Expensive...in the best way.

Here are the promised rings! A few weekends ago, we went to Snowbird for the Mountain Music Festival. With any good festival, you have great booths, right? Well, if that is the case...this was a fantastic festival!! We scored at the booths!

Kassi and I went looking and stopped at the first booth. I picked up a beautiful silver, flower ring, with a moon rock in the middle of the flower. I was almost sold.

Then I asked the price.

"...Oh, that one? It's 99 dollars."

"Oh, wow. Okay, thanks"

I set the ring down, and will forever have a *free* image in my head.

Kassi then says "I was looking at these booths a little earlier and I found some rings that look pretty cool at this other booth, and they are 4 dollars."

Can you guess where we went next?

We almost bought enough 4 dollar rings to equal the price of the beauty which was the silver flower ring, but that doesn't matter.

These rings were so much more special. They were custom, and this wonderfully talented man was engraving on the spot. Whatever you wanted.

The ones you see in this picture are my choices. The first one I bought said *Imagine*. Kass and I wanted to get matching "...Woot..." one's, so we did. The last one was picked by Grandma. It says "Live like there's no tomorrow."

These four dollar rings are priceless to me. They are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful AND, they are made out of coconut.

Isn't that the coolest thing in the world??

Sushi Virginity--Taken forever.

Can I please have it back? I've decided I'm not a fan. I went with Kass and Auntie Kristine to try Sushi for the first time ever. I chickened out and got a California Roll (not even a fan of that!!), and then Kass talked me into (threw one of her rolls onto my plate) trying some kinda something with raw something is all I really remember. Ew. Ew. Ew. Auntie Kristine and Kass ate their raw stuff, and I decided to go for something cooked.

I think that's the way everything should be.

Cooked.

However, to make a really long story short...apparently when you go to a Sushi restaurant and order ANY type of food less than "Fully Burnt," it comes out mooing. Who would have thought?

I tipped .10 for the first time in my life (Auntie Kristine didn't tip anything!) because the service was absolutely horrible and our waitress clearly had better things to do than to pour us more water, and bring stinky, raw fish.

I'm glad I'm able to cross "Try Sushi" off my list, but I'm happy to say that I'll definitely NEVER go to that Sushi place again, I now know how to order steaks at Sushi bars, and I'm not a fan of Sushi.

I'll step down now before the tomatos come flying. (Even though I really don't understand what everyone loves so much about Sushi.)

Snowbird Mountain Music Festival

A few weekends ago (See: still behind on blogging) was the 12th annual Snowbird Mountain Music festival. Our family has been going the past 4 or 5 years and we always have a good time! The last couple of years there has been a charge, because lots of bands come to entertain, however this year everything was free! ...Well, besides the Scentsy booth I couldn't pass up. And, the ring booths (Pictures coming soon). I'm okay with that though. I feel like me paying someone else's bills and scoring some super awesome goods while doing so is a fair trade.

And anyway...the festival was free. I had to spend the saved money on something.

Back to the festival...if you're ever in the area (Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah), you should definitely make a pit stop at Snowbird. It is absolutely beautiful and the festivals and such (especially this Mountain Music one) that they host up there are sooo much fun!

We stayed at the Cliff Lodge this year. There was a pool on TOP of the roof of the Hotel. Nuff said.

We started the day each morning watching the (Insert really long, professional name here) Instrument Competition. Anyone can join. There are two divisions: Novice, and Open. They hold the competition for all types of instruments. It's a blind judging session, and when it's your turn, you get up on stage and perform two songs. Based on the points you received from the judges, they choose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. In the open division, first place gets a donated instrument (whichever instrument they competed in). I love watching all of the people get up there and give it their all!! The age ranges from 10 (or so) to 65+, so you see all kinds of stuff! Later in the day, they have (my favorite) a singer/songwriter contest. This year they had 11 singer/songwriters. Something about live music--singers--and songwriters totally makes me the happiest Jessica ever.

Another thing that makes me the happiest Jessica ever is spending time with the fam up in the mountains! We were all there this year: Grandpa, Grandma, Auntie Tammy, Uncle David, Alexis, Stockton, Katie, Megan, Kass, Jon, Me, and Travis. AND, I totally forgot until now, we actually were welcomed by the emcee on the stage! He said something like "It's so nice to see all of the familiar faces coming back each year! The Nays, and their wonderful parents and family who come to support them each year, the SoandSo's, and the SoandSo's."

I took lots and lots of pictures. Here are a few of my favorites!

Megan competing, and receiving her 3rd place ribbon. (She played beautifully!!)

