The Mazza

Jaron will eat anything, but he's not one to venture out and discover new foods he likes, he'd be happy to eat tortilla and cheese the rest of his life. We decided to take a chance and go to this Middle Eastern Cuisine restaurant on 9th and 9th that we see all the time, the Mazza. We invited one of Jaron's buds from his mission, Stanton, and his wife, Rubi.

I'm no food critic, but I should be--it was awful! No one finished this meals, even the salad was icky. I was very unimpressed with the food, the service was good though.

Afterward Jaron convinced Rubi to cut his hair, he finally got the 'javi-hawk' he's been wanting for so long. She was so nice about it too, then we just sat and watched the boys play Halo 3 for an hour.

Memorial Day

For those of you who don't know, Jaron was recently called to be 2nd Counselor in the Elder's Quorum. Each year they put on a huge breakfast for everyone in our 900 court (about 300 people), this year the new President was in Hawaii over Memorial Day with his family and left Jaron in charge. Little did I know that meant I was in charge.

A few days before we got a TON of food from Costco, the most bacon I've ever seen (we practically cleaned them out), 5 containers of 5 dozen eggs, turkey sausage, just add water pancake mix and tang. In order to get everything ready for the breakfast we had to prepare the night before, I whipped a good amount of the eggs and put them in Tupperware for easy storage and pouring, we mixed all the pancake batter and Tang in drink coolers and defrosted the bacon in our tub.

Despite all our preparation we were not prepared for the rainy Memorial morning, 300 people didn't show up and we had about half of everything leftover. We had a really good time despite the rain and we didn't run out of bacon, which was the goal.

The Green

From May 4th until May 6th Jaron, Curtis, Tara and I kayaked down the Green River. It is named the 'green' river because that's what color it is--GROSS! The water was SO cold too, the one time I got in up to my shoulders I slammed my shin into a rock, big ouch. The water actually helped to numb it and my adrenaline was kicked in because I had to psych myself out to step in.

It was real hard work and my shoulders are still sore two days later. We put the kayaks in at Ruby Ranch (windy, dusty, bumpy 30 minute drive) and we ended at the Mineral Bottom, I think it was about 45 miles.

We all had a fantastic time! We even saw some beavers, a deer and birds of every kind. Our last night camping the boys found some tumble weeds and decided they wanted a bonfire. Crazy kids!!

THE Daniel Tosh Experience

For those of you who watch Comedy Central religiously you MUST know of Daniel Tosh. For those of you who don't you should YOUTUBE his name along with the word 'waverunner'. HILARIOUS!!

Jaron has liked Mr. Tosh since we first saw him on tv and as I was surfing the net one day I stumbled across his touring dates. What!? The University of Utah on the 11th of April!? The only trick would be keeping it a secret for a few days. I had to involve a few friends, which included some risk that my plan would be exposed, but none of our our friends blew it! I thought we were home free until we show up at my friend, Kim's house party. Our hubbys met and Kim's hubby didn't know it was a surprise and said,"So you're going to a comedy show after this?". NNOOOOOO! Ruined, all my hard work, ruined.

It turned out great though, Jaron was real surprised when he found out and that was the point. We got there at 9:40, the doors opened at 10:15 and we got fantastic seats (close, but not close enough for him to pick on us).

My abs were sore the next day, that's how funny he was. We got pictures with him afterward and it was a good ending to a crazy week.

Zion National Park

As promised, here are the pictures from Zion National Park, St. George-ish, UT. Jaron and I had SO much fun! We were there for 1 1/2 days, were rode our bikes and hiked and rock climbed a trail (it was intense). We planned to hike Angel's Landing, Weeping Rock and Lower Emerald Pool, I knew I wasn't going to last the whole day so we started with the hardest, Angel's Landing.

WOW! Where to being, the hike to get to the top did me in, I'm SO out of shape. Since neither of us had ever been there before we didn't know that we had made it, so we kept on hiking up the mountain. I wanted to turn back several times, I finally got my way when we asked a ranger how much further to Angel's Landing and he said a mile the OTHER direction. Down was SO much easier. The mouth to Angel's Landing is cool, you can see the chains bolted into the mountain just in case you fall; however, you can't see the end. It was SO worth it: climbing on the edge of a drop off, the slow kids, the stupid bottle-necks of people coming and going and the terrible photographers were all worth going through to get to the top.

We didn't get to Weeping Rock because I pansied out after the Emerald Pools, they were really good though. A real easy 2 mile round trip walk to three water falls and 'emerald' green rocks from the algae, hence the name Emerald Pools.

Easter Weekend

WOW! What a busy week! After we got back from Zion National Park, which was AMAZING, we stopped by Smith's Market Place. Just a casual walk through the furniture department and we fell in love with a cute brown/black microfiber number. Come to find out it was the LAST one, cha-ching 10% off. An additional 10% off from the ad in the paper and thanks to our U of U student Smith's card -5%! They almost paid us to take that couch home!

We BLEND well

I've wanted a blender for a while now, Jaron has a little hand-held one, but it's just not the same. The problem was that I'm too cheap and too picky. I wanted a nice glass one, but I didn't want to pay more than $30. This is where NPS comes in, our secret discount lottery. Depending on the day you can find anything from basketballs ($.50) to hotdogs ($.10 a pack). We found the most beautiful 500 watt glass pitcher blender for $24! It makes the most delicious strawberry banana smoothies ever!! I'm so happy with our discount find!