Making Popcorn

Ok, so I have to say, popcorn is one of my favourite snacks and the other day I was getting groceries with Ashley and she said that her and Chad just pop it on the stove, since a big bag of kernels is like 2 bucks and I usually pay like 6 bucks for 12 servings, so here I am like...alright, I am going to try this, and you know what, it was darn good (not as good as Melese's cause she's got a popper and some yummy butter) but I try. So pretty much every night when I am craving a snack I just pop some good ol' corn. Yay.

Ohh the anticipation kills me!

READY!

Only thing, does anyone know how to make it taste buttery without soaking the popcorn in melted butter from the microwave?

Let me know.

Utah #7

September 27th
My last day in Utah. It really hit me when I woke up that it was my last full day of fun, and that Sharee didn’t have her baby yet, which sucked. Aubrey and I knew that it was going to be mall day, as we had yet to hit up Gateway! We also hadn’t done a session at the temple either. So we got our Sunday best on and made our way (after checking to make sure it was open this time) to the SLC Temple. We did a 9 am session and it was awesome. It’s a totally different experience that everyone should try to do at least once. I had a good time, but honestly, I think I like the way we do it here better. Just a personal preference.
So after that we met up with Sharee at the Olive Garden where I wolfed down the best pasta dish ever. We totally need an OG here. No lie.
So then we went to Gateway. It was a really nice warm day which was perfect for shopping. My first store was Forever 21, which I found some really great stuff, but I think I’ll prefer shopping online to in the store, it’s crazy in there. P.S They are going to start shipping to Canada soon, yay! Then we did all the other stores that we don’t have up here. I decided that I don’t like Hollister and Abercrombie’s atmosphere. The music is WAY too loud and it’s too dark inside to appreciate the clothing on the shelves. It was more annoying that inviting, but I still bought stuff. Well for Josh, cause he likes their jeans.
We ended the day with a trip to Ben’s Cookies where they have these yummy warm cookies and ice cream and it was awesome and I couldn’t eat it all and I had milk to wash it down and it was totally fantastic and I am drooling thinking about it now. Yum. We were totally tired after our long day out, and so we picked up some Café Rio and headed over to Aubrey’s aunts house to watch the season premiere of Grey’s. It was a perfect way to end my vacation. Maxin’ and relaxin’. Just wish I had one of these love sacs to lay on all the time!

Utah #6

September 26th
Alright, so this morning we drove home from Cedar City and all of its shenanigans. We dropped Meghan off at her parents place and then went to Aubrey’s friend Nancy’s house for a visit. Nancy has a little boy, Zach, and he’s pretty much the funniest little man ever. He LOVES BYU and plans to go there “when he grows up”. We then met up with Melissa for lunch at the Brick Oven and it was really yummy. Tragically, I wasn’t super hungry and couldn’t eat everything I had wanted to. Darnnit! So we finished eating up there, Melissa was on her lunch break so we didn’t have all the time in the world to hang out, but it was still fun, and then we headed to the BYU Bookstore where I purchased the one thing I truly wanted, a BYU sweater (which I am wearing in the picture below, totally posing as a "y" to match the one on the mountain!)I was so stoked. I love wearing it now, like all the time, I am sure you can all attest to that. So yea, and I thought it was cool because the bookstore was also like a clothing store and it had shoes for 20 bucks and it was awesome and I want to go back now just thinking about it.
On our travels from Provo to SLC we stopped at the Provo Temple, the MTC, and Mount Timpanogas (sp?) Temple to take pictures. I really liked the Mount T one, and hope one day to do a session there.
Finally we made it back after all that side tracking (thanks to Aubrey and her excellent guide help, I was able to do plenty of touristy temple stops) and we met up with Nancy and Zach at the Olde Spaghetti Factory. It was also super yummy (I wasn’t very hungry there either, since we ate at the Brick Oven not too many hours earlier) and so Aubrey and I just split a meal. Also, we were trying to conserve our calorie intake for our trip to the Roof restaurant for the all you can eat dessert buffet, which is where we went after we finished saying our goodbyes to Nancy.
Now, I must tell you that our visit to the Roof made me feel super special. See we have a friend Jeff Van Houlten (who actually served here as well) who is the evening manager there, and so he reserved us a very special seat (the seat where they filmed the movie Charley as well as many others). Sorry for the fuzzy picture, but I wanted to get the temple all lit up, so no flash!So we got there and he seated us and told our waiter that we were VIP so it was cool. And cooler still, the King and Queen of Portugal were eating just a table over. It was crazy! Rumor is that they were in town to meet with President Hinkley, but who really knows. If they were though, I am super jealous. But yea, Aubrey and I spent some good quality time talking over 3 trips up to the buffet, each time filling out plates with some new tastes. It was insane. By the end of it we were feeling quite ill and had to be rolled to the car! Oh and there was a piano man in the restaurant taking requests and when it was someone’s b-day as they brought over the dessert he would play Happy Birthday and it was so cool.
So yea, it was awesome, and I loved looking out over the temple, and the city. It was just spectacular. It was an awesome day full of….eating mainly!

