On the 27th day of June I went a flying in a hot air balloon. It was....AWESOME! We got to see everything from set up to take down of the balloon and got about a 50 minute ride. We traveled 6 miles across Park City and got very high in the sky!
My partners in ascension were Lena, Lara and Chelsea. (all three of them are on the left in this picture)
It was very HOT inside the basket because of the big flame that they use to heat the air and keep the balloon afloat.
We landed in a neighborhood on the road. (the pilot can't control the direction of balloon travel, they only control the up and down) This is our landing spot and deflation of balloon.
It was a very fun experience and I would recommend it to you when you're feeling comfortable spending $200 dollars on a ticket (I bought the tickets using groupon BEFORE I got married). Our tickets were $170 with the groupon we used.
So apparently this video isn't exaggerating as much as I thought....
Today was our first day teaching Sunbeams and guess what the kids names are? Navaya, Shasta, and Danger. Yep. Danger. Welcome to Utah :D
We just spent a wonderful week in Virginia. Jill and Chris were so good to have everything planned and arranged for. Jill picked us up at the Norfolk Airport, and we went straight to our condo at the beach in Sandbridge. It was a lovely, roomy condo with a pool table upstairs that we all enjoyed and a nice kitchen and three bedrooms besides the loft. It was only about a three minute walk to the beach, and the beach had great sand with lots of sand crabs to catch and sea shells to gather. It was beautiful. We spent Tuesday thru Friday there. Chris' parents joined us on Thursday evening. We all left Saturday morning for Jill's house.
Here are some pics of the beach fun.
They are holding out sand crabs in their hands. All you have to do to catch one is dig up a shovel of wet sand, and there they are! squiggling and trying to bury themselves back in the sand.
This starfish was mostly Jill's creation.
Hunter boogie boarding
We're trying to win a contest at Jason's work with the following sand sculpture.
I know...the following castle is a little underwhelming.
We let one of our crabs go, it was fun to watch them run across the sand.
We walked along the boardwalk at Virginia Beach and ran into King Neptune.
I got up a couple of mornings early to go watch the sun rise. Very peaceful and beautiful.
Early morning walk.
Here's a video of some dolphins I caught on my morning sunrise vigil.
Kaden was baptized on Saturday night, June 13th. He is a special young man. His grandpas gave the talks and did an awesome job! Jill prepared an icecream bar for refreshments afterwards. Yum!
These pictures are taken in the church parking lot.
McKell and family drove down for the occasion. So nice of them.
This is a park by Jill's house. So fun to walk in it. We had fun spotting fire flies.
We went to church with Jill on Sunday. Love this family!
Shortly after Ayla had a time out for throwing a fit and hitting Mom, we sat down to dinner... After a few minutes of eating ayla stood up on her chair and yelled "I Happy! And Nice!"
We had an "Olive Garden" night with Mom and Dad last night... we made a few different kinds of pasta and tried some different sauces, plus salad and breadsticks of course! The breadsticks were actually really easy and turned out yummy so I thought I'd share the recipe!
Breadsticks:
1 cup warm water
3 TB brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 c. oil
3 cups bread flour
2 1/2 tsp yeast
Topping:
3 TB melted butter
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/8 to 1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp dried oregano
Dissolve 2 1/2 tsp yeast in 1 cup warm water. Meanwhile combine brown sugar, salt, and oil in mixer. Add water/yeast mixture and gradually mix in flour until slightly sticky dough forms. Knead 5 minutes. Roll out on lightly floured surface and cut into 1 inch strips. Move strips to lightly greased baking pans, cover and let rise 30 minutes.
Brush the breadsticks with butter and sprinkle with kosher salt, bake at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes, then brush breadsticks with more butter and a light dusting of garlic powder and oregano.
