Connect Pass Adventure #1

Angela and I decided that we needed some better quality date nights. Now we do love binge watching some shows on Netflix or visiting our favorite restaurant, CousCous, but we decided we needed to spice it up. We decided that we would get a Utah Connect Pass. This pass gives you entry to 13 places all over the valley and their various amenities. This would give us at least one fun date night every month.

Our first stop was the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. We also invited Matt and Larry to join with us since it was close to them. We had a fun time seeing all of the cool bones and various exhibits at the Museum. It is mind blowing to think how large some of these animals were! There were many exhibits that had to be two or more stories to showcase the ancient life! We had a great time. Matt almost got eaten. (See the picture below) We were excited that our first connect pass adventure turned out well, and are hoping that the others will be just as fun! 

Night at the Opera

Last year we ventured out and I went to my first opera. I must say that I was rather skeptical at first, but once the curtain closed I found that I actually enjoyed the experience. So, we decided that this year we should go to another opera. We got some good seats for a great price due to a program that the Utah Opera/Symphony has that give deals to younger audience to try to entice them to enjoy the arts.  We saw Bizet's The Pearl Fishers. It was a great production, and we enjoyed the show. I don't think it was good as what we saw last year, but again it was still fun. We also love going out to the opera because it gives us a chance to dress very schmancy! We are looking forward to next year to see what opera we will be seeing next!

 

Christmas Fun

It was a great Christmas!  My brother Travis, his wife Nori, and their cute boys were in town from Texas.  We got to spend lots of time with the family and had a great time!

Jenner with Reed and Jimmy - in their awesome superhero jammies

We played a lot of Bang....

Mario Kart...

and Just Dance...

We also saw 3 movies!  (Hunger Games #3, Hobbit #3, and Into the Woods)

It was a good Christmas.

We also had a good time hangin' out with the Bates!

Jenner got an awesome sweater

Me and Zoe (what a cute dog)

Life

JENNER'S LIFE

Studying


Volunteering


Working


DJ-ing



ANGELA'S LIFE

Painting

Working

More painting...

And more working....

TOGETHER

Seinfeld - Jenner has introduced me to this show and it is delightful. :)

Reflections at the end of Summer

Alright I know that its waaay past the end of the summer, but hey better late than never right? Angela and I have been able to lots of fun things the past few months and also some things that were not so fun either.
We were lucky to be part this summer of our stake's youth conference. The conference was centered around the Book of Mormon. So we were called to "Lehi and Sariah" or "Ma and Pa" or whatever rendition of leader for a group of kids you want to use. During the conference the youth would perform small plays depicting various scenes from the Book of Mormon. It was fun seeing it come to life. We also had fun activites from a wall we had to get over as a family, a zip line, nightly chats by the fireside, getting real wooden swords to bury our sins like the Anti-Nephi-Lehi (these swords are pretty cool and we were able to keep and decorate them) a battle complete with plastic shields and water noodles as swords (Angela was actually quite the fierce warrior!) and a dance/Karaoke party that we put on.   We were put in an awesome family with a group of talented youth.  We loved the kids we were with and we very impressed by who they were, the standards they kept, their knowledge of things spiritual and we think that our "kids" have the potential to do great things in their futures.

Here we are with our family banner before the war!

Most of the Ammon Family

One of the plays

Last year for Christmas Angela surprised me with tickets to Wicked that was coming to Salt Lake. I had to wait quite a long time to finally get my Christmas present but it was worth it! I had never previously seen Wicked before. It's a shock. I know. I know all the words to Defying Gravity, but have never seen it. It was a great production and we really loved seeing the show!

We were also able to go that same week to a concert at the Conference Center. MOTAB was having Santino Fontana (Prince Hans from Frozen) as their special guest. We were lucky enough to have enough tickets to bring Kallee along too! It was a really fun concert including a great medley he did at the end using songs with the word happy. 

So my birthday happens to be in the summer so we of course had to do what I ALWAYS do on my birthday, we went to the Zoo!  I love the zoo. It was really fun to go this year because of all the recent changes they have made at the zoo including bringing the lions. Really the best part of the new renovations was that they extended the train. The train is almost the whole reason for going to zoo.

You are probably wondering if I am done yet. This really is getting long. Ok i'll...oh wait! Just one more quick thing. We bought a new car. I'll keep it simple in saying that I REALLY hate car shopping and I do not look forward to it in the future. So we got rid of "Maximus" my old car and we welcomed "Ellie" into the fold.

Back to work

Someone brought to my attention that I have been slacking in updating my blogs. This is true.  I have been incredibly lazy this summer.  But now summer's over, and there's no more time for laziness.

So I've started work and I love it! I get so much energy from being with my kiddos. And this year I actually decorated my room. The kids love it but they are also waaaay more distracted. :)

Partying with Matt

School's out, which means I'm freeeeee!!!  And for my first week off, I was able to hang out with my little brother Matt.  My parents went out of town for the week and asked me to keep an eye on him.  Matt and I were able to do a lot of fun things together!

We went to Wheeler Farm:

And to the dinosaur museum at the University of Utah:

The newly remodled Bean Museum:

The aquarium!

Jenner and Matt also built a lego set together.

In addition to these activities, Matthew and I also went to a play at the Hale Center Theater, to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and to the Lego Movie (in 3-D).  During the week was Matt's first 3-D movie and first root beer float.  He liked both!  We had a lot of fun together but we were also pretty exhausted by the end.