Call me Nanny McPhee

The past four days I've gotten to play mom for some cuties! I used to babysit these boys for years every weekend, but haven't for quite some time. Their parents and older siblings (one of which is my good friend Eliza!) went out of town, and I got to house sit! Bring on the crazy adventures and non stop play.

DAY ONE

Some quality Treehouse swimming time. Well, technically the pictures above were our 'wait while they clean poop out of the pool' time. It ended up being 45 mins sitting there, hence all the pictures

Snoshacks, with their favorite flavor combo: root bear and blue bubble gum...so random.

He really likes his duck face. We went hiking (yes in pajamas, my bad.)

DAY TWO

I tried my hand at Mickey Mouse pancakes again, it's a crowd pleaser.

We went to Discovery Kid's Museum at the Gateway! Best idea ever. They were entertained for a whole 4 hours, and after a while I got to just sit back and let them wear themselves out. They could barely stay still, it's a miracle I got some decent un-blurry pictures.

Creepin on them playing house through the window. This museum really is the cutest thing.

Future news anchors

Or cowboys...it's sixes.

He REALLY loved the dress ups. It was adorable!

I'm all for free frozen yogurt.

Then we headed home for dinner, bath time, and watching Tangled in our PJ's.

 DAY THREE

Started with making cinnamon muffins for breakfast. Again with the duckface...told you he likes it.

We went to the Draper Days parade, got a lot of candy. Bad picture...but this caption has to go with something.

Had a Pinterest lunch--octopus hot dogs! They think I'm the coolest ever because of it.

After lunch we went swimming again. I'll spare you more swimming pictures.

Next we went to Draper Days at the park, I took a bajillion pictures. I compiled some of them into a handy dandy collage. They got to pet some reptiles and ride a bunch of blow up slides, basically. They were very much pleased, and when they're happy, I'm happy.

There's still one day left of nannying, but this post definitely has more than enough information about some random kids' whereabouts.

In other news, I got a new phone. The Droid Incredible 3! I've gone through the Incredible 1 and 2, lets see how the third treats me. More like how I'll treat it, here's to hoping I can actually keep it in tact for the full two year contract!

Let's admire it, I'm in love.

Also, here's an awesome video. Some of my favorite things: people after they get their wisdom teeth out, and Jef Holm.

I can't get over this, love it! She speaks my mind. The lucky duck got to actually meet Jef too after this stint! I'd get my wisdom teeth pulled any day to meet that fine man. Oh, and I'm a little excited for the finale tomorrow. It has been much anticipated! He better win.

We'll end on that note.

Bear Lake

Boy oh boy! Bear lake was a blast and a half. I quite enjoyed it. Can't go wrong with best friends and boating! But you can, however, go wrong with best friends and fire poles. This happened at Challie's cabin, you can't totally see what happens, but you can hear me in the background. Watch Mitch's leg swing out...he knocks off a solid wood frame from the wall which then launched at me. My arm has a wicked bruise now, pretty legit battle wound! 

It was great, glad we got it on video! His face at the end cracks me up. A frame can do a lot more damage than you'd think!

Besides our fire pole adventures, we had some other great times! Big thanks to Challie for letting me kidnap her phone for the weekend! Because of her, this post has pictures/videos, and I haven't freaked out too much from phone withdrawls.

We went kayaking! My first time, I love it.

Fireworks on the beach, illegal aerial ones even.

Shoot, sorry it's sideways. But we made margaritas, which may or may not have been virgin. Mmm

The group, minus Sam. Someone had to take the picture...he got the short end of the stick.

Also not captured with pictures was our boating fun! There was a lot of wakeboarding, surfing, choppy water, and goosebumps. It was a tad chilly. On saturday night, we went to Mont Pilier to get ice and redbox movies, then took a different route home and headed 30 minutes in the wrong direction! Getting lost in complete darkness with no service is always a great time.

SO happy to see these amazing friends again! And my family, and the Iceberg crew, but mostly my bed. A month away from home will make you appreciate your normal day to day routine, that's for sure!

