"So...how's married life...?"

HIGHLIGHTS

- It's not quite as traumatic as I thought. :)

- Playing jinx. I don't just play jinx with simultaneous words. There's also sniff-jinx and sneeze-jinx and think-jinx...

- Perma snuggle buddy. I quite love snuggling. Which brings me to the lowlight...




LOWLIGHTS

- Getting up for work every morning while Tyler's still snuggled in bed. Lame, lame, lame.

- My first huge fail as a wife. Writing a sweet love message on the mirror to TLYER Pond. For some reason he didn't seem to think it was quite as sweet.



- Boy brains and girl brains are really quite different. Turns out. Well, live and learn...

How to Know You're Not Really an Adult

1. You accidentally microwave a paper towel to your pizza. :( And trust me, if there'd been ANY way to salvage it, I would have.





2. You find a big tangle in your hair in the middle of church on Sunday (while you're on the stand ready to give a talk). Then two days later, you find the same tangle in your hair, only bigger.


Sunday.....


Tuesday.....


3. You show up for a full day's work at the office, sans brassiere. (Sorry, no pic for this one...)

Goodbye Belize, Hello Real World

HIGHLIGHTS
- Our grill-it-yourself dinner. Yummiest tasting meat ever.
- Discovering our favorite local breakfast being served out of a trailer near our hotel. $2 each!!!
- Coming home to the love shack newly decorated and ready for us!! :) Compliments of the Pond family!

LOWLIGHTS
- Realizing in the airport that my phone decided to extended its vacation in Belize without us. Or our permission.
- Lower light: Finding out that someone else discovered the phone and used it. A lot.
- Tyler's last Coke Light. Sniff!

Caye Caulker continued

HIGHLIGHTS
- Snorkeling. Lots of way cool stuff to see. Plus, Tyler got a freaky shaped sunburn on his back too, so now I'm not the only one.
- Finding out that we couldn't check out early from our nicer place to go to a cheaper one. This was secretly a highlight since neither of us really wanted to leave. Plus, the lady gave us bikes for the day since she never said that the reservation was non-refundable.
- Chatting it up with the locals. Met lots of cool peeps, and been able to get answers to our most burning questions like what language they use in the schools versus what all the kids are gabbering to each other.

LOWLIGHTS
- Water in a bag. What?
- Running face to face into two of my most hated creatures in the world in one day: the moray eel and the cockroach.
- Still searching for the answer to: "When the heck does school start and end??" Tyler has observed that there is no apparent school hours since at any given time, there are as many uniformed kids in the school as out of it. And when we passed by at 5pm, there were still kids there.




Please take the time to read this sign. It's really special.





Snorkeling. The sport for the hardest of hard core.

Caye Caulker

Ok, so the island we're at is called Caye Caulker (pronounced "Key Cocker," which in itself is a lowlight since I keep messing it up).

HIGHLIGHTS
- Location, location, location. See pics.
- Tyler getting the local vibe and spending a good deal of the day roaming the streets in bare feet.
- The little kiddos everywhere. We're right near the school. Today I saw a little boy carry his even littler sister's princess backpack because it was too heavy for her. I love them.


LOWLIGHTS
- Getting here. Missed the 3pm boat by moments, so we got to wait for like an hour and a half for the next one. Keep in mind, I was still sick so I wanted to die. But Tyler was very helpful and made me feel better and we wrote thank you notes to be productive. But then by the time we got to the island it was pretty much dark, which always makes it harder to find a place to stay.
- Tyler's all-lobster day. Gross.
- The supposed "breeze" that's actually fierce wind constantly flicking sand and your own hair into your face. Nah so relaxin' mon.


Tyler showing what it looked like to wait.



Down the dock to our place.



Us in the sliding glass door. I know, I'm a geek. But it looked so cool.



The view out our window.



The little kids with the backpack. Bro is the little one in front, sis is the littler one in the more front. (Bro is carrying the princess backpack in front of him.) Tyler captured the moment very discretely. Hopefully we don't get arrested for it.

Tikal and lots of driving

So we left our quaint abode and all our new friends in Placencia to brave the roads of Belize and Guatemala. It was basically 3 straight days traveling, so pretty grueling, but obviously chalk-full of adventures.

