Family Reunions and Awesome Experiences

Well... I'm back, and boy has the last week been pretty eventful, exciting, and awesome! The Ballantyne's have an epic family reunion every 2 years. They are the most organized week of fun you'll have with huge group of people who happen to all be related in your life! I have always looked forward to being with my amazing family, and seeing those who live far away. The last reunion Jason was in school and I unfortunately had to work, so we were super excited when we found out we'd be able to make it for at least of couple of days.

Thursday morning we left our house and headed to the airport at 4:30 am. Our morning was a whirl wind because we were honestly running so late. It doesn't help that we were at our friends place until 10pm and were so excited sleep was kind of out of the question. I had to make sure everything was packed and ready to go, which really ended up doing us no good :). The flight was so quick, but boy was I not happy. Flying with allegaint air, you don't get to pick your seat unless you pay for it and what can I say, we are cheap so we didn't pay for our seats. That came to bite us later when we were seperated and the lady I happened to be sitting with actually paid for her seat and wouldn't let Jason and I sit together. Yes... I was a little bitter, but an hour flight by myself was really nothing to get mad over.

Walking off the plane and into Idaho was amazing! The weather was PERFECT and I could actually breath! For a couple of seconds I think I was actually cold. It was awesome! We then took a shuttle to get our rental car, and we were off driving into the beautiful scenery of Idaho.

I will never forget the looks on everyone's face when we drove into Camp Smokey. Our rental car was a 2012 hyundai accent with Wyoming plates. No one knew who we were until we pulled up to my parents truck and asked if they had seen any Ballantynes running around. Everyone commented on our new car while we were there and asked how we were liking Wyoming even though they thought we were in Vegas. It was pretty funny.

Anyways, as soon as we arrived it was lake time! Alturas Lake was right across the street from our camp. We had tons of toys to play with too, including kayaks, a motor boat, a sailboat and an awesome dock to jump off of. Of course the first thing we did was jump off the dock and get our bodies ready for some hard core skiing and tubing. I was so sore the next day from all the tubing we did, and Jason got up on skis for the first time! We had so much fun! I think one of my favorite moments was when Jason and I were scheming to push one of my cousins off the dock. It ended with Jason totally not following our plan and tackling him into the water.

After several hours at the lake, I headed back to camp with the family I lived with during my student teaching. My aunt and uncle are incredibly awesome, and they have the sweetest kids! We were so bummed when our assignment changed from New Plymouth Idaho to Las Vegas, just because we wouldn't be near these guys. I really liked visiting with them, and even got a book read to me by the cutest 8 year old girl ever! She's a sweetie!

Dinner followed soon after, and it was so awesome to just look around and see everyone from our wonderful family together. All together there were about 50 of us so we were quite a sight. I got to see my brother too, and visit with him and his wife for a little bit which was awesome!

Our reunions include firesides, talent shows, olympic games, usually someone getting hurt, and organized fun through out the day. They are quite epic, and from my experience and others I have taken with me.... they have never experienced anything like it. After dinner we had a fire side and slowly made our way back to our cabins. Jason and I were so exhausted we fell asleep 5 min. into The Lorax which was our first attempt of watching it together since getting it. We decided to watch it simply because we didn't want the day to end, but I guess we didn't really have a choice.

Friday was pretty fun. It rained most of the morning, and we decided to take a trip into Stanley with our immediate family to check out some white water rafting. That ended with us just visiting, calling all over for places that would take a group of 8 on Saturday, and eating ice cream (well some of us). When we headed back, camp was completely empty, and so we went exploring. We ended up finding a ghost town called Sawtooth City, which was about 120 years old. You could really tell, because all of the buildings were rotting away and in ruins. With that, we took a little walk around a historic ranger station and headed back to camp.

Jason and I were totally falling asleep in the car was we drove back to camp, and so our plan was a 20 min nap and hittin the lake with everyone else. Unfortunately our 20 min nap turned into a 3 hour nap and a call that dinner was almost completely gone. We were supposed to help cook it too! We laughed about sleeping that long, but I really wish we would have made it down to the lake.

After dinner was our legendary talent show. We have so many awesome talented people in the Ballantyne family. It is so fun to see everyone share their talents with each other. Jason and I were pretty stoked about this talent show too, because we actually learned a piano and guitar duet (a video will be coming soon). However, we ended up not having a guitar, and the piano was way out of tune, so we did skits with the family instead. We were the commercials in between talents and it ended up being a ton of fun.

