I was lucky enough to have some time off and a free plane ticket to head to Salt Lake to see my family and friends. Shane had to stay behind in AZ because of limited vacation days (due to scouting commitments).
During my trip, I...
...caught up with friends! I went to the 3D (Dinner, Devotions, Discussion) at the Saeed's, which brought back wonderful high school memories, lots of old friends, and (of course) delicious Persian food. I went and visited Tricia and Gavin (sadly, since Gavin was our only hope of getting a picture together, I only have a picture of myself that Gavin took to document the occasion). And I spent a wonderful evening with Carly, Natalie, Lahdan, and Megan...the evening was so grand, it warrants its own blog post (coming soon...), but here's a little sneak peek into the evening.
...spent a lot of time with my family. We watched Jared sing in a barbershop quartet of sorts, had many Easter egg hunts with Vera, ran around the house singing kid songs with Vera, blew bubbles with Vera, thought of names for the new baby Richards (Jared & Jessie's soon-to-be boy), ate dessert with the Castles, ate at Costa Vida. I ate lunch with my parents at Greek Souvlaki (yum!!) and dinner with them at Hire's one night (I have to catch up on the Salt Lake restaurants when in town). Mostly, we just spent time together, catching up on things. Sadly, most of the pictures taken during our time together involved Vera. The following picture is one of the few I have with someone other than just me and Vera in them. We were blowing bubbles...
[I know, not the most flattering picture, but the one of my mom and me is even worse...]...got to go snowboarding (see previous post).
...saw fresh snow three of the days I was there.
...shoveled over 4 inches of snow...IN MARCH (the updates made to my parents' house added a lot of new sidewalks to shovel)....did a lot of shopping with my mom. Technically we were shopping for my birthday (in June), but we ended up with a little more than expected so some of my birthday presents came home with me on the plane :)
...started and finished The Hunger Games. I didn't know it was a series and I'm a little upset that I didn't get the closure I wanted, but I definitely enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one.
...started (but nowhere near finished) my grandma's life history. She had her journals along with various pictures, documents, and other items of interest from her life published into a book. I started reading it and found it very hard to put it down at times. If only I had my own copy...for now, I'm working on my grandpa's (her husband) book instead.
Then, I got on a plane and returned to the 80+ degree weather of Phoenix. Even with everything I was able to do, it turned out to be a wonderfully relaxing vacation. If only we had more of those!
