Uh Oh! Spa-GETTY-ohs!

I recently discovered that neither of my parents had ever been to the Getty. Ever. So, I decided that we needed to go immediately.

We got to see the Paris display that is a traveling exhibit. It was interesting to see the ornate nature of Parisian artwork and craftsmanship. The Getty Gardens were beautiful, as usual.

My favorite part of the Getty is the decorative arts stuff, so we spent a chunk of time there. I just love looking at the ornate pieces that decorated palaces, and manors long ago. Before, we left we had to stop in the family section and have some fun.

It's crazy to me how real that snake looks! Yikes!
Well, as you can see...

...the Getty is HUGE!!! We didn't get through all of it today, so I guess we'll just have to go again sometime!
On the way home, we stopped and had dinner in Azusa at one of my very favorite restaurants of all time. Northwoods Inn is delicious!

Awesome! All in all, we had a great day!

Happy Birthday, Joey! Play Ball!

So, my oldest nephew, Joey, turned 8 on July 11th. EIGHT!!! I can't believe what a grown-up boy he's become. He is awesome and I can't imagine life without him. Since this is a milestone birthday, David and Melissa wanted to do something a little more special than usual. Joey has become quite the baseball fan, so they rented out a skybox for Joey and let him invite some friends to share it with him. The kids got to eat hotdogs, snacks, and sodas and watch the game from the box.

PLUS, David and Wiss got each kid their own foam finger...

...so that Wooly Bully could sign them when he visited the skybox!

The kids also got to run across the field with Wooly Bully!

The rest of us hung out in the seats right in front of the box:

David and Wiss definitely had their hands full, managing all of those kids, but a great time was had by all! Happy Birthday, Joey! I love you, little man!

Knock! Knock! Knock! Do the Fossil Rock!

On July 13th, I had the opportunity to go to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History right by the USC campus to preview their newly remodeled dinosaur exhibit. It was awesome! Nancy, Jacob, Josh, Dylan, and Anthony went and it was a fun day.
Here's my beautiful sister:

It's always fun to do museums with kids and get to explain all the cool things to them and see the wonderment in their eyes when they see a real dinosaur!

I love me some dinosaur bones!

Run Anthony! That big dinosaur/bird thing is gonna eat you!

We all had an awesome time at the museum! After we were done, we had to jet because all of us, except for Anthony, had to drive up the hill to go to a baseball game in celebration of Joey's birthday (which I will cover in the next post).

Some of my greatest blessings call me Auntie...

Since David, Melissa, and the boys live in Victorville, I knew that we would be driving right by their house on the way home from Utah. So, I called Melissa and asked if we could stop by and take the boys for a couple of days. She said that would be great and I was way excited since I hadn't done something like this with them in a while. The first thing we did was wash my car. It was less about getting my car clean and more about letting them play in the water. In fact, I'm pretty sure my car looked dirtier when we got done than it did when we started. : ) BUT the boys seemed to be having a great time. Then, I attached the sprinkler to the hose and we just played in the water.

Next, we went inside to play and the boys found these hats in their toy bins. Pretty soon, they were all dressed up and ready for an impromptu photo shoot.

These little guys are SO cute!
I asked the boys where they wanted to sleep and they told me that they wanted to sleep in my tent. I tried to set it up outside, but we had a leaky sprinkler and the ground was super marshy. Plan B: pitch the tent in the family room. We decided to go to the store and get some snacks for our "campsite" and then we watched Ernest Goes to Camp to make it official.

The next morning, the boys wanted to watch the "Ernest" movies (Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Goes to Jail, and Ernest Scared Stupid) over and over and over again. So, we did! And then we met Nancy, Jacob, Joshua, and Dylan at the park.

After the park, we walked across the street to Jacob's house, where we ate dinner and the boys played together. It was a great day! The next day, we went to Target. It's not an Auntie Rach adventure without a trip to Target and my nephews have come to expect it. : ) Afterwards, it was time to head back up the hill to take the boys home and watch the fireworks over their neighborhood in Spring Valley Lake. What a great weekend!

Utah!

After we left Vegas (see previous post), we went drove to Utah. On the way there, we stopped at Daniel's and Tyisa's apartment where I was going to stay for a couple of days. Their new place is super sweet! They live in a historic mansion turned apartment building in Provo, Utah. I forgot to take a picture of it, so I stole this one from the Internet:

It's called the Knight-Mangum Mansion.
While there, we got to talk alot, watch some amazing things on YouTube, play games (including Uno Attack...oooohhhhh yeah!!! lol), and explore the mall. Daniel kept telling me that he didn't want me to be bored and tried to think of other things we could do in Provo, but what he didn't realize is that being there with him and Tyisa was plenty of fun for me. I miss that kid like CRAZY!!!

