st. thomas

st. thomas might have been my favorite island.

have you ever seen more beautiful water and backdrop?

if you say yes then i don't believe you, because this place was amazing.

we thought we had the transportation on the island figured out, and so we took a taxi van to

emerald bay

^ did you think this was mary-kate and ashley? 

the bay was beautiful and the weather was perfect and we spent a few glorious hours there 

frolicking in the water, palm tree climbing, having a wave diving olympics, boys playing football, etc.

however when we were leaving emerald bay to go get lunch, we almost created a national uprising.

i guess there is an order to what taxi van you can take, and our taxi driver was trying to butt in line (gasp!).

it wasn't our fault (naive americans), but there were a lot of st thomasians yelling and cursing in their island talk, 

as well as comments of our taxi driver getting his "skull bashed in".

we got in and out of 3 different taxi vans before the st. thomas taxi men got it figured out, 

and luckily we didn't witness any murders...

after lunch the group split up, and us and the harris' went exploring!

we took the "99 steps" (really 103, according to winston) up to blackbeards castle and got an amazing view.

and then we decided that since we were there, it would be a crime 

(similar to the one we unknowingly committed with the taxis earlier) to not go to the famous

magen's bay

it really was as beautiful as those national geographic people say.

now i will leave you with a very scandalous picture that shows you just how pretty the water was

(just ignore the inappropriate couple right there in the middle)

the bahamas

the beginning of the "chick pic" era.

since hubbies only have about a 3 picture quota before they start whining,

us girls fulfill our picture taking needs with pics of ourselves.

it's not because we are narcissistic, it's because we love each other.

 

daw and i tried really hard to eat healthy and work out before the cruise so we could have our best beach bods.

unfortunately we started stress eating from the fact that we are remodeling a house ourselves,

but we still did pretty good compared to our usual twice weekly nielsens frozen custard runs.

however you will notice that we get exponentially fatter as the cruise progresses...

(i am cringing in embarrassment/shame at posting our beach selfies.  dont judge us.  we will never be in good shape again so we had to document)

 

we rocked the bahamas.

we steered clear of the people trying to make us pay ten times what we should for transportation,

and headed to a bus stop to travel with the locals.

we made friends with a guy on the back of the bus who guided us in the right direction,

and made it to a beach that we had pretty much all to ourselves.

it was the perfect set up with beach chairs, crystal clear water, and 

a volley ball net!!!

(with a free volley ball included).

we spent a few hours playing beach volley ball and having the time of our lives.

sadly, the worst part of a cruise is leaving paradise and having to get back on the ship.

but thankfully we had 3 more islands to go to!

couples cruise

if you haven't noticed already, we love our friends.
so back in november when we were all in depression because of the snowy weather,
someone thought of the idea of a friends cruise.
best. idea. ever.
we knew we had to make it happen and not let it be one of those ideas that people always talk about but never follow through with.

fast forward to april and we were on our way to the caribbean!

it was the worst timing to be in the middle of a total home remodel…
but also the best timing because dawson was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

so seeing as we are back in reality now and dealing with the stresses of life, work, and pretending we belong on HGTV...
don't mind as i re-live those amazing 7 days on my next couple of blog posts.

long live #thisisfriends!

the bahamas

st. thomas

puerto rico

friendsgiving

#thisisfriends friendsgiving 2013.

we may be a bunch of newlyweds but we put together a thanksgiving feast that would have made those pilgrims and indians proud.

we couldn't be more grateful for our amazing friends.
dallin & kate. winston & elise. ryan & nicole. steve & kayley. chase & nakita. gavin & jill.

however you will mostly just see pictures of the female parts of those couples, seeing as our husbands would prefer to reminisce about high school, discuss business, or talk about sports than take pictures.  weird, right?

but sometimes i can sneak in a picture or two with this cutie.  it's because of him that we have this great group of friends.

thank you brighton high school class of 2007!