Utah #5

September 25th
So today we traveled to Cedar City, which is like a 3 hourish drive from SLC, well I think it was that long, but it seemed longer, not sure why. Maybe it was because I was super excited to be going to Bryce Canyon to see all the red rocks. In any case, we finally got there and we went to check into the hotel we had looked up online, and it was a dive, like super dive and the woman wanted to see our id’s before we even asked questions, so we were like…no way.
We decided to continue the hunt for shelter after getting back from the canyon. So we drove up and it was an awesome drive and the leaves on the trees were all yellow, which was nice, but I have to say I love all of our different colors here more. We got to take some fun pictures (in the picture above, I was sure I was going a over tea kettle into the great abiss!) and I have to say my favourite part of the day was when we got to go horseback riding. I got to pick out the horse I wanted and I was stoked, but then not so stoked when I found out that mine was lazy and didn’t want to keep up with the others and would get down on it’s knees and eat the grass, not listening to me telling him to get up and oh my! Lol. The girls kept telling me to kick him so he’d get a move on, and I tried, but he was not having any of that! It was all good tho, we had an amazing tour and got to see some great sites. I got this wicked picture of me riding into the deep blue and I asked them to take the picture and they were like “are you ready” and I was like “yup” with this big grin on my face for the camera…only realzing afterwards that I didn’t need to smile because it was a picture of my behind! Meghan (Aubrey’s sister) thought it was funny. I am a dork! So we got back down the mountains and decided to check into the Quality Inn since it had a pool and Aubrey invited boys over for her to flirt with! We had a good time in the pool and then we got hungry so we went to Denny’s and it was awesome. Mainly because I had never been to one before and because our waitress was crazy and had her guitar and started singing REM and it was funny. Hahaha, I think about it now and laugh. Wish you were there to see it. And one of the guys I met was from here in NS (guy in red sitting next to me) and it was cool because he knows Ashley and it just proves that it’s a small world after all. Especially if you’re a member! So yea, that was our night. I was tuckered out from the hiking and the riding and all, so the three of us didn’t even mind that we shared one king bed. It was awesome.

Utah #4

September 24th
So it was raining today, again (but it later got sunny). Aubrey and I got up early to go to a session at the SLC temple, but quelle surprise, they are not opened on Monday’s. At all. I thought maybe for the morning, but I guess planning for FHE takes all day! So we were a little sour about that, since we had gotten all dressed up and had our temple bags etc. The anger was short lived tho, because the rest of temple square was still open. Bonus! So Aub and her roomie Natalie took me around. So we got to do all the touristy things (‘cause that’s what I was) and I think my favourite part was seeing the Christus. It was flippin’ big!The whole day was great because the Spirit was so strong and again I was glad I was there with Aubrey. Everyone was asking where I was from and Aubrey was like a proud mama telling them she taught me on her mission, and that she got to be my “mum” in the temple. I just love her.
In between our Temple Square tours, we went to….CAFE RIO! It was amazing, you people are right. I miss it now just thinking about it. Mmmmm. Ok, enough. But seriously, good times. I even had Aub take a picture of me and my excitedness!!! So then after my long day being a tourist from Halifax (Nova Scotia? It’s about as far east as you can go in Canada….oh, lightbulb!) we went to Sharee’s for supper. Honestly, I can’t say I was excited to go, but only because I wanted her to be in the hospital having a baby! But oh well, supper was still cool lol. We didn’t get to hang out too long after supper because we had made plans with Jason Hainsworth (Elder Hainsworth?!) to meet up. So we did. And we ended up going to Aubrey’s aunts place because she has a hot tub. It was fun, but as Karlee already said, it was weird seeing a post-missionary (the one who did my baptism interview!) outside of a suit. It was fun tho. He and Aubrey are friends, so it was all gravy, and it was a nice end to the night. I ended up in bed still prune-y from the hot water! So yay, another post done! I need a kick in the pants for taking so long!

