Colorado

This last week I took Myia and Kenny to Colorado to visit the Smiths. The ride there was insane! Oh yea we also brought Izzy, their new puppy. We left after Myia’s camp meeting and headed over the Rocky Mountains. Stopping like every two hours to let the dog run around and go potty. It was easy going all the way until we reached this:

Yea the road is being eaten by the black cloud. Inside the cloud it was super dark and windy and super slow going.

When we got out of the cloud I was like well it’s all gotta be uphill from here(Ha Ha get it? cause Denver’s higher than Mapleton). You should never jinx yourself like that. Because the rain turned to down pour and the wind blew harder. It was about time to find a rest stop and let the puppy out but it was raining so hard I told Myia to just put a pad down because I did not want to get out of the car in the rain. About 20 minutes later we saw a mud slide on the other side of the road and decided to call my dad and ask what the road conditions were like for the rest of our drive. While Myia was calling him me and Kenny were super focused on the road and the cars around us when all of the sudden the car in front of us disappeared in a wave. I guess my car wanted to see if it could be a submarine. Luckily we were really close to a rest stop and pulled off and waited for the rain to die down a little. After  practicing our submarine skills it was easy sailing the rest of the way.

Once there we had a blast. We went swimming, tie dyed shirts, went to the aquarium, played lots of spoons and California speed, played various versions of tag, played the oreo game, the shaving cream and cheetos game and ‘helped’ redecorate the house.

Playing night games

we tie-dyed shirts and we tried to get a picture of all

of us looking at the camera at once but that wasnt going to

happen so we got a picture of us all sleeping.

I think Elles shirt is my favorite

Bowling

Kenny wasnt sure of it at first but he ended up loving it

Lauren cheering for her moms sake.

The pool

I love this picture

We decided that Lauren was trying to pants Parker underwater

I love this picture because it took a lot to get Kate to go under water

and it looks like Nedra is trying to drowned her or something

We tried all the first day at the pool to get Kenny to go down

a slide then all of the sudden he just quietly got out and walked over

to the slide and went down

The two non-smilers

The aquarium

My dad said that he thought he was sending an adult and two kids

but it turns out he just sent three kids

I got this riding a princess scooter

I got this playing a card game with lauren while Nedra went to the store.

I was supposed to be in charge

Day 1

I think this is the next day or later the same day

Like two days later

Today

If you’re still reading then you deserve to know how we ‘helped’ to redecorate the house. Well Nedra left and told me to make sure no one got hurt or lost. Well no one else got hurt or lost. Then I decided that Lauren needed to be tickled so I tackled her and sat on her crazy legs and tickled her. Then I ran. While running through the house, I know you shouldn’t run in the house but it was hot outside, we somehow managed to break the curtains on the windows next to the front door. I really wish I had a picture of the before and after of the door. As soon as we realized that we had broken them we stopped running in the house and argued over who was to take the blame for the damage. Lauren said that they were ugly anyways so I decided she was going to take the blame for it. But then I was helping someone when Nedra got home so Lauren goes “mom, Brittney says she’s kinda sorry!” Yea that’s not alarming at all. We told her WE broke the curtains running in the house because I felt like Lauren needed to be tickled. I think this was a valid excuse and a good reason to get rid of the purply-gold curtains.

Needless to say  when they went to the temple Dustin left Kate in charge because I'm not responsible and guess what nothing broke and no one got hurt!

We had a fun packed week and the silent drive home told me we played hard. Can’t wait to have a crazy fun packed week again!

Did you just love it!?

Since I’ve been home the question I am always asked first is something along the lines of “did you just love it!?” Well this question is hard to answer quickly in passing.

When I met up with Jennifer Hicks at the 4^th of July parade and met her family they also asked this question and to my friends I just had been saying “It was a great learning experience.” I could totally dodge the question and everyone would just move on and ask what I saw, or what I ate, or what the weirdest thing was; those are easy questions to answer. Well when they asked the question I was thinking of a polite way to answer this question since I could tell she had told her family about my time in Greece  and just as I was about to say something she jumped in and said “You know it’s hard to live in Greece.”  I was so happy to not have to think of a nice way to say living in Greece was not the funnest thing I’ve ever done.

Don’t get me wrong I had fun times there and I learned a lot and did a lot of really awesome and cool things but there’s not much to do if you don’t drink. Like in Mapleton and Cedar City my friends and I go to the park or play ultimate Frisbee or go long boarding or have a game night but it seemed like all anyone wanted to do in Greece was go out to this strip of bars and drink and party all night. It made me realize how good of friends I have and how nice it is to live in Utah.

4th of July

The 4^th of July means a lot more to you when you go to a different country and see the lack of pride for their country. The Greek independence day was just another day to them it seemed. There weren’t really any festivities, it was really weird.

I went and camped out with Chalyce and her family in Provo to save spots for the parade (side note; people started setting up their spots at like 10am but you’re not supposed to set up until 3pm so we got a spot in the sun L). The night before the parade, in my opinion, is better than the actual parade. People dress up crazy and walk around, the zoobies (BYU students) form a bicycle group and ride up and down the road with music playing, people bring out their cool/crazy cars and cruise up and down the road, you play card games and eat junk food all night and it’s the best place to people watch. We had a ton of fun.

Chalyce's family has this awesome tradition of singing Happy Birthday

at midnight to America. Its super awesome and fun

A family I met in Greece had told me they were in Utah and so I asked if they were going to the parade and if we could meet up. I was really happy to meet up with them (and their spot was in the shade so I totally lucked out by going to meet up with them). 

Me and Jennifer Hicks.

I was pretty excited to meet up with her and Caleb at the parade

After the parade I went home to see what we were doing and found out that this is how we were going to celebrate freedom:

But don’t worry after that we had the traditional BBQ and fireworks.

Once again blogger is taking forever to upload so I put the rest of them here