Florida continued!

dAy 3:

Monday we decided to tour around Ft. Lauderdale by way of the water taxi. Ft. Lauderdale is known as the "Venice of the America" because there are canals going through the City with seriously hundreds of docked yachts. It was fun to take the water taxi through the canals and see all the mansions and multi million dollar yachts.


The best thing about seeing these mansions was hearing the history behind the homes. We saw mansions that belonged to Wendy Thomas (Dave Thomas's daughter, yes the famous Wendy!), The Wells Family (Wells Fargo), Alamo rent a car founder, and the guy who invented the tags that go on clothes that beep if someone tries to steal them. Funny enough, the biggest house along with a 43 million dollar yacht parked in front belonged to the woman who decided to open a kiosk in every mall selling cheap sunglasses - yep, the founder of Sunglass Hut! It was really interesting to hear how these people made their money, and it does make you realize, there are so many ways to make money in this world, very inspiring!

This hotel is now the Hyatt Regency, but used to be owned by the man who started Phillips 66. He was broke as a joke and kept digging wells - 65 to become exact, but they all came up empty. He begged one last friend/investor for some money to dig one last well, and well, you guessed it, the 66th well was full of oil and he became an overnight billionaire. He became obsessed with the number 66. This hotel has 66 floors, the top roof has the 66 cafe, and there are 66 spikes that tilt at a 66 degree angle, etc. Very interesting.
Wow, those mannequins have awesome looking legs? Oh wait, I think those shorts look slightly familiar since I saw them nonstop for 8 days!


Waiting for the water taxi to pick us up and take us to the beach.


Here is my hottie walking home from the beach.


Monday night we had a fun night out and dinner on the water with Kristin's mission buddy. Just a cute little picture of the baby bump on our way out the door.



dAy 4:

Tuesday we decided to hit up the sites of Miami.

Yes, this was one interesting site we saw... j/k Dave!




We also took a sightseeing tour all around Miami. It was pretty informative, although very strange in terms of where they had us stop to take pictures.

Here are the Venetian Pools - again, not quite sure why this is super cool, but here is Kool n' the Gang striking our best Zoolander poses!



"ThRiLlEr, Thriller Night!" Oh yeah baby, this is where Michael Jackson filmed his Thriller music video!


In Old Havana, we stopped and walked around and there was this little park where tons of people come every day to play dominoes and chess. I thought it was so cute.


After the tour, we spent the afternoon on South Beach soaking up the sun. I know, isn't my wet chest so attractive?


South Beach (at least the section where we went) is located on Ocean Drive, probably the most famous street in Miami. This is the home of Gianna Versace, the head Versace designer who was murdered on his front steps back in 1997. Since then they have turned his home into a hotel where you can stay or eat dinner if you are super loaded. They said on the tour that this house is the 2nd most photographed home in the US, next to the White House. Whether or not that's true, I don't know? All I know is because they said that, we decided to take a picture there too!


And here we are attempting to do Leonardo DaVinci's "Virtruvian Man!" How did we do?





And that about sums up Florida day 3 and 4.

The trip of the year!

Thanks to my incredibly generous parents, Spence and I and some friends of ours were able to go and spend a wonderful week in South Florida.

Because this trip came less than three weeks away from when I delivered with Lance, I was pretty lucky I was able to go, and not only go, but I felt awesome the whole time I was there.

Due to the fact that I am a photoholic, I am going to divide this post up over several days. So, here is day 1 and 2 of FlOrIdA!!! FYI - this post is extremely long and full of stories in an effort to journal our trip, so feel free to skim and look at the pics.

DAY 1 - We all arrived on Saturday night. A funny story about our friends: We met Dave and Kristin in our first ward in downtown SLC. (yes, 9 wards ago!) We only lived in our ghetto blaster of an apt downtown for a couple of months, so we were lucky we met and became friends with these guys. We hung out for about a year, and then they moved to Buffalo, NY to pursue dental school. Well, we have stayed in touch with them however, we have probably only seen each other for tops 2 hours in the past 5 years. However, we knew they would be the perfect people to go with, and indeed, they were. We had a BLAST!

First picture together - reuniting over dinner after the flight Saturday night.

(I just have to point out - dude, doesn't Kristin have the world's best eye lashes?!?)

Day 2 - We decided to get up and go to church. Funny story about church: So, we go and Kristin happens to run into one of her best friends from her mission to Prague! Just pure coincidence. He was in Florida doing dental school. Well, during sacrament meeting, her mission buddy finds out he has to give the lesson in sunday school, and sure enough, Spence steps up and sings an incfredible rendition of "Come, Come Ye Saints." It was amazing. Her mission buddy ends up totally hooking us up later on in the week.

After church, we decide to hit up the beach for some of this:



And this...

(yes, those pasty white thighs become quite nicely tanned by the end of the week!)

Kristin and I were busting up over the obnoxiousness of Spence and Dave's short shorts. So we look down the beach and we see guy after guy coming out of the water wearing short shorts. So we start thinking 'dang, our hubbies are totally in style!" About 15 minutes later as we are walking down the beach, we realize that the area with all of the "stylin' guys" was clearly the gay section of the beach, LOL!


