Why I love my job....

Australia Part 1

This goes along with my last post of why I love my job. This past summer I was able to go to Australia with Makaila and my parents for two whole weeks. I was a little nervous leaving behind my husband and my 4 other kiddos. I honestly didn't know if I would make it the whole two weeks but I did. The trip was amazing and we loved it. I was a little worried about the 15 hour flight from LA but when you travel business elite you don't feel it. The last time I flew to New Zealand about 3 years ago I remember being tired for days and I think it took me two weeks to adjust to the time change. We landed in Sydney and I did not feel like I had been flying all night it was amazing. Once we arrived in Sydney and got through customs we took the train out of the airport and met up with Brother David Potts. We took the train down to Wollongong where we stayed a couple of nights with him. Brother Potts is an older man who has never married. He takes care of all the missionaries who serve in his area. Potts as we call him was very close with my brother when he served in Australia and comes out a couple of times a year and even came out to his wedding. Potts took us to the largest Buddhist Temple in the southern hemispere, down to at Kiama, and then into the coolest little town called Berry where we at a little bakery that made these amazing meat pies. I never liked meat pies growing up here but the meat pies in Australia are completely different then a meat pie here. We went to Seven Mile Beach and then drove through the mountains and countryside and saw waterfalls and beautiful mountains. We also saw where the missionary fell a few years ago. He is so lucky to be alive!!! I don't have pictures from this part of my trip because I didn't have an sd card in my camera and didn't know.

Just a little longer

I will be back to blogging soon and have many things to blog about like my trip to Australia, Summer, Sports, and life. I will have to be much better at blogging seeing this will most likely be the way my husband keeps up on our lives since he will be leaving to Asia for 6 months to a year. Yes I am freaking out!!!! We have never really been apart our whole married life and I am not looking forward to being somewhat of a single mom to 5 kids. Thanks goodness for my job so he will be able to come home hopefully once a month and we will be able to go visit him once in a while. The positive side is I will be able to blog more since I won't have him there as a permanent fixture to our computer. So after next Monday I expect to be taking a lot more pictures, videos, and doing alot more blogging.

ksl.com - Thousands converging on Salt Lake City for Days of '47 parade

Every July 24th my kids go with my mom-in-law and sister-in-laws and camp overnight for the Days Of 47 Parade. This year Tila was interviewed on KSL, you can click the link below to see her, she was really excited!

ksl.com - Thousands converging on Salt Lake City for Days of '47 parade

Two more Alaska pics

Two more picture from our Alaska trip, the moose I mentioned on our walk through Kincaid Park and a picture taken at the beach.

Summer Fun

As much as I would love to post the picture along with this post I will spare my son embarrassment for now.

A couple of weeks ago our friends the Proctors invited us to go boating. I was so excited I have missed boating. Growing up my dad always had a boat and we live for the summers going to the lake skiing, wakeboarding, and tubing. Two years ago my Dad's boat killed over and so we have not been able to go.

We packed up the kids and headed down to Provo marina to meet up with the Proctors. We all loaded up the boat for a day of fun. The kids were so excited and couldn't wait to get out in the water. The Porctors had a wake rider, it is like a surfboard but you ride the wake created by the boat. McKay decided he wanted to try it so Brett was out with all of the kids letting the ride with him. McKay wanted to do it on his own. The boat started going and as McKay tried to get up he was pulled forward. We all started yelling at him to let go of the rope. He had a sure look of panic in his face and we thought maybe because he was alone in the lake. We all kept yelling for him to let go of the rope and we were coming for him. He finally let go of the rope and as we came closer we found out the sheer look of panic wasn't because he was alone in the lake, it was because the water pulled his pants right off of him and he was buck naked all but his life jacket! He did manage to grab a hold of his shorts but couldn't get them back on in the water. We do have the butt shot of him standing on the ski deck putting his shorts back on. We will definitely hold onto it for blackmail in the future though. We all had a good time up until the rope got caught on the propeller and we had to be towed back into the dock. Thanks Brett and Selena for the fun day!

Alaska

My brother Ryan and his wife Megan have been living in Alaska for the past year. Ryan has always loved aviation and knew from the time he was little that he was going to be a pilot and work in aviation. Ryan does have his pilots license but because it's so difficult, expensive, and takes a long time to get your hours if you are not in the military to become a commercial pilot he decided to go into air traffic control. He was accepted into the FAA's program up in Anchorage and will graduate in December.

I have heard so many amazing things about Alaska and what a beautiful place it is that we decided to visit while I had some time off this summer. One of the benefits working for the airline is the free flights so we decided since the flights looked good this past weekend to go up for a visit. Summer is usually a very difficult time to travel standby to Alaska because it the tourist season with all the cruise ships and the salmon fishing.

We left Thursday and we landed in Anchorage at about 12:30am. When we left Salt Lake City at 9:30 it was completely dark and as we flew it was if we were chasing the sun. We landed in Anchorage and it was still light outside! By the time we got our luggage and got to my brothers house around 1:30 it was dark but by 3am it was light again and even the dark wasn't pitch dark.

Alaska is just so BIG! There is so much wildlife and vegetation. Everything was so green, the ground was covered in green, it reminded me a lot of Hawaii without the warm climate and the palm trees. While there we hiked to Byron Glacier, visited the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center, Bird Creek, Kincaid Park, Blueberry Loop, and Flattop. While walking down to the beach at Kincaid Park there was a huge moose right off the trail grazing. Seeing these animals in the open is just amazing! We didn't take to many pics but here are a few.