Virginia Week!! Crafting and the Accidental Sleeping Pill

Well my friends, my vacation is coming to an end and I should really be going to bed now, as I have to be up at 4:15am tomorrow morning…but oh well. I must finish up my Virginia days :)

More randomness for you:
We never realized we had to turn the ice machine off in the freezer so a few mornings ago we opened the freezer to a plethora of ice cubes. We actually thought it was really funny and filled up a few pots of ice and just left them in the freezer for the cooler we’d brought along.

The other randomness is more of a story, I don’t have a picture for it. Yesterday we were planning on going to the waterpark (also no pictures…we were wet). We had two condos for the week, mom and I in one, Michelle and the girls in the other. Yesterday morning, they came over for breakfast (our place had all the food) and then headed back to get dressed and ready for the day because we needed to go get stuff for dinner last night before heading over to the waterpark. Mom and I are getting ready to head over when Michelle calls us and tells us that she accidentally took a sleeping pill! Oops. (In case you were wondering, she was trying to take a morning vitamin. Apparently they look quite similar.) So we had a very sleepy Michelle for most of the day (she can’t really remember most of it). She did manage to get a good nap in before the waterpark and so she did not drown in the lazy river (which I was very concerned about)  ;)

Today was also pretty mellow. The girls went swimming again and Mom had a nice long list of things she wanted in vinyl for her new house! And, as I love vinyl, I was happy to oblige. :)

I think it was yesterday (?) we made some dry erase menu plates as well (the red looks a lot better in person, I promise! the lighting was yucky…;) Note that we both automatically wrote down Waffles for Sundays :)

We spent the afternoon playing games and watching TV and getting things packed up for the very long ride home. We pick up the boys from EFY first thing tomorrow morning and we can’t wait to hear about their week!

Virginia Week!! Steak and Cake

;)

Still having lots of fun at Massanutten! Before I get going on what we’ve been up to, some randomness:
I made this for my mom’s car. You just love it, don’t you? We sure do! :)
We have a bathtub in our bedroom. I’m taking this picture from the bed. Random? Completely. Weird? Yes. Jennifer was trying to explain this to me when we got here, but I kept thinking she was just saying there was one in the bathroom that connects to the bedroom. That’s not weird. But then I walked into the bedroom and I understood. Weird. ;)
But we all loved that Jason was really here with us (in a way)! ;)

Okay, I’m done with the randomness. Tuesday was a pretty laid back day, I did NOT want to get up early. So we were pretty mellow, we took the girls mini golfing and swimming. The girls pretty much played by their own rules. It’s a good thing they weren’t keeping score ;)

And that night we ate at one of my favorite places: Outback Steakhouse! YUM. We were “celebrating birthdays”. Whose birthdays? Um. Everyone’s. Except Mom’s who had hers in January. But mine and Makenzie’s are in August, Michelle’s is in September, and Jen’s is in October.

I know. Why not? We even got the waiters and waitresses to sing to us! ;)
Mom and I ALWAYS get cold after we eat. Weird? I know, but it’s true…so we got a little chilly in the nicely conditioned restaurant. Michelle was laughing at us the whole time.

After dinner we did some shopping for some crafts we are planning to do. More on that later ;) We had planned on going to the water park this day, but it’s a good thing we didn’t because there was a HUGE thunderstorm that night!! Seriously, the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard. We didn’t lose power, but we did lose TV satellite signal. Which was a bummer because I’d been planning on watching a documentary featuring chefs at my school ALL day and then 5 minutes before it started…we lost the signal. It came back after about 15 minutes though. I guess it was really bad at home too, John lost power completely! And it didn’t come back until last night! So basically we had to say good bye to a lot of stuff in the fridge. Oh well. It could have been worse. Our poor friends got their car totaled by a tree! So we remain thankful that John is safe and that the power is back.

Yesterday we went down to see my parent’s new house! They moved in a few weeks ago and that’s a story in itself. My parents decided they were going to finally really put roots down in VA and put their old house up on the market “to see what happens”. Well, the house sold in 3 days! Crazy, right?!? They found this BEAUTIFUL house out “in boonie-ville” (as we like to call “out in the middle of no where”) on 3 acres of land and we all just love it. So we went down to get the tour and I got to try out the new kitchen, because I promised everyone I’d put my skills to use down here and make a cake ;) I only had about 3-3 1/2 hours to make everything AND build it, so it did NOT look pretty, but I was mostly experimenting with some fillings to put in my favorite white cake recipe. I made lemon cream and raspberry mousse as my fillings, and I must say…it was pretty. dang. good. :)
Michelle really did like it. ;) Most of us couldn’t finish our pieces because it was so rich and moist. (I’m not trying to toot my own horn…but it really was that good ;)

I also finally got my KITCHENAID!! But I was told I had to keep it in the box so it would make it home…so don’t worry, I’ll get pictures of it later :) I’m so so so so so soooooo excited to get it home so I can make stuff in it!!!!!!!!!