Soon after our awesome show, we said good night to a few and stayed up and visited with others. Finally around 1 am we had a second attempt at The Lorax and ended up falling asleep before it even started.

Saturday was a sad day, becasue we had to say goodbye to everyone. Usually everyone heads back to Grandma's house to finish up the weekend together, but not this year. Everyone was headed home, and although our flight wasn't until Sunday we had to head back to Idaho Falls. Luckily my immediate family was able to have one last bang before saying our goodbyes. We all went white water rafting!

White water rafting was pretty awesome! We only had a couple of class III rapids which kind of stunk, but we had lots of entertainment along the way. The boys were in kayaks and upon our first rapid, had a casualty. We thought for sure it was Jason, but once Jason and Tain made it through we were super surprised to see Dyelan floating down the river on his back. He kind of hit the rapid sideways, and well I guess that's not the best way to stay dry. Half way through our trip we stopped to jump off a rock, we stopped for a snack a little later, and continued on our journey. I got to be in a kayak with Jason the second half of the trip, and if I have any advice to give about rafting... it's to take a kayak because they are so awesome!

Our 3.5 hour trip turned into 5 hours and by the time we were on our way to Idaho Falls to see a good friend, we were super late! Jason tried to close that gap of time, but while I was reading the second book of The Hunger Games looked up to find a police officer with his lights on behind us. Jason recieved his very first speeding ticket by going about 15 over the speed limit. A word to the wise, even if you are on country roads in Idaho, you can still get pulled over!

Our night ended with eating pizza with our friend Kyra Rankin, watching Catch Me if you Can, and dreaming of our new house in just one weeks time. First we would have to survive being parents to 4 children for a week...

Sunday morning we attended a singles ward, drove to the rental place, said goodbye to our sweet ride, and sat next to each other in the plane! A nice lady actually gave up her seat so we could be together even though it meant sitting by a lady with her baby. We were pretty happy, and actually got through most of The Lorax on our third attempt.

Well ladies and gentlemen, we are back in Vegas and found out yesterday that we no longer need to be parents. We watched kids for 2 days and ended up being able to go home. This made me excited, because our move is now moved up to the 19th!!! In just 4 days we'll be back in Utah!

A New Place to Live

We won't be homeless yay!!! Strangely I am super excited to be moving back to Utah too. I think it is mostly because we found this treasure. Some of you might share the feeling of frustration when looking for housing, but I hate being that frustrated. There are so many things that happen. 1. the landlord you have been working with suddenly becomes crazy, 2. you love everything about the house except one thing, and it's kind of a deal breaker, 3. you look at houses you can't afford, but only dream of having (doesn't really help you to find a place to live), 4. sometimes the time to move is coming so quickly you will settle for anything, 5. places that seemed like a perfect fit turn out they're really not, and many other crazy things happen along the way. We have had many experiences with finding places to live. In fact this will be the 6th time we've moved since being married. I do have one piece of advice to those of you who might be in our situation... Just have faith. Everything will work out as long as you keep your head and RELAX. That is what I have learned every time we've moved. Every time things have worked out, and every time things have turned out better than we could have expected.

After talking to about 20 crazy people, only being able to schedule 3 appointments with houses, almost signing a lease until we actually saw the place, and praying like crazy that we'd find a place for us, we did it! We are moving back to Utah on August 19th and I can hardly wait!

Our Perfect New Home!!!

Well... now after day dreaming for a couple of hours about our dream house, I must get going. We are headed to the Ballantyne family reunion tomorrow!!! It is basically the best family reunion you could ever imagine, and it's Jason's first time! Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it!.... and the packing begins!

Oh my WOW!

WARNIING: This post might be a little long. Prepare yourself to laugh, cry, and maybe even jump as you read about one of our best weekends in Las Vegas and other states..... Continue reading... if you dare!

Our last official weekend in Vegas went out with a BANG and as our life continues, things have gotten so much sweeter!

With our last official weekend, we wanted to do everything on our bucket list. We are still going to be here for 2 more weeks, but we'll be extremely busy and getting ready to move... yet again :) What was on our bucket lists you might ask?... well, there were WAY TOO many things on our list! We decided to just do a couple, and maybe save the others when we come back for a few visits (hopefully). We each got to decide 1 thing we absolutely wanted to do before leaving our Vegas home behind. I chose to see a show, and Jason chose to go have a blast at Hoover Dam and Lake Mead! Here is the story of our exciting adventures...

