Can you say Delicious?

I made like the most delicious cake the other day. It turned out so much better than I thought it would. I made it for work for our weekly challenge. Each year the City of Mesa Aquatics chooses a theme to make the summer more exciting and give us something fun to do. This year we are celebrating the holidays and my pool is Valentines. So I made this delicious cake, and we won so we got a box of otter pops. It was great fun! PS it did taste as good as it looked!






Yes I am a little proud, I just had to show how pretty it turned out.

Cruise! part 1

Going snorkeling on Castaway Cay, Disney's private island




One night on the cruise is Pirate Night where most people dress up as pirates. We took it to a whole other level and dressing as characters from Peter Pan, I hope I don't have to say who everyone is, you hopefully can all tell! It was great fun and we got lots of looks.







At dinner we noticed a lady was trying to sneakily take a picture so, we told her we would just pose for her and she could have a real picture. It was pretty funny!




Another thing to make us more the talk of the ship is on the last night we went into the Disney Karoake at the Studio Sea and broke out our amazing dance to "We're All in This Together" from High School Musical that we did for our final awards ceremony for Festival Disney. It was awesome and all the dads were sitting there videotaping us. I'm glad we could make their family vacation memorable!




















A semi group picture with Captain Mickey the last night on the boat



Sad day leaving the boat

It was not fun going straight to work. I will never do that again. I had to put my head down twice because I couldn't stay awake any longer!

I will post more later. That is all I had the patience to upload today!

Life in AZ

Life has been really eventful since driving back into town on Tuesday. I did so much the first 24 hours it is crazy! Shortly after pulling into town I went and took my drug test so that I could start teaching swim lessons, and then I finished unloading my car. While unloading I noticed that the tread on one of my tires was really bad so I decided I needed to take my car in to get it serviced and get new tires. So wednesday morning I took my car in and also got a call from my manager to go teach lessons for someone that was sick. Luckily everything on my car was under warranty except for the tires, so we took it to a different place to get tires cheaper. Then and Went to Kim's house to bring her and Abby into town and hang out with them before they had pictures with the Merrill Family. As we were pulling out of Kim's complex she ran over something in my mom's van and it started making this sound that sounded like the tire was flat, luckily it was something just stuck in it, so we had to drive all the way back down southern instead of the freeway because we didn't know what would happen. So we go to the tire shop and to pick up my car and then get my mom's fixed. Abby had fallen asleep so she got to stay in the van and sleep while they patched the tire. I just sat and laughed and Kim was so annoyed. It was great.

I am trying to get back onto west coast time, but my sleeping habits are pretty good right now for when I hopefully find a teaching job because I've been going to bed around 10 and waking up at like 5. So now its time to organize all my crap and try to unpack, but it is kind of tricky because my two little sisters have left their stuff in my room and theirs. I told them they need to pick a room, they can't have 2!

The last week in florida was tons of fun playing with my cousins. Then there was a YSA activity the saturday before we left and that was great fun. I did a little body surfing and it was awesome. About the time we decided to go a huge storm started rolling in. Luckily we left before the rain hit!

Now it's time to keep unpacking, find a job and get ready to go to Utah for a family reunion!

Out on the Open Road!

Emily and I has completed our first day of travel. We have driven through 4 states today, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and are staying the night in Louisiana. Tomorrow will be quite lame because it will be Texas all day. The happy news is that I will be home in two days! I'm excited to start my new adventure in life, who knows what it will bring. I also have 2 adorable nieces that are ready to play with me. SO good night and see you in Mesa!

Tugging of the Heartstrings

In a week I will be making the trek back home to AZ. It is a very weird feeling to be moving on from this amazing experience I have had the past 6 months. There is a part of me that wants to stay and a part that is so ready to get home. I could stay until August or September making sales calls for Nite of Joy and Grad Nite, or I can go home, teach swim lessons, vacation with the family and hopefully find a teaching job. I have loved working for Disney and am not ready to give that up completely yet. I am still working on finding something seasonal, but we will see what happens with that.

The past week has been a blast. Monday night for FHE we went to Downtown Disney and we were going to play capture the flag but just ended up playing duck duck goose instead. It was kind of entertaining and I'm surprised security didn't come break it up. Some little kids came and played with us, it was fun. I then went for sushi with some friends from the ward. I tried it and it was ok, I'm not big on seafood but don't think I'll be having it again any time soon. The best part was the fried cheesecake that I got. It was so good, I don't even want to think how many calories it had. I would definitely have it again sometime.

Tuesday after work I played at the Magic Kingdom with my friend Brad from EAC who is now here working for Disney. I told him he came a semester late. Then on Wednesday i went and had some good mexican food with people from work. It made me really happy to eat such good food. I haven't had decent Mexican here for a while and really miss it. That is something I am looking forward to back home! Then I met up with my cousins. I am so glad they are here to play for a week and that Emily is driving back with me. She is so excited to drive accross the country with me. The trip back will probably be more fun than on the way here because Tiff was kind of a party pooper. We also have my dad's GPS that we gave him for his birthday, it's going to be fun.

