Random Summer Happenings

So I am one of those people who LOVES year-round school. I also blab about how great it is, to anyone who asks. It is one of my favorite things about my job.

Except in July. July is the part where everyone else is halfway through their summer and halfway through their tan, and I am just starting my summer while also about to end my summer. In my school, teachers get 2 weeks off, then go back to school to set up our classrooms and sit in meetings. Kids come back after the third week.

(Secretly I still kind of like this, because I don't feel like I need a huge long summer if it means fewer breaks throughout the year. But I like it in kind of a hateful way. Like I like it, but I hate it. It's a love-hate kind of a feeling.)

Anywho, here are some random pictures of things I squeezed into my summer:

1. Shimp family reunion! We stayed at the Westgate Hotel in Park City, which was really fun in and of itself, and also put us close to Olympic Park. Our first room was about the size of my living room. (I'm not kidding.) There was one pull-out couch bed, one king-size bed in a private part of the room behind some pocket doors, and a shower that we couldn't figure out how to operate.

Being in such close quarters for 10 minutes made everyone go a litttttle bit crazy. Brandon trapped Logan in the sauna shower. Logan started screaming that he couldn't breathe. Stephen mooned his brothers. Michael commented that at least the view wasn't bad and we all got confused because the window looked out on some cement stairs. Mama Shimp sent us out to the car to bring everything in, and texted us to not forget the  marshmallow sticks so we could roast marshmallows.

When we had cleared out the car and brought everything into the eensy-weensy room, the Shimp parents went downstairs to get a different room and Stephen and I took the kids to the pool. We came back just in time to help move everything to the other room, which was on another floor and in another section of the hotel. This room was awesome!! It had some quirks, but at least we were all able to recover our sanity in here.

The main quirk was the bathroom. It was a huge bathroom, with a double vanity, sauna shower, jacuzzi tub, and obviously a toilet.....and a window looking in on the bathroom from the master suite. When I say window, I don't mean a dinky little thing with frosted glass. I'm talking about a 5'x5' hole in the wall that you could climb through and you'd wind up in the tub. From window to wall, the bathroom was set up like this: tub, shower, toilet. So the toilet tried to hide, but when you took a seat, you'd be staring into the mirror over the double vanity. And whatever that mirror showed also conveniently reflected off the mirror next to the tub, so no one got too much privacy during this trip.

*Pictures soon to come of this anomaly of a bathroom.*

One time, someone - who will remain anonymous - fearlessly tried to take a dump in these conditions. Then some cousins came to visit.

"Wow, it's really nice in here!" they said.
"Look at all this space!" they exclaimed.
"You guys got a cool room!" they said.
"Oh yeah, except the bathroom has a window in it," Logan said. "You guys have got to see this." And he led them back to the bathroom.

Locked. So he led them into the master bedroom to show them the window.

"What??" they said.
"Why would anyone put this here?" they wondered.
"Oh, hi Stephen," they said. And continued to stand there marveling at the bathroom with a window in it.

While we were there, we roasted marshmallows, swam, played ping-pong, went to Olympic Park, had a baby shower for Stephen's aunt who is our age, and went to lots of things for Stephen's cousin's wedding.

We went on the drop tower at Olympic Park in Park City!

My other favorite part about staying in this room was the sleeping arrangement. Stephanie and Craig got back from a different vacation just in time to spend a night in the hotel, and Natalie got back from a student council retreat on the same night, which meant that 3 more people had to fit in. It was quite an adventure trying to find spots for everyone! 

In the end, the parents and Natalie slept in the bed, Stephanie and Craig slept on the worst couch-bed I have ever felt, Stephen and I slept on our sides squished on the couch, and Logan and Michael made beds out of pillows and blankets and slept on the floor. Brandon started out on the padded bench at the kitchen table, but that got old after about 5 minutes, so he came in and started gathering up bits and pieces of Logan and Michael's beds to make one for himself. Obviously that didn't go down too well. At first, Stephen and I didn't have a pillow, and Logan was highly frustrated when Stephen tried to take one of his five, but eventually it all worked out. 

Until someone farted and Logan almost had a meltdown, but then things got quiet again!

Until Brandon started to feel like "dude I'm seriously either about to throw up or poop for like 5 minutes straight dude, I'm not even kidding," and Logan just about lost his Shimp telling him to be quiet.

