot more trouble with this foot, and she got really frustrated when she couldn't get the shoe on. So she told me to put it on myself!
Here I am with her shoes completely on my feet, but she doesn't understand why half of my foot sticks out of them! So.....
She tries to shove them all the way on! Once she realizes they aren't going to completely fit, she decides she'd rather wear them herself. So she took them off of me and put them back on her own feet! Here we are - I am sitting on the couch and she thinks its funny to put her Hula Hoop around me. So she takes turns putting it around me and then around herself. I'm not really sure what game we were playing...They had some Sprite in their refridgerator and Rachel wanted some. "Soda." She kept telling me. So, I gave her a little bit in this cup and it was so funny after she took the first sip, she kept telling me "this prutty good."

Of course, since I gave Rachel some Sprite I had to give Caleb some. But, when we went to get him a cup he told me he wanted a sippy cup. So, I got him out one that had pictures from the Cars movie - he didn't want that one, he picked out this one with Disney princesses on it and told me that was the one he wanted!! He's so cool.
After a little while, we decided to go outside to play. Rachel apparently has this new fascination with ants. She showed me all of her ant bites when I arrived at their house, and now I can see why... She looks for them and tries to play with them like they are pets! Here, she is using this stick to try and dig around to find some.Whenever she'd find one, she would pick it up and show it to me and she'd say "got one!" I kept telling her they were going bite her, but she didn't seem to mind that much. Once she finally got bit she told me "band aide," and showed me her finger... but went right back to looking for more ants before I had time to get up!

She is so much fun and what a big personality. It's times like this that make me so excited that I get to be a mom soon! I can't wait.

Weekend to Remember

So, this past weekend Alex and I went up to Connecticut for our friend Jordan's wedding in Connecticut. We flew to Boston and then drove up. The flight from Atlanta to Boston wasn't that great, it was really bumpy and hard to get comfortable. We had hardly any sleep because we had to leave Athens at about 3:30 in the morning, and we were up late. We landed in Boston about 9:30AM and got to our rental car and decided just to drive on up to Connecticut because of the weather..... and because of poor planning, we didn't know where any of the sights we wanted to see were or how to get to them. :(

The drive up went pretty fast and when we finally got there we met Jordan and her fiance - now husband. They were still putting a few things together for their wedding the next day, so Alex and I decided to check the Wal Mart that was just down the road. When we returned, about an hour later I realized that I didn't have my drivers license. This is when our day went south!! I realized that I had stuck my license inside the little envelope they give you for your boarding pass; which, I had left on the plane about six hours earlier. Ooops...

Needless to say, Alex was raving mad and I felt horrible for doing something so stupid and careless. He called the airline and had to report it lost and they said they would call us if anything came up - but that if it didn't, I wouldn't be able to fly. I cried and cried and cried.... because of course, we both had finals on Monday morning. After we got through this traumatic experience - we went and hung out with Jordan and Michael and his family, where I became the butt of their jokes. Nothing new.

A few hours later we had the rehearsal, which went really good; then we went and ate at the Mystic Pizza. Soooooooo good, and it made me think of Julia Roberts!! That was a really good time and our weekend seemed like it was looking up. Later that night, instead of Bachelor and Bachelorette parties everyone just got together and went to this huge casino - its like the second biggest one in the nation. It was this really big place that had like six or seven different casinos and then an atruim with shops and restaurants and music. WOW. I had never in my life been to a real casino before and let me say that it was an experience all in it own. I watched Jordan and some of the other people we were with and its really interesting how those machines get you to keep playing. There were rows and rows of them and they were all filled with mostly older people and then there was a separate section with table gamling - like poker - and there were mostly Asian people in that area. Odd, I thought. When we finally left, we went back to Jordan and Michael's apartment and they let us stay there instead of getting a hotel - that was really nice of them! We were so tired, Alex and I slept so good that night.

Saturday morning we woke up to a homemade breakfast of pancakes, grits, scambled eggs, and bacon. Yummy. Then it was time to start getting ready. The wedding was at 3PM. They had it in this little chapel in an old village like place in Mystic. A cute little chapel. When we first got there, the priest hadn't shown up yet and it was time to start!! Jordan's dad asked Alex if he'd ever married anyone before - HAHA. That would have been really funny. Well, when the guy finally got there, he was really sketchy looking... and he didn't even know what to do or say. wow. The whole ceremony took like 7 minutes and then we had two hours before the reception. So Alex and I drove up to Old Mystic and went to the harbor and saw some historic landmarks. Really cool.

Time for the reception and oh my was it an interesting one!! Lets just say a few people got wasted and embarassed themselves. I don't want to get into detail, but you know that one crazy person everyone has in their family? Well, this one was there... All in all - there was ice thrown at the bride and groom... for kissing, on their WEDDING day; an argument about whether God, Jesus and Heaven and Hell exist; drunk riverdancing, two OUT-OF-CONTROL children, and an awesome couple who just took everything in stride. If that was my reception, I don't think I could have played it as cool as Jordan and Michael did.