Trav drove up for the day on Saturday, so after we watched a little bit of the music competition he wanted to ride up the mountain on the Peruvian Express (Ski Lift). We rode last year and I couldn't remember very much about it, except for I thought it was beautiful up there, and I remembered there was an awesome cave thingy at the top. So, I agreed. We got on the chairs, and Travis said (laughing) "I can remember last year, you were a little baby! You were so scared. It was funny." Um awesome. How did I not remember that I was scared and WHY was I scared? Well...I was soon to find out!

The lift is SO steep!!! Also, you are just in a lift chair, with no seat belts. Once we started to go up at a steeper rate, I instantly remembered why I was so scared last time!! I do okay as long as I don't move at all. Once in awhile I'd snap a picture but for the most part, I kept pretty still!

It's pretty bad when you are going *over* very tall trees in a little shaky (ok, Trav assured me they were very sturdy and "Could hold quite a few Semi's full of stuff") chair. It's also bad when you look at your boyfriend to try and talk him into never doing this again, and you notice he is thoroughly enjoying it.

Once we got to the top, we got off the lift and walked through the cave to the other side of the mountain. It has a hiking/biking trail map to show where you are, and the view is so, so, so pretty!! I really want to go up there in the fall to take some pictures. I'm trying to think of another way to get to the top though so I can ditch the chair ride. Any ideas?

Once we got back down, we decided to go on a hike. I was behind documenting everything most of the time, but it was nice for the two of us to just get away from everything for a little bit, and go exploring!

I made him pose lots, but he was a trooper...so I took advantage :)

Love the flower with the clouds in the background. In fact, I love all of the wild flowers in the mountains!

On our way back, we stopped to look at some trees with (probably) awesome stories.

Another favorite about this festival is all of the music lovers who go. It's 100 percent normal to start a "Jam" where you just start playing, and people come join/watch. So, as you're walking from place to place, you see people jamming.

This jam consisted of my Aunt and her family. They played for over an hour and people started to come, and watch, and clap, and there was even a shy little girl who ran up and dropped a dollar in one of the guitar cases.

Grandma and Grandpa had been resting up in the room, so when Auntie Tammy and everyone started to play music, I went up and brought them back down to watch. As you can see, there were quite a few people watching. All different ages. The little boy was a favorite. He'd come right up to where they were playing and clap, and dance, and try to strum the (huge) bass. He was fascinated.

Unfortunately we weren't able to go to the pool on the roof (21 and up), but we had a blast swimming and hanging out together at the pool! Kassi sported Auntie Tammy's swimming suit and I wore some pj pants that I rolled up...with intentions to put my feet only in.

Do you know how hard it is to say no to 3 cousins, 1 friend, and 1 sister?

That being said, I swam too!! We played "Colored Eggs" "Hands Up Stands Up" "Racing" and all of the games that I haven't played in SO many years. It was good times!!

Snowbird I love you, and I'll see you next year!!

Camping...two weekends in a row.

Camping two weeks in a row is the perfect start to any summer, imo.

Last year I had to ask someone what imo meant. (Rookie, I know.)

Oh well, the past is the past, and this year I'm rockin' it.

Sort of like how I "rocked" going camping one weekend, going out of town during the next week for work, and then going camping again the next weekend, which happened to be the day I got home from out of town.

Packing was pretty easy that month. :)

Anyways, here are some pictures from our camping trip like 3 or 4 weeks ago.

Turns out I like to post *lots* of pictures on the blog. Also, I'm pretty indecisive, so I have a hard time deciding which pictures should stay and go.

But I don't like to wait for them to individually load.

So, I throw them all together into a collage (Well, not really throw...sometimes I try to make the pictures look pretty, and put them in a collage with other pictures that "flow".

That way I only have to wait for a few pictures (of pictures) to upload.

I know it's taking the easy way out.

Don't judge.

1-- I've always wanted Trey to love the water. Kinda weird, I know. There's just something about a puppy swimming, playing in water, that I absolutely adore. This time when we went camping, I decided to trick him by throwing a rock into the river behind our tent and tell him to "Go get it!" (I knew he wouldn't want anything to do with the water if I just told him to "Go in") Being the disciplined doggie that he is, he ran right into the water. I know if he could speak English, he would have thanked me over and over. From that point on, we couldn't really get him *out* of the water. He really loved it! It also helped while we were packing things up, I'd throw a rock in and tell him to go get it and he'd spend a good 20 minutes in the river looking for the same exact rock that I threw :). I am almost as excited as I was the first time he lifted his leg to pee on a tree

2-- I'm trying to talk Trav into us getting a truck. In the meantime, Trey and I share the front seat. Um, not necessarily a favorite of either of ours. I suppose it's good "quality" time though. I took the first picture on the way up, and the second one on the way back. He was a tired little boy on the way home. I don't blame him though. Peeing and marking territory on every single tree within a mile radius has got to be rough. He lives a rough life I tell ya

3-- I adore these flowers, and love how they look against the black car that was passing them. I bet the people in the black car thought that I thought they (or their car) was awesome, but that's not the case. They can still think that though, I suppose.