On Thursday after work I went and joined Sara, Lindsay, Emily and Jill at the Magic Kingdom. It was great fun even though it was pouring rain. When I say pouring, it is nothing like you see back home, I mean POURING. I pretty much was swimming when I got off the monorail and walked through the gate. The security guard saw my cast ID and told me I should know better. I do know better, but I was meeting family. We got to ride some of the fun kiddie rides because the lines weren't too long for them. It was great. After that I left them and went to a friends house to watch the Orlando Magic game. I am cheering for the Magic in this one because I have never been a fan for the Lakers, eventhough on most things I am a west coast girl, I am cheering for the magic, and a guy for the ward works for them, so it is my cool little connection! We had a dance party during half time which was great fun especially since my pants had gotten so stretched out from being wet that they kept falling down. I also had to say goodbye to Alina, she is now back in Utah. This is the worst part about working for Disney, you meet cool people for a few months and then you go back home, and it sucks pretty much.

Me not wanting to make phone calls took off friday and monday to play in the parks with the fam. I need the money but will have more fun playing! I did get a fun job the other day to sort through a list of people that came to Nite of Joy last year. I got to sort them by denominations of Christianity. It was interesting to look on some of the websites and read their Faith statements and everything they believe. They have some of the truth, just not all of it! So friday and saturday was spent playing. I will write more of that later as well as cruise stuff, there is just too much to write and not enough time. AZ here I come!

Tons more to come

I will report on my cruise later, I needed to get caught up first. Tiffany went home last Monday, so it has been different not having her here but I am a big girl and I have cousins coming on wednesday! Before tiff left we went to star wars weekends. They run every weekend the end of may through June, and it's a time for all of the star wars nerds to join forces. It is quite fun to go and see everything, especially all the fun characters they bring out. A friend of ours from the ward is a tusken raider and it was fun to see them and pick out which one he was because of the way he acts. We got some awesome pictures and most of them are on our photopass. I won't tell all who we got, you should be able to figure them out. I will report on the cruise shortly, and it will be in installments because there are lots of pictures of four days of bliss. I leave for home in 14 days! It has flown by so fast, I am so ready to come home but not ready to say goodbye. Real world and grown up job here I come!

Let the Rain Begin

So rainy season has officially started and I am excited, bring on the rain everyday at 3! Apparently it has come 9 days early, but no one is complaining since it has been really dry lately. It is so wonderful after it rains because it is not so freaking humid afterwards, and the humidty is the worst part of rainy season. Good thing I will be home in a month! Yipee! Someone asked me the other day if we get big storms back home, and I was able to inform them about Monsoon season, which is one of my favorite times of the year. I love watching the storms build over the Superstition and then the dirt cloud comes and sweeps over the valley. How I miss my mountains, come back to me!

So anyways this week was fun and not as jam packed as last week which is good, I really needed a breather. I actually cooked dinner this week which did not happen last week since I ate out every day. I did a lot of shopping this week to get some fun summer outfits for the cruise. I probably spent more than I should have, but everything was on sale and I needed some summer clothes. Monday there was a shuttle launch and we all went outside during work to go see it. Sadly it wasn't too exciting because the direction it was headed and it was super cloudy. Luckily there is one more before i leave so i might be able to go to the coast and see it for reals!



Tuesday was the season finale of Biggest Loser. It was so awesome. My favorite part was the tongan cousins from Mesa doing the Haka. I love Tongans, and I loved when they showed clips of mesa. I can't believe that the oldest people won. It was awesome. It is amazing how some of them run with it and lose tons of weight and others not so much. I guess it just depends on how much you want something.

Wednesday Night some friends went to the Hoop Dee Doo revue. It was great fun and good food! It was kind of funny because we our server was at church today. The show is kind of cheesy and I wonder how those people could do it every night. They probably don't stay too long, but they might because I believe it is an equity role, so they get their equity card and then might move on to something better because they are cool and have their equity card. If you don't know about equity cards go look it up, I'm not going to explain it.



Thursday was kind of an interesting day. We went and sort of volunteered for this big strings concert and it was interesting. It wasn't run by Disney, so it wasn't the most organized thing but it was still fun. There were people volunteering from Universal as well and at first it was awkward but they got over it. At the end they were cool and they told us some cool things about where they work, and some of them told us how much they like Disney over Universal. One of the people I work with said, someone has to lose and be in second place. Also working this event reminded me how greatful I am to be from Mesa, because this organization teaches students in lower privileged schools the violin. I'm so glad it is offered at the schools by teachers from the district. It also reminded me of Cavalcade (a big piano event we did each year for like forever) because it as in this huge church and they were getting everyone to try and play together, 40 3rd graders trying to play violin together = very interesting sound! This church was huge and pretty cool. The proscenium made it kind of look like the top of the statue of liberty. We also got to hang out in the bridal suite because it was being used as the volunteer break room. It was filled with all sorts of yummy treats, which according to Rene is a huge upgrade from years past. Thurssday was also the finale of the office and I loved it as well.

Friday was a boring day of work because we were making cold calls all day long. They informed us all the other day we could all extend until august or september helping with sales for Grad Nite and Nite of Joy. It would be kind of fun to stay because they will probably go on some trips to get churches and stuff, but I need to get home and find a job, and I don't know how long I would last making sales calls. You know me, I don't sell things.

That is about it for the week. I don't know when I'll post again because a week from now I will be on my cruise!