Two Weeks of Summer!

So after Darcee's Wedding... I decided to really jump two feet into my summer vacation.  I only had two weeks off with no work and no school, so it really had to be CRAZY to make up for lost time.

So.. I went zip-lining. It was pretty extreme:

This is actually Costa Rica!

(just kidding) It was fun, but definitely not extreme or super scary or very adrenaline-rush-producing.  But it was something I had never done before so I'm glad I got the chance to go!

This is the only pic you're getting, because while those cute black pants I'm wearing are comfy-- either the harness or the pants do not produce the most flattering angle of my backside!

I got to go with these lovely ladies, and I was so glad to have one final adventure with sweet Amanda before she rushes off to change some lives on her mission to L.A.

The next day we celebrated my brother Ty's birthday.  It was a wonderful celebration -- which will be detailed in my next post!

Then I got to go back to beautiful and amazing Wyoming! If you read Dawn's blog -- I had a very similar vacation to her -- if only we had been able to go at the same time! 

Sooo.. here's what we did:

My sweet parents took me on all kinds of adventures including but not limited to camping, hiking, bike-riding, and off-roading!

Cake-Pops:

My mom has been wanting to try cake-pops so we decided to get to it right away.  Turns out Powell is NOT the most cake-pop friendly town and they seriously lacked in supplies.  Also.. I'm not has good as I thought I was at cake-pops... apparently my first time (for Darcee's shower) was beginner's luck! But sweet Aubrey wanted to help, so we put her in charge of sprinkling the cake-pops... She loved this job! I'm sure you can tell why:

Sprinkled Aubrey!

Camping:

Adventure Number Two was going to the ward camp out. Todd's people were doing their last hurrah that night so it was the just the parents and I.  We had some amazing Dutch Oven Chicken, and even though it was cold and we lost my Starbursts -- it was a blast! I taught my parents the game of Nerts -- my dad did not take to it but I may have my mom converted!

Aren't they cute?

Aren't we cute?

We woke up the next morning ate some delicious breakfast with the ward then headed out to do some hiking! 

Hiking:

My parents took my sisters to Porcupine Falls and the Medicine Wheel, as I have never been to either of those I asked if they could take me too! We decided to mix things up and go to the TOP of Porcupine Falls.  My mom and I took off down the trail while my dad did some fishing and we went the completely wrong way for a while.  Our trail took us to the middle of this open meadow.  My first thought was Twilight (Bella and Edward in love in their sweet meadow anyone?).  My second and more pressing thought was wow, we are very exposed, a bear could be watching us waiting to kill us right now, or maybe a moose, or MAYBE a serial killer who kills people on trails!!! (It was irrational, but it really FREAKED me out!) You can imagine how my mood plummeted and my sweet mom had to put up with grouchy Kelli until my sweet dad came and rescued us! 

However despite the drama, the end result was worth it:

Dawn took the photo on the left from her hike. Mine is the photo on the right for my hike!

We also went and found the Medicine Wheel. It's pretty neat, even if I am a little skeptical.  I was excited to visit another piece of Wyoming history!

My sweet parents on the way up!

Far Away

Close Up

Civic Tuesday:

The next big event was Civic Tuesday! We decided to get our civic duty done, so we spent many hours on Tuesday doing so.

Civic Event #1:  VOTING!

We were able to all go and vote together, which was so fun! It's CRAZY to me that we are all old enough to vote, so it was fun to do something out of the ordinary together! 

Displaying our "I Voted" stickers!

Civic Event #2: BLOOD GIVING

 Then we did our Church and Civic duty by giving blood! It was our Church duty because one of the Boy Scouts in our ward was putting on the blood drive as his Eagle Project! (Way to Go Cody!!) It was our civic duty, because.. well you know... anyway, you guys know how I LOVE LOVE LOVE to document my blood giving experiences so here's your photo:

They decided to take my blood from the arm OPPOSITE the machine.
so my veins were sucked dry -- RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!!

This time around they asked me to do a "Q" so I gave 1 unit of red blood cells and 2 units of plasma. And the machine would periodically give me back my red blood cells, so I'd watch it flow in and out of my body... Cool huh?

So happy to do our duty

Back to Provo:

Sadly enough after Civic Tuesday, the jig was up.. it was time to start my senior year.  I say that with many heavy sighs and a heart of misery.  Two weeks is NOT enough time to hang out in Wyoming.  Also senior year marks the beginning of the end of care-free college days -- and the start of the stress of job/internship hunting days...

Don't let my smile fool you -- I'm dying inside...

In Provo:

I don't have enough pictures to truly document my parents 4 days in Provo, although I wish I could! The best parts of it was taking my parent to the Provo City Library (my happy place) and taking them to all the good eats in Provo!

I called all the good eats: "The Food Tour of Provo" and here's where we went:

So Happy about FRO YO!

• Kneaders
• Awful Waffle
• Fro-Yo (Yogurtland)
• The Chocolate
• In and Out
• Zupas
• Cafe Rio
• Nicolitalia 
• Cafe Kelli (my house!)

Overall it was super fun, and my sweet parents were great two-weeks of summer companions for little old me!