HIGHLIGHTS
- Tikal. Sitting on the top of the highest temple, looking out over the jungle with all sorts of temples popping up through the trees.
- The drive to Tikal. So fascinating to see all the villages on the way.
- Diet Coke and Fanta. Much yummier here. Tyler and I enjoy the two respectively.
- Filming many more episodes of "Jungle Bob and Andrea hit Central America." Don't worry. You're all welcome to see them when we get back.
- Church! Always cool to get to know people in the area.

LOWLIGHTS
- Going through immigration and customs at the border. Sent around in circles, paying $5-$10 at each window we went approached.
- Many road signs to warn about cow and people crossing in Guatemala, but none to warn about the many, many dogs and horses that leisurely dominate the roads.
- Celebrated our first week of marriage by treating ourselves to the very first available hotel we could find. $20 special. Super sketch, with walls that didn't actually connect all the way to the ceiling. Truly special.
- I got pretty sick and Tyler busted out a cold sore. We were both in sorry shape. (But Sheena, thanks for the Hydrogen Peroxide tip!)


Tikal. Obviously.



Cool dock in Placencia.



Our luxury suite.



Saying goodbye to Stefano. :( PS He said he wanted to hold up that wrench to show off his work ethic.



Fanta Naranja!

Placencia

HIGHLIGHTS
- Having our own kitchen so we could make pizza and muffins and no-bake Oreo pie.
- Tyler saying all of the shop names with Stefano's Italian accent. Such a delight!
- Tour of Monkey River with a really old Belizean man named Harrison, who insists on going by "Buck." He had us rub medicinal plants on us, showed us his village, and even ate some termites.
- Listening to the creole. Crazy to think that it's all English words, but said in a way that there's no hope of understanding,

LOWLIGHTS
- The gelataria!!!!!!! AMAZING!!!!!!!! Why a lowlight? Because we discovered it the first day and have been back at least once a day since.
- The unnerving way the sound travels, making it seem like people are right in our living room. And the bird that sounds exactly like a screen door opening and shutting, to make doubly sure you never feel completely at ease.
- That it took me until I got married to Tyler to see the crazed look on his face that he gets when there's any kind of insect in the room.
- Being the last to sight all of the animals on the river tour. Sometimes I even tried to fake that I saw them, just for the sake of time, but the guides could always tell since I was looking the wrong way.



The pad.



The pizza.



Just plain rad.



If you look close, you can read the carefully painted sign: "John the Bakerman, right in side...the door."



On the boat ride. What a babe.

BELIZE CON TYLER - Getting there

Well, technically getting here took a year+ of dating. Haha. But really, this is just about the first day of travel to get to Placencia, Belize.

LOWLIGHTS
- 21 hours from the SD airport to our final destination in Belize
- Arriving in Placencia without specific directions to our villa, only to find that really no one else in the whole city had ever heard of the name of the villa, or the street it was on.
- Finally getting to the villa, only to find out that they didn't have any idea we were coming.
- Discovering that uncertainty and lack of planning isn't quite as exhilarating to Tyler as it is to me.

HIGHLIGHTS
- Getting upgraded to first class on our flight, just cause we asked! (And mentioned that it was our honeymoon).
- Meeting Stefano, the Italiano Property Manager extraordinaire.
- Getting upgraded to the nicer, bigger floor of our guesthouse as compensation for all of the confusion. (Oops! That was just supposed to be between Stefano and us...) But now the toilet is not in the shower stall!!!

When Tyler Came and Rescued Me

At the end of September, the grueling internship finally came to an end. I stayed in UT to wrap some things up, then Tyler came the next weekend to take me home!!!!

HIGHLIGHTS

- Went to General Conference. Some nice girl I barely knew gave me her tickets b/c she knew I was trying to find some and she was already going to a session. Anyway, it was cool. And cool to sit next to Tyler again at church stuff. I missed the arm around me to fend off overactive air conditioning. :)

- Engagement pics with Sharon. Such a rip-roaring good time. And she did such a fabulous job. Oh, my talented friends!

- Mission reunions. So fun to meet each other's peeps and count how many times one of my Nauvoo grandparents said something like, "You've got yerself a good one here! You'd better take care of her!" Love them! :)

- The Philly Cheesesteaks at his reunion!

- Kissing Skype goodbye.