We did have our fair share of shenanigans, however. On Saturday, when my parents and Diane came to pick me up, this is how they found Daniel and me:

haha
Diane joined in the action too:

It was SOOO hard to say goodbye to my Benjamin when we left, even though I knew I was going to see him again in a couple of days. Here's a shot of Daniel and Tyisa and, of course, Baby Danny.

Next, my parents dropped Diane and I off in Sandy at Rio Tinto Stadium for the Real Salt Lake game. Our seats were pretty good. I got to be Diane's "plus 1" for the game, which she was seeing with a bunch of people from work. Initially, I wasn't super excited for the game, but once I realized how close it was to hockey (my favorite sport), I ended up really enjoying it.

They passed this shield around the whole stadium...kinda like The Wave. It was pretty cool! When we were passing it over our heads it reminded me of PE in elementary school when we used to run under the parachute.

After the game we walked to the train, which took up back to Downtown Salt Lake.
The next day was Father's Day and it was awesome! Daniel and Tyisa came up to Salt Lake to go to church with us in Diane's ward. Afterward, we had ham, Grandma Merrell's raspberry Jello, and funeral potatoes, with chocolate mousse for dessert. After dinner, we decided to go for a walk around Temple Square. It was amazing because the weather was perfect and we were all very relaxed and just ready to browse around and enjoy one another's company. That night, Daniel & Tyisa, my mom, and I stayed up late playing Uno Attack and Phase 10. The next day or two were spent hanging out, shopping, and sightseeing We also got to attend a session in the Bountiful Temple, which I had never been in before.

What an amazing blessing the Temple is! So beautiful!
Before we left, we decided to go to the Church History Museum. It hasn't changed much over the years, but we love it just as much the millionth time as we did the first.

We all had fun coloring at the children's artwork interactive display in the basement.
When it was time to go, we said goodbye to Diane and then stopped at Daniel's to say goodbye and we headed home. It was a great trip.

Jewel of the Nile...

...or Jewel of the Strip? Anyhow, I realized that I had never been to Vegas just for the sake of being in Vegas. My cousin got married in Vegas and I went there for that; I've been there to visit family, and I've driven through more times than I can count, but I had never gone just to have a good time. So, there's a first time for everything, right? Now, gambling isn't my style, so I passed on that aspect of it, but I did get to stay in a super sweet hotel!

I have ALWAYS wanted to stay in the Luxor! It had become kind of a bucket list thing and I found that if you stay there during the week, rather than the busy Vegas weekends, you can actually find some pretty awesome rates! So, I booked! It was amazing! The room was nice and it had the slanty windows that you can see from the freeway.

AND in the evening, we had an awesome view of the Excalibur with a little bit of New York, New York.

Aaaaand it was amazing inside too! Here's what we saw when we walked out of our hotel room door:

How awesome is that!?!?!
We also got to experience one of Vegas' many buffets, which was conveniently located in our hotel, as well as visiting the old Mormon Fort in a part of Vegas that was...uh...definitely on "the other side of the tracks". BUT it was still cool!

And YES, I did wear capri pants with tennis shoes, which looks fine on people with long legs, but not on my short legs. It was super dusty and dirty, so flip-flops were absolutely not an option. Don't judge me! : )
We also got to visit the Las Vegas Temple and do some work there.

It was awesome, of course! And all of these things made for a fabulous trip!

Off The Beaten Path

I had the opportunity to go with my parents to visit a section of Arizona that is, lets just say, less populated than others. We stayed in Holbrook and visited a few cool things around there.

I got to explore a little bit on the Navajo Reservation, which was cool and absolutely beautiful since it was mostly just undisturbed nature. We also got to do some work in the Snowflake, AZ Temple. It was such a pretty temple too! The pictures we took were'nt spectacular because it was SO windy there, BUT they have their charm : )

On the way home we visited the famous meteor crater. It is the world's most well-preserved meteor crater, as well as the first crater to be proved as an impact crater, rather than one made from a volcano. You know how sometimes, you'll go somewhere and you end up with a crappy tour guide that only knows the 10 facts he learned from reading a script? Well, we were way excited because our guide was not like that at all! He made that huge hole in the ground sound like Disneyland. Seriously, though, I really do love stuff like this and our tour guide made it even more awesome!

We also stopped in Lake Havasu and got to see the real London Bridge! It's crazy to see such an awesome, old, and dignified piece of architecture in a place like Havasu, which is, well...kinda ghetto. Ya know, the place where people go to get drunk and run around like crazies! : )

Anyhow, we enjoyed our little trip, which was pretty much spontaneous and got to see some cool things along the way.