Brazil

After two full days of being in an airport in New York, Ryan is finally on his way to Brazil. His brother is going down to São Paulo for a business trip this week and he invited Ryan to come along. Ryan has been wanting to go back to Brazil for a long time, because that is where he served his mission and he wants to go and see all his friends and the people he taught down there. Eventually we would like to go there together and see all the cool, non-people things to see, but for now this is the best we can do. Since I don't speak Portuguese, and I'm pregnant, I figured a trip spent hanging out with old mission buddies probably wasn't a good idea, and might be a bit boring. I'm sure Ryan's going to love it, though. This will be the longest amount of time Ryan and I have spent apart since we met almost three years ago. I will miss him terribly. I'm not sure I can handle a whole week without my best friend, but my little sister will probably go into labor any day now and my mom is coming out to visit on Wednesday, so I'm sure I'll find lots of stuff to do to occupy my time. Have fun in Brazil, sweetie. Be safe.

Mini Vacation

Last weekend we took a mini vacation to St. George with three other couples. The four guys are all mechanical engineering students graduating this semester so they thought it would be fun to do a little senior trip. One of guys has a family vacation home in St. George so we decided to go there. The house was amazing. Here is the front of the house.

It was like a 5 star hotel. Each of the rooms had King sized beds with their own bathroom, walk in closet, and walk out patio. Our room had two patios. Here's a picture of our room.


And here is one of our patios that also led to the front door. I relaxed out here one of the mornings, reading and listing to the fountain you can see on the right side of the picture. It was awesome!

It was tricky to take pictures of the rest of the house, mostly because everything was so big my camera wouldn't fit it all in, and also because I was embarrassed and worried that the people we were staying with would catch me. Here is a picture of the beautiful kitchen that I want so bad. I loved the kitchen

Here is a view of the pool with water slide, and at the top you can kind of see the hot tub.

And here is the view from out of the huge floor to ceiling window in their sitting room. They are literally on the edge of town.

There was also a theater in the basement with three rows of stadium seating and recliners for chairs. And tons of other little things that I will probably never have the money or room for in my house.

The first day we were there we mostly just relaxed and went swimming. We watched movies and played our PS3 in the theater downstairs. It was fun playing Guitar Hero on a huge theater screen. We also went on a hike to this crack and Ryan and mostly everyone else hiked through it.

Me and another one of the girls didn't hike through it cause our pregnant belly's wouldn't have fit. We hiked around and took pictures from the top.

And this should give you an idea of how skinny the crack was.


We also made a stop off at Sears but I'll explain that in the next post.

The next day we went to Las Vegas. I've never really been there before and we all thought it would be fun since we were so close already. I'm not going to say I didn't have any fun, but it was a disappointment and I'm definitely not planning a trip back any time soon. We really wanted to go to M&M world and the Coke factory while we were there because last time Ryan was there as a kid they went to those two places and went on tours and saw how M&M's and Coke were made and got to try different soda flavors from around the world and got some M&M's (all for free). Well, I guess they don't do that anymore cause what we went to was a 4 story gift shop with M&M stuff, and another two story gift shop with Coke stuff. What a let down. That didn't stop us from taking a picture with an M&M, though.

We walked the strip for a bit and looked around at different things. All the while we had to avoid looking down at the porn that had been littered on the side walks, and avoid making eye contact with the guys on the sides trying to hand out more. We stopped to watch the water show at the Bellagio.

We walked through a few casinos, ate some yummy food, and I think I saw two hookers trying to proposition some guy. When Ryan walked by though, (without me of course) they didn't say anything to him. I think his ego was a little hurt.

The next day we did some more relaxing and then made the drive back to Provo. All in all we had a lot of fun and got to spend a weekend together. It was a nice break from school and work, and nice to be some where warm too. I'm getting excited for summer.

Stroller

Ryan and I have been looking at baby gear for the last few months so we can pick the best stuff for the best price. We had been looking at a bunch of different stores and websites at strollers and travel systems and wanted to get a stroller that wasn't too heavy, would fit in my trunk, was easy to fold, had all the cup holders and extras we wanted, and would fit together with a car seat. We found one on the Graco website that fit all our criteria and found a pattern that we really liked.

The only store that carries the stroller is Sears. They are also the only store that carries the car seat. We went to the Sears near us to see if they had them in stock but they only had the car seat. Then we decided to check online and see if we could order it but they were sold out at the warehouse and they only had strollers and car seats available at certain stores that hadn't sold out yet. We checked every Sears we could think of that we could either drive to, or knew someone that lived near by it, and the only store that still had the stroller was the Sears in St. George. Since we were planning a trip down to St. George, we decided to go ahead and buy the stroller and then we picked it up while we were in St. George. It was the last one they had. We also went and bought that car seat from the Sears here, it was the last one they had.

So we're feeling pretty luck cause we're pretty sure that we got the very last stroller and car seat of this specific model in the world. For some reason we keep picking baby items that are completely sold out. First the mattress and now this. We put it together as soon as we got back from St. George. Here is Ryan assembling it.

And here I am practicing pushing it around.

And here is a close up. I can't wait to take our baby home from the hospital in it.