2016

It made me sad how many complaints that I heard towards the end of 2016 how terrible it had been and how people were more than ready for 2017. Last week Derek and I took a drive to Arches National Park and while we were driving we discussed how people were so negative towards the year, we talked about how it's a outlook thing, if you are looking for the bad you will always find it but the same goes if you are looking for the good you will find it as well (I prefer to learn from the bad and move forward reflecting on the good).

So here is my list of 2016 Greats!

• Started the year off great with a COLD bike ride (January 1st)
• Visited Capital Reef National Park with Derek (January 2nd)
• Lots of drives up the canyons with Derek (All Year)
• Ice Castles with Mom, Kayla, and Derek (January 20th)
• Visited Bryce Canyon National Park with Derek (March 6th)
• Hit a blizzard on the way back from Bryce Canyon (March 6th)
• Lots of bike rides by myself, with Derek/Kayla, and with Derek (All Year)
• Lots of experiments with my grill (All Year)
• Went to my first Caucus (March 22nd)
• Went to Salt Flats with Derek (March 25th)
• Hit a blizzard on the way back from Salt Flats (March 25th)
• Quit job at Young Explorers Daycare (April 8th)
• Started new job at Joseph Thomas Real Estate (April)
• Went riding on Antelope Island with Derek (April 9th)
• Got rid of a lot of stuff and reorganized basement with Mom (April)
• Biked Front Runner Century with Kayla (April 23rd)
• Made my first Lemon Curd (April 26th)
• Lots of evening walks with Mom (All Year)
• Went to California to babysit for Joel and Becky with Mom (May)
• Explored California with Mom, Children, Kyle, Kayla, and Derek (May)
• Visited Yosemite National Park with Kayla and Derek (May 29th)
• Hit a rabbit (May 29th)
• Biked Little Red Riding Hood with Kayla and her Mom (June 4th)
• Had my tire completely blow threw (June 4th)
• Made Kiera's First Birthday Cake--6 layers (June 11th)
• High Valley Concert with Mom in the park (June 20th)
• Fiddler on the Roof play with Mom and Lucy (June 21st)
• Bike ride with Brea, Leah, and Mandy (June 23rd)
• Volunteered at Lehi Round Up (June 24th)
• Volunteered at Bike MS in Logan (June 26th)
• Thompson Square concert with Kayla (June 29th)
• Helped carry the Giant Flag up the Canyon (July 3rd)
• Quick trip to Bear Lake with the Chuy's (July 3rd-4th)
• Truck drove through our backyard (July 6th)
• Biked Antelope Island by Moonlight (July 15th)
• Went to Salt Flats with Derek (July 16th)
• Went hiking with Brea and kids (July 23rd)
• Went to Castle Valley Pageant with Mom and Chuy's (July 29th)
• Hiked Donut Falls with Skousen's and McBride's (August 13th)
• Went to Bee's Baseball game with Mom and the Chuy's (August 13th)
• Went to Utah County Fair with Mom, Ben, and Sonia (August 20th)
• Went to Nashville Tribute Band concert with Mom (August 22nd)
• Installed bike rack on my car with Derek (September 1st)
• Went to St. George with the Skousen's (September 2nd)
• Visited Zion National Park with the Skousen's (September 3rd)
• Mom received her mission call (September 15th)
• Biked Goldilocks ride with Leah (September 24th)
• Took the Chuy's family pictures (September 25th)
• Hosted Newport girls night during Priesthood session (October 1st)
• Signed an official offer on American Fork townhouse (October 1st)
• Designed my house (October)
• Birthday dinner with Erin and Jamie (October 12th)
• Witches night out with Brea and Kimmy (October 14th)
• OneRepublic concert with Katrina (October 15th)
• Jazz Game with Kyle, Ben, and kids (October 17th)
• Birthday (October 19th)
• Surprise breakfast from Chase and Davey
• Pedicures with Kayla and Mom
• Dinner at Cantinas with Mom, Libbey, Kyle, Kayla, Derek, and Brea
• Dinner at Benihanas with Brea and Leah
• Pinners conference with Brea and Mandy (November 5th)
• Bonfire up the canyon with Kayla and Derek (November 9th)
• Beauty and the Beast play with Mom (November 11th)
• Disneyworld with Brea and McBride's (November)
• Little Mermaid play with Mom (November 21st)
• Aquarium with family (November 23rd)
• Thanksgiving with family (November 24th)
• Started back at VASA and started working with a trainer (November 30th)
• Nashville Tribute Band Christmas concert with Mom (December 2nd)
• Dinner with Newport friends (December 8th)
• Got beautiful Christmas tree (December 9th)
• Christmas Carol Sing-A-Long with Mom and the Chuy's (December 12th)
• Installed insulation with Derek on my house (December 17th)
• Cookie making with the Chuy's (December 18th)
• Vernal trip with Mom and Kyle (December 21st-23rd)
• Visited Dinosaur National Monument with Mom and Kyle (December 22nd)
• Christmas Eve at the Chuy's (December 24th)
• Visited Arches National Park with Derek (December 30th)
• Family pictures at the State Capital (December 31st)
• Dinner with the family for Mom's birthday (December 31st)

