I have had a wonderful month! It started the last weekend of July, technically, but we'll just move past that. It started with going to visit family in Arizona. The reasons were this awesome guy just returned from his mission to Jamaica and this wonderful lady got a year older! (And yes, I totally stole pics from their facebook pages cuz I didn't have any pics from the trip)
We had lots of fun talking, swimming, pelting people with nerf darts, eating mini bundt cakes, and all that jazz. Also, it was nice to surprise them with how much weight my mom and I had lost since we last saw them. Seeing as I had been dieting up til we left, I wasn't used to eating the way I was and spent most of the trip kinda nauseated, but it was well worth it.
The next weekend (Thursday - Sunday), I drove up to see my bro and his family in St. George. It was great to see them - it is definitely worth the drive. It was both relaxing and tiring. On Friday, Chiemi and I got pedicures (in which I chose a color that matches my car, incidentally - makes me happy) and then later that night the whole family got in front of the TV and exercised! It was a hard workout but very fun and cute to watch the kids come do it with us.
The next day Kyla, Dustin and I went swimming for a couple hours. That night I was introduced the the exciting and very hard world that is rock climbing. It was a fun experience and I'm glad I had the chance. The girls were amazing, zipping up and down the walls. Needless to say, though, I went home the next day sore from head to toe. Ouch. I was sad to leave, but life moves on, unfortunately.
Next up is a cute picture for you of Gwen when I babysat at some point in the next 2 weeks and cutie Cami just for kicks:
The last weekend (again Thurs- Sun), my parents and Brett and his family got to go spend down in a cottage on the beach at Crystal Cove!!! It was SO beautiful and relaxing and fun. OR as my mom called it - freakin' awesome!! I drove up with Kellie and the girls and this is the view I had on the way:
We didn't really do anything in particular, just relaxed and ate yummy food and enjoyed good company. Going to sleep with the waves whooshing away was a nice experience.
Unfortunately, the week after arriving home from that joy, school started. Bleh. On the plus side, though, this is my last semester! I am overjoyed about that. I'm on a countdown now - only 14 weeks left of school now!
The weekend after that, Dustin and Chiemi came out to visit for mom's birthday. They had an unfortunate time getting here but it was great to see them again so soon.
And this past weekend ends my wonderful summer adventures with my mom and I doing....8 hour NINJA TRAINING!!! She found out about it through living social - they apparently put on "adventures" and this is the one they are doing at the moment.
We started out or training learning some self defense for 2 hours, which was fun and very interesting/informative. I know how to overpower someone now and I can stop someone if they take a punch at me. My collarbone area is a bit tender from the training but not too bad thankfully. And my elbow is a bit sore from doing elbow strikes.
Next we had a sushi lunch, which was pretty good. After lunch we moved on to 2 hours of parkour. Man, is that stuff cool! But man am I sore ALL OVER!! My thighs are killing me - it hurts to sit, to stand, to move. I did manage to not do too terribly bad at it for my first time. This guy is awesome at parkour (Dustin showed him to me) - I only managed to look vaguely like that (I suggest watching the 2010 one too). :P
We had to jump over these tables that were about waist height. I sucked at the ones where I had to jump straight at them but I was pretty good at the one's where I jumped sideways. Here's proof I sucked at jumping forward (my other shin has a light bruise too):
And the last 2 hours or so, we learned escapology. We learned that tying someone up in rope is very difficult and it's very easy to get out of - takes like 10 times longer to tie them up than for them to get out. We also learned how to pick handcuff locks with bobby pins - both attached in front to us and behind our backs. This is pretty difficult for me to do, but it is manageable.
So that was my exciting month. Now it's time to get down to work. Ah well. :\