Florida recap

I've been putting this off for long enough, it's just so boring to write a picture-less post! But a lot has happened, so here we go.

There are not enough positive adjectives to describe how great Florida was! I just loved it. Could have done with a little less humidity and heat, but hey, it made for some awesome crazy hair days. The highlight of my trip: meeting so many people! It was great, everyone was super friendly and easy to talk to. 90% of my conversations started with "Where are you from?...Ohh, are you Mormon?" I was happy to uphold Utah's reputation. Some other high points of the trip:

• My advisor was top notch. Mama J, I love you! She was so much fun, I was happy to be traveling with this cool of a teacher and person! Also, the rest of my group was perfect. Some great friends were made and are missed already!
• We got to go to Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios, Typhoon Lagoon, and Downtown Disney. We quickly figured out how to cheat the system and get 4 full free days, while most groups only got 2 or 3. They wanted us to attend workshops, meetings, lectures, and all that jazz, but who wants to sit in a hotel when you could be chillin with Mickey? Not this girl. Again, best group and advisers ever!
• My phone was the only electronic not to make it home with me. My laptop almost fell victim to my abuse, but I saved it! When we boarded our second plane home, I realized I left it out in the waiting area. I ran off the plane and rescued it, safe and sound. That, by the way, is not the proper way to go about things. My impulsive running off the plane earned me a lecture and stern warning because it looked like I had a bomb...whoops
• I am finally DONE with my project. Sure it was fun, but I've been stressing about it for 9 months now. It did its job and got me the best trip ever, and I was more than happy to ditch it in a dumpster!
• In the end, I got 98.3 points out of a hundred. Boom, that's how it's done! Received my third and final gold medal, and boy it feels good. There's my bragging for the month.

I could go on and on, really. It was worth all the traveling and living out of a suitcase. Oddly enough, it feels strange to be back at home! Probably the fact that my family is out of town has something to do with it. My schedule of waking up, putting on sunscreen, heading out for a wild day, going 'home' to a hotel, hot tubbing, and getting 4 hours of sleep is over! Today I spoiled myself with a great deal of shopping, and then had a night at home. But don't get too sad, my adventures aren't quite over. Tomorrow I head out yet again. I'm lucky enough to have friends who like me enough to take me on a weekend trip to Bear Lake! I'm excited. Now I gotta go pack another suitcase, just a slightly smaller one.

One picture, taken from Mama J's phone. You didn't really think I'd put you through a whole post without pictures did you? Well you made it this far, or you skipped down. Either way, here's my newest medal. Loving the Florida scenery!

Orlando was good to me

I killed it.

I'm a murderer of phones. Seriously, I've broken every one I've ever had. And today, my phone went out in style! I was on a super cool rollercoaster in Universal Studios, and it flew out...who knows where, but it's a goner. Bummer right? Last week, my little Kennedy asked me when I'm going to break this phone. She jinxed me! Looks like today was the day. So I only have half of my day captured in pictures, and this will be the last post for a while, or just the last one with pictures.

 Well let's back up a little, yesterday I flew out to Orlando, just a mere 12 hours of traveling. It went well though! I was so wiped out from my all nighter, I could actually sleep on the planes. We arrived, went grocery shopping, and just settled in. Went night swimming and hung out, it was nice.

Today we went to Universal Studios. Photo dump time!

Me and the coolest teacher ever, Mama J

Harry Potter land!!

      

My roller coaster/park buddies

Butterbeer is AMAZING. 

And that's it for the pictures, basically just got all the Harry Potter stuff. The rest of the day was just rides and some meetings. 12 solid hours at the park, we went on everything! And then started re-riding our favorites. It was great. Best part? NO HEADACHE (: Worst part? Well, I'm sure you can guess. Looking forward to tomorrow, Disneyworld magic kingdom! Still adjusting to the insane humidity and heat, but there are no more electronics left to break, it'll be a good day. (:

Coast to coast

Well I was finally back in Utah, for a whole 15 hours! Now I'm taking off for my fifth flight in a week, to Orlando, Florida. Coast to coast! I shouldn’t be complaining that I get to go to Disney World and Universal Studios and do all the other fun things coming up, so I won’t…but just saying, sometimes all you want is to be home.

