Family Happenings...

After I got home from my trip, Amber came out for a visit a few days later. She was here for about a week and we had such a great time together! It made me really miss living close by each other. Something I love whenever we're together is how easy it is and just fun, plus it was so great to have the built in company. Since I couldn't take any time off, she was a great sport and came to work with me one day. We had some great weather and enjoyed a day on the beach and running the Santa Monica stairs and a tour of the Fox Studios lot. My friend Christi was singing in the Orange County Mormon Chorale, so we went to their concert and it was amazing, they are all so talented! We also went out to Simi Valley to the Reagan Library. I love that place so much! It was my 2nd time, but I totally feel like I could go back. The views are so pretty and I love all of the neat insights into Pres. Reagan, love him! A couple of my favorite things: a very cute video about how he met and fell in love with Nancy: yes I admit, made me cry and the tour of Air Force One: so cool to see how much technology has advanced in 20 years or so. Last but not least, in commemoration of our trip, we hit up a Thai Massage place a couple of blocks from my house. So funny, I'm not normally a huge massage person, but I am sold on this. It feels so good, they way they stretch you out, I don't think I would ever do any other kind of massage. Just makes me regret that we didn't get 2 massages a day when we were in Thailand...and to think $6.00/hr!!

After Am flew back to S.L., I flew out a couple of days later for her graduation from the University of Utah. She graduated with her Masters in Education. We were all so proud of her, she was selected to be the student speaker and as a perk was able to reserve the first 2 rows for family and guests, very cool to be up so close. She did such an amazing job! She was funny and real and her talk was so inspiring. I don't know why but I still get chills whenever I hear the graduation march, it made me wish I could do it again :)

I felt so lucky that I was able to not only be home for the graduation, but also to celebrate Mother's Day and a tiny bit of my Dad's birthday. Oh and not to mention a huge highlight of my trip...getting to meet baby Emmy for the first time. She is so cute!! I'm going through major niece and nephew withdrawal since being home! and of course family withdrawal in general: Mom, Dad and brothers and sisters too!

Spring Fling!!

Last week I was on Spring Break from work, so taking advantage of the weekends on the front and tail ends, my friends Misty and Alison and I headed to Europe. We had such a great time together. We started out in Prague, then took a train into Vienna, next stop Salzburg and lastly onto Budapest. Oh, and one of the days we were in Vienna, we took a train into Bratislava, Slovakia (turns out they’re the 2 closest capitals in the world: 40 min. away), so we couldn’t be that close and miss it. So, it was a jam-packed trip but super fun.

Every place was so unique and beautiful in their own way, so it’s hard to pinpoint which one was my favorite. Prague was everything I expected and more. The history and the architecture were so cool. I definitely want to go back. Vienna was a really pleasant surprise. I don’t know why but I had been told by several people “yeah, it’s nice, but it’s just another big city”. But, it was so, so pretty and clean, and the people were really nice. I think Salzburg is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my life: just like I expected from seeing “The Sound of Music” and of course we had to do the tour. It was so great! We got to see all the sites: the gazebo, the cathedral where they were married, the back of the house on the lake where they filmed, etc… I really liked Budapest too; I loved the great views of the Danube and the mix of old and new.

We had some great memories from the trip: getting lost over and over and over again on all of the great public transportation (I think we finally started to get a hang of it in each city on the day we were ready to leave), enjoying the Hungarian baths: lots of beautiful and not so beautiful sights to see ☺, our extremely flamboyant tour guide on the Sound of Music tour, the ATM encased in a giant pig in Vienna (we searched forever for the ATM and am amazed they didn’t just say “oh yeah, it’s over there in that giant pig), our near police run in for “forgetting” to validate our tickets on the bus in Budapest and many, many more.