What we're doing

Today's story started 3 weeks ago. Seth and I were living in Driggs and skiing/boarding everyday at our happy little Grand Targhee Resort. Then the season ended and we packed up our lives into 2 suvs (if any of you know how much junk I've collected over my years in Idaho, you can take a moment and let the shock wear off- gotta love downsizing.) The story of having 2 suvs will come shortly.


We pulled our caravan into Rexburg, picked up our friend Stephen and headed to Seth's sister's house in Temecula, California with an overnight stop at Granny's place in St. George along the way. The next morning his sister drove us to San Diego where we picked up our friend Janalee at the airport on the way to the port so we could catch our cruise!!

We went on an 11-night cruise to Mexico!! Ariba!! It was amazing! The 4 of us shared a tiny little stateroom on Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas (a perk of working for the company in their Alaska office!) The cramped space made for some interesting stories and a lot of laughs.

We stopped in 6 ports along the way: Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Zihuatanejo, and Manzanillo. Puerto Vallarta turned out to be the best stop when we found a local bus to take us about an hour away to a little authentic surf town called Sayulita. We rented surfboards for $4/hour and made idiots of ourselves for the afternoon. Another good stop was Zihuatanejo which happened to be the same day as Seth's birthday. We bought him the most ridiculously huge mexican straw hat that had a wing span of about 4 feet and made him wear it all day. We heard 'eh, hombre, nice hat' all day. That's my man :)

When we finished the cruise, the 4 of us spent a weekend at Seth's parents house in Torrance, CA. Really we just slept there and spent our days exploring through Orange County (my childhood stomping grounds), Santa Monica pier, an Angels game (they got whooped), shopping in 'big city' malls, driving the Sunset strip and Santa Monica Boulevard, walking the Hollywood walk of fame and driving around looking for famous peoples' homes. Sort of a mini-LA weekend. It was awesome! I love traveling, but I love traveling with friends even more. I was sad to drop Stephen and Janalee off at LAX and see them head back to wintery Idaho. They went from flip flops to snow boots in a few hours. h aha that's a rough one- feels like a slap in the face.

After our 2 1/2 week Mexico/LA vacation and spending a day running errands around Torrance, Seth and I had to get back to Idaho to pick up his car. Here's where the 2 suv story comes in...
We were driving home to Driggs from Rexburg just a few days before we had to move out of Idaho and the roads were a little icy from an overnight snowstorm.

We were in Seth car (his fancy pants LA-friendly, ID-joke VW GTI with low profile aka slick as snot tires.) We were turning into our neighborhood from the highway going like 5 mph when the big Toyota pick up behind didn't slow down in time and hit the back passenger side corner of our car and sent both cars sliding into the ditch. Nobody was hurt (thank God) but both cars were suprisingly very messed up for going so slow. The other woman's truck had its drive train sitting on the ground and the back axle was knocked back about 2 ft. Our rear tire was turned sideways and all the fenders and back light were messed up. Cheers! Couldn't have happened at a worse time! We are just grateful that nobody was hurt and it wasn't our fault so it didn't cost us anything.

We had the car towed to a little auto shop in Driggs and they said they could fix it, but it would take at least 2 weeks, having to ship in all the parts to the middle of nowhere where we live. We were moving in a few days regardless because we had to get on the cruise so we hounded the insurance until they gave us a rental car that we could take to LA and a few big messes later, we had one. The blessing came when the only car the tiny rental car place 40 miles away had was an suv- made moving all of our stuff possible! Yay! So we had the rental car for 3 weeks on our trip to CA and the insurance company even gave us gas money to drive back to ID to get Seth's car. Yay for having insurance! Or better yet, yay for the other driver having insurance!

That's where the story brings us now. We did the long drive from LA to Driggs in one day, picked up Seth's shiny fixed car the next and hauled our tired, car sore rear ends back down to St George for a little r and r at Granny's. We're here for a long weekend to spend some time visiting Granny for her birthday before we pack up again and drive to Mesa, AZ which is where we'll be spending the next who knows how long. Why are we going there? Not sure. We don't have work there yet, but we've got a free place to stay in my parents new home. They haven't moved in yet either so we're all starting a new adventure. My dad is working for Phoenix Childrens Hospital and Seth and I will hopefully be finding work soon also, but we'll see how the summer goes. If we find work and like it there, then we'll make Mesa our home. If we don't, we move on and find somewhere else that we'll love. That's the beauty of a free country and even more, free spirits.

Seth and I have been married for just over 7 months and we've been to 3 countries, 5 states, and taken 5 trips together. Whoever said marriage puts a stop to the fun was very much mistaken!