I'll explain my random Florida visit. If you already know why I'm going, or don't really care, go ahead and skip the next paragraph!

Well I'm going for a national competition, which I get to compete at because I won first place in state. The competition is called STAR events, which stands for Student Taking Action and Recognition. There are thirty or so areas to compete in, I chose the Focus on Children category. This required that I planned and carried out a service project that benefited kids and the community. I worked on this project for five months, from beginning plans to the end result. I was one stressed girl. But it paid off! I had a big Valentines day party for about 80 kids, where they came to participate in developmentally appropriate games, crafts, and cookie decorating. The cookie decorating was the service project. They each decorated two cookies, one of which they kept and the other was donated to the homeless shelter. That's it in a very small nutshell, compared to how much more I could bore you with! I have a display board that presents my planning process and a lot of other junk, then I talk for 10 minutes straight to the judges.

 THERE. Done, no more talking about it.

The past 3 days in my California home have been great! I got to baby sit these cute kiddos during the day

Monday we saw Brave,

had an In-N-Out picnic at the park,

and ended with an afternoon swim.

Perfect kick-off to Tuesday, chocolate chip Mickey Mouse pancakes. Took me about 5 tries to get the perfect head shape...then his ear ripped off.

Patriotism at its finest.

 

We had a firework-less fourth of July. We spent the day at Momo and Mofa’s lake house (their names are Danish for grandma and grandpa). By the end of the day, the little ones were pretty wiped out, so we headed home.

On the way back, I was tickling Kennedy and captured here on my lap. In between shrieks and giggles, she looked me in the eye and said “Tessa, I like you,” then went back to flailing her arms and legs. Her simple statement made my night, it was the cutest thing ever. Kids are great.

A window seat + flying on top of clouds= one of my many joys. I could stare out at these beauties for hours.

Random, but I got new sunglasses that I'm obsessed with. Also, found this ridiculously easy and cute hair style off Pinterest that my hair can actually do!! Yayy. The duck face is a joke, I promise. Unlike my 14 year old sister who does this seriously. Love you Jayci (:

Here is a shout out to my father, G. Scott Bishop. He constantly wants me to put pictures of him on my blog, or stories of him and title it “Just a Dash of Dad.” He also is upset that I haven’t posted in a while, so he was the motivating factor for this blog post. I’m giving in.

Just a Dash of Dad

• Today on the way to the airport, we literally got there and his dash board said we had 0 miles of gas left. I still don’t know if he made it to a gas station or not.
• He ALWAYS says thank you. 9 times out of 10 it doesn’t even make sense. “This soup is really hot.” “Thank you!” or, “I love Disneyland.” “Thank you!” or even, “Stop telling me to mention you on my blog, it’s really annoying.” “Thank you!” At least he’s polite.
• He sings in the car, A LOT. He replaces the song lyrics with our names, or other things that are happening. It's actually a surprising talent, he does it effortlessly.
• He’s obsessed with working out. He shows off his muscles, sends me and countless others shirtless pictures of him flexing in a mirror, and uses objects to do bicep curls at any given moment, such as carrying my suitcase into the airport today. If you remember in one of my Disneyland posts, how he lifted his shirt up on Splash Mountain, that's a prime example.
• Then there’s this little gem of a video, this was yesterday at the lake house:

Despite being proud of his muscles, he also takes delite in his belly flub. Gross, I know.

Alright, enough about him. Mom, don’t get jealous, you’ll get a shout out soon and it will be much better. (;

I believe that’s a wrap for this post. I'm leaving for the airport right now, 4:15 after pulling an all nighter. Greeeat. BUT I'm not complaining. None of that, gotta keep telling myselft I'm lucky..I'm lucky I'm lucky I'm lucky.