And a little of this...


Daily group shot!


Later Sunday afternoon:

This is the view from the balcony of our hotel lobby.


This picture shows all of the shops and restuarants that lie directly beneath our hotel.


Sunday evening - strolling the boardwalk and taking a ridiculous amount of pictures of ourselves!

The girls:

The guys
Kristin striking a vogue shot!
Katie smiling cause she can't get up from her "beached whale" position!


Cute couple!


Back in the room, we just start taking funny pictures of each other. Dave, totally acting like a goof ball, starts posing in these shorts (which happen to be my dads from like the 1970's!) Little did he know what would happen to this picture in about 12 hours...

Dave, also known, as Gramparoni, (since he went to bed at 10:30pm this night) - goes to bed, but forgets to sign off of his facebook account. So, in order to get back at him for being a sell out with going to bed, we upload this photo of him to his Facebook account as his profile picture. He was half mad/half laughing when he saw this picture of himself along with all the comments that accompanied it in the morning! It was pretty darn funny. What a good sport.
And that concludes the first 2 days of one fantastic trip!

Taggart's, Taggart's How does your garden grow?

On Memorial Day I decided I wanted to plant a garden.

So, we went from this:


To this:



And finally - to this! (in only 2 1/2 short months):


Because the plants were so small, we THOUGHT (key word here, thought) we could fit 14 (yes, I said 14) tomato plants, 1 cherry tomato plant, 2 cucumber plants and onions around the perimeter. We also tried to fit 1 zucchini plant, carrots, beans, and pumpkin plants in about a 2x2 plot of land right behind the tomato seciont. I guess we didn't realize that all of these plants grow exponentially! I introduce you to the attack of the killer tomatoes!

Can you believe those puppies went from minuscule to OVER 5 FEET TALL! Have you ever seen tomato plants like these???


We are so grateful that are tomatoes are growing so well, but at the same time, we are little frightened. They have completely outgrown their gates, have taken over the entire garden, and every day it seemed like 1 or 2 of the plants would fall over because of all the weight.

Last Saturday we spent over 2 hours trimming and fixing our tomato plants. Lance even had his tools out to help.


We got tons of stakes to hold them into the ground and filled up 1/2 of a huge garbage can with the trimmings from the tomato plants. Here is the after picture.


I am not sure you can tell, but it really is a lot more manageable now. We are excited for them to start to turn red and for the tomato party to really begin. If you LOVE tomatoes like we do, I am sure we will have some extras to share with you!

A story about GoLf!

Are you one of those wives that think its annoying that your husband wants to play golf ALL the time? Do you try to outlaw golfing on Saturday's much like I do? If you are, don't worry you are totally normal. However friends, I am here to tell you that my days as an anti-golf supporter are over.

Last month Spence participated in a golf tournament. He ended up winning the longest drive competition and a $50 gift certificate to the pro shop where he got some cool stuff. Ok, so that was pretty cool.

Fast forward a month. Spence is having a birthday, we decide we want to buy a BBQ grill. Spence asks for money from everyone. We keep our eye out for amazing deals. On Saturday we are shopping at Home Depot and are told to wait until Labor Day to get a good deal. Well, we have already waited this long, so what's another month?

Today: Spence plays in a golf tournament up at Jeremy Ranch. He arrives at hole 15, the site of the Longest Drive Competition. Lo and Behold the prize is sitting on the tee box, and what is it? None other, than a BBQ grill! Well, feast your eyes on the pictures below. SPENCE WINS!!! His birthday may not have been the most fun or the most eventful, but baby it made up for it today. Not only did he win a BBQ grill and accompanying grilling accessories, but he also won all of these random gifts, one in particular that he will model below.

Anyway, so I know this post is a bit braggy, but honestly, how cool is that? We are pumped. CONGRATS SPEENIE!!!




One of the random prizes. It is like this fleece/waterproof material that can be a blanket, or you can unzip the hood and the arm holes and it turns into a poncho!

It was a happily ever after golfing day and night. THE END!
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Since these pictures also go along with the night, I wanted to share them. We got together with our friends Devin and Naomi tonight and there adorable son Spencer, which I just realized I didn't even get a picture of him. Bummer, he is so cute. Must be the pregnancy brain. Anyway, Na and I are both preggers. It will be fun to have little kids so close together!



About a year ago, I had mentioned to Naomi that when I had another kid there were two things I wanted. 1. A hooter hider & 2. A video monitor.

Well, leave it to cute Naomi to remember, and she made me this adorable hooter hider. I love it. It will be so fun to nurse in style!


Thanks Naomi and Devin - it was great to see you guys as always.

Cute Cousins!

We had a wonderful 24th of July party up the Canyon with Spence's family and were able to get this adorable picture of all the cousins. It is so fun that Lance has so many 2nd cousins his age. We missed those who weren't able to make it.

Heber Rodeo.

Here are some cute pictures from the Rodeo this weekend.





Lance loves his Rodeo burger and coke!



Note all the empty rows behind my parents. My dad sure likes to be on time! :)

Waving 'hi' to the horses!