V-A-C-A-TION (I'm singing this in my head as I type it)

One week ago today, I was sitting in my cousin Nathan's (and his wife, my cousin-in-law? Lynn)apartment digesting a full stomach of delicious Cafe Rio food in Provo, UT. I was there for my Thanksgiving Break and it was SO MUCH FUN! (Despite the fact that I didn't get to see you, Kizzie. I'm coming again this summer so for sure we HAVE to get together then!!) Monday night was filled with good food, good company (Nathan and Lynn are the best!) and fabulously awful television! The three of us share a love of ridiculous t.v. and since they have Ti-Vo, we got to watch Hannah Montana, Little People Big World, Jon and Kate Plus 8, AND the Hills all in one night.

Nathtan and Lynn left early the next morning to drive to Washington for Thanksgiving, so I was left to my own devices. I got together with my old friend Mark and we hung out for a few hours. It was fun and also we got to eat at Burger Supreme, which makes the best fast food in the whole continental U.S. of A. (In case you don't already know, I get just as excited about all the wonderful restaurants there are to eat at in Provo as I do about seeing my family and friends. I know it's pathetic, but whatever it's also never going to change.)

After lunch, I bid Mark adieu and then went to my alma mater (is it only that if I graduated there? Or can I claim it since I attended there for a term?) UVU to pick up Robbie. The rest of Tuesday was spent shopping and seeing old friends and meeting new friends and hanging out in church and telling stories. I don't remember what I had for dinner that night, so it must not have been Provo-licious. Anyway, Robbie and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning eating orange rolls and talking about his life and it was great.

On Wednesday, Robbie, Greg and my new friend Jessica a.k.a. "Red" left for our Moab Thanksgiving Adventure. Robbie, Greg and I have done the whole road-trip thing together so I knew they'd be great, but I was nervous about introducing someone new to the mix, especially a girl, but I liked her right off the bat and Red turned out to be an amazing travelling companion.

After driving an hour on the wrong freeway, the four of us stopped for lunch and then realized we were NOT on the correct route. Some people may have been upset by this, but since we were putting the miles on a rental car and we had enough good music to last us several months, we were able to just laugh about adding 2 hours to our trip. We finally made it to Moab and checked into our hostel...the Lazy Lizard. I am now a huge fan of hostels. They give you beds and warm rooms and showers and ours even had a kitchen and living room (those parts were shared with other guests, but still...awesome!) all for less than $10 per night. Our building was crawling with hippies, but besides their constant stern warnings not to use their pans with the pink handles (those were vegetarian pans), they were pretty good housemates. They were probably just really mellow from all the pot.







We spent that night driving through the Red Rocks, and eating delicious Thai food. Then we decided to go ahead and prepare our Thanksgiving dinner ahead of time so we could have all day Thursday to hike around Arches National Park. Moab had a great little grocery store and we bought everything we needed for dinner, including WINE! (and plastic wine cups for the wine!) Ok, it was de-alcholized, but we were totally stoked to have classy wine and cups for our friends' Thanksgiving. Excited in a way that only nerdy Mormons can be. Back at the hostel, we chopped and seasoned and wrapped our food in tin-foil and prepared our sides and coolers for the next day. The plan was to hike until late afternoon, and then find a camping spot and start a fire and then make tin-foil dinners (aka hobo dinners). Except our tin-foil dinners were for Thanksgiving so they had turkey meat in them and we also prepared yams.




After preparing our Thanksgiving dinner (with a twist), we decided to go to bed early so we could have a FULL day on Thursday. Greg was the only one who followed through with that plan though, since Robbie and Red and I were too distracted by our games of BOMB and 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon to actually go to sleep.

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I'm in a weird mood and just now decided that this post was too long, so I'll continue with my Moab/Utah adventures later this week. I seriously will -- this won't be like the Logger's Jubilee post that never came to fruition.

On an unrelated note, Jeanette and Karin (and Lynn too, for that matter), what the heck are we? Are we cousins? Are we cousins-in-law? (cousin-in-laws?). Am I just your husband's cousins? Are you just my cousins' wives? Will we be real cousins after like 5 years? I'm so confused by our relationships. Well, actually just about what to call them. The relationships themselves just make me happy.

Oh man, also unrelated...I'm having church crisis. Not a soul-searching, is god really there, who am i really crisis. Just a oh crap, I went to the single's ward and the only person who talked to me was my crazy semi-retarded stalker-since-i-was-15 man (who STUNK by the way) kind of crisis. And so now I don't know where I want to go to church. I was all stoked to go to a congregation full of kids around my age, but since stupid Aaron (long story) goes to that ward and steals my other friends so I can't sit by them, I'm totally screwed unless my friend Grant comes to church. But when he doesn't, I'm left sad and alone or sad and stalked. It's quite a predicament. If any of you know of a smart, willing man who wants to help me to NOT be single anymore so I don't have to deal with this single ward crap, I'd surely appreciate you sending him my way.

Ok, I really am done now. But you should be excited for the pictures still to come of beautiful Arches and fabulous Thanksgiving!