Virginia Week! The Trip and Safari Park

I’ve got one week between graduation and starting work as an intern at school, so I took FULL advantage of it by coming out to VA to see my family!!! And yes, I’m still in VA, but we’ve got some down time tonight and I like being detailed in my documentation so if I wait until the end and just summarize…well, I don’t write a journal very regularly anymore…this is my excuse ;) So bear with me, mmmkay?

The Trip:
My Dad came out for graduation, and a few hours after getting back from stuffing ourselves at the dessert buffet, we packed ourselves into the car with my aunt and cousins and we headed out to VA. Sadly, John could not join me – he still has to work. :(

Since we were driving on Father’s Day, I wanted to show you what I whipped up for John and my Dad for the weekend :) IBC Rootbeer with shirts and ties! A BYU Cougar shirt for my dad
And a Hawaiian shirt for John ;) They were super easy and worked perfectly with my insanely busy week

We drove through Saturday and Sunday and finally arrived at the resort at Massanutten. Whew! That was a long two days. We were very relieved to finally drive in and go to bed. With everyone still sleeping within two condos for that first night we had the dilemma of me, my mom and Jennifer with one bed. I convinced Jen to sleep in the closet!
We shoved the couch cushions in there and they fit perfectly! It took a while to convince her it was a genius idea, but I mean, come on! She totally fits! (She was the thing living in our closet that night)

EFY:
This morning we dropped off all the boys off at EFY (Especially for Youth, a week long summer camp run by the church – I went two years and it’s SOOOO fun!). It is all of their first year and we were really excited for my brother Cameron to have this experience!

Safari Animal Park:
Once we got rid of dropped off the boys, we headed out to have some fun! :) We went to the Safari Animal Park and had lots of animal interaction! It was really cool (and a little freaky at the same time…I’m not an animal person) There were some animals fenced in like a normal zoo. These lemurs were hysterically funny. We think they are sleeping like this, but they totally looked like they were bowing to the spotted leopard that was in the neighboring cage!

And then there were places where you could walk around with the animals…like the kangaroo walk about (Jennifer and cousin Makenzie were a little freaked out, but they still came in with us)

Then we got to feed lorikeets! We were given little cups of a mixture of soy milk, fruit juices, and pollen (and I think something else) to feed to the birds. Once we went in and they could see the little cups, they totally fly over and land on you and with their little (weird) tongues, they pretty much drain your little cup! Lots of bird pictures ;)

Sometimes, even if you didn’t have any food, they’d still come and land on you to hang out ;)
At one point, the bird started pecking at mom’s hair and she couldn’t get it to leave!! hee hee
We actually visited the birds twice, once at the beginning of our visit and again at the end. The first time, I couldn’t get a bird to land on me (and let’s be honest, I was still a little freaked out) but the second time, they totally came over! It was pretty exciting :)
Conflict! CONFLICT!
And I finally got one on my shoulder! We were told they like shiny things (earlier, one tried to rob my mom’s wedding ring of it’s diamond) and I was so worried it would go for my earrings, but this bird was content with the food…and an occasional peck at my watch ;)
I love this picture of aunt Michelle ;)

In between bird feedings, we went on this really cool wagon ride through the property of the park, where animals roam free and we each got a bucket of feed to give to them. We fed everyone from llamas to buffalo! It was so cool! The llamas were first (and the friendliest)
The emus and the ostriches totally freaked us out. Emus have red eyes! And look pretty evil if you ask us…
The camels are known to try to steal the plastic buckets we were given so that they could chew on them. They were usually pretty successful. I didn’t feed the camels ;) 
We fed some elk, too! They’d totally stick their heads through the gating on the wagon! Eek! One licked me on the knee!!
I fed this huge male elk and yes, I’m totally having trouble because his head moved so much when he ate out of my bucket! While they ate, we could feel their antlers, they are so soft and velvety! I had no idea
See? We were a little freaked by the birds. ;)
Here’s a camel enjoying his prize
I think almost everyone’s favorite were the buffalo. To feed them, we held the buckets or a handful of feed over their heads and they would stick out their (VERY LONG and SLIMY) tongues and we’d have to drop the food into their mouths!

I even got a video! It’s not very long, but it’s a good action shot ;)

Feeding the buffalo!

We also saw zebras, but we weren’t allowed to feed them because they bite. Eek! There were also some other rare species of the deer family and a few others. It was really cool! We had a really good time. After the animal park, we headed back to the condo for some dinner, swimming and (of course) blogging. I’m so glad I get to sleep in tomorrow… :)