hopefully this is the start of a tradition that will last until we're grey-haired and senile (even if the venue has to change to chuck-a-rama because we're too old and lazy to cook our own thanksgiving dinner)!

all hallow's eve

being the hard-working, money-making woman that i am, i have worked night shifts the past 2 halloweens.  

ok i admit, it wasn't necessarily by choice. but i wasn't missing out on much, so i wasn't too disappointed.

this year however, we had a PARTY to go to, and i was lucky enough to only work a day shift.  

elise was the hostess with mostest, and threw the party at her dad's mortuary.  very fitting for halloween, right?

us and the millers have been working out like fiends lately, so it was only fitting that we were the biggest losers.

everyone else put together fabulous costumes, as you can see from the picture above.

and just in case you wanted more pictures from our married people party (i know you do...), here you go:

us wives are very adorable and festive, as you can see from our amazing halloween themed treats ^

seriously though, i wish that really was my butt. ^ i need a little more junk in the trunk.

much thanks to these old farts for throwing such a wicked partay ^

^ kayley and i really embraced the costume and ate enough sugar to actually give us diabetes.

happy halloween 2013!!!

state fair 2013

do i have to mention again how amazing our group of friends is?  

i'm not saying that how much fun we have together is the reason that none of us have kids yet, 

but i'm not saying that it isn't.  

our motto is an inside joke, "this is friends", and it speaks for itself.  

we might love each other a little bit too much... nah.

we plan get togethers at least weekly (ok, usually more) for whoever can come.  

last week since the nicols got back in town, we decided to go big at the state fair!!!  

it almost tried to rain on our parade, but our enthusiasm scared those rain clouds away.

hands down the best part of the night was our grand finale on the gravitron.  

it took some convincing since we are getting older and our stomaches are getting weaker, 

but we all got on and looked death in the face.... and CONQUERED!!!  

aaaaaand then we all decided that might be our last time on the gravitron.  

but hey, if we were all able to go eat hire's cheese fries and root beer freezes after without puking, 

i'd say it was a success.  

the carnis, the people that we saw that we never knew existed in utah, the funnel cake, 

the rides that could collapse at any moment, the over priced games, the smelly barn animals, 

nicole's talent of sneaking us onto rides and getting free stuff, 

the ab muscle i pulled from laughing so hard in the gravitron... 

it was an unforgettable night at the fair.

couples trip 2013

do you think think that's it's possible to ever get sick of lake powell?

we don't!!!

so that's why we headed back to LP with our friends for this summer's couples trip.

we weren't sure if we could top last year's trip, but somehow we managed it.

the one thing that was different about this trip was the amount of girl/boy time.

this year the girls did their own thing (taking the little boat out/dance parties/laying out),

while the boys did their thing (wave hunting/mario kart/playing with the football for hours).

i guess that's what happens when we aren't all newlyweds anymore 

and being with your significant other in a swimsuit isn't that exciting anymore.

and ok ok, even though hanging out with the girls was the best part of the trip,

i did manage to force dawson into taking his share of pictures.

it's not my fault that i like pictures of my favorite person in one of our favorite places?

i'm pretty sure i reached dawson's picture quota for the year, 

so if the rest of my pictures this year are of just me you know why.

i feel pretty confident in saying that we have the best group of friends.

i owe dawson a lot for having such a great group of friends for all these years,

and i owe his friends a lot for marrying girls that i love and get along with so well.

the fact that us girls could sit on top of the houseboat and talk for hours about every topic imaginable

while the boys played mario kart and probably talked about high school the whole time, is pretty impressive.

what's more impressive is that after laughing/joking the whole trip and a VERY intense game of girls vs boys charades 

(where spouses may have been wanting to kill each other),

we were able to take a page out of our parent's books and play the "what i like about ___" game.

(you go around in a circle and everyone has to take a turn saying what they like about each person).

it was VERY sentimental and made us all love each other even more.

and it was probably the only thing that could have saved all us couples from divorce after that game.

bottom line is we love our friends and LP 2013 was amazing!!!

cheers to another great summer vacay!