Okay and then things were pretty much quiet until poor Brandon got uncomfortable again.....and you guys, I don't even know what happened, I'm pretty sure he just ended up sleeping on the floor with no blankets or pillows or anything. 

Through all of this, I could not stop laughing! And Stephen didn't help because I was trying to be considerate by laughing silently into his shoulder (which was jammed in my face anyway because remember we were both trying to sleep on a skinny little couch), but every time I started to calm down, he would start shaking like he was laughing, just to get me to laugh again. It just reminded me so much of that scene in Snow White, where all the dwarves give her their beds, and then they have to find a place to sleep, so they all go in cupboards and tea cups and fireplaces. 

#2. Jackie's wedding. Stephen's cousin Jackie got married at the end of the Shimp family reunion, so a lot of our activities revolved around that. She and Aaron got married in the Bountiful temple, which I had never been to before, but it was beautiful! 

The wedding reception was a lot of fun. It was at my new favorite venue, the Bungalow. The food was good, Jackie's parents danced the legit tango, there was a photo booth, and I had the cutest dance partner in the whole place. 

We love the Bruners!

It is really hard to get a good picture of a photo booth picture.

I guess the only person who didn't have fun was Logitos, when he didn't catch the garter and he had to get under some coattails. 

#3. Studying. Most of our summer was consumed with studying. Stephen was preparing for the DAT, which he's actually not going to take until next spring / summer, and I was preparing for the Praxis, which I didn't think I needed to study for originally but then I got freaked out when I read some stuff online about it the week before my test. So some of our days looked like this:

PS I just got my scores back and I passed :)

#4. Lagoon. Remember when I won something with 97.1 ZHT, and I got to jump in a big....pen kind of thing full of lucky charms with 20 other people, and somebody won Taylor Swift tickets and everyone else won something a little less cool but still cool? Well I won Lagoon tickets that day! Stephen and I went with Natalie and Brandon, and it was so much fun. 

#5. Stephen's birthday! I already blogged about the most interesting part of that, but I also want to share a few pictures here.

In our house, errbody gets to wear a crown on their birthday, even the boys. 

I made him this delicious (kinda yellow) breakfast and was very proud of myself.

Remember the candles I got that were a 2 and a 6? I tried to redeem myself here. 

This "cake" was amazing! It was basically a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake. You can find the recipe here.

#6. We erm......broke our scale.

I literally don't even know how this happened. I just walked in to find it like this. Stephen said he just nudged it and it shattered into a million pieces.....but I mean why?!

#7. Mob. We love Moab because, well, because it is Moab, and also because it was where we took our first mini-vacation together! This time, we went with Stephen's family. We found a cool little lake that I'm assuming was man-made, rented some paddle-boards, hiked to the Delicate Arch, and did a few other mini-hikes.

We were unaffected by the Dad-Bod trend, thankfully. 

#8. Lady A and Hunter Hayes!!! (And Sam Smith but no one really cared about him. #rude? Maybe, sorry.) Caitlin won tickets to all the shows this summer, and even though Stephen meanly rejected her Toby Keith tickets, since he hates country, she was still nice enough to take me to Lady Antebellum. We fangirled it up and I'm now even more obsessed with Hunter Hayes than I was when Stephen picked his song for our first dance.

Um, we were pretty excited.

Sorry that my phone camera is not the best TERRIBLE, but that is Lady A. I thought they were in love, but actually, the girl is just in love with the drummer in the band. And the boy lead singer who is tall and way better-looking than his poor brother that let him live in his basement years ago and came onstage to sing because he LIVES IN UTAH so why not, is actually married to someone else who had fertility struggles but is now pregnant. (Where would we be without Google, amiright.)

And there's Hunter Hayes! Stephen said that if he pulled me onstage and kissed me that would be cheating. So I guess that will never happen. 

Lady A came out into the audience! They were right at the end of our row and it was so great.

#9. Babay shower! So many baby showers. So many, guys. I guess it's just the phase of life I'm in. I love it because baby clothes are fun to buy, especially baby shoes. Ahhhh I die every time!! Anyway, the only one I got a picture at was Christine's.

#10. Back to school!

Here was my first day of school bulletin board! I'm still doing a circus-themed classroom, as you can tell.

And now I'm in Week #2 of my first 3-week break of the school year. We just got back from galavanting around the West coast, and I'm working on those blogs now too. Howwwww was everyone else's summer!?