Friday, May 29, 2009

A Death in the Family



I fully regret to inform you all that Sapo has died. And died he has before I was ever able to introduce him to my blogging friends. He was a good frog. Except for when he would jump away from me when I took him out of his cage. But he was a very good jumper even when he was being naughty. He was only about an inch and a half long and he could jump several feet and super high. I found him on KSL.com for sale for $20. I fell in love with him instantly and had to have him. We drove all the way to South Salt Lake for him. When the girl handed him over he was in this teeny tiny cricket cage thing that was like a little box and it was filled with 2 inches of water with a fake water plant floating in it and Sapo was like 5 inches up the plastic wall away from the water. He's a tree frog! Not a pond frog. He hated that place. Good thing we rescued him. We bought a 10 gallon tank and filled it with bark and a tree and leaves for hiding and a 2-pool rock. He loved his new home. I thought that maybe I was only excited because he was new and that probably over time I'd lose interest in him but this was not the case. I just loved him more and more every day. I fed him live crickets every 3 days by hand cause if I just stuck it in the cage sometimes he wouldn't catch them. I tried to mist him every day and fill his pond with water. Here is the most recent picture of him alive as he's sitting on my thumb. This is when we very first got him 5 or 6 months ago. He was so green! Isn't he so cute!


So I think I killed him. What's weird is for the past 2 or 3 weeks I have had like 4 different dreams that he's died. And I was always super traumatized when I woke up from them cause he would like be bloated, or brown, or shriveled, or his skin would be falling off or something horrid. And it would make me so sad. So I went to work at night, came home in the morning and turned on Sapo's heat lamp and didn't even look in the cage. Then I remembered that it'd been awhile since I filled his pond with water, so I got the water and while I was getting it said to Justin, "Sapo's probably dead! He has no water!", then I walked over with the water and there was Sapo, all shriveled and brown in a stance like he was about to spring forward in a jump! I took one little look and freaked out! I lunged away from his cage and Justin was so surprised and I started sobbing and said, "He really is dead!" then Justin went to inspect and confirm the death. i don't know what was wrong with me, but I sobbed and sobbed. Justin's only seen me cry a few times in the 2 years we've been married, I just don't cry but this made me so sad. I think just because I had had those dreams of him dying and now he looked awful and it just totally shocked me. Plus, I had just worked for like 15 hours straight, all night long and so I'm sure I was a little emotionally unstable. Justin kept saying we could buy another one, but I said I didn't want another one. Then I went to sleep for the day and dreamt that I woke up and found a big gecko dragon thing in Sapo's cage and I was so mad at Justin for buying it and even more made when he said it would only be $200 a month. So he took it out of the cage by it's tail and was showing it to me trying to talk me into keeping it and it growled and bit my neck! Then I woke up.


So we had a funeral for him (right before our softball game hence our lovely outfits) in the backyard of our condo complex. Justin had wrapped him in paper towels and put him in this Lipton Onion Soup box so I didn't have to see him.


I kissed him good-bye and Justin laid him in his grave.








God bless Sapo.








Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Memorial Weekend

Just needed to vent. Sorry, no pictures. We had a spur of the moment fabulous idea to go to Escalante in Southern Utah to hike the slot canyons. My parents and sister were there on Thursday, called and said it had been rainy but that it was supposed to clear up and they had the campsight till Monday! So we took off Friday afternoon, spur of the moment. Bad idea. Do you know how many other people decided to take off for the Memorial weekend on Friday? All of Utah! So what should have taken about 5 hours took 7! We got to the campsight at 11:00 pm and fell asleep instantly in the tent trailer. Rained all night, was raining in the morning and forecast said it was supposed to rain all weekend. So we drove home around 12, which took about 6 hours. Along the way we stopped at Pei Wei in Bountiful. Almost as good as PF Chang's and half expensive and way faster! I crave that place. Then stopped off in Layton to see Angel's and Demons. It sucked. I hated it. Although I had read the book and they totally ruined it and the acting sucked. Don't see it, especially if you've read the book. If you haven't read the book then you'll probably think it's "ok". We went to church with my sister and family on Sunday and then made them a taco dinner. The taco dinner we took down to Escalante but did not use because we just came home. We also had the S'mores and Banana boat stuff so we had a fire at her house and ate those up! It was a fun relaxing Sunday! Then Monday me and Justin just hung out, saw Star Trek (which was surprisingly very good!), went to the batting cages, ate gelata's at Zeppes (the coconut creme italian ice with chocolate custard is amazing, we are obsessed with that place), went to my Grandma and Grandpa Jones' gravesight, then went to my parents to relax and watch the Laker game. So I guess the weekend was fun once we got back from S. Utah. Just relaxin and such. Hope everyone else had a fun Memorial Weekend!

Monday, May 18, 2009

FLORIDA FUN!

A week ago we spent a week in Orlando Florida! It was so much fun! We went and saw Blue Man Group while we were there and I was very impressed! It was better than I thought it would be. I highly recommend it!