After that, everything went uphill. We called the airport and they said I should be able to get through security with my birth certificate and a social security card. We had them faxed to us immediately and spent the rest of our time relaxing and trying to get ready for our trip home the next day.

On Sunday, we met up with Jordan and Michael and spent a little bit of time with them before we had to leave. We ate at this really cool sports bar and got some last pictures and then it was time to go. Our drive back went really good, we didn't have any trouble finding where we needed to go. However, once we got into the airport and to security we hit a rough spot. They told us my birth certificate had to be an original copy that was actually notarized and from the court house. Yea right. Fortunately, once I explained my situation, they let me through - but I had to go through every security checkpoint possible. Except strip search! Whew! Once we got through it was a breath of fresh air. Yes! I can get home!! The flight was actually alright and we got home at a pretty decent hour - we went straight to bed. It was definitely a weekend to remember.

Here we are at Boston. Alex wanted me to take the picture before those people walked by.... tourists.... :)

Our itty bitty compact car - Kia Sorento

We stopped at this Wendy's to eat in Rhode Island. They didn't even have a 99 cents menu... What?

Finally, in Connecticut! Alex was driving too fast for me to get a picture of the Welcome to Connecticut sign... so we had to stop at the information center!

This sign says it all.... a slice of heaven!

Alex at the casino. Does he look like a gambler?

On the big day! Alex is trying to show Jordan's brother, Justin, how to do a tie knot.

The wedding party. I was a little uncomfortable since this dress was sleeveless... but I had to get one at the last minute, and it was free. So, I just put a sweater on immediately afterward!

Alex and I at the beginning of the reception.

Jordan and Michael and Alex and I outside of the restaurant before we had to leave for our flight. :(

Lion King

So this is a little bit old news, but this is the first time I have been able to do anything besides school work!! On Saturday the nineteenth, Alex took me to see the Lion King on Broadway at the Atlanta Civic Center. What an Amazing experience!! The Costumes were incredible and the performers were noteworthy - no pun intended! : )
I’ll start by saying that we left Athens at about 4pm because there was supposed to be some pretty serious road work going on . Well, turns out the road work was happening on the other side of the road so we got to Atlanta around 5:30 and the show didn’t start until 8pm. We drove around and saw some pretty shady areas as well as some really cute old neighborhoods. Their houses were all painted weird colors like bright green and blue and pink.. Kind of cool. So, we decided, we should go find somewhere to eat. Well, we didn’t know where to go downtown because they wouldn’t let us park at the civic center - it was too early. So we decided to get back on the interstate and drive up to the next exit that had food. We ended up going to Shane’s Rib Shack and had bar-b-que. We had never been there before, even though there’s one in Athens and it was in fact, pretty good. We recommend the fries, not the baked beans : ) but their sandwiches are really good.
Once we got back to the civic center we got inside and had to wait for them to open the theatre. Our seats weren’t amazing, but they weren’t super expensive and I didn’t mind. I would have liked to sit a little bit closer, but they weren’t the worst seats in the house either! We could see everything pretty clearly. Of course, no pictures allowed - so we don’t have anything cool from the actual performance!
The first scene when Mufasa is presenting Simba at pride rock was probably my favorite - as it is in the movie. For some reason, watching it that night brought a few tears to my eye. I have never really been to a show of this magnitude and this one touched me.
The show was so powerful and it made the story so much more alive to see real people acting out the characters and feeling their emotional experience as they told the story.
The show was about three hours long, an hour and a half for each Act with an intermission in between. The only thing that I might do differently if I were going to see it again would be that I would try really hard not to compare the broadway to movie. I felt like in the first part of the show I did that and once I realized that I tried to watch the show in a different way. I think that not comparing it makes it one thousand times better; because they share a story line, but they are in fact very different.
All in all I really enjoyed the Lion King and felt like it was one the best dates Alex and I have had in a really long time! Thanks, Honey!!

this is before we left our apartment ... Lion King, here we come!!

This is the little posters that were at the top of the civic center. I wish we could have taken one home with us!!

Our picture in front of the civic center. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Us in our seats before the show started. I don't really like this picture....

FAT phase

So… I feel like I am at that stage in pregnancy - the most dreaded phase…. I have been dreading it and now its here. You know, that stage where you know you are pregnant and you are doing all the right things, but you have started to gain a little bit. Of course, it is natural and obviously the best for thing for the baby that growing inside my tummy…. But, lets just be honest - this is the stage where you just have those few extra pounds, yet no evidence of a baby… so people who don’t know for sure that you’re a Prego, think that you’re just getting fat!
I am at the FAT phase and I HATE it!!!
I realize that this is a part of being pregnant that everyone, and that I too must go through, but I have to admit that it is not and probably will NEVER be my favorite. :) - I wish I could skip the fat phase and just get a cute round belly! I'm a dreamer, huh?
Other than this phase where I am feeling like a whale, all other things are going great! Still no morning sickness, which my doctor says I probably won't have - YAY! I am just so TIRED all the time... We have an appointment tomorrow and if anything exciting happens I will be sure and write about it.