(Instagram created this, they said that these are my top 12 from 2016...they are all from the last 4 months of the year so I am not sure how accurate it is)

PhotoHunt: Bubbles

This was taken at the Jolin Tsai concert we went to on the beach during Chinese New Year. I'm a huge fan of bubbles and wish that I could have taken some better ones, but she was completely surrounded by bubbles, so pretty and mystical.

I Heart Tim!

Have I mentioned that on July 30th I'm going to see this beautiful man?

Along with this group that may now be one of my favorites!

And I will be going with these 3 lovely ladies!

I'm so excited to go to a concert and to spend time with my beautiful sis and 2 of my besties!

Beach Fun

As I mentioned before I left for Taipei Yuling invited Andrea and I to come with her family last weekend to a concert at the beach. It was so much fun, going in we had no clue what to expect, but we were both so glad that we had gone. After school we waited for Teacher Stephanie and Yuling to clean the school and then we hoped on the scooters (Andrea with Yuling and I with Stephanie), this was only my 2nd time riding a scooter and I am not sure if I had mentioned it before but I am sort of terrified of riding them (all right not sort of, they freak me out). Teacher Stephanie knew that I was a little scared and so she went a little bit slower for me and told me where I could put my feet so they would help me balance the most and just told me to wrap my arms around her, not once did I feel really scared or unsafe, after the first little bit it was actually fun. I could definitely see myself having one and enjoying it :D
We went to Yuling's house and Teacher Stephanie left us to go home to get her family. We had to wait for everyone else to finish getting ready and then we were off. The whole way there (about 30 minutes) all we heard from Allie (Yuling's niece) was about Jolin, Allie was so excited to see her, she had even brought a plastic doll and pen in hopes of getting Jolin to sign it for her. We finally got there and man was the place packed, we were pretty close to the beach so it was a little bit cooler, luckily Yuling had told us that it would be cold so we had both worn a sweatshirt and jacket.
Yuling showed us where our meeting place would be, so that we could go look around by ourselves if we wanted and not have to worry about getting lost. We walked around with everyone looking at the different food and game booths, Yuling and her family quickly began buying food--that is one thing that I find funny about watching Taiwanese people at night markets or just eating in general, they can eat and eat and eat and then eat some more. I could be full after the first thing that I eat but they would have to try 3 or 4 other things before they even begin to slow down (my brother-in-law Erick would fit right in :D). Andrea and I split a couple of things but the smell of really strong Stinky Tofu kind of turned us away from food for a little while.
We went back to where we were supposed to meet up and listened to a couple of singers, it was so much fun just dancing, laughing, screaming and feeling like a teenager (I have only been to one concert in my life and this was an outside one with hundreds of people it was so cool and different). We got several looks but we didn't really care, we were having fun! After that Andrea, Allie and I headed back towards the food booths to try and find some food that didn't smell for us. We walked past a cotton candy stand and Allie informed me that she had never had cotton candy, I felt that we needed to fix that very quickly- it's not one of my favorite things in the world but it's just something that you have to experience. In Allie's rush to go back to the stand we lost Andrea but we figured that she would just be back at the meeting place.
On our way back to the meeting place we walked past Teacher Stephanie (we were quite surprised, we didn't think that we would see anyone that we knew or that we would have any luck of finding Teacher Stephanie once we got there). She was trying to find her husband Bob and daughter Eliza but couldn't find them, and she had forgotten her cell phone at home so she couldn't call them. She decided to just stand where she was and wait for them. Finally about 15 minutes later I stood at the spot so she could go and use Joseph's cell phone, we found out that Bob and Eliza had gotten lost and couldn't find Stephanie so they had gone home...Stephanie said oh well but I'm staying :D
We had just gotten back to the meeting spot when Yuling's house keeper came running up to Allie to tell her that they were waiting for Jolin, Allie heard Jolin and she took off, we struggled to keep up with her. We got back behind the stage and we found Yuling and Andrea, they were standing with a bunch of other teenagers waiting to see if Jolin would come through. We stood there for over 30 minutes when they finally told us that she had already come in before the concert had even started, Allie was pretty disappointed :( but then we got to hear her sing, we were pretty close and with Allie on Yuling's or mine shoulders she could see her pretty well. (Yuling said that she feels too old for stuff like this, "I'm not a teenager" but that Allie is the only one that she would do stuff like this for).
Jolin sang 3 or 4 songs and then there was the BIGGEST/BEST firework show that I have ever seen in my life! It was probably 30+ minutes long and it just kept going and going, bigger and better. Beautiful fireworks! (After wards Yuling said "there goes our tax dollars!") Andrea and I were so impressed, of course we couldn't really hear after wards, but that's ok :D I was super happy because I got to play with my camera settings (remember FIREWORK setting!) there are definitely some good ones and some not so good ones, but I haven't had time to go through and delete the ones that aren't really worth keeping.