Friday night came far too quickly. We had been looking at houses like crazy to prepare for a future move back to Utah. Finally a little sunshine broke through and we were filling out an application for a house! I was relieved, but the process was a little crazy and soon we found ourselves a little behind for our fun filled evening. With sandwiches in hand and zooming down the road to the Venetian, we prepared ourselves and talked excitedly about our very first show in Las Vegas Nevada. I got tickets to Phantom of the Opera for a really good price and it just so happened to be on my bucket list and that ladies and gentlemen was the start of an amazing night.

I got tickets! Our seats were really good, but I still had to wear my glasses to see :)

While waiting for the play to begin, we made ourselves comfortable with Godiva chocolate and we had ourselves a little fun with taking pictures. Suddenly we were yelled at that no photography was allowed in the theater, the lights dimmed, and the most amazing show began. Both Jason and I were sucked into the world of the Phantom and were blow away by the performance. The stage was incredible, there was fire, fireworks, flashing light, falling chandeliers, beautiful songs, amazing effects that you'd never believe and many gasps from the audience. It was by far the best thing I had ever seen, and when the lights came back on and performers took a bow, the whole audience was standing. I was sad to see the play end so soon and find our Godiva chocolate wrapper empty...

We're waiting for the show to start, and to eat out chocolate!

Waiting for the show to start + sharpie= Clarissa and Jason with mustaches!

Us after the show outside the theather

With the surprise of the show only being and hour and a half, we suddenly had a very early night with endless possibilities. The night was young and we were not about to waste our last date night Friday in Vegas on being old people and going to bed early. That is when we decided to visit all of the Casinos we wanted to visit, but never had time. Our first stop was New York, New York to take pictures by the bridge. Because it was at least a 2 mile walk down the strip (seemed liked 2 miles) we took the car and parked it at the Monte Carlo. As we walked down the street, we heard awesome music and decided to dance our way to New York. Ok it was more like I danced my way, and Jason gave me weird stares, but I LOVED it :).

On our way to our chosen destination, I saw M&M world and so we made a little bit of a detour. It as more for just kicks and giggles, but I found myself in heaven when we got there. You see, my weakness is M&M's. I LOVE them, mostly because they are chocolate but also because they are just awesome! We couldn't believe all the stuff you could buy and the colors were amazing! We even got a couple of FREE samples if you can believe that. I think my favorite part was looking at all the little kid clothes :P lol. Before we actually cracked and bought some crazy insane M&Ms we had to run away!....

Look at all the colors!

When we arrived at New York, New York, the adventurers inside of us wanted to check out the Manhattan Express Roller Coaster!!! We were ready for a thrill seeking ride until we got in the insanely long line. For $14 a ride, we were not about to wait 5 hours and waste the time we had in Vegas standing and waiting. Instead we decided to go on a deadly motorcycle ride in the arcade. Now I know why some people might take their kids to the strip. New York, New York was kid heaven with all of the arcade games you could want. It was like Chuck E. Cheese on steroids!! Kids were everywhere spending all of their parents money.  It was definitely the kid version of a casino.

With the excitement and disappointment of not being able to put our adrenaline cravings at bay, we exited New York, New York and made our way to the Luxor. A friend of our works there, and we kind of wanted to check out the interesting building that you can see from miles around. The pyramid is acutally the hotel part of the casino, and so we weren't able to go in but you could see inside and that was awesome! One day I think we'll stay there, but we shall see.

With that, our legs were tired, our bodies aching (really from our intense work out the day before) and with a couple of yawns, we made our way back to our car at the Monte Carlo. We then made our way home to find our pillows and crashed at 2:00am. What an awesome night to have as our last out on the town :)

Saturday started with a late morning for us, but it was glorious! Sleeping until 8am has never been more amazing! With that we showered, got our swimming stuff on, ate a breakfast for kings, and made solid plans to go on a Hoover Dam tour, have a picnic, swim in Lake Mead, and end our night with a concert on Lake Las Vegas. Things don't always happen as we plan though, so we headed off in search of more adventure.

Before we hit up the HUGE Hoover Dam, we were able to walk across the tallest bridge of the Western Hemisphere. We walked from Nevada all the way to California in a matter of 1/2 hour. It was pretty awesome, although I must say that I am not a huge fan of the height. It was insanely high, and when we stopped to look down in the middle of the bridge, a semi drove by and hooked making me jump out of my skin. Jason got a good laugh out of it, but I think it scared him a little too lol.

