This was our beautiful view all day Friday. For Brian's birthday, we went to Pineview Reservoir with his family for the day and went wakeboarding, water skiing, water tubing, and swimming. It was a perfect day, about 85 degrees out which made it warm enough to jump in and not freeze to death. Surprisingly the water wasn't too cold once you jumped in. I attempted water skiing for the first time and was almost successful, but for the first time in my life my feet were too small for the boots and my feet kept slipping out whenever I would actually stand up and start going. I'm absolutely determined to get it next time.
Funny story for you: I'm 99% positive I got a concussion while water tubing. Brian's dad was driving the boat and whipping us all over the place. Brian and I were in a two person tube, but because he's a good bit heavier than I am, my side of the tube was always sticking a bit out of the water and I was leaning on him the entire time.
After jumping a big wave which gave us at least 3 feet of air, we came down and I slammed into Brian's shoulder, almost wrapping my neck around it and smacking the side of my head. It hurt a little at first, but the actual pain that followed came the second time we went.
When we got back on the boat I was having difficulty seeing (black spots were all over my vision) and I got extremely tired. Brian said I passed out a few times on the way home, but I don't really remember. The rest of the weekend was complimented with a severe headache and neck pain, which caused me to suffer even more as I sat and watched Brian and 15 of his friends play paintball Friday night instead of participating.
This is another activity we'll be revisiting.
Below are a few more pictures of Brian being awesome at wakeboarding.
I didn't actually get any pictures of him in the air but that's what happens when you use a phone camera I suppose.
Saturday was a day filled with errands and outdoors. Saturday morning we went and helped Brian's aunt and uncle pack and move to their new home. That afternoon we went to Bountiful Park for an outdoor event put on by Nocea. For anyone that hasn't heard of the company, it is a local clothing company that was founded by two guys who grew up in Utah that promote healthy living and outdoor, active lifestyles. Two of the guys in Brian's singles ward are in a band called Ties For Tolliver and they performed at the event. There was cornhole, the ladder game where you throw the ropes with balls on the ends, giant jenga, football, volleyball, and a slack line.
Saturday evening, Brian and I went to Roamer Park in Riverdale. There was a stage setup and lots of music and dancing until sunset, and then they put on an awesome firework show. I'm a big fan of fireworks and they're such a summery event. It was way fun!
And now... my big TA-DA of the week!
Sunday wasn't any less busy than the rest of the weekend because the stake RS devotional I've been planning for two months finally happened! Five sisters (3 singers, one pianist, and one violinist) from my ward performed the song "I Will Shine," a song written about a talk President Uchtdorf gave in the September 2008 Women's Satellite Broadcast. It was beautiful and really brought the Spirit to the meeting.
Below you'll find a photo of our speaker, Kari Rich, and myself. Maybe it's cheesy of me to have gotten a picture with her, but when I told her it was my first time ever conducting a meeting of any sort, she was shocked and said I had done an incredible job and it was even more impressive that I started with a stake-wide devotional.
Sister Rich spoke about how we are all given individual Christ-like talents, and we should never compare our talents to other peoples. At one point she said, "If we all had the same talents, we wouldn't need each other. We would all be the same and that would be boring. We should use our talents to compliment other people's talents and empower each other as daughters of our Heavenly Father."
Another one of my favorite parts of her talk was when she discussed how much we learn from our struggles and trials. She talked about how the book of Alma is roughly 160 pages of war and tragic things for 40 years, while 4 Nephi easily covers 200 years in one chapter because nothing bad was happening. She was an excellent speaker and perfectly set her talk around our theme: Power is in You, which we chose based on D&C 58:28.
Kari has two books out, "Heaven Help Us! A Humorous Look At Surviving Womanhood" and "Lighten Up and Laugh" for anyone who would like to check out her work!
Overall the devotional was a smashing success and I felt like a big deal sitting between our Stake President and Stake RS President. It was a lot of fun as well, and I'm finally able to breathe a sigh of relief that my part is done.
Another best friend from college, Shanna, was the maid of honor.
Sam and I.
Shanna, myself, and Jessie.
Brian and I
SO happy we were able to attend.