Utah #3

September 23rd
So on Sunday we did the church thing and I have to say, it’s so different down there. Aubrey is in the University 15th ward!!! It makes me laugh haha, 15th!!! We’re lucky to have two (not that the singles even really counts ‘cause there are like 20 people!)
So there were 2 speakers, one from the ward, and then Elder Larson was #2. I don’t know if you all know that name, but he used to be in the 70 and maybe even the 12. He was amazing and I really enjoyed his talk. He spoke about giving back to your community (in their case, university) and really just living it up. He was the cutest old man and he had a similar air about him as President Hinkley. That twinkle, you know the one I am talking about. I wish we had more visitors like that up here in Halifax.
After church we went to Sharee’s parents house for her brothers homecoming. I am not going to lie, it was the best food ever. They had thai food brought in and I ate it right up! Talking about it now makes me crave it. Mmm. We got to do a little photoshoot of the three of us in Sharee’s beautiful backyard, which I don’t have the good pictures from because Sharee couldn’t send them to be because she’s all pregnant and stuff. Correction: she WAS pregnant, and now she’s a new mum!! Brady Lamar was born yesterday (Thursday, October 4th) weighing in at 9lbs 9oz. Holy quarterback!I will post pictures as soon as I get them. For now, back to my Sunday events. So yea, we left Sharee’s and then went to Aubrey’s friends place for some more food (enchiladas) and conversation before the fireside. Now, firesides here are like nothing compared to out there. Like as in, there were over 6000 single university students attending this one, and we’re lucky to get like 60 on any given thing. And we had an awesome speaker…Elder Holland!!! He was awesome. I never thought of him as one of my favourite to listen to, but he was funny as all get out! I felt very blessed to be there.
After the fireside a bunch of people were getting together for dessert, but I was so tired I got Aubrey to drop me to her place before she went. I wanted her to go because this guys she was dating was there, but I couldn’t handle it. So I popped in a movie and fell asleep before her return.
That was my day three. I wish I could still be there. Every time I think about something fun I did there I miss it more! I miss the girls, we had some good times...like this moment. "I think I just threw up in my mouth a little" Haha. Inside joke...
Thanks for checking in dudes.

Utah #2

September 22nd:
So upon waking up at Aubrey’s parents place, we ate some breakfast and decided we should plan our activities for le jour. I really really wanted to spend some money, so we knew shopping was on the agenda. However, it was raining so we knew it wasn’t going to be a Gateway day!
We settled on the University Mall, which was all good with me. Oh and before we did that we got to go to a distribution centre and it was cool. I wish we had ones around here so I didn’t have to order things and pay shipping. There was also a Deseret Books and so we went in and Aubrey bought the coolest picture ever. I wish I had taken a picture of it cause it was so nice. So yea, by the time we were done there we were hungry, so we went to this place called Noodles and Company. It was sooo yummy. Here’s a picture of that. I pretended I was super good at eating with chop sticks..but I wasn’t. So yea, then we went shopping and it was super good times. My new favourite store is Charlotte Reuss (thanks Karlee for mentioning it!) It super cheap there and I LOVE their jeans. I also bought my first ever Wonder Tees. It was the highlight of my life. I ended up bringing 4 back with me, and I want more!
After our day of shopping we decided on the Garden for dinner (in the Joseph Smith Memorial Bldg) and it was awesome. I got some great pictures of the temple and the food was stellar. On our way out we decided to watch the Joseph Smith movie (the one that replaced the Testaments). Aubrey handed me a Kleenex on the way in and I was thinking “I wont need this”. Boy was I wrong. I was like a baby in there. The spirit was sooo strong. I have never felt that way before. It was intense and I was appreciative that I got to share that with Aubrey (she’s the sister missionary who taught me). Even now I am thinking about it and I just can’t explain how much it meant to be for her to be there.
So yea, after the movie I was done for the night. We made it to bed around 12, which with the time difference made it 3 am!!! WAY TO LATE. But I was having fun, so who cares! Check back later for day 3!