We started in Nevada and ended up in Arizona!

On the bridge taking pics

The sign was on the other side :(

The Hoover Dam was incredible. We are crazy people who love learning while on vacation (ha ha it feels like vacation everyday it's hard to say it's really not). We got to watch a movie, take a guided tower down to the generators that supply an insane amount of electricity to power miles of cities including Las Angeles, and we got to walk on top of the dam. It was really neat, but boy did it wear us out! I think I walked off about 5 lbs just walking across the bridge and going on the dam tower.

The Bridge!

On top of the dam

Lake Mead was minutes away, and after eating our picnic in 107 degrees we were ready to jump in the water. I prepared my body for the shock of my life to jump into ice cold water. Funny thing is, I didn't think about how were were in Boulder City, in a lake, outside in 107 degree weather, and that it would probably the warmest water I have ever swam in. Well that's what it was, the warmest water I have ever swam in! It was weird how much it cooled us off though. After jumping in a few times, we grabbed our boogie boards and headed out into the water to have a standing contest. I think the boogie boards won, because Jason and I were bucked off our boards about a million times each. It sure was a good work out, and after seeing our hands and feet were beyond prunes, we got out to dry off and get ready to head over to Lake Las Vegas.

After our awesome competition!

As I said earlier, life has a funny way of surprising you. We both had the sudden urge to just go home, plop ourselves on the couch, make some shakes or smoothies, and watch The Lorax with our new roommate Becca. See our roommate Heidi left for the Dominican Rebulic and had her friend stay in her room. I felt really bad though, because even though we were both home all day during the week, I never saw her come out of her room. I was so excited when she joined us, but totally felt bad when I made the worst milkshake ever! It was more like chocolate milk, and that my friends is why I only let Jason touch the blender. While we tried to get The Lorax to play on the T.V for about 1/2 hour (we only had it on our computer) Becca decided to check the movies on demand. That's when we suddenly found ourselves watching Crazy, Stupid Love with delicious smoothies (I had the chocolate shake wannabe).

After the movie at 1:30 am we climbed the stairs to our room and Jason had the sudden urge to check his e-mail. See he had been interviewing for an incredible job all week and was waiting to hear back about the last one. The last interview was supposed to be in person, but the company worked with us and made it possible for him to do it over the phone. With that interview we promised the next one would be in person. Jason's heart was pumping and it was then that he found an invitation for that last interview in person on Monday. We were thrilled! We were so excited we looked for plane tickets right away. We almost cried when we saw the price, but then weighed other options and laughed when we finally realized Jason could drive, leave Sunday, stay with my sister that night, and attend his interview Monday morning. I think it was about 45min of excitedly talking about the future, that we decided I could go too! There was no reason I needed to stay (I don't work during the summer) and we could look at houses!!!! With that we made our final plans and went to sleep.

Sunday morning while I got ready and packed, Jason wrote down things that he could say in his interview. We got dressed for church super quick and went to go say goodbye to the wonderful friends we have made while being here. I hate last Sundays, and this was our 5th one in the span of 2 years (since we've been married). It is so hard to get to know so many amazing, wonderful people, get attached and then say goodbye. We almost thought of just skipping it because of that reason, but we knew that we had to see everyone one last time. I really felt sad as I told my friends I'd miss them, and even when I sat by a fun little lady I had just met and started to get to know during relief society I almost cried. We also found out that some people from BYU-Idaho had just moved in and we knew them! Even though our hearts are sad, I know that we will be able to keep in touch and we will be blessed with their friendships for a very long time.

After church I made lunch while Jason packed his things. We raced around making sure we had everything we needed, talked to Becca about us leaving, and zoomed out the door. We then started the very boring 6 hour drive to Orem, UT.

It was awesome to see my sister and her husband, but we didn't really get to spend too much time with them. When we arrived we played the farming game for a couple of hours and then we all headed off to bed with the anticipation of the next day.

Now, I won't tell you too many details about the next day because there are way TOO many! Long story short, Jason had a good interview, house hunting was both annoying and exciting, we are no longer going to be homeless in a couple of weeks, the house is even better than we had dreamed, and the drive home was just as boring at the drive there. We Osborns are really crazy, but life has been so very good to us! To save you from your eyes burning, I'll give you all the details about the adventures that day (well the ones that matter) another time. Until then, I'm off to change the oil in the car. Have a great week!