My Last Twenty

This weekend we celebrated my twenty-ninth birthday. Yep. Twenty-nine it is.

Megs treated me to a quick trip to the Great White (and Aggie Blue) North that was looking quite green this time of year. I love Logan. I think it's a great city. I don't think it needs two WalMarts, but they didn't ask my opinion. I digress.

We did lunch at Pita Pit before playing with Ty in the park for a couple of hours.





We went out to eat at Cafe Sabor (which recently closed its Park City location and opened another on Bear Lake). I know it's not the most authentic Mexican food you can get, but I enjoy eating there quite a bit. It's tough for me to visit Logan and not eat there. I had a great pollo con crema, Megs had the taquitos, and Tyler ate some of both. The addition of horchata to the menu was long overdue, and we liked it. I think Ty expected it to be milk, so it wasn't his favorite.

We took Ty swimming at the hotel. It took him a bit to get used to, but he was jumping off the edge once he got used to the water. One time he was playing on the stairs into the pool, and he decided to slide down to the next stair. He does the same thing at home, so I don't think he realized that the water wouldn't just move out of his way. Instead he slid down to the second stair and got a mouthful of water. Lesson learned. No more sliding down the stairs in a pool.

Saturday morning the three of us went to the Logan River Golf Course to hit a bucket of balls. I hadn't brought my clubs, so I borrowed a few from the aptly named clubhouse. For the most part, Ty enjoyed running around on the grass behind the practice tees. I thought for sure that he was going to run out to the range to grab all the balls, but he was content to play with the ones in my bucket. He and Megs both got a few swings in, as well. It didn't take long for me to remember that I still have not gotten better in twenty years of golfing. Like we saw with my skiing with Heidi Voelker and Picabo Street, it doesn't really matter who tries to help me. Sometimes you're just not going to be really good at the things you like to do. Not that I'm giving up. I love both golfing and skiing, and I'll keep learning as I go.

We also took a quick trip to Bear Lake for some raspberry shakes and a walk on the shore--the shore of a freshly melted iceberg! There were a lot more people than I expected, but it was still a lot of fun. It's funny that I live just off the shore of one lake (the Jordanelle) but I travel two hours away to visit one that I can't even get in right now. Such is life, I suppose. If the Jordanelle had a place to drive right onto the shore, I'd probably do so. It doesn't, so I can't. Aside from the great shakes we got, Megs also claims to have found the best french fries in the world. Tyler didn't care much for them. He was more interested in throwing (and eating) rocks.






Short as it was, we had a really good time. It was nice to have a staycation for my birthday. Thanks, love.

After coming back from Logan, we did cake and ice cream at my mom's. It was fun to have both sides of the family together even though we missed having Kel and Jodi's families there. Megs continued to hone her skills as a cake artist. This time she paid homage to my favorite candy bar. Nice job, sweetie. It was mmm, delicious.
Now that the birthday fun is over, anyone want to help us move on Saturday? Bountiful, here we come...

MegRy 2.0

Yesterday we had our ultrasound and found out that we're having a Gaby, not a Ben! We would have been excited either way, but I am definitely super happy that Ty's going to have a little sister! The doctor said she looks great and she's growing right on schedule to be born October 9th. I'm crossing my fingers that she'll be smaller than her brother was when he was born, but she's actually bigger than he was at this point. Great. I don't know that I could physically DO a ten-pounder. Eight pounds was hard enough to recover from! Come on Gaby, think SEVEN! We like that number!

Good Eats in Park City

No, I'm not giving away where I think the best eats in Park City are. I'll reveal that later. For now, it's your turn. Many of you have been here to eat. Vote for your favorites with This Week in Park City's annual Best of Dining contest. What did you like in PC (or elsewhere on the Wasatch Back)?

http://www.thisweekinparkcity.com/

Something new for Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day and Ryan gave me a Hot Wheels ice cream truck. I hugged him tightly for being so thoughtful and then felt like I wanted cry.

After Ryan and I got married, I moved into the apartment Ry already lived in here in PC. We lovingly dubbed the apartment complex Little Mexico because of the feeling that we were truly living in a different country there. Loud music, people ringing bells to sell things, the bread man in his van with the loudspeaker on top, and the ice cream truck showing up at all hours of the day and night. We laughed about all of this stuff a lot, but there were also times, usually when it was past 10 at night, that I felt like screaming and throwing things at the ice cream truck or at the person who decided to crank his car stereo full blast because he thought everyone in the complex needed a good night lullaby. When I was pregnant with Tyler I got especially irritated and there were a couple nights I made Ryan go outside and ask the ice cream man to turn off his music. I have vivid memories of my pregnancy and Tyler's first year in that apartment. It was hilarious and frustrating and special all at the same time. For the past 9 months or so we have lived in a different, much quieter place that is only seconds away from that first apartment, but seems a world away. We joke about missing the ice cream man and all the mariachi music, and actually feeling at home when we went to visit family in Mexico for Christmas.

This has been our home for close to three years, since we got married. This is the married life that I know. I don't know what it's like to be married and be in a big ward. I only know what it's like to be married and feel like I'm still serving a mission in a small branch where everyone speaks a different language. All I know is what it's like to have sacrament meeting in the old Park City seminary building, and what it's like to feel so happy when more people show up than can fit in the room. All I know is what it feels like to be absolutely needed in every way and how fulfilling that is. All I know is how wonderful it is to be able to attend baptisms sometimes more than once a week even here in Utah. All I know is how much I love the people I have met here and how much I will miss them.

We're moving at the end of the month, and I've been crying every day since the day last week that we really felt it was the right thing for us to do. We'll only be an hour away, but life will be so different than it was here. This time has been challenging in so many ways, but so wonderful and fulfilling in many others. I'm so grateful for the time we spent here and for all that I've learned because of it. I know that there will be other "ice cream trucks" and many more good memories and experiences to come. But I'm sad that our new baby won't share in this special time we had here.

I hope all of you wonderful women had a great Mother's Day full of whatever may be meaningful to each of you!!

1,000 Days and Counting

Last week Ryan told me not to plan anything Thursday night and Friday during the day because he had a surprise for me. All he said was that Friday was a special day. May 1st. I couldn't figure out what May 1st was. Not a birthday, not our anniversary, not the day we got engaged. I had no idea. But Ry arranged for someone to keep Tyler and he took me to dinner and to the Anniversary Inn. We stayed in the Dodge City room, which was so cute! The bed is a covered wagon and there's like a storefront with the swinging half doors and the shower comes out of overturned bottles. It's the cutest thing! He finally told me why we were there over breakfast at our barrel-converted table in the morning. He gave me a card that said Happy 1,000 Days! Of course I burst into tears and couldn't believe that he had been so thoughtful. Then that afternoon we went the dollar theater and saw Confessions of a Shopaholic. I thought it was great!

The funny thing was that the day before I had watched the Ellen show and it was her 999th show. Her 1,000th would be on the 1st, and I started thinking, "how long is 1,000 days?" But then I had to go stop Tyler from throwing the cat's food into her water and stopped thinking about it. Good thing or I may have figured it out. So we celebrate our 1,000th on the same day as Ellen's, but I think we win. We don't get weekends off, or certain seasons off, and we're 24/7. And it has been the best 1,000 days of my life! Thank you for being such a wonderful husband Ry. I love you!