I have to say we are a little obsessed with vacationing. As soon as one trip is done, we're planning for the next one. We stayed at this Calypso Cay resort.
I wish I could say we went to the Kennedy Space Center, but we didn't. We really wanted to but there is SO much to do in Orlando that we didn't have time to do half of what we wanted. This was at the airport :)
In our seats at the Blue Man Group.


We were so dang excited when we saw a local fruit stand. We wanted fresh grown Florida oranges! I just knew they were going to taste amazing. Here Justin is with a fresh picked orange. Delicious? NO! So not! We get better oranges here in Utah at the supermarket! I have no idea why they weren't good. Maybe we didn't go to the right stand. I don't know.



But the mangos were delicious!!! I'm smelling one in this picture.


We drove over by Tampa the first day and went to Clearwater Beach. It was beautiful!








Justin frolicking in the ocean.




We went to Universal Studios, which had a lot of different things than Universal California. I love Universal!



Somehow Justin always gets picked to be an audience volunteer. He also was picked when we went to the Universal in California. The hostess girl had picked everyone but a last person and said she needed a really hunky guy and picked Justin. What a lucky girl I am to have such a hunky husband!



They had him in front of a green screen and he had to flail his arms around then later they added him to a movie where he was sliding down lava!




We had free tickets to DisneyWorld so we went to experience Epcot. This was in Mexico.



At Universal they had a Dr. Suess Land! I totally felt like I was in one of his books.








Epcot had tons and tons of bush art. This was some kind of goblin or something.

More bush art.We've been to see Cirque Du Soleil in Vegas, Mystere, but in Orlando they have La Nouba. We'd never heard of that one. So we went and saw it and it was so good! Although I do have to say, I enjoyed Blue Man more!
























Saturday, May 2, 2009

San Fran and Triathalon

So every year for the past 10 years or so we've had a tradition with the girls of my family. Every spring we have a 'girl's weekend'. We usually go to Park City, Shakespeare Festival, Salt Lake, or Southern Utah, but this year we flew to San Franscisco! It was so much fun! It was me, my two older sisters, my mom and sister-in-law Nicole who's married to my younger brother. Cortney, who's married to my older brother couldn't come because she had a little baby at home and it just wasn't happening. We sure missed her!!! I also missed my husband, but it was definitely fun to get away with the girls and play!
We went to a museum of old arcade games in Fisherman's Wharf. There was crazy stuff in there!!! They must have been obsessed with executions for entertainment back in the day because there were like 6 different booths that you could pay a quarter and watch the little guys in the box execute someone either with guns, the guillitine, or hanging. Pretty creepy. Everything in there was in working order and you could put your quarter in to watch/play.
?????What the? I thought the olden days were innocent!

Can you believe it? These things had little places you could look down into to see. We of course did not waste our quarter on this olden day trash, but it was pretty funny to me that they had arcade types of sleezy entertainment. I guess it's not much different than today. There's sleeze all over the TV and movies we watch......I just didn't realize that the sleeze came in these types of forms years ago.






This was the sign for the arm wrestling guy below. He was pretty strong.



Seriously? Opium den? Inside were these Chinese people looking stoned and homeless laying in ragged blankets. We didn't put our quarter in to see what they'd do. We should have though cause now I'm curious.....

Oh naughty Marietta~!


Holy cow what a contraption this was! It had a sign describing it and it was called 'Laughing Betty' or something like that. She was in this glass box and like 3 times the size of a real human and you put your quarter in and she'd shake forward and back and laugh for like 5 minutes. It was really creepy. The sign said most kids were scared of her. I was scared of her.

Me and Nicole near the Seals.

We had to see the seals. The guy all by himself was hilarious. All the others are sleeping away on their dock, and this one was so pompous! He sat like this with his chest and nose in the air like he was the king! Whenever a seal got into the water and came too close he'd start growling and slapping around. One seal actually got up onto his dock and he whacked him off!! Rude.


Of course we had to hit China Town! This is a slight exageration, but I was trying to represent how insanely tired we were. This whole trip was go-go-go and once you left your hotel in the morning and rode the trolley cars you were out for the entire day and just walked and walked. Definitely fun, but by China Town on our last day we were all so tired and our feet throbbed!

We did a bike ride to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Tera, Kami, Nicole and mom.

Me and Nicole. We didn't wear helmets. Good thing we didn't crash.

View of San Fran from Alcatraz. A must-see if you go to San Fran!




Since it was impossible to get tickets here, we just saw Wicked there!!!! It was so good! I loved it!!

Kami, Nicole, Tera and me.
Here's what Justin was doing while I was gone. A Triathalon with Steve, Tera's husband. You go honey! He was 13th in his age bracket.



There was a fun art gallery outside that we walked through.

I wanted this fish sculpture!!!
In Utah we have Buffalo's....and horses. San Fran has hearts....."Everyone's gay in San Fran! We're all happy!" at least that's what the trolley guy operator said...

What a fun trip! My sister Tera who planned it is so awesome and worked so hard so that we all had fun! And we did!!!!!