We saw this blazer catch on fire on the way up the mountain. I didn't know that the name of the vehicle was a literal name. That's a super quick way to put a damper on things. (Note to self: Don't buy a blazer

4-- Camping was wonderful, as always! Someone was in *our spot* so we had to camp right next to it, which wasn't so bad...but we're thinking about putting a permanant sign by our spot that says "The Johnsons" or something. I hope that's not illegal. We did all of the usual things: Fished, Rafted, Canoed, Cooked, Hung out, Made someone fall out of a boat, Laughed, and had a great time! --Even the falling out of the boat (canoe) part. One thing that we tried that we'd never done before was cook "Hobo Dinners". These are probably the most amazing thing in the world! I highly suggest them..we are definitely going to add this little dinner to each of our camping trips from now on!!

First Camping Trip--2010

Well we finally had a weekend where the weather wasn't cold and rainy so we went camping with Trav's family (Dad, Mom, Brother, Sister, Nephew's, and Nieces). My sister Kassi came along this time too, which I think is actually her first time camping with us, so that was really nice! I took lots of (but not enough) pictures, as always! Enjoy..and look forward to more during this next week...we're going camping again this weekend!! Woohoo!

When we first got there, someone (genius) showed the kids how to throw rocks into the lake. They were occupied with this for about 2 hours! Then on Sunday when we were packing up, it kept them busy again, so that was awesome!

I know it's one of the most popular things to take a picture of, but I enjoy taking pictures of the sunset on the water, it's so unbelievably pretty!

Pictures from the drive up (we went to Scofield in Price, Utah) and some from the trip.

Trav's dad brought his boat but for the most part, we played on the shore. Tyler was SO excited to catch a fish. He kept saying over and over that "He just caught 4 fish last weekend, and was really good at it!"...He ended up catching the biggest fish this weekend, so he was pretty stoked about that!

With the little fire that we were able to make (Scofield has close to nothing for wood), Duane needed to retire an old American Flag. That was pretty cool. I'd never seen that done before. Some of the pictures turned out really good! I love the Stars one.

I can't wait for this weekend, we're going up into the Uintah's, where we usually go, and it's soooo pretty up there!! The fishing is fantastic, too!! I'll be back later to post some pics of this weekend. Trav was in his cousin's wedding last weekend as well and I need to get pics up from that. AND, my garden is starting to look more like a garden! My plants are growing and I need to update! Coming soon, I promise!! Dang it! I'm so behind!!

Have a fantastic weekend!

Preview. Sit tight!

We went camping this weekend and I got some really cool pictures! It's going to take a few days probably to get them posted because I have a few setbacks (See: messy house, still need to unpack from my week of work in Price, Utah, still need to unpack from camping this weekend, sunburned, and tired) but here's one to enjoy in the meantime.

Oh, and my Etsy shop (Jump there with the button on my sidebar) showcased on Saturday. That's all sorts of exciting!!

Happy Monday!

Have you ever had one of those days...

...where you're SOOOOOOOOOOO tired, but you don't want to go to sleep, in fear of missing any excitement??

Trey has. This weekend was full of that! Finally, late Sunday night after we had an empty house, he crashed in front of the couch in the living room and I had to actually nudge him to wake him up when we went to bed!!

Weekend recap

We went fishing this weekend!! We're so excited that fishing weather is finally here!! Although we didn't catch anything, we still had a good time! I couldn't catch a picture of it but there were some people there flying *HUGE* remote control airplanes. Like, big enough that I thought someone was in them. Even after they were doing crazy twists and turns in the sky. I just figured they were crazy!! I'm glad I figured out on my own that they were just remote controlled. That would have been an awkward conversation.

Trav claims he "almost" caught Moby Dick. Conveniently enough, he only "almost catches Moby Dick" every time I'm not around.

It was super fun though!! I can't wait to go again!

Saturday night we had a BBQ with some friends, and then again on Sunday with some family! It was definitely a good break in for our new BBQ! SO looking forward to future barbecues! Hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend!!

Sneak Peek

...of our adventure yesterday.