Beach Concert

Fireworks

Chinese Concert!

Friday we went to this super awesome concert at the beach with Yuling and her family. I felt like a teenager cheering, jumping up and down, and standing behind the stage in hopes of getting an autograph from the singers. There were about 5 that sang, two that we liked the most. I just wanted to share the videos of our favorite songs, I will write more when I return from Taipei.


We loved this song, it was so catchy and it had English in it :D He was fun and brought tons of energy to the stage. His English (well his name translated is Harlem Yu)


This is another one of Harlem Yu's, I am not 100% sure if this is the slow song that he sang, but I liked it anyway.


Yuling's niece Allie was soooooooo excited to see Jolin! I am sure that I heard her name at least 50x on the way to the beach. Her name is Jolin Tsai and I guess she studied English. This song just makes me laugh, but still the music is very catchy.

Cheesecake Yumminess!

Oh my goodness do I have so much to catch up on (blogging and otherwise), but of course I don't start way back where I should, I start with the yummy (literally) parts :D.
Friday night we were invited to attend a concert recital of Tiffani's (Andrea tutors Tiffany and Isabelle and then Vanessa goes to Owl Preschool). The recital was beautiful and it was fun to be able to listen to good music for a couple of hours. But after wards we were on our way when Vanessa's mom mentioned that she had cherry cheesecake, we thought that we would stop somewhere and eat it, but nope she took us home and when we got out of the car she handed us this bag (from Tiramisu, a cake company) and told us that we would like it.
We tromped upstairs and of course had to open it right away and take some pictures :D, it turned out not to be cherry but blueberry instead (I wasn't super excited about that part at first, but I have warmed up t it now). Andrea was super excited because cheesecake is her favorite. (I think that I already know what I will be getting for her birthday in February)
OH MY GOODNESS! It was so super duper yummy! We each had a piece while watching the movie Friday night, another one while we were watching the movie last night and I think that we may have snuck another piece in there somewhere. If you come to Hualien I would definitely recommend the cheesecake :D

We're just a little excited/surprised to be getting cheesecake (and plates) :D

You can't really see it but Andrea thought that the little forks that it came with were hilarious.

Notice how each slice is wrapped in it's own piece of aluminum foil? Yeah I wouldn't want that job.