LOWLIGHTS

- The super lonely horse that insisted on being in as many pics as possible at the engagement shoot.

- Having to say bye to my girls (and their cute kiddos) in UT.

- The fact that even though I'm home, we still have to date 3 mths to get married. :(


Still learning where to look when taking pics on his iPod.




Watching conference at Sheena's. Miss them!




The drive home. Obviously.



Our new best friend.

Weekend o' Blair

One of my very dearest friends, Ms Blair Sidney Pettijohn, graced me with her presence this weekend. She is a true ray of sunshine in my life!

The other best thing was that a good portion of our old Sunnyside roommates live in UT at the moment so with Blair here, it meant serious good times.

HIGHLIGHTS:

- Thurs night hung with Blair, Sheena, Teresa, Sharon, and Lila and Launi. Looked for wedding dresses (a great consultative team), then to food, then to milkshakes. Sharon and Sheena educated us about life on the other side of singlehood. Haha.

- Fri night: Salt Lake County Fair. Saw Boyz II Men in the flesh! Just a smooth as I remember them being.

- Sun night: True to form, we downed a whole thing of muddy buddies in an hour and talked til the wee hours about anything and everything.


LOWLIGHTS:

- The lady at the wedding dress place who kept calling me sweetie. Which may have been endearing had she not been in her 30's.

- Paying $3 to get our handwriting analyzed by the lady who wasn't very nice or very accurate. But in case you're wondering, she accepts tips.

- The fact that after a delightful weekend, I had to go back and drown in the workload of VRSII.


Lucy came with us to the fair. What a sport!


The cheap seats for Boyz II Men. And yes, Teresa does have 3 separate patches on her clothing. Love her.

The race from H***

Literally. This was the worst race I've ever run. To the point that it was funny. Apparently it was straight up a mountainside and really only for the hardest of hard-core. Both is these tidbits were unbeknownst to us, as is evident in our training plan (or lack thereof).

HIGHLIGHTS:

- I won shoes!!!! Of course, I wasn't there to collect them, as I was only halfway through the race.

- The last 3 miles were the delirium hit in and it was actually kind of fun.

- We survived.


LOWLIGHTS:

- So there was this competition for the best aid station. I heard this announced and I thought, "well that's great. I need some aid stations with some good food since I didn't really eat breakfast." But answer me this--how are you supposed to have a contest if all of the aid stations are serving the EXACT same thing. Gatorade and water. Hmph. I was so hungry by 11:00.

- Blair and I came in dead last. The consolation is that when we finished, they were expecting us, and even called us by name. The extra lowlight though, is that I cheered on the guy behind us cause I thought he was in the race. Really he was just the sweeper guy assigned to run behind the last place people.

- See elevation map below.




Blissfully unaware the day before. Perhaps if we hadn't been this optimistic, we would've trained.




Our pre-race dinner: 2 funnel cakes and ice cream in a waffle cone. Some call that carb loading.




I think this speaks for itself.

Home for the Weekend

HIGHLIGHTS:

- Night I flew in, chilled at the harbor with Typo, then went to In-n-Out with 3-dub (mom). So glad she waited up for us! :)

- RBHS class reunion. Awkward encounters, catching up with friends, screaming over the music, drunkenness & lampshades, the whole 9 yards. It was a blast!

- Getting ready with Becks (which of course entailed a trip to Target with her and my mom! :) Woohoo! Target is always a delight!) And the photoshoot with the piece of the freshman year float. (Pack rats prevail!!!!)

- Remembering just why I love Tyler P.


LOWLIGHTS:

- The food at the reunion. The only thing recognizable were the sliders, which a woman choked on, needing the Heimlich maneuver, thus supporting my eternal argument of why "slider" is such an awful name for a mini hamburger.

- Major flight delays both ways. I know, that inclement SD weather. Hah.

- Getting so little sleep that the day I got back, I took of my glasses instead of hanging up the phone.

- Having to say goodbye to Tyler for the 4th time this summer. But it's the last!


Us and the infamous float! :)




The back is what really makes it special in my opinion.




Becky and her senior standout pic. I know, she's practically famous!




Go for the Mormons winning the "Breeder's Cup" award at the reunion. (Actually we hear there's a kid out there with 4 kids, but he wasn't at the reunion. Prob couldn't get a bbsitter.)




Moments like these make me real happy.